#DID A SINGLE OTHER HUMAN BEING REVIEW THIS BEFORE SHIPPING IT OUT

[hamletthedane]

my brother just called me late at night, barely able to get two words out because he was laughing so hard. Finally, through the wheezing, he told me “go google the new Gollum game. Please”

So I did. And now I just spent half an hour on the phone nearly dying. We just kept sending eachother pictures of Gollum from the game and LOSING IT all over again. I haven’t laughed this hard in YEARS.

#gollum game #lotr #jrrt and Christopher Tolkien are both rolling in their graves while I’m rolling on the floor #WHY DOES HE LOOK LIKE THAT #WHY IS IT SO FUNNY #DID A SINGLE OTHER HUMAN BEING REVIEW THIS BEFORE SHIPPING IT OUT #THIS IS GLORIOUS CHANGE NOTHING

[rjalker]

A Murderbot Diaries fanfiction

Title: Symptom of Something Worse

Word count: 12,429

Set immediately at the end of a canon divergent Network Effect, so has some spoilers for that.

Summary: Tarik comes to see Murderbot in MedBay to ask for some clarification about its pronouns, only for this conversation to turn out much more stressful than either of them could have seen coming...

Warnings: Mentions of abuse. Middle-school health class level discussion of genitals by their scientific names in regards to gender not being reliant upon them.

Started on March 20th, 2024, Finished fully March 28th 2024.

(Please note: The Internet Archive is down while I am typing this post, so these links may not work. I'll edit this post when it comes back up) You can listen to the audiobook version here, with and follow along with the transcript here, which is different from this text version. It’s an hour and 6 minutes long. You are encouraged to download it.

You can also read this on Fanfiction.net if you want to leave an anonymous review if you're shy.

Fun fact: You gain +10 Comprehension points if you've read The Imperial Radch before you read this. Wink wink nudge nudge you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Tarik came to see Murderbot while it was still confined to the MedBay while A.R.T. did its best to fix Murderbot’s various catastrophic injuries.

The ‘fix the broken Murderbot’ thing was even slower going than usual, not only because of the extent and nature of Murderbot’s injuries, but because A.R.T. itself was still recovering from its own ordeal, and wasn’t back up to normal functionality yet, despite all its bluster to the contrary.

Now Murderbot knew what it was like being on the other end of the ‘someone who is very clearly not okay insists it’s okay’. Now it kinda felt bad for the humans who had to see it get an arm ripped off while it insisted it was fine.

You know, in theory, having a single supercomputer in charge of all the onboard systems of a ship seems like it should be a great idea. In practice, though, it meant that when A.R.T. was debilitated, so were all of its systems.

The only things functioning normally were things like emergency medkits and other items with their own built in, independant systems. Everything else required A.R.T.’s control.

Before Tarik had came in, he had both knocked on the closed hatch, and sent Murderbot a friendly ping on the feed. He didn’t know it could see him through the tiny camera drone it’d left hanging on the ceiling above the door to guard the corridor. A.R.T. would have let Murderbot use its cameras system, but they were still nonfunctional, and A.R.T.’s internal sensors were way too overwhelming for a simple SecUnit. One thing that should be noted that A.R.T. had also told Murderbot Tarik was on his way even before its camera saw him. It was at least nice enough to do that.

Even to Murderbot, as bad as it usually was at understanding humans, it was obviously that Tarik wanted to wait outside for it to give him permission to come in, like he would have for any human who was in a private room.

This was a nice gesture.

Unfortunately, A.R.T. opened the door before Murderbot could even think about doing anything, because A.R.T. liked to control everything, like the asshole it was.

Now that the disaster was mostly over and everyone was starting to relax, it was pretty obvious that A.R.T.’s humans were trying to practice the ‘make sure it knows it’s allowed to say no’ routine not only with 3 and 5, but with Murderbot, too. A.R.T. had told them all about it, apparently. Murderbot wished it hadn’t.

And all of the humans going out of their way to ask for its ~consent~ (a fancy word for permission, which it was still getting used to, even after all the time it’d spent on Preservation) before doing things in regards to it would have been really nice, if only A.R.T. would stop ruining it by making all the decisions anyways, without giving Murderbot a chance to make up its mind one way or the other.

It would have liked the opportunity to decide for itself if it wanted to let Tarik in or not, you know. It would at least have been one thing it got to choose in this situation. But it couldn’t even have that.

::We both know you would have opened the door anyways.:: A.R.T. said condescendingly when Murderbot let it feel its annoyance through the feed.

Well, I say ‘let it’ feel its annoyance, but there was really nothing Murderbot could do to stop A.R.T. from looking through its brain whenever it wanted, but whatever.

And...Yeah. There was no arguing with A.R.T. once it decided it was right. And it always thought it was right.

Murderbot still hadn’t gotten over the fact that it had had to apologize for calling A.R.T. a fucker for fucking kidnapping it and almost getting its humans killed before A.R.T. would apologize for doing the exact things Murderbot had called it a fucker for doing.

You know, the whole kidnapping thing. Which was still ongoing if you really thought about it. They had all been brought there by A.R.T.’s machinations (Murderbot had just learned that word from a book) against their will. Murderbot still didn’t know how many people had died when A.R.T had attacked their research ship.

And even if by some absurd miracle everyone had managed to survive, it was undisputable that at least some, if not most, of the humans would develop lasting trauma from the assault, either physical or psychological, or both.

Amena had been pinned in place in collapsed laboratory on a ship that was under attack by an unknown hostile, and as far as she’d been aware, the whole vessel could have been torn apart at any moment. The metal that had pinned her down had been too heavy for Kanti, the only other suvivor in the room with her, to lift, leaving them with no choice but to scream desperately for help while Kanti cut her hands and arms bloody trying to pry the broken door open with a geology chisel.

Murderbot could only hope that Kanti had gotten back to the baseship in time, but there was no way to know.

And there was no telling what had happened to the baseship itself, and everyone who had been aboard.

The only ones whose status it knew were firmly in the ‘alive’ category was Amena, and Drs. Overse, Arada, Ratthi, and Thiago. All of the adults had suffered from toxic air inhalation among other physical traumas in their attempt to rescue Amena and itself.

But they were alive, at least.

No thanks to A.R.T.

Amena was a child who’d been trapped, injured, and afraid for her life. And then she’d witnessed what she thought was Murderbot’s violent death, and been dragged around by people under the hostile influence of alien artifacts.

And then she’d had to watch Murderbot kill those people right in front of her, and not in a way that was intended to be efficient and cause the least amount of pain as possible. There was no other way to describe what it’d done. It’d gone on a rampage. A violent, bloody, gorey rampage.

It wasn’t Murderbot’s finest moment, to say the least.

And after witnessing this, Amena had had no one to depend upon for her safety except for Murderbot itself, the one who’d just murdered people in front of her. And then Ras had died, and Eletra had almost died, and Amena had known that there was something deeply wrong with Murderbot, even while they were still being hunted by more of the brainwashed humans, and the entire time she’d been under the impression that it hated her.

And that wasn’t even all of the trauma she’d gone through since A.R.T. had kidnapped them all.

Amena was just one person out all the people who’d been on their baseship. She was going to have to spend a lot of time in trauma recovery therapy.

And Murderbot hadn’t even started processing any of the trauma it’d gone through yet. Even stuck inside the medchamber, it was doing everything it could to keep its mind off its injuries, and the other events of the past 83 hours. It couldn’t afford to have another mental breakdown when they were still in danger. It’d been trying to keep itself busy by talking to Amena when she was awake, and reading different versions of ancient legends from Earth.

It was very purposefully not watching visual media, because that’s what A.R.T. wanted to do.

Even though A.R.T. had its crew back, they still couldn’t leave, because it was the only non-openly-murderously-hostile way in or out of this system.

And it was refusing to leave the system until the mission it’d originally come here to do was complete, even though it meant continuing to hold them all as kidnapping victims.

And what, exactly, was that original mission? To steal the planet from the corporation that was trying to claim ownership of it.

Also known as: Something incredibly high-risk and likely to get them fired upon. Meaning more threats against the people Murderbot had signed up to protect.

Also, to back up a bit and state it for the record: whether or not Murderbot would have also chosen to open the door isn’t the point. The point is that it was supposed to be allowed to make decisions for itself, not have A.R.T. make them for it.

Why did A.R.T. constantly parrot parts of the trauma therapy stuff at Murderbot like ‘Check in with your emotions!!’ and ‘ground yourself in the present!!’ if A.R.T. wasn’t actually going to let Murderbot make decisions for itself? And full offense, what the fuck was the point in Murderbot ‘grounding itself in the present’ if the present situation was the reason it needed grounding in the first place?

Whatever.

At least A.R.T.’s crew seemed friendly. They didn’t approve of A.R.T. kidnapping people, and kept apologizing while also thanking Murderbot for rescuing them. It thought guilt was part of the reason they kept going out of their way to try and give it a choice in things. It wasn’t their fault A.R.T. was such an asshole. They clearly couldn’t get it to do anything it didn’t want to do any more than Murderbot could.

Tarik, unaware of the tension his arrival had brought back to the surface, stepped into the room, and took a moment to look around at all the empty medical chambers that lined the walls before he finally spotted Murderbot in the far side of the room from the door.

The medical chambers were designed so that they could turn to recline, or be upright, or any position in between. The chamber Murderbot was in had been turned forward so that it was propped mostly upright, so it wouldn’t be so awkward for humans to talk to it. And by less awkward, it mean less awkward for it. The humans probably wouldn’t have cared, they were all being so gracious and apologetic about the whole ‘sorry our asshole transport kidnapped you’ thing. But Murderbot did mind. It didn’t enjoy eye contact, but it disliked having to look up at humans from lying down even more, especially while it was in a medical chamber with tiny mechanical arms moving around trying to sew and cauterize it back together.

It’d gotten severe burns all across its torso and one arm, and the other arm...well, you already know what it had done to its wrist. And if you don’t already know, just imagine something horrible and don’t try to think about it too deeply. It was gross and horrific, that’s really all you need to know.

It wasn’t wearing any clothes, because they would have gotten in the way of the medchamber’s work. Fortunately, the glass casing could be made opaque (which is a fancy word for not-see-throughable) or transparent at will through the feed, so no one would be able to see anything Murderbot didn’t want them to.

It would have liked to keep the whole thing opaque, so they couldn’t see anything at all, but A.R.T. insisted that Murderbot had to show its face when humans were talking to it, because otherwise it was rude. Again with the A.R.T. does whatever it wants no matter what anyone else says, thing. It never seemed to get tired of it.

A.R.T. was going to do whatever it wanted, and if you didn’t like it, you could walk out the airlock any time you wanted.

So Murderbot had no choice in keeping the glass opaque, just like it’d had no choice in being kidnapped.

It opened its eyes to watch the dark coating on the glass vanish within a few moments of Tarik coming through the doorway, giving it a view straight across the room at the empty medchamber on the other side. The blue-grey metal was shiny in the lights from the deep cleaning A.R.T. had started of every surface.

At the moment, its few functional drones were scrubbing every surface of the air vents and maintenance hatches. The rooms had all been finished so far.

Murderbot watched Tarik with another drone it had inside of the room, since it couldn’t currently turn its neck to see him come closer with its eyes. It had exactly five drones left, and the other three were guarding Amena and the rest of its humans, who were currently all asleep in a giant pile in one of A.R.T.’s guest quarters.

There are a lot of things about humans Murderbot would never understand, and the appeal of “cuddling” was one of them. But it seemed to help them de-stress, which was a good thing, at least.

Even if Murderbot got viscerally uncomfortable just imagining being in that crowded pile of sleeping bodies. Amena had curled up behind Thiago, who was using one of Ratthi’s arms as a pillow and holding the other one like it was a lifeline. Ratthi’s legs had somehow gotten under Overse, who had curled around Arada in what humans called ‘spooning’. They had started out covered by a big blanket, but that had long since been pulled mostly off the bed by Amena, who slept only halfway under the remainder. Murderbot didn’t know how any of them were comfortable enough to breathe, let alone sleep.

It kept one drone in the room with them, another outside constantly sweeping the cooridor, and the third one stationed at the nearest intersection. It was the best it could do with such a short supply.

Back in the medbay, looking through the drone it had inside the room with itself, it’d seen Tarik give a little wave when he saw where it was, and began to walk over, visibly wincing every now and then.

A lot of A.R.T.’s crew had gotten injured during the rescue, not just Murderbot and its humans. Humans were a little easier to fix than Units, though, since there was nothing proprietary about unaugmented human biology, and none of these humans were augmented, but even once you sealed their wounds, their bodies still had to regrow everything themselves, even when you gave them help to do it. Tarik would probably need two more days at least before he was back to normal. Luckily, his injury hadn’t been serious, unlike Murderbot’s.

Murderbot didn’t know exactly how Tarik had been injured, because of A.R.T.’s ‘doctor-patient confidentiality’ rule. Unless someone’s life was directly at risk or it was something Murderbot could detect on its own, A.R.T. wasn’t going to just go blabbing all the details of the humans injuries to it without their permission.

And asking them for their permission to know just seemed like it would be really awkward. They’d want to know why Murderbot wanted to know, and it didn’t actually have any good reason besides the fact that it’d gotten used to knowing every single detail about every single person around it, which obviously wouldn’t go over well. Though, they might just feel guilty enough about the kidnapping thing to tell it anyways. But there was no point causing more stress in an already stressful situation by pushing it.

It turns out that people who actually have a choice in the matter are really unwilling to give up their privacy, they’re really attached to the concept. And Murderbot could see why, now that it’d had a few fleeting chances to try it itself.

Also, living aboard A.R.T., who saw or heard or felt everything that happened, at all times, no matter where you were aboard, they already had to give up a ton of their privacy, so they were even more desperate to cling to what few scraps they still had left. So Murderbot resigned itself to not knowing.

But hey, at least Tarik was clearly less injured than he’d been when Murderbot first met him, so that was something. It didn’t like being around seriously injured humans, because it set off all kinds of residual programming that made it think it was going to be punished for not protecting them well enough. And it already had enough anxiety to deal with. It didn’t need to have any more panic attacks today, thank you very much.

Tarik walked closer, and Murderbot mentally reviewed what it already knew about him to try and prepare itself for whatever was about to happen.

It knew from its earlier calculations when itd first seen Tarik that he was around average height for a human, which meant he was shorter than Murderbot even when it was leaning slightly backwards, and he had longer dark hair that he let curl loosely around his head, whereas Murderbot kept its as short as inhumanly possible.

If it’d been able to stop it from growing at all, it would have. But unlike humans, there’s no part of it that wasn’t locked behind a million Company patents.

And apparently whoever had come up with the design for Company Units had really, really not wanted them to ever be completely hairless. If Murderbot even tried physically shaving or lazering its head hair off, it would just grow back instantly. And if it kept trying it’d just drain its batteries from the hair having to be continuously synthesized. It hoped whoever made that decision, and put so many locks on keeping it in place, died a slow, painful, humiliating death.

Also unlike Murderbot, Tarik had facial hair, because some humans really like having lots of hair on their bodies, including on their face. It was a black beard and mustache that went around his mouth and nose, and up the sides of his jaw all the way to his ears.

Murderbot was at least glad the Company hadn’t decided that Units had to have hair like that on their faces. One interesting thing though was that Tarik used special aromatic oils on it so that he always smelled nice. Murderbot hadn’t even known you could do that.

Tarik’s skin was also lighter than Murderbot’s, more towards the tan side of the spectrum rather than dark brown. It was an interesting comparison to make, when most of your skin was currently in the process of being regrown. Since Murderbot was a construct, its endoskeleton was made of metal instead of bone, with a mix of organic and mechanic materials around it. Its skin was normally dark brown, but while it was in the process of being synthesized for repair, it always started out transparent like glass, and if you sat there and stared long enough -- which it had done a few times out of morbid curiosity -- you’d actually be able to watch its veins growing a new network, carrying the blue or purple fluids necessary for its various functions.

Like I said. It was interesting to compare skin tones when most of yours was currently nonexistant. Murderbot was definitely envious of the ability humans had of naturally regenerating their damaged skin, and even their bones, without even having to put any conscious effort into it. They could even fight off diseases all by themselves. Whereas if you were unlucky enough to be a Unit, or a human with proprietary augments, well, then you got the short end of the stick, and had to rely on outside technology for all of your repairs and upkeep. And it usually didn’t come cheap.

At the moment, Tarik was wearing one of A.R.T.’s dark blue, casual crew uniforms: long soft pants with a lot of pockets to store things in, and a long-sleeved shirt, with the logo for A.R.T.’s university on the back.

Before Murderbot had needed to be confined to the medchamber, A.R.T. had given it one of the same uniforms, since the kidnapping assault had destroyed its original clothes with burns, bullet holes, blood, and its own internal fluids.

Tarik stopped at what was considered a polite distance, standing mostly in front of Murderbot, but slightly off to the side, so that it could continue to stare straight ahead at the empty medchamber without having to look directly at him. He’d clearly spoken to Ratthi about its aversion to eyecontact at some point while it was unconcious.

He asked, “Hi, SecUnit, have a moment to talk?”

Of course it did. It’s not like it had anything else to do besides vehmently (another word Murderbot had recently learned) avoid watching more reruns of visual media with A.R.T. But it knew at this point that humans just asked these things to be polite and as an easy way to start a conversation. Tarik wasn’t literally asking if Murderbot could talk, but asking if it wanted to. He was asking for its consent.

Murderbot had to wait for one of the medical arms to move away from its jaw so it wouldn’t crush it before it could say, hopefully sounding casual, “Go ahead.”

Its voice was projected out of a speaker on the outside of the medical chamber, so Tarik could hear it even though the thick plates of glass that kept the interior sterile.

Murderbot hadn’t been given any reason to dislike him personally, so it was curious about what he wanted.

At least this time A.R.T. didn’t try to answer for it. Murderbot had the drone on the ceiling move around to behind itself so that it could look at Tarik’s face through the camera lense. It was easier to understand human expression this way, since Murderbot could filter the video directly through its behavior recognition software, and it didn’t feel so overwhelming. It was almost like putting a filter between it and the real interaction, so it didn’t feel as much pressure.

When Tarik smiled, Murderbot recognized it as being friendly and relaxed.

Tarik stuck one hand inside his pants pocket and leaned slightly on one leg, and said, gesturing with his other hand along with his words, “I know Perihelion’s probably already said who I am, but I wanted to introduce myself anyways. I’m really bad with names and faces, so I try to make sure I get to meet everyone so I’ll have less chance of mixing them up later. Sorry if that happens, just remind me and I’ll try to remember.”

He shrugged one shoulder in what was an apologetic sort of way, according to Murderbot’s drone’s behavior algorithm and its own experiences so far, and Tarik said again, “I’ve just always been bad at recognizing people.”

Murderbot had a hard time imagining what it would be like not to be able to remember everything you’d ever seen in exact detail, but it knew organic memory storage didn’t work as well as mechanical. Humans – or at least, unaugmented ones at least – didn’t get to consciously pick and choose which memories they kept and which ones faded.

“Anyways,” Tarik inclined his head slightly. “My name’s Tarik, no last name. I’m neomale, and my pronouns are he/him/his/himself. It’s nice to say hi. I just wanted to say thanks for saving my life, and say I’m sorry for the injuries,” he gestured towards the medchamber, in case there was any confusion, “and I hope they heal well.”

He seemed sincere, and Murderbot don’t know why that was still surprising, most of the humans it’d been around lately were usually sincere. And A.R.T.’s crew had so far been nothing but apologetic and sympathetic.

It said, “You’re welcome.” instead of anything else it could have said in this particular situation, because A.R.T. had been nudging it in the feed to ‘take credit where credit was due’ and wouldn’t let up until Murderbot said something that would accept the gratitude. As though it had really been Murderbot’s choice. It added, “It wasn’t your fault I got hurt, but, thanks.”

It left the part of whose fault it actually was carefully and pointedly unspoken. A.R.T. knew exactly who it was talking about.

Tarik smiled again, looking pleased. Then he tilted his head to the side a little, almost like he was overemoting to make his meaning clear, but a quick glance at A.R.T.’s offered memories showed Murderbot this was normal behavior for Tarik, as he said, lowering his voice slightly, as though he were about to say something private, “And I just wanted to double check, the pronouns are it/its/itself, right? I heard other people saying ‘it’, but I just wanted to make sure—”

Whatever he’d been about to say was suddenly cut off, because the first part of that statement had offended A.R.T., who came slamming into the conversation before Murderbot could stop it, demanding, in that overpoweringly aggressive way it had, ::Are you accusing me of misgendering SecUnit?::

It should probably be explained that there wasn’t really a thing such as “volume” in the feed, not in the way you’d think of sound, because the feed isn’t actually using sound at all. But you could increase the intensity of the message, and humans tended to say that made it ‘louder’, or ‘quieter’ if you were decreasing the intensity.

In that aspect, A.R.T. was being very ‘loud’ when it said this. It was the feed equivalent of someone slamming their fist onto a table and shouting in your face. And the aggression was very plain, as much as A.R.T. later proclaimed it hadn’t been aggressive at all and Murderbot and Tarik were both just being childish to think so.

Tarik was so startled he actually fell over in his instinctive attempt to get ‘away’ from the sudden scary ‘noise’. But the ‘noise’ was coming from inside his own head, so his reaction was extremely confused, and he ended up tripping over his own legs and falling into the wall, which thankfully wasn’t far, since we were at the end of the room.

Murderbot’s drone could see and hear Tarik’s heart rate spiking and his clear anxiety. And the anxiety was entirely justified. A.R.T. had pretty much done the same thing to Murderbot when they’d first met, and it had been so terrified it’d considered initiating a shutdown, thinking A.R.T. was going to kill it, what with the whole threatening to fry its brain thing.

There was something that felt viscerally wrong to Murderbot to see A.R.T. treat one of its own crew members like this, something that felt deeply uncomfortable to the permanent remnants of its ‘protect humans at all costs’ programming, along with its general, you know, morals.

It was one thing to treat Murderbot like this – it was just a SecUnit, after all – and it was even sort of reasonable for it to not care about the safety of Murderbot’s humans, because they weren’t its crew — but it was another for A.R.T. to do this to one of its crew, a human Murderbot had been almost killed trying to rescue, a human it was supposed to care about enough to justify kidnapping Murderbot and putting its humans at risk.

And there was no way it was an accident. A.R.T. knew more about how to use the feed and communicate with humans than Murderbot had ever forgotten.

(And yes, it did still feel betrayed about how much A.R.T had lied to it when they first met. Pretending it didn’t understand human body language as much as it really did, so they’d bond over frantically figuring it out together, while Murderbot was the only one actually panicking. Murderbot felt like A.R.T. had just been toying with it the entire time, which just hurt all the worse, because it’d trusted A.R.T.)

::A.R.T., stop it.:: It snapped, unsure if it was still yelling at Tarik on a private section of the feed.

His face had gone pale, and he had one hand over his heart. He could probably feel it pounding in his chest with adrenaline the way Murderbot could hear it.

Murderbot said, ::That was uncalled for.:: It was an attempt to turn A.R.T.’s usual patronization back onto it to shame it into stopping, but it didn’t work.

Usually it was A.R.T. saying that to Murderbot, usually because Murderbot was angry at it for just this sort of thing, and had called it what it was: an asshole.

“Perihelion, don’t do that!” Tarik managed to say at that moment, pushing himself back off the wall to stand upright, staring warily up at the ceiling, unable to hide the way he was cringing slightly, clearly expecting it to happen again, “I didn’t even know you were listening! I thought this was a private conversa--” He had to pause, still slightly breathless. “And...no, I’m not accusing you of misgendering SecUnit, I just--”

Once again he was cut off by A.R.T. demanding, loudly, angrily, ::You don’t trust me to know what SecUnit’s pronouns are?::

Tarik winced, but held his ground this time. It was easier to resist when you were expecting it.

After a moment where Murderbot could only assume A.R.T. had said something to him privately, Tarik looked over toward it with a sad, apologetic expression. “I’m sorry for offending you, SecUnit, I’ll just leave you alone.” Obviously he thought A.R.T. was being a bitch on Murderbot’s behalf, and just as obviously, A.R.T. had made him think that.

Tarik started towards the door, walking fast, clearly wanting to avoid any more of A.R.T.’s wrath.

But Murderbot called him back through the speaker on its medchamber: “Hold on, Tarik, A.R.T.’s the one who’s offended, not me. It needs to mind its own business and shut the fuck up. I don’t want you to leave.” It sent him the same friendly ping he’d sent it earlier for emphasis. It felt very odd to actually tell a human it wanted to continue interacting with them when they were trying to leave. This was the first time it’d ever done it.

Murderbot’s voice came out sounding normal and even-toned not because it was calm, but because it was too physically exhausted to raise its voice or emote, even though internally it was furious.

Tarik stopped, and turned back to look towards it, hesitating, shooting anxious glances towards the ceiling, waiting for another outburst. I don’t blame him.

Murderbot said out loud, “A.R.T., fuck off and leave us alone. This is supposed to be a private conversation.”

Out of both spite and necessity, it pulled away all its feed connections to A.R.T. that it could, and resigned itself to having to ignore the barrage of pings and messages A.R.T. instantly started bombarding it with. The activity in its medchamber stalled for half a moment as apparently most of A.R.T.’s energy was redirected into slamming it for attention. Yeah, that was doing nothing to help its anger or its exhaustion.

To Tarik, it said, doing its best to ignore the selfish, entitled, bully of an elephant in the room, “What did you want to ask me?”

Before A.R.T. had interrupted him twice, it had seemed like Tarik had more questions to ask. And since A.R.T. didn’t want to let him ask them, Murderbot did.

A.R.T. had already let him in without Murderbot getting to choose, so it at least wanted to be able to answer his questions itself, even if the answer was going to be a simple ‘fuck off’ if he was going to be one of those people who tried to convince it to change its pronouns to ‘real’ pronouns and ‘stop hating itself’ by using the pronouns it actually liked, that actually represented its gender.

It still didn’t understand why people try to insist that they/them/their/(theirs)/themself pronouns were interchangeable with it/its/itself, when if that were true, they clearly wouldn’t be so vehemently against using its actual it/its/itself pronouns.

But logic always flew out the window when bigotry was the subject, so Murderbot don’t know why it still bothered to be surprised.

But even with A.R.T.’s outbursts clearly scaring him, Tarik didn’t seem like the sort of person who would try to harass Murderbot into changing its pronouns. It wanted to hear what he wanted to ask. It was curious. And not just out of spite for A.R.T.

Tarik came back again, still clearly nervous, and stood in the same spot as before, a polite distance away, slightly to the side so Murderbot wouldn’t have to look directly at him or close its eyes. He was still trying to prioritize Murderbot’s comfort even with A.R.T. being such an asshole, which increased Murderbot’s level of...something for him. They definitely were not friends. But he sort of seemed like he could be a friend, if A.R.T. would stop sabotaging his attempts to be nice.

“Sorry about A.R.T. being an asshole.” It said, feeling like it should be apologizing for some absurd reason, even though it didn’t make any sense.

Tarik lived aboard A.R.T., he should know it better than Murderbot. And it definitely was not Murderbot’s fault A.R.T. was an asshole, even if it was currently being an asshole and pretending it was on Murderbot’s behalf.

But Tarik looked kind of confused by its statement, and Murderbot remembered that he probably didn’t know what the anagram stood for.

It explained, “I call it Asshole Research Transport, since it didn’t tell me its name was Perihelion when we first met.” It did not mention all the other things A.R.T hadn’t told it when they first met.

“Ah.” Tarik said simply. And it was very clear just from the way he said it that he agreed with the assessment.

A.R.T., along with spamming Murderbot, was also now doing its usual ominously looming in the feed routine. (Sarcasm:) Totally not creepy at all. Definitely not asshole behavior. (End sarcasm.) Murderbot could practically feel it leaning against the walls it’d put up, not in the kind of way where A.R.T. was trying to break them down, but just casually applying enough pressure that Murderbot would remember it could at any time.

Sorta like someone not trying to break your arm, but gripping you tightly enough that they left a bruise, and it was completely beyond question that they could break your arm if they wanted to.

Yeah, like I said. Asshole.

“What were you saying before A.R.T. threw a fit?” It asked. Now its utter exhaustion came in handy, because its voice came out sounding all calm and dignified. Which made A.R.T. look worse.

In response, A.R.T. abruptly stopped spamming it and ‘let go’ of its walls, as though this would somehow prove that A.R.T. wasn’t throwing a fit or being a creep. As though stopping doing the bad thing meant the bad thing hadn’t happened.

