#moral of the story is im having more fun with the show now than i have since joining the fandom

[cartcop]

Don't get we wrong, I feel hopeful too, specially with the whole network change because it means the series has an actual shot of going back to the way it used to be. I feel like lately the emergencies don't have that spark anymore, so I'm looking forward to see what ABC does with them. Also, let's cross our fingers and think that they'll actually give a damn about promo and they'll use (at least in social media) what attracts more attention... I mean, if the answer is a couple of firefighters that are raising a child together, I wouldn't mind.

However, what makes me mad is that by the time they were working on the finale they weren't sure if they were going to come back or not. From what it looks like, all the characters will get a sort of happiesh?) ending just in case, because again, the ABC move back then was not a sure thing.

They did that with The Resident. Sure, at first it was supposed to be a season finale, but they still did an ending that could be interpreted as both options: season finale or series finale. Well, it was cancelled so at the end they at least got a chance to leave the characters in a good place.

That's what will happen with 911 this season, I believe, because after almost six years the show at least deserved a decent ending if for one reason or the other they were not coming back.

My point is, we know that it's not going to be an open ending, and that all the characters will be left in a good place. I know there are a lot of possibilities, but we are talking about miss Kristen Reidel, it wouldn't surprise me if Buck and Eddie end this season with Natalia and Marisol, representing a "traditional" conclusion for both characters.

It wasn't hard to leave them single, if she truly didn't want Buddie to happen, but she just had to bring two random characters for the last four episodes of the season, right? If I follow her previous patterns, what will happen is that for the general audience, Buck and Eddie will end in "heathy" relationships with Natalia and Marisol, but they will share a significant moment together that's up to interpretation for the internet. Classic queerbaiting behavior me thinks.

I'm aware that now we are far from losing the war, especially if we consider that ABC has a different target audience and that they actually tend to listen to them. So, Buddie truly has a chance of happening now.

At the end, what I'm trying to say is, I feel optimistic for the ABC move, but I'm also frustrated because if that had been the series ending, that woman would have given a poor conclusion to Buck and Eddie just because yolo?) There was no reason to have those two random characters with them.

Buddie has a second chance, but I hope and pray to the universe that ABC will realize what they have in their hands and even if *she stays, they will overule her bad takes, not only on Buddie, but for the show in general, that move was not a cheap one. If they really want for the series to last, changes need to be made.

It's also sad to think that if they had stayed at FOX or if they had cancelled the series, we never really had a chance to win, huh. Homophobia will always prevail, no matter what.

The thing with this, anon, is that mostly I think it's a really fair reading of what's been going on. I just read the information we have really differently.

I definitely agree with you that the emergencies have been meh for a while now, but to me that's just a symptom of being 6 seasons deep into a procedural; a new network might breathe a little more life into it, and I hope it does, but I've never watched a show through a network switch so I'm pretty 🤷🏻‍♀️ on how much it's gonna affect the actual content. Def hoping for more promo though.

I get what you're saying about all the character's getting a "happy-ish" ending because they didn't know about season renewal but....isn't that always how it is? Like, I don't personally see much of a difference between where it seems they're gonna leave off 6x18 than any of the other finales we've had.

And I get why a finale where one or both of the boys are in a relationship with a woman would be disappointing if we're reading it from a "they thought this might be the last episode they were ever making" angle (but I am BEGGING someone to show me what KR has said or done that makes y'all believe she hates buddie. Because I was watching casually through most of s5, I missed all that. And from the show itself, I don't get that impression at all. I am genuinely asking PLEASE i need context). But, while I've always been a buddie girlie, 6b is literally the first time I've ever thought they might actually do it. And I've been really confident since 6x13 and the interview about the couch being in play until the very last scene of the season (and still am) that the closing shot of this season is gonna be the three boys on the Diaz couch. It's just the only thing I see as a possible resolution. Not to say you can't read that as a "open for interpretation" fan service moment, but until I know exactly why people think KR is fundamentally opposed the idea of buddie together, I'm gonna be reading it the way the text tells me to.

Because while I've become a bit of a buddie truther in 6b, they're not in a place where getting together by the end of the season would make....any sense. A lot of people disagreed with me on that, but that's been my stance since like, early s6. Just cuz there was no development for them in the first half of the season at ALL, and we knew how jam packed 6b was gonna be with other plotlines with other characters. They've got a lot of growing to do before buddie canon would even be satisfying imo. I just really believe we might be on that track now.

And with that in mind, here's my perspective on the ending IF they were writing it thinking they might never write another episode again: Buck can and should end up alone at the end of the season. He should really concretely know what he's looking for, in the way he didn't when he dumped Taylor. Having Buck explore the opportunity to date someone who is fascinated by his experiences but not actually interested in him is a great way to do that, imo. Him walking away from that and realizing he needs to find someone who will, in Oliver's words, meet him where he's at. I really cannot see Natalia being relevant beyond the finale at all, and if I'm wrong, I'm gonna start seriously questioning the writers, because they've told us she's not it for him (like, even my friends who watch the show very casually were screaming "NOOOOO!!!" at the screen every time she was mentioned in 6x15).

Eddie's more complicated though. Let's say, hypothetically, they realized midway through shooting 6b that renewal wasn't likely with Fox, and they didn't know whether or not they'd be picked up by another network. Eddie's been on this little journey of self discovery about wanting a partner, and has accepted the fact that he's lonely. Ending the show with Eddie in his single status quo would be sad as hell for the GA! We have to remember, we are not the only ones watching this show, and the vast majority are not seeing buddie as romantic options for each other. That can change, I really hope it does change, I am optimistic that it WILL change; but it hasn't yet. If they were trying to wrap things up nicely, with everyone in a pretty good spot, I can see why shoving relatively-underutilized Eddie with a nice girl would be a good way to do that. Easy to undo if they got a s7, but also a lot easier to convince the GA of a love interest for Eddie being good for him, just because he's not as big of a deal to the show (which I hate. I love Eddie I want him to have the world. But Buck is the main character on this show, let's be real)

That's not to mention that this is all speculation; we don't have any idea what's gonna happen with these two women. I'm standing pretty firm in my belief that they won't end the season in relationships, but I could be wrong. And if I'm wrong about Eddie, I can see why they'd make that choice and I'm not even a little mad at it. If I'm wrong about Buck, and he ends up in a clearly doomed relationship with Natalia, I'm less cool with that, but I can see the opportunities for s7 and assume that they were working under the assumption that they'd get a renewal somewhere. If Buck ends up in a seemingly perfect and happy relationship with Natalia, my faith in the writers is gonna plummet, not because queerbaiting, but because they told us it was doomed in 6x15, and it would make it clear to me that the writers don't even know what kind of stories they want to tell on a micro, episode to episode level. But I really can't imagine that happening.

[coriphallus]

DA: The Veilguard Spoiler review pt1 - Blood Magic

alright let's do this. let's write an in-depth review of veilguard. this will be long and this will be negative and i might eventually say some good things but everything i say will be undermined with a 'BUT'.

its now been around a week since i finished the game and had some time to parse my thoughts and this is why i didnt enjoy the game; NOT why you shouldnt.

so dragon age has a very special place in my heart and i am %100 the kind that has DAO as their favourite game. i have played these games religiously, and let me prefix this by saying i was not hyped for this game, i wont lie and say i wanted bw to succeed or i hoped the game would be good etc etc. if i liked the game, it would be a surprise. alas.

so theres multiple reasons for that, but the canary in the mine for me had been the announcement on blood magic, and yeah i was not shocked after DAI but i was still disappointed. so lets start with blood magic:

Blood Magic

DA lore has changed alot over time, and just like the media it took inspiration from (ASOIAF) i was under the impression that it used unreliable narrators deliberately, just as theyve poked fun at the concept with bethanys tits. it made sense then that the people telling these stories didnt know much about blood magic therefore they couldnt explain it fully but we've known some things for certain, from the text. blood magic uses blood as its source of power instead of lyrium (blood=life force), what constitutes as blood magic is open to interpretation (i.e phylacteries), multiple groups outside of the 'civilised society' such as chasind are not so staunchly against it, knowledge on it can be passed down from a mentor and that mentor usually happens to be a spirit. it can be used to enact control over people in a literal sense and thats considered by the narrative of all DA games to be more reprehensible than burning someone alive.

now i will derail this but i swear im going somewhere with it. i grew up in a country with majority white people, some blond, most with exposed hair who lived in big cities with cobblestone roads and snowy winters and starbuckses, and who would consider themselves westerners. some religious practices i know less about than most christians know about their holidays.

where my grandma lived was at the bottom of a high slope, and once a year when we went to visit her id see a thick trail of blood trickle down from the waterway to pool on her street, and at that dinner the family (and neighbours, sometimes) would bring a myriad of dishes and we'd feast. i would see butchers shops clean their curbs with buckets of water, mopping red tinted liquid down a drain. when i grew older and we were visiting my mothers village i watched the men subdue and kill a cow that we were going to eat that night. i watched them skin it and separate the meat from its bones, explaining what parts of an animal is used for which dishes because it was their craft and a young girl showed interest. as people we always live with the knowledge that our lives depend on death, whether it be a plant or an animal. existence is not moral and clean, and death is messy. getting blood stains out of a fabric once a month is the lived reality of more than half the human population.

i was not raised religious, nobody in my close family were, i didn't feel any sort of way when those men started to pray around the cow but i knew why they did it, even if it was performative for some, for the rest they had to show respect. the cow was meant to represent somebody you cared about, offering it in their stead symbolically. it needed to be respected, it needed to be butchered without pain. save from one serving of meat, as was tradition, were donated to the food banks.

now im sure some of you are thinking 'no matter how you slice it, its still a brutal act. made more brutal by the audience deriving some form of moral superiority' and yes, i used to think that too, because what is a religious practice for them is a show to me. but it is the norm where i grew up, and in the end a cow is dead regardless because we need to eat. and some people who needed to eat more than us got to eat too.

somewhere in germany news break out that some immigrants were practicing unethical and unsanitary butcherings, you see the footage of men in kufi and puffy pants and women covered completely in black sheets get ushered out by police. they shout some things in a foreign language, speaking the name of their foreign god. they show a censored room covered in blood and gore.

so i have to ask now, when you play veilguard and see venatori torturing and exploding a halla into a puff of red smoke which image does it bring to mind, what do you think of when you hear 'ritual sacrifice'? you may not have noticed this parallel but your brain sure did, as it has been noticing for your entire life and counting, the same reason you cringe at the barbarity of people consuming raw flesh, painting their foreheads with blood, killing animals you would pet. its alien, its gross, its wrong.

i cant play this game and take it seriously with its mask yanked off, gloating about its lack of nuance every step of the way. when you hit people red stuff comes out, red stuff bad. killing bad. murder bad. that it extends more sympathy to a fantasy deer than it ever allows for living breathing people of its universe, faceless and primitive.

in other DA games there were people over there somewhere who enslaved others, built their entire civilization on the ruins of gods they cannot comprehend, practiced bloody sacrifices and rituals that doomed the world for their own power, and even in their homeland they are nothing but canon fodder to be murdered and gawked at. their traditions, religion, entire culture is less than a set dressing, because whatever grosses you out are the bad apples, because the good ones cant be anything else and still derive sympathy from the audience.

and its true, you need to be an exceptional writer to make that work, especially if you dont have any real life experience to pull from. you need to stain your hands a little, and be prepared to be called dirty.

but i see it, i see those news reports everywhere i look in the game, i see the streets being cleaned and scrubbed so the tourists wouldnt call them backwards people, unclean, less than.

ive never played a game so repulsed by and is uninterested in its own universe than DAV, in every line of dialogue i can feel it trembling in fear. my companions tell me i dont need to watch a deer getting butchered, i can look away and proceed to electrocute hundreds of masked men some of whom are talking about comically evil things like patricide.

this has always been a point of contention in the medium of video games as the most prominent way to engage with the world has been through violence, and for me the DA franchise has always managed to tackle this by allowing its main character to be messy. yes, hawke cleaves thru countless faceless raiders but theyre also an illegal immigrant trying to get by with nothing to offer to the world than their violence. warden is deliberately recruited for that same violence, the only purpose of their existence is to fight as theyre made to shed everything else from their old life. and still, still you play these characters as they are allowed to grow, heal, carve out a little space for themselves where they can laugh and joke with their peers. it is juxtaposed to that darkness in their lives that makes those moments precious.

'what is good?' the games asked, and they answered 'doesn't matter, the world can be a better place with them in it'

veilguard asks 'what is good?' and answers 'you are.'

it doesnt matter whether blood magic is bad lore-wise (and that discussion is irrelevant to this decision made by the devs), because it needs to be narratively. like tabloid news the entire premise of the story is built on it. it needs to be inaccessible to and shunned by your party and rook because they need to be 'good' and in contrast, your enemies need to be 'bad'

and like dominoes it retroactively reframes the moral stance of every game in the franchise.

so, yes, i just laughed when i saw that announcement. i didnt know what else to do. but hang on to your knickers because it gets so much worse...

[pomefioredove]

Normally not too interested in noble bell but your writing for the popping into bell instead of nrc and characters and characterizations have captivated me and quite frankly I think its INCREDIBLY fun story so far, interest definitely piqued :]

Love how Crowley extended an invite to reader. Who would have no doubt still ended up in ramshackle i feel like.

Debatably the bell tower is less moldy and rickety than that building yfYGHV

I also adore Clo and Pierrot they are very fun, wet rag and theater kid, im not gonna be surprised whatsoever if they end up tied as favorites for me

Rollo being a stalker for a hot minute is definitely not anxiety enducing for anyone whatsoever ( poor reader has to deal with that probably unintended horror and dread for abit and then The entire school tryna kill them ... rough day wmnjsb)

Hugo is fun and I like em :] goat...

Phoenix is also fun! I enjoy how he showed genuine concern in a way when he noticed reader stop in place, least some people're nice so far to em

Overall i binge read prologue book 1 parts 1 and 2 and have no regrets your writing is pretty nice I think

okay first of all anon hggggggr you guys have no idea how much I love when people analyze my writing like this. I love it sooo muchhhh I love hearing your thoughts!!!! TELL ME EVERYTHING!!!

anyway yes... I really had to include that line about crowley because it goes with my personal headcanon that he was never looking for a way to get yuu home, he just needs a boarder (free labor!) and is actively trying to keep them there as long as possible. I hate/love him so much. the staff of noble bell are just willfully ignorant and not as fun

I found characterizing the boys very difficult because like, NRC? all of the characters there are supposed to be bad people who do bad things. they're based on villains. but, arguably, victor hugo's characters, including claude frollo, are layered, humanized, morally complicated, messy human beings. I want readers to both empathize with, and kinda dislike these guys

NRC has a reputation for having a pretty cruel student body, but Noble Bell doesn't, Noble Bell has a reputation for being traditional, yet modern, in a way. in Glorious Masquerade, Rollo both praises the past of the college and Fleur City, and then says things like "oh, but that's not who we are anymore, now we're a safe and modern and accepting city!" which is obviously not true. not to me, at least. they put up the guise of kindness and tolerance but there's trouble beneath that

what I wanted the characters to be, then, are people who seem intelligent, proper, put-together etc, but who all have something, some flaw that wouldn't be accepted by their society and school, that draws them to Yuu. Rollo included

there'll be a lot more of that in book 2 (ᵕ—ᴗ—)

[starlightkun]

⇢ word count: 13.5k ⇢ warnings: past unethical experimentation, you have to accept the premise of a single human empire in space in the future with colonies and a military and not think deeper about that, multiple needle/injection mentions, main characters are morally gray, and oh yeah cursing ⇢ genre: sci-fi, set in the near-ish future, humans and aliens and robots, black op mission, captain kun, ?????? reader, slow burn, fluff, dash of angst, ft. wayv as the crew of the vision ⇢ extra info: took a lot of obvious inspo for this one from isaac asimov’s robot stories, specifically his concept of positronic brains & the three laws of robotics (and if you’ve read any of his stories, you’ll probably be able to see some other places too) ⇢ author's note: holy shit, this is finally it. the last part. THE last part. im literally vibrating rn y’all, im so excited for you to read this one, i hope you’ve been enjoying this fic im so so proud of it and love it so much ⇢ series masterlist | prev.

You looked down at his hand, then back up at him. “Do you want whatever a robot’s love is?”

“Here’s the engine room,” Ten announced, pushing open a door. Inside were multitudes of pipes, tubes, and wires. On your tour with Kun, he had only pointed out the door to you, not taken you inside.

You looked around with interest, following the pilot further in. He was walking towards a large cylinder set lower than the floor, about the same height as him. Thin bands of white light wrapped around the body of it, stopping where it tapered into a blunt end. Ten stepped down into the inset, now a head shorter than the cylinder, and jerked his head for you to follow.

