#nevertheless-moving

[whetstonefires]

Hello! For the reverse tropes writing prompts (if this catches your fancy) — murderbot diaries with fake amnesia and Really nice guy who hates only you

this is really not in the spirit of that second inverse trope, but for mb this was the only thing i could think of, and it was very funny.

=

"Gurathin," said Gurathin. "SecUnit, you know it's me."

"I don't think I know that," it said, pleasantly, in an okay but not excellent imitation of its creepy canned dialogue options. "Please present some identification, and we'll see."

Gurathin didn't bother sending his data over the feed again. Murderbot walked away, but left a drone eyeballing him. He resisted the urge to flip the drone off. "Come on," he told it, knowing SecUnit was paying attention. "Let me in."

He watched the SecUnit bend forward slightly to show two of Mensah's kids that it was paying attention to whatever they were saying, and then bend over further to help the toddler up onto a chair. It was just fucking with him now. On the other hand, if the prickly bastard started letting children hug it just to piss off Gurathin, who was the real loser?

It finished spoiling the children and moved over to smoothly de-escalate a brewing disagreement over the punch bowl. Gurathin tried to catch Pin-Lee's eye; she did not cooperate. Gurathin tried to walk through the open door; the hovering security drone took a potshot at him.

SecUnit got roped into conversation with Bharadwaj and her media colleagues. It said something that made everyone laugh. It wasn't scowling. It was faking looking people in the face pretty well; that was just creepy.

It went on like that; Gurathin had never seen it go this long interacting without pissing someone off. Presumably it was venting all of that impulse on him. Ratthi introduced it to his favorite cousin; zi was visibly charmed.

Gurathin goaded the drone into firing two more warning shots before the SecUnit circulated back over to him.

"SecUnit. Come on. You have known me for actual years. I helped you rob a place once."

"I don't recall."

"We met on that planetary survey mission, don't tell me you don't remember that one, it's the reason you're even here." That came out maybe a little harsh, but everyone was letting the SecUnit abuse the power of being entrusted with party security to bully him, he was allowed to be annoyed.

"Oh, were you there? That data must have been lost in a corrupted filetree," it said, with incredibly cutting blandness.

Gurathin groaned. "Okay! Okay. I'm sorry."

It technically counted as a reward when SecUnit stopped giving him the customer service face and switched to the hairy eyeball, which just showed how stupid this whole situation was. It was clearly not satisfied with just that.

"I'm sorry for using your personal name without permission. I wasn't trying to weaponize it or anything, it just slipped out, but I know that's not an excuse and it was a really inappropriate disrespect for your boundaries."

SecUnit kept looking at him. Gurathin knew two other SecUnits now, neither of whom was as supremely weird as this one; that was why he'd started mentally tagging it with its personal name, just to keep things tidy. Of course, if anyone else had done that and made the resulting mistake, SecUnit probably wouldn't have been half so mad.

Gurathin sagged.

"I'm sorry for going through your personal files and using your name against you back during the survey," he mumbled, wishing he kept drones around to control with his brain so he could watch SecUnit's extremely expressive face without having to look at it. "That was really shitty. Rim paranoia isn't a good enough excuse for refusing to see you as anything but a tool of the Company. Okay?"

SecUnit was looking as pained as though Gurathin had stripped naked in its presence. "Yes, fine, you can come to the party just stop having feelings," it said, in its normal voice.

"Great!" said Gurathin. "The spinach puffs had better not be all gone."

"I don't pay any attention to the things humans consume," it said, moving out of his way and taking its drone with it.

"I know," Gurathin acknowledged, rolling his eyes and trooping after it. Ratthi waved enthusiastically at him and Pin-Lee raised her cup in a welcoming toast. Apparently SecUnit's relenting returned him to the ranks of people who existed again. "Believe me, I remember this about you."

[wanderershu]

My boy dan heng was in his room all depressed after finding out about a part of the high cloud quintet's past while also coming to terms with the fact that blade is his ex husband only to come out of his room to a majestically beautiful red haired man making a mess out of the things in the parlor and blowing things up. He cannot catch a break.

