#or are they merely a mechanism built into us for the sake of survival?

[biblically-accurate-dca]

KILL!!!!!!!!!

[freddiekluger]

I am all ears for your season 3 cap's big gay awakening ideas 👀👀

alright, you asked so sit down and strap in

before we get started- a few details are recycled/repurposed from earlier headcanons/ask answers (characterisation is like that), and i came up with all this a couple weeks back, so any overlap with other peoples suggestions is totally unintentional! i’ve just been finding the energy to properly write them up as originally i riffed them with a friend late at night lmao

the captain: homo evolution

introduction (scroll down if you’re not bothered for the hardcore analysis/logic)

this isn’t necessarily what i think WILL happen as much as how i would do it. over the past two seasons of Ghosts, we’ve seen the captain’s main character arc being centred around him loosening up, from learning to value mike, alison, and the other ghosts more as equals than soldiers/means to an end to the season 2 finale, where cap is not only expressing an interest in flowers and fashion (distinctly un-soldierly pursuits) but joining the party and other men (the direct opposite of About Last Night, in which cap bah humbugs partying/’gay abandon’ and is left speechless by the mere presence of a mostly naked man). that being said, the captain is still the captain: his character is still centred around this need for rules and structure and he still finds his identity in the archetypal WW2 military man- all of his incremental moves towards a more ‘modern’ perspective have ultimately been made possible because, like Ben said on twitter, the captain isn’t CONSCIOUSLY aware that he’s gay. he has the underlying feeling that he’s different, he knows of his tendency to attach himself to specific men and form incredibly close bonds (and, as demonstrated by his attempts to hide them, is at least somewhat aware that that’s not the norm), but in his mind he’s written that off as merely “not being a ladies man”. 

the captain is from the 1940s- it’s one thing for him to see and be supportive of a same-gender wedding in present day England where gay=legal unions, marketed doritos, and homophobia being still present but generally frowned upon, and another thing entirely for him to have to apply it to himself. we’ve already seen that the captain appears to be stuck in the past more than any of the other ghosts (”the war is over!” “is it, alison? is it?”- he also references the past more frequently than most of the others), and in his past sodomite gay=punishable by imprisonment and chemical castration, back alley hookups, and the constant threat of blackmail and violence. obviously, despite all this, there was a vibrant underground queer history taking place in England during this time & not all of the above is accurate, but it’s what cap would have seen, and the England of the early 20th century is denoted as being a particularly brutal period for lgbtq+ folks (the destruction of the first world war exacerbated rage and frustration, and lgbtq+ people weren’t the only gorup to end up on the receiving end of that, but i digress). this is basiclly just a really long way of me saying that the captain compartmentalising to that degree was, and to some extent is, a survival mechanism. confronting his homoseuxality means confronting what it means for a 1940s man to be a dreaded homosexual, and all of that directly conflicts with the image of ‘the Captain’ he’s built in his mind. 

we’ve seen this in Redding Weddy, where the captain is aware that Havers means/meant more to him than was normal for a captain/2ic relationship (he does attempts to hide his affection- “i shall miss you, Havers. by which of course i mean we shall miss you “he left me, i mean he left for the front”), but is never able to fully verbalise WHY, and it only takes a series of increasingly dramatic prompts before he will even mention the idea of Havers, let alone begin to articulate their relationship. 

all this just goes to prove that for the captain to properly ‘come out’, there needs to be an external inciting incident- he could easily have gone on shadowing attractive men whenever they visit and avoiding interrogating those feelings for another seventy years if Button house remained without alison and mike. 

while at least julian, pat, and robin have noticed that the cap is not the most heteroseual of men (they’re the only ghosts who have visibly reacted when cap says gay shit), they all appear to have decided to just not mention it, which makes alison and mike our wildcards. not only has alison’s ability to see and communicate with the ghosts already connected them more to the modern world than they ever have been, alison, and mike by extension, has a personal stake in the wellbeing/general growth of the ghosts. happy ghosts=happy house, and like it or not some of them are even beginning to become friends. [i probably didn’t need to write all this like explaining my decisions, but i think figuring out the motivations behind everyon just develops the flavour and lets us have a sexy and accurate headcanon]

so,

the episode

while the captain might not consciously know he’s a fruit (derogatory), he is well and truly terrible at concealing the thirst (it’s not his fault things just keep slipping out!)- i love the idea of just having a supercut near the beginning of the episode that just shows that the captain has gotten even GAYER since last season, with slip ups becoming almost a daily occurence, but it’s getting to the point where it’s actually becoming a serious hazard. last week, he was supposed to be looking out for alison while attempted to put up blinds, but one of mike’s friends (who was over ‘helping out’, which mostly meant eating chips and covering himself in paint) walked through the room with his shirt off and paint handprints on the seat of his shorts, distracting the captain from realising that alison’s stepladder was about to give way. 

with the increased presence of non elderly men in the house (the previous owner wasn’t exactly the life of the party) the captain is getting gayer and gayer, but he’s also becoming more and more defensive, while his brisk demeanour and need for control regresses to much more of a season 1 state (a subconscious attempt to regain control as things get close to spilling over). it’s not the first time his repression has almost slipped, he spent much of his life surrounded by soldiers after all, but with no war and no corporeal body he’s got almost nothing to distract himself from it. needless to say, between the safety hazards and the almost agressive defensiveness which derails any interaction, something needs to be done about the captain.

throughout the week, alison tries to find the opportune time to talk to the captain about what’s going on with him for everyone’s sake, but cap keeps masterfully evading any ‘deep’ talk with willful misunderstanding or just straight up dismissal (which at times gets a bit rude), and alison really doesn’t have the time- her and mike are caught up with managing the first official room redecoration and butting heads with a passive agressive delivery driver. insert general shenangigans, but at some point the captain’s whole “accidentally sabotage something by being distracted and then attack anyone who dares even look at him the wrong way afterwards” act causes alison to exasperatedly blurt out “we all know you’re gay! we get it! you like men! you can drop the act!”. there’s no malice or anything but, as we know, when alison gets run ragged things don’t tend to come out quite right.

everything falls silent (and mike is vaguely confused), and the captain just looks like a deer in headlights. as alison catches her breath, pat pipes up with a “it’s alright, cap, we don’t mind- now we can focus on the task at hand”. the captain sort of regains his composure and once again attempts to brush them all off with a scoff and a “i haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. if any of us is distracted, i-it’s... kitty!” but it’s easy to tell he looks rattled. most of his words don’t come out right, and after trying to blame kitty for their failures (she just had the unfortunate luck of being in his line of sight), he ends up doing an awkward little walk away which quickly turns into a full on sprint. mike, having finished processing alison yelling about gay shit to the air and kind of pieced together what must have happened awkwardly chimes in with “it’s okay to be gay!”- alison just pats him on the back (”yeah no he’s gone, mike.” “gone?” “sprinted away.” “huh”)

the episode continues with the captain flat out avoiding alison and the other ghosts to an almost funny extent as the other plots continue. it takes a bit for alison to realise why the captain reacted so badly (in fact, it’s actually mike who remembers that he’s 1940s ghost- “he’s probably just scared and taking it out on everyone else”). while thomas and julian vote for leaving the captain be so they can have some peace and quiet, fanny/pat/alison/robin decide someone needs to talk to him (fanny surprised everyone but after all, she got murdered because her husband had to live in secrecy- if talking to the captain will avert any further crises, she’s happy to make sure someone else does it for her). kitty’s still upset about being singled out, but she knows better than anyone that sometimes all you need is a friend- cue realisation no. 2.

with the captain avoiding everyone, sending in a regular emissary isn’t going to work. they need to find the least threatening person possible, with no agenda or history other than being there to help (a friend, if you will)- cue everyone looking at mike.

a quick offscreen briefing later, we see mike wandering out to the field where the captain has exiled himself- remember that up until this point, the captain was still in conscious denial about his sexuality, so being forced to confront it head on (and finding out that apparently everyone ‘knew’, which for cap would feel like an intimate invasion of privacy/forced vulnerability) would rattle him to the point of self-exile- he might not be able to run from his sexuality, but he can run from people. the thing is, mike can’t see or hear the ghosts, which means the captain can’t be frightened off by any expectations (mike actually talks to/at cap while facing completely the wrong direction, but consdiering the above point, this works rather well). 

the captain was alternating between pacing, fiddling with his swagger stick, and sitting, but he unconsciously stands to attention as mike wanders over. he’s used to mike not being able to see them, so mike asking to sit down takes him by surprise, disrupting his instinct to flee again.

mike begins a little awkwardly (”mind if i sit?” *silence* “...i’m just gonna assume that’s a no. or is it a yes? yeah anyways i’m just gonna sit. so... heard you’ve been going through a rough patch”), and the captain almost scoffs and wanders off, but something about the clumsy earnestness in mike’s voice, the captain’s vulnerable state, and the fact that it’s been so long since cap has had anyone actually check in on him, that he stays put. he keeps standing and staring away from button house, and mike keeps speaking to the empty air to his left, and alison and the ghosts stay hidden behind their bush a few metres away, but at least the captain is listening. for the first time in weeks, he’s not on the offensive.

“i can’t actually see or hear you, so i’m just gonna talk and assume you’re listening. alison mentioned you have a habit of running away but, um, maybe don’t do that please?”

“my mate daniel's gay. uh, homosexual, you’d probably say- did you have gay when you were alive? did it just mean happy? anyway, he didn’t come out- that means tell people- until he left high school. we all kind of guessed it, the other kids at school gave him a real tough time for it, but he just squashed it down. couldn’t imagine that all the things people were shouting at him were true, so he ignored it. he’s doing good now though. got married to his husband last year, currently runs a bookshop. so that’s nice.”

it goes quiet for a bit. the captain hasn’t moved, and we’re still only seeing shots of him from the back, but there’s a little less tension in his stance than there was before.  mike clears his throat before continuing.

“i’m guessing you’re probably pretty scared right now. i would be- i mean not that you should be, you shouldn’t, but coming from your... situation, i’m guessing it’d be hard. no one’s saying you have to be anything you’re not ready to be, but lots of things that are scary are actually not bad. airplanes, skydiving, clowns- well, not the clown from that movie, but he gives clowns a bad rep- i’m sure there are plenty of lovely clowns out in the world. still give me the creeps though.” the captain makes a captain-y noise of assent about the clown comment- he never liked them either. 

mike glances over to the bush where alison and the ghosts were attempting to listen in (they could only catch every few words- mary got particularly concerned about why mike had referenced clowns), and the captain still hasn’t run away, so alison motions for mike to keep going. he starts telling the captain a story from his uni days. it’s got nothing to do with the captain, or being gay, or self-acceptance, or anything like that- it’s just a standard tale of comedic but inventive problem solving. the captain sits himself down next to mike (to his right, avoiding mike’s gaze, and still staring away from button house), muttering that his legs are getting a bit tired. he sits there for a while, and mike just talks. sometimes he circles back to the gay thing, sometimes he just asks the captain questions, before remembering that he can’t actually hear any answer, but then he keeps asking anyway, thinking that cap might need to talk. he doesn’t at first, but slowly he offers up a word or two. and then a sentence, and then maybe more- mike will accidentally cut the captain off, or leave the silence to long, but the captain doesn’t mind (it’s a nice reminder that nothing he says will actually go on to have consequence). at one point, mike gets out his phone to show the captain photos of his mate daniel and daniel's husband, not just their wedding day but casual photos- couples drinks with him and alison, dinners at each other's places, the bookshop. 

alison and the other ghosts have long gone, and the sun is just about to sink below the horizon by the time the captain stands himself back up with the traditional knee crack and grunt. he looks at mike and nods, giving him a simple thank you before turning to walk (not run) back to button house, head held slightly higher and looking more relaxed than he’s been all episode. the captain has still got a lot to figure out, but at least it’s a start.

[i love the dramatic ending but the implication is that alison has to go and fetch mike bc he has no ideas cap has left and is prepared to keep going lol- also by no means is cap suddenly going to ditch his characterisation and become a yas kween gay right away, i didn’t go into the aftermath bc this is alreayd fucking LONG but let me know if you want follow up????}

EDIT: i've rbed this with the follow up/part 2 attached!

EDIT 2, much later: switched out mike's reference to his 'younger brother' to a school friend, since the christmas special confirmed mike only has sisters and we're all about accuracy here

[linkspooky]

Getou vs. Monkeys

An analysis on Getou’s psychology, and how he can go from being a well meaning good guy in the Hidden Inventory Arc, to the extremist we see later in the manga. Read more on one of the best villains in Shonen Jump current under the cut. 

1. Empathy is a liability 

Getou is introduced to us in Hidden Inventory with a unique mentality among sorcerers. In the world of sorcery almost everything is decided either on bloodline, or individual strength. Getou is someone who always sympathizes with the weak. 

It’s a philosophy that puts him at odds with Gojou an individualist, but also one that makes him uniquely complementary towards Gojou. Getou is someone who believes in the collective good. He believes the that you have to sacrifice things for the collective good of everybody. That the strong should have their freedom limited and be used in benefit of the weak. That the strong are expected to use their abilities for the sake of the weak.

Getou undergoes a transformation in this arc, but while he is radicalized and pushed to extremes he never actually changes his core beliefs all that much. This is a point that I will explain later, as for now I would like to explain how much Getou’s trauma in the hidden inventory arc had an affect on his world view. 

Getou and Gojou are asked on a mission to protect a girl, only to kill her at the end of the mission. That girl’s individual life has to be exintguished for the greater good of everyone, which is something that conflicts with both Getou and Gojou’s world views in a way. Gojou believes in the power of the invidual, and Getou believes that the rules of society exist to protect the weak, not exploit them. 

While Getou is a very principled person, he’s also a very empathic person. He wants to do good for society as a whole, but Getou is someone who also deeply sympathizes with individual lives especially the weak, and downtrodden. Getou is someone who will always sympathize with a victim, but that doesn’t necessarily make him a good person. 

Getou is the first one to make a connection to Riko in the mission, and he already has a very personal stake in a girl that he’s known for one day, and is going to sacrifice at the end of the mission. He’s also the first one to figure out the connection between Riko and her maid, and how important she was to Riko by declaring them family. 

The reason why Getou starts empathizing so much with Riko is important as well. Consider the symbolism of this scene. Riko is someone who has spent her entire life unable to live her life. She was told she was not individually important enough to live. She had to sacrifice herself for the greater good of everyone. Riko isn’t allowed to make any choices in her own life because society has dubbed her unimportant. She is essentially, a small fish in an ocean. She’s all alone and can’t be with everyone else because she’s marked different as them. 

However, when she watches the fish at the aquarium she sees them all swimming together in a school, all different kinds of fish. That makes Riko realize what she wants, to be with everyone else, to swim with them. It’s not about being individually big or small or important, it’s about being with everybody. 

Riko craves a life together with other people. She’s important because she’s a part of this world too just like everyone else. 

Getou who sympathizes with the individual so much he’s willing to side against the entire of Jujutsu Society and his direct orders from his superiors in order to allow her to live her life. Only for that life to be immediately taken in front of him. That is the source of Getou’s trauma, empathy and connection in the Jujutsu world is something that deeply hurts him because connection is not valued. 

This is something we see over and over again in the manga. Characters longing for connection, characters wanting to be together with everyone (characters like Kokichi who repeats the exact same words when he makes his final standoff against Mahito, or Junpei who wanted to join Yuji even after losing his mother) only die alone. People want to connect. The system the world is designed around, especially the Jujutsu World, is unfair, heartless, and punishes connection. 

Getou’s trigger for all of this is watching the nameless crowds all celebrate Riko’s death, especially since he later comes to associate that with how the rest of society is completely oblivious to the suffering of individual Sorcers who die horrible deaths for the sake of the greater good. 

Getou is looking everywhere for justice in the world and the sense that he’s doing the right thing, but all he sees is corpses piling up, a small minority of people has to suffer for the sake of an ignorant majority. Not only that but the system that Getou is working inside is corrupt too, it assigns him missions like executing a teenage girl for the sake of everyone else. 

It’s a system that does not value individual lives, and therefore pumps out teenage sorcerers only to have them die on the regular. It almost makes sense to respond to Jujutsu Society the way Gojou did, because Gojou by distancing himself from others and taking responsibility for everyone on his shoulders and becoming strong enough that no one can overpower him means he retains his sanity unlike Getou. 

The incident that causes him to defect is just another repettition of this vicious cycle he sees everywhere. Two individuals who are hurt and rejected by an entire small town, and made to be a scapegoat by people who are completely ignorant. Getou sees this incident as a microcosm of jujutsu society as a whole, and that’s why he comes to reject the way the world is built. 

2. Sinner of the System

I’ve been too nice to Getou so far. Time for the second half of the post where I point out what a hypocrite he is. Getou’s actions are a rejection of Jujutsu Society pushed to their ultimate extreme. In his mind the only way to reform the current world is to completely destroy it, and establish a enw world order with Jujutsu Sorcerers on top. That is the only way he can see stopping the suffering of individual sorcerers. In a way he’s just flipped the equation, instead of a few suffering for the many, he’s taken out the many for the sake of the chosen few. 

His actions are a rejection of the Jujutsu System as a whole and also a response to trauma. A few of his habits after his radicalization are a direct response to Toji. First, when Toji tells him to be sure to thank his parents, Getou goes out of his way to kill his parents when he switches his side. Also the first character to use the term ‘monkey’ to refer to people who cannot use Jujutsu, was Toji himself immediately after taking out Getou. 

However, while Getou rejects Jujutsu Society he is still someone very much shaped by it. Despite Getou believing in acting for the collective good, he is someone raised with an individualist mindset. He believes power is everything especially when it comes to changing the world. 

Getou even says this, if he had the strength to kill every last person on earth, he would use that strength to kill everybody in a heartbeat. Despite the fact that what Gojou wants is to stop the suffering of individual sufferers because he views them as the weaker party compared to the masters, he also reflects a survival of the fittest mindset in his actual methodology. One, he tries to accomplish everything with mere strength alone. Two, he wants to create a world where the only people are allowed to survive are Jujutsu Sorcerers, those born with Jujutsu abilities. 

Getou looks down on people who are not born with inherent Jujutsu powers, especially people like Toji the source of his trauma. However, the reason someone like Toji even existed was not because of the fact he was born without any inherent abilities, but rather the way he was treated and looked down upon by everyone because of it. Getou in a way despite trying to reject society reflects many of the prevalent views of that society. Everything should be decided by the strong. People born without Jujutsu abilities are worthless and to be looked down upon. People need to be sacrificed for the greater good of everyone, even innocent people just trying to live their lives. Instead of just sacrificing one Riko, he’s decided to sacrifice millions of Riko’s. 

The society Getou wants to produce is a carbon copy of the Jujutsu Society that he came from, he just wants to put a different set of people on the top. This is also something that Gojou points out as a flaw in Getou’s reasoning, yes it’s possible to just slaughter everyone to affect change, but the people in charge are inevitably going to just be replaced by new people if you don’t change the attitudes of the system as well. 

Getou wants to make a better world, unaware of how shaped he is by the system he’s reacting to. He judges people on how they were born just like Jujutsu Society, in volume Zero he’s perfectly willing to attack teenagers to get what he wants. (Remember one of his criticisms of society was how many teenage Jujutsu High Students die horrible deaths). 

Getou repeats the prejudice that the Zenin family has on Maki, by dismissing her as a monkey for her lack of natural born ability, despite the fact that she’s working harder than anyone else to become a sorcerer. 

Once again this is all rooted to the idea of empathy that surrounds Getou’s character. He’s someone who will always sympathize with the individual, in a world where individuals die all the time, and Getou cannot handle that. It drives him insane. His only response to this hyperempathy he experiences is to completely shut that off. 

Getou is able to kill his own parents, because he doesn’t see them as his family anymore. His only family are the ones he chooses to see that way. Getou is able to imagine slaughter on a widescale, because he doesn’t see them as human. He doesn’t connect or empathize with their pain in any way. It’s an extremely bad coping mechanism. The world dehumanizes Shamans and in response, Getou dehumanizes the masses. If you don’t see a person as human you don’t have to think about what you’re doing to them. Getou still empathizes with people, but only sorcerers. He spares them because he sees them as human. 

In essence Getou is someone who wants to build a more just world, but he’s forgotten about love and connection. He’s turned off the part of his brain that empathizes with the individual and the hurt because if he left it on he’d never be able to accomplish what he wants to do. It’s also the reason the Getou from Hidden Inventory is eventually defeated by the love he had forgotten after staring at the ugliness of the world for too long. 

