#but for the most part its him being dehumanised by others

[wojtekaneko]

That's how it went

[jarimaa]

Gojo Satoru

I once said that he doesn't prioritise personal connection, but it's more nuanced than that, so very badly worded from my part.

Gojo very much understood personal connections and relationships.

Gojo however loves being the strongest, he loves his strength, revels in it infact and wouldn't give up on it for anything, even if it caused him loneliness and that's why his dehumanisation comes from HIMSELF too. He is fine being a tool and being lonely if it means he can have his strength. Yes, his mindset is fucked up, that's the point.

That's why I never subscribed to all the "bring back nerfed" theories because chapter 236 made it ever clear.

Sukuna calls him (and kashimo) greedy, because unlike sukuna who thinks "love" is worthless, gojo very much wants both connections AND strength.

It wasn't that people were not reaching out to him, it's just that, he wouldn't stoop to their level, he wanted them to become stronger so that they can become as strong as him, so no one is lonely, so that strength doesn't isolate them like it did with him.

He pushes away people while at the same time craves attachment and understanding, but since he would NEVER give up on his strength, that results into largening the gap/distance even more. He causes his own misery and is ready to live with it.

The recent chapter was pretty much very consistent with his portrayal, he fully committed to his role by becoming the monster he was stopping himself from being all these year, for his students. Even in this chapter yuta very much reached out to him, in a way gojo couldn't to geto during that kfc meet, but it's gojo who again decided that it's his burden to bear alone. His was being reached out, it's HIM who didn't close the gap.

People are not ok with him just being treated like a tool and just being seen for his strength, but my point is, when has he ever had any identity beyond being "The strongest," not to imply he doesn’t have any other identity at all, but everyone always prioritized his identity as the strongest, EVEN he himself.

That's the reason why he loved his youth so much and considered it the best time of his life, because then, he had BOTH, strength and a equal buddy (geto), that's why that friendship lasted such huge impact on him. (Also imma just say here, people both underestimate and overestimate his relationship with geto, it's very funny to watch)

People were complaining about characters seeing him as a tool, but they were quite unironically doing the very same thing. Putting him on pedestal, using him to continue being in series for their own happiness and enjoyment of the series, not respecting his wishes from chapter 236, and treating him the same way characters within the story do with him.

Also, you can dislike the way he was treated, that's precisely the point, but don't go around claiming the gege assassinated his own writing because your dislike ≠ bad writing. People are using morality of their real life within a story where everything is being questioned, the so called "good guys" of the story keep repeating that they are not heros, most of them are murderers themselves.

The curses are showing humanity, everything related to normal human morality is being questioned.

So the "he would be happy powerless" doesn't work because thats what YOUR morality tells you (its fine to feel that way), but he most likely wouldn't be happy with it, he isn't a real person either lol. Dude has nasty aspects to him, it’s one of them, they add more to his character, he is selfish (and selfless too), and let him be like that.

In the very end, Gojo very much managed to raise a bunch of students who will carry his will, he is alive in them.

Peace out ✌️

Pretty much my rant after this chapter because of the discourse going around is creating wayyy too many misinterpretations. Also I don't care what you think of the series as long as you just stop forcing your beliefs on others and saying its bad writing, when it's not. I don't think a character can exist outside of the narrative or story he was created in, gojo is amazing because of jujutsu kaisen story, outside of it, who is he?

[wordsandrobots]

Something I've been pondering since answering this ask, which decided to spin itself into a couple of thousand words:

McGillis and Mikazuki spend the entire show talking past each other.

This is a common problem when it comes to McGillis. Indeed, the majority of his interactions with Vidar can be summarised as two men yelling at the top of their lungs from completely different scripts, neither twigging that they are stuck together in the same tragedy.

But there is a special frisson to doing this with Mika because of the extent to which McGillis fetishises both him personally and Tekkadan in general. I mean this non-sexually, obviously (the 'reduce to an object by imputing an excessive degree of importance' sense). In McGillis' eyes, Tekkadan possess wildly outsized potential. They are heralds of the changing times, a beacon of power, recapturing the spirit that won the Calamity War and 'proving' lowly individuals can have a massive impact – all beliefs his personal philosophy requires be validated. Because if they can do it, so can he. Mika, as the pilot of Gundam Barbatos, is the epitome of this image.

Mikazuki himself doesn't see his accomplishments as anything special, having achieved most of them by dint of being completely free of ego. Besides, he simply doesn't have the context or really the interest to grasp what McGillis is going on about. He isn't completely indifferent; there are grounds to argue he is genuinely curious about the mobile armours, given his astounded reaction to Hashmal's appearance. This, however, seems a broadly professional interest. Mika is nothing if not diligent about his weapons and his adoption of Hashmal's tail demonstrates attentiveness to the practical applications of his enemies' stuff, not a wish to channel pre-Disaster legends. The same is true of his comrades, who are generally too busy to appreciate the historical parallels that might be drawn around their activity.

McGillis, on the other hand, operates from a place of ideology. In that he has one, overtly, whereas Tekkadan are ultimately just trying to make it to tomorrow. This leads him to grant special significance to their actions, to the detriment of everyone involved. In this respect his attitude towards Tekkadan is little better than those who view them as vermin. It's no less dehumanising because he's bigging them up rather than doing them down. His final discussion with Orga rams home exactly how far outside reality his views of them are and how harmful, that he would continue to lean on their supposed pride and prowess while standing in the smouldering ruins he's made of their lives.

(Tangentially, this behaviour is one of the reasons I like Steve Staley/Cannon's performance so much. I freely admit coming in on the English dub biases me toward it, irrespective of its undoubted quality, but with McGillis in particular, the pitch chosen for his voice allows such an incredibly smooth slide between 'thoroughly reasonable calculation' and 'batshit fairy-tale nonsense'. It creates the wonderful flip from thinking he's a conniving puppet master, manipulating everyone by appealing to their vanity, to realising that not only does he genuinely mean a lot of what he's saying, that's actively worse.)

At the same time, when it comes to Mika specifically, you get the impression part of this is a yearning for someone who'll agree with him.

McGillis doesn't have any real peers. He doesn't want his friends, who get in the way of his hyper-individualistic aspirations, to the point of actively eliminating them. He has subordinates, but that's exactly what they are. Isurugi's insistence on a non-sentimental attachment to his General runs both ways, at least insofar as McGillis' conscious desires go (that McGillis is nevertheless caught off-guard by and has a clear emotional reaction to Isurugi dying to protect him is basically his whole problem in a nutshell). And while we can argue 'til the cows come home about the exact contours of his feelings towards Almiria, his characterisation of her as 'troublesome' and the admission he wanted to make her happy primarily out of a promise to Gaelio make it clear he does not see her as a confidant without caveat. While he might be more honest with her than he is with most people, she doesn't fulfil any need he might have to talk to an actual equal.

Mikazuki has the potential to be this. Because Mika is 'like something out of a tale of Agnika Kaieru', that is, exactly what McGillis himself wishes to be. A symbol of human might, bestriding the world and stirring up storms. In his mind, Mikazuki does incredible things for the sake of greater power. In his mind, the ability to use Barbatos is a mark of destiny. In his mind –

Well. Perhaps in his mind, a connection to somebody like that wouldn't be a weakness but a mark of having made himself into what he longs to be.

Sadly for McGillis, to Mikazuki he is only ever 'the chocolate man'. That guy from Gjallarhorn who Tekkadan have dealings with, who is a good mobile suit pilot and promises Orga the world. Furthermore, Mikazuki's habitual self-deprecation, his abandonment of his own wants, and his ability to make peace with not existing in the future his friends wish to create mean he is fundamentally the inverse of McGillis' entire identity. These qualities – the true source of what makes Mika so formidable – provide no vindication for the man who spent years plotting to become the new Agnika.

Their penultimate exchange reveals the gulf between them. Opining that the situation has become wonderfully simple – wiping out the Arianrhod Fleet here, on Tekkadan's turf, will mean total victory – all McGillis receives in return is the assertion that Mika will do whatever Orga wants him to. A hollow answer, to the older man's ear, that remains unchanged despite repeated attempts to draw out a more satisfying one. For Mika, there is nothing more to discuss, no glory or pride in taking on the impossible task of winning this 'simple' fight. Those decisions are for others to make and the question of what he, personally, wants, is irrelevant.

During their final parting, McGillis explains that he thought, since Tekkadan 'didn't know how to use their power properly', he could guide them toward a bright future. He presents this as a pre-existing fact and it certainly fits his previous high-handed attitude, now firmly rejected by Orga. Yet he precedes this admission with an overt request that Mikazuki join him for the final attack on Rustal Elion and his visible disappointment at Mika's predictably negative response is telling.

He wanted Mika to be different. He wanted the boy who fights 'beautifully' to have the vision to follow McGillis' ideals. Another Calamity War echo to chime for his side.

All he gets instead is “you talk too much.”

The thing that goes unsaid in the descriptions of Tekkadan as having no ideals, nothing to fight for, no righteous cause, etc., is that of course they do. They have each other. Community plays a vital role in Iron-Blooded Orphans: it is what Tekkadan embodies, at its best, along with the Turbines. These are structures built by oppressed people, providing an accepting home for those on the fringe of society. Though they are ripped apart by over-ambition, foolishness and the external forces they were formed to resist, the core importance of acting as a group – as family, irrespective of origin – lingers on in the ties between the survivors.

Community is not a silver-bullet, mind you. The Dort union shows the struggles of large-scale cooperative action and the dangers of it being subverted by bad-actors, and everyone is constantly at the mercy of bigger, deadlier systems. The pressure of group desires causes trouble too, anger and machismo snowballing to irresistible, unmanageable levels. At the same time, to be without community is a source of doom. Almiria's social isolation renders her extremely vulnerable. The severing of the Earth-branch's connections to the main body of Tekkadan leads to major losses. Most significantly, many of Orga's mistakes and their dreadful consequences stem from an impulse to make decisions by himself. Had he listened more readily to Biscuit or brought the other senior members into his confidence sooner, things could have been very different. As the final episodes spell out, they wanted to help; he just couldn't see past the Mikazuki-induced feeling that everything was on his shoulders alone.

It is similarly significant that Rustal Elion has a very robust support network, a pseudo-family of Iok, Julieta and Galan Mossa providing him vital advantages in his efforts. This is as much a hollow reflection of Tekkadan as a parallel to them. There's far less comradeship to be had on this side of the divide. But still, he couldn't have won on his own. And of course Vidar is a composite entity, Gaelio bonding with what's left of Ein to achieve the victory he could not manage by himself.

McGillis overt rejection of 'moving in a pack' marks the final stop on his road to ruin. Having lost Tekkadan, he dismisses his last few wavering supporters and charges at Rustal's forces solo. Per his monologue, he intends to prove the strength of the individual, to inspire others to cease their cowering and tear into the rotten order that rules their lives. Per the uncompromising material circumstance, he fails. He never gets close to killing Rustal and, mortally wounded, he reneges on his ideological commitments, insofar as he can no longer deny being subject to feelings for others. The last of his strength is spent holding his tongue against the true depth of his friendship for Gaelio, lest he give the other man reason to regret succeeding in a murderous vendetta.

Mikazuki's death, by contrast, is framed by his relationship to the rest of Tekkadan. Not only does he give his life to ensure their survival, their presence in his life fills his final thoughts. They are the place Orga promised him, all those years ago. His devotion to his friends is the kind that leads to deadly violence, sure, but it still defines him as a person and the community he helped build is what gives meaning to his sacrifice.

The text proposes no great mystery behind this divergence in fate and legacy, McGillis was always alone; Mikazuki always had Orga. Though they share an origin as homeless orphans, they were socialised in radically different fashions and their mutual respect for one another's piloting ability cannot hope to bridge the gap between the resulting world-views. While we can read McGillis as yearning for what he ostensibly denies – riffing on a recent post by @local-redhead-bookworm, I compared him to a wolf raised in captivity, contra Mikazuki's more uninhibited, naturally affectionate state – the fact remains he choses to strive for a world of individual power. Others' collective effort is to be marshalled for his personal advantage, not something he wishes to be integrated into.

Returning to his inner monologues, he constructs an identify around his desire for power. In Mikazuki, he sees at least part of what he wishes to achieve. From the first, he is delighted by this young Martian's piloting skill and this burgeons into full-blown awe when Mika goes all-out to defeat Hashmal. He is inspired, seeing another channel the strength he imagines Agnika possessed.

But he doesn't understand it.

He doesn't understand why Mikazuki is able to do these things and cannot grasp the motivation behind them. His entire life has been shaped around acquiring power for himself, to ensure he will no longer be at the mercy of the world that abused him. Doing all that for somebody else is simply not a concept he can wrap his head around.

Or, perhaps, we should say it is not a concept he wants to wrap his head around. I wonder, if he had presented to Mikazuki the side of his personality that stopped Almiria stabbing herself, that eulogised Carta and Gaelio, and that acceded to Gaelio's pleas he die as the villain, then their interactions might have been very different. McGillis knows enough about people's devotion to one another to manipulate it in others. This is how he kills Carta and uses Ein to get to Gaelio. What he wants is for it not to apply to him too.

Sadly, if he hoped Mikazuki would prove it was possible to live free of such pesky attachments, he was howling at the wrong moon.

[Index of other writing]

[featherstorm2004]

*Edit* My bad transitions don't come out till later.

I was so scared they were gonna use different wording and leave it ambiguous, that being said for the longest time in the fandom and in the manga Shigaraki has been dehumanised by people as a monster or a thing. Either because his power or simply due to the fact he was a villain and then completely ignoring the nuance of his situation, of simultaneously being the biggest victim of hero society and also its biggest threat.

And people think he's the biggest threat because of the power of his quirks but in reality the true threat Shigaraki posed was being the manifestation of all of the issues in hero society that the hero's/people can't ignore, he is forcing the hero's and the readers to come to terms with the fact that their society is EXTREMELY flawed.

THAT'S why Shigaraki is the main big bad for the story and not All For One because despite having parallels with Shigaraki, he ultimately can't confront the main question of the narrative and that question is "what dose it mean to be a hero?" and as the protagonist and self proclaimed "number 1 hero" by the end of the story Izuku needs to answer that question. And how dose he do that? by doing the one thing all hero's have failed to do, something even All Might couldn't accomplish and that's getting through to Shigaraki and saving him.

That is something he NEEDS to accomplish for the narrative to justify him becoming the number 1 hero, and his first step being to acknowledge Shigaraki's humanity is excellent. It proves why Izuku deserves to be the protagonist because it's something no one else was capable of, even the past welders of One For All fell into this trap by referring to Shigaraki as a thing or that monster. Hell, even Grand Torino who of all people should feel the most sympathy for his situation blames Shigaraki for tarnishing his grandmothers legacy and even tries to convince Izuku to kill him.

So, overall I'm very happy with the progression of this chapter and how it's progressing Shigaraki and Izuku's character's, but I don't know how I would feel about Shigaraki being redeemed the same way someone like Toga was. Because unlike her, he isn't looking to be saved so to be saved in this single battle would feel a bit rushed since Shigaraki's problems are gonna need way more than a conversation to be solved.

But the manga is probably so going to end soon, so I think hopefully Izuku's talk with Shigaraki will cause him to pull an Sasuke and he'll run off to a different country or something to collect himself. Then the manga can end and then we could get a My Hero Academia Pt2 Naruto style. That way Horikoshi can take a nice long break and hopefully have time to plan out the next part of his story better without being rushed by needing to get a chapter out every other week.

Plus it would be cool so see aged up designs to all our favourite characters, but hey that's just my two cents on the matter.

[pigeonwhumps]

Rules

Pets of the Silver Screen masterlist

Taglist: @maracujatangerine @clairelsonao3 @whumplr-reader @whumpinggrounds @bbu-on-the-side

Multiple times over the years, Agatha learns the rules.

2.1k

CWs: BBU, pet whump, kidnapping, collar, beating, stress positions, dehumanisation, non-con nudity (non sexual)

Agatha juts her chin out, poise perfect despite the tip-toe position she's been forced into.

"My name is Miss Agatha Stanbury, daughter of Lord Kenneth Stanbury. Let me go and you may get out of this alive."

Foster Montgomery smirks, pressing his knife into her neck, blood beading along its edge.

"I think I'd rather keep you. Nobody's going to find you, certainly not after I'm finished with you." He drags his knife down her front, slitting her clothes. They mostly stay on, but it must be a very sharp knife to manage that. "Take them off."

"No."

He holds up the knife, reminding her. "What did you say?"