You dropped down as well, looking up at the contraption.

“This is the slipdrive,” he gestured to it grandly. “Brand new.”

“It’s smaller than the second gen,” you observed immediately, looking around the engine room. “The dimensions of the prior model would be… twice as large?”

“Correct.”

“The Vision was built before the new slipdrive, it’s meant to use the prior model, which has a completely different energy signature. How are they compatible?”

“You’re fun,” he declared with a grin, resting a hand on the side. But the explanation he seemed about to launch into stopped short, as the smile fell from his face and turned baffled. “Well that’s not right.”

“What?”

“ZEN?” Ten called out for the AI. “There isn’t something wrong with the slipdrive, is there? You’d tell us.”

“Of course, Sergeant,” ZEN’s voice confirmed, though his avatar didn’t appear. You figured he might not have a terminal to project himself from down here.

“So it’s just… idling?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Why’d you turn it on idle?”

“Captain Qian’s order.”

“Should’ve figured. Thanks, man.” Ten just looked even more troubled.

“What’s wrong?” You asked.

“Captain apparently ordered ZEN to suspend us in slipspace…” He crossed his arms thoughtfully. “I’m assuming you know the difference between turning off a slipdrive and idling one?”

“Turning off a slipdrive drops the ship out of slipspace. Idling it suspends it in slipspace.”

“It’s not exactly putting it in park. The longer we’re in slipspace, the more the slipdrive and the ship’s systems have to work to hold its position outside time and space. Not an ideal position to be in for a protracted amount of time.”

You gulped, following after Ten as he started towards the door. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to ask the captain why he suspended us in slipspace,” he said simply.

Ten seemed to barely register you accompanying him to Kun’s office, or at least didn’t mind if he did notice. The door was open when the two of you got there, and Ten knocked as he walked in.

Kun looked up from where he had been staring rather listlessly at his desk reader displaying some report. He dismissed the document as he went to give his greetings, “Ah, Ten, Y/N. How can I help you?”

“We were just down in the engine room, Captain,” Ten started. “I was showing Y/N the new slipdrive, when I noticed that it uh, it wasn’t set to propulsion.”

“Yes, I’m aware.”

“Why did you suspend us in slipspace, Captain?” His words, despite their bluntness, held no hostility or malice, they clearly weren’t accusatory or suspicious, just curious, inquisitive.

The captain sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. You chewed on the inside of your cheek nervously. After far too long of a pause to be comfortable, he replied, “There is… a matter that needs to be resolved before we arrive at UHN Main. Do you trust that you do not need to know anything further at this time?”

“How long will it take to resolve?”

“I don’t know, unfortunately.”

“Just making sure we’re all on the same page about the slipdrive idling.”

“It’s brand new, and the newest model. Not to mention ZEN is monitoring all the systems. If an immediate danger becomes present, I will obviously reevaluate.”

Ten seemed satisfied. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do, yeah?”

“Thank you, Ten.”

“Alright, Y/N, have you seen the armory? I bet you could trick out a blaster like you did the coffee machine.”

Before he could take you back out of the captain’s office, however, Kun cleared his throat. “I wanted to have a word with Y/N, actually.”

“Gag, okay.” Ten headed for the door alone. “I’ll find a manual for the blasters, Y/N. Find me when you’re done. Bye!”

And then it was just you and Kun. And ZEN, presumably.

You turned to Kun, fidgeting with your fingers. “I didn’t say anything about you suspending the slipdrive, Kun. He was showing me the engine room because he knew I had read about the new slipdrive model, and he noticed it was idling all on his own. ZEN told him you suspended the ship.”

“I’m not angry, Y/N,” Kun reassured you gently. “Apparently Liu has been doing some thinking, about the headache you got yesterday.”

“…Right.”

“He wants to take another look at your head, to see if he can figure out what was causing the pain. And ideally, disable it.”

The mention of a painful headache made you shift your weight from foot to foot. Somewhere, in the back of your mind, you knew what he was talking about, but it felt like it happened to someone else, not like your own memory.

“Okay, sure,” you agreed.

In Yangyang’s lab again, he had you lay down on one of the cool metal counters this time, and you felt startlingly like an autopsy cadaver as you stared up at the sterile white light above.

“Well?” Yangyang prompted the captain pointedly, holding his hand out palm-out.

“Well what?” Kun snorted, crossing his arms over his chest.

“My positronic Allen key that you stole yesterday. I need it back now.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Don’t tell me you destroyed it in some noble, romantic gesture, or so help me, Captain—”

“I have it, Yangyang,” you interrupted, digging into your pocket to bring it out. You offered it out to the roboticist. “Here.”

“Ah, thank you, Y/N,” he beamed, accepting the coin into his hand. “Now, unlike last time, I’ll be putting you into repair stasis. You’ll lose muscle tension, kind of like when you’re asleep, except you’ll be awake. Hence why you’re laying down. That’s so if I were to test out anything that caused unexpected movement, you wouldn’t injure yourself or break anything. But I won’t be messing with any of that, promise. I’m just going to be looking around at how your head’s constructed.”

“Like… opening my head?”

“I don’t think yours does that.” He shook his head with what looked like a nearly disappointed frown. “I’m no human doctor, but from what I remember of your x-ray, I’m pretty sure your positronic brain is encased in mostly human stuff. At least, stuff that doesn’t look like metal on an x-ray. Bone, skin, who knows? I’ll be doing live imaging with some robotics tools this time to try to look at what’s inside.”

“Got it…”

When he held the Allen key up to your head this time, the side that faced you had a glowing pentagon in the center rather than a triangle. Yangyang talked as he slowly slid it around your forehead and temple, “The receiver to turn on repair stasis is usually around the same area as diagnostic stasis, but not always.”

“Holy shit…” Liu breathed out as he moved the sensor over your forehead, continuing to develop the image on the small handheld screen in his other hand.

Captain Qian tensed. “What? What’s going on?”

“I was kind of right. Y/N’s head wasn’t exploding so much as ripping itself apart from the inside.” The roboticist squinted at the parallel, jointed strips of metal at strategic points around your positronic brain casing. If they were to expand, which it definitely looked like they were meant to do, they would not only rip the casing apart, allowing the organic, wet human fluids like blood into the carefully aligned positronic brain, but fracture and break your skull from the inside out.

“Well fix whatever did that!” The captain snapped.

“I can’t.”

“What kind of roboticist are you?”

“A fucking good one,” the lieutenant shot back, the tension in the room finally getting to him as he bit back at his superior. “Because I can tell that nothing is faulty, Captain. It’s a failsafe. If certain parameters are met, the failsafe is triggered, and her entire positronic brain is permanently destroyed.”

He sighed, looking over the mechanics again. They were almost too familiar to him, rudimentary, but effective. They were widely considered cruel to use on robots nowadays. His roboethics professor was the first vocal opponent of such failsafes, especially when the topic of sentient robots was brought up. A human ordering a robot to destroy itself was one thing, a direct order, a choice, a decision. But installing failsafes for a robot to destroy itself, entirely unaware of what was happening to it was different. You weren’t even just a robot, you were… something else. A person, regardless of what percentage of you was organic matter.

“I doubt she’s doing it consciously,” Liu added, as if that made it any better.

“But you said someone either took all her data or destroyed it already, then ordered her to forget everything! What the fuck would this failsafe even do?” The captain was still demanding answers, insisting on reason, on anything less than the brutal reality in front of them.

“Presumably destroy the last thing left from whatever shady thing was happening down there.” Liu nodded to you, laying limp on the counter, eyes closed, almost looking peaceful, if one could imagine that you were sleeping.

“I hate to ask… but why keep her like this in the first place? Why not just destroy her when they abandoned Aegeum? Why do all this to her and not just trigger the failsafe? It’s just… cruel,” Captain Qian said, his voice hoarse. The lieutenant didn’t need to look at him to know that he was staring at you. They both were.

“I wish I knew, Captain. I wish I could tell you anything.”

“It registers as pain for her?”

“She remembers being human a lot better than she remembers being a robot, those might be the only words she has for it,” Liu offered up an explanation, then another, “I also haven’t seen a model exactly like her… I don’t know how much of her is organic. She could have nerves, pain receptors. If she says it hurts, then I believe her as much as if you told me you got a boo-boo.”

“Is there any way you can take the failsafe out? Or deactivate it at least?” The captain asked, voice near pleading now.

Liu turned away from you to shoot the captain a look, retorting, “Without accidentally triggering it or turning her into a positronic vegetable in the process? Fuck no.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“God, what the hell went on down there?”

“The more I learn, the less I think I want to know.”

“You’re going to have to tell the rest of the crew. You know that, right?” The roboticist said bluntly, leaning his elbows forward on his knees to look the captain in the eyes.

Captain Qian ran a hand through his hair, sighing. “I know…”

“I won’t blab. This is between you and Y/N. We all trust you to tell us what we need to know when we need to know it. But I think they need to know this for Y/N’s sake.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t want them accidentally triggering the failsafe or ordering her to do something.”

“Or another flying knife incident.”

“Fuck, that too…” He swore, looking up to the ceiling as he tried not to imagine your head randomly exploding at mess one morning. The captain focused back on his crewmate. “Are you about done with her like this?”

Liu stood up, setting the positronic Allen key onto the countertop next to your head. “Yep.”

“See you at mess, Liu.” The captain nodded to him as the roboticist moved to leave, closing the door behind him.

The captain picked up the Allen Key, gently lifting and turning your head to be able to access the base of your skull. He slid the key into place as he’d seen Liu do twice now, pressing the side with the pentagon to your skin until the coin buzzed twice against his fingertips. Setting the key aside, he delicately placed your head back down.

This time, you could tell that time had passed. Kun was standing above you, in the process of letting your head go, so tenderly, and you didn’t quite remember him grabbing it, but you didn’t not remember him grabbing it. You blinked slowly, eyes following him as he stepped back politely.

“Y/N?” He said your name quietly, holding your gaze. “You with me?”

“Yeah, Kun,” you replied, slowly sitting up. “I’m here…”

“How much of that were you actually hearing?”

“All my systems were operative but not talking to each other. I could hear you guys, but I wasn’t actually processing what you were saying.”

“Sounds like Wong in our briefings,” Kun joked dryly, and you let out a half-hearted chuckle. When tense silence fell over the two of you, he cleared his throat and continued, “Anyway, Liu thinks we have to be careful with our words when discussing certain things about your amnesia or Aegeum, and that the headache is a failsafe is to keep us from prying too far.”

You tried to argue, “I can deal with a headache if it helps—”

“Y/N, it’s not just a bad migraine. It’s a self-destruct button. And pushing it wouldn’t help us at all.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So we’re going to leave it alone, alright?”

“No picking at the scab.”

The corner of his lip twitched. “Exactly.”

“I-I think I’d like to go back to our room,” you said weakly.

“I’ll go with you.”

When you woke up from your midday nap, you weren’t expecting Kun to still be in the room, honestly. But there he was, sat at the desk with the paperback book from Aegeum, having turned the chair around to face the bed. As you stirred, he dog-eared his page and set the book aside. You yawned and sat up, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes for the second time that day.

He stood up and moved to sit on the edge of the mattress, offering you a tentative smile. “Hey.”

“Hey…” You echoed hesitantly.

Kun inhaled through his nose, then exhaled through his mouth before drawing his eyes up to meet yours and setting his shoulders. “Whatever kind of impulses and signals fire in me that my brain interprets as love, I don’t question those. If the best word you have for what’s going in you is love, it’s not my place to question that either. I’m not the gatekeeper of the word.”

You held his gaze steadily. “Do you think I only love you because of the First Law?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Can you live with yourself not knowing?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sure this has been a lot for you too, I won’t push you for an answer right now,” you said quietly, slinging your feet over the side of the bed to stand up.

As you made your first step towards the door, hand outstretched to grab the handle, Kun spoke up, “I…”

You stopped, your hand falling back down to your side as you turned back to look at him curiously. “What is it?”

“Never mind.” He rushed to shake his head.

“You were going to ask something, weren’t you?”

“It’s okay. You were going.”

“You can ask. I know the difference between question that I can say no to, and an order.”

He still hesitated.

“You’ve seen me say no, haven’t you? Even to you, when there was no danger. Think.”

Kun finally nodded. “You’re right.”

“So?”

“I want— Could you… Would you mind… staying, for a little bit? You don’t have to… you can sit over on the other bed, or at the desk, or leave, or whatever you want, but…”

“I want to be around you too, Kun,” you said the words that you knew he couldn’t bring himself to for fear of it being too forceful, sitting back down next to him, closer than before. “Even if… you don’t know what to do about it.”

He swallowed thickly, and you saw his jaw tighten. You held your hand out for him, watching as he slowly put his on top.

You woke up first in the morning. From where your head rested on your pillow, you could see Kun’s own sleeping form in the bottom bunk of the other bed. Yesterday had been a bittersweet time: he told you about the book he was reading, you shared what you’d learned about the latest subject you’d been perusing, you gave him his injections, and the two of you had been unable to leave each other. Until it was time to go to sleep, and then Kun wordlessly got under the sheets on the other side of the room.

Slipping out of your cabin, you started down the halls of the ship. You had no particular destination in mind, thinking that maybe you’d go to the observation deck before eventually meandering over to the kitchen for mess, but more-so wanting to stretch your legs and let your mind ruminate. Your positronic mind. Even that thought alone was something you were still turning over.

As you passed by the robotics lab, however, you weren’t expecting to see light coming from under the door. Stopping, you gently turned the handle and pushed it open, finding it unlocked. Yangyang—or who you assumed to be Yangyang, as their face was completely covered by a welding mask—was at one of the workstations, welding something together as sparks flew up around his hands, and you squinted, covering your eyes against the brightness.

“Hey, Yangyang,” you announced your presence.

He perked up towards the sound of your voice, and waved his hand that was holding the robot piece in it. “Oh, hey, Y/N.”

“Are you busy?”

“Does it look like I am?” He gestured to the materials in front of him.

You looked over the countertops that seemed more cluttered than normal, welding tools that he was actively using, and robot part that was still in his hand. “I mean, yeah, kind of.”

“Nah, come in.” He waved you in, setting his tools and project down as you stepped further in. Still aware of how early it was in the morning, you shut the door behind you. The roboticist took his welding mask off, putting that aside and mussing his hair up with his fingers. “I really am sorry about the other day, by the way. Giving you an order.”

“Oh, that’s not why I’m here.”

“I didn’t think it was, but I still wanted to apologize. I needed to do it, but it was still a shitty thing. So I’m sorry. I’d do it again, to save your life, but I’ll apologize after every time.”

You tilted your head curiously. “Then what’s the point of apologizing?”

“Because you deserve one,” he said sincerely, firmly.

“Well, thanks. For saving me, and apologizing, I guess.”

“So, what do you need?” He changed his tone, throwing on a bright smile.

You took a deep breath, pulling up another stool to sit across the counter from him. “Do you think I can love?”

“From a robotics standpoint, I don’t know enough about how you’re constructed to be able to say much about what you can do.” He leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on the tabletop, lacing his fingers together over his stomach. “But that doesn’t matter. Ever since humans invented the idea of love, we’ve been debating about if it’s real, what it is, trying to study it, sell it, whatever.”

“Sounds like you don’t think it’s real.”

“Sure it is. As real as any abstract, undefinable concept is,” he shrugged. “Humans like to think they’re special. It was only in recent human history that we even learned that we weren’t the only intelligent species in the universe. And even then, there were some people who said that surely what sets us apart from them is that humans are the only species capable of love. And when we finally got translators proficient enough and could talk to them and we found out that they had the concept of love too, then it became that humans are the only ones capable of real love. Whatever that is.”

“The other species might’ve been thinking that about humans, too.”

“True.” He tapped his thumbs together thoughtfully, then continued, “My old roboethics prof, he used to say something: There’s no true metalman.”

“What does it mean?” You asked curiously.

“It’s a play on ‘no true Scotsman,’ which is a logical fallacy. The fallacy itself is kind of irrelevant. But it means there’s no such thing as a pure robot, free of human influence. That no matter how hard a roboticist may try, they’ll unintentionally leave some trace of themselves in whatever they create. There is always some human choice to be made at some point in the process. Some cases are more obvious than others, like early robots that had more limited built-in vocabularies talking like their creators, or a roboticist making seemingly arbitrary aesthetic decisions for a robot’s head features then his buddy walks in and jokes that it kind of looks like the first guy’s ex-wife.”

You blinked. “Did that really happen?”

