People Are Like "if You Put Crabs In A Bucket They Can't Escape Because They Keep Pulling Each Other

people are like "if you put crabs in a bucket they can't escape because they keep pulling each other back in, this is called crab bucket mentality and describes why people don't help each other" and never acknowledge that crabs do not naturally occur in buckets, a human with more power had to put them there

Hellsing & Vulnerability: Alt. How Sad is Alucard?

Gentlemen… I am a nerd.

Case in point: during my lunch breaks, instead of surfing Facebook—something I save for the comfort of my couch—I am on the TED talks website. Nothing makes my day like learning something new; I would take infinite college courses if they didn’t cost a dime, no matter how stressful the workload would be. Give me a lecture on anthropology or ancient history and I am happy as a lark.

Recently, my lunchtime lecture was given by self-proclaimed researcher-storyteller Brené Brown. It was entitled “The Power of Vulnerability”, and I highly recommend you view it [link here], if you’re interested in human nature like I am. Anyway, so I’m sitting there, half-reclined with the door to my classroom locked and fully engrossed in both the video and the sandwich in my hand, when it hits me. I’ve heard of inspiration washing over people like a wave, but when I get it, it’s like an arrow straight to my brain: sudden, unexpected, and I can’t think of much else afterwards.

My brain sent a single thought through my head, one that made me stop chewing and run it through two or three times to make sure I’d heard it right: Alucard’s greatest fear is vulnerability.

Emotionally, that is.

Well, wait, I countered myself, taking another bite of my sandwich. Who isn’t afraid of vulnerability? It’s sort of a given: we don’t want to let anyone else—who can do harm—into the deepest, most secretive part of our souls. But then, as I thought more, I realized that although we as humans try to hide it, vulnerability also has a little habit of sneaking through.

Humans, as a species, are amazing. My favorite thing to learn about is universal experience. For example, all nations seem to have the odd occurrence where a child’s father tells corny jokes that often fall flat, but are funny because they fall flat. But dad jokes aside, universal experience bleeds into vulnerability like pink on a white dress. You don’t have to know someone’s language to know that they’re smiling because they’re happy, or covering their eyes and cowering because they’re afraid. Body language, facial expression, the look in their eyes—it all goes without saying, no matter who you are or where you’re from. Isn’t that amazing???!

(Clears throat) Since I was supposed to be talking about Hellsing, I’ll use an example from the manga/OVA. Also—do I even have to mention spoilers at this point? It should be assumed, but even so: spoilers!

The scene I’m thinking about is not Alucard, but rather his master. When Walter shows up on the streets of London, dressed in conveniently found leather and sporting some impressive age reducing cream, everyone is astounded. Seras gasps dramatically, Alucard smiles like he always does, the Iscariots go “No, no, don’t step there!” collectively. But what always got me was Integra’s reaction. Not immediately, though she does kind of waste her nicotine on the bloody ground, but afterwards, when Alucard asks her what he’s supposed to do—kind of. That one page became one of my absolute favorites in the manga, and it’s an excellent jumping point for our talk about vulnerability.

Hellsing & Vulnerability: Alt. How Sad Is Alucard?

See, Hirano didn’t have to say “Oh, she’s super sad. That was her butler and kind of her second dad and now he’s thrown their relationship away to fight another dick also dressed up in leather”. He didn’t need to say it. She says it all without a word in edgewise about it: clenched fists, watery eyes, a tightness in her stance that suggests fighting back tears… she’s in despair. When you see a panel like this, it’s all too easy to remember that she’s a young 20+ woman who just lost the last person she could theoretically call family.

Heartbreaking, but what’s my point? Think about it. She was in the middle of a war, her house is on fire, vampires are trying to bite her, she was unofficially kidnapped and held hostage by a bunch of weirdos working for the Vatican, and she remains calm and cool. Her breaking point only comes when something cuts her to the core, something that she can’t deal with without instantly having to fight against the tears that would show everyone—enemies included— “hey, I’m hurting emotionally, I really need comfort and reassurance.”