Agatha swallows but keeps her poise. She's going to be an actress, she can pretend she has nothing to fear.

"I said no. You have given me nothing to wear afterwards and I will not follow your disgusting commands."

"I have more suitable clothing for you later, if you earn it. But if you won't obey willingly I'll have to do it for you."

Agatha's barely had a chance to process the statement when she's slammed to the ground. All her bones are jarred and her nose explodes with agony. A boot seems to grind her into the floor as Montgomery removes her clothing piece by piece.

She hates herself for thinking it, but at least he lets her keep her knickers.

He grunts in satisfaction, and hauls her to her knees. She shoves his hands away and stands, but is back on her knees in less than a second.

"Stay." He reaches behind him and picks up a leather collar complete with tag.

Agatha doesn't move when he reaches out and buckles the suffocating leather around her throat, but not out of obedience. She just doesn't think she can.

She reaches up to touch it, but Montgomery smacks away her hand before she can.

"Don't even think about it. I'll only ever remove it if you need a punishment that might interfere with the collar somehow, so if you do so yourself I'll assume that's what you're after. But you do still deserve a punishment. Bend over."

Agatha swallows hard, the soft leather and cold metal buckle pressing against her throat. She doesn't move. She only came down for the season, she's not going to obey a kidnapper who's apparently obsessed with turning her into a pet.

He couldn't find a volunteer? There's enough of them.

She pitches forward onto her hands and knees as he pushes her over, pulling her knickers down.

"Bare flesh is best for this. Pets obey. They don't say no. They don't talk back. You need to learn this."

Agatha has never had such a thrashing in her life as she receives then. No-one's ever drawn blood before. She's not passed out enough by the end to receive a reprieve though – he orders her to clean the house, and woe betide her if he finds a speck of dust or blood.

She experiences it all as if from miles away. As if from the gathering she's supposed to be at right now, with entirely different rules. She's not in her body, most of the time, and that's probably for the best.

That day and the next, she learns the rules of being Foster Montgomery's captive.

1) Don't say no.

2) Only speak when spoken to.

3) Don't talk back.

4) Address other people as sir or ma'am.

5) Always obey immediately.

6) Don't remove your collar.

7) Punishments are always deserved, always hard, and given at the slightest provocation.

She adds an extra one from herself, too, which she knows is true. Montgomery giving her a collar is not just him being a sick bastard, it's theatre, another part of the pretense. Because even if he were to parade her in front of those she loves, everyone knows that only pets wear collars.

8) No-one's coming to my rescue. I'm not getting out of here unless I do it myself.

Over the next few months, the rules don't change. The chores are hard, and the punishments harsh, and a lot more of her is scarred now. Very little of what Montgomery does has any logic to it.

But she still can't find an escape. She fears she's sinking into it.

_

When she's hired by Hayes Fletcher, more rules are added to the list.

9) Don't talk to the other pet.

10) If you disobey, it won't just be you who's punished.

Eloise won't receive whippings, of course, and no canings during the shoot, but she can be put in stress positions, or starved, or have a bucket of water dumped over her head before being left in the unheated studio overnight. And Agatha has absolutely no desire to subject her to anything other than a good hot meal and somewhere better to sleep.

_

Rule 7 is underlined dramatically by the inspector's visit. In the aftermath, Agatha's arm and back throbbing, blood pooling on the frozen stone floor that her toes are just able to touch, Eloise whimpering from her own position, Agatha makes sure to add another two rules to herself (though the second is altered after Eloise's angry objections).

11) Don't talk about the situation to outsiders. It will only make things worse.

12) Don't break the rules. Even Only if Eloise agrees to do so.

_

Agatha could possibly escape during the transatlantic crossing. She thinks about it. Even jumping overboard might be better. But she needs to see Eloise again. Be sure that she's alive and physically unhurt (from the sinking at least, Agatha has no doubt she'll have been hurt since). Tell her that she's brave, and a hero, because if it had been anyone but fellow pets she'd saved, if she was anyone but a pet herself, her actions would've been lauded, but instead it's Hayes Fletcher who's being praised for having such a good pet. Which isn't right, it isn't fair, and Agatha can't leave Eloise on her own.

That's when Agatha solidifies the last rule for herself, that's been brewing since she first met Eloise but she's never stopped to think about it before.

13) Her and Eloise only have each other, and will always have each other.

_

Then the Great War comes.

Foster Montgomery signs up to fight. He leaves Agatha in Hayes Fletcher's care, who lends her to the munitions factory, for good publicity and probably money (money for Fletcher? Money for Montgomery? She doesn't know. But neither man is big into philanthropy). Eloise isn't there. Agatha follows the rules Montgomery has already given her, hating the fact that they keep her alive.

Another few rules are added.

14) Don't become emotional.

15) Never make a sound.

16) Just because you're working alongside people, doesn't mean you are one.

That last is... profoundly obvious, at times. When the rest of the workers get to go home at the end of their shifts and she is kept working, or if there's no-one else at all, locked in the breakroom until morning. When she's fed less than the others, or when she's beaten, or–

It's so obvious, even more so than when she was hired by Hayes Fletcher. She hates it. And she's so alone here.

The war will be over by Christmas, right?

_

1915. Foster Montgomery is dead, and Agatha desperately wishes she could thank his killer, if anybody even knows. She gets a new tattoo, signifying her ownership by Hayes Fletcher (luckily, she knows his rules, there's no new ones to learn there). The Munitions Act comes into force, and the regular bombing raids start.

Monkey's paw. She's not alone anymore, but it means that Eloise, and several other pets, have joined her in the munitions factory.

She teaches Eloise what she's learned about staying out of trouble where possible. They have a dedicated bunkroom now, pets crammed in on old bedding on the floors of the worst-maintained rooms. They learn that only a few owners have paid for their pets to be taken to air raid shelters.

Hayes Fletcher hasn't.

Night after night they spend, trying to stay calm as bombs rain down around them. Occasionally they're still chained or tied up at night, for punishments, and when that happens Agatha worries the most.

She learns one more rule.

17) Sometimes all you can do is pray.

_

The war ends. By a miracle, her and Eloise are both still alive. Hayes Fletcher goes back to producing films, albeit with less success. Agatha watches as pet liberation campaigns grow, and the next decade approaches with force. The world seems a little more hopeful, things seem to be changing.

Except for her and Eloise. Stuck with the horrible, spiteful little man, punishments getting worse as he gets more frustrated and blames them for it (or maybe he simply has nowhere else to put his anger). The world's moving on, votes for women are coming, and she can't help but think of what her life might be like if she hadn't been kidnapped all those years ago.

She remembers rule 7. And the last time was dreadful, and another attempt could get them both killed, but she mentions her rule to Eloise one night and Eloise agrees. They have to try, don't they? Sometimes, it's the only thing you can do.

A week later, the film studio burns down in the middle of the night. Arson, probably. By the time the fire brigade arrive to the burnt out husk Agatha and Eloise are already sneaking onto a train to London.

_

"If the both of you want rules, I can give you some," says Ira, clearly reluctant, "as long as we can go through the ones you already have first. Is that all right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Ira nods. "Why don't you write me a list then? We can go through them while Eloise is busy."

Agatha takes the paper and pen she offers, wincing as she sits down, heart skipping a beat. She's still not used to it.

At the end of the session, her list reads:

1) Don't say no.

2) Only speak when spoken to.

3) Don't talk back.

4) Address people as sir or ma'am.

5) Always obey immediately.

6) Don't remove your collar.

7) Punishments are always deserved, always hard, and given at the slightest provocation.

8) No-one's coming to my rescue. I'm not getting out of here unless I do it myself.

9) Don't talk to the other pets.

10) If you disobey, it won't be just you who's punished.

11) Don't talk about the situation to outsiders. It will only make things worse.

12) Don't break the rules. Only if Eloise agrees to do so.

13) You and Eloise only have each other, and will always have each other. (Ira says she can get rid of this one partially too, but she's not so sure. Not yet)

14) Don't become emotional.

15) Never make a sound.

16) Just because you're working alongside people, doesn't mean you are one.

17) Sometimes all you can do is pray.

The new rules are easy, and straightforward, and Agatha doesn't entirely trust them. The list now reads:

1) You belong to yourself.

2) You will never be punished, no matter what you do.

3) You and Eloise only have each other, and will always have each other.

4) Sometimes all you can do is pray.

_

Agatha kneels on the floorboards, trembling. It's her turn today, Ira asked her to clean and she said yes, she's not sure why except she's so used to not being allowed to say no.

She hopes she's done well. She hopes she's done well. She hopes she won't be punished.

Ira doesn't do punishments. But all the same, she hopes she won't be punished.

There's footsteps, then they stop.

"Agatha?"

"I've finished cleaning, ma'am."

A hand on her shoulder. "Agatha, please look at me. I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. Come on, look up."

Agatha obeys hesitantly. And gasps. Ira's eyes are dark and warm and how could Agatha ever have thought otherwise? Ira gets down to her level as Agatha grasps her hands tightly, pulling her into a rare hug.

"Rules one and two, Agatha."

"I belong to myself," whispers Agatha, still clutching Ira tightly, "and I will not be punished."

Ira's two rules. The only two she'll ever make.

1) I belong to myself.

2) I will never be punished, no matter what I do.

And there's a third, that Agatha has added herself, that she thinks she probably can after so long. Rule number 5, now Ira has been proven correct and number 3 has been partially removed (Agatha does not only have Eloise now).

5) Ira keeps her promises.

[popstart]

Hi, i was the anon who sent this ask, and now that you are talking about this issue, i will talk about one of the accounts you talked about.

"Oh yeah, let's ignore ALL the good things Duncan Said about Courtney and ALL the times Courtney defended him in the season, and Just sum up their ENTIRE relationship on one of their worst episodes"

Now, don't get me wrong, i hated Duncney in "Top Dog", but summing up them in Just it is so weird.

Also, the "Duncan was scared of Courtney 🥺" pisses me off so much, like can his fans STOP babying a whole criminal?

Oh my fucking God, this is a low blow.

Again, summing Duncan and Courtney's relationship in Just "Top Dog" is weird, but doing this just to make Gwen and Duncan's relationship less worse is disturbing.

Ok, let's see Duncan's ENTIRE confessional.

"Aw, man! I only came back for Gwen! She better not sulk the whole time, or i might as Well date Courtney-"

Wow, dehumanising Duncney and Gwourtney shippers by calling them maniacs. Incredible. Also, i've seen her (the user goes by any pronouns) Interacting with the shippers, and they were Nice?! This Just makes her look like an annoying and immature child.

Again, dehumanising Duncney and Gwourtney shippers by calling them terrifying. Incredible.

Ok, she reblogged this shit. Oh my god, the way i'm gonna scream now.

SHE THOUGHT IT WAS PART OF THE CHALLENGE! THIS ISN'T COMPARABLE AT ALL! ALSO, DIDN'T YOU WATCH THE EPISODE? OR YOU JUST SAW THIS CLIP OUT OF CONTEXT AND WENT LIKE "Oh, yeah, this one is gonna work to make Cuntney like a Cheater hehehe"? BECAUSE IT SEEMS LIKE IT!

The way Courtney antis try the most possible to make Courtney look like the Devil incarnate is uncomfortable as fuck.

Also, I'm really Glad this post's OP is now deactivated. I was already not standing this user in the Duncney tag talking shit anymore.

This is an excerpt of her fanfic (The Wattpad account is on the bio)

The fanfic is about a Duncan in xem (the pronouns in the fanfic) 30s now who, along other old contestants (Courtney and Gwen are two of them) and new ones, is kidnapped to a new reality show hosted by Chris. During this reality show, xe finds a magic necklace, which is obviously important.

I'm going to admit, i actually liked the fanfic and (*GASP*) Gwen and Duncan's relationship in It, but i would've liked It more If, every time Courtney appeared, she wouldn't be treated like a "monster who traumatized Duncan forever and should die painfully 🥺".

Anyway, talking about the necklace, It is obviously searched, so one of these people invades the show with a gun and threatens Duncan and the people with xem, but Duncan DIDN'T give them It, so they actually tried to shoot xem, making a whole mess.

Now, that's my problem with this excerpt: Courtney is, again, treated like an annoying bitch, even though she has ALL the right to Get angry over Duncan.

Like, what do you Mean that you will not give a necklace to a person who threats you with a gun BECAUSE of it, which is worse when you are along people, including MINORS, who didn't have to do with it, threatning their lives too?!

Seriously, the way some of Courtney's haters Go as Far as they can to disregard her feelings is so disturbing i can't-

(Sorry about the bad English, It isn't my First language)

YEAH i saw all of this on their account and i just sighed. that one post they reblogged about how "unfaithful" courtney is especially pisses me off because they showed way more evidence for duncan being the unfaithful one then ended up spinning it into a duncan baby boy gwu'ncan win moment. what! that entire post was about how all three people in that situation werent good yet the conclusion they (and the op) came to is that gwun'can good courtney bad duncney bad 🥴the reach of all reaches

its honestly just double standard after double standard and it pisses me off so much. they just jump through hoops to defend their hatred of courtney and any ship with her that they end up missing a key point of their own damn posts LMFAO. its just sooo uncomfortable how much theyre willing to defend a white boy and a white girl that they provided textbook evidence themself about them not being saints yet praise them for being good people yet completely demonize the hell out of courtney and for what 💀

also the cherry picking is EXTREMELY prominent here. the "how duncan looks at courtney vs how he looks at gwen" thing is extra amusing to me because literally 3 seconds later duncan talks about how much he loves courtney DJSHGSFKJA. extremely amusing. anyways, anyone that knows their shit will see through the complete bullshit these kindsa people post but the thing that scares me is that theyre not just posting into the void, they have plenty of notes on their pretty blatant creepyness and it just. auhgghhh.

it really gets to me and the thing is, they dont care a damn bit. they see anyone who likes courtney as completely demonic so they WANT to piss people like me off but they end up going about it in completely misogynistic and racist ways. at the end of the day, i dont think i can change anyones opinions about what they should or shouldnt like, i just hope people can look inwards about why something like a fictional character being a "bad person" can anger them so much more if the person in question is a 16 year old brown girl rather than a white boy of the same age.