“It’s an ‘everyone knows a guy who worked with a guy who…’ kind of thing,” he explained. “Anyway, my point is that I don’t think it’s so hard to imagine that a species so obsessed with love might, intentionally or not, make something that loves too.”

You pulled your bottom lip in between your teeth, thinking about the difference in Kun from before and after you went into repair stasis. “Is that what you told Kun?”

“What?” Yangyang’s confusion seemed genuine.

“I don’t know, I figured he would’ve talked to you about it,” you mumbled, looking down at your hands.

“No, he hasn’t.” After a moment, he added, “For what it’s worth, I think if he was to be taking my word about if you can love over yours… that wouldn’t be a great sign?”

You let out a choked laugh. “What does it mean that I’m asking you that then?”

“You’re someone who knew so little about yourself in the first place and now feels like you’ve had all that turned on its head. You’re doing what you’ve always done: Asking questions. I think that’s perfectly fair.”

“You don’t think I’ve completely lost what little sense of self I had?”

“I think you might feel like that—I can’t read your mind—but this doesn’t make the Y/N we got to know on Aegeum a figment of our imagination. You weren’t pretending to be our friend.”

“You don’t think that was the First Law?”

“The flying knife and the ceiling, definitely First Law behavior,” he conceded. “But I’ve met some rude, unhelpful robots before, trust me.”

“When did you know?” You asked. “That I wasn’t completely human?”

“I suspected something from when they found you untouched with no memories. I thought you were an android with a busted memory core. But then you bled.”

“I thought androids didn’t exist.”

“They don’t, but it’s the best I could come up with. No way was I expecting that they had actually developed a functioning humanoid before the first android.”

“Maybe they did but they didn’t survive.”

“Oh, you see, now that’s sad,” Yangyang clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Don’t make me think about that.”

“Sorry,” you chuckled a little, then went to change the topic. “So what were you working on?”

As Yangyang began explaining the personal project he had been tinkering with when you walked in, you let your seemingly ever-present problems fade into the background, eagerly listening to his enthusiastic words.

After breakfast, you took an extra plate of food to Kun’s office, knocking firmly on the closed door. When ZEN had called him for mess earlier, the AI reported back that he didn’t want to be disturbed, and the other six of you were to eat without him.

“Come in,” he voiced from within.

You entered, spotting him at the desk, hunched over reports with his head in his hand. “You missed breakfast.”

“Sorry, I… thinking.”

“About?” You asked, setting his food on the only empty space left on his desk.

“Thanks,” he took the food, moving some of his papers aside to put the plate front and center. “The Skippers that were on Aegeum, we still don’t know why they were there.”

“No, we don’t. Or why they were flying Fishead pods instead of their own ships.”

“I was just re-reading this report from the Admiral from before we entered slipspace. List of attacks by Fishead pirates, but there’s something off about a couple of them. The targets are all UHN scientific sites, not military vessels or trade outposts, and nothing was pillaged. Just destroyed.”

You tilted your head thoughtfully. “Were any K’llor spotted at the attacks, or only their ships?”

“It looks like they were just aerial attacks, cannon blasts. So, it would seem like a no.”

“If we assume those weren’t K’llor pirates driving those pods, and were actually more Skippers looking to destroy rather than plunder…”

“Two’s a coincidence, three’s a pattern.”

You sat in one of the chairs across his desk from him. “Were the facilities bigger or smaller than Aegeum?”

“Sites, not facilities,” Kun corrected you. “They weren’t even buildings. One was an unmanned space station in orbit around a meteor. It was ran entirely by robots, so it had no defenses. The other was a solar farm installed on a colony planet. They left the city it was powering alone.”

“So… no fatalities?”

“None. The city that lost their solar farm is running on back-up generators until the solar farm gets fixed.”

“If they were all Skippers, and they were all together, then what the hell happened on Aegeum?”

“They may not be in the same faction. Or they may have been at some point, then diverged only recently because of… differing ideals.”

“Still makes you wonder how they ended up at Aegeum in the first place…” You mused. “Doesn’t seem like a place you could really stumble upon accidentally.”

“No, not particularly.” Kun shook his head. After a beat of silence of him pushing food around on his plate and you silently mulling over what you had just been talking about, he changed the subject, “You got up early this morning.”

“Yeah, I was thinking, too.”

“…About?”

You shifted forward in your chair, resting your elbows on the desk in front of you and folding your arms together. “I understand that you’re worried about my having a lack of… choice in the matter, when it comes to this. And I can appreciate the sentiment, Kun, and where that concern stems from. But don’t you think, that in unilaterally ending our relationship supposedly for my own good, that also takes away my agency? The thing that you’re so worried about me keeping through all of this?”

Kun’s fork stilled over his food, and he swallowed as he held your gaze steadily. He slowly nodded, the weight of your words clearly resting heavily in the creases of his forehead. “I-I didn’t think of it like that. I’m sorry.”

“Do you trust me to make my own decisions? Even about this? Or do you really just think of me as a mindless, obedient robot?”

“No, I don’t think of you like that. God, Y/N, of course I don’t,” he denied, his voice troubled.

“Then you have to trust me to make decisions about us, too. You can’t just make them for me.”

“I…” He opened and closed his mouth, momentarily at a loss for words. “Can I digest this? Think, before we keep talking?”

“Of course,” you agreed, well aware of the gravity of your questions. Hopefully, your next ask would be lower impact, “Yangyang asked me to stop by the shop after breakfast, I’d like you to come with me, if you can.”

Kun gave you a small smile. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

“No, she’s not something for you to experiment on,” Kun rejected Yangyang’s idea as soon as he had started pitching it, his voice biting.

“She’s all we have left of what they were doing,” Yangyang replied, gesturing to you zealously.

The captain stepped in between you and Yangyang, his fists clenched down by his sides. “Exactly. Don’t you think Y/N’s had enough people studying her? You’re not going to put her under your microscope next.”

You looked at your friend from around Kun, shaking your head for him to drop it for now. Yangyang held his hands up and started backing away towards the door of the lab. “I’m going to grab a juice…”

Kun watched him leave, his chest heaving with deep breaths.

“Kun… what’s wrong?” You asked calmly.

“What?” He looked back at you.

“You’re shaking.” You gently picked up one of his trembling hands.

“I’m angry,” he answered shortly. “Why aren’t you?”

“He’s trying to help.”

“Did you see his face? Liu’s just found a new toy. You’re not just some… specimen to be studied.”

“This is his field of study, he’s allowed some interest, I think. And I don’t think that’s all he thinks of me.” You watched as Kun started pacing, running a hand through his hair, visibly agitated. “You’re thinking about your program, aren’t you?”

He sighed bitterly. “We weren’t people to him. Especially not the discards.”

“That makes me angry.” Your blood simmered just hearing him talk about himself like that, so casually, as if it were an objective truth. “You’re not… disposable, Kun. You hold your crew together, and I… treasure you.”

“God…” Kun looked up at the ceiling again, and it was then that you saw tears forming at the corners of his eyes as they reflected the lights above him.

“Yangyang is not Dr. Yoon,” you said firmly.

He stopped his pacing, hung his head, then nodded. “No, he’s not. He’s a good kid.”

“Exactly.”

“Y/N…” He said your name weakly, desperately, looking up from his feet to your face. You saw the tear tracks on his cheeks.

“Yes?”

“It’s true, that you were created by Dr. Yoon. I wasn’t letting myself think about that earlier. But I don’t hate you.” He didn’t falter in his words in the slightest, determined, resolute, his mind made up. “You are probably the only good thing that has come out of that man’s existence.”

“I might’ve done awful things, back at the lab,” you said, warning him.

“Yeah…” He shrugged one shoulder almost sheepishly. “And I work for the head of Intelligence at the UHN, right now. Do you think my hands are clean?”

“I’ve never thought they are.”

“You’ve always been able to just see me. I’m sorry I was refusing to see you before, but I’m looking now, I promise.”

“Can you live with yourself? Not ever knowing… if it’s the First Law?”

“Roboethicists and robopsychologists can talk themselves to death on that, I don’t care. You were right. I wasn’t giving you any sort of autonomy by making a decision like this for you. So…” He inhaled softly, but in the dead quiet of the room, you could hear every rustle of fabric, every breath, every step he took closer to you. Kun held a hand out towards you. “I can’t offer you anything close to a normal life. Or really anything at all. Other than me.”

“That’s all I can give, too. Myself. You can accept that I am in love with you, whatever that means to me, just as I accept that you love me, however that reality presents itself to you. But…” You looked down at his hand, then back up at him. “Do you want whatever a robot’s love is?”

“You are more than enough, Y/N,” he pleaded.

You took his hand. “So are you.”

“All of you, how you were made, what you very well could have done, what you are… You are more than enough,” he repeated like a prayer, pulling you in closer at the same time that he stepped forward and wrapped his other arm around you, as if he hadn’t seen you in several lifetimes, holding you to him with a crushing strength that you hadn’t experienced from him before. You hugged him back as tight as you could, so he knew it was real, that you were real, and that you were here.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, pressing his lips to your cheek. “I’m sorry—”

“No, Kun,” you hushed him. “We both needed time. It’s okay. Thank you, for trying to do what you thought was best for me.”

“Are you sure about this? What Liu wants to do?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” You pulled back from Kun’s embrace to look him in the eye. “I’m the proof. I was built there, and if we want to know what they were doing, we have to study me. I wouldn’t trust anybody more than you guys to do it.”

He cradled your cheek. “You’ll tell us as soon as your head hurts? You cannot push through the failsafe, Y/N.”

“I will, I promise,” you agreed, wiping at the drying tears on his cheeks. “I like my head in one piece.”

He stroked his thumb over your skin gently. “Yeah, me too.”

“Alright, ZEN,” you called out to the AI. “Can you get Yangyang back here?”

“Lieutenant Liu has been loitering outside the entrance for the past two minutes,” ZEN informed you.

“Of course,” Kun sighed, stepping away and turning towards the door. “Liu!”

Yangyang traipsed in, a nondescript juicebox in his hand. “Reporting for duty, Captain.”

“Explain your idea again, please.”

“Right, so, every robot’s positronic brain has a unique imprinting of positronic pathways,” the roboticist started. “New copies of the same model that are fresh off the assembly line might be nearly identical to begin with, but as they’re exposed to new stimuli, learn new things beyond their base impressions, those pathways will diverge and change.”

“So kind of like a fingerprint?” Kun asked.

“If your fingerprint changed after you learned trig for the first time, sure.”

“You want to look at the pathways in my brain closer,” you said. “Will you be able to figure out what I was imprinted with and what has been… divergence?”

“That’ll be a little bit of trial and error,” Yangyang replied regretfully. “I mean, I can assume that you were imprinted with knowledge of Outspacer, and obviously you’ve had to learn who we are… and using your brain’s positronic flows from those, I can start building a functional image of your pathways.”

“How will you access her brain?” Kun questioned. “You’re not going to open her skull, surely.”

“No, no,” the other man shook his head. “Y/N, still got that positronic Allen key on you?”

You reached into your pocket for the tool that Kun had returned to you yesterday. “Had a feeling we might be needing this. Diagnostic stasis or repair stasis?”

“Diagnostic. Sorry. But, I’m hoping you have a secondary active diagnostic stasis. If not, doing a functional positronic pathway image will be pretty much impossible, since you won’t be able to respond to any stimuli.”

Kun narrowed his eyes. “What’s the difference between this and the repair stasis, then?”

“Loss of muscle tone and level of awareness.” Yangyang took the tool from you, then grabbed a nearby notebook and pencil. “An active diagnostic stasis will keep you pretty much frozen in place unless you’re executing an order, Y/N. And you’ll be fully conscious. You ready?”

You sat up on the countertop. “Yeah, ready when you are.”

“Woah, wait,” Kun interjected before the positronic Allen key could be brought anywhere near your head. “What sorts of orders will you be giving her?”

“I won’t be giving any,” Yangyang answered defensively. “Just having her react to stimuli. It’ll look like we’re having an interview, kind of. Or a conversation.”

You gestured to one of the stools that was nearby. “Kun…”

He seemed to get the idea, pulling it up closer to your side and sitting down. Yangyang, meanwhile, rolled his stool in front of you, bringing with him his notebook, pencil, and the Allen key.

“I’ll probably have you help me, Captain, if that’s alright with you,” your friend kept talking as he flipped open to a new page, then leaned in towards you with the Allen key. “I’d love to map what the positronic flow of love looks like.”

This time, he found the spot at the base of your skull with precision, lining up the Allen key deftly. Kun watched the movements of his hand closely as he responded, “Just… having a conversation?”

Their voices faded out as your muscles froze up for a moment, then faded back in, before Yangyang drew his hand away from you and sat back in his stool. You still couldn’t move, but you could listen in on their conversation once again.

“…nothing weird, Liu,” Kun finished whatever warning he had been giving.

“Of course not, Captain,” Yangyang grinned, then turned to you. “Hey, Y/N. So you’re in active diagnostic stasis right now. We’re going to get started. Can you tell me your name?”

“Y/N,” you replied automatically.

“Great.” He sketched something onto his notebook, then grabbed a tablet from the counter. After a few taps, he turned it around to show you the screen. “Can you read this for me?”

It only took you a moment to read the Outspacer glyph. “Grain.”

“Cool.” He swiped, then showed you another. “This one?”

“River.”

“This?”

“Emergency communication.”

He set the tablet aside, grinning as he looked back down at his notebook. “Fantastic.” Then, he asked, “What did you have for breakfast today?”

“Oatmeal.”

“Who sat on your left at breakfast?”

“Corporal Wong Kunhang.”

“And who sat directly across from you?”

“Lieutenant Xiao Dejun.”

“Who did you meet first? Corporal Wong or Lieutenant Xiao?”

You were quiet, unable to formulate your response.

“Y/N?” Yangyang said your name. “Do you understand the question?”

“It’s unclear.”

“That’s okay, I’ll rephrase: Who did you encounter first in your life? Corporal Wong or Lieutenant Xiao? Regardless of if you knew their identity at the time.”

“Corporal Wong.”

“And who personally introduced themselves to you first? Corporal Wong or Lieutenant Xiao?”

“Lieutenant Xiao.”

Yangyang nodded, his pencil never stopping once while you were talking. “Great. What’s my name?”

“Lieutenant Liu Yangyang.”

“And where did you meet us? Myself, Corporal Wong, and Lieutenant Xiao.”

“Aegeum.”

“Who are the other members of our unit?”

“Staff Sergeant Ten Lee, Captain Qian Kun, Professor Dong Sicheng, and ZEN.”

“I’m going to have Captain Qian talk to you for a minute now.” Yangyang rolled out of your view.

Kun scooted into your vision, offering you a soft smile as he met your eyes. “Hey, Y/N…”

“She needs a more direct prompt if you want her to respond verbally, Captain. Either a question or an order,” Yangyang said.

“Shut up, Liu,” he responded through gritted teeth. After taking a deep breath, he addressed you gently, “Uhm, do you remember the story I told you about my parents? What my dad built for my mom?”

“A greenhouse, because your mother wanted to grow strawberries, but the climate on Dura-Jil was too cold.”

“Yeah, and—”

“I read about greenhouses.”

That seemed to catch Kun off-guard. “Wait, really? Why? We have ag bubbles.”

“I wanted to understand what love means to you.”

“Because I said when I think about what love is, I think about him building her a greenhouse.” He nodded in understanding.

“It’s an involved process, requiring a lot of thought and planning. Your father must have had to go to great lengths to get many of the materials for it on Dura-Jil.”

“My dad was an architect. I don’t think I’ve told you that, have I?”

“No.”

“That’s why we were one of the first families on Dura-Jil, he was overseeing the construction of the buildings. He was a civilian contractor with the UHN.” Kun cleared his throat, then said, “Liu has a few more questions for you, okay?”

Then Yangyang was back in front of you. “What other topics have you read about while you’ve been on the Vision?”

Kun brought the positronic Allen key down from your head, his eyes watching your face very carefully. You blinked, readjusting in your spot and rolling out your shoulders. You could recall your entire lengthy conversation with them, thought the memories felt slightly hazy, as if you had been half-asleep the entire time.

“Alright, I’ve—”

“Sorry, would you mind if I stood up while you talked?” You interrupted Yangyang sheepishly. “It feels like I’ve been sitting for a while…”

“Yeah, of course.”

Kun helped you off the counter, his hand hovering over you cautiously as you stood, until he seemed sure that your muscles would support you. Your limbs felt just fine, no aches in them, but you felt the need to move your joints around again.

“So I’ve got your positronic pathways mapped out,” Yangyang announced giddily, gripping his notebook with two hands.

“How could you even measure that though? All we did was talk, you didn’t have anything attached to me, and you couldn’t see my brain,” you asked curiously, grabbing one of your arms to stretch it across your chest.