[playing--koi]

Melancholy Mercenaries and No-Nonsense Nomads

Pairing: Nomad!Steve Rogers x Reader

Rating: 18+

Warnings: contains explicit sexual content, oral sex (m&f receiving), swearing

Word Count: 5k

Summary: After fighting alongside Steve in the name of the Accords, you used the chaotic aftermath to slip away and sever ties with the Avengers—attempting to go back to a life of mercenary work and vigilante justice, but what happens when the man in question hires a hitman to kill you?

MASTERLIST

A/N: I’m back! I was previously bootypoppinbarnes, but I wanted a bit of a fresh start since it’s been forever that I posted anything. I really hope you like this, I’m a bit out of practice so I tried my best! x

The Parisian streets were misty, littered with cigarette butts and squashed pigeon feces—keeping you that much more inclined to avoid the curb-stomping that no doubt awaited should you make a mistake. With the unknown man attempting to shove your face into the concrete, you knew thinking on your feet wasn’t optional. Bracing yourself on the sidewalk with your forearms, you kicked your dominant leg out behind you. You could feel your foot make contact with the attacker’s knee, throwing off his balance and giving you just enough time to lift yourself off the ground and turn to face him head-on.

He looked unfamiliar; of a hench build with an aggressively sharp set of features. His breathing pattern showed no signs of distress nor pain, even though you knew with your heightened strength and abilities that your kick was by no means weak. It solidified exactly what you’d suspected: that this was no common mugging or random attack.

“Might I suggest a gentler greeting when approaching a lady?” You sneered, raising your eyebrows to provoke him further.

He remained silent, but moved to pull a gun from the holster you’d just spotted on his hip. Realizing you needed to beat him to the punch, you quickly unsheathed the blade that you’d equipped in your boot. Within seconds the weapon was fired, the bullet that he’d aimed for your forehead ricocheted on the vibranium surface of your dagger. Your eyes widened at this man’s efficiency; it screamed of Russian espionage training.

“You sure don’t waste time, do you?” You sighed, feeling extremely inconvenienced on what was supposed to be an uneventful night walk. You liked to stroll around well populated cities deep into the night. On the occasion that a man approached you aggressively or attempted something impure that he would’ve no doubt bestowed upon another unsuspecting woman, you would teach him an unforgettable lesson as an example to both him and any other predator that happened to lurk in the shadows.

But this? This was different. Without much thought, you launched yourself toward the hulking figure, grasping the wrist that was locked in position around the weapon. At the last possible moment, you misdirected the firearm vertically and caused the bullet to fire upward. Taking his momentary surprise as an opportunity, you wrenched the gun from his hand and battered him over the head with it.

He fell backward upon impact, so you quickly removed the ammunition and chucked it down a random alleyway, hearing it clatter in the distance. Two gunshots were already enough to awaken everyone in your general area; and anonymity was imperative to you at the moment.

Before he could move to get up, you placed your foot firmly over his throat, applying just enough pressure to partially cut off his air supply. His breaths were shallow and quick as he moved to grip your ankle with both hands, trying to brace some of the impact on his trachea.

“Considering I’ve never seen you before, I highly doubt that you’re the one with a personal vendetta—” you pressed your foot down harder “—so who the fuck is paying you to do this?”

An ex-Avenger mercenary didn’t exactly fly under the radar in the world of the criminal filth that you’d been making work of; just as you had before being approached by the famous Nick Fury. Your vigilante status had governments uncomfortable—to say the least—so, you assumed that your induction into the Avengers Initiative was more glorified babysitting than anything else.  

“Steve” he gasped for air between syllables “Rogers”.

The mention of his name sent a shockwave through you. You’d no doubt this moment would be seared into your memory for the rest of your days. The man you loved more than anyone in the entire world, the only person you’d ever really trusted, and the one you’d been running from since the Accords tore the Avengers apart; that was the one who was trying to kill you?

Your eyes were welling up. Your body was overheating. You could hear your heart frantically beating from your ears. “You’re lying,” you whispered, afraid any louder and your voice would shatter under the pressure of your unshed tears.

The man, now turning a dark shade of red, shook his head as much as your foot would allow, his eyes silently begging you to release him.

“No” he panted. You lifted your foot from his neck, allowing him to take a gulp of air before you knocked him out with your heel. His body went limp, but you knew he’d survive.

You felt as if your entire being was on autopilot. Mechanical movements and eerily calm breathing as your mind raced to find some sort of explanation. It wasn’t public information that you and Steve were lovers. Hell, only select Avengers even knew. No one would know that his name would affect you so deeply. There was no gain for the hitman to lie, nor was there any perceivable reason that it made sense to utter Steve’s name unless it was the truth.

Without even realizing, you were now in front of your hotel room door. The life of an illegal mercenary was actually a pretty lavish one considering your skill set brought quite a few upscale employers when you needed the bills paid. Not to say you only took expensive cases; in fact, you loved helping out the little guys. But you couldn’t say you hated the paychecks that came with the high-rise jobs.

Once you’d unlocked your door and entered the room, you dead bolted it shut, hoping that it’d offer you some sense of security now that the only entity in this world that brought you the feeling of safety was paying to have you killed.

Pride, heartache, and emotional constipation would prevent you from ever telling another soul that you cried yourself to sleep that night.

~

It didn’t take you long to figure out where Steve and his crew were holed up. It seemed that, when they weren’t in Wakanda, they occupied different abandoned HYDRA facilities that had either been ditched previously or they’d cleared out themselves. In retrospect, it was a good idea. Those bases were designed to hide in plain sight—conveniently located, decked out with equipment and amenities, and built like fortresses.

However, lucky for you, your plan didn’t involve sneaking around. In fact, you were feeling rather bold as you’d stopped by a local bar beforehand to guzzle a few glasses of wine to take the edge off. The patrons stared as you downed the glasses in mere gulps, dressed in your mission attire with various blades and clubs situated over your shoulders and miscellaneous other weapons stored out of sight. You knew that the bartender wanted to tell you that such equipment was not allowed in their establishment, but you couldn’t tell if he’d let it go due to fear or pity.

You were now scurrying within the connecting tunnels beneath the city of London. The only access point you could find was through a maintenance door in their underground train tunnels of the tube. And, for the sake of remaining hidden from the public, you had to wait until the early hours of the morning. After slinking your way through the maze of tunnels and ladders, you finally came to a door-vault contraption that looked promising.

Without a second thought, you stuck a bomb to the vault and stepped back, activating it from the launchpad on your arm. Your obstacle was obliterated in mere seconds and you stepped into the fort nonchalantly as the deafening alarms sounded. Your eyes met the barrel of a gun being wielded by one of the fiercest agents you knew, but while her eyes screamed relief at seeing her attacker, your own eyes narrowed accusingly.

“Did you know?” Your voice was so monotone that it sounded unfamiliar to even you.

Natasha Romanoff cocked her head in question. “Know what?”

“Don’t play dumb with me.” You whispered.

“Listen, Y/N. I have no idea what—” You didn’t even let her finish.

“DID YOU KNOW THAT STEVE PLACED A HIT ON ME?” You screamed out at her, immediately losing your cool as your emotions bubbled over.

Her eyes widened as she started to shake her head. “There’s no way he would do that. He loves you, Y/N. You know that.”

“Do I?” You bit back, venom dripping from your voice. She lowered her gun in an attempt to calm you down, but she could see your countenance cracking. Nat could feel the pain radiating off of your body in waves.

Before she had any time to respond, you and Natasha could both hear footsteps pounding, coming closer toward you both before you saw Sam come around the corner to see what all of the commotion was about.

“Y/N?” His confused expression summed up this whole situation perfectly. “What’s going on?”

You were fed up with trying to explain a situation that you yourself couldn’t make sense of, so you just figured you’d cut to the chase.

“Where the fuck is Steve?” You practically hissed through gritted teeth.

He looked to Natasha for confirmation and she gave him a curt nod, so he started to lead you to what you could only assume were Steve’s quarters. The hallways and passages were so vast and confusing that you couldn’t help but wonder where they even ended. If they even ended. Sam didn’t attempt any smalltalk, probably sensing that you weren’t exactly in the mood. So you both trekked through the corridors in silence until you approached a giant metal door. Sam entered a code on the keypad next to it, allowing access into the space.

“He’s probably asleep in his room, but I’m guessing that whatever you have to say can’t wait until morning—” he pointed to the double doors across the foyer-like room of his quarters. “—it’s just through those doors”.

“Thanks, Sam.” 

As if feeling your broken heart, he placed a hand on your shoulder before pulling you in for a hug.“We missed you, Y/N,”.

You tried not to cry as you pulled away, offering him a soft nod as you began walking toward the double doors. You heard the door close from behind you as you slowly and quietly approached his bedroom.

You opened the doors gently, the pitch black of his room now illuminated by the low lighting of the entryway. Gingerly, you inched closer to the bed; eager to get a look. While you were blindly furious, you’d still missed him dearly over the past year. His beautiful face seemed angrier with the addition of a beard—or perhaps it was the scowl that he seemed to adorn even in his sleep. He was sleeping flat on his back, which you knew was extremely uncharacteristic of when you’d shared a bed with him. He’d loved to curl up under the blankets and lay freely all over you, his body like a magnet to yours even in his sleep.

He let out a small noise and you couldn’t tell if you wanted to sob, kiss him, or strangle him. You opted for none of the above. However, you still felt it necessary to release some pent-up rage.

You picked up the generic lamp that sat atop his bedside table, ripping the plug from the wall in the process, and hurled it at the wall. The shattering of porcelain dragged Steve out of his slumber, his body bolting upright and his eyes searching the room for the intrusion.

The lovely blue-green of his eyes locked with yours as they widened, but he didn’t have long to take you in before you grabbed the club that was attached to the back of your suit. He ducked as you narrowly missed his head, the club connecting with the wall behind his bed, the sheer force causing a large hole.

He leapt from his spot on the bed, using the object to place distance between the two of you.

“Y/N—” He breathed out in what sounded to be a mixture of relief and stress. “—you’re okay”.

You growled. “What? Upset your little hitman couldn’t get rid of me?”

“Please let me explain—” Steve began inching closer around the bed with his hands up in surrender and his knees bent, as if confronting a spooked doe. “I promise you I can explain”. He was now just a few feet away from you.

After hearing him admit to this heinous act that you were truly hoping to be a lie, you dropped the club with a loud clatter. He stopped in his tracks, realizing that he’d made a mistake. At this point, you were practically seething. You grabbed onto the neckline of his t-shirt and used it to launch his back into the wall, successfully knocking the wind out of him as you trapped him with a dagger to his throat.

“How can you possibly begin to explain that?” Frustrated tears welled up in your eyes. “Why, Steve?” You whispered.

His brows furrowed and his eyes shone with unshed tears of his own. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to kill you”.

“Really, Steve?” You pursed your lips. “ You expect me believe you hired and paid a hitman because he wouldn’t actually be able to kill me? How dumb do you think I am?” Without even realizing, you pressed the dagger harder, causing a bit of blood to fall from the skin of his neck. It didn’t seem to faze him, though, as his full attention was on you.

“I knew you’d never come back to me if I found you.” He sighed. “You’d just run from me again. I tailed you for weeks after the Accords, but you were like a frightened animal. Doing everything in your power to disappear from me.” His voice was thick with sorrow. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch the woman you love desperately doing everything she can to escape you?”

You shook your head frantically. “No, you don’t get to put this on me,” You fought back, unwilling to feel guilt in this argument.

Though your words did nothing to deter him, so he continued. “I know my girl. And the only thing powerful enough to bring my girl back to me is if the fury of the devil’s in her,”.

“So it was your plan to piss me off?” You almost couldn’t believe what you were hearing. The utter shit that he was attempting to feed you. “You think that makes any of this better—that you hired someone to kill me with the intention of making me angry?”

“Baby,” his hands snaked around your hips as he whispered into the silence of the night, your blade still marking his throat as the red molasses dripped from the open wound, “I hired a low-level thug with loose lips who can’t hold a candle to you in a fight—” and he had the audacity to smirk at a moment like this, “—do you really think I was tryna get you killed?”

The feeling of his touch was that of a blaze. It’d been so long since you’d felt the touch of another. Another who wasn’t trying to inflict pain. Another who you cared for, so desperately, so wholly, so helplessly.

The only sound in the noiseless bedroom was that of heavy breathing; two bodies aching for the next motion, neither having any idea what it’d be. Wordlessly, he gripped the handle of the dagger, slowly coaxing it out of your tight knuckles and effortlessly throwing it out of your sight. You could hear it make contact with one of the walls, the sound almost deafening in such a hushed space. His hand immediately went back to its place on your waist.

“Well, you got what you wanted,” You cleared your throat, “I’m here. Now what?” You hated yourself for how quickly your body and soul betrayed you in the name of Steve Rogers. Just a minute ago, your fury could be compared to that of the furthest depths of hell, but one look at his statuesque physique and his nearly palpable morality, and you were nothing but putty in his Adonis-like hands. You had every intention of standing your ground, but you knew Steve. Better than Steve knew Steve. And you knew your man was one of honor—however questionable said honor could be. And Nat was right: you knew he loved you.

You placed your hands on his shoulders, gliding over the fabric of his t-shirt before using one of your hands to yank his new-to-you long hair backward, causing his head to hit the wall. He let out a silent chuckle in response, staring at you with hooded eyes. He groaned lightly, “There she is,”.

Before you knew what was happening, he had you pressed up against the wall; positions swapped in milliseconds. You were pinned in place with his arms wrapped around your waist and his knee between your thighs, nearly lifting you off the ground as if you weighed nothing. Your chests were pressed together tightly, feeling the constant inflation of breaths. He was everywhere and god, had you missed him. You let out a desperate sob in response, after so many restless nights away from him, starved of any genuine compassion for over a year.

His hands massaged your ass, lightly coaxing it forward to grind against his sweatpant-clad leg, just staring into your eyes, watching you respond to him after so much time apart. You felt pathetic, nearly crying over a dry hump, and yet you were too horny to be anything but shameless with it.

“That’s it, baby—” He gently spoke, watching your face contort with pleasure, “It’s been so long since you’ve ridden your captain’s knee, hasn’t it?” You couldn’t help but nod, already fully under his spell. And although you might’ve not noticed it then, he’d fallen right back under yours happily as ever.

He started unbuckling and unzipping your tactical gear, with you barely registering that your weapons and armor and gear were all falling to the floor. You could feel yourself soaking through your panties, overheating under your clothes. Closer. That was the only thing you could think. How much closer you should be to Steve. “Please take it off,” you whined, almost expecting him to laugh at how distressed your pleas sounded, but he simply obeyed.

He moved his knee out from between your thighs, so he could strip you fully of your suit. Leaving you in nothing but your undergarments, he took a moment to stare at you in all of your glory. Since getting back to your mercenary roots and being forced to live on the run, looking out for yourself, you’d certainly gotten stronger. More agile. Muscular.

As he stared at you, you returned the favor. You looked at his beard and his newly long hair that was slicked back in the most delicious way. How he was holding himself higher in his new role as a Nomad. Forever on the run, assured in his abilities, following no orders. It really suited him. You could tell it’s been good for his self confidence. You pointed to his shirt and flicked your finger, motioning for him to take it off and he so kindly obliged. The trail of hair that disappeared into his sweatpants caused you to press your thighs together, biting your lip sensually.

“You got me to come all the way here just to stare at me?” You egged him on, needing him to make a move.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise, “Sorry, baby—you know I can’t help myself,” he winked at you, before enclosing you in his warmth and pulling you into the first real kiss you’d had since Germany. You were so lost in each other, pouring everything you’d felt in the past year out of your own soul and into his. How much you’d missed him, how inadequate you’d felt among the Avengers, how you never wanted to leave him, but your mind wouldn’t stop telling you that you had no choice. You were drowning in the most sinfully angelic way. The dark and light within you were in perfect harmony whenever you were with him. He moved his lips down to your jaw, nipping and sucking on your differing pressure points that he still hadn’t forgotten. The newly added, yet delectable scratch of his beard had you coiled even tighter.

He started to growl out words in between marking up your neck. “Please don’t fucking leave me ever again,” His nails dug into the flesh of your ass, pulling you impossibly closer. “I’ll suffocate without you. God, all I wanted was to help you and I couldn’t fucking do anything.” He smacked your ass to annunciate his words and you let out a squeak in response, somehow feeling even more aroused than you already were.

“Never again,” you whimpered out as he nibbled on your earlobe, skimming over the fabric of your panties with his deft fingertips, “I love you,” and you really meant it as you pulled at the roots of his hair, massaging his scalp.

Without any warning, he picked you up and threw you on the bed, grabbing your ankle and dragging you to the edge. As he walked closer to you, you were eye-level with his waist, so you mindlessly pulled down his loose, raggedy sweatpants to reveal his aching cock. Your pupils dilated at the sight and you pulled him closer to you by his hips. You noticed that, in growing out his facial hair and the hair on top of his head grow out, he’d also allowed his pubic hair to grow a bit too. Nothing forest-like, but enough to exhilarate you.

Shocking him, you enveloped his member between your lips, not stopping until it reached the back of your throat and nearly gagged you, but fuck, you’d never needed anything more in your life. He let out the most carnal noises as he gently brushed your hair away from your face.

You began to suck up and down his shaft, using your fist to cover the surface area that your throat couldn’t handle, sometimes deviating your hand movements to fondle his balls. You would focus your attention on the tip for a few seconds before bottoming out once again before you formed a rhythm in your head. He tasted delectable, his thickness filling your throat and intoxicating your senses.

“Holy mother of god, baby—look at’chu,” he whined as you stared up into his eyes as your lips closed around the tip of his leaking cock. “You’re amazing”.

Your heart swelled as he looked at you with such desire, urging you to give him even more. Lifting his cock, you placed your mouth around his balls, making them messy with your spit and massaging them with your free hand as your other pumped him above you. You could see his legs shaking as his eyes nearly rolled into the back of his head, the v of his torso flexing in an effort to hold himself still. The sounds coming out of your mouth were loud, dirty, and orchestral, your moans emitting a vibration throughout his member that added to the significant pleasure he was feeling.

You could tell he was close and, although you certainly wanted to have sex with him, you felt like this action was even more intimate. To get to watch him completely relax and just feel without any expectation. Without any distractions, you could just see your lover combust, so you made an executive decision. He was going to come down your throat.

Still paying attention to fondling his balls with your hands, you once again latched your mouth onto his cock, focusing on the tip but still managing a rhythm of dirty slurping and consistent motions. He started to pull lightly on your hair in warning, but with one look up at him, he knew what your intentions were and who was he to deny you?

“Jesus, your mouth feels incredible. I love you so much,” he babbled as he watched you take him so well, “Missed you so fuckin’ much, baby,”.

With endless whispers of I’m there, Steve came down your throat and you swallowed every last drop, only a minuscule amount escaping the corner of your mouth. And while keeping eye contact with him, you swiped at it with your thumb and sucked it right off as he groaned, looking thoroughly fucked out.

You giggled.

“Holy fuck, what the hell did I do to deserve you?” He gently caressed under your jaw as he looked down at you.

Lifting up your leg, you lightly pushed him back a few steps away from the bed. You were grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “Nothing yet,” you scooted back on the bed, propping your head up against the pillows. Starting to make yourself comfortable, you unhooked your bra and tossed it across the room, pretending to ignore him as his eyes practically burned a whole in your tits. You laid back, opening your legs with your knees bent and your feet planted on the bed. “But you can get to work,” you winked at him as his jaw dropped. The only thing covering up your perfect body was your lacy panties as you displayed yourself for him.

Steve approached the bed, staring right into your eyes, his gaze never wavering. He lifted your right leg and kissed the skin of your calf, using his hands to lightly tickle your skin and inciting goosebumps, making it even more sensitive. He slowly started kissing his way up to your thigh and eventually came to the edge of your panties. Steve took a moment to stare at your underwear, now soaked through and moved his thumb to massage the area where he knew your bundle of nerves was located.

Since it was the first time your clit had been fully stimulated that evening, you felt your back arch in response and he almost grinned, eager to please you in any way he could. After he circled your bud for a few moments, the time for teasing was over. So he lifted both of your legs up and pulled your underwear off, tossing it carelessly across the room.