[janeyshivers]

'This city is like a parody of the sorts of novels I used to read when I was younger' - The Literalisation of Cyberpunk's Digital Unreality

i've been rewatching Psycho Pass with the gf recently and something really jumped out at me during Makishima and Choe's conversation in episode 15, just before they set out to Nona Tower. Makishima compares Psycho Pass' vision of Japan to the works of a few different 20th century SFF authors, Gibson, Orwell, and Dick, eventually concluding that it most closely resembles a Philip K. Dick novel. obviously part of this is just the show wearing its influences on its sleeve, but what fascinates me about this interaction is the specific wording of "this city is like a parody of the sorts of novels i used to read when i was younger". intentional or not, i think something about that line gets at a quiet, fundamental shift that's happened in cyberpunk media since its inception, as a direct result of the genre's impact on the world.

reading old cyberpunk fiction, one thing that becomes clear is that a world mediated through a layer of digital unreality was often used as a shorthand for the layer of psychic unreality imposed on society by capitalism. the classical example of this is of course The Matrix, but it's just as often employed less as total-immersion VR and more as just, a world where digital technology runs through every part of our lives. i think this is especially noticeable in Gibson's stuff, particularly The Winter Market (in which the protaganist's tentative connection with another sputters and dies as her personality gradually leaves the real world and is uploaded into cyberspace) and Dogfight (in which a man with nothing becomes so obsessed with the cheap high of digital success that he destroys everyone around him). so much early cyberpunk is about being blind to the people around you because you can't tell what's real and what's software anymore. the software follows laws and logic disconnected from reality, and yet you have to immerse yourself in it to survive, even if you know it's wrong. splitting your attention between the real world and the digital exerts a mental strain that often causes characters to snap.

silicone valley tech geniuses saw this devastatingly effective metaphor for the dehumanisation and alienation of capitalism (as evidenced by their constant, pathetic invoking of classic sci-fi and cyberpunk that they've read in their public personas) and instead of recognising it for what it was, rushed to make that metaphor literal because, read superficially, those stories present a digital world as the aesthetic of "the future". this is why tech bros are constantly creating the Torment Nexus from hit novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus. they can't understand that the Torment Nexus, or whatever other nightmarish hypothetical technology, could ever mean something beyond its literal application in-fiction, that it might have been saying something about its contemporary social context, and so don't realise that they're creating systems that, as a direct result of their inspiration, are doomed from first principles to reinforce the worst excesses of capitalism. i say this not to excuse these freaks, but merely to highlight the systemic incentives that lead them to do all the evil shit they do.

while the metaverse might seem the logical culmination of this mindset, i think ai art is the true final form of this kind of intellectual rot. the desire to unroot art from reality entirely, to drag it with them into the sea of software so that it's all just datapoints and averages, is something that i think a lot of people find so immediately and viscerally disgusting because on some level they recognise that this is an impulse founded entirely in the logic of the software, the ideology, not reality. the people dickriding this tech don't get that something can be within a piece of art beyond aesthetics, that a dystopian world fully mitigated by digital interactions can be anything other than a cool aesthetic for the future, that people love art because through it you feel some measure of the artist's touch and understand something about how they see the world.

and yet, for now, it seems that these people have won. they've mostly imposed a literal simulacrum of a metaphorical manifestation of psychic torment and misery on those of us living in the imperial core. the corporate internet is the unreal layer of digital reality made real, systems that mediate a staggering volume of communication between people within the core, even between people who know each other irl. and it extends beyond even this, to the computerised logic of late-stage capitalism, where untold suffering is inflicted on workers through layoffs and wage cuts to make lines go up, because a line going up is recognised as "good" within the system, and must be pursued at all costs. making the line go up is worth trashing the health of the economies and businesses which the line is nominally supposed to represent the health of. this logic is pervasive, and endemic to the chaotic decline we're currently living through.

this is where i circle back around to Psycho Pass. in 2013, at the time of the show's release, the internet was rapidly becoming an unavoidable part of daily life, a process which has only sped up since then. cyberpunk media has been caught in a grimly ironic position where its metaphorical concerns have been literalised; the world it commentates on has become, as Makishima put it, a parody, built off of wonky, incomplete misunderstandings of 20th century sci fi and cyberpunk in particular. Psycho Pass even responds to this idea in some ways, especially through its use of holograms; the very first scene in the show, that iconic flash-forward to episode 16, takes care to show the camera swooping through a building that is entirely holographic, while the show focuses on the dead, insubstantial aspects of the holo-interiors of buildings (shoutout to the gf for clocking that one). Makishima, who to be clear is a character whose flaws i could talk about for days, is nevertheless compelling when he talks about craving a book's "familiar smell of pulp and glue", the unique way in which a physical book "stimulates your senses", even if it technically has all the same words as an ebook. the fictional, digital representation of the psychic insubstantiality and contradiction of capitalist ideology has begun to seep out and infect the material world. this trend has even continued in the show's wake; for a show released a decade before LLMs were rebranded into "AI", the revelation of how the Sybil System actually works seems eerily prescient, right down to the deliberate obfuscation of the obviously biased human training data behind a rhetorical shield of passionless, objective artificial intelligence, something that at the time of release was almost certainly instead intended to be a commentary on the bogus claims of impartiality made by the criminal justice system.

there's something uniquely bleak about this process, especially as it intertwines with the unrelenting war that has been waged on academia and the humanities in particular over the past few decades. STEM is good and valuable, but the way it's rhetorically deployed by policymakers and elites as a bludgeon against the humanities is probably at least somewhat related to a generation of those elites' kids watching The Matrix and deciding that the biggest thematic takeaway is that they should become silicone valley investors and make that technology real.

with all of that being said, while it's often been observed that one of the greatest strengths of capitalism is its ability to hollow out and then incorporate criticisms that are levelled against it, in this case, i think there's a world where the results of that process end up being self-defeating. after all, part of the reason digital unreality was such a compelling concept thematically was that it laid bare the contradictions and tensions of capitalism in an extremely obvious and easy to understand way. making that into a real thing that millions and millions of people have to use every single day has, i think, already started to cause major problems, for example as politicians here in the UK slip completely into the digital layer of unreality, captured by a war over the ideological affections of a small minority of extremists on social media (TERFs, Nazis, pro-Israeli cheerleaders, 15 minute city conspiracy theorists, opinion columnists, etc), the disconnect from reality leaves an incredibly obvious vacuum that allows the increasingly poor, sick, and repressed general population to see exactly the ways that this system works against their interests. anecdotally, i do believe there is a palpable sense of exhaustion even from normies with the way that technology has been used to make everything shittier, and the strain that causes is becoming ever more visible to the naked eye.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

Something I love about Exile Arc is that it focuses heavily on emotional abuse as the most harrowing aspect of c!Tommy's experience.

Like, yes, the physical torture (both c!Tommy and c!Dream have referred to it as such) started pretty much immediately. c!Dream was always very physically abusive, frequently striking c!Tommy with weapons while he was defenceless and eventually hitting him to the point he didn’t react. And that’s horrific on its own, obviously, but what Exile really focuses on is the emotional and psychological harm done, and the escalating abuse there.

It starts off with c!Dream belittling c!Tommy's feelings and thoughts, and isolating him for large periods of time. As he visits Exile more- something he occasionally didn’t do early on- he started lovebombing c!Tommy heavily, something he did to a degree beforehand with gifts but would start doing emotionally. He began manipulating him to gain his trust, presenting the absence of abuse as proof of kindness and leading him to see himself as uniquely bad, then making him feel special by portraying himself as a saviour and a trustworthy adult figure who was there to help. He began gaslighting c!Tommy about serious events, like Mexican Dream's death, and would increasingly make c!Tommy out to be the offending party and himself the victim, making c!Tommy feel guilty and wrong and ashamed, like he was the toxic party in the situation. He intentionally isolated him, lying to him and others to deliberately lead people away from Logstedshire and to keep c!Tommy unwilling to accept any help when someone did show up. Whenever anyone did while c!Dream was around, he'd worsen his abuse and drag the other person into it without their knowledge, leading c!Tommy to associate visits from anyone but c!Dream with humiliation and pain. On that note, c!Dream was very much deliberately setting rules and organising things to make c!Tommy feel humiliated and ashamed of himself, like it was embarrassing to be the victim of abuse- with infantilising and dehumanising rules, c!Tommy was treated very much like the child he hated to be seen as. It left c!Tommy desperate for any sort of validation, which c!Dream provided by making himself out to be a martyr who was the only one who cared, and he'd lovebomb c!Tommy even further when he fell into that dependence, encouraging c!Tommy to- as c!Tommy describes it himself- lack free will and become a toy, puppet, and/or pet.

Emotional abuse is often downplayed, but it's one of the most damaging forms of abuse out there. It’s insidious, and the effects of it often never go away. Many abuse survivors consider emotional abuse to be the most traumatic parts of their experience due to this, but it’s so rarely depicted as such in media. Physical and sexual abuse are considered worse or more serious than emotional abuse (and even then they’re not treated with respect a lot of the time!), when it’s far more complicated and nuanced than that with each of them causing different but deeply damaging trauma. It’s genuinely very cathartic to see a depiction of abuse that really focuses on the psychological elements, along with other stuff that’s generally not covered by media as much (such as c!Tommy not being anywhere close to a perfect victim yet still being portrayed entirely as a victim who didn’t deserve his abuse at all, or the complex feelings towards his abuse he has), and it helped me process a lot of what personally happened to me. It might be a little fantastical in some areas, but in others it’s so realistic in ways I’ve never even seen before, and I think that’s awesome.

[harrowlark]

Sorting More Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes with Sorting Hat Chats

This post uses the Sorting Hat Chats system, originally created by @sortinghatchats. It’s a personality system, sort of like mbti or enneagram, except it developed right here in fandom for talking about and analysing fictional characters.

SHC is about two things — your motive (called your primary) and your method (called your secondary). You can read a full explanation of the system over here (thanks, @wisteria-lodge!)

@the-phoenix-heart has already done a great post on Coriolanus and Lucy Gray over here, which I recommend you go and read if you haven’t already! But since I have A Lot Of Thoughts about this book (and am currently writing a longfic about it that’s going to end up at 200k+, whoops) I figured I’d chat about the sortings of a few of its other characters.

Also, good lord this ended up long for a post just about three characters. Like, grab some snacks, grab a glass of water. The rest of this post is below the cut, to protect your dash. You ready? Let’s go!

Sejanus Plinth — Double Lion with a Badger primary model and possibly a singed secondary

Starting with his primary — Sejanus is a good example of how Badgers and Paragon Lions (that is, Lions with Badger values) can be really difficult to distinguish from one another, especially in fiction. People are people and this means something to him, in a way it doesn’t to either the Capitol or his father. It’s a Badger ideal, but it’s not exclusive to Badgers. Although Sejanus is so incredibly heartfelt about it that I do think he’s a Felt primary (Lion or Badger).

There’s his angst about leaving Two, his community that he still considers an incredibly important part of his identity, that could be a Badger primary thing… but it also could be a human thing. And it’s so tied up in his guilt for his father’s actions during the war, and I think any primary could be hit hard by a parent producing munitions for a war against their own people. (And later using the money from said munitions to save their own skins and move away from home. Sejanus has reams of survivor’s guilt, and that’s just a person thing.)

I could still be convinced either way, I think (and if anyone reading has strong opinions, I’m curious to hear your thoughts!). But I’ve come down on Lion for him, and that’s because of the way he talks so readily about systems and what’s right, not just the Badger that’s a person! stuff. When Dr. Gaul says it’s the Capitol’s right, to treat the Districts how they choose, he doesn’t come back with they’re people, how could you? but meets her at her level, Idealist to Idealist. “You’ve no right.” Everyone is born with life and freedom, and “they’re not yours for the taking.”

There’s also the way he lives for so long in the Capitol without giving an inch. Badgers are External primaries, meaning they tend to adopt the values of their larger communities. I’d expect a Badger to have more… doubt, more misgivings. Or to dehumanise the Capitol more, as a way to cope. But Lions have a way of digging in their heels and saying no, I know what’s right. They’re also, classically, the most at peace with being loners. And Sejanus isn’t happy being alone in the Capitol… but you get the sense he’d choose it every time over compromising his ideals.

I also think having him as a Lion creates an interesting read on the way he bonds so easily with Coriolanus and not with his father, despite the two being really quite similar people in a lot of ways. Sure, Coriolanus is charismatic and trying to be liked in a way that maybe Strabo isn’t, I’m sure that’s part of it. But Coriolanus, fellow Lion primary, also seems to just… get it, where Sejanus is coming from with his ideals. Coriolanus doesn’t like it — Sejanus is rejecting everything that his Lion has been fighting for most of his life. But he gets the innate drive, because he’s the same way with his own success, his safety and control, his family’s power. So he slots it into his calculations about how to act around Sejanus and moves on. Whereas I get the sense that Strabo probably doesn’t understand Sejanus in quite the same way.

(External primaries — Badger and Bird — have this knack for just deciding to like something, or to be alright with something. In parents, this can often manifest in expecting their kids to be able to do the same thing. I don’t think we have enough information on Strabo to conclusively sort him, but I do wonder if that’s what’s going on here.)

All that being said — groups and his community in Two, forming one with the rebels, are important enough to Sejanus that I’m going to say he has a full Badger model, rather than just being a Lion with Badger ideals.

As for his secondary, he’s a Lion, through and through. He goes the direct route, he’s unapologetically himself. He can do the Lion secondary “dimmer switch” where he stays quiet about parts of himself or his ideals — he would have had to learn that, to survive as long as he did. But the moments where he’s at his most powerful… I’m coming back to that conversation with Dr. Gaul again. He stands his ground and says “You’ve no right”. It might not get him anywhere in the text itself, but as a reader that’s a powerful moment. Even Coriolanus is grudgingly impressed by his pluck.

In this he’s like Katniss, another Lion secondary. She’s at her most powerful when she can stand her ground, speak her truth, and shoot straight for the problem at hand. It’s the berries, it’s speaking from the heart in her propos, it’s shooting Coin. But it’s also such a dangerous thing to be in Panem, and Collins is keenly aware of that. It so easily could have gotten her killed. Sejanus is a case where it did.

An Aside on the Way Collins Writes Idealists vs Loyalists That Has Become it’s Own Section as it’s So Damn Long

The contrast between Sejanus and Katniss is also a good example of the way Collins tends to write about Idealist primaries (Lion and Bird) vs Loyalists (Snake and Badger). When Collins writes Idealists, they have a tendency to sort of… careen off some edge or another, for their drive, or their ideals, or their philosophy.

Coriolanus loses himself in his drive for control, safety. He makes himself someone who will thrive in the Capitol, because he values his own comfort more than he values the snatches of empathy, of another way forward, that he ponders throughout Ballad. And so he murders the part of himself that cares. The boy who told Lucy Gray that he should be like Sejanus and try to quit the Games ends up trying to kill them both. This is his tragedy.

Gale loses himself in his drive to defeat the Capitol. He makes himself someone who has what it takes to help win the war, because he values justice and perhaps revenge more than he values the human life on the ground. And so he murders the part of himself that cares. The boy who told Katniss that he’d protect their families above everything gets Prim killed. This is his tragedy.

Coin you can read as either or both of the above, depending on how much you think she believed in rebel justice vs her own security and power. We’ll get to Dr. Gaul later on, but she’s also an example of someone who cared more for her own safety and philosophy than the lives of the people she has power over.

It’s not as simple as “good Loyalists, bad Idealists” — certainly the Idealists in this series are written sympathetically, even when the text disagrees with them. We understand Coriolanus wanting his family to be safe and fed. We understand Gale wanting justice. But surviving in a dystopian dictatorship, under that kind of violent oppression, is hard, and enacting meaningful change is even harder. Every single character has to grapple with that, but the Idealists tend to get the worst of it. Whether they choose to submit for personal gain like Coriolanus or fight fire with fire like Gale or Coin, they lose something of themselves in the process, and it drives them to tragedy one way or another.

And then there’s Sejanus. Sejanus, who knows the risk of loosing himself, who’s seen his father do the exact same thing and who knows what the cost of that has been. He will not murder the part of himself that cares. He will not even pretend. But he doesn’t know how to move forward for his ideals, without that first act of self-mutilation, and he can’t live with himself for that.

And… this is speculation, but I think maybe he’s terrified that he’s destined for it anyway. “What makes you think I could do that?” he asks Coriolanus, when Coriolanus says he can do good with the Plinth fortune when he inherits. There are lots of reasons Sejanus might say that. Maybe it’s just unthinkable to him to say that sort of money could do good. Maybe, in SHC terms, it’s a sign of burning on his secondary, that he doesn’t think he’s capable of his own actions doing good. But I also think it’s possible that he really doesn’t think he’ll get that far with his whole self intact, after the pressure exerted on him by his father, by the Capitol. That he thinks either his compassion will die young, or he will. So he nearly looses himself to despair, instead.

But to be a Loyalist, in this series, is to have something that grounds you. It protects you from loosing yourself the same way. Peeta is aware of the risk of self-mutilation. “I don’t want them to change me,” he says, before his first Games. But he’s a Snake primary, and the way he keeps hold of himself is his devotion to Katniss. To change him, Coriolanus must remove this devotion — the hijacking — but even this cannot last. Katniss, likewise, is kept focused and steadied by her own Snake primary, by the people she fights for. It’s still difficult — wars have a way of coming for the people you love. But even when Katniss is at her lowest point, her love still centres her. When she kills Coin, it’s “for Prim”.

The text is saying — yes, the world is big and you are very small. But if you can help one person, that means something. If you can fight for one person, that means something. And those small acts of kindness and love are where change comes from, in the end.

This is how I think Lucy Gray manages to be the rare Idealist in this series who doesn’t careen off some edge or another. Because that sort of small-scale love is her ideal. She’s focused, she’s grounded, she cares for the Covey and her own personal freedom and the impact of her own actions on the world.

And she’s flexible, about her ideals. When Coriolanus and Coin and Gale and Dr. Gaul careen off that edge it’s sort of… it, for them. There’s no coming back, they’re too committed for that. Sejanus, if I’m right, is terrified that will be him, too. Lucy Gray is no stranger to becoming morally grey. She’s a victor, she’s killed people. But, to her, this does not prevent her from doing the work to walk on the right side of the line. This does not excuse her from doing the work to walk on the right side of the line. It’s her life’s work and she will see it through.

And then we have Coriolanus. And the thing is, he starts off with these sort of small-scale ideals, too. He cares for his family, he cares for Lucy Gray, and he prioritises them over a lot. And you could read that as being a performance, or that he only cares for what their wellbeing could do for him. I know a lot of people read him that way. But there’s another reading where it’s at least a mix. I’d argue even his care for Sejanus winds up being at least halfway genuine. And in that reading… you get the sense that his care for them could have been what saved him, if only he had let it.