“You were indicating the positronic flows with your fingers.”

“Wait, really?” You looked down at your hands.

“Yeah, it looked like you were playing the piano on your knees the whole time,” Kun replied, his brow furrowed. “You didn’t feel that?”

“No, I didn’t even realize I was doing it.”

Yangyang’s face lit up. “We should totally do this again with a piano under your hands! Hearing the positronic pathways as music? That’d be so cool!”

“Liu, focus,” Kun said sternly.

“Right, anyway. Here it is!” He turned the notebook around for you to see what he had been sketching.

You couldn’t tell what you were looking at. It definitely didn’t look like a human brain, or even what the components on the x-ray had looked like. If anything, it looked like some combination of abstract art and quantum physics. Intersecting curved lines, straight lines, circles, the occasional indication of a charge or other scientific symbol, some numbers. It was fascinating to look at, and sort of beautiful in a strange way, but you definitely wouldn’t be able to identify it as a brain, much less your brain, without being told that.

“…What was the point of this?” Kun asked frankly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“It looks very complex,” you added. “What does it tell you? And what will you be able to do with it?”

“Well, first of all, the degree complexity is interesting. You see these more condensed areas?” He gestured to a few areas on the page where the drawing was more congested with information than others. “We call those nodules. Some robots’ impressions will only have two nodules: The Three Laws, and then whatever their pre-programmed job is. Those are basic robots, meant to do one thing. You have a lot, as well as sub-nodules, but I also watched you gain a sub-nodule in real time as we were mapping.”

“What sub-nodule?”

“When you were talking to the captain, he gave you new information about himself, about his dad, his family,” Yangyang rambled on with enthusiasm. “What a thrill… Anyway, you’re very dynamic.”

“Uh, thank you?”

He laughed. “You’re welcome. But also, that means something when it comes to positronic brain construction. You’re able to construct new nodules and sub-nodules on your own, as well as modify or combine existing ones when presented with new information. Pretty advanced stuff. You obviously weren’t designed to be a one-trick pony. You don’t have the most nodules I’ve ever seen in a positronic brain, but you had all your non-impressed knowledge wiped, to be fair. By my estimate, you’ll surpass that other brain in… a couple weeks maybe?”

“How old was the other brain? With… more nodules?” You asked curiously, hoping you were using the jargon correctly.

“Several years old.” He beamed. “And, I was able to confirm that you were ordered to wipe everything that wasn’t impressed. You see, when data is wiped from a robot, the data itself can be entirely erased. However, it’s like leveling a house. The house may no longer be there, but the foundation is still in the ground. The positronic pathways from when the robot did have that data still exist, sort of.”

“You can see the pathways from the data that I wasn’t impressed with, but you can’t tell what that data was?”

He nodded. “The pathways are there, but since they haven’t been used, they’re degraded.”

“We have no clue what the house looked like just because we can see the foundation,” Kun sighed.

“Exactly.”

“This degradation,” the captain continued. “Is it bad? For her?”

“No.” Yangyang quickly shook his head. “They weren’t for any sort of sort of critical functions, as those would’ve been in her factory impressions, and they won’t spread to any other pathways that are currently being used.”

“Good.”

“Did this tell you anything about Aegeum?” You questioned nervously.

The roboticist tapped the eraser end of his pencil to his paper. “This is one of the most advanced positronic brains I’ve seen, and I’d love do another mapping in the future, if you’d let me.”

“Why does it sound like you’re hedging, Liu?” Kun cut in.

“But… I can only learn so much under the current circumstances.”

“You’re not opening her skull up.”

“That’s not what I was going to say!” He defended himself. “I meant… she’s not a robot. I can’t study her like one. I’m not even 100% what parts of her are flesh and blood and which aren’t, other than the positronic brain.”

“Do you think we should call Dejun here too?” You suggested.

Kun hesitated. “Why?”

“Well, we know I have a positronic brain, but the field scanner and the infirmary scanner thought I was plenty human enough when he tested me. And, I obviously bleed, sleep, and eat too.”

“She’s right. We thought we were on the trail of… something else down on Aegeum. Getting a doctor’s second opinion on the fleshy parts couldn’t hurt,” Yangyang offered his support.

Kun approached you, holding your gaze seriously. “Are you sure about this? The more people know…”

“I trust Dejun,” you affirmed. “I trust all of you.”

“Go get him, Liu,” Kun directed. ZEN had been put on a blackout again for the actual mapping, meaning that he couldn’t just ask the AI to page him.

“On it!”

“You’re fucking with me,” Dejun deadpanned.

“Nope.” Yangyang shook his head, feet kicked up on one of his workbenches, having just explained why he’d dragged the doctor to the robotics lab.

“Y/N doesn’t get Earth humor, fine. But how did you get the captain to go along with this weird as fuck joke, Liu?” Dejun pointed to where you and Kun were standing off to the side.

“It’s not a prank!”

“She bleeds!”

“I know.”

“And breathes! And sleeps! And eats! And has vitals that can be picked up by diagnostic scanners!”

“Those only look for the presence of an illness or disease, right? Or abnormal heartrate or breathing?” Yangyang pointed out.

“Yeah…”

“So, an absence of certain things wouldn’t register. She’s got a heart and lungs, as best I can guess.” He continued, “Positronic brain confirmed. Everything else… we’re a bit less certain about.”

Your friend looked over at you, squinting in clear confusion, then back to Yangyang. “I… Huh?”

“Need a consult, Doc,” Yangyang grinned.

You sat down again for Dejun to start his exam. He brought over a few things from the infirmary, one of which was an ordinary stethoscope. He put the earpieces in his ears, then held the other end up to your chest. Everyone was silent as he listened.

“Yeah, okay, heartbeat. It’s… normal. Normal resting heartrate,” he murmured. “I’m going to listen to your breathing now.” He moved it to another place on your chest and paused again. After a moment, he switched it to his other hand and gently touched the back of your shoulder. “Forward.”

You leaned forward for him to reposition the stethoscope, and at the same time out of the corner of your eye, you could see Kun tense up and unfold his arms.

“Xiao,” Yangyang said urgently.

“What?” Dejun paused, sounding annoyed to have been interrupted.

“The Three Laws. Careful with your requests,” the roboticist reminded him.

“Don’t order her around,” Kun said more bluntly.

Dejun blinked and looked down at you, clearly startled out of his usual routine for an exam like this. “Oh. Right, sorry. Forgot you were… Sorry, Y/N.”

“It’s fine, Dejun,” you reassured him. “I didn’t… It didn’t process like an order.”

“I need to listen to your breath sounds. Can you take a few deep breaths for me?” He requested, looking between Kun, you, and Yangyang hesitantly, as if to see if he had said that correctly. When you felt him place the stethoscope on your back, you breathed in then out, deeply, as he had asked. After a few breaths, he said, “Okay, and normal breathing now?”

You evened out your breathing again, and he listened for a few moments, then drew back. Dejun took the earpieces out and hung the stethoscope around his neck, putting his hands on his hips.

“Well?” You prompted him.

“Those were definitely lung sounds. And I mean, you’ve already breathed into my field scanner, so I don’t know if it would’ve made more or less sense for you to not have them,” he declared. Next, he tested all your reflexes, then contraction and dilation of your pupils. “You have a heart, lungs, a circulatory system of some kind, and immune system, since you haven’t been bleeding uncontrollably from that cut you got. I’ve personally seen you eat, drink, sneeze, cough, and at least a dozen other normal, involuntary human reflexes.”

“Oh, about the cut…” You grabbed the end of your bandages, quickly unwinding them and taking off the pristine gauze that was underneath. Turning your hand, you displayed your unmarred palm.

Dejun took your arm to look at it closer, then looked at your other one as if to double-check that he was looking at the correct one. He held it up closer to one of Yangyang’s table lamps, running his fingertip over where the cut should have been.

“No scar?” He pushed on it with his thumb in disbelief. “Pain? Tightness? Muscle or tissue damage?”

“No, nothing. It’s been like this since the day after I cut it. I don’t know exactly how fast it healed, but it was less than a day.”

“Seriously?”

“I saw it when I went to change her first bandage. It was like nothing ever happened,” Kun confirmed.

“That’s…” Dejun trailed off and sighed. “Again, I don’t know if that makes more or less sense than her healing at a normal speed.”

“My turn,” Yangyang stood up, walking over to the x-ray machine that had started this whole thing. “Since the captain made me destroy the last image I took—Y/N, you mind?”

“Oh, sure.” You followed him.

“This is why you took my portable head x-ray machine?” Dejun asked incredulously as Yangyang got you situated, then went back over to his computer. “I thought you were just being a weirdo and wanted x-rays of your own head!”

“Xiao…” Kun’s voice held an air of warning. “Next time Liu is ‘being a weirdo’ like that, let me know.”

The process was as quick and painless as before, and you all gathered around Yangyang’s screen as the images processed and loaded up. Despite knowing what it looked like, somehow, you were still as baffled as before. Like there was still some part of you expecting a human brain. You didn’t know if it was the old order conflicting with your personal knowledge, or if you just couldn’t believe that that was your brain that you were looking at.

“Holy shit,” Dejun breathed out.

“Positronic brain,” Yangyang declared, as if it weren’t apparent enough to the doctor that he wasn’t looking at a human brain.

“Alright, I believe you now.”

Kun cleared his throat. “Liu—”

“Yep, deleting right now,” Yangyang quickly erased all the films he had just taken.

“Who knows?” Dejun asked you.

“Just the people in this room,” you informed him. “Even ZEN’s knowledge is somewhat limited, he’s on blackout right now.”

Dejun’s eyes strayed over to the captain.

“I’ve suspended us in slipspace and haven’t reported a word of this to Admiral Lee,” Kun answered his unspoken question, clearly bristling at the implication. “Nor do I intend to. Our story stays the same: We found a human survivor on Aegeum with amnesia.”

“I’d like to take some samples, if that’s alright.” Dejun’s focused back on you. “Blood, cheek swab, nothing invasive.”

“Sure,” you agreed.

Dejun took the cheek swab first, then prepared your arm to take the blood sample. Unlike the field scanner, which just needed a pinprick from your finger to get a quick rundown of your vitals, he apparently needed a bit more for the tests he wanted to run this time.

“Y/N, what you were saying earlier, about not processing Dejun telling you to sit forward like an order, what do you mean by that?” Yangyang asked as Dejun wrapped a band around your upper arm.

“I mean, I guess I knew that it was a request and not an order? Like, it didn’t shut me down like the order you gave me. I did what he asked, but there was no reason for me not to, you know?” You explained, trying your best to articulate the difference between the two experiences.

Yangyang tilted his head, his eyes once again glittering with that studious fascination. “How did you know it wasn’t an order?”

“I mean, his tone of voice, and the context? He was giving me directions for the exam, but it wasn’t really an order, right?”

“Oh my God…”

“What? She’s right. I wouldn’t have forced her to lean forward if she said no for some reason. I definitely didn’t think I was ordering her around,” Dejun scoffed, preparing the needle and collection tube. “Y/N, small pinch.”

You felt when the needle pierced your skin, but your focus was still on Yangyang, who was now pacing the room and gesturing furtively.

“Well, early robots did everything that any human told them to do, usually very literally. No room for sarcasm, no nuance. All orders were of the same level of importance. Then, they started being able to prioritize based on who gave an order, as they were given capabilities to create hierarchies of people in relation to themselves—only for the Second Law.” He then pointed to you. “But Y/N is the first I’ve heard of not only deciphering tone and context, but also then using that to determine if she was actually given an order or not.”

“So… what we do? Understanding social cues?” Kun arched an eyebrow, seeming unimpressed.

“That almost sounds like she doesn’t have a Second Law. Or at least not a very effective one, if she can think her way around it,” Dejun added skeptically. Having finished, he held a cotton ball to the site as he untied the band around your arm. “Here, I’ll get you a band-aid.”

“I don’t think you need to,” you reminded him quietly.

Dejun tentatively lifted up the cotton swab, and sure enough, there wasn’t any indication that you had just had a needle in your arm. No bruising, no blood, no small pinprick hole to be found. He silently nodded, turning away and bringing his materials with him.

Yangyang continued with his explanation, “Okay, think of it like this. We’re given a command, and based on tone, context, word choice, and other social cues, come to the conclusion that it’s an order. Despite knowing it’s an order, we can still choose not to obey it. Y/N, on the other hand, once she determines that she’s been given an order, she has to follow through. Like she said before, the Second Law shuts down her other systems until she’s executed it.”

“I’m not sitting there thinking it through like that… but yes, I think so,” you agreed.

“It all happens in less than a millisecond, like it does for us.”

Kun rubbed his face thoughtfully. “So she still has a Second Law, but what other robots might interpret as an order, and would therefore trigger their Second Law, Y/N might not interpret as an order, and wouldn’t have her Second Law triggered?”

“Exactly. Makes for much more natural interactions, especially if you want to treat the not-quite-robot you’ve made uh, not like a robot.”

“So, you guys think Y/N was… made there? On Aegeum?” Dejun asked, wincing over the word ‘made.’

“That’s the… working hypothesis,” Yangyang answered tentatively.

“So, she’s the proof of concept, then? Of the robot-people?”

You touched your forehead instinctively as a dull, familiar pain started up in your head again.

“Y/N?” Kun rested a hand on your back. “Your head?”

“Yeah…”

“We’re done,” he declared forcefully. No room for arguing.

Dejun looked between Kun ushering you to your feet, and Yangyang, who was watching the two of you somberly, with bewilderment and concern. “What’s—”

“I’ll explain in a minute, Xiao,” Yangyang said quietly. “Let the captain get Y/N out of here first.”

In your cabin, Kun sat you down on the single bed. He cupped your cheek to lift your gaze to him as he stood in front of you, eyes tracking over your face. “How’s your head?”

“Better,” you assured him, placing your hand over his. “You can’t be mad at Dejun, he didn’t know.”

“No, but I can be worried, and afraid of your head… of the fact that you have a self-destruct button that we can’t disarm.”

“I’m okay, Kun.”

“This time,” he added bitterly. “I get why you hate what I’ve been doing, with my enhancements degrading. The way I was acting. Why you called me a pathetic idiot. I don’t like seeing you like this either, especially when it doesn’t have to be happening.”

“You should tell the others, about me,” you said. “What I am, orders, the failsafe, everything.”

Kun sat down next to you. “Are you sure?”

“We didn’t know enough before. It would’ve been too much, for everyone. But we know enough to be able to tell them something, and to tell them what we don’t know. And you need to tell them everything. So nobody accidentally triggers the failsafe or gives me an order. Or asks why we aren’t at Earth in a week.”

He nodded with a resigned agreement. “And I have to tell them…”

“So you can speak candidly and they can ask whatever questions they need to. Without worrying about my head.”

“That’s not fair to you,” he stated.

You reached over to take his hand, lacing your fingers with his. “But it’s what will keep my head in one piece, isn’t it?”

Kun looked at the time on the wall clock above your cabin door. “There’s still a few hours before mess… Can I do it then?”

“Sure,” you chuckled. “Can I make a request in return?”

“Of course.”

“Will you sing for me?”

He looked at you with genuine shock. “Excuse me?”

“When you and Yangyang were talking about the piano earlier, I realized… I’ve never heard music.”

“God damn it… Hold on.” Kun moved around until he was sitting up against the headboard, then gestured for you to come closer. “Come here.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to do this with you looking at me. So—” He once again motioned for you.

Reclined back against him, your head against his chest and his arms around your waist, you definitely could not see his face from this angle. You were looking out at the desk and the dresser, in fact.

You half-expected him to try to dissuade you again, as he cleared his throat from behind you. But instead, the next thing you heard was the quiet, uncertain beginnings of a hum. He slowly added more words to the tune, every so often dropping back into a hum. His voice never rose above a quiet murmur right beside your ear, a performance just for you. It was a simple melody, only a few notes, and repeated over the few verses. But you found yourself enthralled the whole time, never wanting it to end.

His soft singing faded out, and he cleared his throat again, signaling the end of the song.

“Can you sing it again? Please?” You didn’t dare look back, not wanting to startle him from fulfilling your request, but you grabbed his hands tightly, hoping to pass along your enthusiasm through your touch.

“Really? It was just a nursery rhyme my mom used to sing. I don’t think I’m even a very good singer…”

“I liked it.”

“Alright,” he sighed, a tinge of fondness in the word as he leaned forward to press a featherlight kiss to your cheek.

So far, this wasn’t as big of a shitstorm as Kun had been expecting, really. The crew who didn’t already know were understandably shocked, but ultimately, let the other three finish briefing them with minimal interruptions or questions.

