#Dead Pilots Society

[ofkithandmckinney]

A podcast where actors read through pilots that didn't quite make it.

Mark McKinney takes the lead role in this one. It's quite good, and it is really interesting to hear Mark in a role that isn't really typical for him.

[finwrld]

i want friends on here

pls be my friend

ill send you memes and we can scream about our common interests

[redkoi1]

Twin Flame

You terrorized my faith because I lacked the strength, when it's been Patience, not a wait

That played it out that type of way, and You're really not that worried? Well, I just wonder, still afraid?

Numbed to my core; another day My soul locked up with rust My spirit snuffed, I'm forced to pray

I woke up from a rest "It was a setup", disregarded in array If I really cannot love you, I'll just force myself to hate

[sillyrainydays]

ayo im looking for mutuals if anyone wants to become mutuals !! <3 interests include (but are CERTAINLY not limited to) - cartoons (big on atla & steven universe) - music (adam melchor, laufey, conan gray, billy joel, twenty one pilots are my current favs !!) - ANYTHING BY ALICE OSEMAN. heartstopper especially !! - dead poets society <33333 - japanese language (recently started studying!) - the marauders (fuck jkr tho) - spiderman !!!!! huge spiderman fan. really normal actually i mean im super normal about spiderman and not at all insane hahahahahahahaha....

[dao-luxury]

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[goatmilksoda]

No, right, sorry babe. I know I said I was going to bed but I got distracted thinking about Only Child by John Hodgeman and crying over the fact it was never made.

[kindaasrikal]

Cole headcanons, because apparently when I’m bored I think about Cole (and Morro, and Cryptor, surprisingly enough):

Cole is annoyingly acrobatic. In fact, when they first started doing their ninja stuff he was the most flexible and acrobatic, when it would make more sense if it was Jay or Kai due to their builds or elements. Not once did he ever share the reason as to why being Lou putting him into ballet, gymnastics, and having him train at home to peak flexibility because Lily was the one who did it before, so Lou was not gonna stop until Cole reaches Lily’s expectations. (Lily used to do the splits easily in front of Cole and Cole was determined to do that too, no one could stop the force that was baby Cole. As much as Lou started the idea, he wanted to stop because he kept thinking it was too much. It was Cole staring him dead in the eyes and saying ‘Mama wants me to’ that pushed him to continue. The dance stuff was all him though). He actually helped Jay train into being more flexible pre-pilots and later helped Nya do the same.

Cole understood Lloyd’s desire for sweets a bit too much, and instead of pushing it down and making Lloyd learn control, he encouraged it and now Wu had too deal with two sugar rushed ninja.

Cole used to argue with Kai all the time when they first began training together, until one day he had had enough. When Kai huffed and walked away after a particularly heated argument where not even Nya could get Kai to calm down and Zane and Jay couldn’t pull the two apart, Cole stomped up behind the shorter male, picked him up, and teddy bear hugged him until Kai apologised. It’s Cole’s version of when older siblings keep you head locked until you apologise. Kai was an embarrassed mess because Cole wouldn’t stop complimenting him and sharing his point of view like a healthy adult whilst he was still huffing. He didn’t argue with Cole for the next week and agreed each time the other told him to do something. Nya couldn’t stop laughing each time Jay and Zane mimicked the moment. The only reason Cole did that was because he remembered a big argument between his mum and dad when he was younger, and when it got heated from his dads side, his mum just picked Lou up and held him until he calmed down and she was able to think with a clearer mind.

Cole absolutely LOVES throwing dirt at people, and when they found out Nya’s element, he was able to convince her into helping him make mud to throw at people. They had to run when Zane had enough and froze the mud to chase them with it.

Cole likes to pop out of the ground at random times. Lloyd had to quickly learn to watch where he stepped, less his foot connects to Cole’s face again.

Cole actually planned to sell fake ‘special, one of a kind rocks!’ During that one time they were poor as dirt. It would’ve worked amazingly well too, seeing as everyone knew he was the earth ninja. Despite Wu not being there to tell him off, Kai had fun smacking Cole over the head for that idea.

Cole is probably the only ninja completely willing to commit crimes, especially fraud and theft.

Similarly to how Jay had to teach Zane how to live a tad more normally and how to understand society, Cole had to do the same with Kai and Nya. Wu could not be trusted because everyone realised he was just a tad of a recluse.

You know how Nya stepped onto that soulmate machine thing and it said Cole was her perfect match? Well, after Cole threw away his weird need to prove it right (lowkey think he was just matching the energy Jay had given and got petty) he called his dad up and explained it all and how they somewhat worked it out but it was still weird with Nya, and Lou lowkey just laughed at him, and reminded Cole of all those fairytale book’s he used to read and how they tended to explore the topics of found family and friends. Cole didn’t understand, but Lou explained that soulmates aren’t just the people you love romantically, but the people you love platonically. Cole and Nya sat down together just an hour later and Cole had to share this epiphany to the person he considered a sister, and understood him just like he understood her.

Cole is usually dragged into helping Pixal in her personal projects due to his strength, but he knows she also enjoys his company.

Cole and Vania share late night texts about their lives after not talking for weeks and they talk for HOURSSS just sharing everything they’ve been through recently.

Cole struggled to learn how to swim. Mainly because his element enjoyed making him more sinkable rather than floatable.

Cole went through the phase of having decently tight curls as a child, to loose and flowy hair, to extremely tight curls. He likes having a new hair style every week, from wavy hair and ponytails, to dreads and puffs.

He wears hoodies in the hottest of heats just to prove to Kai that he can. (He can’t its all sweaty by the end of the day)

If Morro stuck around Cole would absolutely force him into living and healing. Ghost duo my beloveds 🫶

Yes these are head canons leave me alone ajdghdhd

Cole the man that you are.

Edit: guys why is it telling me this is a mature post i swear its just cole being a lil loser

I FIXED IT NVM

[luminouslywriting]

Masterlist

Masters of the Air: Here :)

The Pacific Masterlist

Dead Poets Society (Go ahead and send in requests :)

Band of Brothers Masterlist

Band of Brothers Fanfic Masterlist

MOTA Fanfic Links

Requests and asks are open :) Just no explicit smut will be written. Spicy asks—go for it though.