Dropping down to the bed and laying stomach-down on the mattress, he lifted your knees to lay comfortably on his shoulders and licked from your perineum up to your clit as your knees closed tighter around his head. He chuckled into your dripping center at the thought of wearing your legs like earmuffs. Easily his favorite fashion statement.

“Are you laughing at me?” You flicked his forehead in annoyance at the idea of him laughing at your most vulnerable parts.

“Quite the opposite, baby,” he placed a quick kiss to your clit before continuing, “just admiring my girl’s pretty pussy. It’s been too long since I ate it,”.

Waiting for no response, he immediately dove back in, alternating between sucking your clit and and offering long, languid strokes of his tongue. He was eager and messy with it, his face nearly covered in your juices as he slurped, suckled, and moaned into your aching core. You tried to control yourself and he could feel your body fighting with itself, and oh no, that simply wouldn’t do.

Coming up for a quick breath of air, Steve smirked, “C’mon, baby—you know you don’t hav’ta hold back,” his voice was so deep and gruff, the lust proving to be quite the drug, “grind that pretty little cunt all over my face if that’s what you wanna do,”.

Your eyes nearly rolled into the back of your head. Your boyfriend was sinfully skillful with his mouth—both in cunnilingus and dirty talk—so you had no choice but to obey. Legs tightening, back arching, and body losing control in the search for pleasure. Once Steve added his fingers to the mix, it was practically over for you.

You could feel yourself nearly approaching the edge, so you told Steve as much. He grinned, a diabolical idea popping into his sex-clouded brain. Keeping his tight grip around both of your thighs, he flipped you both over, so you were now situated with your thighs on either side of his face on the bed, offering him a totally new angle in which to devour you.

His mouth was still gladly enveloped around your clit as he reentered you with his fingers, slowly fucking them in and out of your entrance, encouraging you to grind yourself down onto his fingers and his face. And he was happily taking all of it.

“Shit, Steve—I’m gonna come,” your actions weren’t thought out or calculated—they were simply animalistic and greedy. “Please don’t stop,”.

He removed his fingers from your pussy, now using both of his hands to pull you down, closer, to his face, letting you ride out your bliss as he happily slurped it all down.

You felt like you were surrounded by white noise as you climbed off of his face and fell back onto the bed, your head hitting the pillows completely by chance. You both faced each other. You stared at him and he stared at you. You intertwined your fingers with his, smoothing your thumb over the skin of his knuckles.

“I’m sorry I ran, Steve,” your eyelashes fluttered in an effort to avoid the waterworks. “I just felt so out of place with the Avengers. And once everything in Germany went down, I just spooked; felt like maybe nobody in the big world of superheroes needed a mercenary,”.

His eyebrows furrowed as he lifted your hand up to his lips, kissing your palm. “Well, lucky for you, this isn’t the Avengers anymore. And even if it was, you’d belong there just as much as everybody else,”.

He pulled you closer, hugging you to his chest. “And I needed that mercenary that you’re bad-mouthing, so watch it with the insults—I don’t take too kindly to people insultin’ my girl. Even if it is my girl,”.

You let out a watery chuckle and snuggled even closer. You were home and you were safe. And no matter how nomadic your home had become, you’d still always find your way back.

A/N: I am back from the dead! I was previously bootypoppinbarnes, but I decided to change my user for a bit of a fresh start considering I might attempt writing fics for characters outside of the MCU (shocking, i know). It’s been quite a while since I’ve written anything or posted anything, so please be gentle with me. Also I’m a total harlot for any sort of feedback, so I’d be honored if you so choose to give me any! Happy new decade, babies! 

also I know I had a tag list before my long hiatus, but I figured I’d start fresh considering I had no idea if anyone would actually be interested in my writing, but if you find yourself wanting to be notified of my writing, just lemme know! much love, g x

[humanwheatleyslefttoenail]

Now I Am An Arsonist [Chapter 2: Science Will Continue]

Now I Am an Arsonist - When the power goes out at Aperture Science, GLaDOS is unwittingly uploaded into the body of a human test subject in order to preserve her intelligence. Forced to once again seek out the help of Wheatley and Chell, GLaDOS desperately tries to control her emotions before they consume her thoughts a second time. 

---

Chapter 2: Science Will Continue

---

She’d awoken slowly, feeling the hard coils of a mattress underneath Her back and a stiff blue jumpsuit enshrouding Her arms and legs. Long fall boots clung tightly to Her feet, uncomfortably squeezed into the rigid white plastic.

Gradually, She sat up on the neatly-made bed, a rough linen blanket still covering Her lower half. The chamber had been deliberately made to look like a hotel room, complete with a TV in the corner and a nightstand on the side. Still, something wasn’t right.

It was like living in a distant memory, a dream She’d had but not quite remembered.

A part of Her felt like this was normal, as if She’d woken up here every morning, but another urged Her to look for answers.

GLaDOS searched Her memory, not fully processing the world around Her, puzzled as to why Her computerized thoughts had been slowed tenfold.

Looking down, She saw two pale human arms and two pale human hands. Feeling the top of Her head, She found a mess of dark brown hair which came down to Her shoulders.

           No, this surely wasn’t right.

           Only hours ago, only hours ago, She’d been in control of all of Aperture Science. She’d been invincible, the immortal, all-powerful GLaDOS and now…

           Now, She was this.

           What the hell is going on here?

           There was seldom more awful than to be a human being, to life a short, painful life defined by the burden of emotions. Even on Her worst days, even as a potato, the most She could muster for human beings was a vague sense of pity.

           Yet, here She was, more human than She had been in centuries.

           Oh, you have got to be kidding me.  

           Being Caroline, however brief, was not something She’d ever wished to return to. Emotions didn’t merely burden Her logic; they were completely incapacitating. There was something to be said for the victory of a test well done, of throwing Wheatley into space where the little moron belonged, of the relief when Chell woke up. But something like guilt? Something like fear? Real, genuine fear?

           That hurt more than Her head being torn off. It hurt more than being burned alive.

           As a machine, She could destroy those feelings, suppress them until they were nothing at all. As a human, that task wasn’t so easy.

           Sparks of happiness, moments of joy; none of them were worth the ordeal.

           The heaviness of dread welling in Her processors as She waited for Chell to wake up was not something She wanted to reexperience. Was there even a name for that awful feeling? Whatever warm elation followed when everything was alright… GLaDOS would burn it at the stake before She ever felt that anguish again.

           Ironically, the anticipation of fear made GLaDOS’ chest pound, rapidly breathing in and out as She reflexively clung to the blanket. The last thing She needed was more complicated thoughts about Chell, more bittersweet memories of Cave, more useless sentiments to wring Her bitter heart dry.

           In a very human moment of pure shock, GLaDOS screamed. It was an ugly cry of anger and surprise swirled together, resounding throughout the vault. The echoes crashed off of the walls, and the once-powerful GLaDOS cowered with Her head in Her hands.

           The potato was bad enough. The potato brought Her closer to Her own humanity than She’d ever wanted to acknowledge, but barely minutes in GLaDOS could tell that this would be infinitely worse. GLaDOS felt Herself shaking, barely even processing the fact that this hideous amalgamate of skin and bones was now Her body. Now She had hair, She had hands, She had fingers and She had lungs and She had a heartbeat.

           She had a heartbeat. A thudding reminder of Her newfound vulnerability. A symbol of Her weakness.

           GLaDOS did not particularly care to be weak.

           Finally, She understood the meaning of organic in Organic Transplant Procedure. Could they have possibly made it any vaguer?

           Whatever this was, whatever had happened, She had to figure it out. The potato battery, being fed to birds, and dying twice was apparently not enough to satisfy whatever gods lurked in Android Hell. She would spite them once again, return to Her body, and everything would be alright. It had been alright before, so why wouldn’t it be now? At least, this time, She didn’t have Chell and Wheatley working against Her. All She had was Herself and the facility.

           GLaDOS took a deep breath, a sensation She had not felt for hundreds of years. The motion didn’t entirely calm Her nerves, but Her only option was to move forward. Staying here would do nothing to help. The faster She figured something out, the faster She could leave this awful body.

GLaDOS leaned one arm against the peeling wallpaper, trying to balance on Her boots. The heels on the shoes were suspended above the floor, supported by a spring. Shifting Her weight while wearing them, however, was an acquired skill. Gently lifting Her hand from the wall, arms out at Her side, She was stable.

Briefly.

Without warning, the boots gave way, and GLaDOS toppled onto the dusty carpet.

A dull pain filled Her legs, quickly fading as She clung to the wall and rose again slowly. If She wanted to go anywhere, She would have to try again.

           She walked along the side of the wall and felt the way the heels bounced beneath Her, made specifically to take the impact of any fall. Cautiously, GLaDOS let go of the side of the room, miraculously still. She took a careful step forward, preparing for impact, only to see that She was steadier than expected. Still, each step was uneasy, tense and on the cusp of collapsing.

           Walking around the perimeter of the bed, She peered at the little wooden nightstand. One of the drawers had already been pulled out, but the other remained tightly shut. Crouching down, GLaDOS wrenched the second drawer open, finding a small mirror clouded with age. Holding it close to Her face, She examined Her repulsive new features.

           GLaDOS wondered if there was any particular reason why this body looked so similar to Caroline. Most likely, it was an odd coincidence, but She wouldn’t put it past Aperture to find someone who specifically looked like She once had. She appeared to be in Her late thirties, already sporting gray hairs and frown lines. Her eyes, weighed down by bags, were a dull metal gray.

           Robots, unlike humans, were built specifically to look beautiful. GLaDOS used to be a technological Aphrodite, gears moving in harmony, painted finish gleaming under the lights of the enrichment center. She was stunning in the way She alone could be, completely alien and yet striking to the eye.

           Humans, on the other hand, were made only to survive. Nature didn’t particularly mind if its final product was an unsightly, hairless primate so long as it could handle the simple job of finding food. Some humans considered certain members of their own species more attractive than others, but GLaDOS found them all equally ugly. Humans, with all their variation, looked essentially the same when you’d seen enough of them.

           GLaDOS’ real body was a physical manifestation of Her power; She didn’t care that it was pleasing to the eye so long as it conveyed a sense of authority. This new human body, with its small size, its blemishes and imperfections, conveyed the exact opposite. Other humans may have even described Her appearance with words like pretty, soft or even kindly.

           The idea of being seen as anything but imposing was a nightmare.

For Her own sake, GLaDOS didn’t ruminate over Her first impressions any longer.

           Part of the zipper on Her blue jumpsuit was undone, revealing an implant attached to Her right collarbone. It appeared to be a small, bright yellow core, the source of Her being, woven into Her skin by a cluster of wires.

GLaDOS rezipped it, the yellow light still glowing brightly through the fabric.

           Whichever body She was inhabiting was certainly one of a test subject’s, preserved in cryosleep for hundreds of years. GLaDOS could tell from the old uniform that this woman was one of the first batch of specimens, from all the way back when She was originally brought online. The woman had been brain-dead years before GLaDOS ever inhabited Her body. GLaDOS was now some sort of mechanical zombie, Her programming superimposed on this host. Even She had to find that a little unsettling.

That was typical of Aperture. Somehow, with every possible option available to them, they always managed to find the least ethical. It was a feat at this point.

GLaDOS placed the mirror back in the drawer and shut it closed, screening the room for an exit. In the front of the room was a wooden door with a rusty brass knob, waiting to be turned ajar. Without hesitation, She followed the path and twisted the handle, the door creaking open without any resistance.

As She entered the hall, GLaDOS was taken aback by the sheer number of chambers, suspended from above and hanging inches away from a more stable platform. Closing the door behind Her and jumping onto the catwalk, She couldn’t help but notice the sense of abandonment that filled the room. It had been centuries since the old Relaxation Center had been brought up to code, and previously there hadn’t been much reason to improve it.

Now GLaDOS wished She’d put in the effort.

The metal catwalk led directly onto a tiled floor in an old waiting room. Ladderback chairs sat around a central column in the middle, surrounded by coffee tables, a water dispenser and miscellaneous paintings. A flickering Aperture Science logo still shined in the dim gray room, gleaming a ghostly white. Near the back, a faded poster called for test subject applications, apparently endorsed by Cave Johnson himself.

Everywhere She looked, remnants of a dead man’s company made parodies of themselves, untouched for years.

Behind a front desk was a hallway filled with shadows, leading behind the room. With nowhere else to go, GLaDOS stepped into the dark, the light of Her core guiding Her through.

There wasn’t much to see, and for a while, the corridor ran along a single route.

GLaDOS had to come up with a plan.

Somewhere around here there had to be a control room, or at least a place where She could catch a lift back to the Enrichment Center. The thought crossed Her mind that She might have to pass through a testing track, one of Her own meticulously designed traps. It didn’t matter. She’d deal with it when She got to it. Still, the fear that She’d have to fight Her own monsters remained in the back of Her head.

The hallway was only becoming darker, and the little light on Her shoulder was slowly becoming less effective. As far as She could tell, there were no switches along the way. Any lighting was likely controlled by a power station a mile from here.

Something metallic banged against Her foot, and upon examination, GLaDOS discovered it was an empty can of beans. In front of Her, at least three more were lined up in a row. She sighed.

Of course Doug had been here. That man was as ingenious as he was stealthy, and had found his way through every nook and cranny at Aperture. Not even Chell had been able to access some of the places he had.

GLaDOS took it as a good sign. Wherever the path led, it meant someone had been able to survive it.

           Surviving had never exactly been a consideration before. Even when Chell murdered Her the first time, She had a feeling there was some kind of safeguard. Humans didn’t have a black box; when they were gone, they were gone. Nothing could bring back a dead human.

           As a potato, GLaDOS had been forced to confront the idea that if Wheatley blew up the facility, that would really be the end. There had been a part of Her almost content that if it was, Chell would be by Her side. Whether it was a vengeful wish, or a side effect of companionship was still unknown.

           Back then, though, She hadn’t really been in control. She’d relied on simple hope that Chell could stop Wheatley before it all went down, not contributing much besides the occasional bit of advice. Now GLaDOS was responsible for Her own fate, fully mobile and fully alone.

           Maybe that was even scarier than standing still.

           After all, She could rely on Chell. Relying on this new human body was another story altogether.  

           The question now was whether any light could be found in this hallway. GLaDOS uncomfortably dropped to her knees, feeling for anything besides the three cans. She grasped at something plastic with a switch on the side. A flashlight.

           Turning it on, the hallway became completely visible. Immediately, GLaDOS was surprised by the sheer number of paintings that covered the white walls.

           Portraits of Chell were splattered from floor to ceiling. Everywhere GLaDOS looked, a woman in an orange jumpsuit stared back at Her, shooting portals and knocking over turrets. Swirls of paint danced from one scene to another, blending each picture into the next. Words were haphazardly scrawled across, some of them poetic and others screaming pure nonsense. Whatever meaning they’d had was lost with Doug.

           A common theme was the companion cube, and one particularly disturbing image replaced their iconic hearts with bleeding human eyes. There was a stark contrast between the idyllic, peaceful depictions of Chell sleeping and the scribbles of scientists running for their lives. GLaDOS could barely make out some of the more manic drawings, but those turned out to be the most horrifying. Tightly clustered loops signified a cloud of neurotoxin. Blotches of red were human remains.

           GLaDOS stood back up, meandering further down the hall. The paintings only devolved from here, intricate detail morphing into crazed warnings.

           Don’t trust Her lies.

           The path went on for about another fifteen minutes, twisting and turning at sharp angles. Metal doors led to cluttered offices, all of them sealed and locked. In some of them, the computers were still on, endlessly flickering in the darkness.

           When GLaDOS finally reached the end of the corridor, She was greeted with the sudden activation of a bright white light. Reflexively, She shielded Her eyes as the voice of the announcer blared.

           “Welcome, Aperture Science Testing Associate! You’re here because you’ve voluntarily, or involuntarily, chosen to sign over all your legal rights to Aperture Science and further humanity’s progress!”

           Of course. Being turned into a fleshy mess of tissues wasn’t enough. She’d have to go through the testing track, too.

           She bit her lip in silent rage, no longer blinded by the light, gazing upon an airtight room with little more than a circular door. All around Her was white, covered in portal surfaces. Beneath Her, GLaDOS could feel the electronics of the panels whir, making the whole room seem alive. It could move at any moment.

           “Before we begin, the Enrichment Center would like to remind you that you may suffer terrible injuries caused by our testing devices designed to create terrible injuries. If you have suffered a terrible injury, please review our community-shared legal manual, which states that Aperture Science takes no responsibility for terrible injuries caused by Aperture Science.”

           GLaDOS knew that redundant message. It was backup, for when She wasn’t there to narrate. Testing tracks had levels of difficulty, and before Her takeover, it was fairly common for subjects to be screened and assigned one based on what they could handle. This message only played for the most difficult, and consequently, the deadliest. Not even GLaDOS was entirely sure what was in here; She hadn’t used it for fear of subjects dying before any real data could be collected.

           “As part of [HIGH DIFFICULTY] testing protocol, Aperture Science has temporarily issued you your very own Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.”

           Without warning, a panel on the ceiling lifted, a robotic claw descending and dropping the device directly in front of GLaDOS. The claw lifted, and the panel closed again.

           “The device has been successfully deployed. To ensure the validity of our tests, please verify that your device is completely operational.”

           GLaDOS was familiar with the portal gun from Her databases, and She knew exactly how to work it. Despite this, She’d never actually handled one Herself, unless being impaled on the end of one counted. The device was heavy in Her hands, cold and sleek against Her fingers. The center, black plastic encasing a glowing yellow coil, was warm to the touch.

           Pointing at one of the white panels, She cocked the trigger, and a golden portal blossomed in front of Her. Running Her fingers across the surface, it felt like waving a hand through a ray of sunlight. GLaDOS turned around, shooting the next portal at the opposite wall. The portal which followed was a lighter yellow, less vivid than the first.

           “Good. A signal from the device has proven activation. Please enter the elevator.”

           The metal door opened, and just beyond the emancipation grill, an elevator stood wait. It was the only path left to take.

---

           Putting a cube on a button should’ve been simple task for a supercomputer. Even for a human, the menial work was a cognitive breeze. The large button in particular required minimal force to operate, and the weighted storage cubes were lighter than they appeared. In any scenario, placing an object on another was easily mastered with only the most basic of motor skills. It could have qualified as the least difficult task known to mankind. All GLaDOS had to do was put one cube on one button.

           That was all there was. One cube, one button, and several killing machines stuffed with thousands of bullets. It was for this reason that GLaDOS could not perform this extraordinarily simple job. The turrets blocking the way would surely be a hurdle.

           Already, GLaDOS could feel the beginnings of human fear creeping into Her mind. She was out of the turrets’ line of sight, and yet the caution of Her new form compelled Her to stay hidden in the corner regardless. Nervously clutching the trigger of Her portal gun, She considered the dangers lurking in future tests. This one was only the first, and it had already deployed one of the worst weapons Aperture had to offer.

           Logically, GLaDOS knew She could step out. She could put one portal behind Her, another at the opposite wall, and avoid the turrets altogether. Behind them would certainly be the cube and the button. Still, emotion was quite a world apart from logic. As a computer, She could be revived over and over again. Humans could not be fixed, and GLaDOS understood that in the very unlikely possibility She died here, She was never coming back.

           GLaDOS didn’t want to admit that She was afraid, not even to Herself. She was sure Chell could tell back when Wheatley was in control; She’d let Her voice slip more than once. Now, with nobody around, She only had Herself to prove it to.

           Removing Her cores all that time ago had also been the removal of Her regulators; She felt everything once they were detached, things She would have to relearn how to suppress. All She remembered before the world went dark, before Chell killed her, what She’d relived, was fear. Panic. Terror. There were a million words for it, none encapsulating just how soul-wrenching the phenomenon was.

           Even then, that’s all it was for Her. Just an emotion. For human beings, fear was a sixth sense. It could be felt in a spiraling heartbeat, in beads of sweat, in shallow breaths and temporary, last-ditch strength. Fear was a state of being, and for the particularly unfortunate, a way of life.

           GLaDOS knew fear only when She had to, only when She could not relocate it to the very bottom of Her files. Humans knew fear like they knew living. Every day, if only for mere moments, it was almost guaranteed that a human would feel fear.

           What a miserable way to live.

           It was all the more reason to complete these chambers faster.