[sage-nebula]

PSA: Zelda was the light dragon for way longer than 10,000 years.

The event that takes place 10,000 years prior to BotW was the first recorded Calamity. The first recorded Calamity is not what we see in the TotK flashbacks, with Rauru and Sonia and all that. The first recorded Calamity took place AFTER Ganondorf was sealed, when his malice escaped confinement. This is the event the Guardians and Divine Beasts were built for. The Guardians and Divine Beasts were used successfully, the Sheikah were banished by the mad king of Hyrule and the Yiga Clan formed as a result, and Zelda was the light dragon for all of it.

So to summarize, the timeline is:

A really long time ago, probably the Era of Myth noted in Creating a Champion: Sonia and Rauru found Hyrule 3.0, Ganondorf starts a war and is sealed, Zelda turns herself into a dragon

A long time after that - 10,000 years pre BotW: First recorded Calamity, Sheikah tech helps avert it, Sheikah are subsequently banished & Yiga form, dragon Zelda chills in clouds

9,900 years later - 100 years pre BotW: Next Calamity happens, Divine Beasts and Guardians are corrupted, Champions are killed and Zelda (human) restrains Ganon in the castle while Zelda (light dragon) flies around

100 years later - BotW: Link wakes up, helps Zelda (human) seal Ganon again, while Zelda (dragon) hangs out in the sky

5 or 6 years later - TotK: Zelda (human) gets yeeted to the Era of Myth, beginning the time loop, while Link works to beat Ganondorf and eventually transform dragon Zelda back into a human

Some have speculated that the "10,000" number used for the first recorded Calamity is meant as a generalization or something similar, because how can history be recorded so far back? But regardless, these are the numbers we are given. Since the first recorded Calamity was stated to have been 10,000 years ago, and the Sonia and Rauru stuff would have to have happened before that, we can surmise that Zelda was a dragon for way longer than just 10,000 years. Thank you for coming to my LOZ Talk.

Bonus: the beginning of the timeline outlined in Creating a Champion as receipts:

[leiththebard]

been relistening to WoK and its got me thinking..

what if kals family traveled to kharbranth together like Lirin mentioned considering in WoK Ch 37?

no tien death, no kal soldiering, no bridge crew, but a happy family.

kal learning surgery there, and once we get back to regular canon timeline he is a liscencdd surgeon who wants to help the mentally ill. after looking into it he slowly understands what is wrong with the devotary of mercy and begins doing therapy. maybe legal fight with the hospital/ardentia to trigger him swearing an oath? cause in this au he swears an oath to be a edgedancer. he wants to look out for those disenfranchised by society, like help the mentally ill or permanently disabled.

He has a lot of motivation in the flashbacks for wanting to help those hurt by superiors bc of Roshone and his melancholy (depression) helping the mentally ill is definitely people who have been forgotten ie 2nd ideal) not exactly sure when he would swear the first idea but maybe he mutters it while in surgery trying to save a life which allows him to use regrowth, saving that life and then many others.

He also gets abrasion which allows him to zoom places which isn't windrunning but is zoomie movement.

Then i feel Kal would discover taravangian's bleeding of people for death rattles. He obviously being horrified by that swears the 3rd ideal to listen to those being ignored, because OBVIOUSLY these folks are ignored!! The coppermind literally says the patients are "the terminally ill, the lowly, and the forgotten" and dismantles the system in kharbranth (maybe locking up Joshor and giving him to Dalinar if this occurs in OB because i dont think this Kal would kill if its not absolutely necessary)

mostly i want kal to be happy and tien to have lived and been a silly lightweaver with his truthwatcher brother and them sharing the surge of illumination is just so awesome

obviously theres gaps in this au (what happens to bridge four, who saves dalinar, etc, and anyone that has ideas i invite to add onto this, but mostly this has been rotting in my brain the past couple days

[mrsmiroir]

the setup (lots to unpack here)

[ceriseo]

^funniest possible thing u could say about a dragon that killed up to hundreds of smallfolk not two weeks ago.