Updated 6/22/24

John Brady:

Brady and Pregnancy Headcanons

Clair de Lune Baby Drabble

John Brady Dilf Drabble

JB w/a girlfriend who gets turned on by his strict attitude

Fights with John Brady + Makeups

Brady with a handsy lady

Brady dating a woman on base

Brady when he's injured

Brady with a woman easily turned on

Brady being involved in your hobbies

Jealous Brady

Brady w/a secret admirer

The Snow Stork

Car Sex With Brady

Domestic John Brady

John Brady & Serious Arguments

Brady Being Turned On by Angry S/O

How John Brady asks you to be his girl

Brady when his S/O gets injured

Brady and a religiously interested S/O

Going Dancing With John Brady

Brady and an out of wedlock pregnancy

Brady’s first time

When You Make the first Move

John Brady & Brat Taming

Brady w/DeMarco's Sister

Gale Cleven:

Pregnancy and Domestic Headcanons with Gale

Kitchen Sex w/Gale

Being Gale's first

Domestic Gale Cleven

Gale Cleven & Spankings

Bucky Egan:

Bucky coming home to you wearing his jacket

Bucky being involved in your hobbies

Bucky w/an anxious SO

Bucky and a reader with a panic attack

Bucky and a physically insecure reader

Domestic Bucky Headcanons

Bucky as a brat tamer

Robert Rosenthal:

Rosie is Clearly Wendy Material

Rosie & Brat Taming

Rosie & Kisses/Affection

Rosie and a weekend away

Rosie and teasing

Being Rosie’s First

Domestic Rosie

Rosie and his authority kink

Rosie and massages

Rosie Being Teased

Rosie with a tipsy/giggly/touchy girl

Rosie's handsy lady

Rosie When He's Sick

Rosie & A Jazz Club Singer

Rosie & A English Girl

Rosie & Cuddling

Ken Lemmons:

Ken Lemmons and his wife

Ken Lemmons and an S/O w/high libido

Everett Blakely:

General Relationship Headcanons

James Douglass:

General Relationship Headcanons

Douglass & Blakely:

Throuple Headcanons

Hambone Hamilton:

General Relationship Headcanons

Hambone and Dirty Talk

Harry Crosby:

General Relationship Headcanons

Bubbles:

General Headcanons

Charles Cruikshank:

General Headcanons

Curt Biddick:

Falling in Love With a Nurse

General MOTA Headcanons:

MOTA Men W/a Single Mom

MOTA men + hobbies

MOTA men w/ a shy and anxious S/O

MOTA Men when their S/O tries a new style

MOTA Men when their S/O tries a new style part 2

MOTA Men & The RAF Pilot Incident

MOTA Men & Spicy Letters

MOTA Men As Dads

Married Life W/Lemmons & Hambone

MOTA Men & Pregnancy

MOTA Men & Infertility

MOTA Men Taking Care of You When You're Sick

MOTA Men When Their S/O Has A Tattoo

MOTA Men w/a tomboy S/O

[unhingedmarvelandclassicwhobuff]

Apparently at some point MCU fans collectively agreed that the Blip takes place on October 17th, 2023. Which is today. So I figured I'd take the time to detail the four biggest reasons why the time jump in Endgame was a universe-shatteringly horrible idea that should never have seen the light of day

the absolute biggest problem, of which there are many, is the fact that countless people died as collateral damage in the initial Snap. Hell, we are shown it in the Infinity War post-credit scene with those multiple car accidents and that helicopter slamming into a building. And that was just the tip of the iceberg; imagine how many planes crashed because the pilots were dusted, or how many babies starved because both their parents were dusted, or people who may have died on the operating table because a surgeon got dusted. All of these people are totally ignored. It's never so much as mentioned when talking about bringing everyone back, and Tony insisting that the last five years remain unchanged is implicitly saying all of those people remained dead when the dusted returned.

the second big problem with this plot point is that it's used as an excuse for every character except Nat to be totally unrecognizable. Bruce becomes Professor Hulk, Thor gets fat, Tony has a family (and I fucking love how the movie inadvertently says he just let the world rot for five years instead of using his billions of help. That is 100% in character for him), Clint went on a mass killing spree, and Steve... I actually have no idea what made him change so radically. None of this is shown to us at all, it's just told to us.

this is less a problem with Endgame and more a problem with Phases 4 and 5, but the other worse thing about this development is that absolutely nothing has been done with it. Far From Home played the time-jump for comedy, WandaVision had that one great scene in the hospital and then did nothing else, Shang-Chi had a singular throwaway line about the Blip, Hawkeye had that one neat visual of getting Snapped from Yelena's POV and then nothing else, Multiverse of Madness had a single conversation where Strange wonders if letting Tony have his way was the only way to save the universe, Quantumania had a single scene addressing the homelessness issue and then nothing else, and I think Secret Invasion tried to do a bit of a look at how Talos reacted to the Blip, but that show was so awful that I'd rather not think about it. The only projects to do anything at all with the Blip as a major plot point are Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Eternals.

the fourth and final massive problem with the Blip is pretty simple yet complicated; it ignores the absolutely insurmountable societal implications both the Snap and the Blip would have. Think about it; half the fucking universe disintegrates into ash. There are SO many things that would do to just human society alone. But even more importantly, five years after all those people were declared dead (meaning wills are executed, spouses remarried, jobs and homes redistributed, etc) those people suddenly reappear, and from their POV it's only been a second. Just to put it in perspective, the Snap happened on April 29th, 2018. Doesn't that feel like forever ago? If the Snap were real, all those people would have been gone until today. That is such a huge mindfuck that I'm shocked no one went insane. And even looking aside from the psychological impact, all those people are pretty fucking screwed. Far From Home had a single scene addressing this, then promptly forgot about it.

My final point is less of a problem and more of an amusing byproduct; since Tony directly forbids Bruce from undoing the last five years, that means the events of WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, No Way Home, Multiverse of Madness, and Secret Invasion are on some level his fault. That’s fucking hysterical.

I suppose I'll be absolutely fair and say that rewinding time isn't a morally perfect solution either, as you would be erasing any maturity the survivors gained during those five years, as well as anyone born in that time. But that's just all the more reason to NOT HAVE A FUCKING TIME-SKIP!!! I still think the only reason it was done was for cheap shock value.

All in all, the five-year time jump is the single worst major plot point in the MCU. Fight me.

[chaotijenotic]

You don’t remember joining the military as a mechanic. It swallowed you and all of your memories of what was before are long gone and plans for what will come after are nil. The “dead mecha division” where you repair and maintain mechs that upper ups think of as worthless as their pilots. These ones are either very old, battle scarred, made out of lowest grade parts or all of the above. Just cannon fodders meant to soften enemies or divert their attention. No one actually cares about any of you. Place for all the junkies and others society sees as completely expendable or even as better off dead.

You make your way against the current pariahs of the military, some dragging themselves to beds despite grevious wounds, barely bandaged with rags. These bastards wouldn't get better treatment even if they had money to pay for it. Another battle with massive casualties. Another portion of endless fodder consumed by the wicked battlefields. You try not to pay any attention to them. You’re only friend rattles as you go, a padlocked toolbox. You don’t remember when your paychecks made it possible to buy it, or even if you bought it but it's been your trustworthy companion ever since. You know you can have a peaceful night, other mechanics  and drunkards pretending to be mechanics won’t start their work until morning. You feel peace. Finally the torrent of fodder fades and soon you find yourself in a hangar. tons of mecha, some barely larger than you, some are lumbering. All in a miserable state. You look around and search for any single one that calls you the most. Finally your eyes fixate for a while and you know this is the one. BetaWare Medium Assault Mecha Mk7 “Clumsy Dancer” Rather large mecha, about 25 meters tall. Even though very blocky in design, surprisingly swift, fast and cunning. You slowly approach Her, wordlessly. you drop your friend and open him and start making your repairs, starting from vision sensors so she can see all your handiwork. You look into sensors for a long time. One machine stares at another, one of flesh and bone, one of steel and electronics. After some time, maybe fifteen minutes, maybe two hours you start your work on other components, with all you can bring them back to the best state possible. No one ever cares to do this that way, everyone just fixes mechas so they can barely perform in battle. You only get one extra food ration for working all night and all day. You still do it. You were broken long ago but these mechas still have a chance for a better life than you so you do it. One broken machine repairs another broken machine, one of flesh and one of steel.