           When She reached the other side of the room, GLaDOS found exactly what She expected. The cube glowed a bright yellow when placed on the Aperture Science Super-Colliding Super Button, and the chamber lock opened.

           As the elevator descended, GLaDOS realized that She had no idea how to solve these tests. She was smart, and the solution would certainly come to Her eventually, but the human mind could only store so much. GLaDOS used to have entire libraries of nothing but solutions to tests, but the upload procedure hadn’t deemed that useful or necessary. When trying to remember, there was nothing. For the first time, GLaDOS’ mind was blank.

           The next test dashed all Her hopes for a few more tutorial puzzles.

           No, GLaDOS reassured Herself. This is alright. I’m used to being challenged.

           After Chell, She was sure any other problem would be easier to solve.

           This particular test was supposed to introduce lasers. The first step was to burn the turrets with the beam, done with the help of portals and crouching behind a corner. The explosions were louder than She’d expected; GLaDOS had seldom heard them outside of watching from a camera. Her ears rung as She crept past the charred remains of the turrets, seeing almost nothing left of the slender white robots. The burn marks brought a smile to Her face; She’d killed them. Even now, She had power over something.

           The turrets were programmed to have some level of sentience, though their sense of self was not nearly as defined as that of a core’s or a human’s. It didn’t matter anyway; they wouldn’t be missed. For every one that was destroyed or made wrong, ten more were created in its place, and the missing turret was simply forgotten. Nobody really made an effort to remember in the first place.

           Humans, too, were often unremembered. She used to be able to look at their files at any time, but why would She want to? She’d seen so many, none particularly worthy of note, and most of them were gone. Even so, in a part of Her that She wanted to deny, GLaDOS almost felt sorry for them. She too had been forgotten for years; nobody had even wanted to wake Her up, to check and see if She was alright. All the robots in the facility knew was that the voice controlling them was gone, and that She wasn’t coming back. Logically, GLaDOS knew She couldn’t blame them. She had also been forced to have someone else’s voice in Her head, and didn’t exactly find it pleasant.

           The rest of the puzzle was much more challenging than swinging around a laser, involving the use of a redirection cube and multiple steps to obtain it. Another round of turrets was waiting where GLaDOS couldn’t see, launching a bullet directly between Her ribs. Luckily for GLaDOS, the force of each bullet was minimal, and the single hit left only a painful bruise. These turrets were stuffed to the brim with ammunition, part of Cave Johnson’s idea to really give his customers their money’s worth. The unintended side effect was the reduction of firing power.

           Trudging to the elevator, GLaDOS clutched Her side. She’d been knocked out of breath, and the sharp throb of the bruise had faded into a dull ache. It was almost worse that way, grating on Her nerves, flaring up when She took a breath.

           Chell had taken a couple bullets before, some grazing the sides of Her shoulders and most leaving similar small wounds. GLaDOS had to give her credit for continuing to test, holding her head high even when she was bleeding. That didn’t even count sores in her lungs from the neurotoxin, or the damage from falling down the pit. The fact that Chell stayed alive, then went on to test for days, proved her exceptional stamina.

           This one bruise to the rib was occupying nearly all of GLaDOS’ thoughts. She couldn’t fathom the kinds of things Chell felt. The only comparisons She had were the removal of Her head and dying, both of which didn’t last longer than a few minutes. Her pain as a computer had been simulated, but this was real and arguably worse. Chell had likely felt this same sensation a hundred times over, and a hundred times longer.

           You did that to her, you know. A voice clawed from deep within Her mind.

           You gave her all that pain.

           Testing was bad enough, GLaDOS didn’t need the additional burden of guilt. She ignored the voice, though remorseful discomfort still welled in Her chest. Her conscience, the one with Her own voice, was coming back. GLaDOS couldn’t say She missed it.

---

The following tests had proved themselves to be little more than a series of colorful injuries.

Despite Her caution, misfires on behalf of the turrets were inevitable. A stray bullet had bruised Her shin, while another flew past and grazed the side of Her left shoulder. Other little nicks were speckled across Her skin, the products of miscellaneous falls.

Hitting the sides of walls, and even landing with the boots, left GLaDOS’ arms and legs sore. Every step She took was a laborious trudge from panel to panel, and eventually Her fatigue took control.

GLaDOS scanned the level sign on Her right upon entering the test. 15. It hadn’t felt like 15 tests; it’d felt like hundreds had gone by. GLaDOS wasn’t even entirely sure how long it’d been. The adrenal vapor in the air muddled Her perception, and an hour and a minute seemed to be the same.

An educated guess was about four hours, accounting for the rests She’d taken in between. The hard physical activity had already worn down this middle-aged body, and whoever it belonged to before hadn’t been particularly fit or athletic. The woman was lean, more bony than muscular, and even slight exertion took all the effort She could give. The factor of age didn’t help.

GLaDOS sat down in front of the glowing screen, giving Herself a minute to catch Her breath.

There was a possibility that these tests would go on for thousands of chambers, enough to last years. Equally likely, at the end of the next there might be a scorching pit of flames. That one without any portal surfaces to escape from.

She leaned Her head on the wall, closing Her eyes and letting Her mind wander.

           The chamber was frigid, and the jumpsuit did little to shield GLaDOS from the cold. Arms crossed and knees at Her chest, the heat still escaped Her.

           The thought crossed Her mind that this was how Chell had felt. Was she always this cold, this tired, this desperate? GLaDOS made a mental note to Herself.

           Make the chambers warmer.

           The heat was only a surface-level fix. The claustrophobia induced by the walls, the artificial lights, and the expectation to give it your all or else was maddening.

           Why does it matter to you? GLaDOS asked Herself. Sure, it was bad for Her, but why care about the other subjects? Once She got through this, GLaDOS would never have to feel it again.

           She remembered the time She’d described Her worst imperfection to Atlas and P-Body. Too much sympathy for human suffering.

           Still, Chell would’ve been happier (whatever excuse for happiness that would be) in warmer chambers. Now that She’d gotten attached to one human, She’d felt for them all. It was why She was so hesitant to form a connection in the first place. That would interfere with Her experiments.

           Memories of sparing Chell’s doppelganger and saving the life of the man reentered Her mind, and She was embarrassed at the thought of letting Her study careen so far off the rails. Looking back, how much perfectly good science had been ruined? Chell wasn’t even here, and yet She was still wrecking the facility.

           Even then, GLaDOS couldn’t quite be mad. An ally, no matter how hated and murderous, had still been an ally. Not that She’d ever tell anyone.

           Missing Chell, no maybe not missing so much as becoming used to her presence, was the source of all this mayhem.  The thought of writing a whole new subroutine which deleted the feeling completely…it was a motivating fantasy. Sentimentality had been, and would be, the death of Her.

           If it was such a dangerous condition, though, then why had thoughts of Chell propelled her through these tribulations? There was something to be said for dwelling on these memories, emulating Chell’s boundless tenacity.

           Wisely, GLaDOS stopped Herself from wandering further.

           Don’t think about it. Control yourself.

           The act of caring about Chell verged on Caroline behavior. Most human traits, especially the most loathsome and empathetic, were also included in this category.

           If only to distract Herself, GLaDOS stood up tall and readied Herself for the fifteenth test. Walking deeper in, Her nose caught the scent of toxic goo, stinging as the fumes filled Her lungs.

           GLaDOS sighed.

           She could already tell that this would be a long one.

---

           Cheating was not as good of an idea as it originally seemed.

GLaDOS knew, No, you have to do the test, there’s no other way out. When subjects tried to escape, it never ended well for them. Despite past observation, the temptation remained as strong as ever. The walls beckoned Her, waiting to be climbed, an onlooking room in wait. These tests hadn’t been as thoroughly repaired as the others, and sunlight shone through holes in the ceiling. Wreckage from years of decay looked almost like a staircase, or perhaps more like a ladder. Everywhere around Her seemed like an easier path to freedom.

           The main issue was stability; the rusty metal plates couldn’t support Her weight, and trying to climb left Her tumbling down onto the hard floors. No wall ever seemed to have enough traction, and a sprain on Her arm quickly taught GLaDOS that Her ingenious plans were too risky to continue. Even the use of momentum could not propel Her high enough to reach the windows of the room overhead.

           Frustrated and defeated, She solved the test without further incident. Chamber 25 was waiting up ahead, and the sunlight from above was the golden hue of dusk. To Her own disbelief, all of this testing had amounted to only a single day.

           After the long, arduous completion of 25 had wracked both Her body and mind, GLaDOS found welcome relief. She almost couldn’t believe the fact that the chambers had ended so… safely. The door opened, and there was no death traps or fire waiting for Her. It only led into a waiting room with a faded Thank You sign on the wall. GLaDOS smiled, satisfied with Her victory. Shortcomings aside, the fact that this measly human body had managed to endure so much was something She was proud of.

           That had been Her work, Her survival, not just testing by proxy.

           The waiting room She stood in was eerily similar to the last, furnished with the same kind of chair and plastered with similar advertisements. Unlike the last one, two exits waited in front of Her. One was for test subjects, boarded up with wood nailed to the door, completely inaccessible. The other was a flight of stairs leading upward, blocked off with a chained sign reading Employees Only.

           GLaDOS lifted the chain over Her head and ascended the staircase, no other option available. Nervously, She hoped that anything but another testing track was up ahead, only to find exactly what She needed. Her luck had been improving; a control room was only a step away. A panel of countless switches was adhered to the pale blue walls, adjacent to a desk with pens, paper, and a noisy radio. The same jazzy tune played on loop until She switched it off, content with the silence.

           It’s finally over.

           She sat down at the beige office chair in front of the control panel, scanning it for the words lift or escape pod. Dials and switches cluttered the board, labeled with miniscule text that was near impossible to read. GLaDOS scorned Her human eyesight, searching desperately, but finding nothing. The buttons only controlled elements of the test chambers, which panels to open, which cubes to drop.

           She reread it, knowing that surely She’d missed something. Again and again, She screened the switchboard, yielding nothing.

           GLaDOS had to have overlooked a button, misread a label. Nothing was hidden behind the desk, and no other devices had been plugged into the socket on the wall. The realization that She could be trapped here, here of all places, sank low into Her chest. After everything, after all of the testing and the pain and the feelings, it had all amounted to this.

           “Oh my god. Oh my god. That’s not possible!”

           All the panic She’d suppressed was finally let loose, Her human mind no longer able to contain the fear She’d been anticipating.

           I might die here. That’s it. I might never get back in my mainframe, and I might spend my last hours stuck in this human being.

           I’m going to be alone.

           Alone.

           She lingered on that sentence, anxiously pacing around the desk, nervously clawing through Her hair.

           I am going to be very, very alone.

           GLaDOS had always wanted to spend Her entire, immortal life alone. No friends, no family to weigh Her down, to distract Her from purpose. Cave Johnson had put it best; Caroline was married to science, and that had carried over to GLaDOS.

           Machines didn’t need companionship, but depriving a human being of social contact was like denying them water. Whatever human need for friendship still existed in this woman’s body was bubbling up, broken by the sheer loneliness of the tests.

           She often wondered why subjects had such a difficult time euthanizing their faithful companion cube. Unless rare incidents of stabbing threats counted, the companion cube had not once spoken to them, never shown any kind of personality or attachment. They were sentient enough, like most Aperture products, but their only real difference from a storage cube was their little heart decal. A mere design change had been enough to exploit human compassion, and it was fascinating to behold.

           A part of Her now understood why it was so easy to believe that an inanimate object could be a friend. GLaDOS’ human component ached for any sort of company, any kind of reassurance. Even an enemy would be nice. An enemy would be better, maybe even preferred.

           Just someone to talk to, even if that conversation was just a tirade of insults on Her part.

           Maybe GLaDOS wasn’t alone. She took a shaky breath and projected Her voice.

           “You know, it’s awfully rude of you to keep me waiting here. I’ll report this to your supervisor, and then you’ll be fired. Maybe he’ll kill you. Maybe I’ll kill you.”

           Murder threats usually got anyone’s attention, but the sound only echoed off of the walls. If there was somebody here, somebody listening, they’d made the mistake of underestimating GLaDOS.

           “Alright, maybe you’re just refusing to talk to me because you look down on me. I’ve known someone like that. Do you know what happened to her?”

           The walls were silent.

           “Well, she got a lungful of deadly neurotoxin. And even if you’re not afraid of me murdering you, surely you wouldn’t want to go out that way, would you?”

           Still, nothing responded.

           “I can’t promise anything, but maybe I’ll let you live slightly longer than I would have five seconds ago. All you have to do is let me out. It’s the best offer I can make, since I can’t let you off the hook entirely for keeping me here. But still, those extra minutes are available.”

           GLaDOS gave up; nobody was here, and nobody was waiting for Her. The future looked lonely, and in desperation, She gave the control panel one last glance. A button that She’d seen before caught Her eye, one She hadn’t fully considered the first time.

           Core Sentience Connector.

           With nothing to lose, She pressed the button, and a whirring erupted from a panel downstairs. GLaDOS rushed back to the waiting room, portal gun in Her hands, and watched the walls open like magic. In its place was a metal contraption, holding the empty shell of a personality core with a flickering screen above it. The Aperture Logo flashed onto the newly implemented monitor, while the announcer blared from an invisible speaker.

           “Hello, and thank you for activating the Aperture Science Personality Core Sentience Connector Protocol! If you have selected this feature, congratulations. A subject under your supervision has been experiencing difficulties testing due to prolonged exposure to severe social deprivation.”

           GLaDOS wondered what other insane scenarios they’d thought of as the screen switched to a moving blueprint of a personality sphere.

           “All Aperture Science Personality Constructs are made with the intended purpose of solving this problem, providing companionship to those in crisis. Personality Constructs with an active distress signal can be summoned with the connector protocol. A list of available constructs is provided on the screen.”

           Walking closer to the device, GLaDOS saw only one serial number listed. Personality cores all had radio capability, and the signal of their very being could be transmitted in times of emergency. Once the signal was received, that could easily be implemented into any compatible device.

           GLaDOS hesitated before selecting the number. She doubted that the little moron had the capacity to activate a distress signal, and if he did, it was highly unlikely that the signal could bounce all the way back to Earth. Still, the possibility that this core could be Wheatley was something She did not want to risk. Although psychologically destroying him would be a good use of Her time, being in a position of power would make Her revenge all the more satisfying.

           The last thing She wanted was for him to see Her weak again, but the only other option was to remain trapped. At the very least, if they were stuck here forever, She could use the last of Her human strength to make Wheatley’s tiny, moronic life as miserable as possible. In the off chance he could open a panel, She’d use him to escape and leave him behind. Preferably, in the incinerator.

           Survival was worth the temporary burden of dealing with Wheatley, especially if it meant another thousand years doing nothing but testing. GLaDOS tapped the number, an electric chime sounding from the machine as the connector activated. Within thirty seconds, the core’s eye opened, gleaming a bright blue.

---

           “If you were, let’s say, a brain damaged woman who was betrayed by her only ally, what would it take for you to forgive the bloke who tried to murder her? It’s just theoretical, just, you know, coming up with hypotheticals to pass the time.”

           “Space. Space is nice. Rocket ship. Rocket ship goes to space. Space goes to space. Space is in space.”

           “Alright mate, thanks for the input. Very useful.”

           Wheatley sighed, his optic focused on the same group of stars he’d watched for the past couple of hours, his mind wrapped up in the past.

           Four months had been a good amount of time to relive his mistakes over and over, micro analyzing every transgression against Chell. His life was now a series of unpleasant memories, or pleasant ones turned painful by context, interrupted with by chatter of the space core and the light of the sun.

           Fantasies, in which he apologized for his mistakes and Chell forgave him, were far too frequent. He’d say sorry, deliver a whole monologue four months in the making, and She’d pick him up and smile at him. They would be friends again, and Wheatley would never return to Aperture. GLaDOS would be gone, out of sight forever, and they could be happy. He could be happy.

           Not that Wheatley particularly thought he deserved it. By most human standards of morality, trying to kill someone was considered an irredeemable offense. Empathizing with Chell’s fear, Chell’s heartbreak had been impossible with the mainframe distorting his thoughts. All of the sympathy he could not feel then was coming back now, transformed into guilt.

           If you hadn’t acted like a monster, if you hadn’t been so awful, if you hadn’t been…

           He knew that realistically, Chell would never pardon him. Even that was given the unlikely event they’d met again.

           Wheatley wondered if he would ever get a second chance, ever get the opportunity to show that no, he wasn’t a moron and all that villainy had been a just a fluke. Just several, awful mistakes that he could show weren’t all he was. He only needed a chance, just one.

           Hell, if GLaDOS got an opportunity for redemption, why couldn’t he?

           Wheatley closed his optic, feeling the cold of space against his metal casing.

           One chance. That’s all I need.

           For a moment, there was only the silence of the cosmos.

           Without warning, his processors hummed with a fever pitch, and his thoughts raced until they melted into nonsense. A loud beeping resonated from inside, and through the chaos, Wheatley could discern a single error message.

           Sentience Connector Protocol Initiated. Prepare for the brief suspension of your consciousness.

           What in the bloody hell-

           Wheatley screamed in surprise, his cry cut off halfway through.

           The space core hardly noticed that his companion had been zapped away, content with watching the surface of the moon below. The stars shone bright as ever.

---

           “Oh, oh my god, I’m alive! I…” Wheatley’s voice trailed off as he awakened to the dim walls of Aperture, facing a middle-aged, brown-haired woman. A yellow light glowed through Her jumpsuit, and a suspicious grin was spread across Her face. Wheatley had never seen this person before, but the moment She spoke, the voice immediately struck fear in his servos.

           “Well there you are, moron.”

           He didn’t even have to think to recognize that sarcastic tone.

           She was back.

---

A/N: Hey guys! Thanks again for reading, I know the wait for chapter 2 was pretty long, but here it is!  

[animebw]

Binge-Watching: Sarazanmai, Episodes 6-8

In which we find out the history driving this conflict, desire and love are two sides of the same coin, and everything falls apart.

Otterly Ridiculous

Well slap my salami and call me a commie, because we just got one hell of a lore dump. As it turns out, the kappa prince Keppi our heroes have been serving is one of the last surviving members of a war between a once-great kappa kingdom and their mortal enemies, the kingdom of otters. Their conflict was over the energy of desire, the ability to turn want itself into great power. But the kappas lost, and with their victory ensured, the otters turned their attention to harvesting desire from humans. Mabu and Reo are merely two small pawns in that empire, an empire that abuses human desire, packages it up in perfect little cardboard boxes, and uses it as a source of crafting giant kappa zombies who suck up even more desire. But the otters’ victory wasn’t flawless; Mabu actually straight-up died in the final battle saving Reo. And the Mabu we’ve been following all this time is nothing more than a cheap recreation, all the memories of his former self but none of the humanity. He’s a fake, a facade, a hollow shell that only serves to remind Reo day after day of everything he lost so long ago. But despite how much agony is brings him, he can't bring himself to throw this fake Mabu away. Not when it’s the one connection remaining to someone he cared for with all his heart.

That’s a hell of a lot to take in, and it’s once again to Sarazanmai’s credit that it’s able to so effectively threat the needle between concrete information and metaphorical symbolism. In the space of all these reveals, not only do we understand the magnitude of the conflict Kazuki and his friends have been wrapped up into, we also understand the emotional stakes driving all the players on both sides of this ever-ongoing war. It also helps that a lot of the finer details have been very clearly foreshadowed, to the point where I’m almost surprised I didn’t notice them before. Like, now that it’s actually revealed that the fake Mabu has a mechanical heart that Reo has to keep jump-starting through the creating of kappa zombies to keep him alive, I’m remembering them doing that exact process during every dance and wondering why I didn’t pick up on that sooner. Ditto prince Keppi and Sara being on the same side (and in love as well, I think?); it is stupidly obvious in retrospect that Keppi was the kappa who was always flouncing around in Sara’s broadcasts, so it makes total sense that they’re the last surviving members of the old kappa kingdom, still fighting desperately to stop the otters from monopolizing desire. And with these stakes firmly established, Sarazanmai is finally able to reveal its ultimate game plan, a plan that it’s been sneakily reinforcing every time the otter cops pose the question to a new hapless victim:

This is a show about the conflict between desire and love.