[peggydreadful]

Better Things

The letter arrived in the morning.

It came, as letters do, in the mail, slipped between weekly ad circulars and flyers for next weekend’s voter registration drive. The plain white envelope bore no return address. It was marked with only two words, written in a dark, nearly illegible scrawl: Vox Populi. 

For a moment, Leda considered destroying the letter, setting the paper alight over the kitchen sink and watching the edges curl and blacken until it was nothing more than flakes of ash. After all, Ollie was out on his morning run; by the time he got back, there would be no evidence that his former guild—a band of the most eminent dragon slayers in the United States—had ever been asking after one Oliver Song. 

But Leda did not burn the letter, as much as she wanted to. Instead, she left it on the kitchen table, tucking one corner of the unopened envelope under the vase of wilting flowers that Ollie had bought for her two weeks ago.

Maybe he won’t notice, Leda thought to herself, knowing that he would, that he’d make a beeline straight for it as soon as he got home. Still, she couldn’t help but hope that he wouldn’t open the envelope for a few days (at least), that by the time he did, the dragon would have already been slain or the ritual already completed or the world already ended (or saved). 

Was it selfish of her, to want to keep Ollie to herself for a little while longer, if she could? Perhaps, but Leda had always been selfish; that was nothing new. 

There was a reason why people called Ollie a hero and Leda a bitch.

—

Sometimes, Ollie forgot that he was famous. 

It was easy to forget in a place like Evendale, Ohio. It helped, he supposed, that the dragons here were much smaller than the ones in New York, and less aggressive, too; the biggest ones—a pair that Hugh Donavan kept behind his sheep pastures—were hardly bigger than cows and lovingly docile, a far cry from the legendary, skyscraping beasts that occasionally darkened the skies of Manhattan. 

In Evendale, Ollie could be a boyfriend first and an EMT second and a dragon slayer third. It was why he’d left the Vox Populi in the first place and moved out here: to be more than just the hero from Queens who had killed the Wyvern of Wall Street with a broken stop sign, to leave the blood and fire and glory behind and just be some guy. 

Unfortunately, Ollie’s forgetfulness rarely lasted for very long; the world, it seemed, derived a sick pleasure from reminding him that he was not, in fact, just some guy. 

When he’d first moved to Evendale, the paparazzi were everywhere. He hadn’t considered that they might follow him from Manhattan to Ohio, but there they were, camping out on the sidewalk by his apartment building or the community gym or the local Waffle House with their cameras pointed at the main entrance, hoping for a candid shot of the newly-retired hero. It made him feel like an ass, slipping in and out of places via service entrances like he was some sort of rock star, but pushing through the mob of journalists and photographers, surrounded on all sides by flashing lights and rapid-fire questions, terrified him more than any sea serpent he’d ever dredged out of the East River. 

Those first few months had been hard. He’d done his best to be polite and understanding, but the gossip columnists never seemed satisfied with the answers he offered, never content to accept that he really had left the Vox Populi because he didn’t want to slay dragons anymore and not because of some secret scandal or covert reconnaissance mission. 

“Someone like you doesn’t just leave a penthouse in Manhattan to slum it in Ohio,” a reporter from OK!—or was it Star? Or maybe TMZ—had said to him once. “It just doesn’t happen.”

“Sorry,” he’d said in response, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. He'd really wanted to ask, “Why not?” Was it so strange to think that Ollie liked helping people but preferred to do so without constantly fighting for his life while clamped between the jaws of a fire-breathing beast the size of the Guggenheim Museum? (Judging by the number of prying questions he received about it—apparently.) 

In those moments, Ollie wished someone had told him, before he’d become a member of the Vox Populi and slain not one, not two, but three greater dragons in the name of the city. He wished he had known how utterly alone he’d feel, buoyed aloft by the praise and adoration of strangers. To have millions of people watching his every move without seeing what he’d done and listening to his every word without hearing what he’d meant—it was like screaming and screaming and screaming into the dark tunnels of the subway system, hoping that the emptiness lodged in his chest would spill past his lips and seep into the grimy tile and screeching tracks of the Elmhurst Avenue stop. 