POINT #1: Vulnerability shows when a person feels a pain so great that it strikes a chord within their soul. Remember it, bookmark it: it’ll come back up later.

Another big thing, that I didn’t really think about until Mrs. Brown touched on it, was that the only people who don’t feel shame are the ones who lack the ability to connect empathetically with others. Now, I know you just read that and thought “Wait, weren’t we talking about vulnerability?”, but trust me on this. It’s just another point I’m making.

Now, let me ask you this: What is the defining term between the words psychopath and sociopath? Most people put them on the same lines, but there’s a major, major difference. That term is conscience. Psychopaths lack a conscience. They feel no sense of right or wrong about what they do. They can’t connect with others. Sociopaths, according to experts, have a weak conscience. They feel guilt or remorse, but it’s not strong enough to guide their hand like it might be in the average person’s mind.

Now, Mrs. Brown found in her research that the underlying cause for shame, for people saying ‘I’m not ___ enough, I don’t deserve love or happiness” is excruciating vulnerability. The people who were ashamed of themselves were also afraid to let their inner selves show to the world. And the only people who don’t feel shame are psychopaths, who lack empathetical connections with others.

Point #2: Sociopaths can feel shame; therefore, they can feel vulnerable. You can probably see where I’m going at this point, right?

Last point: Mrs. Brown, in her findings, talked about something called “numbing vulnerability”. She talked about how humans will try to numb the emotions that they don’t like or agree with, the ones that cause them pain or go against what they consider their morality. Think of monks and nuns giving up pleasures for devotion, that sort of thing. But humans can’t just numb things that make them suffer. When they do, it starts numbing other things, too. You can get rid of shame, of guilt, disappointment, but at what cost? Joy, gratitude, happiness.

POINT #3: Those who chose to fight against vulnerability, become miserable.

Think of the London Blitz, or as I call it: manga catharsis. Everyone—Iscariot, Hellsing, Millennium: they all blew up, shot a man or two, got their emotions out, and if they lived they went on with their lives. SAY THAT I’M WRONG. Out of all the people that could have cried their eyes out there, which one of them did? (looks at camera like the office) Which one of them had a complete screaming, crying meltdown and showed a surprising amount of true vulnerability to a dying man as well as like, fifty other people who were just kind of hanging back and watching it all play out?

It wasn’t Seras, I’ll tell you that much. T_T;

Let’s take our three main points and apply them to the 600-year-old… uh… guy.

Point 1: Why did he have that fit in the first place? Catharsis, I tell you! Anyway, he was angry at Anderson for becoming a… plant thing dude. Ugly. He was mad at Anderson for turning ugly. (coughs) But if we take that point into thought, Anderson’s ugliness—okay, the nail loophole—cut him so deeply that it struck a chord within him, and he couldn’t help but rant and rave against what had happened. And, we can assume that unlike Integra, it went so deeply that he couldn’t stop the tears in time. Why? Because—and this is a bit of conjecture, but I think I can safely say—what Anderson did hit on a source of deep shame for Alucard, shame that he hadn’t been strong enough, brave enough, whatever enough to stay a human and instead became a vampire.

Summation: Alucard has the ability to feel emotions, and these can be forceful enough to provoke a reaction from him.

Point 2: Alucard is, I believe, a sociopath. Prevalent more in the manga, and subtle in the anime/OVA, he does appear to have the ability to connect with others. In the manga, he’s seen joking around with Walter, teaming up with Seras to tease Integra, getting along with Pip in a business-like way, and you can even go so far to say that he has an—albeit unhealthy—connection with both Anderson and the Major. Of course, it’s sometimes possible for people to fake these connections, but I don’t think that’s the case BECAUSE of his breakdown in London.

As stated earlier, to feel shame and vulnerability, to be burdened with emotional pain, is a sign of someone who has morality and can form relationships. Now, that’s not saying he’s a good guy—not at all. As a sociopath, any emotion he feels that gets in the way of his ultimate goal is easily ignored. He might feel guilt, shame, pain, or remorse for his actions, but he simply chooses to do it anyway and probably doesn’t bother to consider it more than a minute or two.