Dr. Volumnia Gaul — Double Bird

Double Birds in fiction are classically either the (mad) scientist or the mentor figure. With Dr. Gaul being both, is it any wonder this is her sorting? @the-phoenix-heart already mentioned her sorting in their post, but as that was a quick one-liner and I have Many Thoughts, I’m going to chat about her here for a little bit!

So, Bird primary — the way she mentors Coriolanus (and to a lesser extent the other Hunger Games mentors) is very Bird. She lays out the evidence of her system, her worldview, and expects this will be what convinces people to follow suit. @the-phoenix-heart wrote that Coriolanus probably built a Bird primary model for her, and I absolutely agree. And then there’s the bit where she says that what she loved about the war was that it proved her right… which is such an Idealist thing to say, but maybe swings a little more Bird, too. There’s that Bird drive for truth, as opposed to for a cause (which would swing Lion).

As for her Bird secondary, that’s obvious too. She loves plans, she loves tools, and she’s always working on tinkering with both to make them better. Her mutts are a beloved tool. The Games are a beloved tool. Coriolanus, fellow Bird secondary, takes a little while to come around to her ideals, but the Games as a tool? Control as strategy? He gets that immediately. “So obvious. Too obvious,” he says, about controlling the eternal war.

There’s an interesting thing about her Double Bird, mad scientist vibes, though, that I think separates her from the classic Double Bird scientist who gets so caught up in their scientific shenanigans that they don’t realise or care how “mad” they come off.

This is pure speculation, but — what do we think she was like, growing up? She’s sadistic, a “nerd”, quite probably some form of neurodivergent. What are the odds she was the “weird kid” in her class? Which is a hard thing to be under the best of circumstances, but in the Capitol? It must have been brutal. Thinking of her this way unlocked a lot about her character and motivations, for me.

No wonder she decided it was true that humanity is brutal, vicious, at constant war with itself. No wonder she doesn’t take on evidence that questions that truth. No wonder she loved the war, when everyone else suddenly saw what she did. No wonder she loves the Games, which specifically use children as an example of the brutal nature she sees in humanity. Finally, something to point to when people tell her that children are innocent.

And no wonder she values control so highly. I think she probably learnt quite young — at school, maybe at university — that fear is a powerful means of control, of personal safety. It’s one of the main tools she passes down to Coriolanus. Getting back to what I mentioned about her Double Bird, mad scientist vibes — in SHC terms, I think this is an Actor Bird costume she’s built for herself, as well as being reflective of her actual sorting. Everything “mad” about her seems so carefully calculated to manufacture a reaction. The nursery rhymes when she starts a conversation, that she drops the moment things get truly serious. The carefully planned encounter with Clemensia and the snakes. She’s using the trope itself as a tool, because she knows “the mad scientist” is something that scares people.

Tigris Snow — Badger Snake with an exploded Badger secondary model in Ballad and an Actor Bird secondary model in Mockingjay

Unlike every other character in this book who’s been sorted so far, Tigris never talks about ideals or truths or philosophies or causes. She talks about people — her family most of all, but others as well. Lucy Gray is a person, and that instantly matters to her. She’s definitely a Loyalist, but I could see Snake, I could see Badger. She’s a minor enough character that you could pull her either way. But I’ve come down on Badger for her for a couple of reasons. Apart from Sejanus, she’s one of the main mouthpieces for the “the districts are people and that matters” argument, which as I’ve said before isn’t exclusive to Badgers but is a Badger thing.

And it’s a small thing, but there’s the way she refuses to hear anything bad against her boss, Fabrica, as Tigris is so grateful she gave her a position in fashion. I think a Snake would be more likely to say that no, she doesn’t owe Fabrica anything, if Fabrica is going to treat her like that. But Badgers take their obligation to the group seriously, and they can run into problems with dismissing their own worth in the process.

As for her secondary… there’s definitely some Badger there. She’s the main caretaker in the Snow household and caretaking is classically a Badger secondary thing. But the fact that this is something she’s had to learn how to be makes me think it’s probably a model she’s picked up for that specific purpose — which then exploded, this girl seems to always be up all night working.

The biggest example of her problem-solving is Coriolanus’ Reaping Day shirt, and from that we learn that she’s adaptable. Take the fabric from an old pouch, exchange favours with the maintenance man, tell your boss her curtains need bleaching so you can slip in the shirt while you’re doing it. Rapid-fire Bird, Snake — she’s in her element, fashion, which makes it hard to distinguish between the two. But there’s the way she looks around at her environment for cues. The tesserae she takes from the walls on the maid’s bathroom for buttons.

And there’s also the playful way she seems to have of coming up with little words and phrases on the fly, as a kid. Nicknames like Coryo and the Grandma’am, and the mantra Snow lands on top. I think she’s a Snake secondary, the balance to Coriolanus’ Bird that made them such an effective team growing up. It’s the same thing we see with him and Lucy Gray, another Snake.

But then we arrive at Mockingjay, and Tigris feels so incredibly different. She’s this very carefully constructed persona of a tiger, enigmatic and silent with a purr when she talks. In SHC terms, it’s an Actor Bird costume, it’s too obviously constructed to be anything else. As for why she made it… that’s anyone’s guess. But it’s such a break from the way she presents herself in tbosas that has to have been part of the point.

One thing about that costume, though? She can’t take it off. It’s literally tattooed on her skin. And if there’s one thing Actor Birds (whether innate or modelled) don’t seem to like, it’s when they get stuck in one of their roles.

[darkcircles4lyfe]

Hii I’ve stumbled across a few of your posts and haven’t even gleaned the tip of the iceberg that is your blog, but I would love to hear a more fleshed version of your Bakugo with AFO post (if you have more that you wanted to share), because that is such a cool concept???

Like, it’s such a nice way to address the symbiotic nature of the two quirks + Bakugo’s relationship with Midoriya at the same time, and there’s also so much to explore in terms of the repercussions of that (not just the symbolism of it, but also the parts you’ve mentioned like what that would mean for people who’ve had their quirks stolen, how they will deal with all the stockpiled quirks, or even on a wider scale of how the media would react if AFO/OFA is leaked/ revealed to the public).

Just imagine the amount of continued exploration in terms of the nature of quirks v nurture of society, because AFO/OFA has so far been (imo) one of the few evidence that quirks carry personality, which is so awesome because it’s like saying a quirk literally holds a part of you through the vestiges while demolishing this idea through basically the entire plot of the manga loll. (To phrase it slightly better, the manga is sort of reaching the conclusion that a quirk is a part of you and you only, without being all of you, and that it’s exactly what the name says it is: a quirk.)

The thing I don’t really like about this conclusion is the blatant disregard for the quirkless community, which was the initial point of discussion and social commentary in bnha. This is why I think Bakugo being given AFO would be great fuel for the debate of should we be allowed to mess with the quirks we are given.

As in, who gets to decide? Who gets to play god? How will it be regulated? Should it even be regulated? How do you do all that without dehumanising Bakugo the same way society dehumanised pro heroes? (Bonus points for linking this to real life because I’m all for social commentary/ reflections in fictional media)

And then on a personal level, what will it take for Bakugo to be able to control AFO’s personality (hello, eye symbolism + name symbolism) within the quirk? How will All Might handle this info? How does this all relate to the conflict of children in war? The development of the league of villains’ character plots (esp Tomura’s)?

I have a lot of questions with very few answers loll, I would love to hear your thoughts on this!!

this post, for reference

Gosh, I am so sorry for taking forever to answer this. But you ask so many good questions! And I think this is actually a pretty good time, after 419.

I guess where I stand with the idea now is still somewhat ambiguous. All for One as a power is too big and interesting to go away--or at least, if it did go away, it would speak volumes. It feels like an almost elemental, fundamental, and even spiritual power, something beyond the man himself. So I'm still wondering about its future.

While a lot of other characters' narratives, including Katsuki's, are about this "nature of quirks vs. nurture," with the original Japanese name for quirks literally meaning "individuality" ("個性" or "kosei"), All for One (the power) oddly represents a lack of individuality. Like a shapeshifter with no form of its own. With that in mind, might we actually compare it to quirklessness? This is worth considering if we're trying to guess who might be a fitting person to inherit it.

I'm at least certain that Tenko shouldn't keep it, since he was literally groomed for it, to be a vessel. For him it represents a lack of individuality in the absolute worst way: a lack of agency, and an identity determined by/in the image of someone else since before even the moment of conception. Actually, as of 419, it seems like if there is any echo of him left after being possessed again, Tenko needs to get rid of the quirk. If he is able to regain control for even a second, the most logical action he can take to save himself and do something of his own free will for once, is to pass the quirk on to someone else.

What I'm a little less certain about is who should get it. On the one hand, Katsuki has a very strong sense of self, especially now. As I said before, this would make him an interesting candidate because he wouldn't want AFO, and thus wouldn't use it for his own gain, on principle. However...

In between now and when I wrote that little post, the future of One for All has also become ambiguous. Does Tenko have it even though All for One does not? (because of Izuku's intent in passing it on?) I've wondered for a long time what would happen if OFA and AFO combined. Would they become more than the sum of their parts, creating something new? Maybe something that can connect with other people and build them up? Perhaps it would develop some aspect of agency that takes away its capacity to exploit people. I'm just speculating...

And I haven't wanted to talk about it, but I'm ambivalent about Izuku becoming quirkiness again. As in, I think Horikoshi could pull it off either way. So this is just an idea:

Izuku could also be a candidate for AFO because he lacks a sense of self, in his own way, as I've gone into before. At best, this means a lack of an ego, the opposite of AFO's personality. In AFO's words, Izuku is the boy born with nothing, who now has less than nothing. There's also a nice symmetry to this idea: Izuku giving OFA to Tenko, then Tenko giving AFO to Izuku. It would be interesting to see what the power would be like in the hands of its antithesis.

But like I said, if you ignore AFO's own selfish interpretation of the power as a tool for domination and a sign of his natural superiority, its essence is a lot more comparable to quirklessness. Just as one's quirk does not encompass one's entire self even though it is unique to them, so too does the quirk have potential beyond its user's point of view. It is potentially ideal for someone who wouldn't make it a part of who they are or use it to enforce their desires, and this applies to both Izuku and Katsuki.

The final thing to mention from your question is the possibility that whoever received AFO would have to deal with overcoming his possession. Maybe this is too much for one person to handle. Maybe Katsuki plays into this either way.

[starforgedthor]

when you become untouchable {Vigilante / Adrian Chase} // nine

nine. no crime in being kind.

Summary: during your first mission for project butterfly, you're the only one that knows you've been tailed by a certain local menace to society. arguably your favourite menace to society. so you go to hang out when things get dull.

Need to Know: She/Her pronouns. villain!meta-human!reader. self depricating reader. chaos. implied dehumanisation. canon typical violence. heavily implied smut. slowish burn.

A/N: i know its been eight months. i have no excuse. i still think about this fic. i love vij and the reader here but they might be inconsistent idk lol. you understand, it's been a while. ANYWAYS, please let me know what you think!!

[ masterpost ]

Taglist: @16boyfriends-and-me @a-girl-who-loves-disney @amysuemc @generalfoolish @idkanymoreaboutlife @home-of-disaster @2guysonascooter @demure-doll @grippleback-galaxy @demeterdavis @specificpuppy @gay-cold-brew @siberianallen @evvilspawn @bright-cherry-bombzz @simping-4-jason-todd @girlinchair @blackwatxr @plzu

Taglist is always open, feel free to message or comment to be added! xx

Problems began the moment Peacemaker was handed his gun, and he realised it didn't have a Dove of Peace on it, the same way all of his personal weapons must have had.

"Get me a Dremel -" you offered in the face of Chris's rising frustration, the only one willing to tolerate his antics in this moment.

"Do I look like I have a fucking Dremel?!" He hissed back furiously, clearly not thrilled with your suggestion. Harcourt flatly offered to get a marker for him to draw one on, but Chris still didn't exactly seemed pleased with the solution; "the most important part of killing someone, at least to me, is the goddamn Dove of Peace! Can you even draw a Dove of Peace?" He demanded to know from you.

It takes you a moment to suggest pulling one right from his memories, that you could draw with one hand and hold his hand with the other to get it perfect. While he hesitates for a moment, by now he seems willing enough to trust you, which is honestly more than you got from anyone else these days.

So that's how you find yourselves while the others, the ones who 'weren't potential liabilities' got the rest of the site and it's equipment set up.

Chris lay in the grass, one hand behind his head, the other resting in the space between the two of you, while you pulled your gloves off, his sniper rifle in your lap, something jabbing your back pocket that you ignore for the time being, and the marker beside you.

Taking his hand, his life and memories rush over you. While you'd done this before with Chris, to stitch up his wounds the other day, the memories always feel fresh. There's a moment of genuine shock as the newer memories include you, wanton and breathless and stark naked between him and Vigilante, but at least his thoughts were complimentary, if incredibly vulgar. It was more that you'd never get used to seeing yourself in that situation from an outside perspective. Still, you tried to ignore those and focus on the other Doves of Peace from his weapons.

Technically you could just take the memories of the Doves no longer need to be in contact with him, but there's something about this moment, this cool afternoon and him relaxing in the sun, holding his hand and drawing a pretty decent Dove on his rifle, that would probably be very nice if you weren't all here to commit murder. Something about the way Chris was perfectly content in this moment for you to hold his hand, happy for you to have free reign on his memories and experiences, no shame and with complete trust. Even Harcourt took years to develop that kind of trust. Despite his reputation and attitude at times, you were genuinely glad to be able to call Chris your friend.

Harcourt finally joins you both when you're handing over the rifle, and Peacemaker's giving begrudging compliments about the last-minute Dove addition. It pitters off into general small-talk before Chris asks you if you've been around this area before.

"I'm usually not allowed in Washington," you mused, knowing you still had a long time to wait before the targets to arrive, "especially not this part, considering the amount of important people that live within, like, a ten mile radius of here," you gestured towards the targets' house, "Senators and stuff, you know? But isn't it beautiful -"

"I need you to be like forty percent less Disney on this stakeout," Harcourt rolled her eyes at how you'd chosen to phrase the factoid about yourself, "why are you even out here, shouldn't you be in the van with the others?"

"I hope not, there's barely room as it is," Economos's mutter comes through the line and you beam at Harcourt.

"And you're my favourite," you coo at her, voice syrupy.

"Tell us what you really think," from Harcourt's other side you hear Peacemaker's snicker.

"Seriously, Chaser, where are you meant to be- Murn," Harcourt goes back to her headset, "where is she meant to be?"

"We're literally just killing time, they're not due for hours -" You pitched yourself back against the grass with a groan.

"What do you mean you're usually not allowed in Washington?" Peacemaker speaks up, however back to the thought you'd had just a few moments ago.

"Technically," you started, looking up at the sky through the dappled leaves, "I'm not allowed anywhere that isn't Belle Reve, you know?" You huffed a strange little laugh at that, "but the rules on where I am and am not allowed to be kind of change depending on where I'm needed." Silence filled the air for several long moments, "there's lots of people in Washington; I've found a lot of people in Washington, and I don't know where they are now-"

"Okay," Harcourt says sharply, and your gaze snaps to her. From her pocket she pulls a zip-tie, and she doesn't even have to say, "go be Disney somewhere else for a bit, Cujo," for you to take it and loop it around your wrist.

It takes all of five minutes of wandering around the surrounding shrubbery for you to feel the pressure of the item you'd stuffed in your back pocket before leaving the hotel that morning.

The fucking multitool.

It was still light out, nobody was talking to you directly over the comms, it was just a little, silly thing for you to entertain yourself with, no-one would care -

Except with your glove half-off and the multitool against your hand, you could feel that it's owner, Adrian Chase - that fucking busboy, Christ if Vij ever ends up actually telling you his name you're going to have to live with the embarrassment of never having connected those dots - was much closer than you'd anticipated.

Still, considering you knew how you felt about Vij and Adrian when you believed they were different people, there was something strange about knowing they're not, especially when Vigilante clearly went to great lengths to hide his identity. You reasoned that if you could earn his trust, he'd tell you himself, and so you didn't want to know it until then, at least if you could help it.

So you take a moment to store the information of his location in your mind, which is the first step that lead you to getting the name The Chaser in the first place, and pulled your glove back on properly. Contact broken between your palm and the tool you now clutched in gloved hands, all you knew is where he was, and that it was definitely within walking distance.

"I'll be back! I'm exploring!" You hollered, and we're met with dismissive mumbles. The multitool was clutched tightly in your hand.

There's a maroon Sebring a quarter mile away that you know Vigilante has ducked down behind before you even properly see it.