[uniquepeanutcreatorfire]

Hazbin Hotel vs. The Purge

Today, I'm going to examine and analyze HH's annual extermination by comparing it to another fictional event that I feel is similar in terms of ethical dilemma or morality, the annual purge in The Purge movie franchise. For those who haven't seen the movies, the purge is a 12-hour annual event where all crimes are legal.

Let's start with the purge and what's known about it:

Cause(s): Multiple wars led to an economic collapse and rising social unrest.

Rules: Here's a screenshot-

Outcome(s):  As a result, crime and unemployment rates plummeted to 1% and there's a strong economy. It's seen as a way for people to release their violent tendencies and aggression.

Implication(s): Lower, working classes are specifically targeted as they don't have the protection that upper classes can afford during the purges.

Sounds simple enough (there's more to it, if you don't want to watch all the movies, here's a link to the trilogy explained).

Now moving on to the annual extermination in HH.

Cause(s): This is confusing. The pilot initially presented that the exterminations were due to overpopulation in Hell. However, the actual show doesn't show any hints that the population is rapidly increasing, or overpopulation is causing any issues in Hell. The first episode stated that Heaven started exterminations to ensure sinners never rise against them. I don't see how that's possible since there aren't accessible ways to Heaven from Hell. Lucifer, a former angel, had to get permission from Heaven to get a temporary portal for Charlie so how do you think sinners are going to get up there to be a threat in the first place? Also, I wanted to point out that Charlie's plan to send sinners to Heaven only makes sense if overpopulation was actually a problem. Since there isn't anywhere else to place sinners other than the Pride ring. However, the narrative suggest otherwise.

Rules: It's not clear what the rules are for annual exterminations other than the exorcists can't kill the royal family or hellborns. Is it on a set date and time? Do exorcists go inside buildings? We see that the exterminations take place outside. This begs the question why don't sinners just hide and barricade themselves to avoid getting killed? There could be news broadcast reminding sinners of an upcoming extermination so they can be prepared.

Outcome(s): It's not clear how the exterminations affect Hell's society since the show never gives a glimpse of that. If overpopulation is an issue, it doesn't seem to help at all. Sinners don't seem to care and go on about their business. Let's not explore those who may have lost friends or loved ones. There are also the overlords who lose souls.... poor them, I guess. We can't forget the most important thing...... it's makes Charlie sad.

Implication(s): Heaven apparently never thought this would build hatred towards them, very smart. This is why Adam ended up dead. I want to bring up Lilith being the one who empowered sinners. Since she's been removed from the equation for seven years, what's the point in Heaven doing exterminations anymore? The only message I get from it is "genocide bad". But why is genocide bad in the context of the Hellaverse? There have been killings in HB/HH that are considered no big deals (including humans the imps kill on Earth that contribute to HH's problem further). There's also the black market for angelic weapons that's never brought up. I'm just not invested in the sinners as a whole to care.

Conclusion: The extermination is an interesting concept that can be explore in many aspects like The Purge. It's just not much thought went into it which makes it less compelling.

[coquettedragoon]

could you expand a little on your writing and worldbuilding process for coquette? the way you write characters is really nice

my writing process is kind of informed by a sense of wanting every part of the thing i'm working on to be fun to work on, which sounds obvious... but well im one of those people who made webcomics excited to get to the big story payoffs 5 years down the track but didn't put any thought into what came before it and got burnt out. in the past i would've shown xios life before enlistment as a slow burn but instead i'm just opening right on it.

the overarching structure of coquette is informed by hxh... i really like how each arc of it is a drastically different setting and genre with a rotating primary cast, i don't intend for coquette to be as varied but it struck me as a really fun way of making longform work that feels consistently enjoyable to work on... ig as a brief example, the first section will focus on the zephyranthes, after this xio and co are sent to fight in sunset as part of the lilac occupation and then are left behind after the lilac force retreats (careful what you wish for ayane...) and Stuff Happens, ig what i mean is i dont want to linger on a status quo for too long.

as for the world, i mostly am drawing from legend of the galactic heroes/gundam 79 as a template. the duchy is the empire/zeon, the lilac is the FPA/earth federation, and sunset is fezzan/side six.

for the lilac in particular, i'm kind of drawing from like... how things felt being in school during the iraq war and the fervor among the students around me, i knew so many people who wanted to enlist after graduation etc and saw the army as like a winning ticket compared to the deadend town we were in, like girls wanting to join the army to get a degree as a lawyer or a pilot etc. the core of the lilac is its a society that exists to funnel people (especially like xio) into the army.

the duchy is a bit more vibes based, i just like when the baddies in scifi are anachronistic aristocrats. theres a section in the gundam origin manga about like... interpreting the zeon invasion of earth as a return to 'the sacred grounds of the soul' that carries a lot of weight. i think it sort of gave me an impression of the zeon as like... people living in the void of space and feeling spiritually/intellectually starved by it and driven mad by it, and i kind of used that as my basis for the duchy. they are obsessed with tradition and antiquity to feel like they have a sense of place in the world and aren't just drifting in space, the aesthetic sense is rooted in a sense of like.. older feeling things are more connected to earth and feel more 'human' to them. then ofc like the imperialism and arranged marriages and social stratification are all 'old' and can't be questioned so they are miserable anyway.

i guess it's all based on the thing in LOGH of how it opens on 'no human or society is immortal', and then depicts the slow collapse of the two nations founded on flimsy ideas. the lilac and the duchy are both dead end nations.

as for character writing... i think i kind of just take archetypes i like from moe anime etc and then try and dig into how their brains work living in the world of coquette. xio could be a happy little moeblob in most other worlds. ryukishis writing is probably what informs me better than anything else... i just want to try and depict what it's like to live inside these characters heads.

[best-yandere-tournament]

hikaru: He is literally a malevolent deity that took over the body of a dead 17 year old boy, indou hikaru. and has been piloting that body, pretending to be indou hikaru for months. and then when hikaru's best friend called him out on it, he confessed his love to said friend, also he killed someone

Charlotte Wiltshire: She is the protagonist of the game and of the world she lives in. She has infinite clones with various personalities. A couple are murderous psychopaths who have started cults (called the White Society) and committed various war crimes. Her original version is very timid and meek, except when she does something insane like kidnap and enslave literal Krampus. She also doesn't exist in the "real world" that is in the game. She is aware from the start that she is being puppeted around by you, the player, and she finds no problem with that and is even comforted by someone else making all the decisions for her. Charlotte's favorite animal is her pet, a "magcat", which is a cross between a maggot and a cat. It eats cockroaches.