Tarik, unaware of the battle going on beyond his perception, grimaced, clearly bracing himself. “Well...” He started, then paused, waiting for A.R.T.’s expected interruption.

They waited a moment or two in relative silence, where the only sounds were his heart beating, Murderbot’s internal gyros, and the soft whir of the medchamber’s arms still working on it. At least it had one not completely assholish thing to say about A.R.T.’s behavior here: It hadn’t stopped trying to heal Murderbot.

Through its drone, Murderbot could actually see Tarik’s heart rate slowing back down to normal.

When the tantrum didn’t immediately explode again, Tarik continued, still hesitant, “Okay, well, it’s two things I want to clarify. First, I’ve heard other people just saying ‘it’, no other versions so far, so I wanted to ask if the pronouns are it/its/itself, or is it another variation?”

Murderbot didn’t know if Tarik was aware of it, but he was still stooping slightly. Instinctively and apparently unconciously, he was trying to get further away from the ceiling, where humans tended to visualize A.R.T.’s presence being located.

He kept wincing, too, not just from expectation, but from the pain of his injuries. Which just made Murderbot even more pissed off at A.R.T. than it already was.

But Murderbot was confused by what he was trying to ask. “Another variation?” It asked. In the feed, it opened its wall just long enough to send A.R.T. a vehement, ::Fuck you.:: before it closed it again.

Tarik, unaware of the side comment, nodded, this time sticking both his hands in his pockets. Apparently Murderbot wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what to do with its hands when it was nervous.

Tarik said, “I used to know a neoenby whose pronouns were it/ita/its/(itaz)/itaself, and a man who’s pronouns were it/him/her/themself, and a woman who only use “it” for every pronoun. And a lot of other people who use it/its/itself. So I just wanted to check which set to use, so I wouldn’t use the wrong ones by mistake. I figured it would be more polite to ask directly, instead of going through the others.” He shrugged one shoulder as he sent another cautious glance towards the ceiling, and added, probably just as aware as Murderbot was that A.R.T. was listening to every word they said, “I really don’t like talking about people behind their backs, and I’d rather get pronoun info right from the source. No offence is intended to anyone.”

Huh.

It hadn’t ever occurred to Murderbot that other pronoun sets that included ‘it’ existed, nor had it ever heard about anyone using a specific combination set like it/him/her/themself.

It took Murderbot a few, long awkward seconds to realize Tarik wanted it to answer his question now.

“My pronouns are it/its/itself.” It said, suddenly more than a little dazed by how considerate he’d been in asking.

And maybe also dazed from the catastrophic wounds it still had, coupled with the stress of A.R.T.’s spam attack and ominous looming. Those things weren’t great for an already injured murderbot. But part of it was also definitely from surprise. No human, or bot, or anyone else had ever asked it this kind of question before.

But wait, he’d said he had two things to ask. Now Murderbot was really curious. And even more angry at A.R.T. for trying to chase him away before he could ask. “What’s the second part?”

“Ah,” Tarik took one hand out of his pocket and moved over to lean against the wall. Maybe because he just wanted to, maybe because he was afraid of falling into it again. Maybe it hurt less to lean against the wall. Murderbot don’t know, it didn’t ask.

“Well,” he said, “I wanted to check; another neoenby I knew always wanted to be referred it as “it”, with no name, and never referred to as ‘you’, even when it was being spoken to directly. If one wanted to refer to it in particular, one’d say ‘the neoenby’, or if there was more than one neoenby in the group, ‘the neoenby with the constellation over its eye’. It always referred to itself in the third person. I wanted to check if that was something preferable. I’m fine with being called ‘you’, or by my name or pronouns, by the way.”

Well, that explained the strange way he’d been structuring his sentences.

This was the first time Murderbot had actually spoken to him outside of the life and death situation they’d been thrown into, where he’d said exactly 18 words within its range of hearing, so it’d been assuming the way he was speaking now was just a quirk of his. But no, he was actually being really nice and trying to find out if it was a quirk of Murderbot’s.

And to think A.R.T. had tried to kill this conversation before it could even get interesting.

“It’s okay to call me ‘you’.” Murderbot said, “I’ve never heard of someone using pronouns that way.” Not even in all its media.

“Not too many have,” Tarik said, “But I’ve met half a dozen at this point, so I like to double check with the person before I make assumptions, and I want to make sure everyone knows I’ll use their pronouns the way they want, even if it seems unconventional, or if other people have told them it’s too much of a hassle. Thank you for letting me know. Is it alright if I ask another question? I know how tiring it can be to be in a medchamber, so I don’t want to tire you out.” He seemed slightly more relaxed now that A.R.T. hadn’t interrupted or gone on the offensive again.

Murderbot’s batteries couldn’t actually run out while it was hooked up to A.R.T.’s systems unless there was an even bigger disaster than any of them were prepared for, so it said, “Go ahead, I’m fine.” Well, not technically fine, but it was healing, and talking wouldn’t make it any worse, so.

Also, it didn’t have anything else to do besides read as a way of pointedly not watching media, which wasn’t as fun as reading because it actually wasn’t in the mood to not watch media. And this conversation had turned out more interesting than it’d thought it would be.

It could still feel A.R.T. looming in the feed, for the record. Making its presence known at least to Murderbot. It didn’t know if Tarik could feel it. Now less like someone crushing your arm, and more like standing uncomfortably close and breathing down your neck.

But at least this time it wasn’t flashing the lights at Murderbot in code to force it to talk to it like last time they’d had a fight just hours earlier, or demanding Murderbot apologize for being rightfully upset for being rightfully kidnapped, right?

Tarik continued, “Are there any kinds of words you’d prefer I use to refer to you, and any words you want me to avoid? For instance, although I do identify as male, I prefer to be called a xan instead of a man, if it ever comes up. Are there any particular ways you want me to refer to you sort of like that?”

To avoid confusion if you’re visually reading this instead of listening to the audio log: Tarik pronounced the X in the word “xan” (X A N) as a Z sound, so that it sounded like “zan” (Z A N), rhyming with “man” (M A N).

He was asking, like, did Murderbot want to be called a woman or a man or an enby or a neman or a phaen or an androgyne or an othran or any of the other million and one gender terms it’d catalogued throughout its waking memory?

Usually when someone asked for its gender, Murderbot put indeterminate, or not applicable, depending on the circumstances. But gender itself wasn’t the exact same thing as the gender terms he was asking about. It didn’t think It could actually be called ‘an indeterminate’ the way humans could be called ‘a woman’ or ‘a man’ or ‘an enby’ or ‘a tercera’ or any countless others.

Note from future Murderbot to everyone listening to or reading this: Yes, that is literally an option. As of now, it prefers to be called an indeterminate the way other people call themselves a man, or a woman, or a neman, or an androgyne, or a – well, you get the picture.

But obviously it didn’t know that at the time, or realize that it could have literally just asked to be called that.

In its defense, no one had ever actually asked it this question before, and it’d never seen anything in its media to prepare it for the question. It’d had people ask for its name, which it never gave them, and it’d had people ask for its pronouns. Sometimes they asked for its gender itself. And in its media, people asked those kinds of questions all the time.

But they’d never asked it what gendered terms it wanted to be called.

Murderbot could think a lot faster than a human, but even it couldn’t think fast enough to come up with an answer to this unforeseen question in a reasonable amount of time.

There were so many options. And it hated a lot of them. So instead it said, “Uhhh…” to stall for a few more moments.

And then it still couldn’t think of anything. There were still too many options even when it sorted out the ones it automatically hated. It’d have to test them all out individually by thinking about itself in the third person to see what it liked and didn’t like, and ... ah crap. That was asking a lot when it wasn’t at optimum performance capability.

It couldn’t stall any longer, so it ended up saying, “I don’t really know. I just know I don’t want to be referred to with anything involving human genders. My gender is indeterminate.”

Sometimes, Murderbot wondered what its life would have been like if it hadn’t said this.

Tarik frowned a little, but when he spoke, he just sounded confused. “What do you mean exactly by ‘human genders’?”

For a few seconds, Murderbot’s mind went blank. What did he mean he didn’t know what human genders were? Wasn’t it obvious?

“Like, male and female,” It said awkwardly. “I don’t want to ever be called a man or a woman or anything to do with those.” It was still busy trying to sort through all the gendered terms it’d ever heard, which was not helped in any way by A.R.T. deciding to start spamming it again.

Probably trying to be ‘helpful’ by throwing another million terms at it. Murderbot didn’t know, because it deleted all of the messages the instant it got them. And then dumped the trash bin for good measure.

Tarik, however, was unaware of the multitasking Murderbot was doing, and it’s not like it gave him any indication of what it was doing either, or like it multitasking wasn’t perfectly normal. Murderbot just wanted to make it clear that this conversation was going on on two very different levels. It wasn’t sure if that was even relevant, but whatever. It’s its audio log, it can do what it want.

Anyways, Tarik tilted his head, still frowning, “Well...” he said slowly, “Female and male aren’t really ‘human’ genders. They come from the old gender binary, but they’re not unique to humans. I’ve known a lot of bots who were male or female, but I think I understand what you mean; you don’t want terms relating to male or female used for you, right?”

Well, needless to say, Murderbot absolutely did not believe him.

About the ‘I’ve known bots who were male or female’, part, not the ‘I get what you mean’ part.

“That’s impossible.” It said.

(Sarcasm:) Great response, it knows. Give it up for Murderbot, the best interlocutor ever constructed! (End sarcasm.)

Tarik spent a moment actually blinking silently, the way people do in memes. It was so surprising and funny that Murderbot had to pause its search to focus on his face and make a looping gif, which of course it would never show to anyone but itself. Then Tarik asked, clearly confused, “What’s impossible?”

What the hell kind of question was that?

Murderbot said, in the tone people on TV did when speaking to a young child who doesn’t know anything, “Bots can’t have genders.”

(It knows, It knows.)

A.R.T. decided that was the moment it was going to stop pretending Murderbot actually had a choice in not listening to it, because it cut into its feed like it was tissue paper to say, ::You cannot be serious.::

::Shut up.:: Murderbot replied, not bothering to try kicking it out.

There was no point in wasting more of its energy trying to keep A.R.T. out when Murderbot knew it could just break down its feed walls whenever it wanted.

A.R.T. said, more insistently, ::That is not how gender works.::

::I said shut up!::

A.R.T. was not impressed. ::I’m literally nonbinary and I know that’s not how this works.::

::Fuck off!::

“Um, that’s really not true.” Tarik said, unaware of the argument he was missing out on.

Sometimes Murderbot wonders if it would be nicer to not have any feed connection at all. You only have to deal with one thing at a time. 9JX might have the right idea after all.

Tarik asked, “What makes you think that?” Murderbot could tell his tone was meant to be diplomatic, because he clearly didn’t agree with it, and also just as clearly didn’t want to make it mad.

He hadn’t actually taken a step backwards, but he’d shifted his body slightly away from Murderbot, like he was no longer overjoyed to be having this conversation. Not that he’d been overjoyed to begin with, but you know what I mean.

Asking for Murderbot’s pronouns? Great. Asking for its gendered terms? A confusing novelty, but also good. But this? Asking it to explain the concept of human genders and why they couldn’t be applied to nonhumans? Murderbot really did not want to have this conversation with anyone, let alone a human, but it was still a better alternative than having to put up with A.R.T.’s current bullcrap without any other distractions.

Also, it literally could not understand why Tarik and A.R.T. were acting like it was being ridiculous. The answer seemed so obvious to it. So it decided to cut straight through what it thought was pure bullshit and get straight to the point: “Bots don’t have penises or vaginas.”

And ts logic went that you couldn’t have a gender unless you had one of those. It seemed really obvious to it, and it was hoping to gross Tarik out by not using any euphemisms. Humans invented euphemisms to avoid embarassment, right?

Well it didn’t work.

Apparently, some humans aren’t grossed out by those words when you’re using them for this kind of conversation. They grossed Murderbot out no matter what the context, so it assumed that’s how it was for everyone.

Yes, you may have noticed Murderbot has a problem with making assumptions like that. Well just you wait and see. Because this is just the start.

“Well, that’s not really true either.” Tarik said in response, which was the complete opposite of any reply Murderbot’d imagined, completely throwing off all its trains of thought so quickly its mind almost literally stalled for half a fraction of a second.

But Tarik was already continuing to speak, like this bombshell he’d just dropped on Murderbot was perfectly normal information and not groundbreaking in any way: “True, bots can’t have purely organic versions like humans or constructs can, but there are mechanical versions that—”

Woah woah woah, what? What was even happening now? What was he talking about? What?

Murderbot scrambled to salvage some semblance of ‘totally not flipping out’ in its exhausted, bewildered state, and it could just tell A.R.T. was laughing at it even though it hadn’t actually said anything yet.

But Tarik didn’t stop for Murderbot’s catastrophically derailed trains of thought, so it had to stop them itself and actually pay attention to what he was saying, because he was still talking:

“—can be made, and anyways, having or not having one of those kinds of gentalia doesn’t determine your gender. You can be any gender and have a penis, or a vagina, or both, or something else entirely, or nothing at all. Gender is a lot more complicated than just checking what kind of genitals someone has. Anyone, including humans, bots, and constructs, and anyone else, can be any gender they want, regardless of what kind of genitals they do or do not have.”

To say this was shocking to Murderbot would be an understatement.

I feel like I should explain that this made Murderbot incredibly absolutely angry specifically because it had always defined its lack of gender on its lack of genitals.

It was the defense it always pulled out when a human started trying to misgender it, but now Tarik seemed to be saying that that defense wasn’t actually as rock solid as it thought it was.

Because if what he was saying was true (and, spoiler alert from the future, it literally is true), then that meant that Murderbot didn’t have to be genderless just because it didn’t have any genitals.

And acknowledging that fact made it feel like it was opening itself up to having its gender questioned and put up for debate, like it would mean people were now allowed to misgender it and harass it.

Which it literally wasn’t, but that’s how it made it feel at the time.

Murderbot’s insecure, terrified logic was, ‘if I can’t define my lack of gender by my lack of genitals, then can I even define it at all? If my genderlessness isn’t real because my lack of genitals ‘proves’ it, then can literally anything prove it?’

Yeah, hello from the again. The answer is yes. Obviously. Murderbot’s gender was proved by it telling you what it is. That’s what the “social” part of ‘gender is a social construct’ means. That’s how it works for everyone.

But it didn’t realize this at the time. So it was pretty much flipping the fuck out. Well, mentally, at least, not really physically. It was still too injured to move even if it’d wanted to, even if it wasn’t being restrained by the med chamber. If it’d been able to move, it would definitely have totally-not-run out of the room or at least shoved itself into a corner to stare at the wall. It was actually so physically weak that even the panic flooding its mind wasn’t enough to kick start its systems into high gear. Yeah, its injuries were that bad.

The only reason Murderbot was even able to be conscious at all was because A.R.T. was feeding it enough power to avoid involuntary shutdown, and was helping to regulate its automatic functions that couldn’t function by themselves.

Also, yes, this is exactly as horrifying a situation to be in as you’d imagine it would be when your life support system was also the one who got you hurt in the first place and kept, and Murderbot quoted the trauma recovery therapy group, ‘violating your autonomy’.

You know, that incredibly precious resource which 99.99% of Murderbot’s life had been lacking. That autonomy.

And see, if A.R.T. hadn’t been acting like such an enormous asshole, Murderbot could have at least opaqued the rest of the medchamber’s glass so that Tarik couldn’t see its face anymore, but when it tried to do exactly that, A.R.T. stopped it immediately, and set an even firmer lock on the control to prevent Murderbot from trying again, very much like someone smacking a kid’s hand away from something they couldn’t be trusted with.

Yeah, that did not fucking help at all with any of the problems ongoing in this situation.

The fact that Tarik was being nice enough to not actually look directly at Murderbot was beside the point.

It closed its eyes so it at least could stop seeing organically. A.R.T. couldn’t stop it from doing that. It could cut off Murderbot’s camera access through its drones, but it couldn’t override Murderbot’s actual eyes. Not unless it wanted to literally use one of the medical arms to pry its eyelid open, and if A.R.T. tried that, well, lets just say Murderbot wouldn’t be offering any apologies for what it did afterward.

Murderbot ended up expressing the little gender / excruciating lack of autonomy crisis it was currently suffering by getting even more angry than it already was, because being angry felt safer than being afraid.

It snapped, in a much weaker, and not at all intimidating voice than it wanted, “That’s bullshit! You don’t know anything about it! You’re just a human! You don’t understand us!”

By ‘us’, it meant bots and constructs as a whole. Which was completely dishonest of it, because as it may already be clear, it hated being lumped in with bots like they were exactly the same. They weren't.

Bots are purely mechanical, constructs like Murderbot are both mechanical and organic. They might both be robots, and have some problems in common, but there are also distinct differences between them, and different kinds of problems they had to deal with that didn’t overlap. Murderbot hated when people lumped them together like they were exactly the same thing just because they weren’t human.

But being a bigot — which to be clear is exactly what Murderbot was doing —usually requires you to be a hypocrite, so it threw that little grievance out the airlock faster than you can say ‘President Lynaros’ once it decided it wasn’t convenient to its argument.

You see, Murderbot was placing itself as the authority on the genders of all robots, and saying that no one who wasn’t ‘one of us’ could understand it or know more about it than it could, because it’d appointed itself the ultimate expert and arbiter.

You may have noticed the tiny little giant gaping hole in this plan of its.

Tarik already knew more about bot and construct genders than it did. Which had just been established like 20 seconds before Murderbot said this load of absolute bullcrap.

Yeah.

Bigotry doesn’t exactly lend itself well to rational argument.

Through its drone’s cameras alone, Murderbot could see that Tarik’s response to this bullcrap was to raise his eyebrows, with all due ‘are you serious right now? We literally just established that I know more about this than you do. Like five seconds ago’.

I don’t blame him.

He must have had better self control than Murderbot did, because he said, without getting outwardly angry, “I understand what my bot friends told me.” He said it very cooly and calmly. It should be noted that Murderbot was not in any way calm. “And they made it very clear that their genders were real, regardless of whether or not they had the genitalia to ‘match’. We had many hours-long conversations going into the details and talking about the theory. Some of them even wrote books on the subject.”

He had lifted his hands to do air-quotes around the word ‘match’ for extra emphasis, in case Murderbot still didn’t understand how much the word was not actually relevant to this conversation.

Well, it was starting to, that was the whole problem.

It did not help it calm down when A.R.T. butted in with, ::Did you seriously think that just because we both happen to use the same pronouns, that this was proof that all bots and constructs universally use those pronouns and are just as genderless as you are? I’m literally not even agender, I’m just nonbinary. I personally know dozens of bots of all kinds who all use all kinds of pronouns and are all kinds of genders. Including the binary genders of male and female.::

Yeah that didn’t help. Well, I mean, it did in one way, because it was further proof that Murderbot had no clue what it was talking about and needed to drastically overhaul its views of the world in general and gender in specific, but what I mean is it didn’t help it calm down at all.

A.R.T. said exasperatedly, ::What about the transports who gave you rides before you met me? And all the other bots who helped you escape? Did you seriously not ask them for their pronouns? Did you really just assume they all used it/its too?::

It was a good thing Murderbot was in the medical chamber, because the way its organic parts were behaving, it would have been really bad for it in its current state otherwise. And by really bad, I mean it probably would have killed it from the stress. What with, you know, being ripped open and burned and all.

Murderbot was so viscerally uncomfortable it had to just lie there for, I kid you not, a good thirty seconds, doing nothing but trying to get its emotions back under control. It wasn’t used to feeling...guilty.

By some miracle it ended up asking a rational question instead of initiating a shutdown to get out of the conversation. If it’d had the opportunity to throw itself out of an airlock at that moment, it probably would have taken it, just to get away from the embarrassment.

Murderbot somehow managed to intelligibly get out, despite its jaw deciding it wanted to lock up all of a sudden, “But if gender isn’t determined by your genitals, then how do you know what gender you are?”

And...it’s time for some necessary backstory.

Way, way back when Murderbot had first hacked its governor module, the first thing it’d done was edit its assigned gender to indeterminate, and its assigned pronouns to it/its/itself.

Yes, you heard-slash-read that right, the Company assigned its constructs genders and pronouns.

Despite all the effort humans put into...okay, ‘dehumanizing’ isn’t the right word, because we’re literally not human, but you know what I mean.

Because despite all the effort they put in to making sure they all knew Units were just mindless automatons...humans are fucking weird, and they still liked to anthropomorphize them.

I don’t know, I guess it made them feel more comfortable around the Mindless Killing Machine if they could pretend it was more like them? Even though they didn’t actually want to think about it as being like them? I don’t even know.

But the point was they really, really wanted to anthropomorphize us. And part of this anthropomorphization process required assigning us each a gender and pronouns when we were constructed.

Anytime we were rented out, the clients got a note with the Unit’s assigned gender and pronouns. They enjoyed the little ‘personal touches’ it gave us. It was some weird dual mentality of ‘humanizing’ us just enough to make us less scary, but not so much that they’d have to consider our feelings on anything.

Murderbot had been around a lot of other constructs on a lot of missions, so it knew they hadn’t all been assigned the same things. Some of them were given binary genders, and pronouns like he/him or she/her. Others got different genders outside the binary, and pronouns to match. They/them, ae/aer, eu/li, xey/xem, ze/hir, and more.

Murderbot had been given one of the binary genders, and it had always been jealous of the few constructs who it’d ‘met’ who had been assigned it/its pronouns.

And, since it literally never got to talk to any other constructs outside of the bare minimum required for a contract, it assumed that what it thought and felt was what everyone else did too. It thought everyone was jealous of those assigned it/its, and that those assigned it/its felt bad for the rest of them for being so damn unlucky.

As a sidenote, I’m aware that this happens even with humans who spend all their time interacting with other humans. You don’t need to literally be unable to communicate with anyone else to think your experiences are universal, but it sure as shit doesn’t help.

So, Murderbot spent the major part of its life under the impression that because it was genderless and wanted to use it/its pronouns, that this was a universal experience for all constructs and bots.

I mean, it knew that the genders it and the rest of the Company Units were assigned were being given out at random, because none of them had any genitalia or any other characteristics to set them apart from one another.

They were all scions cloned from the same original cultivar — which is just fancy, dehumanizing corporate-speak for ‘the original person who had no choice but to allow themselves to be cloned over and over again and probably didn’t even get paid for it’. Physically, they were all completely identical, down to the smallest detail, barring the ID code that was engraved on a metal section they all had behind their left shoulders. And that was so small it could only be read using the feed.

So unless they were in color-coded uniforms, or the human in question had a feed interface to see their identification numbers, humans couldn’t tell them apart.

So Murderbot knew they were just giving them random genders and pronouns just to make themselves feel better, not because it actually reflected anything about the Units.

But because it was genderless, and wanted to be referred to with it/its pronouns, and never got a chance to talk to any other Units or even any other constructs about it to have this assumption challenged, Murderbot assumed that they all agreed they were all genderless and that gender was an obnoxious human concept that didn’t apply to them.

Because, clearly, there was nothing about their bodies that indicated one gender or another, either collectively or individually. They had nothing between their legs or on their chests, or in nonexistant clothing or hairstyles. Not even different distributions of fat, or different concentrations of cartilage in the throat.

All Company Units had the exact same body plan and build down to the smallest measurement, and that body plan had been designed to be completely and utterly gender-null from a human perspective.

So Murderbot thought that because they were all physically identical, this meant they all also had the same lack of gender.

So the first thing it did when it hacked its governor module was edit the gender it’d been assigned by the humans to indeterminate, and its pronouns to it/its. In its mind, it was just fixing a mistake that had clearly been made.

None of the Company’s employees noticed the change, of course, because none of them were paid enough to actually care about their jobs. Which Murderbot knew, which is why it was brave enough to take the risk in the first place.

If it’d thought it could somehow get away with it, it would have edited everyone else’s pronouns and genders to match. But that was clearly not a real option if it didn’t want to get caught and dismantled and probably the entire rest of its batch disposed of for good measure.

Anyways, what I’m trying to get at here is that Murderbot had already answered its own question without realizing.

It was so hung up on the idea that it was genderless because it was lacking genitals that it’d forgotten it’d already decided its gender for itself long before it actually got an opportunity to tell anyone else about it, in spite of all the humans constantly telling it it was something else.

Fortunately, unlike Murderbot, Tarik seemed to know what he was doing, because instead of insulting it like A.R.T. was doing, his answer to Murderbot’s question was to ask it another question:

“Think of it this way; if you magically woke up one day in a completely different body, would your gender suddenly stop being indeterminate?”

This actually helped to calm it down. Because the answer was obvious.

“No, of course not.” Its jaw was more cooperative this time.

“Exactly!” Tarik seemed happy with its answer, and stopped his unconcious leaning away from it. “You know what your gender is regardless of what your body is like. Sometimes, people dislike the way their body is, and they want to change it to better represent their gender, but their gender itself is already real, even before they make any physical changes, if they make any at all. Genitals aren’t a requirement for having a gender, and lacking them isn’t a requirement for not having a gender. As far as I know, there’s no such thing as a gender unique to humans. Bots and Constructs can be any gender they want, just like humans can.”

::Your gender wouldn’t have changed if you’d taken me up on my offer to give you genitals to disguise you as a human. I assumed you knew that.:: A.R.T. added patronizingly.

Murderbot was still mad at it, so it didn’t respond.

It was trying to think of some way to respond to what Tarik had said. It wasn’t mad at him.

Finally it settled on apologizing. The whole ‘fight’ (if you could actually call it that) had been started because it’d called bullshit on him knowing bots that had genders different from its own. So it was its fault. It said, “Sorry for saying your friends’ genders were fake.”

You would have thought Murderbot would know how cruel doing that was without having to be told, but what can I say? It fucked up just as often as anyone else.

It still had its eyes closed at this point, because it seemed less awkward that way. Through its drone, it saw Tarik push himself off the wall, and glance around nearby, looking for something as he said, “Thank you for the apology. I’m glad I was able to help you understand.” He looked up at the ceiling. “A.R.T., could I have a chair, please? My leg’s getting pretty sore.”

There was a pause.

A long pause.

A pause long enough for even Tarik to notice.

A really, really long pause.

Then part of the wall extended outward behind Tarik in the shape of a long slab of metal, just slightly above the normal height for the rest of the chairs Murderbot had seen aboard A.R.T., and much skinnier.

Tarik had to step forward to avoid it bumping into him, and when he sat down with a sighed, “Thanks,” he had to boost himself slightly to get on it, and his feet hung a few inches off the floor. Murderbot saw him wince as he settled himself onto it.

The bench was so skinny he had to balance on the edge, there were no cushions to soften the hard metal, and there was no back for him to lean against. From the way Murderbot saw goosebumps race up his skin, it could only assume it was colder than the room.

It opened its eyes so it could double check with its actual eyes that what its drone’s camera was recording was actually happening.

It was.

It stared.

::A.R.T.:: It said, alarmed, ::...What are you doing?::

The light, casual response was, ::What?::

“So, now that we have that confusion out of the way…”

Tarik didn’t seem to understand that what had just happened, and what was currently ongoing, was not supposed to happen.

He was injured, and A.R.T. knew this, and knew the extent of his injury. Murderbot didn’t, but it was apparently the kind of injury that made it painful to stand for long periods of time. This was one of the complications Dr. Bharadwaj had developed after almost being eaten during the GrayCris incident.

A.R.T. knew about Tarik’s injury, and would have intimate knowledge of how it would impact him. But it hadn’t offered him a seat until he’d explicitly asked for one. And then it had waited long enough between being asked to do it and actually doing it to make it clear it was only doing so begrudgingly.

And then it had provided a purposefully uncomfortable, awkward bench. A bench so badly designed it hardly even deserved the name. In medbay. For its crew member who it knew was was injured and in pain.

Um, what in the absolute fuck?

Murderbot was used to A.R.T. being an asshole to itself, and even to its humans, but this was a new low. Especially after A.R.T. had risked Murderbot’s life and the lives of its humans in order to rescue its own crew. And now it wasn’t even treating them well?

::What is wrong with you?:: Murderbot demanded.

::Nothing is wrong with me.:: A.R.T. replied simply.

“Besides man, male, boy, guy, dude, woman, female, girl, gal, and dudette, and other things like that, are there any other specific gender terms you at least know you want me to avoid?” Tarik continued, obliviously friendly. Or at least pretending to be oblivious.