Another example is his and Seras’s little spat in the hotel room. She argues that the people he killed are humans, innocent of anything other than following orders. He shouts at her, yanking her up by the collar and yelling in her face. Then, when she starts to cry, he puts her back down and is more subdued. Now, there’s two ways I look at this: firstly, his expression when he sees her tears. He looks, in the OVA at least, almost shocked that she’s crying, and then seems to rethink his actions. Now, he wasn’t rethinking the killing, per say, but instead he felt something about making her cry. This leads back into the ability to make connections. He felt—bad?—about her tears, so he promptly stopped the offending action and reformed his behavior to something more acceptable: a quieter tone, placing her back on the floor, backing away to give her space. A psychopath wouldn’t care that he’d made her cry, having no emotional connection to her. But Alucard cared enough to stop the behavior, which means that he cared enough about her to at least think “I should not be doing this to this person. Let’s stop and do something else.”

Summation: Per the clinical definition of a sociopath, Alucard has the ability to both make meaningful connections with others. Whether he makes those connections or not is up to him.

Point 3: Throughout the manga/OVA, a close observer can see Alucard fighting against himself—and his emotions. When he dreams about his demise at the hands of van Helsing, he cries in his sleep. However, upon waking he is apathetic about the experience, dismissing it as “a dream; it was nothing”. He feels disgust and anger when a guard kills himself, rather than let Alucard rip him apart while alive. He speaks out against monsters “like me[himself]”, pleading with Anderson to stay human even if it costs him his life. He demeans himself at different times, often in soliloquy or as an undertone to a sentence.

This provokes the question: Does Alucard consider himself worthy of happiness? The answer is probably no, he does not. He shows himself to be very self-critical of his past choices, although he accepts all of them for what they are. However, instead of learning from his past and starting over a new leaf, he remains on the same path of death and destruction. One can assume that he might feel trapped by his own actions, unable to rise up and overcome to begin life anew. This might be why he waits for someone to kill him—a punishment that would, ultimately, free him. This would be a miserable, endless existence, one of self-loathing and an eternal feeling that he is, and always will be, beyond any sort of redemption.

Summation: Alucard’s shame and constant fighting against his own emotions has caused him to turn bitter against the world, as his existence is a cold, bleak realm of misery.

Now for the (deep, echoing voice)

REALM OF OPINIONS:

If all of the above is true, and can be said about Alucard, here is what I think. Alucard would view his vulnerability as something weak and useless, to be despised and ignored for as long as possible. In short, I think that he would consider vulnerability to be something wholly

human

, and that as a monster he has neither need nor inclination for exposing that side to others. As a human, he was taken at a young age and abused, which set the foundations for what would have otherwise been a happy, healthy adulthood. Surely as a prisoner of the sultan, any weakness would have been mortifying to show to his captors. Even now, as a servant to the Hellsing Organization and British Empire, he would feel it better to hide any emotion that he truly felt behind a mask, so that they could have no ammunition to use against him if the time arose. This does not, however, stop him from at the very least forming a social bond with a few select people, even if they remain outside the field of acquaintances. It is shown through the manga, anime, and OVA that although he walks with both feet in the lawless side of existence, he has the ability to be polite, civilized, work with others, be a teacher, understand the implications of his actions, tease others, even laugh and cry. Despite hating the human part of himself, it is still a core element of his being. I leave you now with questions and thoughts: you are more than welcome to continue the discussion in the comments, PM me, reblog, etc. In fact, if you liked this read, please reblog it so that others can see as well! If Alucard can feel vulnerable, what other situations might he willingly/unwillingly show it? Men are automatically expected by society to be more aloof and emotionless than women, though it is not the case in the slightest. How might this also play a factor in Alucard’s psyche? Is this another part of the reason he loathes himself?If he were ever willing to step back and take a look at himself, or even go to therapy, how would that affect his behavior? As a sociopath, would he make a willing change, or would therapy only further complicate things?