"You and I both know what my powers are, Vij," you sighed after turning your mic off.

"I still want to ask how you found me," you hear, "but only because that's how this kind of dialogue usually goes."

"Chaser isn't just a vanity title," you found yourself grinning, leaning on the hood of his car. Vigilante pops up, and you like to imagine him looking miffed. You offer his multitool with a blithe smile, "you should also take this if you don't want me to be able to find you again."

"Why are you out here?" He asks slowly, taking the multitool finally. You breathe a sigh of relief, climbing to sit on the hood of his car.

"I was bored," you told him honestly, before adding, "also I almost gave that away, I know you said I should keep it but really it's in safer hands with you."

"To who?" Vigilante asks finally, and when you ask if he has any snacks instead, he offers a protein bar from the box in his back seat. He's got binoculars, and a shitty radio with the other having been stashed near the others.

"What do you mean?"

"Who did you try to give the multitool away to?" Vigilante clarifies. At that you lean back against his windscreen, scrubbing your eyes with the heels of your palms.

"I know his name," you groaned with frustration, "he told me!" You actually whined, before the idea came to you, "you're from around here aren't you?"

"I- uh-"

"At Fennel Fields, you literally bought us lunch from there the other day, starts with A, around my age, he's -" Vigilante is frozen beside you when you turn to him, his arms are crossed so tightly over his chest it looks painful, "Vij, your dick has been inside me, and I'm pretty sure you used to get off to the idea of fighting me-" he loudly spluttered protests at that, but you continued, "you are not allowed to judge me -"

"For what- why?! I'm not judging you!" He crowed, and you puffed out your cheeks for a moment.

"Seriously, you're not allowed to judge me, or tell Chris about what I'm about to say, he's already a judgemental bitch about my taste -"

"What does that even mean?"

"Don't worry about it," you blurted quickly before powering on, "the bus boy, the cute one with the face and the - don't fucking judge me, Vij - the nice hands, good handshake - Adrian!" You lit up, as the name finally found you.

"What?"

"His name is Adrian!"

A long silence follows.

"Why would you save something like that?"

"Save?"

"Like with your powers."

"He told me, and I remembered it, like a normal fucking person," then, after a long moment, you couldn't help but point out, "you sound weird, Vij," you smile slyly, "don't be jealous, you're still my favourite from around town."

"Peacemaker is-"

"I adore Chris but not only does he bully me but he also knows you're my favourite and bullies me about it."

"But I'm Peacemaker's best friend, I can't be your best friend -" Vigilante was beginning to sound distressed, and immediately you tried to assure him.

"No, dude I know, it's okay, I'm not asking you for anything, I have a best friend, it's Harcourt -"

"Is she the one who tried to veto our friendship -?"

"You called it a friendship!" You crowed with delight, "I win! We're friends!"

"Yeah, obviously," Vigilante snorted. A far more comfortable silence fell over the two of you, and you opened the protein bar. Then, out of nowhere, he leans over enough to bump your shoulder with his.

"You've got a crush on a bus boy, you're so lame!"

"Oh god," you groaned, "you're not jealous, you're just a nosy bitch like Chris," you shoved him back, "and who I do or do not have a thing for is actually none of your business, Vij."

"Actually it kind of is," he sounds like he's stifling a laugh.

"Why? Has Chris said something?"

"About what?" He seems genuinely confused for the moment, but it piques your interest. Why would Vigilante feel like your feelings are his business if Chris hadn't mentioned your possible crush on him?

Still, as neither of you seem to be able to elaborate one way or the other, a comfortable silence settles between you as you sit side-by-side on the hood of his car.

"I thought you only knew how to find someone when you were in contact with a thing of theirs," Vigilante mused, inspecting his multitool carefully for a long few moments. Considering how surprisingly forthcoming you usually were about your powers and how they worked, the sudden silence he's met with actually surprises him.

When he looks to you, for the first time he can remember, there's a cold, calculating look in your eyes. It's the first time he'd felt like you came close to resembling your reputation.

"Why?" There's no humour, nothing light; he doesn't quite understand what nerve he's struck, but clearly it's an unexpected one.

"Uh," he's at a loss, momentarily fumbling for the reason he'd brought it up in the first place, while you're laser-like focus never sways from his face, "I thought you were wearing your gloves when you found me," he points out, before he looks back at the tool, "but that's what you do, right? You have to have skin contact - like, your hand has to have skin contact with the thing of whoever you're chasing down, and then you know them and you kill them," his frown grows deeper as he considers how you'd arrived, muttering to himself, "that can't be right..."

"You're very observant." Your voice has that strange, cool tone, and there's sirens going off in the back of his head that he's in immediate danger. He can feel his tool belt heavy on his hips, wondering if he'd be fast enough to stop you if you sprang at him. But you're too close, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the hood of his Sebring; if you attacked, he can't trust that you don't have some form of plan, some kind of weapon or training assistance in your pockets. There's a moment when he wonders if this is where he dies.

"You know the owner of whatever you touch, right? And their position and the thing's whole history and whatever, you know that while you're in contact with it, right?" He tries to keep his tone light, like he can't see the way your pupils have grown dark and wide and searching.

"Right," you say slowly.

"Well parts... Parts of this conversation, I don't think would make sense if you knew that much about me," he admits easily, leaning back on his elbows, repositioning himself to appear more casual while his taser became more easily accessible.

"And...?"

"I won't tell, you know?" He shoots for casual, and angles his head just a little further towards you, enough to see your eyebrows slowly rise, "that you like me so much you wanna know my location forever. You saved it, and you're embarrassed that I figured out how much you like me." He's spelled it out. Stated in no undercertain terms. Sure, he dressed it up in something light and teasing, but you both knew now that he knew that you could retain more than just memories; that much, he concluded, wasn't information you were quick to broadcast.

Despite his teasing, light tone, he watches the way your expression shifts. His fingers twitch towards his toolbelt in anticipation; if you were going to kill him, now would be the time.

Your expression, however, slides from cold, to genuine surprise, to uncharacteristically thoughtful, before you scrunch up your whole face with a bashful smile.

"I can give it back," you tell him, expression still squished, eyes still closed like you don't want to look at him, to see him looking at you, "I should have given it back before I gave the tool back to you, I'm sorry," your expression smooths out, eyes opening with something faintly exasperated and apologetic as you look at him, "it's weird, I must seem so weird, I'm sorry, I can -"

"Why didn't you?" It's not accusatory, he's genuinely enquiring. Your rambling stops, and you give a little half-smile, as if there's some kind of joke he's not privy to.

"I think there's something I don't want to know about you."

"That you got from my little, tool thing?" At his question, you nodded, still wearing that smile, "but you knew who I was when you held it?" Another nod from you, "but you didn't think that was important to save, like, all things considered?"

After a very long moment, you took a deep breath, looking over your other shoulder to the woods from which you'd emerged. Vigilante sits back up, resting his elbows on his knees, reasonably sure you weren't going to attack him.

"You're okay with knowing my location at all times, but don't think it'd be important to know my name?"

"I can give it back," you insisted again, still not looking at him. This time, however, you offer a hand towards him. For a long moment, he looks at your open, gloved hand, and frowns.

"If you don't want to know about me, you should give it back," he sounds almost sulky as he rummaged through his pocket for the tool.

"I didn't think it'd be as damning as your name," you admitted lightly, turning to look at him, amused.

"Well you'll probably be able to figure out where I work, where I live, where I patrol -" he's sounding grumpier by the second as he practically slams the tool into your waiting hand, still rambling, "Google maps is free, it's not a very big town, and I can't control what you do with your days off -"

"I wouldn't stalk you!" The way you laughed made it sound like you found the very notion absurd.

"So even if you do have the means to find out who I am, you won't even bother?"

"I'm sorry," you scoffed, "are you offended right now?" Removing your glove you both fall silent as your fingers close around the multitool. Vigilante immediately stiffens beside you, gaze snapping to your face, only to see your eyes squeezed shut, expression reading almost embarrassed.

"Ah, fuck, take it, I'm an idiot -" you tell him after barely a moment, taking the tool with your gloved hand, holding it out. Eyes still closed, you appear to be wincing.

"What just happened?" He asks, clearly confused.

"I probably found the thing I didn't want to know," you cracked your eyes open, expression still a little pained, "which was probably reliving me trying to awkwardly give it away as a tip to that poor busboy in excruciating detail, the way my powers like to show everything."

"What?"

How- why- surely you knew he was that busboy, right?! You'd just been in contact with his multitool, you must know he's Adrian Chase, that very same busboy, who's definitely taken that very tool to work in his back pocket at least three times before -

Granted, Adrian knows he's not the best at reading people in situations like this, but he's pretty sure that if you were operating with the knowledge of who exactly he was, you wouldn't be reacting like this.

"Seriously," you wave the tool at him a little more insistently, "it doesn't take me long to give back things like that, you can go and get lost if you want, and I'd never be able to find you," you hesitated for a moment, "well, not using my power. There's still conventional methods, you know?" After another moment of deliberation you add, "but they haven't caught you yet!"

Vigilante takes the multitool, quickly stashing it back in his pocket.

"So you've had the ability to know my secret identity ever since we first met, pretty much, and you haven't even bothered?" Again, he sounds strangely offended.

"I didn't think you'd want me to?" You frown, confused.

"I don't, but still!"

"I wouldn't violate your boundaries just because I can!" And while Vigilante babbled out half-protests, clearly having not thought about it from that angle, you sit back, "and learning your secret identity with my powers would just cause so many issues I don't want to deal with now," you continue talking, listing off the issues without giving him a chance to interject; "one, you're my friend and this would mean you'd probably never trust me again, which would be a bummer and a half, two, I'd have zero plausible deniability, not that anyone's asking me to identify you in a line-up, but like, in our line of work, if I knew who you were and I saw you on the street and had even a slight reaction, that could be bad, and three," you sighed, taking a moment to breath, "interacting with you, knowing your identity, and knowing you didn't want me to know it, that kind of unbalanced dynamic in a friendship it feels like -" you searched for the word, but Vigilante cut in, tone surprisingly understanding.

"Meta-gaming."

After a beat of silence, you frown and remind him you don't play videogames. Laughing, he shakes his head, tone having brightened considerably.

"No, it's from- well, I know it from D&D, but I think it's a thing in most tabletop role playing games like that; like say our group, in the game, has split up, and my character's in a tavern hitting on some hot elf, and then we have to focus on some of the other characters, who have just found out from someone else in the bar that the hot elf is here to see her half-elf son, and they put two and two together and realise she's my estranged mom or something, and I, as the player, have heard all this because the entire group of players is sitting around my friend Alec's table in his basement, but my half-elf character wouldn't be aware of this development. I can't just be all like 'ew gross you're my mom' in character, because my character wasn't with their characters in the game when they found out. I'd be operating on information I logically shouldn't know; meta-gaming." He shrugged for a moment, looking out ahead and stretching, seemingly pleased with the surprisingly fitting explanation, "I don't know, I get it can be hard to not meta-game when you have the information and can't get rid of it, and maybe some people feel more powerful or secure or whatever having that information, but I don't think it's as satisfying for my character, you know?"

"I know -" you say, quietly.

"There's no -" and he's halfway through his next sentence before he'd registered what you'd said, and it finally hits him as his final words trail off - "... fun in that."

"Exactly," and you're wearing this soft, gentle smile as you look at him, and he can't quite believe it's taken him this long for it to actually make sense.

"You haven't been doing a bit; you - Chaser, Y/N - you like me as a person. You like being around me." His bluntness leaves you flustered, but you try to laugh it off, having though that you'd made as much clear already. He still seems to be in shock from this revelation, however - "you don't benefit from being close to me, I've straight up admitted to fantasizing about killing you for years, you... want to be my friend," he paused, "like normal people do." His tone was soft but otherwise unreadable, and you couldn't bring yourself to look at him.

"Sorry, I know all things considered, that's probably really weird, and like, borderline impossible," you admit with a self-conscious laugh.

"All things considered, you're putting in a lot of effort," Vigilante hesitates, "more than I realised." Then, "you're good at being a friend, aren't you?"

"Yes, but I'm good at everything," you answer automatically, sounding like your mind is far away, quoting someone else, "that's the point of me." After a moment, you seem to come back to yourself, and give him a smile, "but I'm trying, so thanks."

And neither of you quite knows where to go from there. There's so much more you want to say, but again, all things considered, there's no way it'd be the right time to bring any of it up. It's too early in the friendship for anything more. Yet. Hopefully.

You know you should head back. Your comms have been blinking a red light at you for the past three minutes, if you didn't answer soon, Harcourt would probably send Economos or Adebayo out looking for you, and you didn't want to get Vigilante caught.

So, you jumped from the hood of his car, stretching, breaking the moment.

"Cool, just came by to drop off the multitool, I should head back," you announce nonchalantly, leaving Vigilante to catch up on the mood shift.

"Uh, okay, sure -" he nods, "be, uh, safe or whatever? Good luck?"

You're already headed back the way you came, and you throw a wave over your shoulder as you click your comms back to life -

"- five-to-one odds she's dead somewhere, probably roadkill," is the first thing you hear, from Peacemaker of all people.

"I'll take those odds," Economos snipes back, and you debate whether or not to pipe up, or stay quiet and see if John could make some money off of Chris and his bullshit about you. Ultimately, however, you knew you had to interject.

"I appreciate the show of support, John," you answered cheerfully, which only ignited everyone else in the chat, berating you on being gone with your comms off for at least fifteen minutes.

"I'm sending Economos to come and get you," Harcourt sounded less than pleased, once the outrage had died down, despite John's protests -

"Why me?!"

Glancing over your shoulder, you knew it would be too close for comfort for Vigilante.

"Sure," you answered easily, "I can show him where I shit in the woods."

Silence.

"The fuck?" From Economos.

"Yeah," you continued blithely, "what did you guys think I was doing?"

"Not shitting in the woods!" Harcourt countered without missing a beat, "what is wrong with you?!"

"Don't answer that," Economos added, before you got the chance, and you couldn't help but laugh.

"When in Rome -" your response was infuriatingly mellow.

"- shit in the woods?" Adebayo sounded like she couldn't quite believe the situation at hand, and you snorted.

"I feel like I have a better understanding of bears now, spiritually," after a beat you added, "thought it might help with the mission."

"Why would it help with the mission?" Economos groaned.

"The Berenstain Bears?" You reminded them all.

"They're not the kind of bears that shit in the woods," Adebayo sighed deeply.

"And they're just code names!" Economos crowed with frustration at your continued antics. Still, when you get back, no-one asks where you've been, and no-one seems to want to investigate your absence further.

[teine-mallaichte]

Day 11 @ailesswhumptober - Prompt: Isolation

There's a new rumour making its rounds through the assets.

CW: ostracisation, dehumanisation, rumours, isolation, alienation, paranoia, mistrust.

AiLessWhumptober List Complex 27

Ash couldn’t remember when the rumour started. It didn’t matter - he could feel it now, like an iron weight dragging him down. He’d always had a reputation in the complex, “unstable” was the label most thrown around. He was used to the whispers, the sideways glances that followed him through the halls.

It wasn’t new.

But lately, something had shifted. It wasn’t just whispers anymore, it was avoidance—a tangible, oppressive force that followed him everywhere. Even the other assassins, the ones who used to trade barbs with him, push him to the edge just to see how far he’d go, had pulled back. Their taunts were gone, their stares brief. They lingered on him just long enough to confirm his presence before darting away, like he was something they didn’t want to acknowledge for too long. Like he was something they didn’t want to risk being seen with.

Here, isolation wasn’t just normal - it was expected. Connections made you vulnerable. connections were weakness. The higher ranks were often kept at a distance from the lower, both by design and through sheer intimidation. But Ash had never felt the distance this strongly before. It wasn’t mere indifference anymore; it was active avoidance.

No one wanted to be near him. When he walked through the corridors, people shifted to the other side, making a point of keeping away. The hollow echo of their footsteps seemed louder than his own.

He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter. He was better off alone—no distractions, no ties to hold him back. But the silence gnawed at him in a way he wasn’t prepared for. It was worse than anything the facility could throw at him. Worse than the missions, the punishments, or even the treatments in A Block.

Paul, at least, hadn’t disappeared. Their connection—if he could even call it that—remained. That strange bond, part rivalry, part something neither of them wanted to define, had held. He didn’t know why Paul stuck around, but he was grateful, even if he’d never admit it. At least there was one person who hadn’t succumbed to the isolation.

Still, the question burned at him. Ash had pushed for answers, needing to know what had shifted. Why now? Why did the silence feel heavier, why did people avoid him like a threat?