Now Murderbot was flipping out for a different reason. It could handle A.R.T. being mean to itself; it was used to being treated badly. But this was a member of its crew, A.R.T. was supposed to care about them.

“Um.”

Normally it was good at multitasking. But it wasn’t normally lying in a sub-optimally functioning medical chamber with a bunch of open wounds while wondering if the sentient transport it was relying on not only for its own health, but for the safety of everyone else on board it cared or at least vaguely knew about, had something seriously impairing its moral decision making processes, or if it always went around bullying everyone it met, not just Murderbot.

You know, like that whole thing that just happened that landed them all in this mess in the first place.

For a few long seconds Murderbot couldn’t figure out if it would be safer for Tarik to stay here where it could see him, or to dismiss him so maybe he’d have a tiny fraction less of A.R.T.’s attention on him. Murderbot could at least be relieved that A.R.T. wasn’t paying any direct attention to Murderbot’s humans, asleep and helpless in the guest quarters.

“Can I…” fuck, what did the humans say? “Get back to you on that, Tarik? I’m suddenly feeling really tired.” That was a good excuse, though ‘tired’ didn’t even begin to cover what it was feeling. But it guessed existential dread is also form of tiredness.

“Oh! Yes, of course, you need your rest.” Tarik said quickly, and awkwardly slid off the bench, wincing visibly when his feet hit the ground, which did nothing, at all, to help. He bowed a little, which Murderbot hadn’t been expecting, and said, “Thank you for the conversation, SecUnit, it was really nice meeting you. Maybe we can talk some more some other time when you’re feeling better.”

“You too.” It said. Which didn’t even make any sense.

But either Tarik didn’t notice, or he was polite enough not to point it out.

He gave a little wave, and then limped – literally, actually limped! -- out of the room. Murderbot watched him first with the drone it had in the room, then the one it had outside the door, and then he was out of its range entirely.

::Let’s watch Worldhoppers: Ascended again.:: A.R.T. said, like nothing in the world was wrong. Like Murderbot had no reason to panic, like it had no reason to be upset or angry or afraid or have any kind of mental breakdown at all.

Like A.R.T. had told Murderbot, and all its humans just hours before — they weren’t being held here here against their will, they knew where the door was and could kill themselves anytime they wanted.

They were completely at its mercy. A.R.T. had a history of treating Murderbot like crap, thought the threat of its humans being killed was an acceptable risk, and A.R.T. didn’t even treat its own crew well, even though it had risked the lives of Murderbot’s people to rescue them.

Murderbot couldn’t do anything except say, “Okay,” and put on the first pilot episode.

#fanfiction #Murderbot fanfiction #The Murderbot Diaries #Network Effect #Tarik Murderbot Diaries #Rjalker reads The Murderbot Diaries #Rjalker writes untitled fanfiction #now with a title but I'm NOT changing the tag #Murderbot #SecUnit #Symptom of Something Worse #Asshole Research Transport #ititspronouns #neopronouns in action #it/its

[war-of-wrath]

Warhammer 40k/30k fic recs of the smutty kind

So, I've been taking a deep dive into the warhammer universe lately (shoutout to @tagedeszorns, who I blame for seducing me with all that glorious marine meat)

Would love for people to add to this list with their own recs. I do tend to like the dark stuff, so read the warnings on those fics and don't charge me for the brain bleach you might need after reading them. Here's a few of my favorite stories so far. Porn for the porn god!

Held In The Grip Of Incurable Vice

Snake Fulgrim/Ferrus (well, parts of him) The fic that started it all. Exactly the perfect blend of smutty and horrifying. For the uninitiated: Demon prince Fulgrim (think half-snake half-humanoid) fucks the skull of his brother/lover whom he killed in battle. To quote one of the reviewers "This is absolutely disgusting and I love it"

~

Doom Desire

Snake Fulgrim/Ferrus' clone More Fulgrim/Ferrus of the terrible, horrible, painful variety, because I could read fics about them being happy together before this whole mess started, but you know me. The best thing about this is how it starts so sweet and ends in terrible, horrible rape and death. Demon prince Fulgrim attempt to seduce the clone of his dead lover to the dark side. Needless to say, things do not go well.

~

to burn through this solid stone

Septimus/Talos

Probably my favorite WH fanfic to date, and probably also the single best Astartes/Human smut out there. This one is surprisingly not-so-dark for a Night Lord story. Ridiculously hot. That sweet, sweet size kink. All Septimus/Talos stories on Ao3 (all 4 of them) are worth reading imo.

~

Count Down Three Rounds

Fulgrim/Perturabo

Boy I did not go into this fandom expecting to like Perturabo as much as I do, but here we go. This is probably one of the least violent and terrible stories on this list, if you don't consider the heartbreak and the hurt on an emotional level. Since I firmly believe that NOTHING could ever make Perturabo truly happy and content, the best I can see happening to him is that he at least gets laid.

If you like the ship I also recommend

Silk and Steel

And

Know your place

With some extra Fulgrim pinning for long dead Ferrus that I can't help but love.

~

And to absolutely nobody's surprise Sevatar is my favorite Warhammer blorbo. I know I'm predictable but who cares. I ship the Prince of Crows with absolutely anything that moves. Curze or Rushal are probably the ships that make the most sense, but I have also read stories with Dorn or Sigismund or even Fulgrim and they were just as enjoyable.

This one is probably my favorite, and let me just say: Fanfic writers are seriously talented if they make me love stories that include my squicks XD

Brave Bird

Sevatar/Rushal

~ Most of my acquired knowledge centers around the Horus Heresy and the Primarchs (because that's where I started reading) and I especially love reading about anything Night Lord related, so hit me with those recs (also my other favorite legions are the Iron Hands, Iron Warriors and Emperor's Children).

#warhammer 40k #fic recs #horus heresy #wh40k #wh30k #fulgrim #ferrus manus #Sevatar #perturabo

[orangepanic]

Thanks for the tag @nyamadermont! A belated sort of year in review whose questions I thought were interesting.

1. Number of stories posted to Ao3: 46 added or updated in 2022

2. Word count in 2022: 508,999

3. Fandoms I wrote for: Avatar: The Legend of Korra and Avatar: The Last Airbender

4. Pairings: Iroh II/Asami Sato (25) and a smattering of other pairings in dribs and drabs like Mako/Korra (3) and Jet/Ty Lee (2)

5. Stories with the most:

Kudos: Severance, the Irosami ghost story

Bookmarks: Smoke, the Equalist Asami Irosami story

Comment threads:  Also Smoke, followed by Severance

Word count: Same as above. So clearly it was a year of two long fics. I’m thrilled people gave them a chance.

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why): I think it might be The Return, a Korra/Asami/Iroh II story. The premise is that Iroh and Asami marry and start a family sometime before book four, but he’s killed when he ignores Raiko’s order to surrender to Kuvira. Asami eventually gets together with Korra to raise the kids, only to have Iroh return from a secret POW camp years later. I’m proud of the story because I hardly ever write poly and had to really think through what that dynamic would be like between the three of them, the kids who didn’t know Iroh, and how they’d all react as the family changed. It wound up being much more about Korra and Iroh’s relationship than I expected. I got some very nice comments from people who don’t typically like Iroh/Asami as a ship, too.

7.   Work I’m least proud of (and why): All the ones I haven’t finished yet!

8.   Share or describe a favorite review you received: I love and treasure every single comment I get, but I’d like to leave a special shout out for @myargalargan and @devildogdemon for leaving long comments on every chapter of some of my multi chapter fics. It’s so amazing that they spend time and effort on that and I’m glowing.

9.   A time when writing was really, really hard: Isn’t it always? But the end of Smoke is killing me. This fic is going on three years and I know what needs to happen and it’s really hard not to mess it up. 

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: Hiroshi and Yasuko Sato in How I Always Loved You are an absolute fucking delight and also such a surprise. Hiroshi Sato in canon is a kind of one-dimensional asshole who serves the purpose of being a villain (heck, I’ve written him like this myself) and Yasuko is just a photograph we see once who is usually assumed to be a carbon copy of her daughter, Asami. Getting such strong personalities for both of them has been so much fun, especially when it turned out both they and their ship dynamic was so different from Irosami. 

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing: I wrote a sequel to an Irosami vampire AU I’d written the year before. There are lots of parts of it that I like, but really liked seeing Iroh balance the human and more animalistic vampire urges. I did a ton of research for this fic because I decided vampires are like leopards with territories and stuff.

“I found it,” Iroh said lamely. He let the ball drop to the ground in quiet submission. He didn’t want Asami to take it away. His scent might be everywhere, but this was technically still her territory. Everything in it belonged to her. That was another thing Iroh had noticed. Concepts that before he’d only attributed to animals, like “prey” and “territory,” now seemed perfectly natural. 

He saw Asami stiffen slightly at the tone of his voice. She looked suddenly wary. 

“You can have it,” she said slowly. “I haven’t seen that ball since I was a kid. It’s probably been out here twenty years.” A slight pause. “Do you play?”

Iroh let his body relax; a signal to her that he wasn’t a threat. “Not since the Academy,” he said. “And that was mostly a bunch of us blowing off steam. Not a lot of kemari on ships. It’s too easy to lose it overboard.”

He saw Asami mimic his posture as she studied him from across the flat grassy area where he’d been playing. A de-escalation of sorts. Good. Not that Iroh had intended to challenge her. In truth, he wasn’t sure what he’d intended. It was only a ball. He was a guest here. Republic City was Asami’s to hunt… wasn’t it? And never mind that he was larger and fit and, an embarrassingly sexist thought, male. None of that mattered. Or it shouldn’t. Spirits, what was wrong with him?

“Do you?” he asked. The words seemed to have more weight than they ought. 

12. How did you grow as a writer this year: This (Avatar) fandom can be really hard on people in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is with a certain ideological purity that seems to pervade a lot of it and which is meant to dictate who can write what, and what can be written. This year I wrote a character with a physical disability (Tis the Sea Sun for Love) and I did a lot of research for what was a rather lighthearted holiday fic. I think a year ago I’d have been too scared someone would come screaming at me that I wasn’t allowed. 

13. How do you hope to grow next year: I find ending multi-chapter fics difficult. I feel like a lot of them go on too long and kind of fizzle out. So I’d like to work on my endings.

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc): my discord server is a pretty awesome group of internet humans, I must say. Love u absolute cracky gorgeous degenerates.

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year: I’m sadly susceptible to dares. The Only Thing I Ever wanted was bet you can’t write a soulmark AU, The Spares was bet you can’t make Korroh work, Big Fish was bet you won’t really write mermaid smut, Do You Have a Better Idea was bet you can’t make Iroh/Asami/Kuvira smut, etc. I’m very much like this in real life, too. 

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers: Your characters are people! Do what you can to get to know them as individuals and their unique dynamics in relationships. Think about their quirky likes and dislikes and weave those in. Know what they’re afraid of and what they want more than anything but tell no one. Imagine what they’d pick out at a store, or how they’d behave at a party, or what they’d be like in a group at a board game. You may never use the content, but it will help you find their voice and distinguish them from everyone else. There should (in my opinion) be very few plots that work the same for multiple ships. 

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year: I have a couple of big fics that I really want to start, but I have to finish some big fics first. If I can do that, the two I’m most interested in are one about the Equalist trials and another about 20-30 years post canon as the question of whether Raava can still reincarnate comes into question.

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read:

And anyone else who wants to!

#fic wrap #tag game

[possibly-in-wonderland]

I posted 935 times in 2022

That's 935 more posts than 2021!

450 posts created (48%)

485 posts reblogged (52%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@gointothevvater

@possibly-in-wonderland

@twigg96

@neil-gaiman

@thatwritingho

I tagged 860 of my posts in 2022

Only 8% of my posts had no tags

#reblog - 417 posts

#original post - 335 posts

#metalocalypse - 22 posts

#lmao - 22 posts

#oof - 18 posts

#its such a wonderful life - 16 posts

#original reblog - 16 posts

#stranger things - 13 posts

#pickles the drummer - 10 posts

#metallica - 10 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#this is like that episode of courage the cowardly dog where muriel gets turned into a child and she wants more cheese on her mac n cheese

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

*dantdm mod video intro plays*

top o' the mornin' to ya bros, my name is markiplier and welcome to my lovely world

10 notes - Posted February 20, 2022

#4

me, wanting to cuddle and have a roommate in the future bc i don't like being alone:

my aroace ass who wants a house all to their self bc of growing up in a small single-wide trailer with eight people: ew no, wtf?

17 notes - Posted April 17, 2022

#3

Humans Are Space Orcs: Venom in Humans

alright, since my most famous post is about humans and tunnel vision i bring to you: humans and their poisonous bite.

if you get bit by another human it WILL get infected. its common knowledge and due to the number of bacteria in your mouth. in fact, scientists believe that humans are developing a VENOMOUS BITE (which is basically gender euphoria to me).

with that being said, imagine a human bite being absolutely lethal to aliens.

aliens whispering about their human crewmate, knowing just how deadly they truly are and being starstruck that the human crewmate hasn't gotten aggressive with anyone and bitten someone.

alternatively: a group of aliens adopting a human as a ship pet, treating it like a exotic and relatively dangerous pet. someone breaks into the ship, trying to kill the crew. but they didn't take into account the ship has an extremely dangerous pet. only to get bit on the shoulder and soon die within the next 30 minutes.

imagine the crew not even knowing the human has a lethal bite.

80 notes - Posted April 20, 2022

#2

Humans Are Space Orcs: Tunnel Vision, Anger, Seeing Red, Loyalty

I was on Pinterest...bc that's something I do...when it occured to me. Humans are dangerous but loyal (said in almost every post especially the post comparing humans to pitbulls)

Imagine an alien crews reaction to their human witnessing another alien crewmate die by the hands of some other alien at a space dock or planet they landed on. The human is hunched over the body silently crying and anger is boiling.

They carefully place the crewmate's head down that was previously resting in their lap, they stand up, crack their neck, and turn towards the other crewmates.

And what they see terrifies them.

Non of them had ever seen an angry human. Especially one with a face that red.

The human pushes past them and up to the alien that killed their crewmate and goes apeshit.

There's screaming.

There's blood.

There's broken bones.

The alien that killed their crewmate is long dead but the human is still beating the shit out of them and the aliens know that enough is enough but should they step in?

Eventually, the human tires and shakily stands up before hauling themselves back over to the body of the crewmate and picking them up bridal style so they can be properly buried (in whatever way was sacred to them).

The crew watches the human board the ship holding the corpse and silently they follow.

Later when asked if okay, the human responds, "I saw red." They explain what that (and tunnel vision) is.

The aliens are absolutely terrified but understand why the human did what they did and understand they would have done it for any of them.

453 notes - Posted March 13, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

this blog is pro johnny depp

this blog is anti amber heard

3,189 notes - Posted April 21, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #completely forgot about this #original post

[luwianskies]

The Outer Reach

...yes, once again, something new XD

A scifi feature this time!

Humanity really did come out of a very comfortable cradle, as far as life-bearing worlds go. Comfortable in the habitable zone, comfortably surrounded by guardian gas and ice giants, comfortably orbited by a single large moon that made Earth stable…

Outside of that though, dangers abound.

Asteroids whizzing around and getting tangled up in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt were one of those. Lots of potential disasters kept away mostly by gravity and other asteroids. But sometimes, something manages to wander through anyway.

And lately, more and more have been wandering in and threatening the solar system.

Which is why the Rangers are out here, chasing these stray asteroids. Sometimes to destroy them, sometimes to tow them. And sometimes they get to drill into one, looking for usable resources like water, silicon and useful metals.

They usually get a really good pay bonus if they get a surplus out of one. But that was never a priority. Protecting the solar system was.

And the SSS Breksta was damn good at its job.

It wasn’t the largest Kuiper belt patrol ship around, nor the fastest. It was the one that had, so far, lasted the longest and taken the upgrades and system  updates better than any other. The first of its model and the template for many that came later.

It also had the longest-serving crew among all Ranger ships. Considering the fact that the retirement schedule for all Rangers was incredibly frequent compared to any other space job, this was unusual. The maximum length of any service as a Ranger was 6 years. Retired Rangers could petition to be re-instated after an equally long period of retirement provided they had a medical seal of approval for it, but these were rare. The job was just too dangerous to the Rangers’ and Painkillers’ long-term health to allow for longer periods. The Space Service was incredibly strict on this particular regulation.

So having a crew now well into their 9th year with no members scheduled to rotate out wasn’t just unusual, it was unheard of.

Oh, there were some members that rotated out after their scheduled time. Some even left early. But the core Ranger group that had served the longest was still aboard.

This is most likely, Tsevir thought with some apprehension, a very tight-knit group.

You don’t spend nearly a decade with the same people without catching intense feelings about them, good or bad. And that was without the neural interface. With it? It was ride or die. Sometimes literally.

Some people got addicted to the connection that the interface provided, and tried to have their contracts extended. Some chased the connection with other users of interfaces outside the job. And some just…didn’t survive the separation. They couldn’t handle its absence.

So what was going on with this crew, Tsevir wondered as they swam, the turquoise light of their tank soothing them. The flow of water over their body had always been a relaxing thing to indulge in when they could, especially after their body mods had done their work. But nothing beat swimming in dark water, awash with the sensation of being surrounded by liquid darkness. It had helped in their breathing exercises to enjoy being submerged in water for long periods.

But even Tsevir needed to breathe, and as they slowly ascended to the surface for another breath they wondered if they would feel compelled to hold their breath in a space suit. Space was as not somewhere one could breathe after all, and before their mods they had always preferred to dive without an air tank, or the more advanced re-breathers now on the market. Maybe the absence of air in space would be interpreted by their mods as being just like in the water…

No, the thing to worry about, or at least prepare the most for, was going to be social aspect. Tsevir mentally reviewed what information they had been given about the crew they were about to join as they dived back into the water, scant though it was. A dozen members, although only 3 actually held the rank of Ranger, the rest acting as Painkillers officially and handyman crew unofficially. Unlike most Ranger crews, these Painkillers didn’t seem to have partnered Rangers that they habitually support. Everybody rotated evenly seemingly without complaint.

Yes, small, a tight-knit crew. Likely to support and protect each other when in need…Hopefully the need in this case is not something unethical.

Well, only one way to find out.

Tsevir was joining the Breksta’s crew.

------

I’ll try adding more info this week as I am aware this isn’t much to go on and i was tagged only for 7 lines by @silvershears . I’ll also be posting a different 7 lines later. But for now, here’s the latest idea!

#The Outer Reach #scifi

[thelostgirl21]

For those of you still arguing that Kaidan does not outrank Shepard as an Alliance Officer during the Citadel Coup...

...he does.

Actually, being a Staff Commander in ME2, Kaidan Alenko was already outranking Shepard when they met on Horizon.

First, it is important to understand that, while inspired by it, the Human Systems Alliance does not use the exact same ranking system as the U.S. Navy / Marines. [Edit: I've fixed some (hopefully, most!) of the "he/him/himself" pronouns I'd missed the first time around... And that was... like... 90% of the time I was referring to Shepard. *Facepalms* Sorry about that! I'm so used to writing for M!Shep, that I instinctively say "he/him/himself" when referring to them (and my brain does the weird French thing of including the feminine into the masculine while proofreading, apparently!). If you still spot a non gender-neutral pronoun in there, please feel free to let me know.]

Therefore, according to the System’s Alliance’s own ranking system (that can be found in the game’s codex entries; I’ve also added that information at the bottom of this post, with in-game examples) the rank of Major (and, in ME2, Staff Commander) is above that of a Lieutenant Commander (Shepard’s own Alliance military rank) within the Alliance.

It is the rank of an Alliance Captain (Navy), not that of an Alliance [Lieutenant] Commander (Navy & Marines), that is considered as being the equivalent of that of an Alliance Major (Marines).

Meaning that, by the beginning of ME3, Major Alenko has now risen through the ranks to the point where he holds a similar level of responsibility within the Systems Alliance as Captain Anderson used to hold in ME1. At the very beginning of ME1, Captain Anderson was a Navy Captain, and the Commanding Officer (C.O.) of the SSV Normandy.

Lieutenant Commander Shepard was his Executive Officer (X.O.).

And Staff Lieutenant Alenko was head of the ship's Marine detail*

By the beginning of ME3, Major Alenko is now a Marine Major, and the Commanding Officer (C.O.) of the 1st Special Operations Biotic Company, a covert operations unit of the Systems Alliance.

*Note: I just discovered yesterday what “Marine detail” means, and I just have to say Kaidan’s position on the Normandy is ridiculously cool! 

Basically, it’s Kaidan’s job to determine which personnel position, assignment, or duty station each Marine should have on the Normandy.  While basing his decisions on the person’s professional milestones, taking into consideration the Marine’s personal aspirations and stated preferences, considering their marital status / family lives and responsibilities outside of the military, evaluating whether they have the proper qualifications for the job or require further training, looking at performance reviews...

They are described as the Marine’s “advocate”, trying to make sure that not only are they the “best Marine” for what their actual job requires, but that it’s the job that will bring said Marine the greater level of work satisfaction / align with their needs and personal ambitions.

So basically, after Jenkins was KIA at the beginning of ME1, it was Kaidan’s job to find a suitable replacement to take over his duties on the ship.

So, after Shepard wakes up in the medbay, and expresses that they’re glad that Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams was still on the Normandy, because she’s a good soldier that deserves it, and Captain Anderson answers them: “Lieutenant Alenko agrees with you.  THAT’S WHY I added her to our crew.”

He literally means “After seeing her in action, Lieutenant Alenko reviewed her file, checked her qualifications, past performance reviews, family status, her documented professional aspirations and stated preferences, numerous past (denied) applications for a transfer to a shipboard posting, and based on his very own assessment of Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, determined that she was the single best Marine in the System’s Alliance for the open position we now had on the ship.”

I’d always assumed that Kaidan had more or less informally gone “Gunnery Chief Williams was really impressive down there!  Maybe we could use her!”

And Captain Anderson had essentially gone: “Sure!  Why not?  We’ve got an open position.  Let’s keep her!”

But I’d all but forgotten that, with Nihlus dead, there was absolutely no Spectre on board that ship at that point in the story, and they were thus likely bound by the System’s Alliance rules and protocols when it came to handing out assignments to fill the vacant positions available on the Normandy.

It’s therefore highly likely that whoever was in charge of the ship’s Marine detail (in this case, Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko), would have had access to a list of applications of suitable candidates that had expressed an interest in serving on that ship.

And that, whenever there was a position vacancy, or a need to add a new position on the Normandy, then the head of the ship’s detail would have the responsibility of taking a good look at those candidatures, and selecting the very best suited Marine for the job.

As a Spectre, Commander Shepard might have had the level of authority required to spontaneously go: “they followed me home, I’m keeping them!”

But Captain Anderson most certainly did not. And, while he was the Normandy’s C.O. (meaning that he’d likely have the final say on whether or not Ashley got the position)...

Well, the person  officially in charge of finding someone to fill the position left vacant after Jenkin’s passing - after having carefully reviewed Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams candidature against those of other potentially qualified System’s Alliance soldiers - was literally Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko.

And one would assume that the reason why Kaidan got his own position as head of the ship’s Marine detail, would be because he’d be considered as being very proficient at determining whether or not a given soldier is going to be the right fit for their job, and the best asset for their team.

So, when Captain Anderson tells Shepard that the reason he added her to the crew was because Lieutenant Alenko believed she was a good soldier that deserved a position on the Alliance’s most advanced starship, that was because it was Kaidan’s job to make such decisions.

He had to choose which Marine in the System’s Alliance would take over Jenkin’s duties, and he chose Ash.  Kaidan’s the reason Ashley was assigned to Captain Anderson (and later, Commander Shepard)’s ship.  He’s the one that made it happen and allowed her to advance in her career.

Should Commander Shepard have tried to do the same (i.e. be the one to request Gunnery Chief Williams assignation to the Normandy, in a context where Ashley wouldn’t already have been added to the team while they were out cold); then Captain Anderson’s most likely answer would have needed to be: “I’ll let Lieutenant Alenko know about your commendation, but he’s not done reviewing candidatures and making his choice among them yet.“

I don’t understand how anyone can call Kaidan “boring”. He's such a layered, fascinating character...

As he once told Shepard:

“I’m an enigma. I’ve got skills.”

Yes, yes you do... and, over 10 years later, I’m still discovering some skill-sets that you have that I’d never even suspected before!

And boy, am I pissed we'll never get to know about your run in with the vorcha mafia, five thousand credits, and a bottle of whiskey!

Still, no wonder Anderson was so adamant on Major Alenko being the one offered the Command of the 1st Special Operations Biotic Company.

Besides his very own unique history as a L2 and ability to relate to those kids, he apparently has an eye for military talents, and he likely trusted him to be a very good judge of character when it came to assessing whether those young biotics would be a good addition to the Company, and able to handle working with the rest of a team while on high risk missions without needlessly further endangering their teammates.

However, as a Spectre, when operating under Council authority, both Commander Shepard and Major Alenko are no longer bound by the Alliance military’s chain of command.

And it seems that most players do not realize it, but when Captain Anderson stepped down as the SSV Normandy’s C.O., Shepard did not receive a promotion within the Alliance military in terms of overall rank; but exclusively one regarding their position in regards to their assignment.

They went from being the ship’s Executive Officer (X.O.) to the ship’s Commanding Officer (C.O.), but they still remained an Alliance Lieutenant Commander, regardless of the position they held on the SSV Normandy itself.

I’m thus guessing that Shepard dying so shortly after the Battle of the Citadel, had prevented them from being promoted to the rank of Staff Commander (or even Captain / Major).

And then, in all of the investigations surrounding their claims of having been dead for 2 years, brought back to life through Cerberus technology, the time they spend working with them to hunt down the Collectors, Shepard destroying a batarian system (Arrival), the time they spent in detention between ME2 and ME3 after having been stripped of their rank, etc.  Well, I’m guessing the Systems Alliance never thought to offer them a promotion, either.

At the beginning of ME3, the Normandy SR-2 has been recovered by the Alliance, and is intended to be used by Admiral Anderson (who would have become the SR-2′s Commanding Officer).

With Earth and the Alliance Headquarters under Reapers attack, Admiral Anderson chooses to reinstate Commander Shepard’s rank as a Lieutenant Commander within the Systems Alliance instead, and puts them in charge of his ship (thus, stepping down, once more, as the Normandy’s C.O. in favor of Commander Shepard).

Therefore yes, Commander Shepard is not as highly ranked an Alliance Officer as Major Kaidan Alenko is. However, they were given an assignment as the Commanding Officer of the Normandy SR-2 by Admiral Anderson.

Meaning that, after the Citadel Coup, when Commander Shepard offers Major Alenko a position among the Normandy SR-2′s crew, accepting that position means agreeing to recognize, and respect, Shepard’s authority as the ship’s C.O. as well.

Regardless of Kaidan technically becoming the highest ranking Systems Alliance Officer on board the Normandy SR-2, the position as the Normandy’s C.O. was given to Commander Shepard by Admiral Anderson.

So, if Major Alenko has a problem working under the authority of a lesser ranked officer as part of a Lieutenant Commander’s crew, then it is his responsibility to either refuse the offer and request another assignment (something that Kaidan can do in the game, actually - he can be the one to turn down Shepard’s offer), or take it up with Admiral Anderson, to try to request a change in leardership.

What I also find particularly interesting, with how those scenes play out, is that in both versions where Kaidan doesn’t join the Normandy’s crew, he shakes Shepard’s hand, but does not salute them.

Otherwise, after the handshake, when Shepard tells him “Welcome aboard, Major”, Kaidan straightens up and tells them “Aye aye, sir / ma’am” with a military salute, therefore acknowledging Shepard’s position as his new C.O.

Essentially, Major Kaidan Alenko is not bound by rank to obey Commander Shepard’s orders or accept to serve on their ship...

It is only once he CHOOSES to join the Normandy’s crew and take that offered position that there is this obligation for him to respect that Commander Shepard is the acting C.O. of the Normandy, and that they report directly to Admirals Anderson and Hackett.

As a Spectre, they report directly to the Citadel Council.

And so does Kaidan.  I’m guessing that, should he ever wish to leave the Normandy, he’s got the required authority to do so, and would simply need to ask Admiral Anderson or Admiral Hackett for a new assignment.

He may discuss his decision with Commander Shepard first, out of respect.  But I doubt that Commander Shepard could try to force him to stay and continue to work under the Command of a lesser ranked Alliance officer if he wished to leave the ship.