I also want to do a talk that’s more about my fanfiction side of things, which will be coming up VERY soon. I hope you enjoyed! Please let me know what you think! I leave you now, with a quote from the TED Talk that Mrs. Brown gave, that I think sums it up nicely.

But there’s another way, and I’ll leave you with this. This is what I have found: To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen … to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee — and that’s really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that’s excruciatingly difficult — to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we’re wondering, “Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?” just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, “I’m just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive."

508 notes View Post

j-drawings

6 years ago

The ONLY WAY to combat the lack of funding in arts education is for professionals to take a few hours a week to share their skills for FREE, to empower and encourage the next generation of artists. THIS IS WHAT THE INTERNET IS FOR. Here’s 200 tutorials:

How to draw ANGRY EXPRESSIONS How to draw BATTLE DAMAGE How to draw BIRD HEADS How to draw BOOKS How to draw BOTTLES and GLASSES How to draw BOXES How to draw BREAKING GLASS How to draw BRICKWORK How to draw CABLES and WIRES How to draw CAR CHASES How to draw CATERPILLAR TRACKS How to draw CAVES How to draw CHARACTERS (3-SHAPES) How to draw CHARACTERS (FLIPPED-SHAPES) How to draw CHARACTER SHAPES How to draw CITYSCAPES How to draw COMIC COVERS How to draw COMPOSITION How to draw CONTRAST How to draw CONVERSATIONS How to draw CREATURE TEETH How to draw CROSS-CONTOURS How to draw DETAIL AT DISTANCE How to draw EARS How to draw FABRIC How to draw FEET & SHOES How to draw FEMALE HANDS PART ONE How to draw FEMALE HANDS PART TWO How to draw FLAGS How to draw FOOD TRUCKS How to draw FOREGROUND MIDGROUND BACKGROUND How to draw GAME BUILDINGS How to draw GEMS and CRYSTALS How to draw GHOSTS How to draw GIRL’S HAIR How to draw GOLD How to draw GRASS How to draw HAIR (1940s styles) How to draw HAIR IN MOTION How to draw HAPPY EXPRESSIONS How to draw HEAD ANGLES How to draw HOOVES How to draw HORNS How to draw HORSE HEADS How to draw IMPACT DEBRIS How to draw IN 3D How to draw INTEGRATING LOGOS How to draw INTERIOR BASICS How to draw IN-WORLD TYPOGRAPHY How to draw JUMPS How to draw JUNGLE PLANT CLUSTERS How to draw JUNK HOUSES How to draw LAMP POSTS How to draw LAVA How to draw LIGHTNING and ELECTRICITY How to draw MECHANICAL DETAILS How to draw MUSHROOMS and FUNGUS How to draw MONSTER HEADS How to draw MONSTER TENTACLES How to draw MONSTER TRUCKS How to draw MOUNTAINS How to draw NEGATIVE SPACE How to draw NEWSPAPERS How to draw NOSES How to draw OVERGROWN VEGETATION How to draw PEBBLES AND GRAVEL How to draw PERSPECTIVE BOXES How to draw PIGS How to draw PILLOWS and CUSHIONS How to draw POD HOUSES How to draw POURING LIQUID How to draw ROBOT ARMS How to draw ROCK FORMATIONS How to draw RUNNING FIGURES How to draw SAND How to draw SAUSAGE DOGS How to draw SEA WEED How to draw SHADOW COMPOSITION How to draw SHOULDER ARMOUR How to draw SIEGE WEAPONS How to draw SILHOUETTE THUMBNAILS How to draw SMALL FLAMES How to draw SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE How to draw SMOKE EFFECTS How to draw SNOW How to draw SPACE BIKES How to draw SQUIRRELS How to draw STICK FIGURES How to draw SWORD FIGHTS How to draw THE HORIZON How to draw TIKI STATUES How to draw TREASURE CHESTS How to draw TREE BARK How to draw TREE ROOTS How to draw USING THE SHATTER TECHNIQUE How to draw VEHICLE STANCE How to draw VINES How to draw VINTAGE PLANES How to draw WATER How to draw WOODEN HOUSES