“So Y/N’s a…” The Professor trailed off, looking to Liu to fill in.

“Humanoid,” the roboticist offered tentatively. “So far the only robotic part we’ve found is her brain.”

“You say that like she has a prosthetic pinky toe,” Ten retorted. “It’s her brain.”

“Ten, come on, dude. It’s Y/N,” Wong scratched the back of his head awkwardly.

“I’m not saying we deactivate her or throw her in a cell or anything. I’m just trying to make sure we all understand the gravity of the situation.” The pilot sat forward in his chair. “She’s clearly the proof of concept that they were trying to preserve by doing a partial scrub. The question is what use is to she to them like this? No offense to her, Captain, I’m not calling her an idiot, I’m saying they erased her memories and convinced her she was a normal human. Whatever she was doing for them before the partial scrub, she doesn’t know how to do it now.”

“Maybe she has some component to whatever they were doing there that’s vital enough to risk her being discovered,” the Professor suggested.

“Right, Liu said they could have backed up her data externally. Maybe they were planning on this being temporary. They knew they were about to be found out for whatever they were doing, and had to get out, but couldn’t bring Y/N for whatever reason. So they make an external back-up of all her sensitive data with the intent of putting it back in later and, you know, picking back up where they left off. But they wipe it off her memory banks so if she’s found in the meantime, whoever finds her has nothing.”

Kun interjected here, “I’m telling you, Y/N didn’t—”

“You think they just kept one of the most advanced robots—sorry, humanoid—Liu has ever seen around a top-secret, illegal, unsanctioned lab for conversation?” Ten retorted, then seemed to catch himself, and added as an afterthought, “…Sir.”

“Captain, we all like Y/N…” Liu assured him.

“She’s one of us, just like ZEN,” Xiao jumped in to defend you as well.

“But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the fact that she was definitely involved in whatever was going on in that place. Somehow,” Ten argued.

“We don’t know how. Or if,” Kun reiterated forcefully.

The Professor quickly tried to smooth over the rising tensions in the room, “You’re right.”

“I mean, I just think it’s crazy that they took her memories from her—her entire life—and you guys are assuming that there’s going to be proof she did all this awful shit in there!” Kun was on his feet now, he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stay in his seat another moment, not when a righteous anger was electrifying every inch of his being now.

“And you’re assuming that it’s going to be the opposite.” Ten remained seated, but no less impassioned then before.

“No, I’m saying we don’t know! So we can’t just treat her like a criminal because we’re assuming she’s going to be one!”

“Nobody’s doing that,” Wong tried to placate the captain now. He repeated, “She’s one of us, Captain.”

“She’s not here. We’re talking about her without her. That doesn’t seem like she’s one of us,” Xiao stated bitterly.

“Right, so you want her head to rip itself apart from the inside?” Liu reminded him.

“I would have preferred to be able to have Y/N here as well, but we needed the ability to discuss this openly without risking her safety,” Kun said regretfully.

“I hate this,” the doctor announced.

The captain sighed. “So do I, Xiao.”

“Uh, I feel like we’re all forgetting something here?” Wong spoke up hesitantly.

“What?” Kun asked shortly.

“Y/N’s a robot… kind of. The First Law? She can’t hurt a human.”

“She could’ve not known what they were doing,” Ten immediately proposed.

“Then that blows a hole in your whole theory that she was crucial!” The captain retaliated.

“There’s been loopholes found in the First Law before. Robots who were convinced some kinds of people weren’t humans. Robots who were convinced that hurting individual humans for the greater good of humanity was okay. And then of course, we have robot surgeons,” ZEN gave his own incredibly helpful input at that moment.

“Did I ask for a fucking encyclopedia article?” Kun snapped at the AI.

The Professor waved his hands to get everybody’s attention, declaring, “This conversation is getting us nowhere.”

Kun stood up straighter and rolled out his neck, taking a deep breath to recenter himself. This was not the level-headed leader he wanted to be for his first crew. “The Professor’s right. This isn’t productive. I wanted to debrief you all now since we know more, and also for Y/N’s safety.”

“Yeah, what was Liu talking about her head ripping itself apart from inside?” Wong asked, clearly concerned.

“The failsafe, that we had mentioned earlier,” Liu took over explaining this part. “Specifically, the mechanism is in her head, and the best that we’ve been able to figure out, it’s to prevent anybody who may have found her in her amnesiac state from finding out too much about the experiments they were doing, while also having her, uhm, intact.”

“She gets headaches, usually around stuff having to do with the people-robots on Aegeum. That’s the failsafe. If you’re talking to Y/N, or within earshot of Y/N, and her head starts hurting even a little bit, shut the fuck up. Talk about anything else,” Kun instructed, deadly serious.

“So it’s like a game of hot or cold of if we’re on the right track?” Ten tilted his head curiously.

“A game that we’re not fucking playing,” Xiao smacked his teammate’s arm. “Because winning means Y/N’s head exploding.”

“Why do you people assume the worst of me? Fuck…” he grumbled, rubbing his bicep. “I was going to suggest that we could try to reconstruct what was being talked about when Y/N got her previous headaches. Not give her new ones.”

“ZEN, look through your archives,” Kun instructed. “Next: Orders. Do not give her a direct order.”

“Y/N’s really good at distinguishing what’s an order, or direction, or suggestion, or question,” Liu clarified. “But so far, it seems like the word ‘order’ triggers her Second Law.”

“So like, what can we say to her? Like, if I’m fixing the coffee maker—” Wong got interrupted by incredulous sounds from the others. “—and she’s closer to the wrench, can I ask her to hand me it?”

“Yes, you can say ‘Can you hand me the wrench?’” Kun affirmed. “Just don’t be demanding, and don’t use the word ‘order.’ Third: No flying knives.” He was practically boring holes into Wong with his eyes.

“I haven’t done any knife tricks since that happened!” Wong defended himself.

“That goes for everyone. No doing stupid shit that could get you hurt around her. I don’t care if you’re willing to risk slicing your finger off because you’re spinning a knife around, unless you’re also willing to risk slicing Y/N’s finger off, don’t do it.”

“First Law. She will intervene,” Liu added, in case they had somehow forgotten about your positronic brain the past ten seconds.

“Uh, Captain…?” The Professor tentatively raised his hand. “We’re on a pretty dangerous mission. Does this mean you've changed your mind about keeping Y/N aboard?”

Kun’s brows were furrowed as he evaluated the options in front of him, none of which seemed like good ones. “Leaving her somewhere else in order to keep her safe in regards to the Second Law would require briefing whoever she went with about what she is, which would put her in an entirely different kind of danger.”

“So she’s staying?”

“I wish there was a better option, but yes.” The captain watched the uncertain glances that his crew were exchanging. “I’m not asking that this affect the way you do your job. However, outside of the mission, when you’re around Y/N, don’t be doing stupid shit you don’t need to be doing. She’s not made of metal. If it’ll hurt you, it’ll hurt her.”

There were murmurs of agreement and head nods, and Kun let out the breath he’d been holding unwillingly.

“Any questions?”

After everyone else filtered out to go to mess, Kun remained on the bridge, sitting in his seat at the head of the table. He held his head in his hands as a hologram of a green cube materialized in front of him. The captain didn’t even react, continuing to stare through the transparent projection.

“I think that went well, Captain,” ZEN declared. Kun couldn’t tell if the AI was taking pity on him.

“If the crew can survive this, I think we can survive anything,” Kun stated, not sounding very optimistic about the chances. Shaking himself out of his despondent spiral, he asked, “Where’s Y/N? At mess?”

“I let her know the meeting was over and she thought it best to wait for you, Captain. She’s in your cabin.”

“Thanks, ZEN. I’ll go see her.”

Mess wasn’t as awkward as you had been expecting. Sure, the crew had some questions, especially when you took your first bite of food, but they were all pretty tame, and seemed to come from genuine curiosity, not suspicion.

“What else needs to be done before the slipdrive can be reactivated, Captain?” Ten asked between bites of food.

“Xiao, how long will your tests take?” Kun turned to the doctor.

“Should all be done by tomorrow,” Dejun answered.

“Liu, anything else pertinent that we need to take care of before arriving on Earth?”

The roboticist let out a puff of air as he looked up at the ceiling, thinking. After a moment, he brought his eyes back down and shook his head. “Nah, all clear here.”

“Pending the results of the tests that Xiao is running, we’ll be turning the slipdrive back to propulsion soon.”

That got them excited again, one step closer to shore leave, the crisis of the evening almost completely pushed from the crew’s mind. Almost.

“Hey, Y/N,” Kunhang got your attention, mischievous grin on his face. “Xiao said something about how you’ve got super-healing. You up for a drinking contest on Earth?”

“You’ve watched way too many old superhero movies, Wong,” Dejun scoffed. “You think she’s going to have a superhuman metabolism and not be affected by alcohol, right?”

Ten, meanwhile, was laughing. “She’s probably never had a drink! She’s going to be a lightweight!”

And of course that set them all (including the Professor and Yangyang) off into a debate about, theoretically, based off what they did know about your physiology, whether or not you’d process alcohol like an average human or not. You looked over to Kun with amusement, and found his eyes already on you. Quirking an eyebrow up at him inquisitively, you didn’t receive a verbal reply, but instead he reached over to briefly squeeze your arm before dropping his hand back down to his lap.

“What’s Earth like?” You asked Kun as you prepared his injections that night.

“Tired of hearing about Dura-Jil?” He teased, settling in on his front.

“That isn’t the only place you’ve lived,” you pointed out. “And we’re on our way to Earth. I’m curious.”

“I didn’t go to Earth when I was 15. I went there after.”

He didn’t say it, but you knew where he had been in between Dura-Jil and Earth. The program.

“When you enrolled in the Academy?” You disinfected the injection area.

“Yeah. Couldn’t believe how blue that sky was…”

You aligned his first injection. “Is it a similar color the sky in the ag bubble?”

“Sometimes.”

Click.

“But Earth has weather, and clouds,” Kun continued, humor in his voice. “Central, the city that UHN Main is located in, it’s got all four seasons. I think we’ll be coming back in late summer. I kind of wish you could see snow. It’s got a big military population, Central, obviously, but the city’s so huge that if you can get a few blocks away from the UHN Main building itself, you can kind of forget that. As long as you don’t see a solder in uniform.”

As you listened to Kun gradually and sporadically paint you a picture of Earth, you could feel the soft, persistent smile on your lips, even as you had to switch out his med-pod, which didn’t make him falter or stutter. He was telling you about a restaurant within walking distance of UHN Main that he used to frequent when he was on Earth between missions when the second med-pod clicked again, signaling it had finished. You disposed of the materials and sat back down next to him, up by the pillow he was resting his upper half on.

To your pleasant surprise, he didn’t immediately roll over or sit up this time, simply looking at you over his arm. You ran a hand over his hair, dropping it down to rest it on his shoulderblade.

“I can’t wait for you to get your adjustments,” you sighed. “How long is the procedure?”

“An hour or so,” he informed you. “I’ll have Xiao wait with you.”

“Dejun should be able to enjoy his shore leave with the rest of the crew.”

“I’m sure he’ll want to wait with you anyway. It’s what friends are for.”

You stretched a finger out to trace his cheek with your fingertip. “Does it hurt?”

“No, I feel fine,” he promised. “Still doing good on two med-pods.”

“I meant the adjustment.”

“Oh, I’m under anesthesia for it. Don’t feel a thing.”

“And after?”

“A little stiff for a day or so, but after that, good as new.”

Before you could respond, there was a rapid-fire series of knocks on your cabin door, and you exchanged a bewildered, concerned look with Kun. You stood up as Kun slowly began shifting himself into a sitting position.

Dejun was on the other side, and you didn’t hide your confusion as you looked him up and down in his pajamas as he stood in the hall. “Uhm, hi?”

“Can I come in?” He requested quietly, his brow furrowed deeply, a look of worry cut deeply into his features.

“Sure.” You stepped back, opening the door further for him to enter.

“This couldn’t have waited until morning, Xiao?” Kun asked flatly, clearly disgruntled at the nighttime disturbance.

“I’m not Wong, I take no joy in this.” He gestured wildly to his surroundings and the three of you. “But no, this felt rather urgent.”

The captain sighed, “Go on…”

“The tests I was running. A few of them came back. I also ran another test on the sample from the lab on Aegeum.”

“I thought you already did all the testing you could with that sample. It was human, right? The other results were largely inconclusive.”

“Yeah, yeah. But I realized I could run another test, actually.” Your friend was clearly agitated about whatever it was, fidgeting, unable to stand in one place.

“And?” You prompted him.

He met your gaze, face clearly filled with regret and a deep want to not be saying this to you. “It’s a partial DNA match for you.”

“Partial? Like she’s related to it somehow?” Kun questioned.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a familial connection… I sequenced the genes and they’re almost identical.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, the differences in these genes wouldn’t come about from the natural shuffling of genes that happens during reproduction, or even familial variations. It looks… more precise.”

“Genetic modification?” You guessed.

“More like genetic design.”

“So Y/N and the sample you found…” Kun trailed off, and you weren’t sure if he didn’t know how to finish his own sentence, or didn’t want to.

“Same base DNA, different modifications,” Dejun did it for him anyway.

“Clones?” You could feel your eyebrow shoot up.

Dejun rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “If you want to be crude.”

“And what’s the not crude way to say that, Xiao?” Kun snipped.

“I’m just saying, we don’t call identical twins clones…” The doctor replied levelly. After a beat of you and Kun still wrapping your minds around the information, Dejun cleared his throat and added, “The sample was all undifferentiated cells—stem cells—it wasn’t… developed like you are, Y/N. Uhm, for what’s that worth.”

“Oh, okay…” You said just to say something, grabbing your upper arms and holding yourself tightly.

“Anything else, Xiao?” Kun asked tersely, already getting to his feet.

“Nope, nope, I’ll show myself out,” Dejun scrambled for the door. “Sorry, goodnight, and uhm, sorry again.”

You heard the door close behind you. Looking up at the ceiling, you could feel the tears gathering in your eyes before you even knew why they were there. They easily eked out the corners of your eyes and slipped down your cheeks.

“What are we going to do, Kun…?” You whispered, your voice coming out as a nearly unrecognizable squeak.

“ZEN, set the slipdrive to propulsion.” Kun’s stern command made you turn your head towards him in confusion. But his brow was set with determination, just like it had been when he’d suspended it in the first place.

“Are you sure, Captain?” ZEN questioned an order from Kun for the first time that you’d ever heard.

“Yes. Then go on blackout.” After a beat, the cabin was quiet, save for your shaking breaths, and the sound of Kun’s feet as he padded over to you. He wiped his thumbs over the wetness on your face, holding your gaze steadily as he answered your question, “We’ll be arriving on Earth in two weeks. The crew will go on shore leave. I’ll give my full report to Admiral Lee about Aegeum, the human survivor we found there with amnesia, and Dr. Yoon being alive. I’ll get my tune-ups. If we have time, I’ll take you to a concert to see some real music, live. And then we’ll go where the Admiral sends us.”

Keep going. Don’t pick the scab.

You gulped. “What if he sends us to find Dr. Yoon?”

You weren’t sure if you ever wanted to see the man who made you, whose experiments, in one way or another, got all those people killed on Aegeum, who did what he did to Kun…

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” His voice stayed steady.

“You said Admiral Lee has never lied to you. Why are you willing to lie to him, for me?”

“I already told you. All I can offer is me. You’re the first person who I got to choose to give that to.” Kun smiled bittersweetly with his words, still cradling the side of your face, giving him the perfect view for when your tears rose back up. “Y/N? Are you okay?”

“I was just thinking about your program again. And Aegeum…” You admitted, bringing your own hand to your damp undereyes. “Do you still think you’re… not human?”

“I’m certainly an experiment that they didn’t plan on living this long. But I did, which let me meet you. So whatever I am, I’m lucky.”

“Then we’re two experiments, created for something, and choosing each other instead.”

Kun chuckled softly. “You know, I actually think I like that a lot better than cyborg or humanoid or clone or whatever else.”  

“Me too.” You wrapped your arms around his waist to hold him closer. “I love you, Kun.”

“I love you, too,” he murmured, pressing his lips to your forehead.