(It never did; instead, that loneliness would wedge itself under Ollie’s tongue and stick to the roof of his mouth, leaving a bitter aftertaste like the dandelion tea his grandmother used to brew for him when he was twelve.) 

Would any of the Vox Populi have joined, if they’d known how lonely it would be beforehand? Ollie wasn’t sure.

He, at least, had Leda. 

—

Bitch wasn’t the worst name Leda had ever been called. 

Frankly, she’d endured a lot of defamation throughout the years, the most vitriolic of which had surfaced in the first few months after news of her relationship with Ollie had been leaked to the press, when they’d both still been living in New York. 

On an intuitive level, Leda understood where the name-calling was coming from. If anything, jealousy-fueled insults aimed at the integrity of her character were to be expected of the thousands of people who, for some reason, thought themselves deserving of the affections of a Vox Populi. Still, the amount of hate mail in Leda’s Twitter mentions was almost comical—she had a folder saved on her phone that was filled with screenshots of the most outrageous conspiracy theories about her. (Her current favorite was one that claimed she was a former CIA operative who was currently using LSD-based mind control on Ollie in order to dismantle the Vox Populi and install a system of dragon overlords. Truly, people gave her way too much credit.) 

These days, the Internet trolling came more slowly, cresting and falling in lethargic waves. The most recent incident had been sparked by a video from nearly five months ago, when Leda and Ollie had first moved to Evendale. In it, dozens of cameras and microphones are being shoved into Ollie’s face as the couple emerges, hand in hand, from their apartment building. 

“—rumors that you’ve been in and out of Evendale General for a number of weeks now. What can you tell us about that?” a reporter asks, barely in frame as the video starts.

Ollie opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, his eyes darting anxiously from camera to camera. “Well, I’ve been—”

“Have you sustained a career-threatening injury, or are you in rehab for addiction?” another reporter interrupts, his voice harried as he shouts into his microphone. 

Ollie’s brow furrows, and he licks his lips before speaking, thoughtlessly seductive. “No, I’m fine—”

Leda didn’t remember much of this confrontation, hadn’t given it much thought before it had gone viral, but she did remember this: Ollie’s hand tightening on hers, his pulse fluttering frantically underneath her fingers as he struggled to fend off rumors. She’d spoken up, then, cutting in as another reporter tried to interject with their own wildly invasive question. 

“That’s enough.” 

In the video, Leda’s face is twisted into a snarl, her upper lip curled in disdain. She doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t need to as she pushes past the paparazzi with more force than is strictly necessary, dragging Ollie along behind her, but a threat hangs in the air around her nevertheless, reflected in the dark storm clouds crackling in her eyes. 

That video had earned Leda a number of colorful nicknames, none of them particularly forgiving. Luckily, it had also resulted in fewer paparazzi stakeouts in Evendale as a whole, which was a relief because the number of shirtless candids they had been taking of Ollie during his morning runs had really started to grate on Leda’s nerves. 

They’re not entirely wrong, she mused, watching the clip cycle through her Instagram feed for the eighth time. I really do look like a bitch.

—

Ollie got asked about Leda a lot.

In all honesty, he liked answering questions about Leda, enjoyed telling people about how they met and what she was like and yes, they are in a long-term relationship and no, they’re not really interested in threesomes right now, thank you though, that’s very kind. It was a refreshing change of pace from the questions he used to get about the best way to kill a dragon and how many dragons he thought lived in the New York subway system and what it felt like to be burned by dragonfire (decapitation, none anymore, very bad). 

It was easier, too, to gush about his girlfriend in an interview with The New Yorker than it was to stave off questions about when he was planning to rejoin the Vox Populi or why he’d chosen Evendale of all places to retire.

