#1k more than you probably wanted to know about this half-thought-out dystopia

[yumester]

OC rambling under the cut because I am having a moment

So I have an OC, let's say his name is Kasper; short for Kas. Kas is like going through the worst Tuesday of his life. In actuality, its been six years in the making and the world is ending—typical alien takeover, post apocalyptic/brutal dystopia Armageddon (some part Half Life and interlining Heavenly Delusion, mixed with Fallout NV in a drug laced worldbuilding cocktail). A bunch of stuff happens to him yada yada (i.e. mind taken over, body modified against his will, nightmares/hallucinations on a constant bases, loses every ounce of his previous life; family, friends, future desires, etc.). And, suffice to say, Kasper was about to live the rest of his life as a unyielding drone to some entity beyond his understanding.

That is until he meets professor Lise Blackwood while patrolling. Lise is another character of mine, originally a RP self-insert style scientist but unlike Kasper, I actually did a few stuff with her here and there.

Anyway, Lise and Kasper have history together, Lise was a tutor for Kasper in her college years—forming a close relationship of sorts. They reunite; Kasper technically chasing after her into a desecrated building while she fails to hide from him, only to be reassured when he does something that sparks recognition that its him. Funny thing is though, Kasper can't talk. Couldn't for years from the modifications (he's like one of the Combine Soldiers in that regard, junk rammed through his throat and body absolutely wiped clean). There is one thing Kasper keenly knows what to do for this. It's sign language.

Back in school, one of the things Lise taught Kasper was sign language. To be honest, Kas thought nothing of it at the time. He was technically forced to learn it. But he liked Lise's odd teaching so it kind of worked out.

Anyway, Lise takes in Kasper. Not necessarily like some dumb adoption or other found family nonsense. Kas is like in his late twenties, was literally in college when shit hit the fan, while Lise is in her late thirties/early forties. Taking in Kas is a process in and of itself. For one, she's literally commandeering the enemy, Kas technically is still viewed as a tool for the outsiders. Two, she has no idea if its actually Kas because he's tailored head to toe with padded armor and no voice to speak but she just hopes in a way it truly is him. Three, she has to talk to the current group she's with about it; technically just her, her old buddy from work, some robot she found in a parking lot, and lab rat of sort. A small group nonetheless. Last task isn't hard to do but the walking tin can of a robot despises her for it. Though, to be honest, he's always hated her (if I go into details about their dynamic this would be like 1k words later but lets just say they were siblings in a previous life <3).

Okay with that out of the way, I wanna say this; imagine feeling so out of place in a world you hardly recognize. What do you do?

To Lise, it's simple. Learn everything you can and adapt.

To Kasper, it's a hard and yet, to him it should feel easy. He wishes it was. He wants attainment. Whatever that might be, he doesn't know. For now he just kinda wanders the line of being there and not being there. Lise is like an anchor to him, a sad anchor but a good one nonetheless.

Thinking back to that post I reblogged talking about certain dynamics. Lise and Kas are like "I'd destroy the world to protect you" but in like a child, grown in harsh, cold environment trying to protect its mother type beat. Whereas Lise is like "I hate everyone but I love you more than anything" core. She literally does not care for people or things or anything, she is very cold at times not even gonna lie. Kas is like one of the, if not, only people she treats in high regard and yet, Kas would probably destroy any ounce of himself for her.

Funnily enough, both have the mindset of "I hate everyone in this room except you" but in like very different fonts.

TLDR; Boy who loses everything finds comfort in someone he lost and can and will absolutely do anything for them even if that means losing himself even more, even if that means betraying his former teacher.

[doorsclosingslowly]

disjointed notes about nightbrothers, sexual orientation and gender, since i’m apparently posting background reasoning today

[content warning for rape and transphobia, as was to be expected considering the canon information i’m extrapolating from]

my basic model of how nightbrother/Nightsister society works is:

a child is born. if She is a Sister[*][**], She is raised by Her Mother; if he is a boy, he is returned to his father’s village. he’ll be raised in the house his father belonged to, usually; occasionally, the Sister talks directly to the village elders, who then give the boy to his brothers by the same Mother; boys will also be taken in by other nightbrothers, if there is no identifiable blood relation. this happens too if a young boy loses his brothers later on. they’re mostly raised communally anyway: they are all each other’s brother. that’s what they call each other. direct blood relation is a difference of degree, not kind. they work together, keeping each other alive and paying tribute to the Sisters. (the Sisters keep detailed records of who is related to whom, but they do not share.) (this is basically the settlement that wrath reached with the Witch in the stories: allow me to raise my child. allow me to hold him, if only for a few years. obviously, it’s been twisted--now: give my son to my brothers. the father does not return.)