46K notes View Post

j-drawings

4 years ago

Cheat Sheets for Writing Body Language

We are always told to use body language in our writing. Sometimes, it’s easier said than written. I decided to create these cheat sheets to help you show a character’s state of mind. Obviously, a character may exhibit a number of these behaviours. For example, he may be shocked and angry, or shocked and happy. Use these combinations as needed.

by Amanda Patterson

360K notes View Post

j-drawings

4 years ago

an author i love just tweeted about how “big joy and small joy are the same” and how she was just as content the other night eating chocolate and cuddling her dog as she was on her Big Trip to new york and honestly. i think that’s it. this morning i was listening to an audiobook while baking shortbread in my joggers and i realised i really didn’t care what Big Things happened in my future as long as i could keep baking and reading at the weekend and maybe that is the kind of bar we have to set to guard ourselves against disappointment. just appreciate and cherish the mundane stuff and see everything else as a bonus.

183K notes View Post

j-drawings

4 years ago

It starts like this:

Cody stops dead in the middle of the hall, passkey tumbling from his fingers to clatter on the deck. Everything is grey and white and grim, and his armor is white white white without any markings at all. There’s an ache in his brain, a tremble in his hands, and not even the mercy of momentary amnesia to blunt the realization of what he’s done.

He remembers, vivid, vicious, the way it felt to take aim at Obi-Wan, the way he pulled the trigger. Remembers the fall, the look of surprise, the satisfaction. Remembers, too clear, what happened on the planet below just this morning, and the Rebel cell they put down, leaving no survivors.

There were children down there, he thinks, and feels sick to his stomach when before he’d only felt vague distaste.

Cody doesn’t know what happened. Doesn’t understand. There was the Emperor’s voice, the order—execute traitorous commanding officers, reliant on Palpatine’s verbal command alone—but…he doesn’t know how that became kill the Jedi, all the Jedi.

The 501st marched on the Temple. The 501stmurdered every child in the crèche.

Cody staggers, knees giving way. He stumbles into the wall, grabbing desperately for something to hold him on his feet, but there’s nothing. His stomach turns, and bile bubbles in the back of his throat as his vision wavers towards darkness.

Hells, but what have they done?

Instinct more than willpower pushes him back to his feet, gets him standing even as the world lurches. Cody thinks of his men, of the rest of the 212th, and has to swallow hard. He took casualty counts after they stormed the Rebel base. He saw the list of numbers marking the men who died, and all he felt was satisfaction at an operation successfully executed. No care for those under his command, his brothers. No thought for the lives cut short as anything other than statistics. And—it was him, it was him and Cody knows that, but what the hell was he even thinking? What was he doing? How could any part of him take that, accept that, and not even bother to spare a moment to grieve?

Cody’s breath hitches hard in his chest, not a sob but a close cousin, all tangled up with horror and remorse. All he has is slow-burn anger, the hotter burn of tears behind his eyes, and he aches.

His general is dead. His general is dead because Cody killed him, and Cody has spent the last two years serving an empire that declared every Jedi a traitor and burned the Republic to the ground.

A sob breaks through the quiet of the night-shift ship, loud and ragged and desperate, but it’s not from Cody’s throat. His head snaps up, and in an instant he’s moving, practically running down the corridor and around the next bend of the hall. There’s a figure in featureless armor slumped in the middle of the walkway, and Cody has one horrifying second where he can’t tell who it is. He looks and he doesn’t know, because the blank white armor is nothing but plastoid,

not even a hint of paint to set it apart from every other trooper on the ship. Hands are scrabbling at the helmet, hauling it off, but even that doesn’t help. Regulation haircut, no tattoos—they’re not allowed them, aren’t allowed any marks of individuality. Or maybe they just don’t want them, and that’s a thousand times more chilling to consider.