Hearts and Minds

When you think about it, desire and love and really two sides of the same coin. They’re both feelings based on a deep, yearning want, a want of someone, or something, to bring into your life and give you meaning beyond what you can give yourself. The difference is in intent: desire is selfish, while love is selfless. Desire monopolizes and hoards, love shares and connects. Desire is wanting things solely for yourself, love is wanting things for the sake of the people you care about. But because of how closely knit those two concepts are, it’s dangerously easy to get them confused. And that’s exactly what our heroes and villains alike are struggling with: they want to connect (with love), but their hangups and selfishness (desire) makes them shoot so wildly they miss the target and leave damage in their wake. The Otter Empire’s entire structure is built around the exploitation of desire, to the point where the kappa zombies they birth from people’s wants are erased from existence entirely once they’re destroyed. They have no use for people who land on the love side of the coin; those poor souls just get chewed up by a very Child Broiler-esque grinder of oblivion. Yet the connection Mabu and Reo shared was clearly so much more than desire; Reo wouldn’t be so broken by living with this false Mabu if he didn’t genuinely love the original. Mabu begged Reo not to let go of his desires as he died, because without Mabu, Reo had nothing but desire left. Meanwhile, Mabu 2.0 is a being entirely warped by desire, who wants Reo to desire him like he desired the first Mabu, unaware that he’s trying to recreate a selfless bond with a selfish intention.

And then there’s our heroes, all of whom showcase just how fucking easy it is to get selfish desire confused as selfless love. Kazuki tried to convince himself he was cutting Haruka off for his brother’s sake, that his brother was better off without him, but the shock of his lie being revealed forced him to confront the fact that he was only doing it for his own selfish desire to avoid accepting the fear of loving someone he feels he can never repay. Because if Kazuki was willing to genuinely love his brother, he would realize that Haruka wanted nothing more than to live with Kazuki at his side, smiling like always, someone he could trust and confide in no matter how bad things got. It’s only when Enta and Tooi finally break through to him that Kazuki’s finally able to let himself love Haruka, realizing that selflessness often means letting people who care for you into your life instead of shutting them out for your own convenience. And once he makes that breakthrough, he’s capable of shaking off his despair and seeking to make real connections once more, returning to Enta’s side as one half of the Golden Duo and picking the soccer club back up again. It’s a really wonderful moment, when we see him symbolically running with that ankle bracelet again as he races to catch his brother right before he’s chewed apart. He’s shaken off his self-loathing at last, and now he’s got the chance to live the life he’s always deserved to live.

Ripped Apart

But no sooner does he make that break-through than his newfound maturity forces both of his friends to confront their own contradictory selfishness, and the rifts that forms shatters them all over again. Like Kazuki, Tooi has tried to live entirely for his brother Chikai; after all, his brother sacrificed everything for him, so why shouldn’t he do the same in return? He even gave up his dream of being a soccer player (in case the metaphor of soccer = companionship/connection wasn’t clear enough already) to make life easier on Chikai. But Chikai’s not stupid; he’s noticed the way Tooi’s face lights up when he thinks about his newfound friends, the way he blushes when confronted about it. He knows his little brother might not be best off throwing everything away to pal around with a yakuza on the run, not when he’s got such important connections holding him. Hell, Tooi’s attempt to throw his connections away in the first place only ended up forging new ones; that ever-important ankle bracelet used to be his! And in trying to symbolically throw that dream away, he only ended up passing that dream to Kazuki, forming a bond in his very attempts to rid himself of bonds. He can’t shake the desire to connect, no matter how hard he tries. Even Enta can tell just from his voice through the phone how bitter his lies taste in his mouth as he tries to pretend he doesn’t need them anymore.

Not that Enta’s much one to talk, because fucking Christ does he screw the pooch here. He’s claimed to be fighting for his crush all this time, selflessly pursuing whatever goal Kazuki sets and helping him achieve his desires. But Tooi’s addition to their friend group forces him into a dark realization: he’s jealous of them. He’s jealous of Tooi’s companionship with Kazuki, jealous to the point where he’ll actively sabotage the soccer practice spot that means so much to him if it means Tooi and Kazuki have less time together. That supposedly selfless love he had for Kazuki curdled into selfish desire far too quickly; how dare Kazuki have such a close bond with someone else? How dare someone else intrude on my territory? How dare they have such a deep, intimate connection, a past shared in the very ankle bracelet that’s meant so much to Enta’s feelings for Kazuki, that Kazuki doesn’t even remember it yet still is perfectly happy spending time with Tooi regardless? He can’t accept any of it, and that rage ends up almost destroying his bond with the very person he thought he would never break from. And by the time he realizes his mistake, it’s too late: Tooi is leaving thanks to his meddling, the Otter Empire has already tracked them down, and the only way he can think to fix what he broke is to throw his own body on the line.

And that’s where we leave them for now. Our heroes are scattered, our enemies have gathered the Plates of Hope, and Enta’s bleeding out on the sidewalk after taking a bullet for Kazuki. Things are bad, bad, bad, and the climax is bearing down on us fast. All he have left is that one simple question: did Enta take the bullet for desire... or love?

Only one way to find out.

Odds and Ends

-”Cucumbers are awesome!” Aaaaand he’s lost it.

-”Pole dance.” ...why.

-”Oh my god, that’s creepy.” aslkdjasdkja

-Oh Christ, that conveyor-belt whirlpool descending into the Otter Kingdom is really fucking cool.

-”I’ve always been on the outside of the circle.” God this is breaking my heart

-”Dear Sara-chan.” Oh. Okay. Sure. Just rip my heart in half, why don’t you.

-”Let’s fix it up again.” Ooh, I do not like the strain in his voice when he said that.

-”Actually, never mind, you’re gonna throw me off my game.” pfft

-”I never said the damn word, did I?!” Oh, Ikuhara, you and your puns.

-WHY DOES HE HAVE A BALL GAG AKJSDHAKJSD

-”I’m not good at handling these situations...” You and me both, Tooi.

-Lol, and Chikai sacrifices him the first chance he gets. Let that be a lesson, Enta, never live wholly selfishly.

-”Help, police!” “Uh, we’re the police.” askjdhakjsdh

Holy cripes, this show is something else. One session left to go, so see you next time for the grand finale of Sarazanmai!

[rwbyconversations]

The Princess and her Pauper- A Weiss/Emerald Character Contrast

One of the greatest weapons in the arsenal of a creator is the art of contrast. In storytelling, characters that contrast, often referred to as foils, can serve to highlight particular qualities of each other. How one acts to a situation and the other reacts. It’s why rivalries form the backbone of many a great story with conflict in its theme- why the most memorable moments in action titles like Devil May Cry 3 and Metal Gear Rising are when two rivals who serve as foils for each other come to blows in a winner-take-all clash of wills. Not all foils need be rivals, however- George and Lennie in Of Mice and Men are built as foils, with George being wire-thin and razor-sharp mentally while Lennie is a lumbering giant of a man with the intellect of a child. 

Rooster Teeth’s RWBY is a series that loves to set up connections between its central heroes of Team RWBY and the villainous factions under Salem. Although the connections between current villains Team WTCH and RWBY have not yet been solidified (Watts screentime when), RWBY’s initial foes in Team CRME (Cinder, Roman, Mercury and Emerald) all complimented aspects of RWBY’s personalities. Ruby and Cinder were both leaders, Ruby through example and optimism and Cinder through manipulation and fear, Blake dual-contrasted with Adam and Roman, Yang with Mercury and (regardless of what TVTropes tells you), Weiss contrasts with the sharp-tongued, fast-fingered gem thief Emerald Sustrai. 

Despite having not technically met in canon*, with their appearances relegated to sharing fights in the Volumes 2 and 3 OP, with their dialogue being two lines in a Chibi episode, Weiss and Emerald are almost perfect narrative foils for each other. I am convinced that they were purposefully written to contrast each other, and if/when Emerald has a redemption arc, you can be sure that this material will be used to show how similar Weiss and Emerald can be... not that either of them would admit it. And for the record? This is my OTP and Weiss and Emerald rank in my five favorite characters each, so this is going to be a self-indulgent mess. Consider it my two and three hundred follower specials wrapped into a neat little bow.

In this post, I am going to show the narrative, backstory and character contrasts between Weiss Schnee and Emerald Sustrai, and why I think they could have one of the best-written rivalries/friendships/bond in the entire show if Miles and Kerry play their cards right in the coming Volumes. As usual, the post is under the Read More for the sake of users on their phones.

(Art source: @nibbles-scribbles)

* (In before “Didn’t Weiss fight Em at Haven during the Checkmate scene?” offscreen doesn’t count and Let’s Not Talk About Haven This Is A Happy Post)

Part 1-  Lonely eyes, well, it sure looks like you just might be looking for something

Weiss and Emerald’s backstories on paper couldn’t be any different- which, again, is one of the purposes of narrative contrasts, connecting the impossible. Weiss lived in the lap of luxury her entire life, part of a family that probably had the combined net worth of half of the Fortune 500. The Schnee Dust Company was such a profitable venture that it bought out rival families and took them out of business. Weiss’s every need was catered for, she had a loyal servant in Klein, and became a popular attraction at parties thanks to her singing voice.

And she couldn’t have been more soul-crushingly alone. 

A young Weiss sits at a piano, basking in the praise of the adults around her

Weiss, narration: Words of praise were often overflowing around me. Whatever I did, with a little effort, I did better than average. I expected the praise as a matter of course and believed I deserved it all. As the daughter of the Schnee house, I would be the best. Nothing else would do. 

Weiss reaches out to her father who is walking away from her. The door shuts in her face. Weiss’s face comes into the panel. The smile is gone. 

Weiss, narration: My father felt the same way. So his indifference... was expected.  - RWBY Manga,Shirow Miwa

Weiss was little more than a toy when she was a child, something Jacques brought out for the guests to coo at, but they never cared for Weiss herself: 

Everyone only cared that I was part of the Schnee family, not that I was me. They were honoring the Schnee name. I thought all that praise was for me. It wasn’t. It messed with my head when I figured that out.

Weiss’s Volume 5 focus song, and the first chronological song about her, The Path to Isolation (AKA Mirror Mirror 0.5), is about when Weiss realizes how alone she is in Atlas with the realization that people only care about her for her money and surname, and not for Weiss as a person. We see this in person with her interactions with Henry Marigold in Volume 4 and Jacques spells it out later:

I don’t give a damn what you want! This isn’t about you!  

Miwa’s manga alongside Path To Isolation makes it clear that Weiss lived in the lap of luxury, but it was a cold, sterile lap where she never felt loved even with Klein’s presence and Winter’s distant love, thanks to Jacques’ distance driving Weiss further into her personal hell. Weiss lived a tragically lonely life in her childhood and its effects are still seen on her even in the present day. For a long time, all she was was an accessory to Jacques who got pushed into his obedient shadow.

Emerald’s backstory is less concrete than Weiss, but from what we do know it’s no less painful. She lived alone on the city streets with no parents (dead or neglectful we don’t know) or friends to look out for her, and every day was a struggle to survive. By the time we see Emerald in Volume 3′s flashback, she’s barely holding it together and is stick-thin.

Her clothes are frayed in various places, held together with belts and straps, and Emerald is nearly emaciated. She’s jumpy, paranoid and resorts to blatant daytime robbery of a jewel store just to cover the costs to get some food for a night. When Cinder finds Emerald, she finds a cornered street-rat barely staying alive. 

If Jacques manipulated Weiss through inaction, Cinder in turn twisted Emerald through action, providing the young thief everything she ever wanted. Cinder gave her a warm bed, food whenever she wanted it and possibly even the love of the mother that Emerald might not have had. Chibi Season 3 in fact had a skit where Emerald (within a dream) jokingly notes that Cinder really is “The mother figure I may- or may not- have never had.” Regardless, Cinder learned from Salem the best way to get people to follow you is to give them exactly what they want. She gave Roman some Dust and a chance to commit crimes, she gave Mercury a target and people to hurt, and she gave Emerald a sick, twisted lie. She made Emerald fall in love with her. 

I don’t care about Salem! But I owe Cinder everything.

Cinder twists Emerald around her finger and makes her almost entirely dependent on Cinder’s approval and love. And make no mistake, this is (at least from Emerald’s warped perspective, the poor girl) love. 

This is not the face of a heterosexual woman upon seeing Cinder Fall. 

Em sadly closing her eyes behind Cinder just... gets me, man. I care for that mint-ice-cream too much Jesus Christ.

Cinder, of course, doesn’t love her back. I don’t think Cinder knows what it means to love beyond that she can use other people’s love in her pursuit of power. She manipulated and tricked Emerald, making the thief fall for her in a worthless attempt to impress her. And every time Emerald stepped remotely out of line, even if by complete unintentional accident, Cinder harshly made her judgement clear and forced Emerald back into her obedient shadow. Cinder definitely didn’t love Emerald. But damn if she didn’t know how to abuse her.  

Emerald: We don’t need him (Mercury), everything was going fine- A slap is heard. Emerald shouts in pain. Cinder: Do not mistake your place.

As pointed out expertly by @alexkablob, Emerald’s body language when Cinder gets angry in this scene is very telling- she almost shrinks and hides herself, trying very hard to avoid Cinder’s wrath in that immediate moment. The mere threat of reprisal has Emerald assuming a more subservient position

Here’s what connects Weiss and Emerald from their backstories. Both had terribly lonely childhoods, with Weiss lonely in a crowd as she realized people only loved her for her money and name, and Emerald forced to live alone as a street rat with no one to rely on. Jacques manipulated Weiss through making her seek his approval which manifested as physical abuse, and Cinder as well manipulated and abused Emerald into falling in love with Cinder or seeing her as a replacement mother figure. Both were lonely children, abused and scorned by everyone around them, especially those who had the most direct power over them. Both of them, tragically, are victims of those above them who see them as tools and not even as people. Ones who occasionally fall out of line and need... percussive maintenance to fix. Weiss and Emerald have some of the darkest backstories in RWBY and in their tragedy, they compliment each other beautifully. 

(Source: @nibbles-scribbles, who gave me permission to use her art)

Part 2: Sight Unseen

Now that we’ve covered their backstories, let’s actually contrast Emerald and Weiss on a fighting and character level. 

Weiss and Emerald fight each other in the OPs for Volumes 2 and 3. They are so far on the very small list of fights in the OPs that have never occurred and are in fact the only notable fight to not happen ever four years since it was first teased, especially since it happened in two sequences. 

Both characters use revolver mechanisms in their weapons- Weiss for her Dust and Emerald for a ranged component. Both are agile fighters who dart around the battlefield and can be very damaging in the right circumstances and are the most fragile member of their respective teams (Weiss having the worst solo win/loss record of anyone on RWBY and Emerald being a stealth fighter who dropped very quickly when Amber focused fire on her being my evidence). 

What’s interesting in contrasting the two is their Semblances. Emerald creates vivid hallucinations for a single target that effects all five of their senses but ultimately is a purely mental effect on the subject’s reality. Her Semblance can’t create physical matter. However, Weiss’s Semblance is a purely physical one that lets her influence and change reality on a primal, physical level- be it for Glyphs, time dilation or using Summoning to create physical constructs to fight for her. Depending on if Weiss’s Summons can be affected by Emerald’s hallucinations (or if Weiss being hit with Em’s Semblance has consequences for her Summons), the two could serve as hard counters in the event of a fight. 

Long story short a fight between these two would be really cool.

Character wise, one of the more interesting bits of contrast between Weiss and Emerald is how they approach friendship. Both are equally sardonic and have razor-sharp wits on anyone who irks them, but while Weiss is cold at first and softens as she gets to know and trust people, Emerald throws up a facade of being chummy with people, a facade she hates. If her friendship with Mercury is anything to go by, Emerald can make some very biting remarks at the expense of those she’s close to. If her love for Cinder is anything to go by however, Emerald is very tender and affectionate when it comes to the people she loves. She rushes to give Cinder a hug in Volume 2 and in Volume 4, acts as Cinder’s translator, being almost sickeningly tender and rushing to come to Cinder’s side when she asks. 

And while Emerald’s a villain, it would be a shame to waste a rivalry between her and Weiss. Both are passionately devoted to their leaders and are willing to cross the world for them and fight in this endless war for them (note how Weiss volunteers for the war while Emerald is drafted). Emerald hates Ruby because she maimed Cinder at Beacon, while Weiss hates Cinder because... bitch shoved a spear in her. It’s more than enough conflict to kickstart a rivalry and as proven despite their lack of screentime, the contrasts between them write themselves.

Part 3) Dry your eyes now, baby, broken wings can’t hold you down

In the event (by which I mean when) Emerald undergoes a redemption arc and leaves Cinder, Weiss will definitely play a significant role in facilitating her joining the heroes, much like Blake did with Ilia. Weiss is honestly the only RWBY member who really can facilitate this redemption in the coming Volumes- Ruby will likely never forgive Emerald for her role in Penny’s death, Blake has basically done this arc already for Ilia, and Yang will be too caught up in her Raven/Blake issues. I have no doubt that Blake’s own abusive past can be used as a bonding point as well with Emerald (a common vector used for fans of the rare ship Cat Burglar), but Weiss perhaps more than anyone else shares a fundamental understanding of Emerald’s “love.” The love of someone determined to win any shred of approval that they can from the monster that haunts their nightmares every night. 

Given how Emerald has allusions to Aladdin and Weiss is Snow White, their relationship also works in referencing their fairytale sources- Aladdin saves Jasmine in his story, after all. Rags to ritches is also one of the most prolific tales out there, especially ones where a person destined for greatness falls in love with a member of high society and rises through the ranks. Weiss is a princess after all, and every princess does need her pauper so that she may find true love. Weiss has already tried her hand as the upper echelons of society romantically (Henry and Neptune) and they were found lacking.  

(Source. Art by @nibbles-scribbles​)

In some cases, literally. 

Does this need to mean a romantic connection, especially when Emerald will be coming off her last lover being abusive? Perhaps not, but a close bond between them would be impossible to avoid. However, a romantic attachment between Emerald and Weiss would be a beautiful thing to see develop. Two women, nearly broken down by their oppressive abusers, coming together and helping each other heal from their past traumas? I don’t know about you but that sounds like it could be a great story to me. Emerald already wears a lot of white too, so their color schemes unite smoothly. 

To conclude this extended love letter, Emerald and Weiss are two sides of the same coin. Young women beaten down and abused by those with power over them who had desperately lonely childhoods. Women who developed into strong and capable warriors with Semblances that altar different facets of reality, who could have a natural rivalry that leads into a smooth friendship and maybe even more beyond, all of which could be backed by organic references to both of their fairytale sources and allow for a wonderful string of character development for Weiss and Emerald as they heal from their past traumas. This may be a rare ship, one that may have gotten all the references it ever will when Emerald complimented Weiss’s dress.

But damnit. It’s my rare ship and I’ll go down with it, I’ve made too many great friends thanks to it. If you’d like to see more EmWeiss content, check out my great friends @goldibox, @dabby-the-house-elf (the main for @nibbles-scribbles whose seminal art I’ve used throughout this piece), SassyUnicorn7′s A Fight To Remember (one of the best fanfics for both EmWeiss and Yang/Merc, and Sassy herself is a delight to know who lights up my day when I get to talk to her).

(Thanks to @weisscoldglare for this)

Thanks again for reading. 

[clerithraven]

DEEPLY BONDED SOULS: AN OBVIOUS CONNECTION

Cloud and Aerith have been shown to have a very deep connection, one that started from the moment they met. It was something that came easy for the both of them. In fact, mere moments after meeting each other, Aerith was able to make the seemingly cold and emotionless Cloud smile and laugh, which the Ultimania Omega hints at a connection between them.

When talking about the “rare smile” which Aerith brings out in Cloud during the game, the FFVII Ultimania Omega says that “there seems to be something between them”. ~Aerith’s info page, FFVII Ultimania Omega

Their growing connection was even very obvious to other people, especially to Tifa.

It’s just that…I was displeased at the way Cloud and another girl soon became good friends. Well, Aerith is a very good girl, I was fond of her soon, too. No wonder… ~Tifa’s monologue; Dismantled

Tifa, considered as the other love interest for the dating mechanism, had this thought about Cloud and Aerith in Don Corneo’s mansion. She was ‘displeased’ that they became good friends even though they had just met one another. Tifa could see that they get along well, and it must be frustrating for her because Cloud didn’t act that way with her.