⇢ series masterlist | blog masterlist

[conspicuous-clown-car]

lemme ramble for a bit

so i have this story in my head of my self insert and the bs they go through while working at the pizzaplex for like 2 years as a night guard

and originally they were gonna die at the end of it before the events of security breach, smth about them finally getting what they wanted bc that’s one of the reasons they wanted to work there in the first place. but i thought that was way too sad, despite, yknow, it being a horror and if i was in their place id definitely be dead before then. plus there are some things worse than death in the fnaf universe. so i decided to veer away from angst for this story and go for a more thriller horror (maybe psychological) type thing yknow? makes it more fun

THEN i was like yo what if ghosts kids start haunting them to help them find their killer and there’s like 1 for each pizzaplex animatronic (excluding freddy and roxy bc they got gregory and cassie). and it could be super angsty bc 2 of the kids were inadvertently killed because of moon and one was killed by moon, and my s/i is super close with moon right? so it would be like a moral dilemma, bc they want to help the kids but they still want to be friends with moon, but they’re also horrified that he killed a kid. and my s/i would start dreaming and sleepwalking, forced by the ghost kids to relive their deaths to try and find who killed them. but then i started thinking about the timeline of that, and it would mean moon would’ve had the virus or whatever years before this story takes place, which isn’t what i wanted nor did it make sense. so after a while i was just like nahhhh, and it didn’t really mesh well with the story of security breach anyways, its more sci-fi than supernatural now, and including the ghost kids would just be too much crammed into self insert story i have. the kids designs im still gonna use tho lol

NOW after getting back into fnaf after like a few months of not really caring about the lore, i’ve been watching more theory videos and book summaries and stuff like that and it made me shift my whole view on security breach’s story

so i’ve decided that i wanna stick as close to canon lore as possible and make gregory and vanessa/vanny more present and important. i want to focus more on the issues with ai, and show the slow downfall and problems with depending solely on them. i also need to figure out why my self insert has plot armor bc anyone in their situation would’ve been fired or killed by now (i don’t have to stick that close to canon for this i guess). but im just gonna justify it as they’re a pushover who doesn’t ask any questions and just does what they’re told, which is pretty much what got the other employees fired or killed bc they did the opposite (they’re also a huge nerd about robots so they end up being good friends with all the animatronics which is a HUGE plot point in this story, friendship is the real magic love conquers all etc. etc.) don’t get me wrong, they are fully aware of how wrong things are in the pizzaplex and how some things vanessa has told them don’t add up, but they are a good little employee (they are a severe people pleaser) so they feign ignorance to it all.

my self insert being autistic and having adhd is also a big thing i wanna include, bc there’s some really specific shit about their autism that would affect how they survive and stuff. things like trauma responses, masking, unmasking, meltdowns, and shutdowns that will affect their relationships with the others and will domino affect over time and lead to them surviving. idk ive just been thinking a lot lately about social interactions and experiences i have that are negatively or positively impacted specifically because of my autism. choices choices

i also want to make sure that it’s clear how neglected all the animatronics are. not just the dca since it is intended to be a s/i x sun and moon story. but there’s a lot of issues the in game messages have talked about with the animatronics that seem to happen because no one is bothering to help them. they just put a bandaid on a situation but they don’t fix the root problem yknow. also, my s/i doesn’t think the animatronics are sentient at first, and i want that to be a big thing that gets explored several times throughout the story bc i love thinking about robot sentience.

at first i was gonna have monty sort of start to be nice to my s/i, and maybe they could be friends or even have a sibling type relationship (red hair lol) but then i was like nah, monty being an asshole is what makes his character interesting. plus his behavior is a nice contrast from the rest of the band. though i think it would be funny for some characters to think monty is my s/i’s favorite at first bc their hair is dyed red

i also want sun and moon to be as close to canon as possible. while i love love LOVE pretty much every dca x reader fic i ever read, i have a preference for canon depictions of sun and moon lol. no hate to fanon depictions of sun when i say this, but ive been lost in the sauce of fanon sun for too long, and i wanna make him passive aggressive, and sarcastic, and picky, and fussy!! but still an anxious wreck and a people pleaser perfectionist. i’ll admit im still struggling with this. it was kinda hard to get a gauge on his personality at first because until help wanted 2 we had only seen how he interacts with kids. and even though in universe that isn’t the real sun it’s the only indication we have of how he interacts with adults, so im taking it. moon is still gonna be mischievous, creepy as hell, and won’t talk much, but he’s not gonna be killin anyone (yet), he’s just gonna be kind of a stalker lol. also the dca and freddy have beef for some reason, it’s a personal head canon of mine but im adding it to this story hehe

lots of physical injuries, several concussions, a migraine so bad they loose the ability to communicate properly (smth i experience) will all happen to them, bc i am throwing them through the ringer. they will be stressed more often than not. get projected on idiot (i say that as if this isn’t my self insert and is literally me)

tbh this story would mostly be just a slice of life, shenanigan, character driven thing for most of it. but then little things brought up in the past will become important to the plot later on.

like how copyright music can’t be played in front of any of the animatronics or else they will freak out :]

that’s all lol

[literalite]

I remember you saying you liked young justice so I wanted to know who's your favourite character or the one you think is most like you? I've been attached by the hip to this show since I was 13 so I'm a little... not normal about it lol.

also opinions on s3?

YES oh my god it was like formative media for me genuinely and i still love yj dearly i was rewatching it like last month actually along with yaboyroshi's reactions to it 😅 we are both a little not normal about this show dw 🤝🏼 im putting the rest of this under a cut because i start Yapping

my fave characters were dick, artemis, jaime, bart, and zatanna! dick i was Obsessed with from the moment i laid eyes on him in hindsight for gender reasons, probably but artemis always meant a huge deal to me as a kid because she was like the only vietnamese character (and with a skintone like mine!) that i'd ever seen on a screen. i loved everything about jaime's character and personality and arc and i had a really soft spot for bart because characters who are very outwardly upbeat and fun but are going through a lot of shit and hiding it are my favourites ever usually 😅. i also liked rlly them as a duo. zatanna's sort of cool-girl sass was always really fun to see and i think especially in s4 where her sort of less-rigid morality had more room to shine, really made me appreciate her character more. OH also when they introduced cassandra wu-san/orphan in s3 i like literally cheered out loud 😭 shes one of my fave characters from dc comics in general, so i was already biased towards her and i really liked her depiction and the room they made for her arc

i'm actually not sure which character is the most like me... i think because i watched it so young a lot of the characters kind of made their way into my personality in one way or another. i think irl im most like dick but it could be wishful thinking 😅 i'm not as cool as he is for sure

season three.... i'm kind of on the fence about it? i will say though i think it was a little rough with the dialogue especially, and i definitely didn't bond as well with the outsiders as i did with the original team and then the s2 cast. violet was the most likeable of the group by far but i think i was really put off by the fact that they kept killing them 💀 like i get that you guys can do this now with the higher rating but there are better ways to show off your newfound creative freedom than repeatedly brutally killing them. it was offset with the majority of the other characters suffering from basically no visible injuries too- if they'd been hit with bruises or scrapes or broken bones or ANYTHING and reduced the harm dealt to vi then i would've been less urgh by it.

i also wish they'd introduced victor a bit earlier into the season instead of spending sooo much time with brion because cyborg's story felt a little tacked on at the end, and um i was annoyed by brion from the jump 😭😭 tried so hard to sympathise with him because to be fair he went through a Lot but he just kept being such an aggressive ass to like everyone. which i guess was the point.. didn't make it any more fun to watch though.

i do like that they kept with the huge mass of entangled threads of the plot that were to me the hallmarks of the earlier seasons, picking apart scenes to try and work out how things interconnect was always my favourite part. i think the cast of the show at this point for what they were trying to do and focus on may have exceeded the show's bounds though- it was still a compelling narrative but i imagine for a casual watcher who isnt as meticulously invested in who is who and can recognise adaptations of arcs from the comics it can get very confusing or frustrating. its hard because i Love the og cast too but i think with s3 they couldn't decide on letting them go or letting their new characters shine and it ended up muddying the waters a bit, with the outsiders suffering the most from it due to no nostalgia or prior narrative heft to keep them from looking secondary to the original members of the team.

with s4 they chose to throw their lot behind the old team, which i appreciated and it neatened the rough edges of the show more, but i do still miss the s2 cast quite badly so i actually kind of wish they'd kept expanding the cast but just narrowed focus onto the new characters for every season. the title of the show is young justice, so i personally would've liked to keep seeing a focus on the newer and rising heroes of each successive generation as opposed to returning again and again to the originals

sorry that this is such a wall of text 😅 but i think this is one of the shows that i could genuinely just like sit and talk about for ages and ages... even the characters i dont like at all have a fair amount of gravity and heft to them that i love. wally is still alive btw i will never stop believing 😤 get that man out of the speed force!

[dontcallpanic]

Hi there sweetheart! 🩵 as i said on my post, im turning this around

what are some of the things that never fail to make you smile?

and I'll also ask: what are some of the things/people that scream 'love' from miles away for you?

@gege-wondering-around I am so, so sorry this has taken so long – as usual. Life is chaos but I really appreciate the ask! You’re so kind and so lovely and your answer was perfect I hope I can do this justice! Diolch yn fawr iawn and here we go

Family. – One member in particular keeps wandering around singing Life is a Highway very badly and offkey and I just love it! It’s so cosy and fun and I just love it when things are calm enough that people can relax and be themselves. My cat (called Busy) also makes me smile. She’s a floozy cat and loves attention.

Writing – I’m working on something for my absolute best friend which has a bit of a story behind it. It’s a Sterek Au that came about because I went back home. I grew up in among those strange rural small towns where everything is a bit weird and a little left of reality. I was in the local supermarket and for some reason in the back rooms they had this section absolutely chock full of plaid shirts so I snapped a pic and sent it to my friend for fun as a Stiles reference. And from that we just kind of ran with this strange Sterek, small town au where all sorts of strange, odd, supernatural things happened. So, of course I had to write it for her. But I write REALLY slowly. It’s not going to be finished any time soon but it’s 18000 words so far! Anyway, it’s purely for fun and full of joy and bittersweet things and it makes me smile SO much. Have a snippet! He can see it now. He’s going to become a cautionary tale. Parents everywhere will tell their children all about the dangers of running off to find themselves and all because he got lost in the woods and eaten by a bear. My what big teeth you have and all that. Wait – that’s little red riding hood. Maybe he’ll be eaten by wolves, not bears… That would be exactly his luck. Especially when there are famously no wolves in California. What was the moral of that story again? Something about not trusting strangers? Never leave the path? Something else about… not… going… for a walk in the woods… alone? Fuck. Stiles runs an anxious hand down the front of his favourite red hoodie. Double fuck. There was no way he was little red riding hood. The universe wouldn’t be that cruel, right? The colour of his jacket should have no bearing on the likelihood of him being eaten by a wild animal. Absolutely not. None, whatsoever. Nope. Incidentally, has anyone done any research on whether bears are attracted to certain colours more than others?

Adventures – I love exploring and just seeing new places, near or far. It doesn’t really matter where but show me a quiet road surrounded by tall trees and I am just giddy with happiness. I love driving too so that helps!

Music – this is one of the things that I live for. I love how much music can give you, from inspiration, to pure feeling, vibes, joy, drama, beautiful poetry. It’s everything and it’s got everything! Here’s a link to my favourites playlist (that I'm still adding to!) but it’s full of all sorts of everything . Listen at your own risk!

Kindness - I’ll shout out to people on Tumblr too. I love seeing people be themselves and owning their weird, whatever it is! That always makes me smile – especially when something good happens for someone I follow. I loved what you said about kindness too. The words I try to live by are be curious and have compassion. Everyone’s going through something and the world can always use a bit more kindness!

Things that scream love from miles away (loved this question!)

Friends – I have two best friends who are the complete opposite of each other and I love them so much. They keep me going and whatever’s going on, they can always make me smile.

I’m moving away from them both which is breaking my heart a bit but something they both do which, to me, screams love from a distance is they’ll just send me things.

One friend sends memes and funny videos

The other shares her day and sends me pictures of what she’s doing.

I love this so much because its just I saw this and thought of you! It’s quick, it’s sweet, its thoughtful and it just means so much to me that they are going about their day and they take the time to think oh, I thought you’d like this! Now my phone is full of their lives and it makes me so happy.

I try to reciprocate  as much as possible but everyone always says my love language is bread. I’ll often bake bread for my friends to pass on when I see them although I realise that might be harder these days. Posting bread doesn’t seem like the best idea…

I’ll also do a small shout out to my husband here, as we’re talking about things that scream love. We met about 14 years ago when I was 18. I saw him across the room in a crowded bar on my first day of Uni and it was love at first sight. Still can’t explain it to this day. He was just my person.

Thanks so much for the ask! It’s really sweet and I had a lot of fun thinking about this one! It’s always worth spreading a little love and happiness and I hope your day is full of pure joy! You deserve it!

[jolalibrary]

Hi there! 😊 I came across your comment regarding reblogging while dealing with social anxiety, and it got me thinking. I want to make sure I approach things correctly, especially considering the significance of reblogs for gif makers and writers. I hope it's alright to reach out and ask for some guidance?

omg of courseeee it's okay! (i've actually added a little inbox is open for chats thing to my masterlist so never fear, if that says open, we are gravy). anyway, let's give this a go.

although, firstly, i just want to preface this i am not an expert, this is just how i dealt with the early "reblog" panic.

so, you are right, reblogs are important. not just because of the algorithm, spreading the work etc etc etc, but also because it means you get to interact with the gifmaker/writer! (yay!). and for me, initiating that one-on-one contact is intimidating. but, one of the ways i first began to interact was through reblogs.

so, nowadays, i leave comments as part of the reblog. not just to say that i loved the story, but why. and the why is so important. why?(hehe) because that's personal to you.

you, you wonderful person.

no one can take that from you. not everyone is going to think as beautifully as you. you own that thought. and also you can't be wrong as to why you liked something. because that's your opinion (which is awesome in itself).

now when you're starting out reblogging it can feel super daunting to think up a comment, so when i started, i began in the hashtags (for some reason, this felt less scary? im not sure why, but it works).

i think earlier i said you could always start with "love this", but you could always add more (in my case, i get more and more unhinged).

for example, you could go:

#love this #X was written so well #my favourite trope #reread material ⬆️ btw, these are just examples, you dont have to use them

now the benefits of doing this are, yes, you are reblogging the work, therefore exposing it to others (and showcasing why you loved it to them). but, anon, you're also opening a dialogue with the gifmaker/writer. and they will notice (in my case, i do a little kick when i read them, true story).

while this doesn't mean automatic friendship, you are interacting. and look, there's also a chance they'll interact back. regardless if that happens, you have shared work (yay!) and you've likely made their day (and for us, socially anxious folk, also showed your brain whats what).

then, in time, when you grow more confident, you can experiment with moving from hashtags to comments (if you want). equally, your experience and comfort matter here, you don't have to use the hashtags at all, you could reblog and keep them generic like #frankie morales x reader (for example) at first.

i know from personal experience, sometimes i am staring at my reblog comment of someone else's work and i'm not sure WHAT to say. but then i remember talking to someone about a book and i just began explaining WHY i liked the book, and realised (in one of those weirdly earth-shattering moments) that is all i need to do when i reblog. i am just sharing out loud what it was about the thing that made me grin.

now, i will say, unless specified by the author/maker, do not give constructive criticism or point out things you didn't like in a reblog (especially if you don't know the person). just because without "tone", it can feel really impersonal and hurtful.

but other than that, have fun! fandom is only a beautiful place if those participating are having fun.

i hope this was helpful, in some capacity. love jo 🩷✨

[born-in-hell]

u all are now doomed to see my opinion on qbbh/ron situation

u all know i wanted ron to have eaten ron SO BAD, but mainly bc the reaction from the other islanders when they learned abt it wouldve been GREAT. in a qbbh story viewpoint yeaahh it wouldve killed rons lore way too fast and early imo. in the long run itd be easily forgotten by us and forgiven by the islanders (especially since qcellbit lives normally w pac, and he ate his leg) (and also foolish, phill, fit, mike, mouse and cellbit wouldnt even care, some would even support him). there would be no payoff to it all. qbbh got some info, tortured the worker, didnt save the kids, had a mental breakdown and then ate said worker. it wouldve been too abrupt

but giving the kidnapped worker STOCKHOLM SYNDROME is in a whooole other level. and it STILL makes sense in qbbhs personality. qbbh is not heartless. he used to treat ron worse when he thought the fed workers were mindless puppets. As soon as ron started to show he was an individual, qbad started to pity him. And missing his lover, being in weird terms w his other potential love interest and best friend, feeling used and distrusted by his fellow islanders, and more important, missing his children, made him try to find someone to relate and care to again. and that someone was ron.

and now it is the best and also the most messed up as it can get. after the talk w qbagh, qbbh was pushed to do the right thing and help ron escape the fed. but hes not dumb. he probably realised that is ron trusted him he would give more info. and thats what happened.

