#She basically made the choice to respawn for him but had to wait until she was completely sure @v@ had fucked off before letting it happen

[factorialsotherfandoms]

*siiiiiigh*

Look I promise today's prompt was going to be cute, I swear to high hell it was. And no, this isn't going to be anything like canon, and yes, I don't care fix is for silly ideas and aus and dreaming.

So anyway today, instead of nosebleed, I'm writing alt prompt: begging. Spoilers for 22/12/23 streams~

TW: temporary major character death, possession, grief, suicidal thinking as a result of said grief, self harm

(Read all the way to the end for a happy ending still)

"Please!" Philza screams. "Please, give him back!"

The others at Spawn look nervously between them. Their weapons are still raised, their tempers sharp, unable to quite process that whatever is controlling Forever will not use his totems.

Philza pays them no Mind, gives no quarter to their words. Ugly sobs tear through his voice, tears dropping onto the moss and cobble that makes up Spawn. He cradles Forever's head in his lap, shields him with his body even as he runs fingers through white hair and begs a miracle from the sky.

Forever - the parasite within Forever - laughs, his whole body shaking as black blood spills from his lips and from the gaping wound in his chest.

"How quaint," the monster laughs. "Even now you still can't accept what's been done."

"Fuck off!" Philza turns down to look at the monster corrupting his dear friend's skin, snarling even as tears continue to pour. "Fuck the fuck off and give me my fucking friend back!"

"Ah but little bird," Forever's chest strains in a cough and corrupted blood splatters over Philza's cheeks. "Can't you see he's already dead?"

Philza leans further down, pulling his hands from white hair to press against the wound. There's only more gasping, cackling laughter as he bows his head and let's a few sobs pass. "No, no..."

"Let him go, Phil," a gentle hand hovers near his shoulder. "He might respawn yet - just let him go."

If Forever wasn't allowed to use a totem, Philza doubts he'll be allowed to respawn; he slaps the hand away and turns his eyes back to the heavens.

"Rose!" He screams. "Rose! Help me! Please!"

She's only promised to aid him and his children, though - Philza knows this, knows that so far across the worlds she must be weak.

"Please," he sobs again, quieter now. "Please, I can't loose him... I can't..."

The tears are no longer sobs, now just silent torrents dripping from his face. The hand comes back, resting on his shoulder as he cradles Forever's possessed, dying form, and rocks himself.

Someone strokes Philza's wings, and he almost - almost relaxes. But then there's hands on Forever- hands trying to pull him away - and he screams again; he throws himself forwards, clawing at whatever would try steal his friend.

The monster in Forever's skin laughs, but laughs as though it can no longer breathe.

"She'll help!" He begs the people around him to understand. "She- She promised... She'll help..."

Because no matter what, if he loses Forever, Philza doesn't think there'll be anything left of himself for Rose to save.

---leave off here for ambigious ending. Continue for things getting worse, and then better---

The laughter beneath Philza's chest ceases, Forever's corrupted body falling still. The form that had been taunting him goes slack, tension against pain falling limp.

Philza is intimately familiar with what that means.

Philza knows death in all its forms.

Philza turns to the heavens, and screams.

It is not the screams of before, not a begging, not a plea, not a blind hope within the world. It is a scream born of anguish, of a splintering mind, of something once great and terrible carved open and laid bare. The abyss yawns before him, the void open and wide. Once he'd skim its surface, dancing and laughing and free - now he seeks only it's embrace, the oblivion which it promises as a final, lonely embrace.

The spectators turn away, or watch, Philza doesn't know - he just screams and screams and screams, helpless to what is happening, helpless against the shattering of an already fractured mind. He thinks he might see Rose's frowning in the grass around his knees - too late, too late, too late, and he would curse them if he had the throat left to form words at all.

But he doesn't, and so he screams.

The darkness fades from Forever's body only now, only too late. It trickles into the earth, corrupting instead the concrete beneath Forever.

The moss beneath the pair of them remains pristine.