[ezlo-x]

NO LET’S TALK ABOUT IT BECAUSE i’m willing to come to botw defense in some cases because i feel that there’s some strong substance there but totk?! did me so dirty, i must be truthful. did me so dirty and left a lame smell behind it.

botw:

zelda characterization is actually something i love about this game; while she isn’t always the strongest/most depthful persona, the fact that her lack of agency and empowerment in that story is actually focused on as the central struggle is a great way to have the typical damsel-in-distress formula while not compromising the characterization of a main character. link’s memories of zelda are the sharpest evidence we get into how hyrule suffered from the calamity, both before and after it passed—we only learn about how hyrule has suffered in the scars of the calamity and the echoes of a dead kingdom, but zelda’s cutscenes turn that suffering into a personification. zelda’s struggle with unlocking her power was relatable, touching, and substantial, and the way the memories end up culminating to her sacrifice makes for an excellent and heavy-feeling conflict. her character is central to botw, and i only wish that they had characterized her much further, so that she had more of an arc in the past, and so that the time we see her would be more valuable.

mipha was done DIRTY. princess of a realm, successor to the king, skilled aquatic warrior, and pilot of a divine beast, and all we get of her is that she has feelings for link? NINTENDO. make it make sense for me, i beg of you. while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with only depicting her feelings for link, it does not really inform us to her character (because link is mostly more static and ambiguously characterized in relation to others), and fails to actually make the tragedy of her defeat feel substantial. still, the details of her character are fun, and the character traits we have of her are good material—it is such a shame that it wasn’t used properly.

urbosa is obviously is a very likeable character, and ostensibly the wisest of the champions. she’s a strong-woman in a sense, but but that characterization isn’t reductive to her persona. her role as a chieftain isn’t very thorough, but nor is daruk’s, so i wouldn’t necessarily attribute that fact to a misogynistic approach. the misogyny (and exoticism??) in the characterization of the gerudo kinda plagues every part of the story/every location that involves them (for example, how most wandering gerudo are on the search for a voe, which is an amusing gag, but not all that funny when we don’t have much else of gerudo culture, or a good sense of their society, in comparison to say, the zora. the rito don’t have it all that well either, to be fair). urbosa’s characterization as a fierce warrior and wise leader isn’t done badly, but it’s very one note, which is disappointing to say the least.

i have conflicting feelings on riju. she’s the young ruler of the gerudo, but it feels as though there’s not much else to her. the moments where her youth shines through (like the stuffed animals in her room, and the fact that the lightning helmet is too big for her) are very endearing, but we don’t really get a sense of how she struggles as a leader, or of how her history informs her person. she’s gerudo, and a later successor to urbosa, so she also exemplifies the same strong and wise traits, which isn’t a very honorable persona to the facts of her character. it is a shame that riju isn’t given as much depth as her character implies, especially when the timeline of the gerudo desert/vah naboris quest is so strong, and when it seems like she has so much potential substance that goes unrealized for the rest of the game.

impa plays the village sage, and is very fun in that role, but there isn’t much more to her than relaying the story of the calamity and offering short comments to things memory or sheikah related

of course, there are other female characters in botw, but none of them star (or enjoy cutscenes) like everyone mentioned above.

totk:

the characterization of zelda in this game is just… ruinous. calamitous, if you will. that person you met in the last game is dead and gone, and the zelda in her stead is heartbreakingly inactive in this story.her sacrifice to bring the mastersword to the present was so strong, and while i hate that it’s essentially a repeat of the damsel-in-distress setup from the last game, it’s technically a different type of conflict, one which i normally imagine wold set her up to take an active character role, but she is so very upsettingly passive in this story, just constantly in the backseat. not a single action of hers (apart from the eating-the-secret-stone bit) impacts the events of the past, which wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t have the power/knowledge to do so, but she does! her knowledge of the calamity, of the cave paintings, of the incident that brought her to the past are all pieces of information that should have impacted the events of the past! and the fact that they don’t is more than mischaracterization, it’s just a gaping plot convenience. it’s already dismaying to see her characterization from the last game discarded, but the fact that she isn’t recharacterized anywhere near to the same depth or complexity as the last game is just. a source of apathy, as a zelda fan. the events of the past do not expand on her much at all, but nor do they expand much on ruaru or ganondorf or sonia, nor anything related to the zonai, which is kind of a recurring thing in this game.

sonia was fridged, one and done. kind and caring mother character killed off for an emotional payoff. in almost every cutscene of sonia, she is consoling or caring for zelda, so that when ganondorf kills her, the moment carries emotional weight. her only role in the story is to be a tragic loss, and not in any poetic way, but in the storytelling 101 way. she’s quite depthless, and while her persona and design are quite likable, her characterization is undoubtedly poor.

mineru… doesn’t get enough time in the story. every aspect of her character is defined in relation to the conflict with ganondorf (besides being smart/techy), which is a conflict she doesn’t really have any personal stake in, besides her relation to ruaru. this wouldn’t really be a problem if we were given any insight into the relationship between the two of them, but we aren’t given much of anything. at all. so the fact that she’s a zonai and ruaru’s sister is doing a lot of the heavy lifting to sustain our belief in her personal investment and motivation in this conflict, which simply doesn’t make for a good story. her cutscenes outside of the past really isn’t all that different to the other sages, and the sages are so characterless that they don’t even have names.

purah being redesigned the way she is feels like… a choice by the developers. she has about as much of an active role in the story as impa did in the last game, so her actual characterization isn’t necessarily all that important, since she doesn’t feature much. nevertheless, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth that the essential leader of the effort to redevelop hyrule is given less characterization/character conflict than many npcs in that same location, not to mention in the whole game. the fact that she’s redesigned to be older and… modelesque feels less like a development of her character and more of like a cheap ploy by the developers to put a baddie on the opening of the game to appeal to the demographics of gaming who have, well, a typically misogynistic view of women (and their roles in stories), to say the least of it.

i haven’t actually finished totk and i haven’t seen riju’s arc firsthand, so i don’t know enough about her new character to reflect on it.

i don’t know if you can tell but. i don’t like the story of this game. i’m not saying there aren’t things to like (definitely a super cool gaming experience! even just the story itself, good king ruaru defeats bad king ganondorf is a successful trope), but i feel like the story is just incoherent. characters aren’t really given reasons, motivations, or interest for acting the way they do (at least, in any way that implies that these characters are multitudinous or complex), or they’re taking reactive roles to the events of the story. the main conflict of the story is how ganondorf is threatening hyrule, but we see nothing of his motivations, nothing of how his actions impact ruaru beyond separating him from sonia (what of his kingdom? the livelihood of his subjects? the history of the zonai?), nothing of how it impacts zelda (the most we get from her is her reacting to sonia dying and her sacrifice to become the light dragon. so. three cutscenes), and nothing of how it impacts link. the events of the present are entirely disconnected from the conflict of the past, and it doesn’t do justice by a single one of its characters.

i should have probably just made this my own post, it’s waaaay too long, but i had to. let it out.

yknow in animal crossing when you're fishing and you catch a big fish like a whale and one of the quotes says "THAR SHE BLOWS!!" feeling like I caught a big fish rn. This has to be one of my longest asks I've gotten!!