Mostly, though, Ollie liked to talk about Leda because he knew that his fans—it was weird that he had fans, but that was what they were, really—were not always kind to her. 

He did his best to defend her on social media, combing through Instagram and Twitter with pleas to leave his girlfriend alone, to stop doxxing her and calling her awful names. But for every cruel comment he took down, ten more would spawn in its place. 

“It’s fine,” Leda would say, gently extricating Ollie’s phone from his vise-like grip. “They’re just Internet trolls. Forget them.”

“You shouldn’t have to put up with these horrible things because of me.”

At that, Leda would cradle a warm hand against his cheek. “I have everything covered. I promise.” She’d pause, then, and add, almost to herself, “No LSD needed.” 

Ollie never quite understood what that last part meant, but he liked how Leda looked when she said it, liked watching that sly smile unfurl from the rightmost corner of her lips even though the joke flew right over his head. He’d try to draw it out, sometimes, by assuring her that he kept his body in prime condition and had no intention of throwing off its chemical balance with highly addictive hallucinogens, thank you very much. If he got it right, she’d laugh, and it was like watching a stormy sky break for a single, unfiltered ray of sunlight, like getting drunk for the first time and feeling absolutely, utterly unbreakable. 

He frowned back down at his phone, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet so that his legs wouldn’t start to cramp. The text from Reggie was still open, the last in a long chain of pleas and justifications: The position is there for you, if you want it.

Ollie considered for a moment, running a hand through his sweat-slicked hair before typing out his response.

—

Ollie deserves better.

It was a thought that gnawed at Leda’s mind constantly, chewing noisily through the edges of her sanity like the silkworms that her grandfather used to keep in their living room when Leda was seven, loud in the way that the crunch crunch crunch of insect mandibles on mulberry leaves would fill her seven-year-old ears as she tossed and turned in bed. 

It was hard, not to think it—especially now, as Leda balanced two pairs of chopsticks across the peel-off lids of the cup noodles on the counter, letting them sit as she rinsed out the kettle and dumped it unceremoniously into the top rack of the dishwasher to dry. Ollie was a good man—the best man, the kind who wept openly at baby animal videos and worked extra shifts so that the other EMTs could take the night off, the kind who asked himself what he could do to make the world a better place and then did it. He deserved more than a dinky one-bedroom apartment with an empty refrigerator and a bathroom door that jammed, sometimes, and a girlfriend who loved him, not for his heroism, but in spite of it. 

Leda sighed, sliding heavily down the kitchen cabinets to sit on the floor, her legs splayed haphazardly across the tile. She leaned her head against the cool wood behind her, listening to the steady sound of running water as Ollie showered. 

It was funny, in a distinctly unfunny way, how often she thought about breaking up with him—not because she wanted to, but because it felt like everyone else was waiting for her to do it. Even her sister had admitted, once, that she hadn’t expected them to last nearly as long as they already had. 

“Not that I think you can’t make it work, if that’s what you want,” Lily had said, peering owlishly over the rim of her latte. “It’s just—he asks a lot from you, you know?” 

Leda set her own mug of coffee down with enough force that she half-expected it to shatter. “Ollie isn’t a job, Lily.” 

“So then why is he asking you to give up yours?”

Leda scoffed. “It’s not like my job was all that great to begin with. Besides, the new firm in Ohio’s nice.”

“It’s tiny, Leda. And you’ll be making a fraction of what you’re making now. You can’t seriously be giving up New York for that?”

“So what if I am? People leave New York and downgrade all the time—you did.”

“Yeah, once I had kids. You’re still young, Leda; it would be insane to leave the city right when you’re about to make junior partner,” Lily said. “Why would you risk your entire future on Ollie when there are plenty more just like him?”

Leda hadn’t known how to respond to that. How could she possibly explain what Ollie was to her, how every time he looked at her he would smile like he was seeing an unpolluted night sky for the first time, how she’d wake up every morning to see him drooling into the pillow beside her and feel so afraid of the brittleness in her heart? No words in any language were sufficient enough to describe what it was like when they watched movies together and Ollie would ask her to explain the plot, how he’d listen to her talk like her words were more important than anything happening on the screen. 