Someone tries to pull Philza away - he hears Etoiles say something about an explosion - but he refuses. He refuses, he refuses, you will carve him from Forever or you will not seperate them at all. Bury him in the grave beside his confident, burn him on the pyre with his friend, leave their bodies entangled and deep and dark their remains.

Tubbo and Fit will look after his children - they don't need a broken husk for a father, after all.

He bends all the way down, now, pressing his face to Forever's chest. The blood there is red, red, red - still trickling from his back, but only as gravity pulls it away. Philza pays it no heed as he presses himself as close as he can.

Distantly he is aware of people being shepherded away, of whispers around him - it's a curse, it's a curse that even now his mind notices the movements, the threats, keeps plotting to keep him alive.

He doesn't want to live, not in a world without the sun.

He doesn't want to live, but his chest keeps on heaving anyway.

He doesn't want to live, but suspects he might be forced to anyway; hands peel him from Forever and force him against a solid chest, and this time he is powerless to stop them.

They let him keep Forever in his lap, at least, now cropped blonde hair bloody and draped across his thighs. His own black hair is stroked, and what can he do but continue his sobbing against Fit's chest as the world caves in?

The world remains suspended in time, a frozen mess only beating by Philza's sobs and tears. It drags and it shifts, and he is too far gone to recognise the vines which reach up, entwining around his limbs.

It's only when he hears the waystone that he looks up.

Blue eyes meet brown, and Philza throws himself at Forever.

Even after a respawn fuck only knows where Forever is weak, so weak. They both tumble to the floor, Philza's quick twist putting himself below the only thing saving Forever's head from the grown.

"You bastard!" His throat is too raw to scream, his sobbing back with full force and distorting everything he says. "You fucking dumbass! You- You- You fucking idiot why did you tell me you were okay?!"

"Hi Philza," Forever's words are rote and his smile is confused.

There's footsteps, heavy footsteps, and a potato canon pointed at the pair.

Philza twists again, shoving Forever behind himself, protecting him come what may.

"Sorry, Forever, but just need to check. Clothes off, and we need to see you bleed."

"Fit!" Forever struggles the full laughter or fake scandal, seemingly too weak to do more than lean against Philza's back. "I didn't know you were into that!"

Philza hates the option, he hates it so much, but Fit's right, Fit's absolutely right - they need to know.

"It's okay," Philza keeps his body between his friends, tears still quietly pouring as he cups Forever's cheek again. "I'll help you."

The "and all I needed to do was die" isn't nearly as obnoxious as either of them want it to be.

Gently Philza helps Forever strip. It's cold, and he shivers, and there's ugly burns on one shoulder and and ugly death-scar on his chest, but not a hint of the black infection from before.

The buttons on Forever's clothes are too complicated to easily redress him. Philza slips off his haori, and wraps it gently around him. Tucks the belt in an approximation of tied, and pulls Forever properly into his arms.

"Blood too," Fit says. "I'm sorry, but..."

"No, no, I understand," Forever whispers, even as Philza hisses.

He scrapes his hand through filthy gravel, tearing the skin in an absolute mess; Forever bleeds red, and Philza grabs his hand, already pouring a splash potion on it and picking out the gravel.

He can do this, he can do this, even if it's all he can do.

Behind them, Fit takes photos, a d relaxes.

"I'll let the others know," he promises. "Why don't you two get somewhere warm, eh?"

"I don't-" Forever begins.

"Let me show you somewhere special," Philza says. "I think you'll like it."

Even in the depths of hating himself for things he cannot help, Forever has never been able to say no to that.

The children are asleep in Rose's Garden. Philza won't wake them now, and especially not with Forever in tow. Now yet - reintroductions... they'll get there, they'll get there, just not today.

But the children are in Rose's Garden, and so the nest is free.

It's a little exposed, but the hay is warm and the blankets and pillows and clothes that make it up... And it's so far away from anywhere, so far from anyone who might panic and hurt Forever before there's been time to spread the news.

It's also home.

