#I'll do it my damn self if I have to. I'm zonked out of my mind on sleep deprivation

[trans-queen-administrator]

Shatterbird is a monster who delights in being feared and massacring cities, but she's also a poor little meow meow who I love dearly. Like her backstory is so damn sad, she got dosed with a Cauldron vial against her will, and in her pain from getting powers she Screamed, exploding and shattering all the glass and sand in the United Arab Emirates. Y'know, the place thats 80% desert.

So she probably killed hundreds of thousands of people in a situation entirely out of her control, and I highly doubt she got forgiven for it in the slightest or that she was given any sort of understanding. She was almost certainly being hunted down and portrayed as a monster to the media, a ruthless killer who had no remorse over destroying a country, and who would hear her out? Who would consider that she never wanted this or that she could be redeemed? She was entirely on her own from the moment she got her powers, and she went to London most likely to hide, only to have to lash out again when she was found and cause another disaster, so she fled again to the USA, only to get recruited by the Slaughterhouse 9 because she can't catch a break. Do you think she had already begun to slip and become the monster she was painted as by that point? Did anyone reach out and give her human connection? Or was she alone and isolated and feared, with some serial killer nominating her to join their gang because they think she's a monster like them and she can't exactly say no. And at the end of it all, when she got through all the tests and had her morals slowly drip away, she had to personally murder the other surviving candidate to survive and join the S9. I know this is like 80% guesswork already but I like to imagine that maybe the other candidate was her only companion and friend, even if it isn't though it's still a lovely showing of how she's finally become the monster she's believed to be, finally a murderer by choice.

Shatterbird at the time we see her is a monster, one of the most despicable and terrifying characters in the text, and I just love the implication that she was innocent at first. Her only choices after getting her powers were to keep getting worse or die, and she chose the only option she could.