I REALLY DONT GOT MUCH TO SAY CAUSE YOU HAVE SAID IT ALL except for the TotK Riju part! If I recall correctly her arc is that she wants to master her skill in summoning lightning, after that she kinda plays as Urbosa 2 or the "wise one" of the group. Someone can correct me abt that but she pretty much gave me those vibes, but I can't really go off w botw cause we really don't know much abt her personality wise! So in TotK she's grown...and that's pretty much it

[takerfoxx]

(After)Life: Why the Evangelion Pilots Should Be Left Alone

Hey, throwing this up here before I officially publish it in a couple days as both of a sort of preview and also for feedback. This is the first installment of that Evangelion story that I've been talking about, a sort of in-universe opinion piece to introduce the premise and themes and whatnot. But basically, here's the general idea: it takes place over the course of about a century and a half after End of Evangelion, where Third Impact turned everyone into orange juice (LCL, whatever) and made humanity into a hivemind. Shinji and Asuka emerge onto that beach in a post-apocalyptic landscape like in the movie, Rei herself later returns under very odd circumstances, and after many trials and tribulations they eventually form a throuple. However, as more and more people also emerge from Instrumentality and society begins to rebuild, they find themselves needing someone to blame, and the Eva pilots seem the perfect fit. And since Shinji, Asuka, and Rei are afflicted with a somewhat modified version of the Eva's curse from the Rebuild films (basically, can't age, can't die), they're stuck with it for a long time.

So, basically the idea is for it to be a series of short stories released out-of-order, each of them taking place at a random point of time and touching in with how the trio are doing at that particular moment and keeping track of how society is reacting to them, and vice-versa. So, this will be very different than the more serialized stuff I've done in the past, and a lot more manageable as a result. Any installments will come out whenever I feel like working on this. Anyway, here's the first installment. Let me know what you think.

Why the Evangelion Pilots Should Be Left Alone, by Alice Glocke

One-hundred and twelve years ago, the world died, and ever since then, we have been seeking someone to blame.

A world still reeling from the horrors of Second Impact. A world under constant invasion by extraterrestrial monsters beyond comprehension. A world fighting desperately against increasingly hopeless odds not just to recover, but to survive, to not go quietly into that good night, to plant its feet and declare into the face of God himself that it not only existed, but would continue to exist, and woe be to all that would seek its destruction.

In this, it failed, and the world died.

In many ways, the horrors of Third Impact are less of a scar and more of an open wound, one bleeding LCL into our waters. Yes, we continue to rebuild, and life continues to repopulate and flourish. But though the brief moment in which humanity ceased to exist was now over a century ago, we still have those among us who were forced to take part in Instrumentality, only regaining their thoughts, bodies, and sense of personal identity through sheer force of will, and who had to eke out any means of survival that they could on a dead planet.

In the years following Third Impact, as society finally began to reconstruct itself and climb out of the muck into something that was at least functional, humanity has had to grapple with how to respond to the collective trauma that every person on the planet now shared. There was a great deal of righteous anger and a cry for justice, but with the entire SEELE Council still out of reach within Instrumentality, those cries went unfulfilled. Yes, a small number of NERV employees were found and taken into custody, but those were found to have nothing to do with Third Impact, with only that organization’s highest-ranking members working in cohorts with SEELE. And those individuals also remained out of reach.

And then, everything changed. Fourteen years after Third Impact, we finally had someone to blame. The surviving Evangelion Pilots had been found.

In a way, finding them had been a relief. So much bottled-up anger, so much unresolved pain, and those responsible were beyond justice. Now, humanity had the perfect scapegoats. Essential key components of SEELE’s Instrumentality Project, masquerading as fearless defenders of Earth while working the whole time to destroy it. Shinji Ikari, known as the Third Child, and son of NERV’s infamous commander Gendo Ikari, the man perhaps the most responsible for enacting Third Impact. And Asuka Soryu Langley, Second Child, daughter of one of the Human Instrumentality Project’s designers. And while there had been many to decry pinning the blame on those two, that it was unfair to place the sins of the parents on their hapless children, all of those protests faded away when Shinji Ikari made his fateful confession. It had been he that had been given the choice whether or not to allow Third Impact to take place. And it had been he who had made the decision to end the world.

Everyone knows that image of two young teenagers being led from the UN Council by their lawyers and bodyguards, being pelted with garbage from an angry crowd. Whether they saw it in textbooks, had it sent to them by friends as a meme, or even were one of those that watched it live, this is perhaps the most infamous image of the New World. And for a time, most felt that the anger directed at those two was fully justified. Certainly, the UN Council seemed to agree, finding them both guilty of aiding and abetting in SEELE’s schemes to end the world, Shinji intentionally and Asuka unintentionally. The two were then incarcerated in a “secure facility,” and that was that.

Since then, the condition of the two pilots has mostly fallen out of the public’s consciousness. No appeals, no interviews, no word as to what they were up to or how they were doing. Every single “Where are they now?” op-ed has always ended up as a rewritten version of the same events, with each one ending with “Shinji and Asuka: still locked up,” with the only significant change being the number of years between the trial and the newest article’s publication.

Which isn’t to say that they’ve disappeared completely, but rather they seemed to have ceased to become actual public figures and become more of caricatures. They appear in comic strips and cartoons as grossly exaggerated versions of themselves, usually with the destruction of the world as the punchline. They’ve become symbols, memes, representations of the guilt laid upon their shoulders, little more than villains straight out of a children’s story.

Which isn’t to say there haven’t been voices of support over the years. Asuka especially seems to have garnered a small but vocal following, pointing out that she actually had nothing to do with the implementation of Third Impact, and so forcing her to share Shinji’s fate was perhaps unfair. The phrase “Asuka did nothing wrong” has come in and out of vogue, and in time it seems that she has become something of a symbol of the unjustly persecuted. Even Shinji himself, who for so long shouldered the majority of the blame for Third Impact, has seen a turnaround in how the public has treated him, pointing out that perhaps placing the full blame for what had happened upon a child soldier indoctrinated by an evil organization of adult men is a bit unfair.

However, none of these voices ever gained much traction. Once the trial was over, most of humanity’s attention was directed toward just trying to heal, and there was little room for the Evangelion Pilots.

But then, nine months ago, all of that changed.

The hacking of the UN security files and the subsequent leaks of not only their own data on the pilots, but also all of the files that they had managed to recover from NERV, has been nothing less than earth-shaking. Granted, little had been revealed about the Human Instrumentality Project and SEELE’s designs that the public didn’t already know, though the full extent of their machinations had been troubling. However, it was the data on the pilots that had been the most troubling, and revealed how little we truly understood about the Earth’s murderers.

For decades, Shinji Ikari had been painted as a willing participant in his father’s schemes, Gendo Ikari’s heir anointed and trusted lieutenant. But now we knew the truth. He was little more than a child forced into taking part in a war that he wanted no part in and suffered greatly for. We listened to the recordings of his screams of agony, his enraged curses and threats, and his pleas for help on behalf of himself and his fellow pilots. We read the psychological evaluations of his frequent depressive states, his attempts to run away, and the lack of support that he received. We learned of his own father’s cold treatment of him, and how Gendo Ikari would psychologically torture his son to get him back into the cockpit of his Evangelion.