and as time passes, ron becomes more of a person and less of a mindless worker. there is a pattern between all the workers. the more they interact w residents, the more human they become. theres smth interesting abt this, but who am i to guess

him trusting his captor is weird to us. but in context, the fed aparently was HORRIBLE to the workers. mental control, no breaks, possibl experiments and torture. it is so much that ron fears the fed more than he fears qbad.

so yeah this whole things messed up, and ccbbh probably wants it this way kkkkkkkkkkkkkk this is one of the most morally grey arcs weve gotten and its so fun imo

yeah this is it i may add more things later but for now im tired

edit: Ive also been thinking what if the workers start misteriously disappering and all of a sudden everyone discovers that bbh has been kidnapping them and making a ""worker village"? like he sees how horrific the fed is, and starts helping the workers escape. he gets to fred and then he gives qbbh info abt the eggs as a trade. but everyone thinks hes torturing them and he starts to isolate himself again aaaaaaaaa

[cloudyscreams]

aikatsu stars 2nd season rant

ok im couple of episodes in now and its a good thing im working while watching because i would rage quit otherwise

have to preface this with wow this is even gayer now with elza being so open with actions and words...

there is a fatal flaw to that though, i cant claim it 100% since im obviously not very deep in the story but she seem manipulative as fuck to me and i would take it if it wasnt so...yucky i guess

like despite me hating edgworth at first manipulation was the fun part with his character and dont even get me started on nahyuta because im playing aa6 rn, i love the guy

elza is just...weird. she is the out of touch rich kid who made fun of you in school. she is regina george of aikatsu (how fitting for her to be in a trio too lmao) ive seen a comment saying its because of her mothers approval but i feel like there were so many ways to set up and develop her character even up to this point that doesnt do....whatever this is. im not the greatest writer (barely one at all) but i personally would make these changes:

dont make hime and some other older and/or experienced characters acknowledge elza to the extent they do. with aikatsu so heavily revolving around feelings and intent i cannot fanthom how anyone would say that perfect but soulless perfomance (and focusing on perfection in the first place) is truly perfect. elza cant be the worlds "greatest idol" because she doesnt really break through, she just maintains the status quo (as a rich person i guess it is in line with her character) to perfection. her brand does look amazing and i think admitting that and her perfomance skills is good and neccesary; but i think its weird for hime to refuse her yet somehow not see that she lacks the fundamentals aikatsu likes to preach about (friends/rivals, individuality, emotions and all that which dont get me wrong i love)

following point 1, i would love to see elza perform more and actually break overtime (maybe it will happen and i will be glad if so). similar to yume's power the perfectionism WILL destroy you and eat you inside (if we are talking about some realism here but even in terms of simple childrens lesson), it would make so much sense for her to one day collapse and have to build up all the fundamentals from the ground up (which is not even that hard to do, she is obviously surrounded by people who genuinely like her and she *is* passionate, just in the wrong direction)

no way people actually like her. skills aside, she is nasty to people she perseves as worse than her...personality is a staple thing for an idol, she doesnt even hide being a mean girl??? if even two cases of her being rude got known i feel like she would lose a lot of fans (happened irl at least in k pop several times!!). maybe its too realistic of an approach for aikatsu but it would make sense for her to be two faced, at least

thew thing i hate the most about aikatsu - they dont commit to the antagonists being antagonists at all. the stakes in dreaka arc were so high (according to the show itself!! they literally set it up as a job competition situation) and then it was just a big nothing because wow dreaca idols are actually good and we all get jobs. i get that being a bigger person for mc is the route they take (and with ichigo it genuinely made sense, she is just like that with everything) but no one being even a little hesitant about their supposed rivals?? not even mentioning how mary sue most of dreaca episodes were (again, especially seira) where they got the jobs just because they were the new characters. the conflict was set up and then not developed at all!!!!! either make them so evil im allowed to hate them and not cheer for them or dont make them so mean spirited in the first place, esp now with eliza. i hate that they make it seem so serious but then you are supposed to be like wow i love these new girls. LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER

ambiguous and morally grey characters are great dont get me wrong, but what aikatsu does is just inconsistent with what they themselves set up the show to be. i loved the first season of stars because the rivalry and conflict was there with yume and laura but it wasnt showed as laura just being a rival and nothing else. even if they werent friends with yume (or more from what i see lmao) i would take it because her growth arc is amazing. there were no antagonists but the stakes were still high and it was interesting to watch. i think the most beautiful aikatsu arcs come from similar place: admiration, chasing someone out of reach, battling yourself and *friendly* rivalry. i love akari's story even though its a weaker season compared to the first one because it was mirroring ichigo's arc so much

all of that yapping basically to say that antagonists in aikatsu are always inbinsible somehow: no matter how good the mcs get, no matter how many "thinking" mistakes that were already overcome by mcs they make they never fail and it pisses me off because its just not following the universe?? world logic?? rules. i get that power of love cant make you sing better irl but fuck its such a central theme in aikatsu that i refuse to believe they suddenly decided not to apply it to elza for any reason other than "she is better because we said so"

[ectopuppy]

which ben 10 series do u like best??!! im a sucker for the original series bc of nostalgia personally, but they are all good in their own ways

this is an impossible question to answer so im just gonna talk about why i love each series im sorry and thank you anon for gifting me this opportunity to ramble about The Hyperfixation (tm) o7

This is going under a cut btw. It's a little under 3000 words of unedited thoughts so like, just a heads up lmao

Why is the Original Series Good?

So first! Before I get into it! I overall just fucking love Ben 10 conceptually in general! I've always loved aliens and sci-fi and superheroes so you can imagine how excited I was to stumble onto this show airing on teletoon when I was just a tiny Kiki.

The OS has a lot going for it, but the big one is, of course, the nostalgia factor. Iconic as fuck! Fun theme song! Max is there! Yay!!

The BEST character in the OS is Max and I WILL die on that hill. Even as a kid I fucking loved him. Ben and Gwen are fun characters, but Max is the much needed reprieve from them constantly bickering. (Which is one thing I'm glad there's a lot less of in later series.)

Ben is a compelling hero, and the OS is an amazing START POINT for him. While he does have character growth in the OS, I would not be THIS obsessed with him if the OS was the only Ben 10 media that existed. He's a kid. A bit of a brat, but always TRYING to do the right thing. Which he's not always great at considering he's, you know, 10, but he really does try.

Something a lot of people seem to brush past when talking about Ben is that at the beginning of the series he was actively friendless and being bullied at school. I feel like that's a huge factor in why the Omnitrix is so important to his identity in later series. (or even in the Xylene episode when he finds out the Omnitrix was supposed to be for Max) He really didn't have much going for him before that. Being a hero is very likely one of the first times he's felt like he belongs somewhere, you know? Anyway..

Gwen is also very fun in the OS. UAF filed down her teeth just a little too much in my opinion. A lot of her personality in the OS is her THINKING she's sooo much more mature than Ben despite also being a fucking grade schooler. (They are literally the EXACT same age, right down to sharing a birthday.) She's is just as immature as Ben, no matter how much she thinks she isn't. It's just that her smug "I know better." attitude doesn't cause outfacing issues as often as Ben being impulsive and a little self centred.

The OS also benefits from being the "spaghetti on the wall" series. Things just kinda worked however the writers wanted at the moment. Big point here: Magic got to just be magic. (I have made a whole ass post RE: Anodite Gwen so I wont get into it here, but I like the retcon. That statement does not conflict with the above.) Gwen getting fed up being sidelined and going "Fuck it I'm learning magic." is so good and I love it.

I feel like it is impossible to not like the OS in some form, because it's the Original Series. Everything that happens later can only have happened BECAUSE of the OS. Is it my favourite series? No. But it's charming and silly and fun and I love it. c:

Why is Alien Force Good?

Alien Force is a tonal downshift for the series. The era it was made in was the era of Gritty Cartoons for Cool Boys, and it shows. Now, this is not a bad thing to ME, but I know a lot of people don't like the heavier atmosphere of Alien Force, especially in its opening arc. Like... episode 1 (or 2 not sure, but it's in the premiere) of AF has a dude straight up just fucking die, which is kinda. A lot. I can see where people are coming from.

HOWEVER.

Personally, I love the entire DNAlien arc, and it's use as a coming of age story for Ben. A big part of AF is Ben realizing that he needs to grow up. In the OS he was a kid. Max was the leader and the beacon of morality. In AF Max is MIA from episode 1. Gwen is more mature, and has mellowed out a lot, but she just isn't a leader. Kevin should never be put in charge of other people, so he's out. So it's Ben. He has to step up and lead, because there IS nobody else.

But, also the show is not gloomy! It has it's moments, and I get why people might watch the premiere and think "Hmm, too dark.", but AF is silly as hell. I will point to the Alien X episode as my basis here. It's smack in the middle of the DNAlien arc, and it's dumb as hell. Again, I have made a whole ass post about this, but the gist is: I love Alien X being a god being with the ability to do LITERALLY anything, but Ben gets so frustrated that he refuses to use it unless the universe is actively collapsing. (Also, the incurseans are there, and they are never not silly lmao)

But to me, the best thing AF did for the series was give it structure. The OS was extremely episodic, but the front half of AF is held together with a tight plot line. The back half not so much, but it does have a lot going for it character wise. Case in point:

Let's talk about Kevin. c:

Kevin was always a fun villain in the OS. Any time he showed up I knew we were in for a fun time, so him becoming part of the main cast (As a hero and friend no less!) in AF was a major selling point to me personally. Unlike with Gwen, I feel like they sanded him down just enough. He's still kinda sleazy and a bit of a shithead, but now he's trying to do better.

I'm aware the explanation for this behaviour is that the Omnitrix energy he absorbed in the OS drove him crazy or whatever, but that's not something we get up front if memory serves. He really does seem like he naturally just grew up and realized acting how he did when he was 11 wasn't exactly getting him anywhere good.

Kevin's arc in the back half of AF plays really well with Ben's arc. Ben is at an all time high after saving the universe, while Kevin gets mutated again and has a really shitty time. Ben getting humbled while Kevin gains confidence just works really well in tandem, I think, and they end AF on somewhat equal footing.

AF also gives us some of my favourite side characters so I really love it on those grounds alone tbh. Mostly talking about Paradox here, but also Albedo, and The Plumber's Kids (especially Alan I love him he's so baby <3), and Sandra. God, I love Ben's hippy dippy granola mom so much it fits him so well.

I could make a whole fucking post about Paradox to be honest, and this post is already insanely long so I'll be brief here. He made it a billion times easier for the writers to play with timeline bullshit without having to sneak retcons past the audience every time. He's also just insanely fun. Silly Time Man. I loves him!!

I also really love Julie and Omniverse did her so fucking dirty, but that's a whole thing and I'm sure I'll get into it when I get there in my rewatch so I'll save it.

Again, I don't know that I would say AF is my favourite series, but I will say AF DOES happen to have my favourite EPISODE of the entire continuity though. "Con of Rath" is the best Ben 10 episode and I will fight you on this one.

I'm about to pivot into Ultimate and seeing as I haven't gotten there in my rewatch I am going to have less to say about it (and Omniverse) since they aren't fresh in my mind and I don't want to be spouting half remembered nonsense or go dig through the wiki to fact check (and spoil myself on things I don't remember). I know this post is stupid long, bear with me a bit longer.)

Why is Ultimate Alien Good?

Every new series of Ben 10 does something to change the status quo in some way. In AF it was aging up the characters and relegating Max to side character status. Omniverse does much the same, giving Ben a new partner and pushing Gwen and Kevin aside. Ultimate changes things in a different way, though, and I'm NOT talking about Ultimate forms.

Ultimate's big shake up is actually the name of it's first episode: "Fame".

Now, in this house we love a secret identity, lemme get that out up top. For Ben, though? The fame works. He never really honestly HAD a secret identity the same way most superheroes do. He'd always just kinda done his thing, and had it work out. All of his villains knew who he was. (To the point that "Hit 'Em Where They Live" kinda makes no fucking sense? Zombozo is dumb as shit so like maybe he didn't? But Charmcaster DEFINITELY did, and Ben was famous OFF earth already? It's whatever, but like ',:| ya'know.)

The important thing about making him famous is that it gives him a new avenue for character growth. As in my dude needs to get his fucking act together good god. Like, it's Ben, when it comes down to it he buckles down and does the right thing, but fuck man. This is a character trait that will haunt the rest of the series. There are episodes of OMNI that focus on Ben needing to get his head on straight wrt being famous.

It circles back to my point from earlier, though. Ben was NOT popular before "Fame". His friends included: Kevin, Gwen, and Julie. That's it. He's on a soccer team (At least at the beginning of AF I feel like it never comes up later.), but he never talks about his teammates. That one bully whose name escapes me is on okay terms with him after "The Gauntlet", but I wouldn't call them friends. But after his identity is leaked suddenly everybody likes him. He's gone from absolute nobody to celebrity overnight. Of course he would love this.

This is also an extension of one of Ben's core character traits: He NEEDS to be a hero. Actually he needs to be THE hero, because that is his entire self identity. It comes across (both in universe and from a meta standpoint) as Ben being conceited and selfish, but underneath it is really just a sad little boy who is clinging desperately to the ONE thing he's ever been that people liked. The Hero.

If Ben isn't the hero then who is he? He clearly doesn't know as of the AF finale. He loses the Omnitrix and completely breaks down. Even though he's an expert tactician and a damn good leader, he doesn't even know who he is without the Omnitrix.

Azmuth of all people is the one to tell him to get his head out of his ass. I don't think any other character could have done it, though. Azmuth does not care about Ben's feelings, but he's also someone who (whether he likes it or not) sees ALL of Ben's worth. Max or Gwen would be too soft and Kevin's words wouldn't hold the same weight. Azmuth is someone Ben looks up to while also being someone who won't pull his punches. If he's telling Ben he can do something it has to be true, you know?

That aside, lets talk about the "Ultimate" in "Ultimate Alien".

The Ultimatrix is... weird. It's interesting, don't get me wrong, but it is so completely and clearly just a marketing gimmick. The Ultimatrix can be as cool as it wants, it is not making it out of this series alive. Also, everything I find interesting about the Ultimatrix gets dropped. The first episode has Ben be apprehensive about using the Ultimate forms, but then it's just never brought up ever again for some reason.

Also this shit:

WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN????? WHY IS IT NEVER TALKED ABOUT? 😭

It all just feels so fucking meaningless knowing the Finished Omnitrix is going to replace it. Like, Albedo made this peice of shit. So even if I hadn't watched parts of Omniverse first I would have put together that Azmuth would inevitably replace it, right? But it doesn't really matter I guess. That's my personal gripe with Ultimate forms, though, so I wanted to get it out here. Ultimate's does give us "The Ultimate Sacrifice" which is an episode I remember enjoying though, so its not a complete wash.

The thing with Ultimate as a series it that it's really just Alien force... 2!! to the extent that fans refer to them as a collective. "Ultimate Alien Force" Like, my header up there ^^^ was "Why is Ultimate Alien Force Good?" when I first started writing the AF part, and I only changed it so I had a smooth transition to talk about "Fame". They are so intrinsically linked in my brain that I didn't even blink lumping them into one. It makes it hard to find fault in Ultimate when I love so much of the things introduced in AF that carry over, you know?

Now onto the one I was soooo close to saying was my favourite:

Why is Omniverse good?

Omniverse is very, very special to me. I did not watch UAF as a kid. It started airing just as I was hitting my "I'm too old for cartoons" phase, so I just.. never watched it. I wouldn't have ever really gotten into Ben 10 as much as I have if not for someone talking about how much they liked Omniverse on my timeline when it was airing. I watched a large chunk of Omni before doubling back to watch all of the OS (Which I had only seen bits of growing up.) and then UAF.

I fucking love Omniverse and a big reason is:

Him 👆 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

I would kill and die for Rook Blonko.

He is mine moste beloved boy. My babygirl. My right hand arm etc.

But beyond The Boy 💖 Omniverse has a lot going for it. It's another tonal shift for the series, this time back to the more innocent and silly tone of the OS. Like I said, I like the tone in UAF, but Omniverse is just so bright and charming it's hard not to enjoy it.

The art style is also very fun in Omni and matches that lighter tone really well. (There are some stylistic choices I'm not personally big on, but it's whatever.) Where UAF had scaled back a lot of designs to give off a pretty generically American Comic Book style, Omniverse lets characters look interesting again! I'm thinkng specifically about Animo and Charmcaster here (Charmcaster's UAF design is so boring. Omniverse puts her back in her cool robe/tunic thing from the OS.), but in general the characters in Omni just have more interesting designs than they did in UAF. Like, Paradox isn't just Guy in Labcoat in Omni lol

I also think the ten episode arc structure does Omniverse a lot of favours. It gets to have the fun silly episodic nature of the OS while also holding onto the structure AF gave the series.