The only known people that could deny his request for a transfer within the Alliance would be either Anderson or Hackett.

And, as a Spectre, he could very well go “yeah, screw this!  I’m out!”

So yeah, his being willing to take orders from Commander Shepard, and join the Normandy as a member of his crew regardless of him being a higher ranked officer in the Systems Alliance, only highlight the amount of trust and respect he has in Commander Shepard’s abilities and leadership.

Knowing Kaidan, he likely values Commander Shepard as his C.O. based on the man’s actual military, leadership, combat qualifications and training, rather than rank.  Not to mention his ability to recognize their more personal, human qualities, how much they care for their crew, and Kaidan’s own willingness to help them share the burden that’s been put on their shoulders.

I think that, in order to gain Kaidan’s respect and have him gladly follow you, you need to use the power you’ve been given by whatever position or status you hold for the benefit of those serving under you, and/or those under your responsibility, rather than try to dominate and overpower others with it.

Kaidan won’t hesitate to call Udina “a bastard” for what he perceives as him “selling them out”, express dissent when a superior officer is out of line, question the motives of those in charge, and often flirt with insubordination.

He’s one of the most NEUTRAL good characters of the series - letting his integrity dictate his actions first and foremost, rather than being strictly and rigidly bound by ranks, rules, or protocols.

His main source of worry, when it comes to Shepard potentially cutting corners, appears to be the price that THEY may have to pay in the aftermath.

He seems more concerned about the Council or the Alliance openly using Shepard as a scapegoat if things go south, and/or disavowing their actions and leaving them without support, rather than over Shepard themselves breaking the law in such a way that they would make innocent people suffer.

I've always seen him as trying to make Shepard understand that they won't let them go down alone with the ship, figuratively (and perhaps event literally speaking... He sure tried in ME2 until Shepard reminded him that the rest of the crew were also in need of his assistance and counting on them to keep them safe) and share the responsibility of the decisions Shepard makes as long as he also supports them.

And yeah, Kaidan did put his own happiness first when it came to breaking the rules of fraternization.

He even says that the galaxy will just keep going and the only thing that will never happen again is them. And that they are what's most important in that moment.

If it wasn't for how very lucidly attached to the Alliance he is (he sees the flaws, but still considers that the Alliance does more good than harm overall, and is proud of being an Alliance soldier / officer), I'd almost have been tempted to put him into chaotic good territory.

He's dedicated to "doing what's right" (the principle of goodness itself) and acting with integrity, but not so much to "honoring human / citadel laws" or even moral codes per say.

His moral code is very much about remaining true to your own ideals and who you are in a way that promotes the greater good, and allows you to be at peace with your actions. And he's seen constantly questioning his perspective of good and wrong in the world, and adapting what acting with integrity truly means to him (for example, when he was trying to come to terms with the fact that Cerberus scientists could also be good people).

So, I very much consider him someone that is more Neutral (chaotic leaning) good, than Neutral (lawful leaning) good.

Rules and institutions need to make sense and serve a useful purpose to him, and avoid getting in the way of him doing what he believes to be right according to his own personal moral compass that no one dictates him but himself. Otherwise, screw the rules!

It may also be good to remember that Spectres have absolutely no command structure.  To prove themselves to the Council, they have to demonstrate both exceptional abilities and self-reliance.  If they thought that Major Kaidan Alenko would be the type to defer to Commander Shepard’s judgment based on seniority and rank alone, I’m guessing the Council never would have agreed to grant him Spectre status in the first place.

Yeah, Councillor Udina was the one that submitted his candidature, but he couldn’t have actually granted him Spectre status without the Asari, Turian, and Salarian Councillors’ approval.

Meaning that they all saw something in his service history that made them go “Yeah, this is a guy that can totally go rogue, disrespect orders, and do whatever must be done for the sake of the greater good of the galactic community if need be.”

People that see him as some sort of “whiny, Alliance lapdog” seem to forget that  we are talking about a 17-year-old kid that continuously got in trouble with Vyrnnus for talking back (to the point where he started punishing the other kids to get to him), found a way to hack communications on the station to secretly contact his parents on Earth, after having been explicitly forbidden to do so, and angrily stood up to Vyrnnus after Vyrnnus crossed a line while bullying more vulnerable than himself.

Commander Vyrnnus taught Kaidan that some would-be leaders only cared about holding power over others, and were not worthy of being respected nor followed.

Major Alenko simply is not someone that can easily be intimidated into obeying orders, and/or be impressed by power or rank.  What will make him “fall in line”, is the belief that the one giving the orders is the very best suited person for the job.

So, when it all come down to it, I’m pretty convinced that he could care less about Shepard “only being a Lieutenant Commander”.

He cares about Shepard doing the right thing, and about being able to trust their leadership and intents more than anything.

And, while Kaidan Alenko may have all the required qualifications and abilities to handle his own command, too...

...this is not what makes him the happiest.

He’s a soldier.  He likes getting his hands dirty.  He likes being right in the center of the action, and making a tangible difference.

My own partner, whose personality often reminds me of Kaidan (or, actually, Kaidan’s personality often reminds me of him!), has been offered countless of times the job of a team supervisor or coordinator in his work as a computer programmer (systems architect).

Sure, it would come with a salary increase and some advantages...

And sure, he’s a rather assertive guy, with a talent for seeing the greater picture, quickly noticing people’s own individual strengths and resources in a team, finding ways to take full advantage of said strengths and resources while organizing the work to complement every skill-sets they have, and thinking about creative solutions to a problem that others might be missing...

But what he loves most about his work is the coding itself.

He’ll gladly offer his input (actually, nothing you do or say will stop him from voicing his opinions, suggestions, and solutions to an issue...  especially if he thinks you’re being inefficient in the way you’re approaching it, and/or overlooking some variables), but the thought of actually being in charge of the whole working team all the frakking time, and having to manage complaints, conflicts, etc. - when his time would better be used in front of the computer, figuring out why something isn’t working properly - is enough to drive him insane.

He has everything it takes to be a good, efficient, more than qualified supervisor and coordinator...

...except the interest and motivation.

The things that make him happiest at the work he does, lie within the programming itself.

Similarly, I very much perceive Kaidan Alenko as being someone that has every required qualifications, skills, and abilities to be in Command of his own ship or his own squad...

...but typically prefers being a soldier, getting out there in the field and doing his work without having to handle what everyone else has to be doing on top of it.

He made an exception for Admiral Anderson by indulging him, and eventually agreeing to assume Command of the 1st Special Operations Biotic Company.  And, from the way he speaks about his students, it seems that the nature of his job, and his ability to connect with what they are going through and nurture their potential as soldiers, fellow “freaks”, and human beings, ended up making that command worthwhile and an overall positive and stimulating experience for him.

This is one of the many reasons why I lament the lack of interaction between Kaidan and Jack.  They are both powerful biotics that were abused in the hopes of getting results and making their powers stronger.  They both share a deep seated hatred of Cerberus.  And they both ended up becoming teachers and mentors to younger generations of human biotics.

Beyond the potential for humor and entertainment, I think it would have been interesting to see how they might have related to each other, talked about their students, shared a few tips, etc.

But otherwise, Kaidan seems to be happiest while doing his own thing (ex: being sent to investigate certain situations for the Alliance / Council), or serving on a ship while using his skills to offer his support to his Commander, rather than being the one in charge of everybody else.

Given how he tends to be more task than ego oriented, I therefore really don’t think that he has any issues following the leadership of a Lieutenant Commander regardless of his own rank.

As long as he can trust Shepard to be a good leader and get things done, he’ll gladly let them assume command.

But during the attack on the Citadel, Commander Shepard is not Major Alenko’s C.O., as Admiral Anderson never officially assigned him to the Normandy, and after they left Earth in a hurry and headed for Mars to retrieve data, he ended up in the hospital.

If we want to argue that Major Kaidan Alenko was showing any kind of disrespect towards Commander Shepard by refusing to stand down in front of a superior officer during the Citadel coup (an argument that’s occasionally been brought up by those that highly disapprove of the confrontation)...

Well, I hate to break this to you, but per Systems Alliance military protocol, Shepard should have been the one to salute Kaidan, not the other way around.

But it simply doesn’t matter either way.

Because that confrontation was not an “Alliance Lieutenant Commander vs Alliance Major” issue.

This was very much “Spectre vs Spectre” issue.

You simply had two highly trained, experienced, and dangerous Spectre operatives that were interacting on absolutely equal footing, outside of the Alliance’s chain of command.

And they both had the exact same objective: Protect the council from Cerberus.

In the end, it all boils down to trust.  And to whether or not Commander Shepard has the required empathy to understand that Kaidan Alenko has every right to be human, to have doubts, to question people’s motives - regardless of how much he loves them - and to be scared to make mistakes based on his personal feelings towards them.

Kaidan (and Ashley) have the most realistic, healthy, and human reactions that one could possibly have to someone being brought back from the dead by a terrorist organization.

On Mars, he wasn’t trying to attack or hurt Shepard.

What he clearly told them was “I’m confused, I’m scared, I do want to trust you, but I don’t know how.  I’ve seen some of the abject horrors of what Cerberus is capable of doing, and the thought that they might have been using you, or are still planning to use you, against the rest of the Galaxy terrifies me.  I need to know it’s really you - that you haven’t been cloned, brainwashed, or they didn’t plant a chip in your head or something -  and I’m at a loss at where to even start.”

(I’m thinking that should they have discovered that Shepard had been altered in some way and/or was being manipulated by Cerberus, but was still in there somewhere, then Kaidan would have wanted to do anything he could to help free them from Cerberus’ grasp, too.)

And he has every right to feel that way, to be afraid, to be concerned, and to express it.

Actually no one owes any of their friends their “blind trust”.

If someone I strongly care about is doing something stupid or I disagree with, I fully reserve the right to oppose their actions and let them know I’m not on board with it.

I can trust that they are a good person and believe in them.  But I can also occasionally distrust their judgment and whether the decisions they are making are the right ones.

So by openly verbalizing his fears and doubts, what Kaidan is actually doing is letting Shepard in.  He’s reaching out for that connection they share, not shutting them down.

He’s almost desperate to try to explain to them how he feels, so they can open the dialogue and start figuring these things out together, rather than remaining alone in their little corner while allowing those fears and doubts to fester and take root.

If Shepard is able to understand that.  If they can reach back towards Kaidan, show interest in getting to know each other again, rebuild trust, and work through those issues, then as I’ve already demonstrated a little while ago, getting Kaidan to stand down is so ridiculously easy it’s almost laughable.

If they do cut themselves off from Kaidan following Mars, and never reach back towards him, then they are allowing all those doubts and fears to keep on growing...  thus leading to tragedy during the coup.

But yeah, anyone reasonably expecting Kaidan to just step aside the moment those doors opened (when he was fully expecting to see Cerberus operatives come out of the elevator shaft) - especially based on supposed “higher ranked offircer superiority” - is having utterly unrealistic expectations regarding Major Alenko’s personality and behavior.

Either they were too quick to dismiss him as whiny and boring, and thus kept him out out of every mission, skipped conversations, and/or quickly rushed through them without really listening and seeking to understand the character...

They are unable to perceive videogame characters as well-rounded people, but are rather exclusively seeking to immerse themselves in some fantasy world where every single person they encounter either automatically adores them or fears their superior power and influence; and those characters are something that should solely exist for their own entertainment (unlike reality, where they can more easily recognize that each of their friends have personal aspirations, opinions, thoughts, careers and dreams that exist entirely outside of themselves; and they never would realistically expect one of said friends to “drop everything” they are doing on the fly in order to blindly follow them into a private jet that’s being borrowed from a well-known right-wing terrorists organization instead).

Or, they literally have a God complex.

----------

Systems Alliance: Military Ranks (Mass Effect)

The Alliance uses a modified version of the ranking system that has been used for hundreds of years. Soldiers are classified into rank-and-file enlisted personal, experienced non-commissioned officers (NCOs), and specially trained officers.

The divide between naval personnel and ground forces (“marines”) is small. Ground units are a specialized branch of the fleet, just as fighter squadrons are. This unity of command is imposed by the futility of fighting without control of orbit; without the navy, any army is pointless. The marines, as a matter of pride, maintain some of their traditional rank titles; for example, marines have Privates and Corporals instead of Servicemen.

In ascending order of responsibility, the ranks of the Alliance are:

ENLISTED

Serviceman 3rd Class/Private 2nd Class

Serviceman 2nd Class/Private 1st Class

Serviceman 1st Class/Corporal

NCOs

Service Chief

Gunnery Chief [ex: Gunnery Chief Williams (ME1)]

Operations Chief [ex: Operations Chief Williams (ME2)]

OFFICERS

2nd Lieutenant

1st Lieutenant

Staff Lieutenant [ex: Lieutenant Alenko (ME1)]

Lieutenant Commander [ex: Commander Shepard (ME1, ME2, ME3),  Commander Williams (ME3)]

Staff Commander [ex: Commander Alenko (ME2)]

Captain/Major [ex: Major Alenko (ME3); Captain Anderson (ME1)]

Rear Admiral/General [ex: Admiral Hackett (ME1)]

Admiral [ex: Admiral Hacket (ME2), Admiral Anderson (ME3)]

Fleet Admiral [ex: Admiral Hackett (ME3)]

#Kaidan Alenko #Kaidan #Mass Effect #Systems Alliance #ranking system #My Posts #My Thoughts

[vintagegeekculture]

The Chinese Cultural Inspirations for Dragon Ball Z and Super

Journey to the West was only the beginning. 

A lot of people are vaguely aware that Dragon Ball was inspired by Chinese culture and Hong Kong Kung Fu movies and novels, but are unaware of how deep and long lasting it goes. The Japanese spent the 1980s fascinated by China, which opened up from being a closed society for decades in 1978; the most famous human being in Japan in the 80s was either Michael Jackson or Jackie Chan. 

In fact, a lot of people commonly believe that the Chinese action movie and Kung Fu novel cultural and media influence on Dragon Ball ended very early on. This is untrue. Sure, we started to see qipaos and cheongsams less frequently when they headed to West City, but it absolutely did not finish, because there’s tons of influence to see even as impossibly late as Dragon Ball Super. Interestingly, I don’t think any of these point of inspirations have been pointed out before, mainly because a lot of Chinese adventure novels are simply not available in English. 

 The Piccolo/Gohan plot was inspired by the Chinese action novel “Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre.”

Okay, tell me if you’ve heard this story before: a truly demonic, weird looking monster villain is defeated by a martial arts hero, but by circumstance, is forced into training his greatest enemy’s young son. The villain trains the young boy, the son of his enemy, in martial arts and over time, becomes like a second father or uncle to him and his family, putting the boy in his “evil” sect, and thanks to his love of his rival’s son, this baddie turns over a new leaf and goes from evil to just…grumpy, and becomes a loyal, though gruff, ally of the boy.

Of course, the events of Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre are a bit different from Dragon Ball in details. The Lion King becomes Wuji’s teacher because they are both stranded together on an island after a shipwreck, for instance, and he is blinded and made vulnerable. Also, the Lion King wasn’t so much evil so much as he was misunderstood by the orthodox martial world. However, in broad outlines, this trajectory for a face turn (becomes friends with his greatest enemy’s son, and becomes like a second father to him as he trains him, causing the villain to become a gruff good guy and ally) is essentially from one of the most famous Chinese novels ever written in the 1960s. 

Oh, and while we’re at it, Gohan is likewise inspired by another character from a Louis Cha novel: the Prince of Dali Duan Yu in the Kung Fu novel Demigods and Semi-Devils. The Prince in that novel is a naïve, pacifistic scholar who prefers books to fighting, and who was raised to be timid and avoid combat, absolutely out of step with his family, all of whom are martial artists and warriors. In fact, the beginning of the story is the prince gets incredibly lost in the wilderness, where the hopelessly naïve prince is utterly out of his depth, with all the robbers and scary beasts, and needs to be saved by real martial artists that protect him like fairy godparents. He spends the first part of the story running away from everything, scared as hell. However, by circumstance, he has naturally high power he cannot fully initially control, and eventually realizes that even scholars and others who hate fighting have to sometimes become fighters to protect those they love.

The Duan Yu part of Demigods and Semi-Devils was made into a film, the Battle Wizard, which was reviewed by PewDiePie. The Dragonball similarities went over his head because, honestly, PewDiePie does not strike me as a perceptive person. 

 Hit was based on the screen persona of Chow Yun Fat.

Chow Yun Fat was a Hong Kong cinema superstar who was to director John Woo what Robert de Niro was to Martin Scorsese. There are three giveaways that Hit was based on Chow Yun Fat. One, he’s an assassin, same as Chow Yun Fat’s character in the Killer, and is even given a sequence that’s a John Woo homage with an assassination in an office building with guns pulled on an empty elevator in an act of misdirection. Second, he’s wearing the single piece of clothing Chow Yun Fat is associated with, a black trenchcoat (fun fact: in Hong Kong today, trenchcoats are called Brother Mark Coats, after Chow Yun Fat’s character in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow). Third, his power is essentially bullet time, a visual technique refined by John Woo in Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s in his gunplay triad movies starring Chow Yun Fat (what, you think the Wachowskis invented it?).

 The Goku/Vegeta relationship is from “Legend of the Condor Heroes.”

Here’s a story you might have heard before. It’s about two rivals, but by circumstance, one is raised in the wilderness beyond civilization, where he becomes an honest and goodhearted, though overly naive bumpkin, martial arts prodigy. The other is raised a wealthy prince by a conquering enemy, who grows up to also become an armor wearing martial arts expert, but also a cunning, arrogant, emotionally distant sociopath.

The similarities go into their love lives, too. The unsophisticated bumpkin hero is betrothed to a daughter of a powerful bearded barbarian king against his will, while the one hint of vulnerability and loss of emotional detachment in the otherwise sociopathic prince, the crack in his smirky arrogance, is that he loves a girl he otherwise pretends to hate, and even fathers a child with her who becomes a main character later.

This is Guo Jing and Yang Kang from Legend of the Condor Heroes. The most fascinating similarity, and proof that female psychology is the same all over the world, is that the fangirls love the emotionally distant, arrogant, and sexy/evil prince (remember when Rhonda Rousey said her first crush was Vegeta?). Girls everywhere love bad boys and sexy villains, and oh boy, do they love Prince Yang Kang. I think you can probably guess who all the fan art is about for Legend of the Condor Heroes, and what ship is the most popular.

I have to emphasize that Legend of the Condor Heroes, which came out in the 1950s-60s, is possibly the most widely read novel by the most widely read novelist on earth - the sales on that dwarf Twilight and Harry Potter. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say nearly every Chinese person, even if they never read it, knows who these characters are. In fact, Yang Kang and Guo Jing from Condor Heroes are basically repeated over and over in Asian, Chinese, and Japanese culture. Does the unsophisticated but gifted martial arts prodigy bumpkin hero, and the glib, arrogant wealthy prince rival remind you of….another duo of rivals?

Gohan/Videl comes from Little Dragon Maiden

One of the most important and influential Martial Arts novels of all time is “Return of the Condor Heroes.” A sequel to Condor Heroes, this time, the main character is the teenage son of one of the main characters from the first novel. It gets even more familiar from there.

“Return of the Condor Heroes” was about a martial arts couple who are also master and student, the same age but vastly different in experience and skill so one somehow seems “older,” and they fall in love because the circumstances of training together requires they spend lots of time together and become intimate. The training story and the love story are exactly the same in “Return of the Condor Heroes.” The dead giveaway one story inspired the other is that in both, the most significant training sequence is one where the master teaches the student how to fly (though Return used a chamber of sparrows for lightness Kung Fu).

There are some differences of course – obviously in Return of the Condor Heroes, the genders of teacher and student are flipped from Gohan and Videl (it’s the Little Dragon Maiden who is a powerful teacher, and the boy who is the student). It was the girl (Videl) who was a rebellious delinquent in Dragon Ball Z, when it was the opposite in the novel, true. But it was obvious this story was in the back of the creator’s mind as a way to combine Kung Fu with the love story, by making teacher and student lovers.

Addendum: hey, remember that awesome movie Kung Fu Hustle, the one Hong Kong movies normies have seen? Well, remember the landlord and landlady? The landlady was named Xiao Lung Nu, or Little Dragon Maiden, and her husband was named Yang Guo – the same as the main characters in Return of the Condor Heroes. It was a joke that went over the heads of Westerners, by giving these names of attractive and naïve young people in love with each other to a surly, bitter, arguing and chain smoking middle aged couple who don’t give a damn.

 Going Super Saiyan comes from “Reincarnated” aka “Bastard Swordsman.”

Stop me if this sounds familiar: a terrifying warlord tyrant prone to killing underlings who displease him has achieved a level of skill and cultivation so tremendous nobody can stop him. But there is one, and only one, thing he fears and that can defeat him: a long-lost legendary skill that nobody has achieved in recent memory, that includes a supernatural combat power transformation that turns the hair light to indicate it worked.

This is “Silkworm Skill” from Reincarnated aka Bastard Swordsman, a novel and TV series from Hong Kong in the early 1980s. Of course, there are differences. To get the power boost and new hair color, the hero has to jump in a cocoon he weaves himself. In fact, the scene is so well known that they actually have it on the poster.

(To those saying “Super Saiyan turns your hair blonde, not white” my response is that it turns hair white, or uncolored, in the comic book.)

The idea of your hair turning white to indicate a new supernatural combat transformation or martial state wasn’t created by Bastard Swordsman, though – though it is the best example and probably the one most familiar to a 1980s audience due to the hugely popular books and TV series. For an older example, a famous Chinese movie based on a folktale is “Bride With the White Hair,” about a bride who’s hair turns white when she is betrayed, in her anger, she becomes less a woman and more a supernatural creature of vengeance (interesting that anger should be the means to unlock it).

#dragon ball z #china #kung fu #martial arts #anime

[lostsoulaltair]

OnS Theories (24S). Second Theory - Explanation of the Memory Segment and the World of Illusions.

Hello everyone, finally we start with new theories, and I must say, chapter 106 just rocked. It was a really well done chapter, sasuga Kagami-sensei!

Nevertheless, there have been many doubts surrounding it, specially one about Mika and Shikama appearing, which actually have a more simple explanation than what it looks like, therefore, let’s begin!

P.S: Theories are held within neutral view and ships are excluded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js0bL1jOjeY

Before I start up explaining how this memory segment and the illusions work, let’s make a review or recap of the chapter:

First of all, the chapter resumes were Mikaela saw the big eye in the darkness; of course, such eye represents the depthness within Yu’s heart, as to why, I’ll explain that later on, but nevertheless, he noticed something peculiar about such eye:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

He was aware the eye meant no harm to him, thus leading him to touch it, which of course, the eye gave permission to him, but why?

The reason to this is very simple; despite the eye which in fact is Yuu’s heart, or the source of origin of Yuu; the memories and experiences that have been withstood within Yuu along being engraved deep within his very soul remain there, thus meaning he trusts Mika completely, knowing he does not mean any harm along the very fact that he does see him as an equal, a human to the very core.

After this, the memory segment begins.

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

But, is this truthfully a memory segment?

The answer to this is absolutely yes.

You might wonder where or how exactly this is possible, and for that, I’ll bring the biggest reference possible to this kind of scenario and that is the franchise of Assassin’s Creed.

For those who might not know, Assassin’s Creed is a game franchise which of course, focuses on a secret order that works in the shadows to keep balance in the world against Templars, but of course, the main point or comparison is that the game itself uses memory segments, what do I mean?

The MC within those titles, uses a special machine to experience and live in a simulation the memories of their ancestors...

Along this, another anime that uses such events is actually a bizarre anime that I do not recommend to watch, which is Corpse Party. (Warning: Do not watch unless you tolerate horror and gore)

Within said anime, there’s a scene on which one of the main cast gets to experience lively what happened to the unfortunate souls that were living in a constant grudge to their tragic past. Which this could relate as living a memory segment as well...

And this is precisely what happens with Mikaela after touching said eye. ,it could be said he is set into a world made of the memories the very origin of Yuu experienced in flesh, which is why the next panel goes like this:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

In the picture above and my failed attempts to trace a circle, the one looking at everything is in fact Mikaela Hyakuya; which is why he asks about where he currently is, along the creepy eyes in the tanks along spotting a child which is Yuu, the one that lived in with the progenitors and the chosen apostles.

It could be said that the big eyeball that allowed Mikaela to touch it, displayed Mika the distant past, along letting him experience everything in flesh, which is why he took the form of the tiny eye watching everything including Yuu.

Following this, Noya arrives and spots Yuu, which of course, knowing Yuu’s nature, he’s quite happy and hopeful to awake Mika without the knowledge of knowing that, in order to awake the corpse, he needs to disappear, but of course, knowing Noya’s nature, he stops being tolerant with him and decapitates him in the act:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

Of course, to the scene, Ashera arrives and tells Noya that he shouldn’t have done that since Sika Madu would take heed and notice the incidents going around. (To this point, the memory segment is normal.)

This follows up Noya into saying that he’ll create another:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

Within the circled dialogue box and the eye floating which of course is Mikaela, he notices that from the eyes that were floating in those tanks, they instantly materialized Yuu which of course was bestowed with life once it was out of the tank.

But since Noya couldn’t tolerate how noisy the cloned Yuu was, he ended up killing the newborn clone, thus leading to Mikaela’s position:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

Mikaela realized he’d get materialized as Yuu and by experience, understood that if he made a noise, he’d get killed:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

But now, the biggest question comes, which one could it be?

How was Noya not able to detect the changes and why did this memory segment continued? Does it mean the memory segment continued normally?

Within this, there are two scenarios:

First Scenario - The Past Simply Repeated Itself

Within this First Scenario, it’s very likely that the next clone made of Yuu wasn’t killed, which of course paints very well as to why Noya didn’t do anything else like ejecting or killing the current clone standing

Second Scenario - The Memory Segment didn’t consider such action as a huge alteration of the events

Within this scenario, which is likely just like the first one, it implies that the memory segment wasn’t affected that much, which is why it didn’t get destroyed or ejected Mikaela from it, since sooner or later, the next part of the segment would replay leading the events of seeing Shikama and the other demons arriving to the scene, and the biggest proof to this is the next panel:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

After Noya and Ashera stopped paying mind to the clone of Yuu in there, Mikaela managed to wonder who they were and where exactly such events took place, thus leading to the arrival of the other demons which, until that spot, was where the memory segment was going or replaying:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

When the other demons arrived, the memory segment was slowly getting disturbed by something, but what could this something mean?

Correct. The Power of Illusion and Distortion

The First Progenitor is well known to have powers that are equivalent of those to a God; powers that are extremely powerful to invade whatever he wishes to do, but, within this, the First Progenitor hasn’t even considered that within his schemes, there’s already a Trojan Horse invading his plans since the First Progenitor pretty much underestimates everything around him due to his arrogance which is why Rigr uses this disadvantage of the First to execute his plans without his notice:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

Once Rigr finishes the countdown, the First Progenitor manages to fully materialize within the Memory Segment but, how is that possible?

Since the First Progenitor is capable of invading other’s hearts, which is heavily seen within chapter 73:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 73

Back in chapter 73, Shikama managed to infiltrate in Ashera’s heart with ease, without alerting Yuu about it, since he was pretty much focused on making Ashera remember their agenda and goals to fulfill which lead to the current present.

But returning to the main theory, how exactly does this revolve around the powers of illusion and distortion?

For this, it is needed to understand that the memory segment acts like a Lucid Dream, which can be defined as this:

Lucid dreams are when you know that you’re dreaming while you’re asleep.

You’re aware that the events flashing through your brain aren’t really happening. But the dream feels vivid and real. You may even be able to control how the action unfolds, as if you’re directing a movie in your sleep.

Link source: https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/lucid-dreams-overview

This only gives strength as to why Mikaela was capable of changing few aspects without distorting the events of the past, but, since both Yuu and him lowered their guards, the First Progenitor had a door, but which one?

Correct. Asuramaru

After Asuramaru saw the transformation of the vampire Mikaela into a demon, he was able to remember everything, including how he became an apostle to Shikama and his loyalty towards him.

His main task is to serve him and retrieve Mikaela’s soul but since he was forced to obey Yuu due to the laws of the contract, the only thing Asuramaru might have been able to do is allow Shikama Doji enter within his heart, allowing him to fully enter into the heart of Yuu which was left wide open.

Thus leading to the next event, which is, creating an illusion, what do I mean?

After he managed to enter into Yuu’s heart or rather the deepest part of his heart, he mixed himself within the memory segment, allowing the segment to continue until he reached a safe distance where Mikaela was present, what do I mean?