And with all of this came the truth. Shinji and the other pilots were deliberately abused. Evangelions were at their most effective when bonded with a broken soul. The pilots were traumatized time and time again in order to increase their effectiveness in combat and denied help afterward. In light of this new information, we ourselves were forced to confront an uncomfortable truth. Shinji Ikari’s decision to cause Third Impact was less the act of megalomaniac enacting his father’s master scheme as it was that of a suffering child drowning in a sea of rage and torment, desperate to escape the Hell that his life had become.

Who among us as children has not wished that the world would end at one time or another? Shinji was simply unfortunate enough to have the means to do so thrust into his hands when at his lowest, and he had far more reason to do so than anyone ever could have imagined. And by all accounts, he regretted it immediately afterward.

There is no justifying what he did, no taking back the suffering that he caused. But at least now, people have come to understand why, and feel that he had been unfairly mischaracterized by history.

But that was far from the biggest bombshell to come out of that leak. Just as everyone was coming to terms with what we had learned about someone so long believed to be a monster, we discovered something that pushed almost all discussion of Shinji Ikari out of everyone’s minds.

Rei Ayanami had survived.

If there is anyone among the Evangelion Pilots subject to more discussion, demonization, and blame for what had happened, it is her. And why wouldn’t she be? An artificial human, created by a combination of human DNA and genetic material gathered from Lilith, the secretly imprisoned second Angel, literally created to serve as Lilith’s resurrection and the one to carry out the Third Impact.

Rei had fulfilled her purpose. She had bonded with Adam, the first Angel, and transformed into an abomination. Those who witnessed Third Impact spoke of a monster, an enormous pale-skinned woman embracing the Earth. And there was little reason to doubt this, as her gigantic corpse had been found just offshore of the ruins of Tokyo-3 and sits in the Human Instrumentality Research Center to this day, alongside the recovered remains of the Evangelions themselves, the corpses of the Angels, and the last remaining pool of LCL, containing the souls of those who decided to remain in Instrumentality. Surely, if anyone deserves to be painted as a monster, it is her. And it wasn’t as if she were around to protest how the history books characterized her, as she had perished immediately after destroying the world.

Except she hadn’t, at least not permanently. She had come back, and had been found alongside Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley. The whole time when the UN had been making scapegoats of those poor children, the actual monster had been in their hands, and they said nothing.

However, calling even Rei a monster had proven to be more complicated than anyone could have expected.

The topic of Rei Ayanami’s rebirth is woven into the enigma of her existence. Much has been made of her reincarnation as Lilith, while next to nothing has ever been discussed about Rei Ayanami the person, Rei Ayanami the human. And why would there be? All accounts of her painted her as a cold, emotionless being, as befitting her alien origins. What more is there to discuss?

As it turns out, there is plenty.

We have long known of NERV’s barbaric and, dare I say, downright blasphemous experiments involving the human soul, how each of the Evangelions literally had the soul of a person close to its chosen pilot embedded into its neural network. For Shinji and Asuka, it was their mothers. But what of Rei? What of this artificial person, created from a test tube, born from a vat? What person could possibly fill that role?

As it turns out, it was herself.

Three years after her creation, Rei was accidentally killed by Dr. Akagi, one of the scientists working on the Human Instrumentality Project. Her soul was preserved, thanks to its artificial nature. However, with her death, NERV saw an opportunity. Only half of her soul was implanted within a fresh clone body, while the other served as the core of Unit 00, the first of the Evangelions.

With only half a human soul, Rei’s capacity to experience normal emotions and form human connections was severely stunted, resulting in the passive, almost robotic individual described by those who knew her. She was likewise groomed to be utterly obedient, valuing little for her own life while carrying out her orders with no hesitation. And yet, despite these handicaps, connections did form. Notes from her handlers speak of a growing friendship between herself and Shinji Ikari, one that had NERV’s command concerned. After all, should she somehow break free from their programming, it could threaten all of their carefully laid plans.

This was further complicated by her second death, when Eva 00 became infected by Armisael, the Sixteenth Angel, and was forced to self-destruct before the infection could spread. Again, Rei’s soul was retrieved, but with no Eva to implant half of it into, the entire thing was placed within her new body. And unwilling to risk having a Rei Ayanami suddenly experiencing the full range of human emotions with no prior experience controlling them in such a critical stage, NERV using psychiatric drugs, tranquilizers, and mental conditioning to keep her confined within her customary passive and pliable state, right up until the end.

The topic of Rei’s latest resurrection has also been heavily debated. Certainly, her own recounting of the event has been less than helpful. We know that NERV had a number of clone bodies in reserve should she die in battle, but they were all destroyed leading up to Third Impact. According to Rei herself, a new body was formed by a “her,” presumably Lilith. Another time she claimed to have created the new body herself. But regardless of the body’s origin, following Lilith’s death, her human soul somehow found its way back into the final clone body, where she was later found by Shinji and Asuka, and remained with them for the next fourteen.

Part of the reason that the outrage against the UN has found it difficult to be sustained is that there is a lack of agreement on what exactly to be outraged about, as so much was revealed that turned everything that we thought to be true on its head, causing more confusion than anger. But perhaps the most revealing aspect of the leaks were what has since been dubbed the Pilot Interviews, recordings of the interrogations of the Evangelion Pilots following their capture.

Shinji Ikari’s were certainly eye-opening. Throughout his questioning, he was revealed to be a man haunted by his actions, someone who spent years drowning in guilt and who had only just begun to break the surface. He spoke of his many failed suicide attempts, of begging both Rei and Asuka to put him out of his misery, and seemed completely resigned to whatever justice he was to be sentenced to, though at times a passive-aggressive streak would surface, especially whenever the topic of his infamous father came up. Still, if anything, it was these series of tapes that did the most to rehabilitate his image.

Asuka’s, on the other hand, were anything but passive. If anything, she was downright hostile. It was clear that she did not feel that her and her companion’s capture was in any way justified, and felt compelled to explain her disdain to her interrogators in full, and often very colorful, detail. Nor did she feel the slightest bit remorseful for any part that she had to play in NERV’s atrocities.

There has been some debate if her attitude was warranted, with her defenders pointing out that she was correct, that she hadn’t actually had anything to do directly with Third Impact, while others claim that given the circumstances, her behavior reeked of haughty entitlement.

However, all of that was completely overshadowed by the third set of interview sessions, that of Rei Ayanami.

If Shinji’s were regretful and Asuka’s volatile, then Rei’s were downright unhinged. A far cry from the serene, almost emotionless person that she was said to be, this Rei was fully out of control, at times exploding with anger, screaming curses and profanities and death threats so detailed that they seemed less threats as they were expressed intentions that she would have carried out were she able. Other times she would collapse into a blubbering mess, wailing and pleading for forgiveness. Other times she would enter into a catatonic state, seeming to retreat within herself and not respond to any stimuli whatsoever. And still others times she would sink into a full depressive state, unable to respond with anything more than a few whispered, one-word answers, while frequently asking for death.

Certainly, the tapes of Rei’s sessions were disturbing, and to this day no one seems to know what to make of them. Is she truly the monster that she’s made out to be? An innocent victim? Nothing on those tapes seemed to indicate either way.