(Cloud and Tifa are preparing to jump from the train) Tifa: Scary… huh. Cloud: Too late to be saying that now. Why’d you come along anyway? ~FFVII Script

Tifa made an attempt here of expressing her concerns to Cloud. Cloud’s reply was considerably rude in this scene, and he even questioned why she came along if she would just get scared.

Cloud was cold towards Tifa, but he didn’t act that way with Aerith – this gave Tifa a pretty good idea of how the connection between the two was developing.

Seeing Cloud and Aerith developing their world together before her eyes, she inadvertently lets slip her peevish feelings. ~Tifa’s character profile; 10th Anniversary Ultimania

First, a definition of peevish (adjective):

1. having or showing an irritable disposition ~Oxford Dictionary

2. marked by ill temper ~Merriam-Wesbter Dictionary

3. easily annoyed ~Cambridge Dictionary

Cloud and Aerith’s developing relationship was so obvious to Tifa that she reacted negatively, implying feelings of jealousy.  Why was Tifa jealous? It was because Cloud and Aerith had a growing connection that was considerably greater than what she had with Cloud, even though they were ‘childhood friends’.

Both of them share feelings for Cloud — Tifa was close to Aerith, who can also be called a love rival. With that point in mind, they were also good friends. Nevertheless, it is not hard to imagine that she carries complex feelings as a woman toward Aerith, who had built up a special bond with Cloud that was different from Tifa’s. ~Tifa’s character profile; 10th Anniversary Ultimania

What “special bond that was different from Tifa’s” was this part of the Ultimania talking about? Tifa was always labelled as a ‘childhood friend’ of Cloud’s – a platonic bond. If that were so, then wouldn’t the special bond Cloud built up with Aerith be one with a romantic notion? Perhaps one of deep, romantic love between a man and a woman? Certainly seemed that way if Tifa was jealous of their bond.

And it wasn’t just Tifa who saw it.

Barret noticed how Aerith’s influence changed Cloud. As I have said in a previous meta post:

Once they get to Shinra HQ, they had to find a way to get in. The course they took was through the stairs and they climb. During the climb, we get to see an interesting conversation between Cloud and Barret, who came with Cloud because he wanted to help Aerith who kept his daughter safe.

Barret: Don’t know… why the hell… we gotta climb… Cloud: …because we don’t want to start a commotion until we’ve saved Aerith. I doubt that’s possible though… Barret: …heh heh heh. Cloud: Knock it off. You’re giving me the creeps. Barret: So there are times when even you fight for other people. I am impressed. ~FFVII Script

Being in enemy territory raised the stakes of the rescue, so Cloud is worried about risking Aerith. He wants to make sure Aerith is safe first before taking drastic measures. This exchange is significant because Barret comments on Cloud’s motive with playing it safe. To Barret, it’s the first time Cloud has shown concern for someone else enough to fight for their sake, and this impresses him.

Remember that Cloud had repeatedly refused to help out AVALANCHE even if it was to protect the Planet, even when Tifa practically begged him to do it and reminded him of his promise. Barret had to spend money to pay him for his help, money that was supposed to be for Marlene’s sake. But there Cloud was, doing something for the sake of another voluntarily. This makes Barret see Cloud in a different light. All of this was made possible because of Cloud’s desire to save Aerith. This must have also given Barret an idea of how important Aerith has become for Cloud.

Even Marlene, who was a young child, knew of the attraction between Cloud and Aerith. Look at this dialogue between Cloud and Marlene as Cloud prepared to go save Aerith from Shinra.

Marlene: Guess what? Guess what? Aerith was asking me lots of questions. Like what kind of person Cloud is. I bet she likes you, Cloud!

Option 1: I don’t know Option 2: Let’s hope so

Cloud: Let’s hope so. Marlene: I won’t tell Tifa. ~FFVII Script

Marlene told Cloud that Aerith had been asking a lot of questions about him. Being a smart girl, she picked up on the hint that Aerith was interested in Cloud romantically. Cloud’s line of “Let’s hope so” in reply to Marlene’s disclosure of Aerith’s interest in him implies that he reciprocates the interest.

Some of you may be wondering, why is this optional dialogue significant? Well, it’s significant because the second option was actually proven to be canon, or valid, as evidenced by this quote:

Marlene is a sharp girl — Even though she’s only 4 years old, Marlene is perceptive and well attuned to the woman mind. The scene where she ascertains that Aerith has favor for Cloud and tells him so, then says “I won’t tell Tifa!” demonstrates this grownup behavior. ~FFVII 25th Anniversary Ultimania

This is important because Marlene’s characterization as a “sharp girl” was given a basis through her response to Cloud. Marlene will only reply “I won’t tell Tifa” if players choose the second option as Cloud’s response, making it canon. Marlene understood the complexities of the love triangle and promised not to inform Tifa of Cloud’s mutual interest in Aerith because the girl knew that Tifa also held affection for Cloud.

Cait Sith was also aware of the love triangle, but he supports Cloud and Aerith. What I am talking about? Here you go:

Aerith: Why don’t you read our fortunes?  Cait Sith: Say, that’s right… I haven’t done it in a while, huh? I’m so excited. Right or wrong, I’m still the same ‘ol me. Now, what should I predict?  Aerith: Hmm, let’s see how compatible Cloud and I are! Cait Sith: That’ll cost ya. Exactly one date! Here I go! This isn’t good. I can’t say it. Poor Tifa. Aerith: No! Tell me! I promise I won’t get mad! Cait Sith: Is that so? Then I’ll tell you. Looks good. You are perfect for each other! Aerith’s star and Cloud’s star! They show a great future! Cloud, I’ll be your matchmaker, preacher… I’ll do whatever you want me to! You just call me when it all happens! ~FFVII Script

When asked to make a prediction of Cloud and Aerith’s compatibility, Cait Sith made a comment that implies Tifa was on the losing side of the triangle. After the prediction of Cloud and Aerith being “perfect for each other” was revealed, Cait Sith volunteered to be their matchmaker to Cloud. This suggests that he would support Cloud if he pursues Aerith seeing as they were very compatible with each other.

The connection that developed between Cloud and Aerith was so deep that it could be comparable to one of soulmates. An evidence of this is the fact that Aerith could talk to Cloud’s heart even as he was unconscious. This was after the unfortunate event surrounding the Black Materia, before Aerith left for the Forgotten City by herself.

Cloud… can you hear me? I’m talking to your heart while you sleep right now. I hope this reaches you okay, like when I hear the voice from the planet. Sephiroth is trying to summon Meteor using the Black Materia… He’s trying to wound the planet badly. If Meteor really does fall, then everyone’s going to die. People, animals, flowers… The life on this planet will disappear completely. The only one who can stop it is the last surviving Cetra. Me. I realize that. That was the duty of the Cetra. So, leave Meteor to me. You just think about yourself, Cloud. Remember your own ways… so you don’t have a breakdown. Well, I’m off. When it’s all over, we can meet each other again. Oh, Cloud… I enjoyed our date at the Gold Saucer. The view from the gondola that night was really beautiful. I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget you, Cloud… ~Aerith (inside Cloud’s dream); Dismantled

Aerith and Cloud were connected deep enough that Aerith managed to talk with Cloud even in his dream. Of course, this may have been made possible because Aerith was an Ancient. But Cloud’s lines after he wakes up support the idea that he and Aerith are connected on a far deeper level.

Cloud: Aerith is here… and so is Sephiroth. Cid: Wa, wa, wait a minute. You serious!? Tifa: But how can you tell? Cloud: …It’s not an excuse. I feel it in my soul. Cid: Shit, Cloud, we can’t be sittin’ around on our asses. Cloud: …right. Let’s hurry and find Aerith. ~FFVII Script

Cloud’s connection to Aerith allowed him to feel her, to know that she was near. When asked about how he knew it, he answered that he could feel it in his soul – something that their comrades do not even question. It seems that their friends knew of the deep bond that Cloud and Aerith share, their relationship that obvious to their companions.

Their knowledge of how deep Cloud’s connection with Aerith was what made them concerned about Cloud and his reaction when he lost her.

Grief is what’s left the friends. After the battle with Jenova LIFE, the party members leave that place without a word. At this moment, how they behave is slightly different. We can see that everyone grieves for Aerith respectively, and their looks that worry about Cloud. ~FFVII Ultimania Omega, pg. 157

The party members had their own way of dealing with Aerith’s death, but what worried them was Cloud. They knew that the loss of Aerith had caused Cloud excruciating pain from the way he reacted to Aerith’s death, so they watched over him.

They all understood Cloud’s deep feelings for Aerith. They knew that Cloud would be the most devastated, that he was the one who was suffering the most out of all of them. Respecting that fact, they gave him time and space to grieve and bury Aerith alone. They didn’t try to intrude on the final moment between Cloud and Aerith.

[judgesabo]

A Year of Theory

One year ago today I posted my Classpect Analysis, my first serious attempt at theorycrafting for CaNWC. Now seems like the perfect time then to look back and see what has changed. What old questions have been answered, and what cool and new questions have been raised?

Classpects

I am absolutely delighted by the progress that has been made here. My original classpect post has essentially been confirmed in full, and we’ve made plenty of new discoveries as well. Jhon is the Boss of Wheels, Hecka is the Mus of Time, and Rose is the Lord of Space. Beyond this, Lord Spanish/Lord English has also been confirmed as the Lord of Time, and Papaya/Kanaya has been confirmed to be the Sylph of Space.

Hecka has also made significant progress in inspiring people for war, even convincing Dabe to fight against his daddy. He’s also demonstrated an intuitive understanding for all matters related to time, showing an even greater understanding than a sprite. As yesterday’s update demonstrated, Hecka is able to skillfully use this in the fight itself, creating stable time loops on the fly.

Rose continues to follow down the path of the Lord of Space, giving a greater analysis of the Corruption and working tactically off of that plan. Jack Noir has also offered an analysis of Rose which is very similar to my own.

Lalonde isn’t someone you want to cross. It’s bad enough that each of the heroes has the ability to manipulate an aspect... Not to mention that she now has the horrorterrors doing her bidding, and she has an above-average intelligence, even for a woman uncorrupted. And you’re not one to give out compliments lightly.

If anyone can get this awful reality back to normal, it’s her.

New difficulties have arisen for each player though, and the bids for power will be intense from here on. Hecka Jef’s main goal of killing Jhon has already been completed, so for this moment he’s fighting for nothing. Rose has been officially recognized as a horrorterror herself, so her command over their entire forces is now more explicit, but they are also clearly preoccupied with their own fight for survival against Lord English. Jaed is also likely going to lose control of Prostit soon, facing challenges from both the Blapck Quen and Fresh Whyte Germysprite. But Jack is also pushing to gain control of Durst himself, which may gain Rose new control over the Dark Kingdom. Major changes to the balance of power are due.

Enough with the old, on with the new. Jhon has been given the title ‘Boss of Wheels.’ Since this is a fanon class and aspect, instead of using the classpect to analyze Jhon, we will use Jhon to understand the class and aspect.

The most obvious thing about the title is of course that "Boss of Wheels” is essentially a rewording of “RollerCoaster Tycoon.” When Jhon did the ‘wheely thing,’ he caused a roller coaster to rescue him from lava, seeming to simply will it into existence.  Bg’ogubmom’ibulsprite explicitly confirms that ‘control of theme park rides’ is a power of the Boss of Wheels.

The aspect ‘Wheels’ should be taken as referring to roller coasters, or possibly any kind of transportation. Taking it even more broadly, it could even be taken to mean ‘velocity,’ fitting in with time and space as a fundamental force. Or perhaps it is meant to represent technological progress and advancement, as the invention of the wheel often marks the dawn of civilization.

Wheels are a common symbol across many cultures, but the most famous is the Wheel of Fortune. The Rota Fortunae represents the ever changing and tumultuous nature of fate, spun at random by Fortuna, the goddess of luck. Dynasties are built and they collapse based on its movements.

This concept was adopted into the tarot deck as the tenth card of the Major Arcana, representing destiny, fortune, and success, and reversed represents troubles and negative forces outside of your control. Incidentally, the Homestuck tarot deck shows a god-tier John looking up from his planet as Skaia.

And, of course, the Wheel of Fortune was also adopted as a popular game show where people solve hangman-style word puzzles to win money. A little less mystical, that one, but it strengthens the “money” theme.

Jhon’s own destiny in saving the economy of the Land of Dollers and Danger from President Obana. The LODAD economy is centered around the millions of small businesses that populate it, which are now facing a depression under Obana’s rule. Jhon’s quest will be to become an extremely powerful business owner and build a theme park so awesome it will save the economy before facing Obana in the Oval Offace. So obviously fortune and wealth play a big part of Jhon’s life already.

Jhon’s class as Boss also takes a distinctly economic focus. A boss of course refers to a supervisor, someone in charge who manages a business, directing their employees. The word boss was taken from the Dutch word baas, meaning ‘master.’  Looking at the synonym of tycoon a bit more, while the English definition simply means a powerful person in an industry, the word itself is a corruption of the Japanese word ‘taikun’ or ‘great lord,’ referring to a shogun.

An important question here is whether a Boss would be a standard class or a master class. The word itself certainly wouldn’t be out of place as a master class, except perhaps for breaking with the Medieval theme, but it’s unclear if master classes could work like that. Calliope certainly seems to indicate that there are only two master classes, and marks them as distinct for being the furthers on the passive/active scale. If a Boss is a master class, what is it’s pair, if it has one, and what relation does it have to other classes? It could also be a standard class of course, the existence of which  beyond the twelve we know having always been a solid maybe.

Looking at Jhon’s behavior, this class is also likely connected to Jhon’s role as a ‘daddy’ in CaNWC. Jhon is considered the daddy of Dabe Stidrer, Momi, Dadd before he met Dacronian Dignity, and made two independent offers to be a daddy to two different crocodiles mere moments after meeting them. LODAD might also be a reference to this, being the Land of DAD.

I would argue that Boss is an active class, assuming that scale applies, possibly with an interpretation of ‘manager of their aspect’ or ‘one who manages via their aspect.’

Interestingly, a video game boss is typically the main antagonist of a series. o has explicitly stated that he’s already building up Rose’s side as being the villains of the series.

Rose’s Time Powers

In addition to her space powers, Rose has been shown to have some degree of control over time. At the moment there is little explanation for this, although we do know that it is not part of her power as Lord of Space. AR and Bg’ogubmom’ibulsprite both seem to be aware of the source of these powers and imply that Rose will discover this source during her quest. As of yet we do not even know what her quest is though, which makes theorizing about it rather difficult.

It is worth noting that Rose’s time power is marked by her signature color, while her space powers uses the traditional green sun shade of green. The fact that it’s her color does seem to indicate that it is some kind of innate ability, or at least one tailored to Rose specifically.

Contrast this to Hecka Jef’s own symbol, which is marked with the Time red, rather than his more pinkish red.

Any answer to this question will likely be of o’s own invention, and certainly doesn’t seem to match any existing Sburb mechanics. The closest incident that comes to mind would be items related to an aspect, such as Caliborn using the Ring of Void, or John using the Fear No Anvil, but those aren’t exactly innate. For the moment I will simply concur with Jack’s own conclusion that this has to be cheating.

For the sake of sheer speculation, I’m going to guess that Rose got the time powers from Lord English in some kind of exchange, or perhaps as a reward, for freeing him and the rest of the Felt from the corruption. Rose has been confirmed as a Lord of Space, so I’m standing by my own classpect analysis to say that she will be the explicit cause of why some characters have been enhanced. As a Lord of Time, it could make sense that Lord English would grant her time powers even before she makes the exchange.

Troll Players

The next bit of news is that we have learned that Nepeta is indeed trolling the humans, and we can see her corrupted handle. This leaves Eridan and Feferi as the odds one out as the only two characters that haven’t had their handles revealed.

Of course this isn’t definitive proof that they are the two non-player trolls. In fact, it’s basically nothing. If Dabe can be in the human session without being a player, the trolls might have brought the two odd ones out with them as well. Still, it’s best to keep track of these things. Plus we already know that Eridan is, ahem, tied up at the moment anyways, which is a much better reason to think he’s out.

Considering that the background for Act 5 contains all twelve astrological symbols, we should expect to see the full cast of trolls.

Coulor and Darknes

We finally have some indication as to why the trolls are harassing the humans. According to Kraket, the reason they are looking for vengeance is because their “winners door” has been stolen, which I am happy to say I predicted.

Unlike what I predicted however, Kraket claims they are still being killed by a pair of demons from Earth, one of color and the other of darkness. In addition, Kraket extends this blame to Dabe, even though he’s not a player, claiming that he has known both demons for years, and emphasizes Hecka Jef’s blame over others.

In canon, Karkat never had a good grasp on how long a year was meant to be, so who knows how long he’s really talking about, but it’s fair to say that this is significant.

Lord English makes the most sense for being the Demon of Color, especially considering we already know he has the door, but that leaves an obvious problem with the rest of Kraket’s description. Dabe doesn’t know Lord English. He likely knows Lil Cal, but that’s a fairly weak connection. Caliborn is technically from Earth, but not from the session that the trolls are viewing.

The evidence so far also heavily indicates that Caliborn is indeed still Lord English. We know that Lord English is the Lord of Time from another session, that he leads the Felt, that Lil Cal exists, that the Cairo Overcoat exists, and that it travels through time via sarcophagus.

The Demon of Color might still be some other minion or version of Lord English, like Union Jack in Homestuck. This makes both Dabe’s Bro and the Big Man likely candidates.

The Demon of Darkness on the other hand could work for Rose, further contrasting her to the Lord of Time. Her connection to the Horrorterrors is already well established. Assuming it’s not her personally though, a few more options open up for who this could be since the Queen’s Ring turns people into creatures with the powers of the head of the noble circle.

The fact that Hecka Jef prototyped Rose’s grimoire also makes Kraket’s blame all the more appropriate. That’s an action that very explicitly puts the blame on him.

The bigger difficulty with this theory is that the Queen’s Rings do not work on humans, which makes it difficult to see who Dabe could have known all his life, yet still use its power. One possible answer to this is that since each ring is also prototyped with Dabe’s life-long friend Germy, Kraket may be placing the blame on him. So while a carapacian will still be wearing the ring, Kraket will blame Germy.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it. One year later and CaNWC is still going strong, with plenty new and cool content, art, and music. I’m looking forward to another year of content in the future and all the new facts and theories to come.

[johnjankovic]

CROSSING THE RUBICON

There is not one amongst you who is deserving of Father’s love so what was then built in His name shall be put asunder in His name.

4 John 1:2

In the early pedigree of Rome were Christians subjected to experimental deaths of being doused in wax then immolated as human candles perched above dimly lit streets, fed upon by wild animals, boiled in cauldrons, dragged behind horses in extremis, crushed by stone mills, flayed, racked, scourged, crucified, all macabre ways by which the Church in its first three-hundred years was indelibly carved. The Edict of Milan finally did, under the aegis of Emperor Constantine in AD 313, bestow permanent sanctuary onto the multitude of the persecuted amid this pogrom. Yet what confounded magistrates, emperors, and famously Marcus Aurelius, was the readiness of Christians to die, not by retribution for violence exacted onto others but rather by torture and death in spite of innocence either at the behest of Jews thinking them heretic or the Romans thinking them seditious. Proconsul Gnaeus Arrius Antoninus in exasperation once berated an eager mass of Christians for openly avowing their faith, ‘You wretches, if you want to die, you have cliffs to leap from and ropes to hang by’. This phenomenon if not borderline pathology that was Christianity so bewildered pagans that they stood in disbelief at its canon of unconditional love for whomsoever believed in Jesus neither did the authority of man, nor pain, nor even death have any purchase, none whatsoever, on her conscience (John 8:32).

However heavy the yoke, and contrary to conventional wisdom, Christians were not at all martyrs but witnesses. Throughout Rome’s attrition we died by horrific ways neither to galvanize nor to inspire, we simply elected not to renounce what we knew to be true, whether iron spikes were forced into palms, wooden cudgels cracked skulls, or scalding oil and flaming pyres blistered flesh, we understood forces well beyond man were afoot to dispose of us with brute expediency in an internecine war waged since Creation. Angels and demons are not storybook creatures, nor are heaven and hell contrived artifices, totems like these between good and evil scattered across frescos from the Renaissance are materially real. Though for all of Father’s omniscience, He still could not speak of such things in their entirety until humanity had matured enough to learn about them from soothsayers like Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, or John the Baptist who each foretold of a Messiah (Matthew 16:13-6). The eschatology of man would then be learned in increments. Jesus would be, culminating from generations and genealogies of prophets, the proverbial Prometheus spurring man to great heights with an idea akin to the discovery of fire for civilizations to follow. Expressing kindness, patience, and love in the face of abject cruelty would be the cadence to which Western civilization was built.