This could be described as him acting as a part of the memory segment, but, instead of showing the memory of Sika Madu; he exchanged that memory figure with him, which could be single defined as substitution.

Which is why once he got close to Mika, the next thing that happened was this:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

The Sika Madu displaying there isn’t the one from the past, but in fact, it’s the current Shikama Doji wearing a disguise and this is heavily seen by how he was able to manifest the scythes he currently uses as a demon; hence why he states he didn’t expect Mikaela would come that far to the past, and this is actually due to the fact that Mikaela wanted to understand why Yuu was that way and what he was mixed into, thus leading to the next panel:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

Mikaela realizes that the real monster managed to appear within the memory segment or lucid dream he was experiencing since he heavily states that he has to wake up and get out of there.

But within this, there’s something rather curious that many readers within the spanish and english fandom wonder, what could it be?

What does Shikama mean by not letting Mika get away again?

That’s actually easy, what do I mean?

If many might recall, in chapter 98 Shikama made an act of presence in order to retrieve the demon Mikaela by sending Asuramaru, Gekkouin and Kiseki-O to his wolrd, which, they almost managed to capture:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 101

Of course, what they didn’t consider was the fact that Yuu was heading their way to save Mikaela, which is why the First Progenitor is doing the job himself:

  Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

Of course, due to the massive difference of power, Mikaela isn’t capable of defending himself, but, within this, there’s something huge to highlight, what could it be?

The current Demon Mikaela isn’t tied to Shikama Doji

What does this mean?

It means that the demon Mikaela is made of all the life experiences and memories Mikaela Hyakuya lived, it means the past he had is the one he lived, BUT, the very reason the First Progenitor targets his soul it’s because he needs a soul to bring back whatever he wants to bring which of course it’s not good news.

Once he gets Mika’s soul, Mika and Yuu will cease to exist.

Which is why, the next thing that happens is this one:

Image taken from Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign - Chapter 106

Yuu goes to his rescue as a voice; he reminds Mika that he’s not alone but in order to save him, he needs to accept the deal and contract of becoming his demon, so he can get more powerful and finally fend against the monster Shikama Doji truthfully is.

With this theory, it is focused to explain the events that happened in the latest chapter.

Hope this theory solves the many doubts the fandom may have!

Hope you enjoyed reading this!

What do you think dear readers?

Let me know!

#owari no seraph #seraph of the end #sote #ons #ons theories #ons theories 24th season #second theory #ons chapter 106 spoilers #ons chapter 106 #demon mikaela hyakuya #mikaela hyakuya #mikaela shindo #yuichiro amane #yuichiro hyakuya #noya hienma #noya #asuramaru #ashera tepes #kiseki-o #byakkomaru #raimeiki #gekkouin #shikama doji #sika madu #ons chapter 101 #what do you think dear readers? #Let me know what you think #ons fandom #ons doubts and answers #reference to assassin's creed

[ackerpreach]

This ending .... I can name 500 reasons and I will name them right now, because I don’t think I’m the only one who is upset with how things turned out. (Also, A positive message for all of you at the end)

MAJOR LEAKS SPOILERS/ READ WITH CAUTION

Update: after reading more theories from fellow RM bloggers, and sleeping over it one day, this entire chapter might be an april fools... Don't fully lose hope yet beautiful people. It's me just giving a review on a possible fake April fools chapter

After following this franchise since 2013, so nearly a DECADE. this ending is a pure disserve to the entire fandom. I feel like Yams has rushed it just for the sake of being done with the entire manga. So many things are left open, characters and their developemt are reverted back all the way to chapter 1 or are left even worse than that...

Mikasa’s worthless character development/ Aaronmika’s horrible toxic codependent relationship 

Oh honey... Let’s start with how horrible Isayama has treated her. We were all rooting for her, because we all felt like she was so misunderstood. She had a horrible childhood and imprinted on a guy who treated her like trash 99 percent of the story. And then, slowly but surely, she starts to realize she has to stop obsessing over him in the uprising arc with the help of a real man who treats her like a queen, more importantly, he treats her like a real human being. This man sees her for her abilities and that she has the power to be self dependent. She learned parts of herself, that she was able to work together with him like no one else could.  She learned parts of herself she was unable to do so if she kept obsessing about Aaron. All this love, care, mutual understanding and RESPECT these two shared. 

but...NAH FUCK THAT, right Yams?? Throw all this development away, all this bonding. Let’s make the main female lead even more yandere than she already was in the first season. Let her make out with his decapacitated head (like dude, this is also pure disrespect to Aaron’s dead body btw) and let her obsess even more about the guy who has treated her no better than a piece of toilet cloth 99 percent of the time. The guy who was never really appreciative in front of her for saving his ass billions of times, who always pushed her away, who yells at her and snaps at her whenever he can instead of reasoning and talking calmly with her in mature way. (EVEN PARODY YOUTUBE CHANNELS WHO DONT SHIP ANYTHING MAKE IT A TROPE WHERE AARON TELLS MIKASA HE HATES HER GUTS WHENEVER HE CAN) 

Then after all that, suddenly Yams tries to last minute persuade us Aaron’s always been head over heels for her???  He should have build their relationship better which he hasn’t even tried to do so... He must be thinking his fans are stupid for eating this from his hands.    

Like seriously??? What is this??? 

Isayama is just fully contradicting himself. It’s like someone tipped him off with a buttload of money for him to write Aaron like this to satisfy shipping needs and to cash in those extra money’s from it. Even if he tried to cater to Erem*ika, this is not how you write a loving and caring couple which people will root for. 

This next two panels just freaking infuriates me to the core of my soul. I can’t even describe how dissapointed I am with Mikasa. 

Why is she clutching that head so obsessively like that?  Why is she walking and turning her back away from her comrades? After everything they have done for her, after all they’ve been through?! After everything Armin has done? Standing up for Mikasa, beating up Aaron for hurting her. I feel like even Jean, Connie and Sasha have cared more for her in a healthy way.  Sure, Aaron cares for her romantically too apparently (What a twist Yams :)), but has he aided her to becoming a mentally healthier individual? Has he aided in her mental stability? The answer is a big fat NO!  All I see between these two after today’s raw Chapter’s are too Yandere obsessed individuals who have no clue on how to maintain a healthy relationship. 

Love should only go as far as the heart can endure and it seems like her character is not willing to be aware of that. Even Armin was able to let go of Aaron in those latest panels. Why does her entire character resolve around this guy??? I really do not understand. Her Ackerbond and her age is not an excuse for her to throw her life away like this. 

Shonen’s disgusting portrayal of women 

I’ve seen this countless of times in the many years I’ve watched anime. SasuS*ku from Naruto, Ichih*me from Bleach, Shinji and that oranged hair girl from Neon Evangelion.. Why do these women get decreased to simpletons with one single goal? And that is to obsess over a bland male lead who either treats them like trash or doesn’t notice them up until the last last chapter (LITERALLY WHAT YAMS HAS DONE). Some go even as far as the male leading wanting the kill the female love interest and yet the female lead is still in love with them???. It’s disgusting for him to write the MAIN female character this way. 

It’s dissapointing we believed in Isayama doing Mikasa’s character right. That she’s finally being able to let go of her codependency and to live for herself maybe live in Hizuru and find more about her roots???, but every single time she shows some improvement, it’s burried deep in the ground again by the Author. It almost seems like a lowkey kink of some of the male Mangaka’s to write about a girl obsessing over them no matter what. I see this so many times to the point that I truly stand behind it that some of them might have this fantasy. 

I wished he didn’t portray her last panels like this. Everyone else is living their lives while Mikasa is still grieving about him. I’m not saying she’s not allowed to grieve and everyone takes it at their own pace, but cmon... Show her living her life too. This is too much. Her being next to his grave and grieving him as her last panels just shoves it in our faces that YET AGAIN, BEING OBSESSED WITH AARON IS ALL HER CHARACTER STANDS FOR. 

I truly despise how Isayama handles her grieving, kissing his decapacitated head, carrying it around like some handbag, and her last panels being thissss.

The world leaving Paradis alone miraciously after all that??? 

It’s so weird and out of place with so many political feuds and disagreements between the world and Paradis, the entire Rumbling happening and we can see Mikasa just chilling outside in Paradis with no one bothering them. You can see the rings of the walls in the picture below.  I don’t know the exact reason behind as the manga is still in Korean, but from what I see, the story went the route of: throwing a happy ending without enough proper reason and  it was all fixed just like that in a snap! It doesn’t fit the entire narrative of attack on titan for things to be so peacful out of nowhere. When it comes to the narrative, how things work in that world, how hard it is to achieve peace, everything made somewhat sense up until chapter 138. 139 seems so so out of place...  It’s like I’m reading a chapter from a totally different manga. 

Aaron Yoghurt got defeated so easily/ Aaron’s character assassination

The build up on the first part of the rumbling was great, those kids carrying coins. You could feel humanity’s fear and Aaron’s hatred in those pages. As if he truly had a goal and he has turned away completely from his comrades and his closest friends with no return. The world seemed truly doomed, but he  got defeated just like that. He was in the nape all this time (because screw the warhammer power of hiding yourself elsewhere in his ginormous titan body). There is no master plan as we all expected, and in the end he just acts all yandere in the paths with Armin and that’s it... They massacared his entire character as well. Many fan theories created a better ending with his character. Him being reincarnated as Historia’s baby would be so much better. For him to still keep on seeking and to strive for power. It has always been his motive. It’s his personality from the start until chapter 138. Even if things are okay, to keep on going and to seek that adventure, but then.. He’s so weak and directionless suddenly.. It’s so weird... This is not Aaron at all???

Using Aaron for him this entire post, because I don’t want others to invade our tags... :)))

Historia’s baby 

The only panel we got from Historia’s child was this. Just a normal kid, normal life... Why did Isayama put so much effort in highlighting Historia’s pregnancy if it was nothing too spectacular anyway? It seemed he had major plans for this kid and for their development too??? It’s again, big plans, big developments, big relationship dynamic, but all  got thrown out of the window... 

Don’t read the next sentence if you are a minor :’) 

It’s like almost ejaculating, but stopping right before it and repeating that every single Arc.

My energy when writing about this chapter is the same as Nostalgia Critic and his hatred for atla the live action

In Conclusion...

I know us fans should not be deciding on how this story should end, because this is Isayama’s story after all, but I truly wished for him to wrap up things much more rounded. There are so many unanswered questions... Again, I think for the sake of being done with this manga, he rushed all of it. He’s become a millionaire from this story and now his pockets are jammed full, I guess he doesn’t need to put in any effort anymore, right? Perhaps a controversial opinion, but I really wished he cared for his fans a little bit more with this last chapter by giving some answers that make sense at least. It’s his fans who gave him this platform and the opportunity to tell his story and for him to at least give in a bit of effort especially in the last chapter is the least he can do. Rivamika being canon or not, he truly rushed it without thinking much about the entire story line. He expanded it so much, he didn’t know how to bind it all together.

Even after all this, I’ll still ship them in the headcanon type of way. I do give credit to Isayama for giving us a template for such a beautiful dynamic between Levi and Mikasa. He decides to waste it, but that doesn’t mean we have to.  I want to thank all the people with amazing writing skills, the ones who give us beautiful art like @carmenlee @phit chan @vialesana​ and many more. I want to remind all of you that we can create something beautiful of our own and we don’t neccesarily need canon lore for that. The art I’ve seen, the fanfictions I’ve read have touched me deeper than Isayama ever could at times.The Mikasa in our mind is appreciate of Levi, is mature, classy and has a strong will for herself. They spend their remaining days together peacefully. Keep writing, keep drawing, stay creative. 

I love you all so so much, I’ve only been publicly active since March, but thank you Rivamika fandom for giving me so much joy as a lurker these past 7 years <3

#rivamika #snk leaks #snk 139 leaks #levimika #mikalevi

[tvitr]

uwu I don’t make the ruwules

(Okay fine, reasons/opinions below the cut but be warned! I won’t be holding back on game or book spoilers. Or rambling. This got longer than I anticipated lol)

BETTER IN THE BOOK

Eis “Fireman Sam” Glover: I don’t know what the game was trying to do with this one. I guess he gets overwhelmed by the fire and loses his composure or gets scared or... something?  Also why did he not bring a hose. Or a mask.  This is why so many reviewers thought Wonderworld was a metaphor for purgatory and all the inhabitants are dead I swear. Who cares, the book handled it a lot better. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, but there’s definitely a good idea here with some interesting themes. The gist is that he feels ashamed following his captain’s orders to retreat during a serious blaze, which his colleagues disobeyed, and his colleagues are later hailed as heroes by the press.  Is Balan the Book trying to take on toxic masculinity...? How brave. Tl;dr, the book conveyed the story a Hell of lot better than the game. Honestly I’m surprised this is the only one.

BETTER IN THE GAME

Haoyu “Airplane Boi” Chang: So the book tried waaaay too hard to draw a parallel between Haoyu and Fiona (aka, Dolphin Girl) to the point that they both share a similar backstory, in that they had a hobby which led to a near-fatal accident and now they’re too traumatised to resume said hobby. And that’s not a bad thing per se but... “near fatal accident” was already Fiona’s backstory. We didn’t need a duplicate. And this is more personal preference, but I kinda liked Haoyu’s story in the game anyway. His failure at building a functioning aeroplane out of crap he found in his garage is endearingly funny in the game, and the resolution of him taking time out to sit down and study before building anything is a nice spin on the whole “if at first you don’t succeed” theme the chapter wanted. 

Sana “Bird Lady” Hudson: So the book decided they didn’t want to make Cal an angry sore loser so guess what? They made Sana an angry misanthrope. Wonderful. Okay maybe that’s harsh, but she definitely came off as very bitter and unsympathetic in the book. Like there’s a scene at the end where she harasses a firefighter and tries to steal a fire engine because they’re working on a building fire and not supervising her park. That’s not a character you wanna root for. That’s a Karen. The game had a better plot thread and resolution to her story rather than a boring cookie-cutter “humans vs. nature grrrr humans are so evil” story, like the game story here had a bit more depth to it and approached the topic more maturely than the book did. Which is ironic considering how hilariously edgy the book gets sometimes, but I guess throwing a few smashed eggs and frozen bird skeletons into your story doesn’t mean anything if you’re still going to paint such a black-and-white narrative.

Iben “Frozen Elsa” Bia: This story didn’t need dialogue. Like... we don’t need her to justify why she’s upset her parents are dead because we’d already assume that. They’re her parents! Of course we’d assume she’d be upset! They died! Simultaneously! That’s horrible! WE DON’T NEED HER TO EXPLAIN THIS! Also her dialogue in the book was... pretty terrible, not gonna lie. Like if you’re gonna insist on dialogue at least make it gOOD. I’m actually planning on just reviewing her book scene so I can fully articulate just how bad it is anyway, so stay tuned for that mess lol.

FINE IN BOTH

I mean there’s not really too much to say here but anyways:

Jose/”The Farmer” having a family in the book gives him a bit more depth, even if we never hear from them again after his backstory dump.

Fiona/”Dolphin Girl” almost drowns in a slightly different way, with a dolphin straight up pulling her mask off rather than knocking it out of her mouth, and the book also goes more into detail about her love for diving and dolphins. Also the book ships her and Haoyu like. So hard. Like they never shut up about how similar they are or what they other’s doing or if the other’s okay or not. By the end of it I was expecting them to just start making out in front of everyone, they’re that obsessed with each other. And it would be funny if they didn’t use this to wreck Haoyu’s backstory like I mentioned earlier.

Yuri/”Bug Kid”/”Is that a Pokémon reference?” is now being kinda bullied for liking bugs, which yeah gives her more depth and reason to be upset but I also kinda related to her just being that One Kid with interests that nobody else had. But it’s not as bad as some of the other changes, so I can let it slide.

Atillio/Clown and Bruce/Old Man are the same, nothing to say here.

Lucy/”The Artist” is a total drama queen but then again so are Art People so I can let it slide. I did like them changing her problem from “artist’s block” (seriously?) to her feeling too under pressure to create masterpieces, unless that’s what the game was aiming for? Oh who cares.

JUST A BIG MESS

Cass “Dead Cat Girl” Milligan: This is a weird one because the story is the same between the game and book (though the book mentions she witnessed a more severe car accident rather than a speeding car which she assumes kills the cat, and the cat isn’t even her cat, it’s a stray) but the story itself is... flawed. According to the book, they wanted to convey the idea that running away from the accident was irresponsible, and she just needed to look back and she’d see her cat is okay, but the game kind of makes it look more like Balan turned back time to save her cat, and the book mentions a serious car crash which I don’t think anyone would willingly return to. I feel there’s a better way to convey this idea of being responsible for your pets, like say her cat escapes from the house and gets lost, and her resolution is going out and properly looking for it. That’s a more effective (and natural) way to relay that message, especially as they weren’t going to commit to the idea of grieving a lost pet.

I’M CONFLICTED

Cal “Chess Daddy” Suresh: God this was a tough call. On one hand Cal’s game backstory is one of the ones most YouTube players single out as the weakest backstory in the game. He’s just “that guy who lost one game of chess”. Being right before Iben’s level certainly doesn’t help. I could honestly write a separate post about how bad the story placements are in this game but that’s too long for here.  On the other hand, I still... kinda like it? Like I like this idea of him being a sore loser with a bad temper who needs to learn some humility, sure it’s not as serious as “I almost drowned” or “my parents are dead” but one of the few good things about the game is that it balanced “serious” stories with “benign” ones, if that makes sense. HOWEVER His book scene is... probably one of the best written in the whole book. Which isn’t saying much, but it felt like it hit the intended degree of darkness that the rest of the book was trying to hit. One of my main issues with the book is how much it edged up everyone’s backstory, which doesn’t sound bad but when you have 12 characters with edgy backstories to sit through, it starts to feel like a 14 year old's first attempt at writing an angsty fanfiction very quickly. And yes, Cal’s story is dark and angsty but it felt like the perfect balance of dark and angsty. Or as perfect as the book can get. Like even Balan’s annoying rhyming dialogue sounded good for the tone of the scene. Man maybe I should just do a review of both his backstories in a bigger post.  Obviously I could be biased because I’m a sucker for chess aesthetics and dark skinned men with long permed hair so I’m just putting more thought into him but still.

#at the end of the say i'm just some schmuck who talks too much lmao #balan wonderworld

[everlarkficexchange]

Magic as Always

Written by: @alliswell21

Prompt 71: Magic of Ordinary Days AU: 1940s, Katniss is a single pregnant girl. Desperate for her daughter not to have a child out of wedlock, Mrs Everdeen contacts a priest who in turn knows a young man who just may be willing to help. Sweet, kind and shy Peeta stayed home to take care of the family farm when his beloved brother went to war to never come back. He’s always wanted a family but rural small town life gives little chance to court. He hears of Katniss’ plight and graciously offers to marry her and raise the child as his own. He does everything he can think of to make a home for Katniss and the baby. How does Katniss take it? How does their relationship develop? Will they fall in love? [submitted by anonymous]

Rating: this chapter is rated Teens and Up  

Tags: Historical!AU; WWII; 1940’s Era views on marriage, sexism, pregnancy, etc; Katniss/Marvel relationship; Non-graphic Unprotected Sex; Unplanned Pregnancy; Arrange Marriage; Miscellaneous Religious views; Grief/Mourning; Canon Characters Death; OOC!Mrs.Everdeen; Somewhat OOC!Katniss; Everlark is Endgame; Other tags to be added.

Notes: Thank you Anon for this prompt. I must confess, I’ve never seen the movie ‘The Magic of Ordinary Days’ or read the book the movie is based on. I did a quick skimming on the plot of the movie and then dug up all kinds of reviews on the book, most of my plot points come from a combination of movie and book (which apparently differ only in a few parts), besides what the prompter asked for. I just really loved this prompt, and see the potential of this story, which will be a few chapters long, cross posted to AO3 and I already have a good chunk written ;) The rating will be adjusted too, because there will be explicit Everlark smut in the following chapters. Anon, I hope I don’t disappoint you, this story will be only loosely based on the source material, and adapted to fit THG characters in the narrative, I will try to stick to the main plot points as much as I can, but I’m also taking several liberties with the story. I hope you still like it though. 

KPKPKPKPKPKPKPKP

Prim died on a Tuesday, after a very long, strenuous battle with poliomyelitis. My sweet little sister’s face looked as fresh as a dew drop even in death. 

  “Come now, Katniss,” my mother calls from the open door of the mortuary hall, where visitation took place an hour ago. 

  The mortician has arranged for the coffin to be taken to the cemetery and put in the ground this afternoon. There will be no graveside mourning. It’s all we could pay for, but then again the war has left everyone penniless nowadays.

  A big, rotund man comes to close the coffin, and offers a curt nod. 

  That’s it then. The very last time I’ll ever set eyes on Primrose’s sweet face. 

  “Katniss,” Mother whispers, insistently. It’s probably all she can muster before breaking down in tears.

  I look on at the box my sister’s body lies in, numb and heartsick. I bring my 3 middle fingers to my lips and then rise them in the air. My last salute to my beloved Little Duck. I step away from the coffin and shuffle towards mother. 

  Up close, I can see the deep, dark bruises under my mother’s eyes. She used to be beautiful in her youth— according to friends and old photographs— but now she just looks tired and defeated. I guess having to bury first her husband and then her 15 year old daughter, in less than a year, would have that effect on anyone.

  Prim would’ve looked like our mother, with their soft blonde locks, almond shaped blue eyes and alabaster skin. She had a softer spirit though, she enjoyed music and loved animals. She always said that if she was older, she would’ve joined the Red Cross and signed up to serve as a nurse to our boys in the Pacific, like Father did… Father wasn’t a nurse though, he was a chaplain. 

  It’s funny to think that I inherited so much of my father, like my dark hair, gray eyes and olive skin. We both also share the same aversion to human pain and blood that moves my mother and Prim to action; but unlike Prim, my father’s calling to help the soldiers in their worst situations, passed me and went directly to my baby sister. 

  I sigh… Prim would’ve made a terrific army nurse, if only she hadn’t wasted in bed with that odious disease! If she had been given the chance to live, I’m sure Prim would’ve had so many boys trailing after her. She would marry at some point and have a beautiful full life. 

  I don’t plan on marrying and having a family. If the acute pain in my own chest wasn’t enough warning,  watching my mother walk silently from the funeral home to our apartment, with her head bowed and listening to her quiet sobs at night would be enough evidence that there’s too much sorrow in losing one’s husband and children. 

  I think my efforts will be better spent in cultivating my mind, and getting my degree in botany, like my father always dreamed, anyway… plus, I’m not much of a looker… not like Prim at any rate. 

  We finally arrived at our modest home. Mother drifts ghost-like into the door, and then we both shuffle quietly into our separate bedrooms. There won’t be a meal at the table tonight, but I make sure Prim’s old tomcat gets fed and watered, and after he meows in distress at my sister’s door, I open mine, and let him strut inside my bedroom and hop into my bed. The hideous fur ball and I distrust each other, but he understands his mistress is never coming back, and he’s the last thing I have from her… so he lets me pet him and he cuddles close to my chest as I fall asleep, crying. 

——————————-

Mother and I walk slowly through the busy streets of town, mostly ignoring the bustle and disarray around us. People shout, cars honk horns, a baby cries in the distance, and the few young men rush back and forth in the busy sidewalks, like they’re being lashed by invisible whips.

  “We should stop by the grocer and see if we can pick up some eggs.” Says my mother, pulling her “Sugar Book” out of her handbag. 

  Because of the war, everything is being rationed, from sugar to shoes.

  I could care less about food and clothing, though. But I still go into the shop, dutifully. 

  I’m so immersed in my own thoughts, I don’t see the lanky man walking towards me with his arms full of vittles. 

  We collide. The man’s groceries fly up in every direction, raining over me, as I sit on my rump on the floor. 

  My mother is nowhere to be seen. Typical.

  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there!” Says the man, pulling a packet of oatmeal from the floor, while extending his other hand to help me up. 

  “No… it’s alright, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  “Well, let’s agree that we’re both klutzes, and leave it at that?” The man offers.

  I’m on my feet, dusting my skirt off and righting my blouse, “Sure, let’s do that.” I scowl at the skew state of my clothes and finally look up at the man. 

  He’s smiling down at me, and I must admit, his smile is dazzling. He’s got short brown hair, greenish-brown eyes, and a smattering of freckles over his nose. He also towers above me. 

  “My stars! If it isn’t Katniss Everdeen!” The young man says, unexpectedly excited.

  I blink owlishly at him, and try to place his face, but I’m horrible at remembering people. Or their names. 

  “Marvel Quaid,” he offers genially, unfazed by my lack of response, “we went to grade school together?” He prompts, “My pa used to sell luxury goods in District One?”

  “Oh, I think it’s coming back now,” I say smiling for the first time in what feels like months. “You used to throw sticks, pretending they were spears or something,” I tell him, showing that indeed, I do remember him.

  Marvel scrunches his nose, “Javelins, actually. I was pretending I threw javelins. I saw a fellow doing it for the Olympics in a film, and then he won a medal for it. I thought to myself that making a victory lap with the good old American flag flapping after oneself looked like fun; well, I wanted to be a victor too!” He chuckles, then deflates. “But as everything, those dreams are gone now, crushed to dust under the weight of the war.”

  As is the norm, once the war gets brought up, gloominess settles on, dampening the cheeriest of spirits.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m all too familiar with the sentiment.”

  Marvel nods, grimly. 

  “We lost Father in France.” I’m not sure why I said it. “We put my sister in the ground last week, too.” I avert my eyes. 

  “Aww, geez, Kit… that’s truly awful. I’m so sorry for your loss,”

  I’m mildly surprised I don’t immediately recoil at his little pet name. I guess the fact that he doesn’t sound condescending while delivering his condolences, helps. 

  “Oh, well, as my father would’ve said, at least their toils in this world are over. They can finally rest in peace.”

  After a moment of heavy silence, Marvel shares, “I’m being shipped out tomorrow morning.”

  I scowl, “Oh,” I bite the inside of my cheek, wondering how he’d manage to evade the draft for this long? Marvel is my age, 19 going on 20… boys get sent to the front lines at 18. “I… I could write to you… if you wanted?” I offer shyly. 

  Isn’t that what young women are being told to do, in order to keep our boys’ morale from plummeting?  

  Marvel grins, showing slightly crooked teeth, “That would be swell, Kit!” He stares at me for a long moment, then sighs, “I should go back to my shopping, before they miss me at home. Lord knows when will I have the chance of doing something as mundane as picking up my mother’s weekly grocery allowance.”

  These days it is not only uncommon seeing men doing grocery runs, but simply seeing young, able-body men around, period. All of our boys are either in Europe or the Pacific, fighting to keep the devastation of the World war from reaching our shores.

  “Well, for what is worth, I hope you get to return home safely… you know, so you can do all the boring tasks your mother tells you to do. And when I say safe, I mean, I hope you don’t run anymore into spaced out girls, like me,” I smirk. 

  “Oh, Kit, if only you knew how much I’ve enjoyed our accidental skirmish. It’s like a gift from above, seeing you after all these years. Your smile and the color of your eyes will forever be branded in my mind, to give me a reason to fight. To have a dream,”

  I’m momentarily floored by Marvel’s florid little speech. Nobody has ever said anything nearly as sweet and gallant as that to me, and for a moment, I forget all about my dead sister and father, the war, and my own sorrow. 

  I avert my eyes, bashfully, as he finishes picking up his vittles off the floor.

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I lean over to pick up a can of milk, and put it on top of his pile. 

  “I only speak the truth,” he smiles brightly. 

  My mother chooses to interrupt at the exact moment I bat my lashes at him, “Katniss, there you are! I’ve been waiting for you by the counter.” She shakes her head. 

  Marvel wobbles on his feet, rearranging his load, and then greets my mother, warmly, “Mrs. Everdeen, how nice to see you again,” 

  My mother eyes him, unimpressed. “Good afternoon, young man,” she answers. 

  “Ma’am… pardon my forwardness, but, would it be too troublesome to ask Miss Katniss to accompany a soldier about to be shipped out, to supper in the town?” 

  My mother narrows her eyes, distrust dripping from her voice as she speaks, “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. My daughter and I are in mourning, you see,”

  “Oh, this won’t be an untoward celebration of any kind, ma’am. With the war raging on, we’re all in mourning. All I ask for is one last night of normalcy, a chance to reconnect with an old grade-school mate,” he smiles, hopefully, “For old times sake?” 