Philza will have to put Forever back on the bunker's allow lists, but in his heart he knows Forever will always be welcome in his home.

[momentofmemory]

FICTOBER 2020 - day twenty-five

Prompt #25: “Sometimes you can even see.”

Fandom: The Old Guard

Characters: Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani

Words: 1937

Author’s Note: In the aftermath of a rough mission and all the philosophical questions it entails, Joe takes Nile to the Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark. All pieces mentioned were displayed in the Objects of Wonder: From Pedestal to Interaction exhibit, which ran from Oct. 2019- March 2020. Nile POV.

>> the sweetness remains

Nile scrolls mindlessly through Pinterest, wishing for not the first time that she’d been allowed to recreate her socials.

Copley had barred her from practically all of the actually useful ones, but she’d bullied him down to just having an account on Pinterest, with the argument being that no one cared about the site. Granted, she doesn’t really want to be on Pinterest either, but sometimes the comfort of an app with infinite scroll is all she’s looking for in a distraction.

And right now, she really, really needs to be distracted.

Overly photoshopped cat pics.

Memes ripped straight from tumblr or twitter.

The most white girl aesthetic imaginable.

Three slugs ripping through her abdomen and spitting her liver out the other side—

Nile breathes in sharply. Exhales.

Her thumb resumes scrolling.

Photos of downtown that feel like home.

Recipes for harvest butternut squash soup.

Tips for keeping braids fresh longer.

Nile scrolls, and scrolls, and breathes.

Her abdomen still aches every time her lungs expand, even though she knows it really doesn’t. It’s perfectly healed; not even a scar for her troubles. But it’s hard to forget how her instincts had screamed that a gut shot like that shouldn’t be survivable, even as she pushed herself towards the next target.

(She didn’t survive it.)

(She didn’t survive the next half dozen times it happened, either.)

“Did that phone of yours do something to offend you?”

“Whoa!” Joe’s sudden appearance next to her only makes her clench her phone tighter. She forces out a laugh and eases the tension out of her fingers. “Feel like you should know better than to sneak up on someone that’s part of a bunch of immortal warriors.”

“Most of them would have caught me coming long before you did.”

Nile snorts. She scrolls a few more seconds, then closes the app and opens Temple Run. The game’s ridiculously old, but she’s a millennial. Sue her for being nostalgic.

She can feel Joe watching her as she starts the round.

“Am I correct in thinking you enjoy the arts, Nile?”

It’s not the question she was expecting, and she winds up tilting the screen to the left a half second late, and her character falls off the bridge.

It’s okay though, because she can just use a gem and respawn in the same place, so it’s basically like not dying at all.

Right?

“Uh, yeah,” she says. She winds up restarting the round entirely. “The military was supposed to pay for my degree, but I don’t think I can cash that if I’m technically KIA.”

“That would present a certain set of problems,” Joe agrees. “Andy talk to you about that?”

“Yeah.” Nile’s stomach twists. “Guess it depends on how easy it is to schedule classes between firefights.”

She’s practically laying the opening for a talk out herself, but Joe seems uninterested in taking it.

Instead, he shifts beside her, propping an elbow on his knee. “What kinds of art did you want to specialize in?”

She dies again. This time, she begrudgingly uses the in-game save. "I prefer classic sculpture, but I’m not against modern.”

“You like what was modern art for me, then.”

Nile rolls her eyes. “I dread the day I become as weird as you guys.”

He laughs, patting her on the shoulder as he stands. “I suspect by that time you’ll be too busy tormenting our next recruit. But unfortunately, the exhibit we’re going to will be more in the contemporary style.”

It takes Nile a half second to register his words. “Wait, what?”

“The description said it would be 1960s to the present only. If it suits you, we could hold off on our discussion of it for another thousand years or so. I’m sure we can claim it as classic at that point.”

“What?” Nile locks her phone and zeros her attention on him, registering the mischievous glint in his eyes this time. “Museum?”