“They think you’re dangerous,” Paul had finally said, his voice flat, like the answer was obvious. Like Ash should’ve seen it coming.

Ash had scoffed, rolling his eyes, trying to act as if it was some kind of joke. Dangerous? They were all dangerous. They were trained killers. But Paul wasn’t done.

“They think you’re…a sociopath.”

That word—sociopath—hung between them, cutting through the thin air like a blade. It felt like a punch, not because he didn’t expect it, but because it was them who thought it. Not handlers, not the staff—but the other assets. The ones who knew this life, who understood the grind of violence, manipulation, survival. The ones who were just like him.

Paul’s gaze lingered too long. He was watching, waiting for something - a reaction, a crack in the facade. An explosion maybe? A bitter laugh, some retort? A breakdown? No, Paul's gaze too sharp, assessing, watching him in that quiet, unsettling way only Paul could. As if he was trying to measure something Ash didn’t understand. Was he waiting for a crack in the facade? Waiting to see how deep the damage really ran?

Or worse—was he waiting to see if Ash would prove them right?

Dangerous. Sociopath.

He was dangerous.

Ash had heard worse. But this…this was different. He was dangerous, sure. They all were, or they wouldn’t be here. They were weapons, carefully honed and conditioned to be lethal. But now, it was like the others were casting him out, like he was contaminated. Something more dangerous, something not quite like them.

Maybe it was his time in A Block. The stories that followed those treatments had always stuck to him like shadows. And the way he came back each time... different. Did they think it had broken something in him? Turned him into something beyond even their understanding?

He tried to shrug it off. What did it matter if they avoided him? He didn’t need them. Connections were liabilities. He’d always known that. He was the best at what he did—top-ranked, feared, respected. That was all that mattered.

But Paul’s gaze lingered, that damn cautious look that wouldn’t leave his mind. Not fear, not exactly, but something close. Something more like… wariness. Paul wasn’t looking at him like the others did. He wasn’t afraid of Ash, not really. But he was watching him, carefully. Like he was trying to figure out if Ash was still Ash, or if he’d become something else.

That look cut deeper than the whispers ever could.

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Don’t Go Blindly Into The Dark

Summary:

To hide that he can't read, Jan Van Eck has been forcing his son to pretend he's blind since he was eight years old. Wylan is now attending Ketterdam University, and meeting Jesper Fahey may very well be about to change his life. But is he safe to tell Jesper the truth? And what will Jesper say if he does?

Jesper is struggling to weigh up his life in the Barrel and his life at the University of Ketterdam, and there's a good chance that his growing debt is about to make the decision for him. He hasn't attended class consecutively for months, but maybe that will change when his newest project includes partnering up with Wylan Van Eck. But can he really leave the Barrel behind him? And how long can he keep up the pretence of who he thinks Wylan wants him to be?

Meanwhile there is a darkness growing in Ketterdam, and it seems a killer may be stalking the streets of West Stave. An unknown evil is closing its jaws over the city, and it’s starting to feel like nowhere is safe.

Tags: @justalunaticfangirl @lunarthecorvus @i-need-help-this-is-my-obsession @devoted-people-hater

If anyone else would like to be tagged let me know :)

Content warnings for this chapter: death, trafficking references, slavery (Kerch indenture system), injuries, broken bones, blood, violence, implied violence, abuse, ptsd, implied child abuse, loss of loved ones, grief, dehumanisation, imprisonment, misogyny, implied sexual assault (there isn't a scene focusing on the event itself and what happened isn't explicitly stated but it's very strongly implied that the character experienced this during the course of this chapter), dead bodies, murder, non-consensual drug use, choking/airway trauma, child abuse, separation from home & family

Note: You guys... this is over 8000 words long... it was not originally suppsoed to be this long but I love Anya so much I just looked up at some point like 'oh damn, whoops'. Other than it being so ridiculously longer than all the other chapters I really hope that you enjoy this, I am honestly so happy with it I'm so excited to be able to share it!!! I do, however, want to say please read through the content warnings, because this chapter is pretty dark <3 Thank you all so much for reading!!!!!!!!

AO3 link

Interlude - Anya

The end of Anya’s life was characterised by knocks on doors. So mundane. So simple. 

The first one came at the Van Eck house. Joras wasn’t long back from a voyage with one of Van Eck’s shipments, as a Squaller he travelled with most of the trade ships to call winds or calm the skies whenever necessary, and had caught a bad break to two of his fingers during the journey. 

“What did you do this time?” Anya asked, shaking her head, letting gentle humour lilt in her voice, as she gestured for him to sit down with her. 

Joras insisted he had got his hand trapped between the boom and the thwart, which meant nothing to Anya because she didn’t know the parts of a boat - and that meant she couldn’t be certain whether or not the story added up, because she didn’t know how booms or thwarts worked. She felt suspicious as she eased Joras’ hand into hers, but she said nothing. It wasn’t too difficult an injury to fix; Anya traced her fingertips lightly over the broken bones and shifted them back into place, the dark bruising shrinking beneath her touch, the quick cracking sound of his bones filling the air between them and then dissipating just as quickly. Joras flexed his fingers in and out of his fist, then pulled a sharp arc through the air so a brief gust of wind flew through the workshop. Anya laughed as her hair lifted briefly up off her shoulders and then resettled. 

“Perfect,” he smiled, “As always,”

“You just do that because you like to hear me laugh,”

“Well, who wouldn’t want to hear such a beautiful sound?”

Anya liked Joras - enough that she didn’t mind his flirting, and might even reciprocate from time to time - but theirs was a difficult friendship to maintain. So frequently he vanished, and for so long, and so often he came back injured. For the past year or so the two of them had been the only Grisha indentured at the Van Eck house, and so much of Anya’s time was spent alone trying not to go mad in the confines of the workshop. Wylan would often sneak to see her, when he could; on early mornings, or when his father was out or busy with other occupations. 

She’d once told him, when they were alone in the workshop, that sometimes she thought she wouldn’t mind kissing Joras. More to fill a silence than anything else, not that it was a lie but just that she couldn’t think of anything else to say, but Wylan had burst out laughing and Anya wasn’t sure she’d ever been happier to see him smile. She still threw one of her grapes at him in mock offence, though. 

“Hey!”

“I’m sorry,” he managed, still laughing, as he picked up the grape and threw it back at her, “You just took me by surprise,”

A moment passed. 

“So… Joras?”

“Oh, leave me alone,”

“You brought it up!” Wylan cried, laughing again, before suddenly wincing and glancing at the door as he lowered his voice, “Why don’t you just ask him?”

Anya raised her eyebrows. 

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I could spontaneously combust,” she said, restraining a giggle, “Or… I don’t know, accidentally kill him or something,”

Wylan laughed again, pressing one hand over his mouth to try and muffle the sound.

As Joras looked at her now, somehow she knew that he genuinely meant that he enjoyed her laugh, that even though the sound was a silly, fun-filled shriek and not the pretty drifting and tinkling of bells, that he thought it was beautiful. She stared back into his eyes for a minute, eyes that so calmly settled on her as though they had never wanted to be anywhere else but here, the dark moss of a forest floor containing a thousand beautiful secrets that Anya wanted to learn. 

“What?” he smiled, a little nervously, “What are you looking at?”

Anya shrugged. 

“Just you,”

“Oh? You like what you see?”

“I might,” 

Joras’ smile changed ever so slightly, something sparkling on the edge of those dark green eyes. 

“And if I said-”

A banging sounded against the door, and Anya collapsed back into her chair like a deflated balloon as Joras turned his head towards the sound. It would either be Wylan or Paige, one of the younger maids in the house; no-one else ever knocked. 

“Come in,”

The door crept open and Paige leaned cautiously around its edge, looking suspiciously like her nervous smile was trying to hide something. She greeted Joras quietly, her focus clearly elsewhere, before turning towards Anya. 

“Mister Van Eck would like to see you in the main house,” she said softly, “He said to Tailor Wylan’s scars,”

Anya frowned, feeling her guard raising inside her. There was a schedule for Tailoring Wylan’s scars, and she shouldn’t be needed until next week. But she nodded anyway, stood and walked to the door, catching a final glance at Joras over her shoulder as she left. He looked worried. She tried to give him as reassuring a smile as she could manage. 

Paige led Anya to the living room door and then knocked, and when they were called inside a moment later Anya was once again set to alarm when she realised that it was not Wylan’s voice she could hear, but Jan Van Eck’s. They would not be able to have much conversation, then, if he intended to hover over them like a hawk. She bit her lip, something anxious seeping through her chest, and followed the maid inside.

Wylan wasn’t there.

The door banged shut behind Anya and she whirled instinctively, fighting the urge to duck and pull her hands over her ears, to see that Paige had disappeared. She turned back with about as much politeness and dignity as she could muster, to find herself faced by Jan Van Eck, with two of his guards either side of him, and a man she didn’t know. He must have been a similar age to Van Eck, maybe a little older but it was hard to say, and wore the same mercher black, an expensive looking tie pin, a thick, gold wedding band, and shoes so well shined that when she dipped her gaze Anya could see her own frightened reflection staring back up at her. 

“Mister Van Eck,” she managed a polite smile, lowering her head in the customary Kerch bow, “I was expecting that your son-”

“Wylan will not be joining us today,” his voice was cold and as the words rushed over her, Anya’s blood seemed to shiver into matching its temperature, “Well?”

It took Anya a moment to realise that he was no longer addressing her, but the stranger at his side. He looked her up and down, like he was surveying a painting in a gallery or a cut of meat on a market stall, and then shrugged. 

“Agreeable terms,” he replied, before holding his hand out towards Van Eck, “The deal is the deal,”

“The deal is the deal,”

They shook. Anya stood there, blinking, as the stranger marched straight past her and out of the door as though she weren’t even there. 

“By tomorrow morning,” he said over his shoulder, “If that’s possible,”

“Of course,” Van Eck nodded, “As soon as possible,”

Anya didn’t understand. She watched the door close again, fidgeted with the sleeve of her kefta, waited until she thought it was appropriate to venture:

“Sir, I’m sorry, I do not-”

She cut off in a gasp as Van Eck grabbed her shoulder, shoving her almost onto the floor as he hissed into her ear so the guards could not hear him. 

“I know what you did, you little wretch. I should sell you into a whorehouse on East Stave for pulling a stunt like that,” he spun her round to face him with almost embarrassing ease, his hand was bigger than her entire shoulder, and a slow, terrifying smile spread across his face as he pushed her towards the door and said: “But luckily for you, Councilman Hoede offered a far more favourable price,”

For a moment Anya barely registered what was happening, could do nothing but search her mind for what she could have possibly done. 

“Rest assured,” he continued, “you will never get anywhere near my son again,”

Anya stumbled. Wylan. He knew that she’d been helping Wylan. 

And now she was going to leave him here, in this house, they were going to take her away and who would be here for-

“Wylan!” she shouted, because surely, surely, he had to be here somewhere, he had to hear her, he had to know, she had to warn him, “Wylan!”

She didn’t know where she found the strength to break free, but the next thing she knew she’d wrestled away from Van Eck’s grasp and was running into the hallway, screaming Wylan’s name up the staircase. The guards were, of course, on top of her in seconds.

She was on the second step of the stairs when they grabbed her; a hand under her shoulder, on her waist, an arm wrapping around her middle and dragging her backwards. 

“Wylan!” she tried again

Please hear me.

“Wylan!”

“Wylan is at university,” said Van Eck coolly, watching her from across the hallway with his arms folded across his chest, “And if you have no intentions of calming yourself-”

“Babink,” she snarled at him, trying to push forwards through the guards’ hold on her, ignoring the stunned looks on the faces of servants hovering nervously in doorways, “You do not deserve a son like him, you do not deserve the ground that he walks on,”

Never had she spoken like this before, not to him, not to anyone. It might have been her only chance to ever do so. Might as well lean into it. 

She spat and snarled every word that she could think of, every possible name that she could call this man, fighting uselessly against the iron grip of the guards pinning her in place. Van Eck just stood and watched her, almost with mild amusement, like a parent waiting for their toddler to tire themselves out instead of succumbing to their tantrum. She paused for breath, which felt heavy and constricted in her chest, and Van Eck studied his fingernails. 

“Are you quite done?”

“Nothing would ever be enough to be finished with you,” she hissed, still trying to step forwards against her restraints, but she had to admit that she was running out of Kerch words to say.

She resorted back to babink, sure that he would understand its meaning well enough, and he just gave a long, low sigh. 

“Knock her out,”

“I could kill you!” she shouted, hurling herself forwards and almost tumbling straight onto the floor with her own momentum as her wrists fell free. It wasn’t true, of course, she wasn’t even sure she could’ve done it if she’d tried. But it felt good to say it, to scream it, “I could kill you for what you did to him!”

Van Eck’s hand landed on her shoulder, tight and painful, and then the guards were on her again and she was being forced towards the ground. 

“If that is at all true, Anya,” he said, leaning down like he was speaking to a very small child, “then you have missed your chance,”

Pain exploded on the side of Anya’s skull, and everything went dark. She dreamed of Ravka. She woke up in chains. 

Waking up came, at first, hand in hand with a strange sense of confusion for her surroundings. Her mind quickly lost its grip on the image of home that she’d been lost in, replaced by tall walls and dark, austere wood panelling beneath wallpaper that told the stories of somebody else’s god; at first she thought she knew where she was, a small storage closet off a service corridor at the back of the Van Eck house that moved from the Grisha workshop to the servants’ staircase and above. This room was the right size, had the right panelling, had the same basic shelving units at her back and neatly folded piles of linens - but she was facing the wrong way, she realised, because sitting like this should mean the door was behind her and instead she was staring at it dead on; the door, also, bore no brass hook on its back but instead there was a slender hat rack at its side, empty of property but for a red kefta draped over one of its pegs like the skin of a dead animal yet to be transformed into a coat for sale. Her red kefta, with the white embroidery and the loose stitching along the cuff where she’d caught it on a nail protruding from the top of the table. She could see the little rip from here, the broken red and white threads curling over each other and hanging frozen in the air. It reminded her that this was not, in fact, her kefta, not really, that such damage would never have so easily occurred upon the fabric of the real thing; this was a Kerch kefta, a false impression of something that was supposed to mean so much more than it, and Anya did not own it. Anya did not own anything. If she’d moved to pick up the costume now she would have felt fabric practically ready to break between her fingers, seams set to burst with the pressure of quick movement, a practically translucent weave, a red ribbon pinned to the lapel - nothing about it built for battle. But she didn’t do that, couldn’t in fact, because there was another thing wrong with this room: Anya was chained to a chair. 

This hadn’t particularly surprised her, it hadn’t been the first thing to alert her something was amiss, and it definitely wasn’t the first time she’d woken up like this during her time in Ketterdam. But it was the realisation that she did not know where she was that made the panic grip her; the foreboding sense that this was new, this was different, and that meant she didn’t know what was going to happen next. 

She didn’t know how much time passed before the door clicked and groaned its way open, but it must have been at least an hour. Footsteps had sounded down the corridor more than once and Anya had braced for the appearance of a stranger, but none had come. This time, though, the footsteps had been different - one in command, expensive shoes and a confident stride, another more nervously obedient scurrying afterwards, and two more in almost perfect time with each other. Someone important, with a servant and two guards. She was sure of it. Whoever was keeping her here, they were coming to collect. 

Anya had quite easily readied herself for the arrival. Her hands were bound tightly to each arm of the chair but she didn’t need her Grisha power to summon tears, she was well-practised at calling for them on cue. With cheeks wet and eyes still brimming, she lowered her face towards her chest and waited for the door to open. Look weak. Look frightened. Look willing. Look quiet. 

It was one of the guards who opened the door. The lock giving way to his key with a loud clunk that slightly surprised Anya - Van Eck rarely bothered with a lock if she was already in chains; he knew well enough she would not get anywhere - and in he stepped, harsh face peering over her and beady eyes flitting over the room. Anya looked up slowly, sniffing through her fake tears, blinking both to adjust to the sudden stream of light pouring through the open door and because she knew that more droplets of water would roll prettily down her cheeks as she did so. She let a breath catch in her throat as her eyes met the guard’s, pleading silently until he turned away and stood to attention with his side towards the door. 

Her captor stepped inside, and immediately Anya clicked the pieces together. It was the same man she’d seen at the Van Eck house, with his slowly roaming eyes and fingers that twitched briefly towards his wedding ring before falling still. She’d first thought him to be closer in age to Jan Van Eck but perhaps the lighting here was less flattering. She would guess he was at least in his early fifties, and he was as obviously prosperous as he had looked at their brief earlier encounter; dressed in fine mercher black with a large, dark blue stone glinting in his tie pin. 