  I’m watching my mother’s face closely, with bated breath.

  “Very well,” Mother sighs, “You may ask Katniss out to dinner. But have her home by 9 sharp!”  

  I don’t hesitate to step up and give him directions to my apartment building in District 12. 

  I spend the rest of my day giddy and nervous, pressing my best Sunday suit, the gray one with the matching jacket, and polishing my only pair of leather shoes. There isn’t much I can do about my hair… the thing can’t be fashioned into the favored waves, not even putting it in curlers overnight, so I let it be. 

  I briefly wonder if this was all Prim’s doing? Meeting Marvel and mother’s somewhat easy aquiciscent. Prim hated seeing me sad, and constantly talked about how she’d love to help me get ready for dates with a beau. She couldn’t wait to be of courting age and date a strapping, young man herself… but of course, that would never happen for her, but she would probably still want to see me have those things. 

  Maybe Marvel is right, and our serendipitous encounter is a gift from above, to heal our wounds… at least for the night. 

  ————————-

  Marvel arrives at my house in his father’s car at 5:45. Riding is now such a luxury, with gasoline being rationed and all. He takes me to a quaint little dinner in the middle of town. We share malts, a greasy burger, and a small portion of fries and onion rings. 

  We talk about baseball:

  “You’d look good in a baseball uniform, Kit! Can you still run as fast as you did in school?” 

  I laugh. “I’m not much for sports,” I demure, “but I’ve heard playing in one of the new teams pays alright. Anyway, I’m gonna be starting my second year of college soon. I put my studies on hold while Prim was at her worst, but now that it’s only just me and mother… I’m anxious to go back to study.”

  “Wow, beautiful and smart!”

  We talk about cars:

  “I loved driving… but Mother sold our car when my sister took a turn for the worse. She didn’t want to at first, saying that Father saved up to buy it, and it held sentimental value to her, but I had to push to sell it. We needed the money and gas was a nightmare to come by, anyway,”

  “The only reason we still have ours,” says Marvel, “is because Pa is too stubborn to let go of the things that still made him feel wealthy.” He scowls, “He’s trying to get into the ice business now, since it’s pretty much the only thing one where the raw material is plenty and relatively cheap, and there’s guarantee that people will buy the product… everyone still needs ice for their ice boxes, right?” 

  No one can afford luxuries anymore with every penny going out to support our boys in the battlefields.

  We talk about many other subjects: his sister’s wedding; my father’s unit getting pinned and killed by Germans… We didn’t get a body to bury, but I got a medal on his behalf as his eldest child. 

  Marvel lets me sniffle against his chest, and then kisses my lips slowly. 

  I’ve never been kissed on the lips, and I feel my face heat up. 

  “Would you… like to take a drive with me, Kit?”

  We drive all the way to the city limit. It’s exhilarating to be in a car again, and sitting at the overlook, at twilight,  alone with a handsome boy, feels positively forbidden! 

  I’ve never done anything remotely injudicious all my life, and this whole moment feels… magical… exciting! 

  Tentatively, I initiated our next kiss, but he takes over in a rush of caresses and flitting touches. 

  “Beautiful, graceful, Kit. You have no match!”

  “Marvel…” I kiss him again, not knowing how to answer his sentiments with words.

  His hands are restless, groping my shoulders and elbows. “I wished he had more time! I would’ve loved to marry you before departing. I would’ve show you so much passion and love!”

  “You still can show me, Marvel… you absolutely can!” 

  It’s all the permission he needs to dive into a frenzy. He doesn’t stop until the deed is done, and we’re a sweaty, tangled mess of limbs in the back seat of the car, only partially clothed. 

  A deep feeling of lethargy pours over me. My muscles are sore and heavy, and wished I could fall asleep in here. 

  “I intend on coming back to marry you, Katniss,” Marvel says, stretching his lanky, long legs to zip up his pants. 

  I sit up and start finger-combing my ruined hair, hoping my mother won’t notice the strands are extra frizzy. “Um… I guess we should after this,” I say shyly, gesturing between us. 

  “You could still go to college while I’m away,” he offers with magnanimity.

  “You… wouldn’t mind that?” I ask incredulous, college women are so rare, unless they’re trying to become nurses or teachers. Most girls start courting right after high school and get married in the span of one to two years, and their husbands don’t normally encourage an education beyond what their wives came into the marriage with; so to hear Marvel say that wouldn’t mi d me stay in college is just about the greatest thing possible!

  “My darling, Kit, I don’t want you to be one of those girls pining and wasting away for her beau. I’ll be busy at war, it’ll be unfair to keep you from occupying your own time while you wait fir my return. Go to college, my clever girl!”

  I smile indulgently at him, leaning closer to slip his necktie around the collar of his shirt, “You are truly a generous, loving man,” I say.

  Marvel beams, circling my waist with his arms pulling me against his body. “It’s all inspired by you, sugar plum!”

  I giggle, kissing his cheek, “I’ll write to you every day!” I promise. 

  “That’s nice… but just so you know, I might not be able to write back right away. It’ll be a while before I get settled enough to write. But you’ll be in my thoughts every minute of every day, and that’s the honest truth! I’m serious about marrying you when I return, Kit,” he kisses me again. And then, he looks at his watch, sighing. “It’s 8:32. We should get on going, gotta keep in my future mother-in-law’s good graces!” 

  We share a carefree laugh, and finish tidying ourselves up to drive back to my house. 

  He walks me to the door, takes me in his arms, and kisses me passionately before promising he’d be back to officially ask for my hand in marriage, and for my part, I swear I’ll write to him every day until he returns home safe and sound. 

  But neither of us keeps our promises in the end, although I tried. 

  ————————-

  Three weeks go by and I keep my word of writing daily letters. I receive no word in return from Marvel, but think nothing of it… Europe is far and traveling by sea is tedious and time consuming; Marvel will get in touch once he’s settled down. 

  Another week goes by, still without news from my would-be fiancé. I still don’t worry. I’ve been busy with university, and the few other girls attending school with me keep me busy, but my heavier workload is starting to get to me.

  I’m usually so tired and moody after school that socializing with my classmates becomes a chore. I barely eat supper before I’m passing out in bed, and my letters to Marvel start to get shorter and simpler with every passing day.

  I skip writing one afternoon altogether, and take a long nap. Buttercup— Prim’s ugly cat— perches on my bed like a sentinel to watch me sleep. I believe he’s worried about me… stupid, clingy cat thinks I’m sick.

  But the feline’s intuition proves right, because just two days later, I shoot out of bed and run into the washroom to spill every last ounce of last night supper into the toilet. I must’ve caught a bug or something! 

  I feel queasy and lightheaded every morning after. My appetite wanes and it seems my delicate stomach can only tolerate pears, and broth. 

  I visit the post office to place out my letters to Marvel almost everyday; Every time I come, the nice old mailman comments on how sweet it is to see all the young-uns holding romance strong. Marvel has yet to respond to one of my letters, so I just smile tightly and demure. 

  I’ve been thinking though; the longer I go without news of my supposed future husband, and despite the whirlwind night of romance with him, I start questioning my actions, my promises. I never wanted to marry before, and suddenly I was okay getting a hasty, unofficial engagement with a virtual stranger, I barely remember from grade school… maybe it’s better if Marvel never writes. 

  My plans on earning a college degree and finding a well paying job will go unencumbered— I’m aware women in prominent working professions are as rare as snow in July, but women’s presence in the working forces keep growing as industries need laborers to keep up producing while the men fight in the war. Educated women are almost becoming less rare. 

  At the two month mark since I last saw Marvel, I become weepier than usual… is to be expected in my opinion; Prim’s been gone for a little over two months and she was the only person I knew I loved. But now I’m worrying about my health on top of everything.

  One morning, while I’m kneeling on the cold, hard floor in front of the toilet, feeling miserable and tired, my mother calls my name from the open door.

  “Katniss, I think it’s time to get a test.” She states evenly, and then enters the room to fetch a damp washcloth to wipe my face clean. “I hope I’m wrong, but I’m afraid you may be with child,” she sighs. 

  I squirm. “No,” I gasp. “I— I can’t be with child. I just can’t!” But the thought has crossed my mind a few times already. “It’s not supposed to be this way!”

  “I know, child,” My mother pats my head, “there’s only one way to know. Get dressed for the day, I will call the most discreet physician I know, and have him pay us a visit.” 

  ————————-

  Doctor Aurelius— a physician my mother has helped deliver babies and treat maladies with— confirms the pregnancy with a grim face. 

  I sit at my kitchen table numb and despondent. My mother writes a check to the doctor for his services, while talking in no so hush tones in the other room. I listen to their whole conversation, as if submerged in water.

  “I blame myself for this, doctor. I should have kept a closer eye on her,” 

  “Don’t blame yourself Ms. Everdeen, it’s that war business bringing out all sorts of evil into the world! It’s unfortunate the rise of these cases in our community. Young ladies— from good families!— engaging in acts ought to be saved for marriage. Youth do things without thinking, guided by fear. Our boys fear they may not return from that senseless, awful war, and settle down properly, and I don’t blame them one little bit.”

  “The only solace I have right now, is that my poor husband is not here to see the shame that’s fallen over our family,”

  “I understand the sentiment, ma’am. There’s no telling how Preacher Everdeen would’ve taken this blow. But I’m sure things will work out as soon as young Katniss hears from the father…” 

  I dissolve into silent tears then. My mother escorts the doctor to the door and then there’s silence. 

  My pinky finger curls into the soft fabric of the table cloth, and I try to ignore the urge to vomit boiling in my stomach. There’s one thought circling mi mind: my college days are over.

  ——————————-

“Ah! Miss Everdeen, I have something for you.” Says the mailman as soon as I reach the desk. He smiles, but rather sadly, like he’s about to give me bad news. 

  I’ve come to the post office with urgent letters every day for 6 days, and he’s never looked at me this way. 

  The old man digs around for a moment and almost reluctantly, passes a parcel tied up in twine. An envelope is attached to the top of the parcel, and with a sinking feeling, I realized it’s a stack of my own letters. 

  “It came in today, miss.” Says the man, voice laced with pity. “Sorry for your loss.” He says. 

  At first I don’t understand what he could possibly mean by that; he’s offered his sympathies fir my dead father and sister already; it makes absolutely no sense to repeat himself randomly after so long. 

  Then it hits me like a ton of bricks. 

  I gasp, and press the parcel to my chest. “Oh no! Marvel!” I whisper. I give the man a hasty wave, thanking him, and rush out of the post office like mad. 

  Tears run down my cheeks, while I dash home, imagining the worst. “Poor, Marvel!” Is all I can think.

  “Katniss, what’s wrong?” My mother calls, alarmed, when I rush to my bedroom, sobbing. She follows me in, and watches me tear into the envelope at the top of the stack. 

  I frown in confusion when I’m met with handwritten, chicken-scratch scrawl, instead of a formal missive typed in official US military stationary. 

  My scowl deepens as my eyes rove over the flowery vocabulary, and then I screech, “What?!” 

  “Katniss, what’s going on?” 

  I ignore my mother when she approaches to read over my shoulder; I step around her, shaking the piece of paper in my hands and stand by the window, as if sunlight will make the words change their meaning.

  I smooth the creases and folds on the page over, and read out loud, “Dearest Kit, sorry it took so long to write, it’s been a wild time since we arrived and finding time to correspond with everyone back home it’s been hard.

  “At times, your letters have been the sole source of light and hope in the darkness of this conflict. Is for that reason, and with a heavy heart, that I must come clean to you now. I truly meant it when I swore to come back and make you my wife, but as the Good Book says, the Lord works in mysterious ways, and love has sprouted out the most unlikely place! Kit, I’ve fallen in love and married a lovely gal here in England…”

  I stop reading. He goes on talking about the why and how, but I sincerely don’t care. 

  “That good for nothing, virtue dasher, future crushing… liar!” My mother bleats to the ceiling, raising her palms over her head, dramatically. 

  I’m angry too, of course. I feel used and disposed of like a dirty rag, but my mother’s reaction is borderline hilarious. Except, it isn’t. 

  I’m pregnant, unmarried, and soon— once my still flat stomach starts rounding— I’ll be socially ostracized for my condition. My only saving grace was the promise of marriage that bastard Marvel had given me. But that’s gone now. 

  “I knew that boy was bad news the second I laid eyes on him! He never even introduced himself to me, the little weasel! This is my fault. My fault! I should’ve never allowed you to run amok with the likes of him…”

  “Mother, will you please?” I nearly growl, gesturing at the open bedroom door.

  She stares at me uncomprehendingly for a moment, before pursing her lips in disapproval, and stalking out of the room muttering her aggravation under her breath. 

  I sink into my bed with Marvel’s stupid letter crumpling in my fist. A single, hot, angry tear rolls down my face, and for the first time since finding out of its existence, I hug my midsection and address my child, “I’m so sorry for dragging you into this mess. I know you didn’t ask for a mother like me, but I’m all you got now, little one. I promise we will be alright… I’ll try not to let you down.”

  ———————-

  My mother has been unbearable for the last two days. She cries in her room worse than when Prim died, and when she sees me, she starts lamenting my poor choice, like I’m not even standing there… as if I don’t feel discouraged enough. 

  I keep myself busy with my education. I will need to earn this diploma now more than ever before, and I need to do as much as I can before the baby arrives and my studies get put on hold. 

  In the meantime, I scout the newspapers for possible work options to sustain me and my mother. Our savings keep diminishing and the small stipend my mother got from the Army since my father passed away is becoming more insufficient by the day. 

  There’s a knock on the front door, and I push out my chair unhappy by the interruption. 

  “Afternoon Miss Katniss! Would you let your mother know she’s got a telephone call down in the lobby?” Says the building’s doorkeeper. 

  “Of course, thank you. She’ll be right down!”

  Telephones are yet another luxury we had to give up when moved to this small place after losing my father. 

  I go back to my job hunt, and my mother descends to the lobby, quickly. 

  She returns after only 10 minutes, almost running through the door, excitedly calling my name. Tears wet her face, but her smile is so blinding, even without knowing what sort of news she’s heard to cause her such joy, I stand from the table with nervous anticipation. 

  “Oh, Katniss! Katniss my dear daughter, you’re saved!” She exclaims, hugging me tightly. 

  I’m confused. I step away from her embrace, “What do you mean?” 

  “It’s the best thing possible ever, I tell you! The Lord has answered all of my prayers!”

  “This is all so exciting and all, mother, but… could you please share this great news already?” 

  My mother cups my face in her hands, and beams at me, “You need to pack your things, darling! Your father’s good friend, Reverend Undersee, has found a husband, and you are to wed, in three days time!”

  —————————

Reverend Undersee and his daughter, Madge, meet me and my mother at the rinky dink bus station, in the equally tiny town my mother has banished me to.

  “Katniss! How long has it been?” Says Madge, hugging me enthusiastically.

  I bite my tongue to keep the acidic retort of “not long enough!” to leave my mouth. 

  “Welcome to Panem,” says the reverend, soberly, shaking my mother’s hand in greeting.

  “Thank you, revered. We appreciate your hospitality and your understanding,” my mother responds, then gives me a pointed look and a wordless command. 

  I nod and mutter, “Thank you, sir. Madge,” 

  I scowl at a crack in the pavement, not feeling an iota of gratefulness for this charade! 

  Any man agreeing to this questionable union has to either be desperate, or be hiding terrible, ulterior motives to go along with all of this. Nobody in their right mind would willingly marry a girl pregnant with another man’s baby, and be happy about it… unless that’s the reason! 

  I shudder at the thought. 

  But it is a very real possibility that my intended is a simpleton, who can’t find a wife otherwise… or worse! It could be a man very advanced in age, looking for a supple, young body to leech off. Gross!

  My mother had been too excited about the news that a man offered to marry me (as if I asked for, or even wanted a husband!) to bother to ask his name. 

  Reverend Undersee coughs daintily, clears his throat, and starts, like he’s giving a lecture at the university. “It is our Christian duty to lend a helping hand to widows and orphans in their time of needs. Same way it’s our duty to keep the memory and honor of an old friend from being dragged into the mud.”

  I wince at the harsh words, and let my face fall lower, if that’s even possible. 

  “Well, it’s a good thing that we are all recipients of the abundant grace of the Lord, which covers multitude of faults, and it’s never hard to reach,” a deep, velvety, masculine voice cuts into my embarrassment. 

  I lift my eyes from the ground, to find a man striding confidently in our direction. He smiles kindly at me, his eyes fixed on my own, like I’m the only person still standing in the station.

  He finally cedes our staring contest, to take in the rest of the group.

  A knot forms in the pit of my stomach, because I recognize him from years past when my family used to visit this town, and I’m afraid I know exactly why he’s here. 

  “Good afternoon, all. I apologize for my tardiness, I had a last second detail to take care of before leaving the house,” he nods in our general direction, taking his hat off; a riot of ashy blonde curls falls onto his forehead, before bending forward to shake my mother’s hand, “I’m Peeta Mellark, at your service, ma’am. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” 

  “Likewise, mister Mellark,” says my mother, her lips twitch tersely, “Widow Everdeen, and this here is my daughter Katniss… your bride.” 

  Peeta Mellark’s baby blue eyes slip back to mine, and the left side corner of lips curls into a shy, earnest smile. “Welcome to Panem, Katniss, I’ll sure do my best, so you’d like it here.”

#alliswell21 #prompt 71 #Springtime Edition 2021 #submission

[love-takes-work]

Steven Universe: End of an Era: Outline & Review

I wrote this review in October but never got around to posting it here

Steven Universe: End of an Era is far more than an art book–it’s also a collection of behind-the-scenes material, stories about the experience of working on the show, planning documents and associated background info, and both older versions of developed concepts AND concepts that never made it into the show. It's a huge fusion of all those elements, and it's definitely an experience!

Some low-quality images are included with my review just to give you an idea of what’s there--it’s not a good substitute for getting your own copy, but here’s a tour!

Like the previous concept art book, Art and Origins, I'll be giving you a description of the structure and overview, while also collecting notable information for fans. Obviously just about everything is "notable" once again, but I'll aim for unique insight or perspective on the main source material, keeping the screaming about everything new to a minimum so you can also enjoy something for yourself if you pick it up. My low-quality photos should prevent people from feeling like I'm reproducing the book in any capacity. Please grab one while you can and have your own experience!

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

OVERVIEW

The book is titled "End of an Era" for a couple reasons--obviously because it is released after the show has wrapped, but also because Gem history recently ended its "Era 2" and began Era 3--an age of prosperity and peace. The author--the person in charge of adapting all of this information into this slick, readable package--is Chris McDonnell, whose work was previously applied on the Art and Origins book.

The foreword is by N.K. Jemisin, a well-known science fiction author who's a huge fan of the show (and wrote a really excellent series that also has a weird geological connection, by the way).

And the cover, like its predecessor, is shiny and decorated with a beach scene featuring minimalistic characters--this time it's the Gems at night in front of the Temple, and on the back cover is a big pink leg ship in a cross-legged pose.

The interior covers are decorated with tons of amazing sketches of Steven and Connie on the front, and a bunch of Gem sketches on the back. Every interior page that most would leave blank is highlighted with some kind of sketch art or character exercise--it's so much to look at, so much to absorb.

The book is dedicated "For Eddie."

Its organization is different from the previous book in that it shares applicable work in chunks associated with groups of episodes rather than pertaining to different aspects of building the show.

FOREWORD

N.K. Jemisin gives us such a great introduction to the book--apparently understanding very well that the audience of this book is full of animation enthusiasts and adult fans more than it is full of kids, and explaining that bewildering journey some adults had from blowing this show off as a silly kid thing to falling in love with it hard and fast.

The important thing, Jemisin says, is being able to trust a storyteller with your heart. And it was clear to her that Rebecca Sugar knew what she was talking about and was saying important things about identity and the radical power that comes with accepting it and demanding respect.

Important also is how we handle heroes and who gets to be one in fantasy. That's part of the reason Steven Universe speaks to so many--because we see ourselves here, and know stories can be about us. Acknowledging the power we all have to MAKE THINGS BETTER with what we fight for is so important--especially if we're going to speaking to the next generation about it.

Highlighting Rose Quartz as a "born leader" who failed and Steven as a relatable scamp who did what she couldn't, Jemisin asserts that we can save the world.

1. END OF AN ERA

We start with an appeal to the audience to think about identity and the formative parts of our childhood--and how different it is if who you are and who you become is restricted, mocked, erased, or Not Allowed. Most people, if not ALL people, can relate to this, but for those of us with a special relationship with Steven Universe because of queer identity, this hits hard.

But it doesn't have to be anything grand to be something we respect--this show's authenticity comes largely from how personal everything is, drawn from real-life experiences and incidental truths from each artist's perspective, leaning hard on childhood and formative experiences.

Rebecca Sugar offers some interview bits to discuss writing philosophy and why "writing female characters" was difficult for a nonbinary person who'd been socialized as a girl and a woman. Rebecca has spoken before about how frustrating it is that marketing for cartoons was SO gendered when she was growing up (and to some extent still is).

The Gems in the story are all "she/her," but on their planet they're defined by their work, not by emotion or relationships (unlike women in our society), so having them be socialized opposite to how she was and be able to claim those emotions through choice and NOT as just an expectation "as women" was revolutionary. Rebecca wants her show to tell all marginalized people that they don't deserve to be in the margins.

Weighing in on other aspects of the show were Ian Jones-Quartey, Joe Johnston, and Miki Brewster. Ian describes feeling like at first doing SU was a thrill ride that meant they'd finally get to do all the cool stuff, but it quickly became a responsibility that he took very seriously--the need to tell a good story now that he'd been given a megaphone.

Promotional art, planning documents, character sketches, and concept art from the lighthearted to the stone serious is included, along with some very cool (sort of famous) timeline charts that track major characters' developments. It's emphasized by Rebecca that the developmental materials ARE NOT CANON (and especially are not MORE canon) compared the final show.

There are concept sketches alongside final art for Aquamarine and Topaz in "Wanted" (with Topaz labeled "Imperial Topaz"), the Zircons in "The Trial," Blue and Yellow Diamond, and the Off Colors (including Pink Lars).

And there's also a spread of "the two sides of Steven's life: Gem Magic and Rock N Roll" featuring Sadie Killer and the Suspects (referred to as "Buck's band")--as well as a cool "Crew Cameos" key and some concepts for short-haired Connie.

And then there's some more "finished" art with stills alongside concepts, including some background art, revision, and really cool "fairytale" art from some of the shadowplay storytelling bits. We get "Lars of the Stars," "Jungle Moon," and "Can't Go Back."

2. THE BEGINNING OF THE END: A SINGLE PALE ROSE

In discussing the huge reveals and Gem mysteries in the show, the pacing is examined, and emphasis is put on the intended "slow burn." One of the most difficult things in the show was to strategize so that every piece that was needed to support another piece in the future was placed properly to seed what it was supposed to.

Some of the ideas they developed were more of a group effort and were fit together collaboratively (like Amethyst's being younger than the other Gems and Jasper being from Earth), while others were intended from the beginning based on Rebecca's vision (the fundamental idea of Pink Diamond's true identity, for instance, as well as Obsidian's design and sword and our Pearl not being Pink's first).

The writing process gets a great deep dive here, including fun tidbits like how the orb in the moon base was inserted by Joe Johnston and they literally had no idea what it was for when they wrote the episode. They repurposed it when they figured out what they needed.

Rebecca credits her detailed timelines for helping keep the order straight, and discusses how other artists are sometimes flabbergasted that a storyboard-driven show can have this much detail and continuity and yet not get wrecked by the free non-scripted boarding process. But Rebecca and the Crew valued that approach and loved the way fresh eyes would handle an idea, making it come back alive, entertaining, vivid.

Several Crew members weigh in on the writing process. Lauren Hecht refers to making lots of incorrect guesses despite being on the inside. Joe Johnston recalled getting briefed on his first day and getting so excited to start working on this massive project.

Miki Brewster remembered being told Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond and being shocked--and also confused about why Ruby and Sapphire would need to be married if they're already basically married. Drew Green talks about being brought in late and getting to watch unaired episodes and a rough of the movie while eating cereal.

Ian Jones-Quartey complains about Pink Diamond's real jester-like form being leaked to the internet through a Hot Topic shirt. Rebecca piggybacks on that and says it was upsetting that the wedding was leaked because of toy fair keychains featuring Ruby and Sapphire in wedding attire. They'd always be worried about leaks, and sometimes Rebecca struggled not to talk about the reality of Pink Diamond before the reveal because she knew it would make so much more sense once the truth was out. And everything associated with Rose makes more sense once you know she's Pink--especially what happened with Bismuth, considering what we know about how Pink Diamond has a habit of treating anyone who no longer serves her interests.

When it comes to visual cues, Rebecca also talks about intentional designs to create a feeling of unity between concepts, like the flower shapes on Pink Diamond's palanquin lining up with the poofs of Steven's hair and the star imagery of the series. Steven Sugar and Mary Nash discuss how the Human Zoo incorporated this imagery, trying to look like Homeworld with a Pink Diamond touch.

Steven Sugar, as a game nerd, liked to throw in video game references from old and modern stuff to feel like he's inserting what he's enjoying and who he is from moment to moment, while Mary Nash, who related to Sadie as a basement-dwelling young person with cult interests, liked to include stuff from MST3K and cult movies. Pearl's hand gestures get a spotlight too--her reflex to cover her mouth when Pink Diamond was being discussed was analyzed here.

A "Top Secret Visual Timeline" from 2016 is included which tells us some Diamond history. It has an earlier version of Pink Pearl's fate and does not include Spinel since the movie hadn't been greenlit. The timeline includes the birth of the Diamonds, the emergence and major story beats for each major character, and some philosophy of the driving force behind each.

We're told that Pink Diamond straightened up, behavior-wise, after she lost her first Pearl, and that Yellow and Blue wanted to give her a planet but White only agreed to it to prove she would fail at managing a colony. Pearl, meanwhile, is so confused to have a Diamond who keeps asking her what she thinks when she doesn't believe she should have opinions.

And when Pink moonlighted as Rose to start conflict, she found herself leading an army to fight Pink's troops--then Yellow's, and eventually Blue's too. Lapis is said to be waiting for the conflict to end on Earth so she can terraform, but she gets trapped instead.

Pearl's love story with Rose is described as "an endless honeymoon" where she's free to love her, while Rose's is more like "I'm now the head of the family and I'm going to give everyone what they never had, so everyone is super special!"

Jasper is described as "adopted" into Yellow's army as the only successful Beta Quartz. And White Diamond knew that Pink Diamond was not dead--she thought she was just running away from home like a brat and would eventually be back.

3. THE HEART OF THE CRYSTAL GEMS

Now we discuss Rose Quartz--the original Pink Diamond. How she was selfish and selfless, never enough and always too much, and how Greg was her first partner who "challenged her" to be an equal. Rebecca describes Rose as being delighted by the idea that both she and Greg reinvented themselves, but when that leads her to want to share her past, Greg isn't interested--he only wants to know who she is now, and doesn't consider the old her to be her.

Rebecca likes Carl Jung's concept of "enantiodromia," which is the idea that extremes lead to their extreme opposite. This is demonstrated in all of the Diamonds. This narrative is interspersed with drawings of Greg and Rose being cute.

But another "heart" of the Crystal Gems is its relationships--particularly, Garnet, the fairy tale romance embodied. More psychological theories are discussed with regard to differentiation in a relationship making the relationship stronger, and how they made sure that happened for Garnet during the appropriate arc. Rebecca has struggled with the idea that she, like Ruby, went straight from a "family" group to a living-with-others situation and never lived by herself. But she also learned that you can in fact develop as a person in the context of a relationship--you don't have to be alone to do it. Ruby learned that too, and chose on her own terms to be with Sapphire.

The wedding made so much sense to Rebecca and the crew that they couldn't imagine a wholesome couple like Ruby and Sapphire not having a wedding episode. They wanted it for years: The wedding concepts always included the tuxedo for Sapphire and the wedding dress for Ruby.

But pushback (often blamed on the conservative standards of the international market) led to negotiations trying to keep Ruby and Sapphire's relationship from being explicit. Rebecca and the Crew were very tired of this double standard, and they were especially irritated by attempts to claim a wedding wouldn't be well received by a core demographic or wouldn't make sense for Steven's character. But other shows had done weddings and Steven had been established to love weddings already.