“The Aarhus Art Museum has a special exhibit on loan from the Tate Modern at the moment.” He glances down at her phone, the corner of his mouth forming a grin. “I’m told its purpose is to help move its audience’s attention from their devices.”

Nile scowls and looks back down at her phone. “I died a dozen times yesterday. I’m allowed my coping mechanisms of choice.”

And.

Whoops.

“Of course you are,” Joe says, offering his hand to her, and she’s once again surprised he doesn’t force the conversation. “But phones are portable. You can take it with you to the museum.”

Nile worries at the edge of her lip with her teeth. She doesn’t really want to go anywhere right now, but…

But Joe’s brown eyes are warm and welcoming, and his callouses help steady her when she takes his hand.

“You said contemporary sculpture?”

The grin he gives her is blinding. “For now.”

_________________

It’s a twenty-five minute drive from their safe house to the museum, and the route takes them next to the Bay of Aarhus for most of it.

Nile stares out at the water, determined to not give Joe any more ammunition for making fun of her regarding her phone.

It’s hard. She’d never considered herself a technology addict—never had enough time to be one—but she really, really wants to stop thinking about the fact that she knows what the inside of her liver looks like.

Or did look like, she guesses.

Nope, nuh-uh, not going there—

“D'you know about the Ship of Theseus?” She spits it out before she can decide against it. She figures if she’s thinking about it, she might as well talk about it. “And don’t say you were there for it. You’re not Andy and I at least know enough about you to know when you’re lying.”

The grin on his face tells her that he was very much intending to before she called him out on it. “It’s a thought experiment. The character Theseus owns a ship that, over a long span of time, has all of its parts replaced, until nothing of the original still remains.”

“Yeah, and so then the question is, is it even the same ship,” Nile finishes.

Joe weaves in and out of traffic, a pensive look on his face. “I assume you aren’t asking simply to test my knowledge of early western philosophy.”

“No.”

Nile looks down at her hands. She can still remember how horrifically mangled they were from her impromptu dive off a skyscraper, but at least—at least she’s pretty sure they’re the same ones she had before.

Though that might not last long.

“In your opinion,” she says, cautiously, “if—if there’s nothing left of the original—if you have to rebuild something that many times—”

“Nile.” The sound of the car’s turn signal distracts her spiraling thoughts. Joe nods towards the windshield. “We’re here.”

It’s a large, red brick square building, fairly nondescript but for the circular and multi-colored glass walking track at its top.

“Come on, he says, parking the car. “I find physical objects superior to mental ones for solving such issues.”

Nile doesn’t understand why the one time she wants to talk about something like this is the one time Joe decides to go full mysterious.

She climbs out of the car and follows him inside.

Despite her misgivings, she quickly discovers Joe was right. The exhibit is genuinely incredible, and there are pieces from multiple names she recognizes—Anish Kapoor, Donald Judd, Rasheed Araeen—and pieces she finds herself strangely moved by, such as Damian Hirst’s Away from the Flock, Richard Long’s Red Slate Circle, Rachel Whiteread’s Airbed II. Nile stares at that last one in particular for a long time: a concrete casting of an airbed, the artist’s presence made known in the negative space where her body had pressed the material down.

Joe, however, seems to be moving with a specific purpose in mind, and it’s not until they round one of the walls of the orange-pink room that Nile has a guess as to what it is.

In the far corner, bathed in the additional light of a single fill light, is a massive pile of multicolored cellophane wrapped hard candies.

Joe walks her over to it, an almost reverence to his steps.

“Untitled: Portrait of Ross in LA,” he says. “Are you familiar with the piece?”

She shakes her head, bending down to inspect it. It doesn’t look like much more than what she’d seen from a distance—candy, multicolored, on the floor. She looks to Joe for an explanation.

“Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s partner died from AIDS,” Joe says. The grief on his face is hard to look at. “To honor him, he made this as a portrait—one hundred and seventy-five pounds of candy, representing Ross’s weight from when he was still healthy.”

Nile looks at the pile—it’s a lot, but it’s not a hundred and seventy-five pounds worth of a lot.