But—

But.

That gasping breath, that hitched sob. Cody remembers, because he’s the one who had to deliver the news of Waxer’s death in friendly fire. He’s the one who sat up for night after night, letting his brother cry into his shoulder, shaking, broken.

“Boil,” he says, and Boil chokes, shakes.

“We—we killed them,” he says, ragged, ruined, and Cody closes his eyes, reaches out. Hauls Boil in, clutching him close like he did after Waxer’s death, and tries not to think about how Boil’s face is just like every other clone’s, indistinct and unremarkable. How, ten minutes before, Cody would have thought of him by his CT number and seen nothing wrong with it, and Boil would have answered without so much as a second thought.

Cody doesn’t who which them Boil means. There have been far too many bodies left behind these last two years, too many victims. Too many Jedi, and Cody wants to shake, wants to curl up with Boil somewhere dark and hunker down until this all fades away, until they wake up, until it’s all a dream and it’s not real.

“Yeah, vod,” he says, and the name is unfamiliar on his tongue after two years without speaking it, clumsy and rough and half-forgotten. No brothers, in the Empire. Just soldiers. “We did.”

“It was us,” Boil whispers. “It was us but it wasn’t.”

There was something. Something that changed them. Not a lot. Not enough to take away memories or thoughts or training. But—they faded, after Order 66. They conformed. They let their generals and admirals do the thinking, took orders, followed them. there was nothing left of the individuals behind the identical faces, and no trace of the desire to find them.

Maybe that’s the most insidious thing of all. Whatever controlled them, it stripped away all thought of wanting to be people and not just weapons to be aimed and fired.

“Kriff,” Cody breathes, and digs his fingers into Boil’s hair. Sits back on his knees, lightheaded, and realizes that he’s shaking. He’s trembling, so hard he couldn’t aim a blaster even if he was pressing it against the side of his own head. And—maybe that’s a more tempting thought than it’s ever been. Maybe he would try, if he didn’t have Boil in his arms, coming apart.

Boil’s gauntlets scrape the plastoid of Cody’s armor, dig in. The sound that shatters out of is throat is almost a laugh, and he buries his face in Cody’s throat.

“Never heard you swear before, sir,” he manages.

Cody chokes on a breath, breathes out something that might be a chuckle in a kinder universe. “I was saving it,” he says, “for a time when it felt right.”

No need to say that that time is now. It’s obvious. So clearly, achingly obvious.

Boil’s words break into a sob before he can even get them out, and he digs his fingers into Cody’s armor like he’s going to try and claw his way through. “Waxer,” he breathes. “Waxer would shoot me himself, with what we did. He’d have executed me.”

Cody wants to argue, wants to protest. Waxer was kind. He was the kindest soul Cody ever met. But—

He thinks of Waxer, and then he thinks of Rex. Rex, lost during the Siege of Mandalore, dead and burned and gone, but if he could see Cody now—

Cody wouldn’t even deserve the mercy of a quick death, but Rex would probably give it to him anyway. And Cody wouldn’t even try to protest, knowing—everything.

It wasn’t them, but it was.

Cody doesn’t know what changed them, has even less of an idea what changed them back. But there was a change, there was something, and he knows it, feels it, sees it.

They’ve got their names back, and even if it’s much too little and far too late, they’re going to have to make the most of it.

(Or maybe it starts like this:

There’s a storm outside lashing the windows, but there’s always a storm on Kamino. There’s blood on the floor of the lab, a body, but Te Tinu can’t feel regret, can’t feel remorse. Not for this, not ever.

Her hand is steady on the blaster, unwavering as she presses it to the center of Nala Se’s chest. One hand on the weapon, her other on the computer, and she’s been studying for half a decade now to know how to do precisely this. The command is multilayered, delicate, precise, but Te Tinu is a scientist just as much as she’s a Rebel.

