#so when i say halman is canon i do mean it in the actual romantic ship sense as well

[oflgtfol]

sorry to be 2001-posting yet again on this fine evening but god . i don’t think i’ll ever be over the fact that halman is canon

the first movie has hal be this Ominous Red Eye Whose Gonna Get You!!!! and in the book he’s more sympathetic but he also like, killed everyone but bowman, like. like he killed numerous people. i find hal such a compelling character because of how he toes the line between man and machine, and how that feeds into his moral ambiguity, and so it’s always irked me how in the movie he’s portrayed as just straight up The Bad Guy, no ambiguity about it. but then the few times i dip my head into the 2001 tag on tumblr i see like the same 3 people who then go the opposite extreme and woobify hal so that He Did Nothing Wrong and it’s like. IDK. i feel like both extremes just do not do his character justice. he isn’t the bad guy. but he’s also not the good guy. he did fucked up shit but it’s hard to judge him using human morality since he literally is not human

he’s such a complex and interesting character and his relationship with bowman in the first book/movie really reflected that moral ambiguity. he never meant bowman any harm, but like.... the situation was still fucked up... hal still killed literally everyone else on the discovery one, forcing bowman to shut him down, basically killing hal in one of the most haunting scenes i’ve ever read or watched.... it’s one of the things that really stuck out to me about 2001 as a whole and like at least 50% of why this story still lives rent free in my mind

but then like. the sequels. just throw that out the window. hal apparently becomes the protagonist in the 2nd book (movie?)?? and by the end of it, bowman asks the alien thingies to Transcend hal? like literally WHAT?? didnt u just fucking dismantle hal one excruciating memory block at a time? did we not just hear hal’s haunting last words and hear his robotic voice glitch out as he basically died?!?!?! did we not also see hal kill poole by sending him out to suffocate in space? and bowman had to retrieve the body?? and by the time he got back to the ship, everyone else was also dead by hal’s actions?? LIKE DID THAT NOT ALL HAPPEN?

literally HOW do you go from that weird predator vs prey relationship, fight for survival kinda deal.... and then bowman’s just like, oh hey lol. i want you to Transcend with me and live together for the rest of eternity...?!? LIKE WHAT? like 1. hal was his COWORKER and 2. HE KILLED PEOPLE like WHERE did this attitude come from ITS LITERALLY SO WEIRDDDDD

and THEN. BY THE LAST BOOK. THEY’VE NOT ONLY BEEN LIVING ALONE TOGETHER AS DIVINE BEINGS FOR THE PAST FEW THOUSAND YEARS.... BUT THEN THEY ALSO MERGE INTO A SINGLE BEING? LITERALLY NAMED HALMAN OF ALL THINGS??? like an actual fucking fandom ship name kinda deal, but CANON?!?!?!

like i just do not understand how you go from killing each other in some fucked up game of survival driven to the brink by isolation in space..... to then merging into a single being. like the tonal whiplash is fucking staggering. it sounds like some sort of crack fic you’d find buried on fanfiction.net from like 2006. and you cant even say these are just weird sequels that shouldn’t be considered canon, BECAUSE ARTHUR C. CLARKE WROTE THE SEQUELS HIMSELF... why would you make your OWN franchise into some crack shit??

LIKE THE WHOLE SITUATION IS JUST SOOO BAFFLING AND I WONT EVER GET OVER IT. ITS SOO FUNNY BUT SOO GENUINELY BAFFLING

and i feel like he didnt intend for it to be romantic but i mean like literally. literally........ who fucking transcends to live with a coworker (WHO YOU TRIED TO KILL, AND WHO KILLED YOU) to live with him for all of eternity, and then merge with him into a single being? LIKE LITERALLY I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. I DONT UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS GOING ON IN HIS MIND. I JUST DONT GET IT. WHAT OTHER EXPLANATION IS THERE OTHER THAN THAT ITS ROMANTIC? THE NAME IS LITERALLY HALMAN FOR GOD’S SAKE