Luckily for you, Councilman Hoede offered a far more favourable price.

So this was it, was it? This was all that her desperate fighting had gotten her. A house farther down the same road, new people to learn, new rules to follow, new threats to contend with. No chance of moving any further. No chance of helping Wylan. 

She was still on the same fucking street. And all of it was over. 

Hoede was followed in by a servant but the other guard remained outside the door, perhaps in case she started shouting again or tried to get out. They obviously knew everything she’d done in her final moments at the Van Eck house. 

“Anya?” asked Hoede, not that it particularly sounded like any kind of question of introduction, studying the tears of her cheeks with what she, grimly and yet victoriously, thought might have been satisfaction, “I am glad to see you have awoken,”

I’m sure you are. What a waste of money it would be if I’d dropped dead on my way here. 

“I am Councilman Hoede and, as you should know, I purchased your indenture just recently,”

Anya nodded, slowly, then attempted a halting, nervous: 

“Yes, sir,”

Hoede gave a single, sharp nod, still surveying her. 

“Well before we can take this agreement any further,” he said, as if she was agreeing to anything here, “we need to discuss what happened yesterday,”

Yesterday? How long had she been unconscious? What had they done to her? 

“I am very sorry, sir,” she said, emphasising her accent ever so slightly, “I was frightened, I did not understand what was happening and I panicked,”

“That’s very understandable,” Hoede nodded, “It is not uncommon for those like yourself to be prone to such hysterics, I know, but you must learn to keep them under control,”

“Of course, sir,” she managed, through gritted teeth. 

“Are you calm enough now that we can remove your bonds? You will be sensible?”

“Yes, sir,” Anya bit the inside of her lip, hard, “Thank you,”

Hoede regarded her for a moment longer, then snapped his fingers towards the boy at his side. He was maybe twenty or a little more, Zemeni born but with no hint of an accent in the few words she’d overheard him sharing with Hoede as they walked down the hallway, slender and neatly fitted together like his joints had been intentionally snapped into place. He smiled at her and Anya felt the skin on her arms turn colder even though there was no breeze in the room. Why would he look at her like that? What did he want from her?

“Show her to the Grisha workshop,” Hoede told him, “But know that I will keep a close eye on you, young lady, and misbehaviour shall not be tolerated,”

And then the door had banged shut and he was gone. The guard followed him out, and the pair was alone. Anya swallowed tightly as the servant knelt at her feet to first free her ankles, and then her wrists. 

“I’m sorry about him,” he said, softly, “But I promise, it’s not too bad here,”

She resisted the urge to huff in reply; servant he may be, and his seeming dislike of Hoede may not be false, but he had more power than her here and she would not risk taking the bait in a cruel plan. If she had learned nothing else of this country, she had at least learned that everyone always had an ulterior motive. 

“What’s your name?”

“Anya,”

“Good to meet you, Anya. I’m Ori,”

She said nothing.

“I’m told you were brought from Councilman Van Eck’s house?” he asked, almost cheerily, as he unwound the chains from around the chair leg. 

“Bought,” she corrected, distantly, as though it were a simple matter of grammar. 

“I met his son once,” Ori continued, as though she had not spoken, and though it seemed he would have gone on, Anya lurched forwards and grabbed his shoulder before he could utter another word, fire in her chest. 

“Wylan?” she whispered, forgetting any hopes of keeping herself away from traps or tricks, forgetting any sensible need to hide her secrets, “You’ve seen him? Is he-?”

“Y-years ago,” the boy stammered in surprise, leaning away from her, “When he was a child,” 

Anya dropped away from him, breaths shuddering through her chest, nodding and lowering her gaze apologetically. 

“Excuse me,” she dared to murmur, “I… I do not know what came over me,”

Ori glanced at her for a moment, then his easy smile returned and he offered her a hand to get to her feet. 

“You are close with him? Wylan?” he asked, either ignoring or not noticing how nervously Anya accepted his outstretched hand.

How was she supposed to answer this without wading into dangerous territory? She had acted rashly, without thought, and now she was going to have to face the consequences. 

“He is kind,” was all she dared to murmur. 

There were two other Grisha in the workshop here; a Fabrikator named Yuri, a couple of years older than Anya, and Retvenko, a Squaller some good amount of years older than either of them who’d been at the house ever since the Ravkan Civil War. When Anya stepped over the threshold that first day they both looked up, then at each other, some kind of secret language passing between their silent eyes. As soon as Ori had introduced them to each other he left, and Retvenko beckoned Anya toward him to issue her a warning. She listened, terrified, promising herself she would be careful. But, of course, that didn’t make a difference. It took about a month. 

They both knew, afterwards, when she crept to the workshop like a frightened mouse and spent the entire day in silence, studying the ground, trying to keep herself from crying. Yuri watched her over the top of his work, and she felt like she was going to catch alight beneath his gaze. Retvenko did her the small blessing of ignoring her, but for passing her a glass of water when they paused for lunch. 

“At least drink,”

Anya said nothing. When the pair returned she had not moved an inch from where she sat, had not touched the glass. Yuri held out a piece of fruit towards her and suddenly a dam burst inside her; the tears flooded out of her from despair and pain and sorrow and from being so overwhelmed by this simple, tiny act of kindness. Sobs burned like fire in her throat, the tears felt like acid on her cheeks. She was vaguely aware of Retvenko calling for a maid, of words passing between lips, of being shepherded out of the workshop and up the servants’ staircase to her little room. They claimed that she was ill, and she got three days alone, shivering in her room, to stitch the pieces of herself back together. It was lucky timing, if you could call it that; Hoede’s wife returned from her break to the countryside that week and remained at the house for a full five months. For a full five months, nothing happened. 

*

“May I ask why you're here?” said Anya, offering a chair to the boy who had just been led into the Grisha workshop. 

He looked too young to wear the purple stadwatch uniform he was clad in, but she guessed he must be just a year younger than her. There was a nasty bruise under his eye, dark purple and blue, that Hoede wanted her to clear up for him. 

“It’s my new post - well, first post, really,” he said, as he sat down, “I’m staying here for a while, I think; they want extra security at the Councillmen’s houses because of what happened to the Zemeni Trade Ambassador,”

“We should be introduced properly then,” she nodded, “If we are to know each other for some time. I am Anya,”

“Joost,”

“Good to meet you, Joost,” she stood slightly to lean over him as she reached out to Heal his bruise, “This will itch for a moment, but then it will be fine,”

Anya didn’t smile much these days. There were too many things going on inside her head for that. It was barely a month since they told her that Wylan… 

No, Anya didn’t smile much at all these days. But when Joost looked up at her with those wide, pale blue eyes, something tugged at the corners of her mouth. He’s clearly never experienced Grisha power before, and the awe in his expression made him look so innocent that she couldn’t help it. She smiled, just a little, to see that innocence still existed somewhere. And so close by. 

It had only been after about a week of living at the Hoede house that the Councilman asked her about Wylan. That boy, Ori, must have told him. Anya seethed - more for her own foolishness than for him reporting on her; she should have known that he’d do it. That he may have had no choice but to do so. 

“Perhaps, Anya,” Hoede had said, “if we don’t have any problems, it would be possible to arrange some time for you to see him again,”

“Really?” she’d whispered, looking up, in spite of herself. 

She tried to reel it back but it was too late. Hoede had heard the desperation in her voice, seen it in her eyes. He knew he’d got her. He smiled. 

It wasn’t true, was it? She knew that, really, of course she did. Even if Hoede wasn’t outright lying to her, Van Eck would never allow it. 

“It may be possible. Can we agree that if the next month passes without issue you will be happy to write to him?”

“He-”

“I’m aware of the child’s lack of sight,” Hoede waved a vague hand, “I am sure someone would be able to read it to him, and that he could transcribe a reply. Would you like that? Do we have a deal?”

It didn’t matter that she knew, somewhere inside of her, that this was a front, a trap, a lie. It didn’t matter if it was just a dream. Because he’d found her lever anyway, and Anya nodded even though she knew that she probably shouldn’t. 

“We have a deal,”

And that was it, then. He had rendered her incapable of saying no. 

It was an evening not long after this that the second knock in the build up to Anya’s death came calling. The knock came on the door of her little bedroom and she was led out to the back of the house by a guard in Hoede’s green livery with no answers to her questions. The air was crisp enough to raise the hair on her arms as she padded out into the night, to see Hoede and a group of guards waiting for her. Anya was shoved roughly forwards by the meaty hand of the guard who brought her downstairs and found herself almost tripping straight over a girl lying in the grass of the garden. She was on her back, staring unblinking at the dark sky with empty eyes. There was nothing behind them anymore, there was only the reflection of the stars far above. Anya gasped. 

“What- what happened?”

“It is not of your concern,” snarled Hoede, his eyes dangerous. 

Anya took a deep, shuddering breath. 

“I cannot Heal her if she is already-”

“She is dead,” said Hoede, simply, as if both of them couldn’t already see it. As if it didn’t matter, “Make it look like she was choked,”

“Why-?”

Anya’s question died with the sting of a hand across her cheek. 

“Do it,”

Shivering, though not because the night was cold, she knelt at the corpse's side and took her hand into her own. There was nothing to feel beneath the press of empty skin; no blood, no movement, nothing. But she must have died quite recently because livor mortis, where the blood pooled on the underside of the body without a heart to keep it pumping, had not yet begun. Barely an hour then, maybe less. 

The girl was young, Anya realised - at least a year younger than her, probably more. She was dressed in scant fake silks, her body lithe beneath them, her feet bare. Her skin had the golden hue of someone who’d been raised in the Southern Colonies, under a brighter sun than that of Kerch, and her brown eyes were wide and startled, more like they belonged to a doe than that they matched the leopard spots painted on her cheek and down her neck. 

Anya raised one hand to the girl’s neck, very slowly, and began to trace her fingers across the skin. With her other hand she reached out to her insides, trying to find out what had happened, and was met with the shock of water inside her lungs. Water? She had drowned? 

She traced a thumb over the girl’s pointed cheekbone as though to brush away a non-existent tear, smudging the edge of a painted leopard spot. What did they do to you? 

This couldn’t be right. The girl bore no signs of drowning; her flesh had not bloated, her skin had not discoloured. Her skin and hair were bone dry, but she couldn’t have been dead longer than an hour.

But there were too many eyes on Anya to investigate much further. Too many threats for her to dare taking much longer. She apologised silently to the stranger as she spread bruises across her throat and then, with a sharp tug through the air that sparked real tears into the corner of Anya’s eyes, crushed her windpipe. 

“What was her name?”

No-one answered her. She could hear them moving behind her but she stayed leaning over the girl anyway, brushing the hair of her face as she began to whisper a prayer. They were pulling her away before she’d got the chance to close the girl’s eyes. 

“No - no wait, please, let me-”

“Your job is done,” 

“No, please, please, let me pray for her, let me- let me-”

The guard holding her gave her a sharp shake, strong enough to rattle her teeth so they felt like they might spring right out of her jaw, and lifted Anya clear off the ground with casual ease as she continued to try and pull away. 

“No, please, please-” she tried, still scrambling uselessly towards the girl, “Please-”

She earned herself a smack on the side of the head, and finally fell silent. They held her there as two more guards collected the corpse, and Anya watched Hoede through a stream of tears as she bit her tongue to keep her pleas and questions to herself. 

“You will not breathe a word of this to anyone,” he said, looking down at her, “Understood?”

Anya breathed tightly, lowering her gaze not from fear, and definitely not from respect, but because she did not want him to see her cry. 

“Yes, Onkel,” she whispered, “Of course,”

She did as she was told.

Anya had written to Wylan at least five times since coming to this house, though a reply had never come and she knew in her heart that the letters were never sent. It was a month ago, now, that she’d dared to ask Hoede about the possibility of seeing him again. 

“I’m afraid I learned just earlier today that the boy has left the city,” he’d said, almost distracted, “to attend music school in Belendt. I assumed you knew of this - did he not write to you?”

Of course he didn’t, Hoede knew that. But Anya didn’t even care for this cruelty, because she’d stopped listening by the time he said that. Because there was not a chance that Jan Van Eck would let his son leave this city. If Wylan wasn’t in that house anymore it could only mean one thing, she knew. She felt like something was piercing her through the stomach; the moment Hoede had left, a painful sob forced its way from her throat and she fell onto her knees. Yuri’s gentle arm appeared around her shoulders and she wept into his chest, unable to articulate any of the thousand things inside her head. She didn’t need to hear anything else. 

She knew. 

She knew. 

But, somehow, once Joost had drawn that smile out of her, it was like she’d remembered how to and her body didn’t want to let go of it. He started stopping to talk to her on his every round of the house, even bringing her little trinkets that he’d bought in the city - a little beaded bracelet, a whimsical map of Kerch with an ocean full of hand-sketched sea monsters. 

The third of those fate-sealing knocks, if you believe in things like fate, came not for Anya, but for Yuri. No-one knew why Hoede had come for the Fabrikator this early evening, and no-one knew what had happened whilst he was gone, but when he returned something profound had clearly changed.

“Yuri?” Anya ventured, watching him, “Are you-?”

He flinched to look up at her, eyes flashing and wild. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he whispered, “I don’t- I didn’t- I- I-”

His words broke into fragments as though he couldn’t breathe, but before Anya could say anything more he had lurched to his feet and met her in the centre of the room. 

“It broke her,” he hissed, grabbing Anya’s hand so tight enough to be painful, “It’s inside her head. It’s in my head, all of it. It’s screaming,”

“Yuri-” Anya tried, pulling her hand to no avail, “Yuri, please-”

“She doesn’t even remember,” the way his voice shook almost made it sound like he was laughing, but he looked absolutely terrified, “So much metal in the body. I can feel it,”

“Yuri-”

He pressed a finger to his lips, shaking his head, then said softly: 

“You need more calcium. Did you know that? I didn’t, before, but I can feel it now,”

“I- what? Yuri-”

“I can help with that,”

“What are you-?”

Yuri raised one of his hands and then suddenly there was a guard on his arm, forcing him backwards. He didn’t struggle, but he kept his gaze on her and his free hand still held hers close. 

“They came for me,” he whispered, eyes wild and desperate, gripping her even tighter and pulling her close, “They’ll come for you too. They’re coming,”

“Let go of me, Yuri, let-”

“Pray,” he snarled, letting go of her so she fell backwards with her own momentum and crashed against the wall, “They’ll come for you next,”

Anya stared at him, shaking, pressed against the wall on the floor of the Grisha workshop. What was happening? This was Yuri. Yuri, who had found her on the bad nights, brought her food and water, who had sat with whilst she wept. Yuri, who had held her when the news about Wylan came, who had cradled her like a child and never pressured her to tell him any of it, who had let her cry into his shoulder for what to him would have sounded like nothing of more gravity than a weather report. She stared up at him, still quivering, as someone offered her their hand to help her to her feet and someone else began to lead Yuri out of the workshop. 

“Wh-What-?”

“He didn’t mean to hurt you,” murmured someone to Anya’s right, and after a beat she realised it was Greta’s hand that she was holding; a maid about her age who had always been kind and gentle, “He has a very bad fever, it’s addling his mind. Mister Hoede wants him quarantined, to make sure it doesn’t spread. Don’t pay his words any heed, it doesn’t mean anything,”

Anya nodded stiffly, a little shakily. 

“Are you alright?”

“I- yes, thank you,”

Greta smiled and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. 

“I’ll bring some tea,” she said, “It’ll do you good,”

Anya could only nod, and return shivering to her chair at the workbench. He was just spouting nonsense, wasn’t he? It was just a fever. Wasn’t it? She shuddered, rubbing her wrist where the shadow of his hand still gripped her. 

The last knock didn’t take too long to come.

Anya and Retvenko were sitting in the workshop, in their customary silence, when Greta rapped the open frame as she stepped into view. 

“Mister Hoede asked for you to go to the boathouse,” she told Anya, with a light shrug that told Anya there was no point in asking why because Greta didn’t know either. 

Anya nodded, glancing briefly back at Retvenko with frightened questions in her eyes that he either did not notice or did not care to acknowledge - it was impossible to tell with him - and followed her out into the garden. Crossing through the damp grass it was difficult to push away the memory of the dead girl she had Tailored, and as she tried to push the thoughts away Anya forced herself to focus on the crocuses growing near the boathouse and around her feet. She could smell them in the air, rising up to greet her and cradle something close to her chest. Joras had given her a bunch of crocuses, once, that he got at the harbour on his return; six of them, tucked together in a brown woven ribbon. 

