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Originally posted on Fanifesto
| Additional warnings: | Torture, Violence, Blood|Gore, Amputation |
|---|---|
| Fandom: | Mother Keeper |
| Relationship: | Graham Gregson x Zelik Lindemann |
| Characters: | Graham Gregson, Zelik Lindemann |
| Additional Tags: | Ship Manifesto |
| Publication Date: | 04/04/2022 |
I already wrote a primer for Mother Keeper that alludes to the fact I needed to rewrite this after the original was deleted from my tumblr.
Mother Keeper was a manga by Kaili Sorano that ran from 2005 until 2014. It’s a post-apocalyptic sci-fi manga with cool cyborgs and stuff.
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Graham Gregson is the leader of COSMOS and adoptive father of Ricalna (protag) and Lennard. He used to work in Eden's military but defected and is now trying to destroy Eden. He's a cards close to his chest type of guy; except he's also apparently very easy to scam so his brains might not be all there. |
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Zelik Lindemann is my poor kitty meow meow ♥ I love him, he is the blorbo of my heart that out blorbos all other blorbos because he's so perfect.
Okay, Zelik is the boss of the Cocytus and a terrible person. While he does weapon sales now, he used to be involved in human trafficking for illegal fighting rings. He’s also the ikemen of this manga, and everyone in the Cocytus is head over heels for him but also reasonably fear him because he can break down a wall with a punch. |
So, your quick run-down is that Zelik and Graham have been friends for about 30-ish years. They do have a professional relationship, but they are willing to drop that to just act as friends. Zelik knew Ricalna and Lennard when they were growing up and has been helping out with COSMOS.
In Hunter, the Cocytus is attacked and Zelik is kidnapped by Silas, a former client from the fighting ring. Zelik is suspected of being involved in the raid that got Silas’s friend, Allen, killed and lost Silas his fighters, etc etc etc. Anyway, after Zelik is kidnapped, Graham swings by the Cocytus and is informed of what happened and…
This look. This look of concern just gets me so bad. It’s just so serious I’m 🥺 sir mayhaps you care about your friend??
And Graham stops to ask him what he’s planning to do now. Will the Cocytus survive? Zelik doesn’t want to go back to it. Everyone’s going to think he really did betray Silas, and that would get everyone involved with him hurt. He’s sobbing from his injuries and Graham can only leave him to process his loss.
I mean, Zelik immediately starts ripping it to shreds because he’s not used to it but-
Anyway, Syal (one of the protection cyborgs for Eden) happens to come across him on his mission and starts a fight, since she has a personal vendetta against him. She enters her berserker mode and, well,
Zelik’s kinda outmatched.
And when he realises he’s in trouble, his first thought
is Graham. I Have Been Fed. My Crops Are Watered. On the brink of death, think about the one who is most important to you; who has meant the most in your life.
Zelik survives a little longer though, pushing through as he’s still been left a task to complete.
Anyway, how’s that backstory going? What happened with Silas?
Oh yeah, Graham was doing something normal.
Yeah, Graham went to Silas’s house, killed everyone inside and why?
Quick lesson; You Don’t Fucking Touch Zelik. It will get you and everyone who so much as looked in your direction killed.
But Silas is a perfectly skeevy little man. He’ll do anything to save his own hide. All the money in the world, all the power he could want, the Cocytus rebuilt, whatever medical treatment, anything, everything. Everything Graham could ever need to take down Eden, right? Couldn’t that be a tempting offer?
No, because Zelik is worth more than that. Wait… how is some 20-something that just got his ass kicked to Hell and has literally nothing special about him that important? Sure, he can fight well, but at the end of the day, he’s human. He’s not some gifted engineer or scientist. He’s just some shitty kid from outside Eden, who’s reputation may be in ruins now. He has nothing to offer that Silas can’t give ten fold… so… why?
Despite everything, Zelik got talked into rebuilding the Cocytus by a load of grown men crying on top of him. During the rebuild, Zelik happens to check a newspaper from three days after Graham rescued him.
Detailing the murder of Silas.
Your Honour. [1]
This is the first time Graham mentions to Zelik about his connections to Adam, and the potential of using cyborg technology as prosthetics. Zelik turns him down, having decided he’s actually perfectly comfortable without any prosthetics and he’d rather just adapt and maybe revisit it in the future. Graham warns him that they need to be careful since cyborg parts are rare so they can’t be around forever and…
Hehe.
Anyway, Graham and Zelik are dead. Graham is killed by Adam, Syal takes Zelik down as they work in a suicide attack to take down Adam’s robots.
So, the truth of everything is that
Graham was a cyborg for Adam, and we know that cyborgs in the Mother Keeper universe can be completely remotely controlled to act against their own will at any time.
Which puts kinda an issue on this relationship. Was Graham real? What of his relationships were real? Ricalna takes it as everything was a lie. Every moment was a lie.
But that doesn’t seem right.
So, I haven’t talked about much outside of Graham and Zelik, but there’s some interesting points about Graham worth knowing about. One thing being that during the attack on Eden, Graham kept Lennard on his team.
And protected her. Lennard isn’t special in any way, she’s a 100% human soldier, and potentially a liability due to her brother being on of the cyborgs defending Eden. But he’s immediately in to call out to her and protect her when he doesn’t the other soldiers.
Adam also had him executed, and he clearly didn’t see it coming.
Which would suggest, the real Graham still existed, he was a cyborg, not just a robot taking Graham’s appearance.
All Adam wanted was to destroy Eden. He had nothing to gain from keeping Zelik alive when Silas made that offer.
Therefore, Silas couldn’t have been speaking to Adam.
Graham went in on his own and did his yandere shit because Zelik was worth more than anything to him.
[1] Alright, so I have two interpretations of this scene. The first is that this is Graham, and he's outright lying to play cool about the fact he yandered. The other is that this is Adam, and he genuinely doesn't know about Silas's murder, and Silas's death was Graham acting alone.
They’re in LOVE, Your Honour! I am an incredibly biased source and literally all I could ever want from a ship is character gets the shit beat out of them, activating the man who sat at his bedside into yandere mode. That’s what love is about (right?) and on top of that they’ve been together for so long… They’re already middle-aged men and Zelik calls Ricalna “kiddo”.
Ah, yes, the fandom. Hi.
It
It’s me.
Mother Keeper is a fandom of six people and a shoelace. A lot of them have been less active since publication ended and well
We’re lacking content.
And I’m the big shipper of this ship but the manga gave me everything I could ever want from them so I have no ideas for fan content. Please, I need food so bad.
BUT ANYWAY GETTING INTO MOTHER KEEPER FANDOM! CHECK OUT MY PRIMER! Primer for Mother Keeper