Joe notices her confusion and smiles. “Take one.”

“What?”

“Take one,” he repeats. “The purpose of the work is to invite you to partake in both enjoying his presence and lamenting the lack of it. A sort of communion—choosing to take part of his body into your own. It was a powerful statement when so many were afraid to even be in our presence at the time.”

Nile looks at the pile again, and just like with Airbed II, her heart aches at what isn’t there, rather than what is. She selects a red piece and brings it out of the pile, cupping it in her hand and considering its weight.

“What happens when it runs out?”

Joe selects his own piece—a green one—and it rolls around in the palm of his hand. “It has. Many times. But that’s the beauty of it—it’s the curator’s responsibility to replenish the pile, metaphorically granting immortality and new life to the loss.”

The cellophane crinkles in Nile’s hand as she unwraps the piece. “How do they decide where to get the candy from?”

“The only firm rule is the original weight. Outside of that, there are no set instructions for the candies themselves.” He chuckles, threading his fingers behind his neck and leaning back against the wall. “Sometimes you can even see these strange combinations of greens, oranges, and purples.”

Nile considers the candy. “Not your favorite?”

“It has an almost Halloween quality to it. I tend to prefer the rainbow.”

The candy in her hand feels heavier than it did before—weighed down with the knowledge of what it represents, what it’s taking away.

She slips the candy into her mouth and her eyebrows raise in surprise. “It’s sweet?”

“It’s candy,” Joe says, unwrapping his own piece. “Did you expect something else?”

“I thought it’d be…” She pauses, trying to parse out her feelings. “Bitter. Or sad, somehow. Considering.”

“It could have been,” Joe agrees. “But the portrait isn’t meant to represent just grief and loss. Candy is a happy thing—a reward for yourself, or a lover’s gift on Valentine’s. And even when it’s gone, the sweetness remains. Still lingering on the tongue, or dwelling in the mind. It is the love of friends and partners that keeps the memory alive—and what keeps this the same portrait, even though its pieces have been cycled through many times.”

The candy melts away on her tongue, and she closes her eyes in grief for its loss, appreciation for what it was, and hope for the pieces that would come after it.

She swallows the last piece of it down.

Her stomach settles.

[tranxendance]

Westworld Spoilercast Rebuttal

So I made the thing because I feel like Woolie on the super best friendcast dismissed a lot of things that were good, and latched on to a few things that were bad and that seems to have ruined his experience. Readmore because I wrote a lot. Singlequotes are Woolie’s paraphrased remarks from the spoilercast video.

'Maeve has to take human hostages to get done what she wants done'

Sylvester was sympathetic and went along with it willingly. The other tech guy whose name I forget didn't believe Maeve was awoken UNTIL she started issuing threats.

'Fear for their lives, then punch off the clock, go home...and come back into being a hostage'

There's no going home from westworld island, everyone lives on-site. Again, they weren't really hostages despite being threatened by Maeve at times.

'So then you have to account for human incompetence'

Yes, Woolie, a main part of why the hosts managed to become awoken in the first place is that all these people want to keep their lucrative jobs and put up the big numbers and at every level we're shown people that want to keep their status by sweeping actual problems under the rug.

'The dumbest part is soldiers with guns coming in and seeing robots shooting people and yelling PUT IT DOWN'

Maybe. When hosts started acting up before, they always would just shout “freeze all motor functions” and it worked.

'These future soldiers with body armor and machineguns and ATVs are getting killed by dudes on horses with revolvers' 'You can say they've been modified, but we don't see that at all'

There's arguments on both sides here, I think removing the limiters to not kill, and not stop functioning when you take a human-like level of damage did this, but we aren't explicitly shown it, so maybe. Also, for the time being there's a lot LESS of the human mercenaries than there are hosts in these battles, and even then the hosts take big losses.