when a nightbrother has reached late adolescence, he will be made to stand in the square, for the Sister to choose--if She wants--to participate in the Trials. in the fight that follows, most injuries are not lethal, and the losers crawl back to their brothers to heal and stand in the square once more

when a brother proves his strength and remains the last man standing and is chosen by a Sister as a mate, he leaves with Her and lives in her own home and becomes Her personal servant. he sires Her children. he is totally isolated from his family, from other men, and from other Women. the degree of cruelty is Her choice.

some brothers are sent back, eventually, like stinger who shut down emotionally. the Sister who took him didn’t want to lie with someone who was as lively as a corpse, and She didn’t want to kill him. brothers who are returned become the elders of the village. (savage thinks: He needs to get out, get back alive, get back to his brother, and he will never see him again if She sees his abject fear. Because nightbrothers do come back sometimes from their trials, callous ones and kind ones and small ones and tall ones without rhyme or reason, limping home from the Sisters and falling into drink, and Savage has always wondered at the Elders calling their return a kindness. Calling their own survival merciful, when they have grown hard and cruel for it. and he’s kinda right: they are deeply traumatized, and all too often, they cannot forget the fate that awaits all the young brothers around them. they look at a young boy and see a corpse.)

alternatively, if a Sister tires of Her mate--or has too many sons and doesn’t like Her Sisters’ judgmental looks--She kills him. She might then take another.

i think savage is aroace, but in-universe, i don’t think any nightbrother has a concept of sexual orientation remotely comparable to ours. sexual orientation implies agency: conversely, why would it matter whether you are attracted to women, when it is your duty? when you cannot escape?

there are many nightbrothers who have sex with other nightbrothers, for reasons including sexual attraction and love and affection and the wish to share all their lives forever and the desire for closeness, and some that don’t, but:

it’s not an identity. also, notice this makes no reference to women whatsoever. there’s wanting to sleep with other men, and there’s not wanting to sleep with other men. nightbrother society (and Nightsister society) are pretty much exclusively homosocial. friendship, choosing to share your bed, rivalry, intimacy--that’s what you have with another nightbrother. cross-gender interaction is intensely regulated and unequal. it’s difficult to have a deep relationship with someone so far above (or below) you, and a nightbrother cannot refuse--cannot be honest to--a Nightsister. if there are man-Woman couples that genuinely care for each other, they’re looked at askance by both societies. (also it’s still dubious consent at best.)

nightbrothers do not see sex with men and sex (rape, though that’s not how they see it) with Women as acts belonging to the same category. being chosen by a Sister is mating, breeding, terrifying, duty, purpose--ultimately, death--whereas sleeping with nightbrothers is choice, a fact of life. bisexuality would be the most fundamentally incomprehensible sexual orientation: the idea that there is a word thats put those two actions together is as if there was an adjective for ‘likes bicycles and grass’. why those two things?

w/r/t gender -- physical appearance at birth  ≠ gender ≠ exclusively man or woman ≠ presentation ≠ something immutable and so on and so forth, but to the nightbrothers there is no distinction. gender is a caste, inescapable, the most important fact about you, and it governs your whole life and decides whether you are slave or slaver. (Savage is caught, for a moment, by the thought of the Mother with a nightbrother’s face. It shakes him. How would he know who to trust, and who to serve?) it’s interesting for me to write, this claustrophobic exaggerated cisnormative pov, considering i have a difficult relationship with gender but the closest approximation is ‘no please don’t’

occasionally i’m tempted to think about nonbinary or intersex or transgender nightbrothers or nightsisters, but i know the consequences for them would be horrible--these borders must not be crossed, so the structure of society is not questioned--so i shy away. more seriously i’m playing with writing a conversation about gender between savage and socvumo (gender-nonconforming twi’lek woman) because she knows the violence of gender intimately but she knows it as something imposed from the outside--what is the use of a twi’lek woman if she is not pretty--whereas her own people’s view of gender are far more relaxed and fluid. or eldra (also a twi’lek, but she’s not my OC so i’m more constrained. as a Jedi--luminous beings are we, vessels of the force not mere bodies--she has an interesting perspective though)

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[*]   by the way, Sister and brother are also synonymous with Nightsister and nightbrother; usually i’m not talking about a sibling relationship. as with the capitalization pattern, this is wording i tend to use in savage’s pov

[**]   i really don’t understand why they look so different. i’m way more interested in sociology than biology, though, so i’m just handwaving it. a couple of theories i’ve considered are: phenotypically nonstandard fetuses (i.e., dathomiri zabrak women, paleskinned men, mixed looks) are somehow unviable or the babies are killed at birth, they’re both hermaphroditic species though in that case why would you need the mating in the first place, the gffa is weird, none of the writers gave a fuck