There's also ref which is almost like pointers and safe. Span/Memory do not remain an absolute last resort, they are becoming the standard way for string formatting/parsing/(de)serialization and IO.
I didn't say Span/Memory are a last resort, I said C style memory management (AllocHGlobal/Free), despite being somewhat improved by Span/Memory, remains an absolute last resort. Span/Memory aren't primarily aimed at handling unmanaged memory, though they're useful for it.