'They have the humans with machineguns walking into range of the people with the shit guns and dropping dead' (at the fort battle)

But the humans won that battle...like, they clearly trounced the Hosts, and this was by design so that they'd get in range of the Nitro trap. Them walking forward slowly and shooting is a little odd maybe instead of taking coolguy tactical covering positions but the end result would've been the same of them winning and then getting blown the fuck up as they're finishing off the confederados outside the walls. This is probably like a fight choreography fail because HBO likes to skimp on this sort of thing for some reason.

'Maeve going through her problems, she can literally wave her hands and make the problems go away'

Except Maeve wakes hosts only willingly. She does this for Akane who rejects her offer. She says later that she uses her powers to make hostile hosts kill each other because by attacking her 'they made their choice'. A bit weak of a justification? Maybe, but if she didn't and just forced everyone to obey her she'd be the same character as Dolores

'They take a completely useless detour to samurai world'

This whole thing was intended to show another, mostly still functioning park running with the same rules as westworld was. There are zero humans left in shogun world, and it's pretty much been left to its own devices and hosts are living their own lives and making their own stories even without human intervention. We needed to see Shogun World not just because it's cool, but to demonstrate that the hosts absolutely don't need humans in order to affirm their humanity.

'Ha ha, i've cut off my men's ears so they can't hear your commands'

Well yeah, but the actor also gestures to give his men orders, so the verbal part of his orders are probably just for the audience. If I was him I definitely would've agreed on a couple of gestures that mean certain things, and they definitely were planning on taking Maeve captive before this, so it seems obvious to me they woud've agreed that 'a sweeping arm gesture' means to take them away. Not really a plothole, just a tv-thing that Woolie is reading too much into.

'There's never really a concrete reasoning why (Delores says) some hosts can be free or not'

He's right, there isn't. Delores is kind of a psychopath and is promising these hosts freedom knowing that she's going to be sacrificing all but 5 of them. It's classic cult leader shit. If you work real hard and kill lots of humans for me you too can be saved. it's a lie she feeds them to justify to them why she kills some and uses others for her own ends and so on.

'Seeing the symbol (awakes hosts) but there's also this ear worm of 'violent delights bring violent ends''

The Maze is a host-created symbol that helps other hosts awaken. The spoken command was created by Bernard to unlock hosts' ability to kill humans. While it's not clear if the maze-awakening also gives you the ability to kill humans and those awakened hosts simply did not do so, or if they needed the secondary command before they could. Non-awoken hosts that get the verbal command usually just become tools of Delores.

'There's a whole thing of hearing the inner voice and realizing 'this is me' but the guy that did that to Delores just walks up and sees the wood carving and goes 'I hear the voice' skipping all that'

Bernard spends two seasons getting pushed around to develop his struggle, and mistakes the Ford-voice for not being himself for awhile.

'Delores has the godlike ability to modify people with an Ipad' 'She reprograms Teddy to be a super accurate killer assassin dude' 'And basically has the ability to nullify all of her problems by keeping this ipad around'

Can't reprogram humans. Teddy rejected his changes and was driven to suicide. I'd say human soldiers are Delores' biggest problem, not other hosts, and that it's not the magic bullet she thought it was since Teddy ended up killing himself because of it. Also they go over the point over and over again that having backups or any ability to come back from death or be modified makes you not human in her eyes. Like, this was a major plot point and reasoning for why Delores does most of the things she does, you can't have missed this. She realizes around this time that open conflict is not going to win her freedom, and that having respawning, perfectly accurate shooting host army will eventually get overrun by a larger military force when it comes to the island so she swaps over to commando raids and ultimately wins by stealth.

'Mwaha, can't wait to kill you, ms. main character' and it cuts back to her on the gurney 'ooh you're gonna get it someday' 'Four or five episodes go by of just her lying on a table' 'Then she just decides i'm gonna take control of these dead bodies that are in here and free myself' 'She could've done it at any time and had to do it at this moment because the plot required it'

Maeve is extending her consciousness to other bodies this whole time and even listens to Akecheta's story through her daughter. After she's gathered all the information she can and knows there's somewhere she can escape to, and the six or so hosts in her control range can fight off the small amount of humans between her and freedom, only then does she enact her escape plan. 'Then they're in the cradle and a human soldier comes in to stop the hosts from destroying it but ther'es like a sexy host in there' 'Why do they care about the host-backups?'