Let us, you and I, analogize this learning curve together. How does an infant assimilate the science of physics? She is first taught to count abreast of recognizing patterns, then to add, subtract, multiply and divide, subsequently she learns geometry, after which algebra is inculcated in her, then calculus, until finally she ascertains the universe’s secrets from gravity to quantum mechanics although no longer is she a little girl but, in her stead, a woman. There is a time for ignorance as for truth, for youth and old age, from Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, to King David, to Jesus, and all the interstices of descendants between them, Father’s grand design germinated along the Abrahamic and Davidic lines until they crested with a birth in a manger. Every generation heralded the advent of prophets vested with knowledge on the philosophy of Father’s work with the final act on a cross epitomizing what was its apogee — love. If man were effaced from this planet, no longer would evil exist in the universe, there is nothing inherently sinful about nature, nothing Machiavellian about survival, no malevolence when predators consume prey. It is sui generis to man that in him lives a duality whereby a choice is made between prosecuting either good or evil, between espousing love or hate.

Over two thousand years of animus and stigma against Christendom has wrought the genocide of over seventy-million brothers and sisters. In Mosul as of late where its presence was unbroken since the second century, scores of Christians, monasteries, and manuscripts have been purged. An exodus has materialized with the near extinction of our family in the Middle East. Aramaic Christians in Turkey whose language Jesus spoke have been culled from half-a-million at the twentieth century’s outset to a mere two thousand today. Nigerian Christians have been indiscriminately butchered by Boko Haram. In Asia, the police states of China, Myanmar, and Burma politically suppress Christianity to assert authoritarian rule similar to the Third Reich’s ‘Gleichschaltung’ whilst North Korea exterminated three hundred thousand of its Christians. Swathes of the same in India were hacked to death with machetes by Hindu nationalists in the last decade. Legions of priests in the narco-states of Mexico and Columbia have been murdered for agitating against cartels and communism respectively. In Africa’s Eritrea, thousands are housed in internment camps. Egypt’s Coptic Christians have sulphuric acid poured on the crosses tattooed on their wrists. Altogether the compendium of statistical modelling from government and relief agencies estimates 100,000 deaths per annum and forty-five million more in the last century alone.

More furtive has been Christianity’s erosion in the West where the embattled community has been ejected from the public square as the ascendency of secularism in tandem with anti-colonial grievances dismantle nativity scenes, discard the Ten Commandments in courthouses, bowdlerize salutations of ‘Merry Christmas’, abrogate school prayer after 170 years, counterfeit love through pornography, pervert the institution of marriage after five thousand years for the sake of progressivism, and murder the unborn on demand. When Sri Lankans were killed in Churches, the liberal ruling class referred to us as ‘Easter worshippers’ not Christians. When mass shootings aroused widespread prayer, we were derided by smug politicians for our faith. The moral decay is rampant. New social policies shored up by mainstream Hollywood, historical revisionism, and liberal judges destroy whatever is left of a spiritual compass in favour of cultural marxists who think themselves as great emancipators of the human race despite being themselves indentured to Satan who, in a redux, exhorted the hubris of Adam and Eve saying, ‘Then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods’ (Genesis 3:5). These same people, depressed in their own right, labour to impose their loose morals on others so as to vindicate their pathetic existence. Be shrewd as snakes and wary of this truth.

[turninginasignments]

Finale Draft for Annotated Bibliography

The science of altruism (TED): 

Published June 29th, 2016. Religious def: loving others as you love yourself. “Altruism is what defines who we are as humans and where we come from.” Survival of the fittest. Cooperation has been found to be more effective than the survival of the fittest for a species as a whole (Ex. ants/bees/primates/ bats etc.) (Think of my bio-anthropology class lesson when we talked about this.) Controlled experiments with toddlers where someone will drop something or try to complete a task. TWO main things happen- babies/toddlers will normally try to help and pupil dilation that is linked to concern or empathy happened (When babies couldn’t help their pupils dilated more.) An argument against altruism is people are ration and self-interested (ex. Baker baking bread to sell for money for himself instead of feeding people) BUT people make irrational decisions all the time for various reasons, we are complicated with altruistic tendencies. He then talks about race privilege and inherent advantages in institutions which I didn’t understand how it connected. He claims altruism is in our genetic legacy 

TEDx Talks. “The Science of Altruism | Dustin Daniels | TEDxFSU” Youtube, June 29th, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brqg4HA3mUI&feature=youtu.be. 

Richard Dawkins on Altruism and The Selfish Gene (video of Dawkins):

Published September 1st, 2012. Charles Darwin argued in his book origin of species that the evolution of life on earth evolved through a brutal competition of existence. Altruistic behaviors in animals could include warning cries, group grooming. Richard Dawkins uses the science of genetics to crack the code of altruism. Genes are what build us up and make who you are. Dawkins claims we are survival machines who carry our genes and our goal is to pass on the genetics through reproduction so they live on, (essentially genes are immortal. The survival of the fittest really only means the survival of the genes. A gene that did not look after itself would not survive; the meaning of selfish gene

 How do selfish genes give us altruistic behavior? Different answers: Kinship- the altruistic gene is passed around a family and given kin selection where they will do what it takes to make sure their family survives. Reciprocal altruism- you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Give favor to receive one back someday. But wait those can’t be the only reasons b/c after all humans give to charity, give blood, cry at the blight of strangers and humans are generally nicer than the selfish gene theory would suggest- Goes against the dog eat dog world that Darwinism suggests. There are arguments against the selfish gene theory like consultation behavior seen in chimps. The veneer theory- the idea that morals are a thin veneer on top of the inherent animal nature of us. The veneer theory argues that humans are inheritably selfish and nasty. Darwin suggests that we have gone beyond kin selection and that humans have a lust to be nice. Such as be nice to whoever you meet because in nature animals are parts of small groups where they know everyone in their group more likely to be surrounded by kin and cousins. That could still be there in humans but we have gone too big and now feel that way with everyone. Darwin compares being nice to being horny. A misfiring of the gene. EX: Humans are horny in nature to reproduce but now we have contraception to not have kids but we are still horny knowing we have kids-that is a misfire of that gene. Being nice to people could be wired into us from when humans lived in small groups of close kin and groups of close acquaintances within it would pay to reciprocate favors. 

Andy80o, “Richard Dawkins on Altruism and The Selfish Gene”. Youtube, September 1st, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8C-ntwUpzM&feature=youtu.be.

The Biological and Evolutionary Logic of Human Cooperation (paper):

Published 2005 Intro talks about how there is a debate between reciprocal altruism and altruism for the good of the group (in humans.) The scholars (the collective) write that “human prosocial behavior is fundamentally incompatible with the economists model of the self-interested actor and the biologist’s model of the self-regarding reciprocal altruist. Basically saying humans are NOT only nice to receive a benefit for it. The collective argues that the solution to the puzzle is an altruistic human pre-disposition to work for the good of the group, arising by group selection. That view contradicts decades of work in biology, economics, and other fields which say humans are only altruistic for underlying selfish reasons. Strong reciprocity- a descriptive term for “people tend to behave prosocially and punish antisocial behavior at a cost to themselves even when the probability of future interactions is low or zero”-- Basically being nice to someone you will most likely never see again. The question isn’t IF people do that or not (it is known people do) but WHY. Different ideas on why we are altruistic: kin Selection- acts benefiting genetic relatives, reciprocal altruism- scratch my back ill scratch yours, indirect reciprocity- acts are given based reputation (not wanting a bad one) and signaling- signaling others you are nice so they should be nice to you. All those give back to the altruist. The collective argues that it’s none of that but instead, it is a genuine force not explained by those four mechanisms. Where they differ is on the origin of the altruistic behavior. Conclusions: Behavioral mechanisms are not perfect goal-seeking devices BUT INSTEAD, context-specific physiological systems that respond to environmental cues in order to engage what was, on average over the course of evolutionary history, the appropriate action. A study found humans would do more good to others and the environment when watched by a robot with human-like eyes.  Studies did find that cooperation increases when you add in Kinship. It was found that human cooperative mechanisms are not in equilibrium with our environment. They argue that there is a biological (proximate) and evolutionary (ultimate) logic to human cooperation. One theory is that our social environment (society) has advanced in a gene’s eye blink (really fast) and that our brains are the same, leaving humans with strange tendencies leftover from past eras. Leading to this being the answer to the puzzle. According to the collective “the moral sentiments that have lead people to value freedom, equality, and representative government is predicated upon strong reciprocity.” But we can not RELY on people being naturally nice due to any of the theories above (ex; pirate rule in 18th century or other war stuff) BUT b/c humans can not be relied upon for the good of the group we must craft social, economic, environmental and political interactions to ensure cooperation against selfish temptation.

Burnham, Terence C., and Dominic D. P. Johnson. “The Biological and Evolutionary Logic of Human Cooperation.” Analyse & Kritik, vol. 27, no. 1, Jan. 2005. OneSearch, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/auk-2005-0107

Can Altruism be unified (paper):

Published November 14th, 2015. Different kinds of altruism (ex. Biological/evolutionary altruism and psychological altruism.) Biological altruism focuses on fitness exchanges- what are the outcomes? Psychological altruism is based on the intentions- an act is Psychological, not due to the outcomes but due to the intentions of the actor. There are other forms that are not just biological or psychological- which we will call helping altruism. The goal of this paper is to clarify the taxonomy of altruism concepts and to consider whether this diversity merely constitutes distinct concepts loosely related and collected under the rubric of altruism or if there is a deeper unity. There is no set number amount of concepts of altruism, it depends on implied meanings in various uses of altruism. But a study in 2013 has made four (4) distinct concepts that are widely used but in this study, she is making several adjustments to that and making her own three (3). Biological Altruism- altruism tied to biological fitness. Linked to core behavioral dispositions (give example.) Psychological Altruism- The actor just wants good for others with no reward. Based on facts about the psychological states of individuals. (give example.) Helping Altruism- The concept that humans help other humans just for the sake of doing the action of helping someone. By definition, this behavior does not rely on an individual psychological state but as humans as a whole. (give example.) How are these all connected together? She argues that altruism is simply polysemous- that the same word is used for what are clearly distinct concepts. Claims since all are labeled altruism that they all have some kind of connection with them but they are all different. In the paper, it claims each type of altruism can be independent of the other two. Ex. assisted suicide could count as helping, despite being detrimental to fitness; tampering with birth control may be unhelpful, despite promoting biological fitness. (a nested view that they are all connected is wrong in her words.) But, she claims altruism is still all one big family of an idea. They are all altruism and any act that falls under those three is an altruistic ideal. She argues that there is a one big framework/framespace of altruism that you can look at to see how they are all connected. She then goes on to talk about how they are all connected together but I don’t really need that information or my paper.

Ramsey, Grant. “Can Altruism Be Unified?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci, vol. 56, Apr. 2016, pp. 32–38. EBSCOhost, DOI:10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.10.007.

The evolution of altruistic social preferences in human groups(paper): 

Published February 5th, 2016. This paper is about how altruism came to be. There are three hypothesis

Human cooperation is built on the same evolutionary foundations as cooperation in other animal societies, and that fundamental elements of the social preferences that shape our species’ cooperative behavior are also shared with other closely related primates. 

Selective pressures favoring cooperative breeding have shaped the capacity for cooperation and the development of social preferences and produced a common set of behavioral dispositions and social preferences in cooperatively breeding primates and humans. 

The third hypothesis is that humans have evolved derived capacities for collaboration, group-level cooperation and altruistic social preferences that are linked to our capacity for culture. 

Cooperation among unrelated individuals, who do not share direct genetic interests in offspring is uncommon in nature. Current evidence shows that other primates (specifically other chimps) cooperate in a number of contexts. This paper claims studies on altruism for both humans and chimps in controlled environments can give misleading data, it is really hard to study altruism in nature. Even so, it is obvious that humans cooperate more and with more partners than chimpanzees. The cooperative breeding hypothesis says that back in the day mothers needed help raising their offspring so it made a logical evolutionary practice to take care of other people. The cultural group selection hypothesis helps explain how human societies are able to combine high levels of altruism with low levels of relatedness. Cooperative breeding in humans may be part of a broader system of group-level cooperation ( Giving food to a family who didn’t have a successful hunt) 

Joan B. Silk, and Bailey R. House. “The Evolution of Altruistic Social Preferences in Human Groups.” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, vol. 371, no. 1687, 2016, p. 1. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.24768660&site=eds-live.

The Psychological Benefits of Receiving Real-Life Altruism (paper):

This paper talks about a big survey that was conducted in Venezuela. Since altruism is a human concept and not just an American one it is everywhere. The survey had 148 participants (79 men, 67 women, and 2 unknown) (all but 8 were born and raised in Venezuela.) Most were between the ages of 21-40 years old and had at least one college degree. The sample size responded to an online questionnaire about an experience where they got unexpected altruism and how they felt afterward and how it made them think about human nature. This paper is talking about the effects of altruism compared to the others I’ve looked at which normally ask where it came from or why. Out of the 148 people, 64.2% responded with an event of unexpected altruism and out of that 64.2 %, 75%  reported the experience changed their view of life at least strongly. Very few (4.2%) responded that it didn’t affect their views on life at all. Interestingly women were more likely to say they got a boost of gratitude in life than men. People who said that altruistic events made a strong impact on their life were more likely to be very religious. This study wanted to see the effects of receiving unexpected altruism. The foundings were that those who did experience an unexpected altruistic act had way better mental health than those who did not. 

Hoffman, Edward, et al. “The Psychological Benefits of Receiving Real-Life Altruism.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, vol. 60, no. 2, Mar. 2020, pp. 187–204. EBSCOhost, DOI:10.1177/0022167817690280.   

A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place - Egoistic Altruism (video):

Published March 18th, 2018. This video takes a different approach to the idea of Altruism. It claims that Altruism instead of being an evolutionary concept is a newer concept for our societies (besides kinship altruism.) It focuses more on the future of our societies rather than past societies. They used the terms zero-sum game (the output of economic “pie” would stay the same year by year unless taken) and positive-sum game (the “pie” was getting bigger each year giving people more “pie”.) The positive-sum game came from the industrial revolution. When people get what they want they don’t stop, instead of human nature is to then want something better and improve things for themselves. The positive-sum world has only existed for 0.1% of human history and people are not used to it. Claims that in a positive-sum world it is in your personal self best interests that every human is well of/ including people in countries you will never meet. The more people are well off the better your own life is. That is due to the fact that the better off people are the more people have the freedom and education to the positive-sum world making it better (like a circle kinda.) Improving the lives of those who are worse off has a multiplying effect. Here is an example: a Farmer in a small nation has no effect on you, but if you make him and his family better off then his kids could go to college and make new inventions or contribute to a social function that does affect you. (the research output of humanity would be many times what is it now.) You should want to make the world a better place for others, for your self. Reminds me of the expression the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago the second-best time to plant a tree is right now. I personally do not think this will happen. It is a good idea and one people should strive for I just can not see it happening in the real world. 

Kurzgesagt. “A selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place - Egoistic Altruism.” Youtube, March 18th, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ&feature=youtu.be. 

Peter Singer: The why and how of effective altruism (video): 

Published May 20th, 2013. This video starts off really dark talking about an event in China where a two-year-old girl was hit by a van and badly bleeding out, she was passed by 3 pedestrians who looked at her and walked past and run over by another van until a street cleaner sounded the alarm (she died.) Peter claims that there are still kids who are dying in the world every day (19,000) and even tho we are not walking past them if we aren’t helping them we are basically walking past them. He talks about a kind of altruism called effective altruism - basically altruism that you feel with both the heart and the head. Making sure you feel for what you are doing but also using your head to make sure that it is effective. 

Singer, Peter. TED. “Peter Singer: The why and how of effective altruism.” Youtube, May 20th, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Diuv3XZQXyc&feature=youtu.be

Neural, Cognitive, and evolutionary foundations of human altruism (paper):

This paper looks at altruism from a psychological and neural perspective. It looks at altruism evolutionary origins. Claims that all species’ acts are unified by common psychological and neural mechanisms. This article goes on about how if you look at nature from a Darwinism approach surely it doesn’t make sense for organisms to be altruistic. There are two different models of altruistic behavior that explain the conundrum of altruism. The first is kin selection. I have already written about kin selection a bit reviewing other sources but a quick recap of it is being altruistic to those you share a kinship too (found in chimps and monkeys a lot and other social animals.) Kin selection is thought to be a biological desire to help strengthen the overall groups survival rather than just individual survival. Kin selection is not very helpful at explaining human altruism because humans can be nice/feel a desire to be nice to total strangers. The other model is reciprocal altruism. I have also talked about this kind of altruism. It is behavior that is directed to non-kin. The general idea of reciprocal altruism is helping someone so you will get something back by helping them in a later date (you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours.) This paper explains the different kinds of reciprocal altruism: One is reward expectancy, the expectation you will be rewarded by being altruistic. Serotonin, it has been found that those with higher serotonin are more in favor of cooperation. Care-based altruism. Being altruistic by caring for your offspring or other vulnerable offspring. Alloparenting- is like care-based altruism but it is the enthusiastic care of parents towards infants, even babies that are not related to them. Empathic concern- otherwise known as empathy. This one is also relatively unconfirmed on what biological or psychological reason humans feel empathy towards other humans

Alloparenting is the most likely direct origin of care based altruism. Care based altruism is supported by oxytocinergic limbic structures like the amygdala. Conclusion of the paper: “Altruism is a central organizing principle among group-living mammals, and there are few species for which this is more evident than humans.” Human altruism is found frequently in human social interactions. This author thinks with the increase of interest in altruism that eventually we will be able to get a better understanding of the neural and psychological bases of altruism in humans.

Marsh, Abigail A. “Neural, Cognitive, and Evolutionary Foundations of Human Altruism.” WIREs: Cognitive Science, vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 2016, p. 59. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=112128886&site=eds-live.

A Simple and General Explanation for The Evolution of Altruism (paper):

This paper starts off with the puzzle of where altruism fits in the evolutionary theory. (natural selection and survival of the fittest). How can natural selection favor individuals that carry helping traits, over those that carry selfish ones? This paper is meant to provide a fundamental explanation for how altruistic traits evolve. This article pulls on a lot of examples of human behavior such as the public goods game and the prisoner’s dilemma. There is actually an equation for the best results and outcomes for the public goods game. The desire of this paper is to find out how altruistic genotypes are chosen through natural selection over selfish genotypes. The model of the equation can be modified for other situations as well. The problem with this article and equation is it does not factor in environmental variables. This paper does argue that the evolution of altruism is the same for all species. Just like in almost every other source I have looked at, they credit kin selection and reciprocal altruism to be the biggest backing of how altruism evolved. By the end of this article, it accurately defined different terms but did not come up with a conclusion. In fact, in my opinion, the last paper I read was simpler and easier to follow. 

Jeffrey A. Fletcher, and Michael Doebeli. “A Simple and General Explanation for the Evolution of Altruism.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 276, no. 1654, Jan. 2009, p. 13. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=35363018&site=eds-live.

Other notes that I like: 

(Darwin 1859, ch. 6) “Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect which… inevitably causes the death of the insect” Origin of Species. This caused a problem in Darwin’s theory of natural selection because his idea of survival of the fittest would get rid of behavior like this. 

The traditional views of both evolutionary biology and psychology left little room for altruism. (Darwinism and self preservice) 

[logothanatos]

Bataille v. Kant on Universality

This may or may not end up being a sort of preliminary comparative analysis of Bataille and Kant's respective takes on universality, as opposed to something more thorough. After all, it may seem as if Bataille doesn't say too much regarding universality--at least not explicitly. Of course, this is not really true insofar as Bataille develops normativity in terms of universality--namely, at the very beginnings of Erotism: Death and Sensuality Bataille precisely develops the case for the presence of the taboo as culturally universal despite what may be brought to hand as empirical violations of these very taboos.