The Empire hasn’t reached its claws into Kamino yet. Nothing much has changed. But Te Tinu has seen the outside world, has watched the clones she grew from genetic material be born and raised and ruined, every shred of personhood stripped away.

Te Tinu is a scientist just as much as she’s a Rebel. They were creating souls in this lab, and Nala Se stripped all of that away with one organic chip, all for the sake of credits.

“You won’t be allowed to do this,” Nala Se says, coldly furious, but she keeps her hands raised, her body still. Her eyes are arctic, but Te Tinu meets them defiance, with hatred, with the resentment that she’s kept buried all these many, many years.

There are guards coming. That’s fine. Te Tinu never planned to leave this laboratory alive.

“You made your army, Nala Se,” she hisses. “You made your army and then you destroyed them. You stripped them of value, of meaning, for credits. You are the one who should have been stopped long ago.”

The computer chimes, the program loaded. Te Tinu smiles, even as Nala Se’s eyes widen.

“Look,” she says, and shifts just enough that Nala Se can see the holograms. The systems, the code she’s added, the command. “Look at this, Nala Se. Look at victory.”

“This isn’t victory, this is madness,” Nala Se tells her, but Te Tinu just smiles.

“It is a victory for science,” she corrects, and tips her head. “A victory for the Rebellion, too.”

Nala Se’s nostrils flare. “You will be slaughtered before you can take one step from this lab,” she says. “And I will undo every last piece of your shoddy work, Te Tinu.”

“Ah,” Te Tinu says, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to her before the threat. “That would be most inconvenient, wouldn’t it? I spent so long on this, after all.”

Nala Se registers what she’s about to do half an instant before Te Tinu pulls the trigger. She always was the smartest person in any given room.

Coldly, Te Tinu watches her body collapse, long limbs tangling, bright blue blood seeping out across the tile. Deftly, she holsters the blaster, checks that the other scientist is equally dead, and turns back to the computer. There’s a thump against the door, a raised voice, but Te Tinu ignores it, focusing on her program. The biochips implanted in the clone armies are as flawless as any other aspect of Kaminoan design, for all that they’re meant for a fundamentally flawed purpose, so they’re almost impossible to disrupt. Te Tinu doesn’t need to disrupt them, though, just…change their current function.

The pre-encoded orders can’t be stripped away, replaced by new ones. It would be like reprogramming the chips from the ground up, but they’re already active, already working. A soft reboot is what’s needed, and Te Tinu’s program will do just that.

There’s no more Chancellor to pass out orders. He’s the emperor now, and the coding in the chips is quite specific. Without the direct title of Supreme Chancellor, Palpatine’s commands will mean as little as anyone else’s.

A weakness, though Nala Se never would have termed it so.

The door of the lab shudders, creaks. Te Tinu doesn’t look back, types in the last set of commands and activates them.

There’s a long, long moment as the blood pools and the door groans and someone speaks loudly, quickly, fiercely, so very unlike a Kaminoan.

Then, soft, the computer beeps.

The chips reset.

Te Tinu smiles, even as the door gives way. She turns to face the Defense Force, one hand going for her blaster, the other hitting the button that will trigger a wipe of every computer in the lab and leave them unable to reverse her work.

“For science,” she says, and raises the blaster, taking a graceful step forward. “For liberty.”

The Defense Force fires, but they’re already far too late.

Te Tinu dies with a smile on her face, bright blood on the floor of the lab, and regrets nothing but the time it took to make it here.

She’s won.)

Or maybe, maybe, it starts like this:

Cody looks around the room, at the figures there, at the familiar faces. At the same face, repeated, and some have scars to set them apart, some have old tattoos, but most don’t. Most of them have lost their markers, their names. Most of them have been turned into nothing but puppets for a greater cause. Puppets for a cause they once gave their lives to stop.

Cody looks around the room, at the remnants of Ghost and Torrent and the Wolfpack, at trooper after trooper who woke up this morning with the desperate, horrified realization of what they became. Of what they did, and how their hands were forced, and how they killed their generals, killed civilians, killed for an empire that destroyed them.