Beyond that, based on my memory of the series (which I have not watched since it finished airing so it's not exactly perfect) I don't really have much more I can say about Omni. It's fun, and has good characters and plot lines. It's just a really good entry and was a solid ending to wrap up the whole four series continuity.

And so, finally, I can wrap up this fuck off long post.

Like I said up top, I can't definitively say which series is my favourite. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses, and are good in their own ways. If pressed, I would probably say "Um... Omniverse maybe?", but I love the OS and UAF so so much it's not a confident answer. (having not watched Omni in a hot minute also doesn't help lmao)

Thank you for reading my big dumb post. If you got all the way to the end, I love you. I mean, if you stopped reading it I also love you, but if you managed to get through all, uh, 2800ish words of this post without tapping out, you are on the top shelf. <3

I'd love to hear your thoughts, or answer more specific questions if you have them!

[hollowfaith]

1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

QUESTIONS FOR MUN

1. Who has been your favorite muse to play?

ughhhh this is hard...im gonna cheat and go for nostalgia ok

although i think i missed the mark with her muse in some places i have a special fondness for dahlia hawthorne and her specific brand of caustic sarcasm.

i don't think i've ever come up with so many different creative insults during her runtime...also she had the neatest mix of relationships with random muses, not just in AA cast (tho i remember her tormenting at least 3 different feenies??) but beyond, notably izaya and edward cullen comes to mind.

i also really liked my run as kasen kanesada because he's a very lyrical sword (or at least works hard to cultivate that image) so i had to express that in writing and ended up having a lot of fun doing flowery replies and making up poetry and generally going big ham. (it did take a lot of mental energy though so i started losing steam later on.)

i remember he had a thread with FGO Shakespeare that was pretty nice cause we got to be nerdy and talk about eastern/western literature lolololol, then for his challenge he had to kill like 5 ppl in 24 hours so i actually got 5 volunteers to get decapitated and RP'd mini threads with them all, which was wild (and again a very, very random mix of muses including X-Files Fox Mulder)

i didn't RP OCs back then but i like them a lot now too! the lack of art is an unfortunate reality but the amount of customization you get in exchange...so powerful.

5. What is the most difficult thing about writing your current muse?

stupid guy won't just kiss klaus and marry him that would solve 99% of their problems hey klaus are u listening u need to seduce this idiot or something so his brain has nothing but u all day to keep him out of mischief hey hey klaus

ahem

also his unspoken obligation to be lawful good (in his POV) really limits his ability to "act out," so sometimes i need to find different ways to de-escalate situations before he hits moral event horizon. you know, flattery and adoration goes a long way in wrapping him around your finger, i'm surprised more people don't try (i guess they can't stand him long enough to get there lol)

7. Who was the very first muse you ever wrote?

i remember answering this question on another meme maybe...?

there's a more accurate answer now: pre-tumblr, i remember RPing a Lopmon on some digimon forum once upon a time. also remember the mod that was RPing with me called me out for "slight godmodding" because i was describing how my digimon was crossing a bridge and apparently that was taking things too much into my own hands LOLOL

8. Have you ever written a novel? If not, does it interest you?

i've started written novels but i haven't finished any except for like, a couple of original oneshots. technically Veoc is a supporting character/love interest (spoilers: he's not the canon pairing) in a sci-fi story where i have the general plot laid out but y'know, actually writing it is... *flops down*

9. Do you write fanfiction, or have you in the past?

i definitely wrote more in the past but i've slowed down to a trickle since then. uhhhh i want to start up again, maybe with drabbles/oneshots, but i need to catch up on canon first before i try to do the characters justice

10. Do you like stylized icons and formatted text or do you prefer to keep things simple?

god a part of me regrets giving Aury his fancy brackets b/c i have to copy/paste that thing in every reply

so yeah i am never doing that again i just wanna open up a post and type my reply and be done with it, bless.

same with icons as long as they show a face and expression (or even body part) im happy wheee i've got plots to write

11. When did you start roleplaying?

i can't remember...gotta be probably early to mid high school cause i didn't know RP existed back then

12. Have you roleplayed anywhere other than tumblr?

forums, emails, tried a LJ group but my app got rejected so i didn't even get in (ROFL), tumblr has been the most stable medium with most long-term interactions though

[pink-strawberry-kissess]

I dont even like the re4re ending with the separate ways line and now Adas not in DI, where is my ship? Is aeon even alive anymore im tired. I hope she will show up at some point. They cannot put her aside, nor can they eliminate her from Leon's life. They have to give him some closure.

okay so let's kinda break this down

since re2r, it's been clear that they've been taking care with how to write aeon. a lot of it (og timeline) seems rushed and so campy. leon loves ada after knowing her for a few hours?

realistically he's known her for a few hours, and then didn't see her again for 6 years; so his interactions with her in re4r make sense. but we have ada's perspective as well to work with. we know that she's known where leon has been for these 6 years as well. even if she didn't keep close track of him- we can kind of assume that she at least knew that leon was on the mission

we see how vulnerable ada is, and i LOVE THAT, that she really is more than just "sexy asian spy lady."

another thing is that ada is one of the most interesting characters of re. sure she's shrouded in mystery, but it's gotten to the point now where fans really want to know more about her. give us her backstory, her motivations, her personal desires (outside of just leon), why she does the things she does.

it's fun to speculate; mine being that she screws over people for her own personal gain or her own sense of morals. she chooses the lesser evil because she knows she can. she's not evil and has never been evil- and people have a hard time understanding that morality isn't just good = good, bad = bad. (the biggest glaring hint to this is that it was always clear that ada betrays wesker at the end of re4, but in re4r they had to JUST SAY IT OUT LOUD AND SHOW HER. Cause if we DON'T SHOW IT, then american audiences DO NOT UNDERSTAND)

it's easy to write good characters and villians. it's a million times harder to write morally gray characters. and ada has always been under utilized in the games and movies. we see an amazing arc with her in 2,4,6. And 6 being her most fleshed out story and in really showcasing what she's like.

i don't think it's a coincidence that lily gao had talked about characterizing ada as more than just a sex symbol. and that's also a huge issue that needs to be tackled separately. that ada has ALWAYS been a sex symbol, but she's MORE than that. and to simply reduce her down to "sexy asian lady, with sexy voice," is such a disservice to her character growth and arc.

i think that it's also a bit on the misogynistic side to always be on leon's side. where's ada's closure? where's the exploration of her trauma? if we really broke down re6, we see ada struggling with her identity being stolen, blackmailed, and it can not be easy handling it all. she's so strong and has been seen to be strong- she puts on a smile for leon, but drops it the second she thinks he can't see her anymore

give them both the closure they need. ada is the third most popular character after leon and jill, sometimes even surpassing chris. she needs to be written well and have exploration of the aeon ship shown and fleshed out. capcom has been pairing leon and ada together for 25+ years. give the older fans the closure they need as well.

now until more people have seen DI, i don't want to speak on it much, so i won't be feel free to ask me again in a few weeks after the movie is more widely available for people.

tl;dr i think they just want to have aeon be more grounded and this makes the most sense- and they don't see each other for another 2-6 years after 2004, so that would be their 3rd ish meeting. there's still plenty of time to work to "that night" and then damnation and then re6.

[gommih]

Hello!! 👋

Do you still do art of sun and moon show?? I liked the idea of Lunar being more smart and dangerous than he looks.

And that idea where Lord Eclipse merging both Lunar and Moon IAs to obey him was scary and interesting at the same time.

Do you have other ideas for that?? (Sorry if im bothering you)

You are not bothering me at all! I am happy to answer you! I sadly stopped watching the show for a good few months now. I am not really aware of what happened in the series. Although i can tell you about what was my idea for the "Lunar Is Bored" art (potential AU if you wish) and the "Eclipse Won" theory that I gave up quite rapidly after the episode as i didn't see a point in continuing it. Although i can still create a new design for it (i am inspired to do so now!). I did have a few ideas for it. But it surely doesn't align with the current events of the series.

Lunar Is Bored :

Basically Lunar is like any "evil" character. Although a bit different?? His only motivation is to have fun, to cry and other. Lunar is only dangerous when he gets bored. If doing something morally bad is the only way to have entertainment he'll do it with the sweetest smile on his face. That does not mean that their only entertainment is violence or psychological torture. Pretty much everything is entertaining like feeding alive ducks for example. The boring part for him is when life begins to be static. He does not like routines, he adores change too much to stay in a single pace. What they do crave is the rush of any feelings. This Lunar is pretty much unpredictable. He is capable of many things just for the sake of entertainment.

Eclipse Won Theory :

At first I thought of this vision as Lord Eclipses personal trophy. The AIs have merged in a forceful and painful way. Eclipse Keeps them traped somewhere unknown and makes them watch their friends sufferin his "perfect" world. Although at first I thought that Eclipse would have killed Sun, but seing the episode and how Sun reacted to moon made me think of a better idea. Sun is the same as the one in the episode. He doesn't remember his brother(s) and his affraid of the fusion because of whatever story or warning Eclipse told him. Of course that makes the fusion helpless and powerless. And so they break. There not much to torture now and that bores Eclipse. Eclipse doesn't want to keep a mindless trophy. So the fusion is now some kind of "archivist". They are sentenced to wander aimlessly in those grand halls of books filled with lies.

[classiqals]

{jacob anderson, 31, cisman, he/him} we are so glad to see you safe, {CHIEF OF STRATEGY & FINANCE} TSAR ISAAK STASOV of RUSSIA! it’s dangerous out in the world these days, but i hear that you are BRILLIANT and OBJECTIVE enough to handle it. just don’t let your HIGHLY UNMOTIVATED & DISCONTENTED NATURE bring you down! stay on your guard, because with your secret being at risk for exposure, you wouldn’t want everyone to find out YOU HAVE BEEN FALSIFYING FINANCIAL LEDGERS TO FUND PERSONAL PROJECTS IN RUSSIA.

BASICS;

nicknames:  don't you dare.

sexuality:  bisexual

relationship: {soon to be betrothed}

date of birth:  ??? sometime in 1740 probably

zodiac sign:  see above

moral alignment: tba... i actually don't know

hobbies: tba im so tired

dislikes: see above

languages spoken: tba

politics/loyalty: uhh russia, he guesses? is there anything else?

DETAILS;

TW: medical condition mention (?)

all he knew as long as his memories go back, isaak had only the grand tsarina by way of mother, of caretaker. for so many years, he did his best to defend her ways. the story the tsar had been given at age four, when he'd thought to ask, went as the following;

you were a weak child, you were small, you never cried. russia was weak, barely surviving after a horrible plague, and the people still struggled to feed their families. much less with a mouth to feed that was nearly destined to suffer. they were going to leave you behind, but you had a sister. she brought you to me. i nursed you back to health - look at you now.

sometimes, isaak doubts the truth in her tale. it feels like something that would belong to another; for as long as he can remember, he belonged to none other than the tsarina && russia. to him, they were nearly one and the same. or... they once had been.

but the tale does not begin with isaak's disillusionment; no - it begins far before. from infancy, he would tire quickly, and was quite small. it would turn out to be a heart condition that caused much of isaak's grief in childhood, and in his teens, things worsened as he began to rise && take on duties for russia's greater benefit.

he was used to being the smartest in the room; a near mathematical prodigy, he could solve complex equations without hardly trying. reading comprehension, memory, and problem solving also shone brightly as he grew.

some called him lazy; but after two incidents that in modern times would be known as minor strokes left isaak weaker && weaker after both occurrences, the tsarina's complaints faded away, and isaak became the official chief of finance & strategy for russia, taking control of the nation's finances.

one of the side affects from his poor health && the strokes he suffered in his late teens has led to isaak relying on walking aides for his right side - he is never without his cane, and still tries to avoid walking long distances. though the latter has mostly to do with the heart condition (still undiagnosed)

in the last 6-7 years, isaak has become more cynical & bored than before; there is little excitement in math, he has come to find, and realizes that his ideas tend to be bigger than the tsarina's, leaving him unchallenged and sleepy. once a more brighter being, isaak can now be descripted on his worse days as pessimistic, and his best - amusingly snarky.

WANTED CONNECTIONS;

a diagnosis of some kind -> he's never known the cause of his weakness, fluttering heart murmur, the partial paralysis in his leg, the way he thought he was dying twice in his teens. someone who can shed answers on this in any way - be it through medicine, science, naturalistic measures, or spiritual ones, or even personal experience, would be fun to explore!

someone who shows him how to let loose -> boy he is rigid and really hates that about himself. poor guy doesn't even know how to start; he is used to drinking, but usually in a broody way. he's never done a drug, and never truly partied. would be curious to see how it goes... or even just gambling. someone have him let loose, i beg.

another keen mind -> isaak loves to talk debate and strategy and theorize on diplomacy, even some hypothetical plotting. someone to sit up late with hot cocoa in hand, just mulling over anything along those lines, another fellow intellectual.

teach him all you know -> this exposure to culture has been incredible to isaak, and he wishes to learn everything and anything. his history knowledge is limited, so he is playing catch up, and only knows of very major events, such as the reckoning. someone who can fill him in (and maybe, attempt to recruit him to their side of things with a skewed version?) on any of the many dramas happening would be so fun to see!

a helping hand -> i anticipate more than a couple blunders in proper behavior && etiquette. isaak did not exactly have the same lessons as most other royals; and behaves, in truth, more like a commoner than a true tsar of russia. someone who will try and help him learn the basics, quickly, before making a bigger embarrassment of himself!

the one who took offense -> as above, someone who did not react as well to isaak's unusual behavior, and will get offended.

[devitalise]

IMO im sending this so early NOT because I'm trying to beat you (though it does feel nice 🤭) but I'll be offline during our usual end-of-month wrap-up + i SHANT make you wait long!!! HOW DID AUGUST GO! I read ur goodreads review on The Picture of Dorian Gray but I'm dying to hear more 👁️ + do u think you're gonna try and shift into ~fall vibes~ for reading now (whatever that means to you) or continue to go with the flow?

hi cas this was such a jumpscare getting this over a week ago but i'm glad you were able to beat me! of course there's a new autumnal vibe in the books i'll be reading i've even updated my discord profile (goodbye summer kendall you were great)

but i can go into more detail in the

august book wrap up

(2 days early but i'm not finishing a book in 2 days)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (The Original 1980 Uncensored Edition) by Oscar Wilde

well i read a book. there were some really interesting threads in this, i thought Dorian being a narcissistic weirdo was cool to read about, but other than the end of the book taking a much darker turn, i did't find much about this impressive. i don't like reading books expecting them to work harder for me to enjoy them, but i struggled to want to read this.

Must I Go by Yiyun Li

wasn't what i expected it to be, not really a fan of what it was. you give me an 88 year old woman who's survived her eldest daughter's suicide and raised her granddaughter and is looking after her greatgrandaughter and what do we do? we spend almost 200 pages of her dissecting the journal of some random man who ended up marrying his cousin and lived his whole life not knowing he had said daughter? why. i don't care! i don't care!!!!!!! and then when Lila (the character in question) did talk about herself, her mother having her dreams crushed in her marriage, her three marriages and further 4 children, it's just brushed over and kind of shrugged at. none of the "important" men in her life are alive and yet they took up so much of the book. whatever you keep dead people alive in your memory but other than being reminded how selfish and uncaring Lila was there wasn't much about this i felt positive about. wouldn't recommend, went straight in my donation pile.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

i finally did it. what a rollercoaster! i absolutely hate reading first person books when i find the character annoying. not to say a bad person, or morally defunct or anything. just plain old annoying. Elena Greco is annoying. fine in the first 2 as she's 10-22 years old and it's expected, but the third book sees her in her mid 20s early 30s and i genuinely wanted to throw this book at a wall. i struggle to see this as a tale of friendship at this point just because like. they aren't friends??? they're two women who at this point are bound by history and maybe that's the point but i want better for Lila and she remains the star of the show

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

i finished the quartet and feel emotionally wrung out. this was going fine but i think it's around 350 pages in there's a full blown "relationship" between Lila's 24 year old son and Elena's 15 year old daughter???? reading from the perspective of an awful mother was so jarring, too. really enjoyed the series, i just feel like i felt very untethered towards the end and i just wanted it to end

september / autumnal reads

i'm annoyed that i've ended up in such a white reading space so will be fixing that for sure. also need a romance, i haven't read one i've liked this year! something fun is overdue. i have some horror books picked out but that's not for a little while yet. i don't see myself picking up anything new (maybe?) so i'll just be picking from what i already bought, trying some contemporary reads that have been rotting on my shelf for the past year