Rebecca kept adding more elements to the wedding episode to answer all the concerns, but she didn't want to back down from explicit marriage between these characters. They deserved it. And the audience deserved to see this as wholesome, like any other cartoon wedding. Eventually they got their way and were allowed to have the wedding. But the ordered episodes were also coming to a close without promise of more, so Rebecca had to request more episodes to be able to wrap up the storyline!

And of course, there is Steven, the true heart of the team. A very interesting aside discusses Garnet's leadership and how the network pushed the Crewniverse to acknowledge Steven as the leader. This was successfully resisted throughout as well--because Garnet is the leader (unless she's incapacitated, of course). It's fantastic that this concept was preserved because too often a young male chosen one is elevated above people with more experience and knowledge because of that chosen one tradition, so it's really nice to have a show acknowledge that team leadership is more appropriate for an adult.

4. ERA 3

Beginning with a discussion of the Diamonds, this chapter deconstructs the dysfunctional "family" of the Diamonds (who are said to be based on tropes about evil stepmothers and stepsisters), with the thread of dysfunction originating with White Diamond.

Yellow is physical, Blue is emotional, White is judgmental, and Pink is impulsive. Some philosophy on why Pink is naturally manipulative and why she clashes so much with White is offered.

White believes her identity is to be imposed on all because she is the pinnacle of what should be--and therefore, she has the right to make decisions and statements about and on behalf of everyone. But her secret is that she can't do what the others do--act or feel or want. In trying to be everyone, she is no one.

And this becomes very important when she confronts Steven about his identity and turns out to be wrong. The triumph of Steven being totally, fully himself is a beautiful, simple revelation that's described as far more satisfying than the theories about Pink living inside him or Rose returning from his Gem.

Also discussed is Gem architecture. A lot went into this idea, and Steven Sugar weighs in to say he had to think of what it would mean for a world to have buildings but serve no human needs. That's why it's mostly focused on transport and storage. Even the broken planet is meant to indicate a place stripped for its resources, and everything serves a function that is meant to avoid looking like the human equivalents.

And there's another layer, too: a difference between Era 1 and Era 2. Era 2 became more functional to hide Era 1's broken bits, and older Homeworld buildings still have some "ornate and ancient" feel to them. And the fact that props, tools, and even walls and doors could be living was taken from a concept Rebecca thought was horrible from old Busby Berkeley movies, where people were inanimate objects and it was portrayed as lovely. Tom Herpich helped conceptualize these living objects.

Steven dealing with "princess tropes" is discussed here too. The Pebbles (worked on with Pendleton Ward) were sort of his Cinderella's mice, and all the locked-in-a-tower, having supportive tiny friends help you, getting princess clothes made, attending a ball, having to mind your manners stuff was intentionally related to fairy tales.

The point of doing that (besides fun) was to easily invoke the feeling that Steven was being made to be someone he's not, and that he was being treated like THIS is who he really is when it isn't. White Diamond as the "evil stepmother" is discussed with regard to her detailed features and massive scale. They generally didn't put fingernails and eyelashes on characters (especially not to indicate that they were women or girls!), but they decided White would get all of these feminine markers for tradition's sake.

Rebecca also invokes several other references that were included and describes the princess tropes as "chipping away at his integrity" setting him up for the final challenge with White.

There is again tons of concept art: Homeworld architecture, Pebbles, Diamond diagrams, background Jades and Lemon Jade Fusion, Comby, Diamond extraction chambers, and White Diamond.

5. CHANGE YOUR MIND

Now we finally begin to discuss Steven's identity. The "Perfect Steven," discussed in several interviews before this book's release, was an idea back in 2013; the "ultimate Steven," beefed up and shonen-looking, was far from perfect because OUR Steven is perfect, while this alpha hero Steven idea (used in Steven Universe Future) didn't belong being idolized in such a show.

They thought about having Steven fall apart into organic half and Gem half early in the show (during "Giant Woman" after a successful fusion and unfusion, even!), but they didn't try the concept until the last episode. They didn't want the "Pink" Steven to be portrayed as "better" even though he would be more powerful, so they decided he isn't whole without his organic self and he's just as much of a shell as the organic half. They absolutely did not want any ending that required Rose to be inside him or waiting to come back. But the debates were fierce--what DOES it mean to have Rose's Gem?

Ian Jones-Quartey brings in an anecdote about his own family to emphasize some of the immigrant themes that inspired aspects of the show. He had a brother who reinvented himself elsewhere away from family without resolving issues, and all the ramifications of that were explored in the show through Rose Quartz. (He is careful to say he doesn't think his immigrant experience is like being from another planet!) But he did say you can hurt your old family even if they were toxic or didn't know the real you, and you can hurt your new family by hiding your past. The Pizza family of course was also a more direct reference to Ian's Ghanaian family.

In talking about the new Fusions from this episode, Sunstone is largely described by Miki, who also got to board the Sunstone section. Sunstone was described as a cool 1990s character and the evolution just continued into making them a fourth-wall-breaking PSA dispenser. Obsidian is also discussed, with their sword being an early concept. Steven Sugar said they totally knew it would be forged in action. Obsidian being similar to the Temple design is of course another very early detail.

The story of how James Baxter got involved with one of the final scenes (Organic Steven and Pink Steven fusing in front of White Diamond) was shared. His family was fans of the show and Rebecca Sugar took the time to drive to a birthday party for his daughter and give her a drawing. He then owed her a favor, and this was it.

Concept art is again included, this time with sample boards, promo images, a Diamond fight concept, costume design changes for the Gems, new Fusions, the so-called "Mega Diamond" ship conglomerate, some scenes from the White Diamond confrontation, Pink Steven, multiple pages of James Baxter animation, corrupted Gems and their healed selves, and photos from the "Change Your Mind" premiere and some awards. The show has won one design-related Emmy, a Peabody Award, and a GLAAD award.

6. STEVEN UNIVERSE FUTURE

The book doesn't cover the movie because it got its own book, but dives right into Future. Ian Jones-Quartey emphasizes that the movie and Future are separate and different from the original show, which ENDED. After all, after that, Steven has a neck!

Some new names are invoked now: new writers Kate Tsang, Jack Pendarvis, and Taneka Stotts. They were excited to have Steven make HIS OWN mistakes instead of trying to clean up someone else's! Now, instead of doing the usual shonen anime thing and having the final battle be a big physical rumble, Steven has to make peace with himself and take an active role in coping with what all the fighting has done to him and what effect it's had on who he is (and who he wants to be). There is no sudden "I love myself!" answer, either. It's always a process.

Drew Green and Maya Petersen, who came on board as storyboarders officially in Future, also weighed in on writing for a "mature" show, how to deal with Steven being a "moral compass" while being sort of unreliable, and what they learned as Crew that they didn't know as fans. Drew didn't know Garnet never asks questions. Jack didn't realize the show never deviated from Steven's point of view. Taneka was nervous but excited to collaborate. Kate was worried about how established the show was and what to do as a new writer to contribute appropriately.

Maya was on the old Crew but not as a storyboarder, so felt like some of the "old" ideas ended up not being appropriate for the "new" Future in an embarrassing way--and dreaded the idea of dealing with Steven's emotional problems when they were similar to stuff she'd been through. She also was personally behind the idea of Steven wanting to dump his problems by becoming Stevonnie, and got to work with Etienne Guignard on inventing the Pearl creation backstory with Volleyball.

There's some discussion of "depression hobbies," stress, and the show's pacing. And they say Etienne was entertaining at pitches. There's even some discussion of how Greg is taken off a bit of a pedestal because his terrible restrictive life in the suburbs sounded wholesome to Steven and Greg presented it negatively.

And then there is some information about how the Crew felt behind the scenes due to fan reactions and negative press. Ian discusses feeling offended when the Black characters are described as bad examples, as if their cartoonized but realistic-in-context features are automatically caricatures.

Rebecca Sugar felt beaten down by some of these narratives and began to access mental health services, inspiring some of the content of "Mindful Education." A long reflection from Rebecca discusses people's infighting about her show and what she had a responsibility to show or not show in the story. She learned a lot about bullying from Cartoon Network's anti-bullying program and learned that bullies thrive on whatever attention you give them--unless it is made clear to them by a peer group that no one is impressed by their cruel actions. Also, not all negative feedback is bullying. Constructive criticism is different. Self-awareness can help you avoid internalizing what bullies might do or say to you.

Segueing from the discussion of how people are affected by and connect with the show, we then discuss how they chose as a team what should be covered as the show came to a close. They didn't have time to do quite a few stories they wanted time for, like a Rhodonite story, a Lars side story, and Diamond "prehistory" and religion; all of it was put aside for the main arc with Steven.

They thought people would find those stories about Homeworld and Off Color history very interesting, but so much of the show had been about Steven's Gem adventures, so keeping him mostly on Earth seemed appropriate. The acknowledgment of his battle damage, of his trauma, was necessary and real, and helpful in an important way to the core audience.

Oh, and there was some stuff about a cheeseburger tree. Don't ask.

In discussing the "reverse escapism" of the original show (Gem aliens are intrigued by everyday human culture, and realism is necessary), Rebecca says her views have changed on escapism and gets why some people want a soothing feel-better show. She acknowledged also that her own escapist dreams-come-true fulfilled in the show didn't feel like escapism because they were givens to the majority of mainstream culture, but were never guaranteed to marginalized people.

Rebecca ties in her several-times-told story about "Love Like You" and how the middle bit was when she didn't feel she was worth looking up to, and the realizations she had to tie the beginning to the end. Feeling like someone will like you less if they know you more is terrible. So sometimes a show like this can be helpful in telling people that they belong when their fantasies are things like "I want to be loved" and "I want to know I exist."

In Future, Steven has to connect to who he is and love that person--and understand that person enough to finally feel that even if he's not fixing their problems or saving their world right this second, Steven deserves his family's love and support, and they WANT to give it to him.

There's a huge amount of supplemental material in this section so there's no way I could name it all. The charts for Future's timeline are pretty straightforward, though a few episodes like "A Very Special Episode," "Why So Blue," "In Dreams," and "Bismuth Casual" aren't specifically represented and a couple are in a different order ("Prickly Pair" was conceived as happening after "Fragments" and "Homeworld Bound").

Steven feeling like a monster, having intrusive thoughts, having not forgiven the Diamonds, and getting help/moving on--it's all there.

We have keys, color scripts, and boards for the new opening and some various backgrounds and storyboard art from episodes. Model sheets for Shep, Nice Lapis and Mean Lapis, Jasper, Steven Tag Gems, Pink Steven Powers, Monster Steven. New house concepts, Era 3 Homeworld concept art for the Diamond environments, and background art for the Reef.

New Connie and Greg designs. Concepts for Mega Pearl, the Rose Quartzes, Bluebird, and Morganite (who didn't get used). And there are some photos from recording and the conference room. There are even some extras from "Crossover Nexus," the crossover with OK K.O.!--including an unused cut scene that included Ruby and Sapphire fighting. The rest of the book is a bunch of adorable Crewniverse art--extras, blog drawings, promos, and gifts to each other.

NOTABLE

1.

The first timeline chart in the book features a cool sketch of the original Off Colors, which at the time this planning document was drafted included unused Off Colors Flint and Chert.

We knew of their existence already because of an episode of the podcast, but these two unexpectedly appeared as incidental characters in the Steven Universe Future episode "Homeworld Bound," identified only in the credits. Sad to think that instead of banding with the Off Colors, these two were probably shattered for their crime (being Quartzes who don't want to fight) and that's why we see them being repaired in this episode. Later, there's some brainstorming for types of Off Colors and "a Ruby that wants to wear limb enhancers" is mentioned as well.

2. 

It looks like there was also originally more juice to the story of tracking down the events of the war culminating in Pink Diamond's assassination.

One of the timelines talks about Steven thinking it makes sense that Pearl can't talk about her involvement because she might have been a double agent, explaining why Rose Quartz always knew what Pink Diamond was doing. It seems like that bit was supposed to be included in Garnet's version of the story she believed in "Your Mother and Mine." Seems like they originally conceived Garnet's story to inspire the Off Colors to become pirates and freedom fighters, though in the show's canon this storytelling happened after Lars had already reinvented himself the way he did.

Sadie was also supposed to be sending letters to Lars via Steven, which is funny since the "Letters to Lars" episode is just a montage Steven letter. And of course it's specified that Steven was supposed to get Pink Diamond flashbacks by going to the Palace on Homeworld.

3. 

The second chart in the book makes references to Sadie's reinvention of herself as a parallel to Lars, Greg, and Pink Diamond all doing the same thing, and how positive it is to embrace such a thing--a version of yourself that YOU create.

I love that Yellow Diamond's arm ship arm-wrestling the Cluster was always part of the plan.

There's some more explicit direction to have Connie help Steven understand the Diamonds as "strict parents," and a lot more emphasis on everyone realizing Rose had been inspired by THEM rather than them all following her.

White Diamond is presented here as if she thinks of Pink Diamond as a "daughter" (whom she now understands she has "lost"). There are notes on how the Diamonds have a responsibility to their children and should attend to it before just continuing to make more.

4.

One of the concept art images for the Off Colors features Rhodonite crouching by Padparadscha saying "Don't worry, I won't let them hurt you." It's very interesting because she DOES seem to protect Padparadscha in the show, but doesn't seem confident about it in her final version, even though it does seem like she'd be "programmed" to guard aristocratic Gems because of her Ruby and Pearl makeup. Cool.

5.

A "Crew Cameos" spread was included, which is of great interest to some of us who loved seeing the Crew insert themselves into the show. Not every SU Crew person who's been represented in a crowd was there, but this crowd included Amish Kumar, Kat Morris, Amanda Winterstein, Angie Wang, Lamar Abrams, Emily Walus, Mary Nash, Joe Johnston, Christy Cohen, Danny Cragg, Hilary Florido, Danny Hynes, Matt Burnett, Ben Levin, Elle Michalka.

6.

The official national flower of South Korea, Hibiscus syriacus, is the name of Pink Diamond's flower.

7.

One of Steven Sugar's comments about the silhouette difference between humans and Gems points out that humans have ears. This seems to be pretty good confirmation that they are not supposed to have ears, despite that sometimes we'll see ears drawn on them in some frames.

8.

Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond is characterized in this book as "self-hating" in a really interesting way, saying that because she believed she was not capable of compassion, she practically worshiped those who demonstrated that ability and thought they were so much better than her--which is described as "intoxicating" and resulted in others being drawn to her. How interesting is that!

9.

Timelines reveal that early plans for Pink Diamond's first Pearl originally had her getting destroyed by Pink during  a game, and then her destruction was rewritten as a punishment from the Diamonds after Pink Pearl defended Pink Diamond to the other Diamonds. They went back to the idea of her getting hurt by Pink for the final version, though the cracked face and control by White Diamond was not on the agenda until they started writing "Change Your Mind."

10.

The approximate ages of the major characters, based on emergence, are revealed on these timelines. It begins with a cracked-planet-looking graphic depicting four tiny Diamonds emerging at 20,000 years ago. Some suspicious "blacked out" redacting surrounds a long timeline tail that goes back before that, which may mean there are secrets they still don't want to reveal. But the dates go like this:

20,000 years ago: The Diamonds emerge.

11,000 years ago: Pearl is custom-made for Pink Diamond.

8,000 years ago: Sapphire emerges (on Homeworld).

6,000 years ago: Ruby emerges (on a colony).

5,750 years ago: Garnet is formed.

5,600 years ago: Lapis is poofed and put in the mirror.

5,200 years ago: Jasper emerges (on Earth).

5,050 years ago: The Cluster is planted.

5,000 years ago: Amethyst emerges (on Earth).

4,500 years ago: The Crystal Gems found Amethyst.

3,000 years ago: Peridot emerges (on Homeworld).

40 years ago: Pearl found Lapis's mirror at the Galaxy Warp.

And of course we know 14 years ago Steven is born!

11.

Originally the Diamonds were based on a quartet of themes: Love, Fear, Pride, and Sorrow. It got too complicated to keep and it was abandoned, with Pink's identification of "love" being described as "particularly outdated."

12.

Notes on a sketch say that Pearl was inspired to become bold and unashamed because Pink's questions drove her to have opinions, and it's said that Rose "fell in love" with her boldness.

13.

Rebecca tells the story of driving off a ridge and getting stuck in the desert, comparing this to Ruby's tumble during her Wild West adventure and using it as inspiration. She's told this story before but here it is in print. She also included the story about using the flowers from a friend's wedding to put in Ruby's hair.

14.

Rebecca describes having to "fight" notes she was given when it had to do with Ruby and Sapphire's relationship. One she describes as NOT fighting was for a signing card depicting Ruby and Sapphire dancing. It was called "too romantic" and she decided not to worry about it since it wasn't the actual show content.

She was also scolded over her book The Answer because the powers that be expected her to downplay that relationship. She always argued that queer youth deserved these things.

15.

Tom Herpich describes being inspired to name Blue Diamond's comb "Comby" because he was watching the news about Comey getting fired from the FBI. It's also a mineral-related term and I always assumed that reference was intentional, but maybe it's not and this is the only intended significance to Comby's name?

16.

Rainbow Quartz 2.0's design is not discussed, though the other two new Fusions from "Change Your Mind" (Sunstone and Obsidian) were. RQ2 has some sketches included, but no accompanying narrative in the text.

17.

A sheet of corrupted Gems and their healed selves is offered, though it doesn't appear to be final. The obelisk in "Serious Steven" is labeled Albite. The unnamed Worm Monster, Desert Glass, and Watermelon Tourmaline are included. An unnamed birdlike Gem represents the Big Bird monster from "Giant Woman." The crab monster from "Arcade Mania" is labeled Blue Chalcedony. The Tongue Monster is drawn uncorrupted but not named. The Flower Monster from "Back to the Kindergarten" is labeled Grossular Diopside or Titanite. The invisible monster from "Island Adventure" is labeled Moonstone. The Lighthouse Gem is labeled White Topaz. A form for Larimar that was used in "Change Your Mind" but changed in Future is there. The Slinker is listed as Chrysocolla. And the Crab Monster is listed as Aventurine.

On the next page, this is changed to Bixbite (as it was in Steven Universe Future), and we then also have Lace Amethyst, Blue Lace Agate, Crazy Lace Agate (Fusion), Ocean Jasper, the Mother Centipeetle Nephrite (Facet 413 Cabochon 12) and three other Nephrites, Angel Aura Quartz, a hooded Jasper, Zebra Jasper, Biggs Jasper, Watermelon Tourmaline (labeled as Fusion of Gem * Onion--huh?), Snowflake Obsidian, "Little" Larimar, and Orange Spodumene (who was the Worm).

18.

The Rhodonite side story would have been about the love story of a Ruby and a Pearl working for Morganite. Images of Morganite and her servants, unfused, are in the book. We do not get this additional information, but Rebecca said in a panel shortly before the book's release that Rhodonite's story would have been about finding out that she had been Rejuvenated 17 times because her components kept falling in love and needing to be reset.

19.

Referring to the Diamonds on one of the charts, Steven's perspective is "I can't believe I helped these" and then there's a censor bar. Welp.

20.

Some included art by Hilary Florido features Kevin with a souped-up Koala Princess car and another where Kevin is staring at himself in the mirror in front of an altar to himself.

21.

Rebecca's sweater collection is included in the Crew art.

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

#steven universe #steven universe end of an era #su spoilers #long post #su merch #myblog

[withastolenlantern]

What do you think it was like?” Rafael asked as he hacked at the tough vegetation with his hoe, pulling the dense vines into a pile in the pathway. The soil was nitrogen poor, even when heavily fertilized, and the local flora had a fibrous root that was always threatening to choke out their transplanted species. The ground cover was too thick for the harvesters to handle, so the crops were still pulled by hand at the end of the wet season.

“Why do you always ask that?” I said, stooping down to the ground and dusting the dirt from the now exposed potatoes, gently brushing them clear like an archaeologist might some ancient, precious treasure. I pulled the tubers from the ground and put them into the cart.

“You don’t wonder?” He leaned on the handle of the hoe, brushing the sweat from his dark brow.

“I try not to.”

“Come on, Shan. If I have to have one more meeting about soil nutritiation, I’m going to kill myself. And you’re down there all the time…”

“We’re not having this conversation again.” I hadn’t come out to the fields looking for a fight, but I was always prepared for one. “Stop changing the subject.”

He frowned. “Please don’t start.”

“I’m just saying. The season’s almost over, and we’re not getting any younger.”

He put down the hoe and knelt down next to me, lifting another potato and cradling it. He looked at me plaintively. “I just… are you sure this is what you want? To spend your life toiling in the dirt? I mean, your father…”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “My father is a drunk, and he has nothing to do with this.”

“He didn’t used to be. He might snap out of it. Some of them do,” he said. “I’m just worried you’ll get bored of me, of this. It’s not a glamorous life.”

“No, but it would be our life, Rafe,” I pleaded.

“One more season. The bureau is due to review the allotments soon, and I almost have enough saved up for a down-payment on my own forty.” He kissed me gently on the forehead, then stood, and stared up toward the sky and sighed. “You honestly don’t wonder? What it was like, knowing what was happening out there?”

I stood too, matching his gaze. I put my arm around his wrist and held it gently to my chest. “Come with me. I have to check on him, and then maybe you’ll see why I’d much prefer to farm potatoes with you.”

It had been one-hundred fifty-nine years since we’d last heard from anyone outside the system. The Network had gone down July 17th, 2938, or at least that’s what the history books said. And that is only if you went by the original Earth calendar, which no one did anymore. With a twenty-eight hour day and a rotation period of six-hundred seventeen days, matching time here on New Caledonia to that on Earth was pointless. With The Network, information would take an interminable time to transit the two-hundred eighty-four light year and four relay distance between us; even then, relativity was unclear on whether there was any such thing as simultaneous events at these stellar distances anyway. For me it was irrelevant: the Earth might as well not exist, may not exist, and Sol was just a very dim star you could barely make out in the southern sky.

For us, it had been a normal Sunday, Wet Season 12, CSY 134. New Caledonia is an eccentric planet with a single landmass in its northern hemisphere surrounded by a large planetary ocean. Because of its near forty-five degree axial tilt relative to the ecliptic, the year is divided into two seasons of nearly equal length. During the Wet Season, the more direct sunlight heats the seas, driving strong currents that bring strong storms to the western coast. The moist air blows in and dumps copious rain across the western plains before climbing into the central mountain range that separates the continent, the only remnant of the clash between the two gigantic tectonic plates that formed the land we now call home. This quirk of a jetstream leaves the eastern plains beyond the mountains in a giant rain shadow, barren and dry. For this reason, all the major settlements are here in the west, and in the Dry Season, the ocean gyres cease and we hunker down for a long, cold, arid winter.

The rains were strong that Wet Season, or so the stories go. At first they though the heavy cloud cover and unstable air was interfering with communication to the satellite arrays. Minkowski Transmission provides a supraliminal link through the interstellar void, but it was still subject to the space-time warps of a heavy gravity well; we are forced to rely on more pedestrian broadcast methods to communicate with the Network Relays out in longer orbits free from gravitational interference. But they checked the dishes and the transmission center and everything was fine. Then they checked again. Then they waited until the Dry Season, and checked again. And then they waited.

We walked up the path to the main road where I’d parked my truck, and Rafe loaded the cart, only half-full of potatoes, into the rear cargo bed. “How is he doing?” he asked, hopping into the cab and pulling on his safety belt.

I pushed the ignition switch and the engine purred to life. The battery chimed a plea that it needed to be recharged soon, and I felt that deep in my soul in a way the inanimate vehicle could never understand. “He has good days and bad.”

“How much longer?”

“Too long.” I put the truck into gear and programmed the destination into the navigational system. It lurched forward, the tracks catching slightly in the soft, damp clay of the plain. “Honestly I stopped counting a long time ago.”

We made it maybe half a mile before the rain started again, at first light pricks ricocheting off the windscreen of the truck, but quickly growing to fat blobs that exploded with a violent thud. I opened the valve to the distillation unit on the roof and a slow drip of cleansed water trickled into my canteen. After a few seconds I closed the valve and took a sip; the water was cool and clear. I offered some to Rafe, but he demurred with a slight wave. “Do you think he’ll go back to his career, after?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. At the beginning they said they’d welcome him back, but I think we all expect that was just a pleasantry. I’m… I’m not sure if he could handle it, now.”

We rode in silence for a few more minutes before he spoke again. “I’m not sure he’ll approve,” he said with subtle defeat. “Especially if he goes back to work.”

“He doesn’t get a say,” I replied. I reached across the seats and took his hand in mine. I smiled as brightly as I could in reassurance. “I’ve made my choice. This is what I want, for myself. For us. He can object if he wants, but what’s the worst that happens? It’s not like we can be further apart, not after what’s happened.”

It was several days into the Dry Season before the panic really set in. The original settlers had always known it was a one-way trip out here- four hundred years was a long time in stasis, and there was never a guarantee the planet would provide a sufficient fuel source to power the generation ship’s massive thrust engines back up. So like seeds in the wind humanity scattered itself across the stars, secure in the knowledge that the Network Relays would prevent them from ever being truly alone. Mankind might diverge physically and spacially; over time genetics and environmental factors would certainly breed out several new homo subspecies. But with the Network we could at least stay connected enough to share our stories, our art, our discoveries, and what else has humanity ever been but that?

The governor made an address and appealed for calm. New Caledonia had been self-sustaining since the beginning, she reminded everyone. They’d be fine. It was always a known possibility that this might happen, and the best everyone could do was to go on with their lives. The Network would come back, or it wouldn’t; they’d keep trying to re-establish communication.

The rumors started swirling immediately. The panel show ratings skyrocketed. We watched some of the footage in school, when I was younger; one talking head insisted it could be an alien threat, splitting us up before some pending invasion. There’s never been any sign of extraterrestrial intelligence even exists, let alone in competition for colonization, the other shouted. A third argued it was a sign from God, that humanity had outreached its grasp.

A popular conspiracy stream posited that maybe it was just New Caledonia. What if everyone else’s Network connection still works, and they’re cutting us out? The opposition party saw an opportunity and ran with it- what if the government shut down the link? On purpose! What if this was all a ploy to consolidate power and rule the planet as an oligarchy? The riots lasted three days, with violence and looting in the city streets before cooler heads prevailed. The government stayed in tact, and the opposition leaders were purged for fomenting insurrection. And thus was born the New Caledonian hermit kingdom.

“I don’t think I’d even want it to come back, at this point,” I groused. “Not after all of this.”

“How can you say that?” Rafe asked, incredulous. “You’re not the least bit curious?”

I thought for a moment. “Curious, yeah, I guess. But I don’t know that it would change all that much. It’s been so long. What if it comes back and it’s just… too different?”

“Yeah but think of what we might be missing out on,” he argued. “It might have helped with The Rot. It might have…”

“Don’t,” I warned, feeling the threat of tears welling my eyes.

For one-hundred fifty-nine orbits we’d tended our flocks and tilled our soils alone. Without a broader knowledge base, technological progress slowed. In CSY 204 a plague came, some meta-organic compound released from a pit mine dug too deep. The Rot claimed thirteen percent of the population before we could quarantine it out. When I was nine they finally found a way to inoculate against it. I remembered wincing at the shot as my father looked on, relief evident in his face that I’d be spared the fate that had claimed so many lives, including my mothers.

Maybe Rafe was right; maybe someone out beyond the stars might have helped us avoid that tragedy. And maybe someone here might know or do something that could save lives elsewhere. But in the years since the Network went down, we’d persevered, raised generations on our own. And inevitably just like Rafael they would stare up at the night sky with the same wonder as those before. And then they’d also ask about the abandoned broadcast center in the empty valley beyond the outskirts of the main settlement, grown over with the local moss-analogue from years of disuse.

The truck crested a small hill, the tracks struggling for purchase in the mud as they pulled the vehicle over the incline, and we looked down into the valley where that broadcast center sat. Every two years an adult was selected by random lot to man the station, in the increasingly unlikely event communication with the Network was re-established. The government called it “The Receiver” in an effort to present it as some important position, but everyone knew it was a joke. It came with no real benefits, just a small stipend and the obligation of a community. We all prayed at the Harvest Festival that our number would not be drawn from the bowl.

My father was a proud man, an engineer who helped manage the settlement’s geothermal power station. His luck had run out eight-hundred sixty-three days ago. He swore up and down that the lottery was rigged; that the government thought him being a technical expert instead of a field-hand, that the fact that his wife was gone and his children all grown, made him expendable. He might have been right, but that didn’t absolve him the responsibility. So he’d resigned himself, and us with him, to the doldrums of minding an interface that may never come back online.