Ollie had offered to stay when she’d first learned of her promotion, had offered to keep rising through the ranks of the Vox Populi even though his hands shook every time he picked up a sword and his inbox was filled with unsent emails to the Department of Homeland Security requesting tanks instead of spears and fighter jets instead of crossbows. But secretly, Leda had been relieved to leave the city behind. A part of her had always chafed against having to share Ollie with the world, against being the second priority of a man who felt the need to carry the fate of the world in his hands and his hands only. 

In Evendale, Leda didn’t have to share. Without the Vox Populi to shove Ollie into the national spotlight, he was hers, and hers alone. (Leda was selfish like that.) What, then, could she say to make her sister understand that she had better things, now, than money and status and prestige?

“Because he’s Ollie,” she’d said finally, when the silence between them had stretched too thin. “Because he’s mine.”

—

Guilt was something Ollie was all too familiar with. 

He’d been carrying it with him for years, draped over his shoulders like a heavy cape. There was the creeping, bone-cold guilt of barely managing to graduate high school, pinned to his chest by the silent disapproval of his father, who’d simply left the room when Ollie had announced that he was accepting a place among the Vox Populi instead of applying to community college; the tremulous, searing guilt of slaying a dragon in the Bronx and finding a nest of still-warm eggs that he’d had to deliver, now orphaned, to the zoo; the sour, churning guilt of turning in his two weeks’ notice to the Vox Populi and leaving the people of New York to fend for themselves; the prickling, insistent guilt of watching Leda call the law firm she’d dedicated years of her life to, clawing her way up the corporate ladder, only to resign. 

And now, he felt the sticky guilt of his reply to Reggie’s texts settling over his skin, replacing the sweat he’d just washed away in the shower. Was he letting down the wrong people by making this decision? Should he have discussed it with Leda before making a choice? Would it have been fair of him to ask her at all? 

Ollie yanked, hard, on the bathroom door (it got stuck, sometimes) and blinked, surprised to find Leda sitting on the kitchen floor. She looked up from her phone, giving him an obvious once-over as he stepped out of the bathroom in a pair of old sweatpants, his shirt still bundled in his fist. He flexed a little to make her laugh. 

“I made ramen,” she offered, pointing above her head to the cup noodles on the counter and carefully not looking at the kitchen table, where he’d left the letter from the Vox Populi. It had been a short note, reiterating what Reggie had already conveyed to him over text: he had been invited to head up the New York branch of the guild—a high honor, especially for someone who had already retired. 

Ollie pulled his shirt over his head and drifted over to the kitchen counter, peeling off the paper lids and stirring both cups of noodles with his chopsticks before handing one to Leda and sliding to the floor with a grunt. He sat with his leg pressed against hers, reveling quietly in the comfort of her body next to his as she leaned into his warmth. 

 “Ramen for breakfast is an interesting choice,” he said. 

Leda sighed, resting her head onto Ollie’s shoulder as she peered mournfully into her own Styrofoam cup. “The fridge is empty. I had to improvise.”

Ollie laughed. “We could have made congee, at least.”

Leda didn’t say anything, didn’t throw back a witty barb like he’d expected. Ollie wondered, suddenly, if she had read the Vox Populi letter while he was in the shower, if that was what she was thinking about, if she was waiting for him to offer an explanation. Before he could, though, she spoke again. 

“Let’s go grocery shopping,” she said with feigned lightness, failing to hide the strain in her voice. 

Ollie frowned and brushed a finger under Leda’s chin, gently turning her head so that he could look at her. 

The expression on Leda’s face was one he recognized, one he’d worn countless times on his own face whenever an unknown number with a Manhattan area code would flicker onto Leda’s phone. It was a small look, big enough only for one word: stay.

Ollie reached for Leda’s hand, lacing their fingers together to squeeze tightly. He hoped that in the lines of his palm and the brush of his thumb against the back of her hand, she could read what he meant when he replied. 