They care about protecting the host backups because Ford is in there, and I think it's a big investment of dollars for Delos. The leader of the merc guys getting a boner and losing is pretty weird though, I don't know how to defend this one. Guess it was the moment of the villain gloating because he thinks he won? This moment is in fact kind of goofy.

'Why are we keeping a bunch of guest data? They never really explain why they're keeping all this stuff'

Because having multiple personalities 'vet' an incoming copy for fidelity and having real people's personalities to test with is valuable to creating more copies. Bernard was created by other people’s recollections of how Arnold was, after all. It's also not said but in the original westworld movie, they made robot copies of politicians and powerful people and replaced them. So this is a tie-in to the old movie or novel as well.

'Bernard has zero agency as a character'

But this whole thing of people pushing him around, using him for their ends, hurting him emotionally was the suffering he needed to awaken. You questioned this yourself earlier. Bernard is the most important character because the whole thing of him starting to make decisions on his own is what starts all of this stuff off. He decides to scramble himself so he'll be unhelpful to the humans when they force him to cooperate with them. He decides to do all these things and justify it to himself as it being Ford's programming, but that was his internal voice of him awakening.

'They are building up some secret about the man in black, there's something about him they're holding back' 'The story's not telling us what it is'

Sure it does. You got tricked. You thought that the secret was just what we the audience already knew, that TMIB is a bad person that pretends to be a good guy and that ruined his family life. But it's actually that TMIB was a host for most of season 2, and a lot of the violence and awfulness was him on his loop.

'And then there's this moment of sacrifice where this guy decides to sacrifice himself in this big blaze of glory'

Yeah, Lee had a redemption arc, to prove that some humans can change, even if the majority of us will remain violent selfish assholes as a matter of human nature. His actual sacrifice while shouting the lines he wrote is a little odd, but I got it that he was just trying to buy as much time as possible, deliberately shooting to miss to keep the Delos mercs' heads down and listening to him, and that they keep trying to talk him down because he's clearly not even killing any of them. Unspoken, but that's what I thought during this.

'They've taken the one that they put the power (To make all the other hosts kill each other) and put her on a horse, thus locking her to a slow horse speed'

Except everyone else in universe thinks that too, and they kill her, only for the rate of infection to keep going, and maybe even faster since now it's being passed up the line from host to host as well and her individual proximity doesn't matter after she infected one of them.

'There's all these things in the opening (...) But robirth never happens'

What about the ending when Delores in Tessa Thompson's body remakes people's bodies on the outside of the park?

'This dude, William, takes six shots to the body and manages to not only be fine but shoot armed soldiers'

He takes six shots and dies, and is made into a host-human hybrid. Future space medicine couldn't save him at that point.

'And the torture of being that paranoid apparently wasn't bad enough?'

No, clearly not, because William is a sociopath. He begins to believe that people shouldn't come back from the dead, and sort of stops trying to make the James Delos hybrid. The thing he would hate the most would be to be brought back to life, over and over, just like is father-in-law that he's had to watch breakdown and go insane over and over again, and there he is, now a hybrid himself.

I feel like Woolie missed a lot of things, or had a hate boner for it and dismissed things when he shouldn't. Such as the really (to my mind) obvious and strong differentiation between Maeve and Delores, where Delores takes, but Maeve asks. And she says things like 'I'm doing what I have to do to make it out' and in the end she's the only one that makes it out. Or downplaying Lee's redemption arc, or saying Bernard has no agency when he's the one that causes most of these things to happen, and the voice of Ford is actually his own thoughts. Him calling Shogunworld 'fanservice' hurts me the most because seeing a mostly functioning park post-disaster and having these hosts living their lives and making their own stories without any human interference was one of the most interesting things for me.