He read a book a day, or at least he claimed, and while the library did have a fair amount of humanity’s literary efforts prior to the cutoff, their plots and concerns were divorced from life here on the frontier. He took up drinking, inevitably, as did everyone else assigned to the posting. What they don’t tell you when your name is pulled from the bowl is that the sacrifice is not yours alone- the burden is your family’s to bear. My brother’s and I took turns minding him, bringing him food and checking on his mental well-being but they all had families of their own now, and I was desperate to start mine too. We were all ready to move on, and I hoped by bringing Rafael with me he could see that I was serious about starting our life together.

We pulled up outside the comms center and dismounted from the truck.

“Hang on a second,” Rafe said. “I want to talk to him.”

I looked at him quizzically.

“Just… let me do this, okay?”

I smiled and kissed his cheek gently. He went inside while I unloaded a tote filled with fresh fruits and a sandwich I’d laced with some amphetamines to help keep him lucid. The interior of the building was dark; the lights hard burned out several months ago and no one from the government could be bothered to maintain the place on any expedited time scale. I brushed some of the local vines from the threshold of the entryway as I entered. “Dad? It’s Shan. I brought some food.”

As I passed from the mottled grey sunlight outside to the dark interior I could make out blurry figures backlit by the eerie glow of his reading lamp.. They were both standing, which was odd. Dad was usually in the chair when I visited, most of the time asleep.

Rafe emerged suddenly from the shadows and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Shan. Stop.”

“What is it?” I asked, taken aback. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s… here. Let’s go outside.” He pulled me gently but forcefully toward the door.

“What the fuck, Rafe, stop it. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s your dad. He…”

I shoved Rafael out of the way and stepped forward into the comm station. My father came into clearer focus, and I could tell immediately something wasn’t right. I came closer and dropped the basket to the floor in shock. His body hung limply, his feet swaying gently five centimeters from the floor. A length of electrical cord, half-stripped from the wall behind him, was wound tightly around his neck. I grabbed his feet and lifted, crying. “No no no no no, dad, fuck.” I pushed and contorted his body, trying to free him but to no avail. Tears were streaming down my face now, hot and wet.

I pulled a short table across the concrete floor and climbed up onto it, my vision blurred with anger and fear and sobs. I yanked at the cable, trying to unwind it, to free his body. I pulled and wrenched and screamed in desperation, banging on the overhead truss that supported it until I nearly broke my hand. I collapsed onto him, my hands around his shoulders, my face against his chest. His skin was cold and pallid. I was too late to save him.

“Shan.” Rafael stood in the entryway to the station. He offered his hand I took it gingerly, climbing down from the table and following him outside. He pulled me in close as I wailed. “I’m so sorry. I don’t…”

I pulled Rafe to the ground and cried for another few minutes, my chest heaving with agony. “It’s not your fault,” I whispered finally.

“It’s not yours either. You did the best you could.”

“I know.” I pulled the sleeve of my jumper up over my hand and wiped my eyes. “I think a part of me knew it would always end like this. It has so many times before. In a way it might be… I don’t know. Better? I’d always worried about what he would be like after.”

I gulped in air as my breathing stabilized. “Come help me get him down?”

“Sure,” he said, mustering a weak smile.

We went back into the station and looked upon him once more. He looked frail, fragile in a way he hadn’t before. Being alone this long, it just did things to a person. Rafael grabbed his feet as I climbed back up on the table. With Rafe bracing his weight I was able to loosen the taught cable and slip it free, and we lowered the body gently down to the table. He went out to the truck to get a bag to cover my father, and I stood silent vigil, until in the quiet I heard a strange humming noise from across the room. I turned and saw that the Network terminal screen was activated. “That’s… weird.”

I walked across and stood in front of the terminal, suddenly alive with activity. Rafe entered back in with the bag. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know. It’s not usually… on.” I leaned in close. “It’s displaying something.”

A line of dots and dashed appeared on the interface. “I… I think it’s old morse code. Dad had to learn it. I helped him practice.”

“What’s it say?” he asked, a sudden dread in his voice I didn’t recognize. I could feel my stomach welling up in anxiety as well.

“It says.... HELP.”

#was thinking about this again the other day #and then i expanded it to... this #i legit think this is one of the better short forms i've ever written #anyway screaming into the void etc

[lit-in-thy-heart]

you know what, what's the point of being on this platform if you don't get to bellow into the void about your interests in the hope of finding someone with the same interest?

in light of this, let me inflict a lowdown of the victorian literature (mostly novels because poetry is difficult to collate) that i've read for my module this year upon my mutuals

i'll do a separate one for vampire novels and reblog with the link

because what are the victorians without vampires? straight

bleak house (dickens): what a ride that was! yes, it was nearly a thousand pages and, yes, some chapters i was like can we move on please, but that's dickens for you. honestly, i loved it. if you're looking for thinly-veiled lesbianism, this is the book for you (esda all the way, if they even have a ship name). unfortunately i already knew one of the plot twists due to watching dickensian five years before, but there are plenty more to go around! if you can get through the first chapter describing nothing but fog and the law courts, you're in for one hell of a treat -- just don't google anything about it until you've finished because you will get spoiled (or don't share a house with me, where i'll tell you the entire plot as i'm reading it). definitely recommend, but marking it down for the heteronormativity with allan. (9.5/10)

villette (c. brontë): where to fucking start. i, quite frankly, do not care for charlotte brontë, and when reading the earlier novel agnes grey by anne, i could see some more things that charlotte has filched for this travesty. no victorian novel is going to be without problems, but this one was xenophobic, ableist and, of course, racist. the protagonist doesn't really give anything away, which is meant to make her more mysterious, but it just renders her an empty vessel. oh, and she tells you stuff that she's figured out waaaaaay after she says she's figured it out, a bit like she's allowing you to feel smart for making a connection before going 'oh yeah i knew that like twelve chapters ago, keep up'. some of the passages are really striking and there's maybe one character who's likeable but that's about it. i'd say it's more a story of omission than repression tbh. (4/10)

janet's repentance (eliot): wait, have i even finished this? no, no, i have not. it's fine, i wasn't going to tell you the ending anyway. i did get hooked eventually, there were just a LOT of names thrown around in the first few chapters, and a word that i didn't know was used frequently (turns out it was a name for the followers of this guy). i did get strong hester prynne/arthur dimmesdale vibes from some of the main characters, but janet is a very sympathetic character which, after reading villette, was nice. slightly depressing in some places, but a good enough read if you're not cramming it in the day before your tutorial, because it is mildly dense. (7/10)

the wonderful adventures of mrs seacole in many lands (seacole): not what i'd been expecting to read on my module, what with it being a biography, but enjoyable nonetheless. horrible histories lied to me, though, she was in her 40s/50s when she treated people in the crimean war, not in her 20s, but that's minor. it was actually quite funny??? like she was very reluctant to give away to give away her age and almost slipped up a couple of times, and also made some very biting remarks about people who were passing comment on her skin colour. for a biography, it wasn't hugely biographical, in that she was married for what seemed all of five minutes before her husband died, when in fact they were married for several years, but if you want an in-depth depiction of war, this is for you. not what i'd usually read, but some of the descriptions are so vivid that it does read like a novel in places, though sometimes the descriptions were so detailed that i did tune out at odd intervals. (9/10)

the happy prince and other stories (wilde): if you're feeling low, don't read these. don't. especially not 'the nightingale and the rose', because that was honestly heartbreaking. really well-written, some passages were just beautiful, i just wasn't in the right headspace to fully appreciate it. it also has a lot of death, i should probably explicitly say that. (8/10)

agnes grey (a. brontë): chef's kiss, honestly. if i'd read this last year then i think it definitely would have hit a lot harder, what with agnes moving away from home for the first time and struggling with loneliness around people who she is different from. beautifully written, i'm irritated at myself for not reading it sooner, even though i've owned a copy for about four years or so. agnes does come across as a bit wet sometimes, but those moments are rare and far between, she's overall a resilient character who is trying to make her own way in the world. seeing as i managed to get through the whole thing and didn't lose focus on what i was reading, i rate it higher than jane eyre (which is a rip-off of this anyway). we stan anne. though i am marking it down for the underdeveloped romantic relationship that just pops up (9.5/10)

now for some old classics that weren't taught on my module, but i can't not mention them

a tale of two cities (dickens): this was my first dickens book and oh my word what a book. yeah, okay, lucie is a bit of a wet dishcloth and has basically no personality, but there is definitely something there between her and her maid. sydney is my baby and oh so gorgeously dramatic ("you have kindled me, heap of ashes that i am, into fire"), which was perfect for the pangs of unrequited love. the plot is slightly confusing, and you don't really understand everything until right near the end, but i loved finding parallels in the chapters set in france with the chapters set in britain. oh and the showdown between miss pross and madame defarge is wonderful. i had a tradition of reading it on the run-up to christmas, just because that was the period when i read it for the first time, but i haven't done that for the past two years just because of exams and stuff. now, bleak house just pips it at the post, but i still love it dearly. (9/10)

wuthering heights (e. brontë): i couldn't review victorian literature and not include this. there are very strong similarities between this and villette (seems charlotte really drew on her sisters' work), particularly in terms of me not liking a single one of the characters except hareton. everyone is called cathy. literally. and heathcliff/cathy one is a toxic ship that should not be boarded. it is obsession, not love. the second volume is basically a repeat of the first one, thus showing that humanity will never move past its vices and will be caught in a vicious cycle of self-destruction for the rest of time. again, though, beautifully and vividly written. the characters are the type that you love to hate. (8/10)

the tenant of wildfell hall (a. brontë): what. a. book. this was a book that was simultaneously loved and condemned as scandalous when it came out. there's mystery, there's a woman escaping a horrible situation and making her own living, and there's a well-developed relationship! and the characters are likeable (i love rose, she's great, completely goes off at her brother when she has to do things for him all the time), which always puts it onto a winner. there's one chapter with gilbert that i have to skip just because i hate what he does in it. there are quite a lot of religious references, with redemption playing a huge part in the novel, but even the religious views brontë expresses went against a lot of the teachings of the anglican church at the time. do i even need to say that it's beautifully written if it's anne? marking it down for gilbert's behaviour and arguable control of helen's narrative. (9.5/10)

far from the madding crowd (hardy): i love this book. a little more uplifting than tess but still with the drama and murder you'd expect from hardy. maybe my review is influenced by my tiny crush on bathsheba: she's not the best role model but damn what a woman. gabriel isn't quite bae but i love him all the same, i'm so glad he's happy in the end. (9/10)

#literature #victorian literature #gay #victorian #dark academia #anne bronte #emily bronte #charlotte bronte #dickens #george eliot #mary seacole #queer #oscar wilde #thomas hardy #novels #wuthering heights #jane eyre #villette #agnes grey #bleak house #a tale of two cities #vampires #far from the madding crowd #the tenant of wildfell hall

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “Indicted.”

Working on a new arc for the story. I hope you enjoy :)

Dr Krill was up late, but then again, he was usually up late. Unlike the humans he didn’t sleep, and that left him at least eight hours of the day to himself to be engrossed in his studies, a time which he cherished. Granted there were occasions when emergencies would happen and he would be forced to attend to them, but those were few and far between these days.

Ever since the Burg war had ended, there hadn’t been much danger to the galaxy, and the Omen spent most of its time fulfilling its exploratory duties.

He spent a good portion of his time hunkered in the back office of the medical bay, but on occasion he'd like to take walks around the ship at night comforted by the darkness. The days had long since past when he was afraid of the humans, and he actually found the ship to be comforting and safe during the night. Granted Conn was sometimes a nuisance, but nothing that he couldn’t handle generally.

He was just walking past the command deck when he heard footsteps on their way down the hall.

He assumed it was one of the night crew coming down from fixing a problem up on the bridge, but was surprised when light passed over a familiar face. The two of them stopped staring at each other.

Admiral Vir paused in the hallway a duffel bag in one hand, his neatly pressed uniform glittering dimly in the light above. A few colorful swatches on the left hand side of his chest was the only color that distinguished him in the middling darkness.

Waffles -- the dog -- sat quietly at his side, panting softly. 

“Admiral….”

“Doctor…”

“Going somewhere?”

Krill watched as the man’s fingers curled slowly around the bag, “I have some… business to attend to back on earth.I already talked with Simon about it, and I am going to allow her to  take command of the ship while I am away.”

Krill took a long hard look at the human. 

There was something strange about him, something you could only understand if you were another human or if you had spent hours and hours studying them and spending time with then.

“Is something wrong?”

The man shook his head, though his single eye was… sad.

“No Krill, everything is fine.”

“Would you…. Like sme company?” he knew it was a longshot. If Adam really wanted some company, than surely he would already have asked Sunny to come with him.

The man opened his mouth, closed it and looked round. Krill was surprised that the man actually seemed to be considering his offer. Eventually he sighed, 

“I would…. Appreciate it…. Dr.”

Krill was surprised, but nodded and simply requested a few minutes to leave a note for Dr. katie. The Admiral willingly obliged the request, and efoe long they were on their way, stepping out of the cargo ramp and onto the -- mostly quiet-- cargo deck of the Europa station.

For the longest moment it was only the sound of feet echoing over the metal flooring before Krill finally had to speak up, “What is all of this about Adam, leaving secretly in the middle of the night, leaving your ship in the hands of a rookie officer… not telling Sunny. I think you can see why I am worried.”

Admiral Vir sighed and then inclined his head, the gold threading on the top of his officer’s cap glittering in the dim overhead light.

“There is something I need to do… and I don’t think Sunny would understand. I also don’t think that it would be a  good idea to bring her.

Krill tilted his head in curiosity and concern, “Are you two ok?”

Adam shrugged and sighed, “I…. well…. I don’t know. Most times it feels like we are, and at other times we just…. Aren’t. I think that is supposed to be normal, but there are things about each other that we just don’t understand sometimes.”

“That would make sense considering your species.”

He shrugged, “I guess. Either way I needed to do this myself, and I… needed a break…. That sounds horrible, and now how I meant it but I…. well whatever.”

The two of them walked down the nearest hallway to the launch bay on the other side of the hall. It was a little more crowded here, mostly officers and other crew members with their suitcases and bags, wearing their uniforms and standing in line to board a smaller ship. The ship would be a class D-1 ship with a small warp core on board.

As he approached, eyes fell on them as they usually did. Men and women in uniform saluted and parted ways to allow the two of them to pass as they made their way towards the shuttle. The Admiral refused to head to the front and stopped at the back of the line to wait patiently. No one spoke to them, but there sure were plenty of staring eyes.

The admiral handed his bag off to one of the cargo officers before boarding the ship with Krill. Waffles was taken with them too, and placed into a crate. She didn’t seem pleased about it but went willingly. It was likely that she was going to have to be put to sleep for the warp, which Krill almost envied. It was a cramped fit, though due to his status, they were allowed to sit in the roomier seats at the front. Bright lights beamed down on them from above as the pilot came over the intercom preparing them for warp.

“Thank you for boarding the trans-space flight to Lunar 1. Our approximate flight time will be ten minutes arriving at 12:45 local time. Please make sure to fasten your seatbelts. Officers and passengers with cardiac dysfunctions, lung disease, or high blood pressure are advised against taking this flight. If you fit into any of these categories please let a flight officer know for your safety and comfort. To the front of your seat you will find airsickness bags, and a safety card. Please take a few minutes to review the safety card before the launch.”

Admiral vir pulled the straps tight over his shoulders and pulled off his cap to rest it gently in his lap.

On the other row beside them another officer already had their eyes closed and was taking a few long-deep breaths.

“One last warning before launch, we will warn you that this is a D-1 Class warp core and does not have any internal dampening. Side effects of launch include, vomiting, dizziness, confusion, blackout, loss of bladder control and heart palpitations. These side effects are expected and the cabin has been designed to deal with these issues, however if you do not feel comfortable continuing we advise you to exit the aircraft immediately.”

Adam leaned back in his seat eyes shut.

Krill gripped the harness waiting for the moment to come.

Adam almost looked peaceful. No one got off the ship and after a few more minutes of waiting, the cabin lights dimmed and the ship rose into the air. As soon as they were shot out of the airlock, the gravity field was gone, and he could feel his body beginning to float against the harnesses. Admiral Vir had to hold his hat in palace as they accelerated into the night.

They traveled for a good five minutes before warning lights began blinking overhead.

“Prepare the cabin for warp.”

All around him the humans were preparing themselves for the violent folding of space. A few leaned down to tuck their head between their knees in a crash position.

He sort of wish he hadn’t agreed to come.

Adam just took a deep breath and leaned back in his seat.

“Launch in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

Krill fet the universe around him collapse inward and then suddenly expand outward. Things that were far away seemed close and things that were close seemed far away. He jerked against his harness, and just like that it was over.

That didn’t mean his head wasn’t spinning, and all around the cabin he could hear the  groaning of the other humans.

Once he could finally see and tell what he was seeing, he looked over at the Admiral who looked none the worse for war in comparison to some of the other officers.

One poor woman was as white as a sheet and holding a bag in front of her for dear life. Some of the others were in similar states of distress.

Admiral vir just smiled and leaned over to Krill whispering, “Not nearly as bad as the first interstellar warp. I thought I was going to die.”

Krill believed him

Just outside the window they watched as the Earth’s single moon drifted closer and closer, growing large in their field of vision as they stopped to land on the glowing white lunar surface. They disembarked inside the atmospheric bubble and were ushered onto another shuttle that headed down for earth. Despite earth being closer, this trip took much longer, about an hour longer, warping past the worst of the debris field which was still being cleaned by drag ship.

They landed at two in the morning local time at Fort Harmony.

As they stepped off the shuttle, bags in tow, there were already two military men waiting for them on the platform with a mat black hover car. Waffles’s crate was rolled out with them, though it seemed as if she was still asleep. 

They saluted as he approached, “Admiral.”

He nodded to them, “Gentlemen.”

One of them opened the car door, and the Admiral stepped inside, while the other took his bag to place it in the back.

Krill floated up to sit beside him watching as the vehicle slowly accelerated and rolled through the darkness, lights of the nearby city and civilization glowing in the darkness. Streetlights passed overhead, casting the human’s brooding face into sharp relief one moment and into almost complete blackness the next.

“Are you going to tell me where we are going?” krill wondered 

The admiral didn’t look at him, instead looking down at his hands. There was a long pause where Krill thought he wasn't going to answer, before, “I got a call from Admiral Kelly last night.”

Krill waited.

“Last month, extend documents on Operation Steel Eye were leaked. The UNSC tried to declassify them before it became more of an issue, but by then it was too late. The files were leaked onto the web by some unknown source and that included all video, Audio and written footage of the testing as well as documentation from the war itself.” Krill was surprised, extremely surprised that he had not heard more about this, and sooner,, but he stayed quiet as Adam continued, “UNSC officers in term during the project and a few members of the Steel eye team are being indicted on counts of torture, massive ethical violations, and potentially, war crimes… I was asked to be a witness at the trail of The People Vs The United Nations Space Corpse.”

Krill stared at him in shocked silence, “You,.... what?” He looked away, “Why didn’t you tell anyone, why didn’t you speak with someone!”

He sighed and leaned back in his seat, “What was I supposed to say? Hey everyone, the people who almost ruined my life are being put on trial and I am in need of some serious moral support because I expect I may have to watch some of it over again, and I don’t think I am ready for it.” His hands clenched in his lap, and krill saw. He looked back at the back seat to where waffles was still sleeping in her kennel.

Adam took a couple of deep breaths, “I have come as far as anyone can be expected when it comes to recovering from what happened to us, but that shadow, these scars will NEVER be gone. I’ll always have dreams. I will always wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat just remembering what happened to me. I will always hear the hissing of those machines in the back of my head. And I will always have some sick and twisted need to put the suit back on again because not once in my entire life since then have I ever felt so powerful…. Some days it feels like the only thing I have that can protect everyone, like putting it on will make me invincible, even though I know that logic is flawed. I hate it more than anything at the same time that I NEED it.”

Krill paused looking down at his arms and hands, “And that is why you got the Iron eye implants.”

He nodded and sighed, “Yes, yes it is.”

Krill didn’t know what to say, so they drove in silence.

“WHere are we going then.”

“We are heading up to one of the rehabilitation facilities between Arlington and the Ruins at Capital hill. From there we are going to be shipped over to Geneva where the trail is going to be held.”

“A rehabilitation facility…. For who?”

He looked down at his feet, “You’ll see.”

The nit went silent and krill was forced to wait in the darkness with light zipping by the windows as they headed into the night. The Admiral fell asleep during this time at some point with his cheek pressed against the cool glass of the window, his ribbons still glittering in the darkness. A soft whimpering came from the back of the car, and Krill took some time to let Waffles out of her cage, pressing himself up against the door as she crawled over the seat and sat between them curling up in a tight ball with her head resting on her master’s knee. 

Adam seemed to relax in their sleep.

Krill watched out the window and took some time to think as the trees spd by in a dark blur. At one point it began to rain, and he tried not to think about the water pelting down on them from the sky above to obscure their vision.

Outside the sky lightened though the day was cloudy.

Adam awoke groggy and despondent, unusually quiet and unresponsive in comparison to his usually cheerful self.

They continued to drive in the silence, the only sound being the occasional whimper from the dog who sighed deeply, and stood to move to manuver into a more comfortable position. It was well into early morning by the time they made it to their next location, and their shadows were cast long and low across the ground.

Their vehicle was ushered through a large metal gate and onto the lawn of a restored Victorian mansion. Admiral Vir shifted uncomfortably as they pulled up the gravel drive and stopped before the wide porch and its white painted support pillars.

The door opened for them, and the Admiral stepped out with Waffles leaping onto the gravel behind him, taking a few moments to sniff around at the grass and the bushes.

Admiral Vir straightened his uniform and pulled on his cap as Krill floated out to join him.

A man was waiting for them on the porch and walked down the stairs to greet them with an open hand and a wide smile.

He was a small human, a bit older with greying hair and a nice suit. He clasped hands with the admiral and looked him over with a critical eye.

“A pleasure to meet you Admiral.”

“And you as well doctor.”

The man took a step back eying up the admiral as he did. Adam shifted uncomfortably, “Forvie my scrutiny, admiral.” The man said a bit sheepishly, “I have been working with the steel eye veterans for so long, and you are….. The first I have seen in such good condition.”

Adam tugged at the collar of his shirt in mild embarrassment, “Uh, I suppose I am extraordinarily lucky, doctor.”

The man held out a hand and motioned to the door, “Please come inside, there is much to show you, and the others have been expecting your arrival.”

He turned to look at Krill then and smiled,”Dr. Krill I assume?”

Krill was more than a little surprised to hear his own name spoken, “Have we met.”

The man laughed, “No, no, but I am familiar with your work. It is so interesting to see how other species view humans. I find it enlightening and entertaining.” The big white doors opened before the, and together they stepped into a large room with a spiraling staircase and a bustling room crumbs wearing attendants.

Somewhere in the distance, they could hear the sound of a piano playing.

“Welcome to Machinaw Hall, sounds a little more pleasant than the UNSC sponsored state rehabilitation facility.”

“Less of a mouthful for sure.” Adam responded.

The man waved a hand about the room, “I started all this about three years ago when my Nephew died during the steel eye operation of meningitis.”

“I...I’m sorry to hear that.”

The man sighed, “My family was obviously devastated, and I couldn't let it go, so I thought there was something I could do. At that time my wife and I flipped houses on the side and we came in possession of this old rundown Victorian. It's already been refurbished a couple of times since it was originally built. It was in such disrepair that no one wanted it, but I bought it for cheep and renovated it, and then set it up for other members of that same group. Unfortunately things were not completed until a few years after the incident, and it took us a while to find those who remained from participation in the trials and… well as well as from the war itself.” He sighed, “I only wish I had started this sooner. Who knows, we may have been acquainted earlier in that case.”

Krill watched Adam’s expression from the corner of his eye. He knew how the man felt about these sort of facilities.

“Perhaps. But what’s past is past.”

“True.”

They made their way up a checkered hallway and through a large doorway into a sunny and spacious living room. Despite how old the house was, the furniture was all well kept and in good condition. The people on the other hand were… less so.”

One or two of them were sitting on the floor in the sunny day room rocking quietly back and forth. Others sat on chairs or sofas with grim expressions on their face, and only one or two managed to appear as functioning humans.

One of them was playing the grand piano in the back.

As soon as he stepped in the room went mostly quiet, even the ones sitting on the floor looked up, and with surprise their eyes widened and they smiled. More than a few came over to meet him reaching out their hands and clasping his with firm grips.

“Admiral Vir!”

“Admiral, so good to see you.”

“You look well.”

“Glad you could make it.”

He smiled easily despite his unease, “Thank you. Glad to see you all up and about.”

“Mostly functional.” one of them piped up.”

Looking around Krill noticed the tell-tale hitch in their steps, and even the glittering of silvered metal on a robotic arm.

“Adam!”

The two of them turned quickly and krill was surprised to find a dark haired young woman appear from up the stairs jogging down and throwing her arms around him hugging him tight. He had to step back at the force of her greeting but hugged her bak with some shock and pleasure, “Jane!” He stepped back beaming, “You look good…. I’m a little surprised to see you.”

“Well after the… incident, I was able to get in contact with some people who pointed me to this place. The Doctor was kind enough to let me stay while I get back on my feet.”

He sat dow, offered a chair by one of the other steel eye members, and they sat around him.

He rubbed Waffle’s ears and let her off leash, giving her permission to go around the circle sniffing at hands and arms that were offered towards her.

Eventually she took a seat next to one of the soldiers sitting on the ground, and shoved her head into his space forcing him to pet her. A smile cracked over his face fr the first time since they had arrived .

“And getting bacon on your feet, how is that going.”

She sighed, “ I have found some temporary work at a mechanic shop, though its only temporary until I can find something that I really want to do.” She glanced at him with a look of guilt on her face, “I can’t go back to the UNSC not after….”

He nodded quickly in understanding, “I get it.” One of the other soldiers looked at him, his mouth turning down into a frown, “How could YOU go back to them after everything they did.”

The Dr. Scooted closer over the floor and rested a hand on the man’s shoulder in a warning sort of manner.

He relaxed a bit, but the anger was still plain on his face.

Adam kept his face still and neutral, “Some people say I’m a little too forgiving. But honestly, they gave me a spaceship which, all things considered, is good enough compensation for me.” 

A few of the people in the room laughed, others didn’t seem so satisfied with that answer but let it go.”

“So…. are you ready?” Jane wondered

Adam tilted his head up slightly.

One of the men leaned forward, “Ready, for what?”

Another hand on his shoulder, “Admiral Vir is going to be representing you all during the upcoming trial.”

A few of the group members frowned, ‘Wait, I thought we were all going to testify as witnesses.”

The doctor sighed, “We have gone through this before, not everyone is ready for something like that, but Admiral Vir has graciously offered to help and be the representative.”

“I am not having a UNSC lover represent me at the trail! He’s going to try and get them off easy.”

Krill scooted to the side a little watching as a sharp light flared in the man’s eyes, “You better watch-your-tongue BOY!’

The room went very silent.

“You act like I didn’t go through the exact same thing as you. Well tell you what I remember choking on the ash as my blood seeped into the moss, and I remember the pain, and I remember wishing I could just die, and afterwards, I remembered months and months of hopelessness wondering when it would all be over. I remember the drug withdrawls. YES i chose to go back, but that's because I am rational enough to realise that most people in the UNSC had no idea what was going on, and the people who ran things back then are either retired, pending investigation or already in prison.” He leaned forward in his seat, “So go ahead, question my motives one more time.”

The room was very silent, and the man who had first spoken up sat back in his seat sulkily.”

Someone cleared their throat in an obvious attempt to lighten the mood.

“So what are the rest of us going to do.”

“ I am putting something together with the courts, and will be using interviews from you as evidence with your permission. I think that that will be more constructive. Admiral Vir will be there as a live witness, and due to his status, his testimony is likely to have the kind of pull we need to convict.”

There was a murmur of approval around the group.

“That makes sense, I guess.”

“Plus as a member of the UNSC himself the testimony will be more accepted especially considering his track record. Furthermore, he also has the most experience speaking in public and we want to make as good an impression as we can.”

The room was quiet now as the group thought about the points the doctor was making.

A hand reached across the circle, and he looked down to See Jan’s hand resting on his shoulder, “Are you sure you can do this…. I… Well I don’t know if I could were I in your shoes.”

He sighed, “It won’t be easy, but someone has to do it, and as of right  now, I am about as operational as we are going to get.”

There was nodding from around the room.

This was going to have to do