However, Dr. Anno of London-2 University seems to have what I feel to be the most likely answer. Rei was someone who grew up as an incomplete person. With half of her soul locked away in a gigantic bio-mechanical abomination, she was kept from experiencing the full range of human emotions, and thus never learned how to control her feelings when those emotions were returned to her. She then spent the next fourteen years thrust into a harrowing survival situation, where her only two points of human contact weren’t exactly the finest examples of emotional stability either.

However, as different as the three pilots’ reactions to their interrogators were, there is one thing that united all three: a fervent, almost desperate concern for the well-being of the other two. Rei was the most overt, with her episodes of rage especially largely spent demanding to see Shinji and Asuka and making graphic threats should any harm befall them, but Shinji and Asuka also frequently pleaded to be reunited with each other and Rei. It is clear that whatever their relationship had been during their time actually piloting the Evangelions, the fourteen years that they had spent together had formed an extremely close bond.

What followed next, we all know. Shinji and Asuka’s capture was made public, with no mention of Rei. Those two were then put on trial before the UN Council and found guilty, with the last time that the world saw them was them being led through a jeering crowd toward the waiting transports. And from there, they were to be taken away, never to see the light of day again.

However, we now know that the trial was, at least in part, a façade. An act. Almost a stage play. A deal had been struck with Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley: take the fall for the Third Impact, and you will be reunited with Rei. And then the three of you will be taken somewhere safe to live out your days in peace. The world needed a scapegoat, and it was to be them. Naturally, they agreed.

At this point, the tide had fully turned in favor of the unfairly maligned Evangelion Pilots. Even Rei was starting to be treated with some measure of sympathy. But it was what happened next that fully won over people’s hearts.

As I said, we all have the image of Shinji and Asuka being led away from the trial burned into our minds. The sorrow on Shinji’s face and the resentment on Asuka’s. The featureless helmets of their bodyguards. The trash flying through the air, hurled by the angry crowd. But what nobody knew until now was what happened when they reached their destination, and when they were finally reunited with Rei.

The nature of the relationship between Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley has, like everything else about them, been hotly debated, though it has been commonly accepted that they were lovers. And it was this moment that definitively proved that assertion, but with a new wrinkle: not only were Shinji and Asuka romantically tied, but Rei was equally involved with both of them.

It feels horribly gauche to comment on such an intimate moment, especially since it was no doubt intended to be private, but I feel that it was this moment that the world fully realized how cruel those grossly exaggerated portrayals in our media have been. These were not monsters. These were not villainous masterminds. These were people. People that loved one another, people that were willing to shoulder the blame for history’s greatest tragedy in order to protect one another, people that gave up everything just to be with each other. Yes, they had done terrible things, and yes, they should bear that responsibility. However, it is now clear that they are far from the monsters that history has deliberately painted them out to be.

But of course, it was not enough to completely upend everything that we had thought that we had known the Eva Pilots. It was not enough to smack us with the truth of Rei’s existence or her humanity. We were then confronted with perhaps the strangest revelations of them all.

And that was that the Evangelion Pilots were almost certainly still alive.

One hundred and twelve years have passed since Third Impact, and though people living past a hundred is not unheard of, it is still exceptionally rare. However, even before the leaks, people have pointed that despite the fourteen-year gap between Third Impact and the pilots’ capture, Shinji and Asuka still looked fourteen, when they ought to be in their late twenties. Was this the result of piloting an Evangelion? Some Faustian deal made with Lilith? A result of NERV’s experiments, perhaps?

Whatever it was that kept their youth, it persisted even after their incarceration. Shinji, Asuka, and Rei lived on under the watch of the United Nations for another eight years, and none of them so much as aged a day. What is more, tests ran on the pilots showed that their cells lacked any sort of molecular decay. Quite the contrary, their bodies stalwartly resisted any sort of damage at all. Any wounds were swiftly healed, any diseases immediately snuffed out, with even complete brain death being nothing more than a temporary inconvenience. A rather disturbing but revealing file revealed that all three pilots had attempted suicide a number of different times during the first few years following Third Impact, with Rei Ayanami especially taking painstaking notes on the various methods that she employed and their effectiveness, which was none. There was some speculation as to whether this strange regeneration would persist in the face of total disintegration, but no one was willing to give the go-ahead to check.

Regardless, the case was clear. Whether it be an undeserved blessing or an ironic curse, the three Eva pilots had been afflicted with some sort of immortality, frozen forever in time from the moment of Third Impact. As such, despite the decades since, they are no doubt living today, unchanged from those historical photos.

Unfortunately, there seems no way to actually check, as they are very much gone. As stated before, eight years into their incarceration, they simply vanished without a trace. A thorough, yet discrete investigation into the matter took place, during which a conspiracy sympathetic to the pilots’ plight was uncovered, with a number of UN staffers close to the pilots found to be complicit. However, no one could say where the pilots were now, as their point of release was known only to a small few, and deliberate effort was made not to keep track of them after they had been released.

Which means that Shinji Ikari, Asuka Soryu Langley, and, perhaps most unsettling, Rei Ayanami, the three most controversial figures of the last century, are currently loose somewhere in the world. Perhaps they are wandering the forests of the Americas, the deserts of Africa, or perhaps even returned home to Japan. Perhaps they took on new names, disguised their appearances, and are now living in some suburban home somewhere, or returned their old life from before incarceration and joined one of the many refugee camps in one of the cities slow to recover. They could be in a small Swedish village, in a cabin in the Australian outback, in a treehouse in the Amazon jungle, or any one of the literally millions of other points on the map.

Naturally, there has been much talk about finding them again, some wishing to make amends and publicly make up for the blame that they had been forced to shoulder, others feeling that they still had not repaid their debt to society and should be returned to imprisonment. And there are still others that do not care for either side, but instead insist that they remain a clear and present danger, that more was changed about them than granting them eternal life, that they are inhuman monsters fully capable of ending the world again and need to be stopped. But whatever the motive, something almost everyone agrees on is that they do need to be found.

And I am here to offer up a dissenting opinion. Regardless of whether you love them, hate them, feel bad for them, or feel threatened by them, the Evangelion Pilots should be left alone. This, I feel, would be best for everyone.

Whenever the exploits, positive or negative, of the pilots are brought up, there seems to be a sort of hierarchy to the degree each one is discussed. Shinji seems to be the one brought up the most, as he is still unquestionably the trigger-man of Third Impact. Asuka comes next, given everyone’s complicated feelings toward her and her swaths of supporters. After that is Rei, who, even before her survival was discovered, still occupied a very contentious place in history as the monster who directly ended the world. And then there is Kaworu Nagisa, perhaps the greatest enigma of them all, a half-Angel/half-human artificial being like Rei, created specifically by SEELE as a countermeasure to any possible treachery on NERV’s part, but was killed by Shinji Ikari before his plans could come about, and yet seems to have played as vital a part in Third Impact as Rei, but by the same token, apparently did not see resurrection like she did.

But there is a fifth name that is often forgotten in those discussions, a fifth Evangelion Pilot. And that is none other than Touji Suzuhara the Fourth Child.