“Okay.”

(Later, when Ollie went to throw their empty ramen cups away, he plucked the letter from the kitchen table and slipped that into the trash, too.)

[raceweek]

As an alexnation mutual I think I can ask for one silly alex existing picture too 🥺👉👈

MAL DOUBLE COMBO SLAM PICTURES EIGHT AND NINE

[whisper-and-tangle]

"Don't keep me waiting too long."

I fucking loved this line. Absolutely heartbreaking-

Look at Tangle's face here. Her eyes are closed, and tears are slowly breaking through-

She's visibly shaking, and clearly terrified-

This is one of her first few real adventures,

and the world is ending right before her eyes,

as her heroes die and lose the little hope they had left.

And she's smiling.

Look at that smile- it's a shaky line, because she is so not fucking okay. She is not alright with this, and she shouldn't be-

But she's not going to let it get to her.

She never does.

Because Tangle, the 15 year old lemur from Spiral Hill village, who just started her adventures and had to watch the world end in front of her very eyes-

Is one of the bravest sonic characters out there.

She reassured Sonic, her hero, when he was losing faith in himself-

And now she's alone, with no one to help her.

She knows she's going to lose her battle.

But she's going to try anyway-

She's going to go down fighting, because,

deep down,

she knows,

that her heroes'll never fail.

Her friends'll never fail.

She just hopes they won't keep her waiting for too long.

[ark1os]

.

[gillianthecat]

Love a power outage the afternoon I finally start doing all those chores I've been putting off.

[technicallypalewombat]

I loved the film monster 2023 so much. I've been thinking about it the entire day. Before I make any efforts to move on i want to leave my take on the ending here. After watching the movie twice and the final scenes more times than I can count I've come to the following conclusions. Either:

1. Minato and Yori are dead and the final scene could be purely imaginary. I've read numerous analysis and although many have spoken/written about the director mentioning that they are both alive this assumption still stands considering the ambiguity of the ending.

2. The two boys have entered a non-metaphorical, literal realm separate from their real world (emphasis on the non-metaphorical) - in this case the assumption that the characters are alive and didn't die, as most of us would like to believe, is a possibility. Given, the realm in question does exist. Although this would shift the movie from a realistic to a fantasy coded film and I'm not sure that's something the director was going for.

3. Afterlife - the boys are dead and the final scene takes place in afterlife where the gate previously present no longer exists depicting freedom.

Now I know and as most people would like to point out that Yori asks if they had been reborn to which Minato states that they were still the same meaning their bodies were still the same as before i.e they are still humans with the same features from before . Nothing had changed atleast not physically. This is a reference to multiple scenes in the movie where the characters particularly the boys talk of rebirth and that once you die you are not longer you. A cat once dead is no longer a cat and one could be reborn but as a different creature which, for instance, in case of minato's father : a stinkbug/giraffe/horse or whatever creature sans human (in relation to a conversation between Minato and his mom). Atleast that's what the kids believe (and that is the only thing that matters in this scenario). Therefore in their terms, Not losing their physical body=They haven't been reborn=They aren't dead. So yes, maybe they had died. Because not being reborn i.e retaining their physical bodies doesn't necessarily mean they're alive. Or maybe not. Maybe they hadn't died. Whatever the reality of the end is maybe we'll never really know. Maybe the genuine happiness and delight on their faces at the end as they ran.. maybe that's all that matters.

[puppybearuniverse]

its been said a million times in a million ways. but u really dont realize ur making memories until the time has passed.

[gideonisms]

Okay okay final degree paperwork finalized I THINK and I THINK I get to just move downstairs for $50 cheaper. So now I just need to focus on jobs & getting this place spotless

[tarrarre]

I won my first campaign hehe :3 I own most of the Kingdom of England now :3

[kyannnite]

finals crunch is devastating me rn but in 18 days i will be DONE and can work on my wips (after sleeping for 20 hours straight)