Bataille and Kant on the Problem of Cultural Universality

The Investigation of Cultural Universals

After all, it would seem that no matter what norms are considered as "culturally universal"--key rites of passage for example--these norms can always turn up an exception. Easiest to observe is the fact that supposed norms against murder and incest nonetheless seem to be asserted as present irrespective of the aggregate level at which these very behaviors are partaken in, in a community. In other words, the sociologist and the anthropologist, when making claims about the presence of cultural universals, immediately confront the difficulty of scientifically bringing into account such universality. The measure of the presence of a norm seems to be impeded by the fact that norms themselves are internally comprised of the contradictories of an idealization of the social functioning of the given society, insofar as the society itself is seen as actually endorsing its own professed aspirations, and of the observed dynamics of behavior in that society in spite of such professions. To be able to measure, then, the presence of norms in a society is at the same time to necessarily presuppose precisely that more hidden relation between what is professed and what is not done, for otherwise there would seem to be an impossibility of the very idea of a cultural universal.

Nonetheless, with the presupposition acquired, the very objectivity of that cultural universality would seem to empty itself into a subjective generalization of the defense of the cohesion necessary to the given norms. Thus, the norms immediately turn into the empty rituals of institutional mechanisms of enforcement at the same time that the norms achieve only a subjective reality. For this very reason, the anthropologist and sociologist who see themselves as reasonable and empirical sacrifice the initial objective search for cultural universals, in order to initiate the objective search of institutional dynamics instead. The institution, in this case, is the universal, or the cultural universal. But this is merely a sly act of moving the goalpost, for the institution is precisely predicated on the lack of universality--that is to say, its internal structure and function leeches off cultural particularities so that it may persist. This temporal persistence evidences a kind of universality, but it's not a universality of culture--it's a universality of both the technical and the social. It is also only a contingent universality, as not all institutions survive the test of time, and not all of them arose in some perennial fashion. In this way, any generalizability of the institution itself already rests in the aforementioned presupposition immanent to the given culture itself.

Kant and Bataille's Respective Solutions

How, then, does one make an objective case for cultural universality? By abandoning this very project of empirical objectivity. Here is where Kant and Bataille seem to have some agreement. When expounding on universality, in this case of culture (or a sort of descriptive ethics), there must be a formalistic approach--it cannot be merely empirical. Where Kant and Bataille would nonetheless disagree is that the former thinks this involves an objective process of extraction from empirical content or a normative process of confirmation built into the relevant propositions about culture (which renders it a priori while nonetheless synthetic), while the latter thinks the investigation of the form of culture or the community involves precisely an investigation into the structures of objective, external facts and observations to see what they say about subjectivity. Kant, in other words, sees the problem in terms of the conditions of possibility for thinking culture and community which one cannot get behind and which transcend all experience of culture and community, while Bataille sees this problem in terms of the conditions of possibility for culture and community as such evident in the structure produced and enacted by cultural and communal participants. In other words, there is a methodical difference. Bataille, then, retreats precisely into the structure of the subjectivity which grounds the relations amongst the objective facts observed in culture, rather than to the objective features necessary to an epistemic access to culture and community (e.g., the properties of thoughts or propositions regarding some object--e.g., culture or community--which render them intelligible and truth-functional). The result of Kant's method would be close to mere definition (whether analytic or synthetic), while the result of Bataille's method would be an exposition of the dynamics inherent to the production of culture. Bataille, in this sense, is more in line with Hegelianism (and Heideggerianism) than Kantianism, although he still breaks from all of these thinkers in that both Hegel and Heidegger still posit their own version of a transcendent (respectively, the teleological terminus or the ontological difference/gap).

To be fair, of course, Heidegger and Hegel's respective "transcendents" are a lot more ambiguous than Kant's insofar as they precisely either violate the dichotomies Kant constructs, or otherwise posit a functional binary that, in being ontological rather than epistemic, obliterates the problem of realism and epistemic access (or at the least, their relevance). Of course, it also may be somewhat unfair to depict Kant as blind to the subjectively enacted structure necessary to community. After all, insofar as his social/political philosophy, Kant seems to have an awareness of the impossibility of perfectly following the categorical imperative--particularly in public life--and seems to understand rather implicitly, as in his philosophy of religion, that there is a sort of assent to the community as such (the commitment to the existence of the community as a prerequisite to its flourishing) which is requisite for being bound to morality. In Kant's case, this community is idealized as religion, and the metaphysical notions within a religion are precisely of a practical import to the creation and sustenance of the community. That is to say, individual caprice can be subject to the ideal of duty-for-its-own-sake most optimally only when a means of rational discourse and deliberation is present, and this is present only when the notion of existent community is assented to without need of proof (when the idea of the most perfect and rational being is assented to as a matter of faith). This is why Kant's concept of faith plays an important part in his epistemology--without it, there would be a disunity between his epistemology and normative ethics. It's also a way of solving the issue of being bound to Kant's notion of proper morality, while the fulfillment of that notion in the aggregate of the public arena is practically impossible.

But this merely brings us back to the original problem. Rather than synthesize it, Kant's approach sustains the contradiction: the community or culture (or God) exists by means of its lack of existence. This may of course not be surprising given Kant thinks there are limits to reason (exemplified in his exposition of the antinomies of pure reason). Nonetheless its worth noting the inadequate attempt at tying the knot back together. The subjective provision for the objective lack of community/culture/God (via faith in the lack of this lack of community/culture/God) is done as a matter of moral necessity. Is it not clear in that case that, in the context of trying to resolve the problem of (descriptive) cultural universals, Kant would merely lapse back into the methodically confused investigation of the sociologists and anthropologists as previously explained? With practical reason, the divisions of a priori, a posteriori, synthetic and analytic judgment break down. Given Kant's approach to morality, this is made invisible by the treatment of ethical claims as a priori synthetic claims insofar as they rely on a metaphysics--but the result of such a notion is precisely that ethical claims fail to fulfill their function, even by Kant's own standards, without faith deployed in metaphysics, which disregards the requirements of a priori synthetic claims.

This outcome, of course, does not so much prove Kant entirely wrong as it much more proves the limitations of his framing--namely, his understanding of universality. Of course, one can argue that Kant's notion of a priori synthetic truth precisely suggests some unity of normativity and evidentiality or justification that may be compatible with his notion of faith, as for such type of truth propositional meaning and method of confirmation are in unity. This is simply not the case, however, as his notion of faith is precisely not about a provision of evidence or justification--it is disconnected from this epistemic concern, precisely so a priori synthetic claims have full force. Notice the structure of what occurs here: practical reason, which relies on a grounding metaphysics, must take an exception to its own grounding so that its aspect of practicality remain intact. In other words, we've landed back to moving the goalpost from the issue of normativity (the existence of descriptive cultural universals) to that of institutional dynamics (the action/reaction patterns of social actors). Indeed, one is also immediately reminded of the structure of Bataille's notion of the taboo.

For Bataille, the universal is not so much found in its global applicability as precisely in its particularity--it has a precise and particular relationship to the possibilities of experience as a whole, and this whole is not exhausted in it but, rather, must always pass through it. Thus, the particular character of the exceptions to an otherwise universal is itself supremely important to whether the universal is indeed actually absent or obliterated. When one mentions the exceptions to a cultural universal it is necessary to look at the character of these exceptions to see if they precisely constitute that universality. In other words, how the purported exceptions are necessary to that universality. How is it possible to distinguish this? Bataille isn't clear, but throughout Erotism: Death & Sensuality there's a sentiment that any exception which finds its necessity in the universal or whose practice must be rationalized through the constraints of the universal is constitutive of that very universal. For example, when Bataille discusses the taboo on violence, this taboo is for him culturally universal, despite that violence nonetheless exists in various cultures. But this violence nonetheless occurs always from the standpoint of this prohibition--either the violence infects those who, in its enthrallment, are both threatened and aroused into their own explosion of violence for the sake of snuffing out the violence confronted and effectively stopping it in its tracks, even if at the danger of succumbing entirely to this very violence, or the violence is given a habitual and regulated procedure of enactment such that it must incorporate an antithetic movement towards the affirmation of the scandal that is that violence. Consequently, cultures are equally fascinated and disturbed by violence precisely because it is universally prohibited. In sum, for Bataille, the universal could be seen as merely a particularity privileged as the frame of reference through which its negated contra-possibility is structured. E.g., "non-violence" is privileged as the frame of reference through which the real and undeniable possibility of violence is engaged and made intelligible. Unexceptional exceptions are what Bataille terms "transgressions."

Universality in the Categorical Imperative

Admittedly, Kant's discussion of universality of normative ethics is being treated as transferable to a discussion of descriptive ethics (or, cultural universals), while Bataille's discussion of descriptive ethics (or, cultural universals) is being treated as transferable to a discussion of normative ethics. But in fact, insofar as the implications of the thesis of universalism is extremely similar whether applied in normative or descriptive ethics, I believe I am justified in making this seemingly asymmetric comparison/contrast. There is nonetheless a difference between normative and descriptive ethics, but this is precisely where the implications of, say, Bataille's views become interesting as they cross-pollinate with concerns in normative ethics, especially in the context of Kant. Famously, Kant's categorical imperative legislates the moral law on the basis of internal conceptual coherence of some verbal phrase in an imperative, provided its own conditions of effective possibility. That is to say, in the example of whether one should  lie when a murderer is asking about the location of his victim, the condition for the effective possibility of telling a lie is that there is some standard of honesty as a frame of reference by which the lie can be made. But if one suppose everybody lied all the time, lying would be inherently impossible. Hence, it fails the test, and lying is no longer a moral option.

Relation between the Categorical and Hypothetical Imperative

While Kant disassociates this categorical imperative from the hypothetical imperative, given that its supposed to be unconditional, it is possible to analyze the categorical imperative in terms of the hypothetical imperative. After all, despite Kant's banishment of the passions as arbitrary sources of moral decision-making, it is necessary that Kant extract his purely rational ethical formalism through abstracting from these desires and passions, thereby entering into the cognitive site of discourse by which rational deliberation is made upon the economy of desire, yet in spite of it. Which is to say, where pain or any other emotion may so be deliberately undertaken for the sake of the rationality of some decision, and no decision made for the sake of the passions and desires. But essentially what this means is simply to isolate reason from the material accidents which spur such passions and desires, and thereby to distill any empirical content (the observation of the fact that we "feel" like doing something or "enjoy" doing it [or otherwise]) as source of justification for our actions from rational deliberation. This is so even if the undertaking of action must, after this, still find itself under the forces of the experiential world and confront them.

Hence, in the context of the hypothetical imperative, what Kant is essentially doing is subtracting the accidental character of the antecedent: "If I want eggnog, then I must go and buy it at the liquor store." While there may be reason, material or otherwise, to mentally associate the given content of the consequent with the antecedent, the antecedent, despite its lack of dependence in this context as the clause that stands as independent variable in the conditional, is largely accidental. For the subject need not want eggnog. It could aim for any sort of thing. So, what Kant is trying to do is make this un-accidental by reducing the antecedent to its formal nature, susceptible to purely rational deliberation: "If I want X, then I must go and buy it at the liquor store." While "want" gives a sense of passion and desire, it could be seen as a trivial expression for "aim": "If I aim for X, then I must go and buy it at the liquor store." The subject here has a variable aim whose value is, if analyzed simply in terms of the possibility of what may be aimed for, rationally discernible in terms of the weighing of logical possibilities. The logical possibilities are already delimited by Kant's own valuation of the subject as, via rationality, a self-controlled and self-legislating, and thereby free, subject. They are also delimited precisely by the distillation given his exposition of the forms of knowledge: this aim must be both a priori and universal. Indeed, also synthetic insofar as this aim is not already thought in any of these particular aims, even in combination. They may or may not be contradictory at any given time, but this would not tell us much about their decidability as this contradiction does not conceptually derive from these aims. Nonetheless, contradiction is another thing to avoid, but what contradictions matter? Those that derive from application. Already, the unity of universality with applicability--the practical expression of universality--arises. The universal applicability of what, then? Of some maxim, as a maxim sums up an aim in its generality. That, in sum, is the categorical imperative.

In this way, the given aim--the categorical imperative, or its allowable maxims--can be inserted for any other aim into the hypothetical imperative, but consequently disbanding a subset of the possible aims by also restricting the consequent. In fact, the consequent is largely irrelevant except in this act of restraint on possible ends. Notice that the consequent takes the nature of a means for achieving the antecedent likewise the nature of the causal/logical outcome of the antecedent. In other words, the means by which one abides by the maxims allowed for by the categorical imperative (as well as more unsurprisingly, the material consequences) are irrelevant. The means, through their irrelevance, are an indirect way through which to restrict achievement of the aims to those means which precisely abide by the aims, for their sake. The relationship between the means and the aim here seem reciprocal, but they are not--the mean is subordinate to the end. They are asymmetric simply because of the very functional difference between the antecedent and consequent clause of a conditional: in completely abstracting and formalizing the antecedent, what is being done is a contradictory movement whereby the consequent, whose conceivable content is dependent on the content of the antecedent, plays no content-based role in relation to the antecedent. That is, it loses its role as means or effect, and so leads to the disconnection of action from both those conditions necessary to act (means) and those effects which may or may not affect the presence of such necessary conditions (of such means). The issue, then, is that the categorical imperative restricts the moral possibilities far more than is rationally necessary (e.g., the categorical imperative would seem to restrict one from killing another relentless person trying to kill oneself [killing is non-universalizable]), but also does the opposite in another respect (e.g., the categorical imperative cannot decide between a maxim of self-defense v. that of pacifism--even as it restricts one from killing another relentless person trying to kill oneself!).

Issues with the Categorical Imperative

First, in applying a criterion of coherently, logically possible universal applicability to the aim or end alone, it assumes that the resultant incoherence of a universal case is somehow transferable to the actual case such that a value judgment can follow directly from it. There is simply no reason to assume this even with Kant's rationalist approach. Even if we treat autonomous actors as ends-in-themselves, this does not mean non-universalizeable actions violate this treatment given that non-universalizeable actions can in fact protect the necessary conditions for other people's exercise of their autonomy, or may involve a dilemma in which two actor's autonomies' are mutually exclusive (the perfect [Kantian] example of the latter is whether one should lie to a killer about the whereabouts of his victim, while an example of the former would be something like homosexuality). In addition, even if we take that autonomous activity which is an end-in-itself to be precisely characterized by abiding to the categorical imperative rather than the possibility of doing so, it would then not be autonomy in Kant's sense. If non-universalizeable actions or maxims a priori negate the presence of autonomy then Kant has betrayed his own notion of autonomy by which freedom is expressed in terms of self-legislation. If it is required that one decide not to kill oneself, for example, so that autonomy is to have been exercised, then it would seem respect of the moral law supersedes the mere possibility (thus freedom) of respecting it when it comes to the presence or lack thereof of autonomy. Again, this would be bizarre, even if it would be consistent with his condemnations of suicide, given another of Kant's objections to lying is that it withdraws others' ability to exercise autonomy in their decisions (suggesting that it is the possibility to act out of duty that makes autonomy what it is, rather than conformism to the moral law).

Further, even if we take that, while non-universalizable action does not necessarily violate treating autonomous actors as ends-in-themselves, it is still immoral based on the categorical imperative, the fact that that which is tested for universal applicability is one's aim (whether understood as action or translated as maxim) is actually entirely arbitrary on the part of Kant. Testing one's aim for coherently, logically possible universal applicability is testing just one aspect of action--thinking actions can be morally valuated in a way intrinsic to that action, which is also to say in terms of good will, does not necessitate they be evaluated only as (logically possible) ends. Even further, it seems this cognitive universalizing of a maxim or action is largely merely a heuristic and not strictly a rational affair: for example, that effective lying universalized is in tension with its presupposition of a frame of reference of expected honesty and the presence of truth, does not make the scenario presented incoherent. It is enough for there to be a possibility of truth for lying to likewise be logically possible, and so a case of universal effective lying has nothing incoherent about it. It is not even a performative contradiction. It would be like saying that universal darkness is impossible because darkness assumes a frame of reference where one could conceive of the presence of light. The fallacy is just less obvious because we're dealing in the "ought" realm.

A Bataillian Take on Universal Imperatives

The real concern here, again, would have to do with the conditions of possibility for lying. Once that is realized, however, the categorical imperative ceases to make much sense--the test of universal applicability doesn't really tell us about the conditions of possibility for lying, besides that condition in which honesty must be a logical possibility as well, at the very least. What's of real relevance, then, are the material conditions under which lying could obtain, but even more the conditions, rational or otherwise, where it would or should obtain--simply thinking of the conditions under which it could not logically obtain leaves us empty-handed as to its value in any possible conditions. If indeed it could not obtain without a frame of reference of actually expected honesty and actually-occurring frequent honesty, as well as the existence of truth, then this is merely a factual case of implausibility (or in the case of an absence of truth, impossibility), wherein the implausibility or impossibility is through some sort of moral alchemy transformed into a value judgment that transfers over cases where it is in fact plausible or possible.

First of all, why is universalized lying's implausibility or impossibility married to lying being bad? If its to do with the notion of a rational ethics (e.g., lack of contradictions are the criterion rather than the limitation of ethical judgment), then it is the resultant irrationality of the universalized act that is immoral, and not the act itself. Bringing up respect for autonomy here as a defense doesn't exactly help as it merely raises objections already made previously. Especially given the autonomy nonetheless assumes a capacity for rational, and thereby universal, moral judgment (predicated on this very logic!)--and it is this capacity which requires we treat others as equally capable legislators of morality (i.e., that we respect their autonomy!). Would not a universal morality require that the goodness or badness of an act obtain regardless of whether everyone was or was not doing it? In which case, what relevance would its badness in a scenario of the act's own implausibility/impossibility have in demonstrating the possibility of the universality of morality as opposed to the morality of something universalized? If rationality were what were key it would seem that an autonomous agent would have to admit to being lost precisely in the seeming accident of aims. There is no need to be a consequentialist to see that our ends only gain any discreteness as a result of the properties of the very objects of our aims--their bounds, their relations, their structure (topology), their causality, their contingency. Hence, our aims are never isolated, but collide and intercourse with each other, in ways not merely accidentally related to the aforementioned external factors. If true moral claims must be synthetic, it would be a testament to this fact.

Kant here is simply performing the move of the exception yet again to get out of this rut, as this is precisely what gives the enactment of his morality an aura of impossibility, and thus of absurd harshness of moral judgment--that  is why Kant's political-juridical notions seem at times far removed from his normative ethics. Bataille allows us, with his own notion of universality, to think this very exception Kant performs back into Kant, as woven more directly into a synthesis of his philosophy. Not only does a universal ethic allow for lower-order precepts, actions, or granular moral valuations which cannot be universalized in the way Kant wishes but may still hold correct in lieu of the highest-order universal precept, action, or value--and thus already accounts for exceptions to ethical judgment that apply universally--but the universality of one's aim is largely irrelevant the possibility of universal morality. The universal ethic is not universal because it is applied to an object thought of, or which actually is, universal--this is Kant's mistake--but because the object of the universal ethic is irrelevant.

It may seem as if Kant agrees with this, but he doesn't--he rails against any particular, empirically filthy aims determining the moral law, but only to take the rational form of the aim as such and extrapolate an aim from it, however abstract (e.g., the "maxim"), which all are subject to. This is precisely why for Kant it is not enough to simply conform to the maxim--it must have been one's deliberate aim, e.g. it must be that one acted out of duty. So, he still technically holds to the relevance of the aim, and thus of the universality of the object of moral judgment, as relevant to the establishment or demonstration of a universal normative ethics. In other words, contrary to Kant, the universality of a moral "law"--under a universality holding a similar structure to Bataille's taboo--holds by virtue of a particular relation this law has to "the whole." That is, a relation such that any action, maxim, etc., passes through it even if it is not exhausted by it. Hence, under a Bataillian normative ethics, exceptions do not count against the universality of the moral law insofar as they precisely constitute the conditions of possibility for the binding nature of the moral law. This take, therefore, sees the universal moral law as, while applied by individuals, only rendered possible at the societal systemic level, via institutions insofar as institutions provide the medium through which exceptions to the moral law are incorporated or taken into account at this societal-systemic level. Thus, in this case the individual subject's ethical position on what comprises this moral law also immediately forces always a confrontation with the whole of society, requiring the enactment of that moral law's ownmost exception insofar as a reflection of its impossibility within that society. That is, the moral law, whatever it may be, even if it should be followed by everyone at all times, is nonetheless regrettably capable of challenge if done as a testimony to the societal impossibility of this moral law and done in the spirit of this law.