It is not that Touji is totally unknown, but he exists in the public consciousness as a sort of footnote, a trivia question at best. Though he was selected as a pilot and given an Evangelion of his own, his Evangelion became possessed by Bardiel, the Thirteenth Angel, during its first test run, leading to its destruction. And though he survived, Touji was critically injured in the process, and with no Evangelion to pilot, he quietly left the program to fade out of history.

In a way, Touji was perhaps the luckiest one of them all. The early destruction of his Evangelion protected him from having to participate in the mentally harrowing battles against the Angels, and he was spared of being an active participant in Third Impact. Even afterward, he was part of the first wave of people to emerge from Instrumentality, even reuniting with most of his family and many of his friends, going on to live about as full of a life as one could in those desolate circumstances. And while the tides of history have mostly washed over him, some effort was made to locate him. During Shinji and Asuka’s trials, once it was discovered that he was among the refugees recovered from Tokyo-3, there were multiple news outlets attempting to seek him out for interviews. However, they were far too late, as he and his family were long gone.

And I know all of this, as Touji Suzuhara was my great-grandfather.

I have very little memory of Touji. Though he lived much longer than most, he at least was spared the immortality that afflicted the other pilots and passed away when I was six, and what little I do recall about him paints a picture of a quiet, reserved old man. However, in interviewing various members of my family, I was told of someone who made every effort to flee his past but was unable to fully shake its shadow. I heard stories of bullying and harassment in those early refugee camps, of the other survivors trying to blame him and his family for what had happened, much as Shinji and Asuka would be publicly blamed later. It got to the point that as soon as they were rescued and carried away from Tokyo-3, his whole family changed their names and fled, disappearing into a still-chaotic world to find a place where nobody knew them.

In time, they succeeded, eventually settling in Austria. Though they had nothing and did not even know the language, that mattered little as very few of their neighbors had much either, and they were far from the only immigrants wandering in. There, they were able to blend in, carving out a niche for themselves and building something resembling a life, and no one ever discovered their connection to history’s so-called greatest monsters.

But even so, my great-grandfather never forgot. Though he never neglected his family and tried his best to provide for them, everyone that I spoke to made him out to be a broken man, someone who had lost the light in his eyes, who would smile very little and always seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. It was forbidden to speak to him of the time before Third Impact, and the very few times he did talk of it, it was from the viewpoint of someone who never truly left Tokyo-3, haunted by ghosts.

Touji might have been forgotten by history, but he bore his scars. Unfair blame was placed upon my family’s shoulders for what had happened, and we know all too well what it is like to be made scapegoats by the those who need someone to blame for their suffering. And though I have never met Shinji Ikari, Asuka Soryu Langley, or Rei Ayanami, and know about as much about them as everyone else, I at least have some measure of understanding of how unfairly they’ve been characterized. And I am sure that they desire validation about as much as they deserve further condemnation, which is to say, not at all. As such, I feel that the kindest thing to do would be to just let them be. Wherever they are, leave them alone to seek their own peace. Because I assure you, they have paid for their sins in full. They pay every day, remembering their part in the previous world’s death.

And to those who still think them a threat, who still believe that they possess the power to once again end the world despite no evidence to back that up, consider this: they have had ample opportunity and reason to wield that power, and yet never have. As such, perhaps it would be best not to provoke them?

No matter how you feel about the Evangelion Pilots, I see little that can be gained by seeking them out. They have taken more than their fair punishment, and would likely shun any reward. And as the descendant of one of their number, I say, let my great-grandfather’s companions be and move on. We have all suffered enough.

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

Why is Rassilon everywhere?

Why is Rassilon everywhere?

Ah, Rassilon! Praise be upon his mighty beautiful head! If you ever feel like you can’t swing a Dalek mutant without hitting something named after Rassilon, you’re definitely on Gallifrey.

Here's a few pointers to why Rassilon is so mighty:

🦸 The Founding Father

As one of the founding fathers of modern Time Lord society, his influence is in every aspect of Gallifreyan life. He's credited with many of Gallifrey's greatest advancements, including the discovery of time travel and the creation of the Eye of Harmony. Multiple powerful artefacts bear his name, like the Rod of Rassilon and the Ring of Rassilon, which I assure you aren't as dirty as they sound.

🐉 The Man, the Myth, the Legend

Rassilon's story is written into the very fabric of Gallifreyan mythology and legend. Stories of his heroic deeds, cunning strategies, and formidable powers are told to Time Tots from the moment they're capable of hero worship. It's said he battled great cosmic entities, outwitted ancient gods, and secured Gallifrey's place as the pinnacle of civilisation. What a guy.

📜 The Eternal Administrator

Even after his supposed demise, Rassilon's administrative policies and laws still guide the Time Lords. He wrote foundational texts that every budding Time Lord studies meticulously, and Rassilon's fingerprints are all over the rule book. It's like every bureaucratic form and procedural guideline has a little note from Rassilon saying, 'do it like this'.

🖥️ The Technological Genius

Rassilon's technological innovations are still in use millennia later. From TARDIS designs to the Matrix, his genius ensures that his presence is felt every time a Time Lord takes a trip through time or consults the grand repository of all Gallifreyan knowledge. Any piece of tech you can think of, Rassilon probably invented it.

🗳️ The Political Powerhouse

Politically, Rassilon’s legacy is unshakeable. His time as Lord President set the gold standard for Gallifreyan leadership. Subsequent leaders often find themselves compared to him, and many of the political structures and titles are relics of his era. He's even so generous as to return from the dead to lead Gallifrey in times of crisis.

🗿 The Cultural Icon

Culturally, Rassilon is the ultimate Gallifreyan icon. Festivals, holidays, and even everyday idioms are sprinkled with references to Rassilon. 'By Rassilon's beard!' is a common exclamation of surprise, while, 'What would Rassilon do?' is the go-to question for moral dilemmas, and the Horns of Rassilon is a hand sign you probably shouldn't do in polite company.

🧪 The Supreme Scientist

And let's not forget his contributions to Time Lord biology. Rassilon’s Imprimatur, a biochemical mark, allows Time Lords to safely pilot TARDISes, effectively bonding them to the fabric of time itself. There’s also the little matter of regeneration. This ability to cheat death every now and then is the cornerstone of Time Lord, and without Rassilon, it wouldn't be possible.

Some would dispute this was Rassilon's invention, but of course, they're liars.

🏫 So ...

Rassilon is everywhere because he's the ultimate Gallifreyan hero, lawmaker, inventor, politician, and cultural icon. His influence spans the practical, the mythical, and the everyday lives of Gallifreyan people, as well as all of you. Just remember—it's Rassilon's universe; you're just privileged to be living in it.

GIL adores Rassilon of course, in alignment with the views of our benefactors, the High Council. On a completely unrelated note, GIL also wishes the Celestial Intervention Agency a lovely day.

Related:

What's the structure of Gallifreyan DNA?: How their DNA is structured including the fourth strand, Rassilon’s Strand.

What is looming and how does it exist alongside natural reproduction?: Overview of looming and its place alongside natural reproduction in Gallifreyan society.

What does the Web of Time look like?: Overview on the Web of Time and its relevance.

Hope that helped! 😃

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