“How did you possibly afford this?” she’d asked, holding them close and inhaling their scent like a drug. 

“Who says I bought them?” he teased, and when he saw her stricken expression: “I picked them Ani, don’t look at me like that!”

They’d both laughed. Anya convinced Paige to let her keep a glass of water from the kitchen in the workshop, and the crocuses sat in the centre of the table until they’d turned so brown and dry and wilted that she could no longer justify keeping them. Looking back on it, she wished she pressed them when they were fresh; she could have tucked them into the pocket of kefta and kept them close forever. But they were long dead now. 

“Pretty,” Wylan had said, when he was certain it was only the two of them in the room; only Anya knew that he could see the flowers, “You have definitely got to ask him to kiss you,”

“Wylan!”

“He picked you flowers, Ani,” he’d teased, having overhead the nickname that morning, before Joras left for another voyage, “He even chose a ribbon for them. I bet he’d say yes,”

Anya blushed so profusely that she wasn’t sure she’d ever looked pinker in her entire life. 

“I should never have told you,”

Wylan grinned. 

“You did though,” he preened, “Now you have to live with it forever,”

Anya wondered if Joras knew where she’d gone, if he ever thought about her anymore. She thought about Wylan, grinning at her over a vase of crocuses, laughing, the light dancing in his eyes, and suddenly felt the desire to rip every single flower from the beds and tear them into a thousand pieces. Why was the smell so strong? She hated it. It was choking her. She prayed for something, anything, strong enough to overpower it so she never had to smell those stupid flowers ever again. 

“Anya?” 

Anya flinched as Greta’s hand brushed against her elbow, shaking herself back into reality. 

“Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Anya rubbed a disobedient tear off her cheek, “Yes. Thank you,”

They walked inside in silence. 

Hoede stood inside the boathouse, with a stadwatch officer, whom Anya guessed must be high up by the little stripes on the breast of his jacket, and another man wearing mercher black, but they weren’t the first thing that Anya noticed. The first thing she noticed was the large metal… well, box, she thought, for lack of a better word to describe it. The front wall was made up mostly by a large window and inside she could see a small table, wherein sat a small boy kicking his feet off the edge of his chair. A stadwatch guard stood behind him. 

Hoede nodded at Greta to dismiss her, then beckoned Anya wordlessly to the box and gestured for her to step through the open door on the side. The stadwatch guard closed the door behind her, and she heard the sound of a lock being moved on the outside. This side of the glass was mirrored, so Anya could no longer see Hoede or the strangers in the boathouse, but there was a vent above the glass and she could hear them speaking. The guard directed her to sit down, and she followed the instruction. 

“What’s going on?” asked the boy, looking between them. 

The guard told him to be quiet, and with a nervous shiver he stuck his thumb into his mouth. How old was he? Not yet ten, surely. What was going on here? 

An entire hour passed by as a hum of voices began to slowly filter into the boathouse, a small crowd gathering for no purpose that Anya could divine, before the door opened once more and Hoede stepped inside. He patted the boy on the back. 

“Be brave, lad, and there’s a few kruge in it for you, ja?”

The boy nodded nervously, looking up at him with wide, innocent eyes. 

“And you,” he turned to Anya and she braced as he grabbed her by the chin, tilting her face up to meet his eye, “You do as you’re told and this will be over soon, ja?”

Anya forced her serene mask over her features, the cloak she wore day in, day out, and gave him a vague, empty lie of a smile. 

“Of course, Onkel,” 

He nodded, apparently satisfied, and stepped back through the door. There was another low conversation on the other side of the glass that Anya could not properly hear beyond the edges of words - “results… Fabrikator”, “the dose”, “compensate”. What the hell was she listening to? 

“Sergeant?” called a voice she didn’t know, loudly now and clearly for the ears of those trapped inside this strange box, “First test,” 

The stadwatch guard instructed the little boy to pull up one of his sleeves, and almost as soon as he had done so he produced a small knife and crossed it over the child’s skin. The boy burst into tears as blood leaked onto his pale skin and Anya, glaring at the stranger, immediately leant forwards to him as she tried to whisper comforts. 

“Let me see,” she murmured, “I can-”

“Stop that,” snapped the sergeant, placing a hand on her shoulder, but Hoede’s voice floated through the grate telling him to leave off and he stepped away. 

Anya shot an angry stare to the mirror that she hoped was aimed at Hoede, and then laid her fingers softly over the boy’s cut to close the wound. He stared at her, then back at the smooth, unbroken skin of his arm, running a finger over it like he couldn’t believe what had happened. 

“Was that magic?” 

“Of a sort,” Anya smiled, watching him. Innocence, she thought again, with an internal shake of the head, that’s still all it takes to make me smile, “The same kind of magic that your body does, given time and a bit of bandage,”

The boy nodded, still running his fingertips over the place that she had Healed him. 

“Yes, good,” came Hoede’s impatient voice through the grate, “Now the parem,”

Anya frowned. She didn’t know that word. 

The sergeant demanded the boy hold out his arm again and he shied away, shaking his head, but the man grabbed his wrist and pulled it sharply towards him as he slashed the knife across his forearm once more. Before Anya had a chance to respond, he had placed a small envelope in front of her on the table. 

“Swallow the contents of the packet,” said Hoede. 

If he thought she trusted him enough to do that without question then he must be mad. 

“What is it?”

“That isn’t your concern,”

“What is it?” she demanded, refusing to touch the envelope until she was answered. 

“It’s not going to kill you,” he said, impatiently, “We want to judge the drug's effect, we're just going to ask you to perform some simple tasks. The Sergeant will make sure you do only what you're told, understood?”

Anya nodded, more because she saw no other way out of this than following instructions than because she felt convinced, and slowly reached for the little packet. 

“No-one will harm you, but if you hurt the Sergeant you have no way out of that cell. It's locked from the outside,”

Anya nodded again, then peeled back the edge of the envelope and tipped the contents down her throat. 

“Is…” she frowned, but still the hope that she had tried so hard to kill sparked inside her chest, “Is it just jurda?”

“What does it taste like?” asked Hoede. 

“Like jurda, only sweeter. It’s-”

Anya cut herself off with a sharp gasp as every muscle in her body seemed to seize. She inhaled heavily, leaning back. She couldn’t smell crocuses anymore. She could smell blood - the boy’s blood, bleeding lightly on the skin of his arm across the table from her. She could hear his heartbeat, and the sergeant's heartbeat, and the heartbeats of everyone on the other side of the mirror. Each one of them sounded different, she realised; every heart had its own individual pattern, and she could hear all of them without even trying. What was this? It was… beautiful. Anya sighed, and realised she was smiling. A different kind of smile. A new one. 

“Just the same as the Fabrikator,” said someone on the other side of the glass. 

His heart rate had risen; he was scared of her. Good. He should be. 

“Heal the boy,” called Hoede. 

Anya knew, somehow, that she wouldn’t need to try. She didn’t even look at him, just to see if it would work - and it did. She waved her hand; no touch, no line of sight, nothing. The boy’s cut closed in an instant, and Anya felt something rushing inside her. 

“That was magic,” he whispered, and she did turn to see him then. 

“It feels like magic,”

“Anya, listen closely,”

Anya made a soft humming sound. She didn’t really want to listen to him anymore. She didn’t have to. She could do anything she wanted to. And that was definitely going to be a problem for Councilman Hoede. 

“We’re going to perform the next test now. Sergeant, cut the boy’s thumb off,”

The child cried out in fear, scrambling to sit on both his hands as he frantically shook his head. The sergeant stepped forwards, but Anya wasn’t worried. She looked up at him, smiling her brand new smile. 

“Shoot the glass,”

“What did she say?”

“Sergeant!”

Anya watched him. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if it was working. She reached out to him again - it was so easy, so quick. The sound of his blood rushing moved through her like she was floating on the surface of the True Sea, she wrapped an invisible hook around his heart and felt its rhythm as she raised the rest of her focus to his brain and said again: 

“Shoot the glass,”

She knew that it had worked this time. There was a slight knack to it, but once she’d done it once she knew that she could do it again and again and again. His heartbeat calmed and settled, safe and eased in her command. Comfortable. His face went slack, his eyes blank, and then he drew his weapon and turned to follow his orders like a good little watchdog. 

The gunshots were loud but they couldn’t frighten her now, not when she could control them - not when the heartbeats were even louder. Not when she was floating. The glass rained down ahead of them, a shattered mirage, and a frenzy of cries filled the air. Guns were raised, the cocking of pistols hit her ears, but Anya was calm. She was not afraid. She would never have to be afraid again. 

“Wait,”

All of them - every single one, with a single word - fell quiet and blank. They looked up at her expectantly, patiently. Her toy soldiers. 

“Hoede,” she beckoned, “Come inside,”

He obeyed, of course. 

“Come here,” she whispered to the boy, not commanding him like she had done the others. 

He shuffled towards her and tucked himself into the arm she offered him, either too scared or too confused or too overwhelmed to ask any questions. 

“Don’t look,” she whispered, gently easing him against her shoulder and stroking the back of his head. 

He settled into her, one tiny fist clinging to her kefta. Anya looked up at Hoede, waiting in patient, expectant silence.

“Do as you're told and this will soon be over, ja?”

It was definitely not for innocence that she was smiling any longer. 

*

Anya didn’t know the layout of Ketterdam well, but it wasn’t hard to find her way to the harbours. She ran as far as she could down the Geldstraat, only halting briefly in front of the house that she was pretty sure, though she didn’t know the street or the front of the house very well, belonged to Jan Van Eck. She hesitated - but she didn’t even know why. Wylan wasn’t there. Wylan was… he wasn’t there. There was nothing left in this city for her, not anymore.

It was time to go home. 

[thee-rat-king]

I JUST FOUND THE MOST INSANE QUEER REP

For anyone that doesn’t know, The Muddleheaded Wombat books are a beloved part of Australian childhood literature. They were part of my childhood, and when my sister requested a story today I picked “The Muddleheaded Wombat on Clean-Up Day” at random. But something I noticed, that I had never picked up on as a child, is that one of the main characters (Mouse) is never referred to as “he” or “she”, only ever “it”. It, It’s and Itself are spread throughout the book, all in reference to Mouse. Just now I’ve looked through several other Muddleheaded Wombat stories I have on my shelf at random and all of them use “it/it’s” pronouns for Mouse.

These books are from the sixties, based on a radio show from the fifties. What The Actual Fuck.

As a note, Mouse is never dehumanised (demousinised?) in the narrative. It has its own full personality, and is one of the three main characters of the story, along with Wombat and Tabby Cat (both he/him) who love it very much and the three of them have fun silly adventures together.

A second note: according to the Muddleheaded Wikipedia article Mouse is female, and i do remember it being portrayed with a more feminine voice in the audiobooks I listened to when I was little.

But ummmm canon it/its/itself character, as referred to by other characters and the narrator. Wild. I always knew I loved these books.

(Also Tabby is gay that’s not even up for debate).

[w1tchm0ther]

2022

I didn't know what to expect from the first year in my own home again after years of struggle. Heck, I don't even follow the "normal" calendar. As an astrologer, I follow the astrological year and that one's now going into its final quarter before a new start on 20 March 2023.

In many ways, I've felt disappointed by 2022. I had so many hopes and dreams. But I lacked the belief in them. The belief in myself. For a long time now, I've been missing that belief.

When I was younger - and even only a few years ago - I used to say that I always get what I want; even if it sometimes was to my own detriment, especially when it came to relationships. Pardon me, situationships... But I knew without the shadow of a doubt that when I set my heart on something, I would get it. No matter the cost, too.

And that's just the thing. The cost DOES matter. It just does. Some things are too costly. No longer will I give up my inner peace for some person or job. No longer will I give up my health for more money or status or just seeming normal to the outside world. Whatever that means, really.

What the world calls normal these days feels dehumanising. We have to do, do, do. Achieve. Produce more in less time. Give up our lives to work jobs that have no meaning in buildings that have no windows. Work on somebody else's dream of making more money. Instead of working on our own dreams of being fulfilled and live a quiet life that has just the right amount of excitement. Yes, I'm an introvert.

Right, back to 2022.

The UK has seen three unelected prime ministers, two (also unelected...) monarchs and evergrowing greed from the richest people in the country, which they call cost of living crisis... Since when does it COST something to LIVE?

They say we're the most evolved species on the planet. Heck, they probably say that about us and the universe. The universe! How arrogant humans are! How can we be evolved and the pinnacle of life when we are the only species making life itself cost something? Even death is unaffordable.

My dog almost died in 2022. Ten days of utter misery. I sold a piece of my soul for him. He recovered. That piece went missing. Part of it is back. The rest? Never to return.

I almost gave up on everything. The business I had been building felt like it was not going anywhere. After all, the struggle is still my daily companion. Some bills are piling up, so others can get paid. Buying food is not always an option, but I keep the car on the road, so I can collect free food. It's become easier in 2022 and by the end, I was buying a lot more than collecting. Still feels like a failure.

I have thoughts sometimes. To end it all. Wouldn't it be easier...? But then I remember how much I love life. How much I love MY life. How I was in that place, just a bit darker, years ago and how I got out of it. As much as I've suffered, there is a reason I'm here and I haven't fulfilled that mission yet. I will. In time. And then I'll go. At 111.

2022. A wild ride. In many ways, like the years before. In many other ways, so very different. I've grown as a person. I know what boundaries are now and how to assert them. It got rid of stale energy and made space for gorgeous new souls in my life. I know myself a lot better now. Away from societal expectations.

I feel good about the year ending and 2023 beginning. And I love what I've made of the past 365 days. I feel lucky and immensely grateful. Sending all my love to you out there. Going through it? You'll make it. Because you always get what you want if you set your mind to it. Go get it.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

hello, could you explain c!primeboys to me? from what you post it looks interesting, but its never been something i see a lot of.

also your art is very cool and good <3

Godfhis is like the equivalent of giving me crack. C!Primeboys are my special interest and I could talk about them forever.

SO! c!Prime is the duo between c!Tommy and c!Dream in the Dream SMP- so is c!Discduo but I like religious theming so I use c!Prime a bit more. Obviously, the basics of them are the Disc War, Exile, the Prison… the finale doesn’t actually work on a storytelling level as an ending since it wasn’t intended to be one so I don’t count it as anything but dubious canon at best since it’s basically a bad sequel hook that never got picked up on. I’m presuming you know that much, I took a quick look at your blog and you at least know the basics of the dsmp I think.

But what’s really interesting with c!Prime is that they’re a lot more complex than they might appear on the surface! Most people assume they hate each other, but they don’t. c!Dream is a liar, but one of the few things he holds consistently even when it doesn’t benefit him is a twisted level of friendship and amusement towards c!Tommy, whereas c!Tommy's got severe trauma bonding he was never able to work through at all, and missed c!Dream a lot.

And they were friends! Close friends, at that. And falling in between the sweet spot of being a friend but also being a challenge makes c!Tommy uniquely interesting to c!Dream, who's very much a mad scientist who enjoys prodding at things until they break. If he was just a threat, he’d be eliminated. If he was just a friend, he’d be a meaningless interchangeable doll meant to play the part of “family” in his idealised, stagnant world. To c!Dream, c!Tommy is completely unique- and perhaps the only person even slightly on his level.

c!Dream genuinely wants c!Tommy alive, and not only that but he wants c!Tommy as an ally. Exile was an attempt to break him into one, and I don’t doubt he’d do so again. It’s not 100% clear why, but my hypothesis is that he wants an extra hand in the revive experiments (perhaps predicting c!Punz would betray him, or perhaps plotting to betray him himself once he outlives his usefulness?)

Meanwhile, c!Tommy's a very loud, angry, and honestly kinda dickish (affectionate) character, but around c!Dream is when he most easily and obviously falls into fawn mode for survival. Fawning is c!Tommy's survival strategy, and it’s often mistaken for character growth but it’s c!Tommy's desperate attempt to mimic those around him so he doesn’t die or worse. See Exile, where he folded to the whims of c!Dream to the point of completely suppressing his ability to make decisions in anywhere from a few weeks to a month. And this isn’t weakness, this is c!Tommy's lizard brain desperately trying to make him live. And while he tries to pretend his instinct is to fight, it’s very much to roll over and play the part people want him to be.

It just allows such a fascinating and deep look at their characters. Their incredibly toxic, abusive, and dehumanising friendship obviously is not a good thing, but it can be used so easily to explore their depths- both good and bad!