His hands are still shaking. They haven’t stopped since he remembered himself.

Cody wishes, dearly, just for a moment, that he had Rex at his back again, or Wolffe. But they’re both dead, and probably better off for it. He can’t imagine what Rex’s reaction would have been to the massacre at the Temple. To the fact that the 501st was used to do it.

Jesse is sitting in the corner, side by side with Boil and Wooley. They’re tangled together, grieving together, and it’s only seeing them like that that makes Cody realize how long it’s been since he saw any brothers touching. Not something deemed essential to performance, and so it was quietly shunted away.

Cody breathes, and breathes, and still his hands won’t stop shaking.

It’s Neyo, of all the troopers, who steps up beside him. He curls a hand around Cody’s shoulder, and—

Oh, Cody thinks, and has to swallow. It’s been a hell of a long time since anyone touched him, hasn’t it? Before Neyo, before Boil—he can’t even begin to remember.

“Breathe,” Neyo says, short, curt, but not unkind. “We all know we’re going to do something. The only question is what.”

Cody was a marshal commander, once, before the empire rose. Back when he could think clearly enough to be a commander, rather than just another follower. He knows strategy, and he knows tactics, and he knows how to prioritize what has to be done over what he wants to do. And yet—

He can’t make that decision here. Looking at the identical, unaltered faces, the unchanging grey uniforms, the plain white armor, all he can think is that he wants to burn the whole damned cruiser down around them and be done with it.

The break room is empty of anyone who isn’t a clone. The other officers don’t come here, don’t care. The clones make good obedient drones, who work well without supervision and don’t need a firm hand to maintain their fanatic belief in the Empire. Or at least, that’s how it was. That’s how it’s been for two years now.

Cody doesn’t care. In this, at least, it’s valuable, because it lets the clones gather without anyone thinking things are off.

He leans forward, elbows on the table, trembling hands clasped. Tries not to think too hard, tries not to dwell, but—

“It’s all of us, now?” he asks Neyo.

Neyo pauses, mouth tightening. Cody pretends not to see the way he presses his fingers tight against the numbers tattooed beneath his eye. “As far as I could tell,” he says roughly. “I contacted three other clone commanders on different cruisers, and they’re all…”

“Awake,” Cody supplies quietly, because that’s the only word for it. They were in a daze, these last two years. Dreaming, maybe, trapped in a nightmare. Now they’re all awake, but unlike with a dream, they have to deal with the fallout now.

Neyo grimaces, but doesn’t argue. “We don’t even know what happened,” he says, and there’s a thread of anger to it. “Or if we could go back.”

Back to sleepwalking, placid and loyal. Back to the haze of not caring, not being. Cody breathes out, and it shakes, but—

With rage, this time.

“We might not know how, but we know who,” he says tightly. “Only one person benefitted from us becoming…that.”

“So what are we going to do about it?” Sinker, at the next table over, asks roughly. His eyes are red, and Boost is nowhere to be seen.

The Wolfpack shot Plo Koon out of the air over Cato Neimoidia, fired on him from behind and brought his fighter down in a ball of flames. Until yesterday, every last one of them was proud of that fact.

Cody closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at Sinker’s face, his once-white hair grown in dark again, because individuality was another thing stripped from them alongside their free will. So that he doesn’t have to think about firing on Obi-Wan, and watching him fall, and feeling glad to have carried out an order.

They all murdered their generals. The only people in the galaxy who ever tried to fight for them, who ever treated them like people in their own right, and he and his brothers slaughtered them right down to the last youngling.

Cody’s going to be sick. But—later. When he can lock himself in his bunk and be weak, just for a little while.

Right now his brothers need him.

Forcing his eyes open, his breathing back under control, Cody looks up. He meets Neyo’s eyes, then Sinker’s, and smiles. It’s a rictus, death’s-head grin, full of teeth. “Glory to the emperor,” he says. “Long may he reign.”

1K notes View Post

j-drawings

4 years ago