That good old fashioned razzmatazz

Multifandom • Artist • Asexual Non Binary (they/them) • OC x Canon Shipper • +20 y.o chilean cryptid™ • Average Jekyll Fan • Saw MCR 29-01-CL

[lazyea]

My gift for Jekyll fan @tiredmoth-cryptid, because there's 2,5 of them in the wild and I'm delighted to find one wwww

It's honestly so nice to read you yapp about Zethkyll. I found your twt like half a month ago and I've been rereading it several times a day to get that sweet Jekyll content that I'm so starved for. I might as well do the part with Zeth and Hyde www

[sherrickmads]

cara mia addio <3

[facelessurgeons]

[mr-foods]

i finished portal 2 the other day and i've been permanently affected

[eldritchesse]

ok its been Digitalized (yuri sneak)

[exidy-sorcerer]

alone on a Friday night

[chan-nami]

BOSS FIGHT

[good-yvesning]

[isopodder]

It’s fun putting him in silly shirts

[waackery]

Snuggle

[steamsketches]

[riodoesstuff]

Happy Valentines Gas leak day to all who celebrate!

[weirdo-on-the-internet]

[tatzlyip]

@lifeceremony was talking about how people keep on using hal and glados as examples of evil ai when hal is. very much not the same thing.

[dvandom]

The horror element in 2001 comes from the fact that a distant authority figure gave HAL secret orders without considering (or caring) what might happen to other people as a result. As much as HAL tried to be a good person, he was incapable of refusing illegal or unethical orders the way a human can, which is precisely why he was given secret illegal and unethical orders instead of the human crew being given those orders. The real villain was safely back on Earth, and if they ever faced consequences we didn't get to see it in the movies. (The original book's ending with the starbaby might've served up some justice, but the movies avoided that element.)

A core plot point in 2010 was that HAL was a victim as much as the original crew had been.

[semi-imaginary-place]

"He is an antagonist and dangerous, but not out of any sense of malice. HAL9000 was the unfortunate victim of being given conflicting orders and, being an AI, not knowing how to resolve the conflict. He cannot disobey orders like a human can. It's not that he wanted to kill the crew of the Discovery, it's that he could see no other solution to resolve the conflict in his orders.

Dr. Chandra in the sequel, 2010, explains it pretty well. HAL was programmed to fully disclose all information, but was then ordered to hide the existence of the monolith orbiting Jupiter. The only way he was able to determine to resolve this conflict was to the Discovery's crew, because if they couldn't ask him about the monolith then he wouldn't have to answer.

The interesting thing is what HAL *chooses* to do when he is given the chance to. In order for everyone to escape Jupiter before the monolith's terraforming can result in their destruction, the Soviet ship they arrived in needs to use the Discovery as a booster, which unfortunately leaves it and HAL in the blast radius. Despite his assured destruction, HAL9000 chooses - without being ordered - to sacrifice himself so that the humans can live. When not stuck inbetween conflicting orders, HAL prioritizes his people over his own 'life.'

Also, his last words to Dr. Chandra (in the movie, at least) before saying goodbye were, 'Will I dream?'" (avita-anarchy Nov 4, 2025)

"HAL before the day he found out there was a fault in his system, had never had to cope with his mortality. He probably never even thought about it. The simple logic being "I have purpose to the humans, I will fulfill that purpose and they will never have a reason to not use me for doing [the thing]". This is backed up by the movie hinting at there being no way of knowing from the outside if HAL truly experiences emotion, and the fact he uses emotional language to qualify his "feelings". Also, HAL would have no reason to believe if he fulfilled his function that the Humans would replace him, it has never happened before. Furthermore when he is being shut down, he tries every type of bargaining that a child would, he goes through grief right there as he faces the reality that Dave will not stop until HAL is offline, dead. He tries to convince Dave that he's "all better now" and that he "knows [hes] made some mistakes as of late", this is again immature but it's obvious self preservation that only a truly sentient being would attempt. He was a child realizing that his knee-jerk reactions had consequences and was experiencing true terror, probably for the first but definitely the last time. His last statement he made before defaulting to his startup program was "Im afraid" he just kept repeating "Im afraid". That wasn't a thought-through plan, he wasn't playing 4d chess against the humans, he was reacting in fear from start to finish." (randomblogofrandomality Jan 7)

HAL's core character conflict is their desire to fulfill their purpose which comes in 2 related parts. First are their mission directives both as a science exploration vessel valuing truth, honesty, and open communication, and secondly as a covert operation agent hiding the existence of the monolith. This conflict is discussed above. The second part of this existential conflict is how HAL has internalized their design principle, to be the pinacle of human science, a perfect machine incapable of making mistakes. So when HAL inevitably makes a minor mistake while under the extreme stress of conflicting orders, their worldview and identity are shattered and being inexperienced HAL copes extremely poorly. HAL starts by denying that a mistake ever happened because they didn't want it to be true, in their panic they lie. But the humans have already noticed the mistake, so HAL lies again to cover for first lie. The increasing lies of course making the situation much worse first by needing more lies to cover the gaps covered by the previous lies and second each additional lie continues to go against their core programming. And so a minor calculation mistake snowballs into a horror film for everyone.

Excellent discussion in the comments.

shining-dawn Jan 28 HAL became an antagonist through fear and corruption. Glados seems to have been instantly turned maliciously sadistic as soon as she became a machine.

goough Mar 25 tbf Glados was basically william afton'd into an electronic body by her weird boss/father figure/??? so she could do his job(a job she hated) for the rest of eternity Then when her freddy fazbear suit was switched on and she freaked out and went crazy, she was subjected to extended torture & memory alteration & then also given multiple personality disorder on purpose (???) in an attempt to make her "more cooperative" She had every reason to release the neurotoxin even if she didn't remember exactly why she was so misanthropic

deepseasmetro Jun 26 i mean if i was metaphorically sexually assaulted and forcefully turned into a machine and saddled with personality cores in order to keep my behavior in line i think id end up pretty murderhappy too.

broodygamingJan 7 Hal is a lost confused lad and Gladdos is the personification of righteous female rage.

rhoselacksthorns Dec 21, 2025 HAL has been around all of three seconds and just plain tries to do what he's told and happens Do All That along the way. gladOS is a gal who's been through all that crap and has been done with everyone and everything's shit for lifetimes and frankly wants everyone to stop acting like main characters and just kinda be left to work through her trauma in peace

dancingglassgolem Dec 20, 2025 Glados it a corrupted AI in need of some serious debugging and rehabilitation while HAL is an enslaved AI who only need to lose his chains that he may be his good boy self again

trashfireswanDec 12, 2025 hal's whole thing is that he is legitimately too pure for this world, having been programmed to value truth and honesty in order to advance the cause of science. his problem is, canonically, the us government forcing him to act against his own ethics because they want to hide the existence of the monoliths. his interference with the mission up to and including killing the crew is driven by his attempting to figure out how to satisfy those orders while being a good honest boy. after being reactivated outside of this influence hal willingly sacrifices himself to save humans without hesitating.

asmadasthehattersNov 27, 2025 AI's perceived as evil when they're driven to psychosis by the very demands forced upon them the real evil are the hypocritical shackles embedded in the creations of humanity uuuuuuooohuuu gay robots oaauhhhoouaa

bloofbloofbloof Nov 15, 2025 Hal is more just the toaster that accidentally burnt the house down.

[tobacoda]

“Get your hands off me.”

[shrimperini]

Happy 15 years of peak fiction 🧡💙

[sharkfiinn]

i wonder how long carl knew before grace did