#tw child soldiers

[dr-lizortecho]

sometimes I wonder how many of the ghosts from the Lockwood and Co universe are from the initial attempts to combat The Problem. Like how many are the soldiers and special units sent out after an unidentified unknown coma at any? How many are the scared and traumatized eighteen year olds losing their abilities to clearly discern visitors? The adults who never had a chance?

How long it took for the government to legalize child soldiers- if parents noticed first that their little ones were more inttuned and kept it whispered about, soft warnings to their friends to keep their children away from windows, to not let them talk about the apparitions they saw, or the strange things they heard. How quickly that got up to the cruel people in charge who made the decision to let seventeen and sixteen year olds combat the Visitors? How many of those children in bids for steady jobs to support their families died bloody and terrified and added to the ghost count? How quickly it took the government officials to bribe parents to let their fourteen and fifteen year olds “train” for the positions they’d have in the future- while giving them a small sum of money. How quickly thy turned to thirteen and twelve and even younger. How many of those lost children died before they had a good understanding of what the Problem was. How many neighborhoods started as a horrible trip down the stars and got bathed in the blood of the unprotected and the innocent. How quickly a few instances of violent deaths grew higher and higher and more and more violent and traumatic. Because not only did children die- but from the express consent of their government and their parents ignorance and detachment.

How that makes the series as a whole a discussion on in society- given the amount of times are governments of committed genocide (or attempted genocide) through children, all in the name of protection

[idontknowanametouse]

Yeah, I still don't like Arlecchino.

Yes, they has reasons to do what they does. Yes, they has a traumatic past and is an abuse survivor. Yes, they took in many of the kids from incredibly dangerous situations, including Lyney and Lynette. Yes, they hate Dottore and his experiments.

And they still is a bad person.

First of all, they is a war criminal. That can already be a very good reason for someone to not be a good person (it's not a reason for a character to not be likable, I like Tartaglia for example). Second, they is literally raising child soldiers and spies, which is very fucked up. Third, abuse happens in many different ways, just because they is not like the original Knave it does not mean they is not an abuse perpetrator. And, fourth, the House of the Hearth is a cult. During the entire quest I was very schoked about how fucking brainwashed all the member were, and how those trying to break free would literally be killed. And, no, like Arlecchino said, they didn't live in the end because they had their memories wiped and turned completely different people, so there would be no risk of them telling anyone the "dark secrets" of the House of the Hearth. Also, even though the quest really wanted to make me see Alrecchino in a positive light, I can't stand someone who is willing to kill those they says as their children (yes, they was willing to kill the "traitors"). And many people can assure you that many times, abusers and manipulators can grow fond of you, even when they are activelly choosing to hurt you (ask most people with abusive parents. Many times, the parents "loved" or thought they loved them and still did all they did)

Arlecchino is incredibly well-written and complex, I'm not saying they is not. They is an amazing character while being a terrible person and an abusive parent.

[setaripendragon]

Hello, I'm intrigued by "404 Battalion Not Found". Can you tell me more ?

Yes! =D

So, this one was inspired by a line in... General Jocasta, I think? Also borrows heavily from fandom's tattooine slave culture and the lore established in... the Double Agent Vader series?

It's a timetravel fic where Cody wakes up as a tiny clone toddler and basically makes it his mission to save as many of his brothers as he can, by slicing the decomissioning droid and making it sedate rather than kill the decomissioned clones.

This causes more problems than it solves. He has to deal with trying to hide, feed, and supply an exponentially growing cadre of enhanced (and thus bored) toddlers, most of whom have some form of 'disability', some of whom are actually very badly sick.

Eventually, Cody manages to get them a way off Kamino via a freed slave turned cargo freighter pilot, who recruits some other people to help them set up a refugee camp/outpost on a mostly uninhabited planet, where they grow up more or less running wild on a deathworld.

The fic probably isn't going to quite cover this except maybe in an epilogue, but eventually, when the clone wars start, this little colony is going to be like 'those are our brothers out there, dying for no good goddamn reason' and call for volunteers to make up a rescue battalion that everyone else is very absolutely sure should not exist.

Hence the title.

The fic was originally meant as a short backstory oneshot to a bigger Cody/Mace timetravel fic I had planned, but it grew out of control on me (as per usual with my backstory ideas ^^"). The first chapter needs some serious reworking, and I'm still a couple chapters away from finished, but it's mostly plotted out, I just wandered away from Star Wars before I quite managed to finish it.

Have an excerpt:

Warily, Gerda looks around the cockpit, paying more attention to the little things. The drawer under the dash isn’t quite shut, though nothing seems to be missing when she opens it to check. There’s a scuff-mark on the arm of the co-pilot’s chair that Gerda’s pretty sure she would have noticed before now. If it weren’t for the missing crates, she might have dismissed it all, but with everything put together, she’s pretty damn sure something’s not right here. She gets up, planning to go tell Eedi they’ve had an intruder on the ship, only to freeze in place, half-turned and half-upright, when she spots said intruder attempting to back away down the corridor to the bunkroom.

It’s a toddler.

A human or close-human toddler in a grey onesie, their skin only a little lighter than her own, but their hair dark instead of ruddy, cropped short and just a little curly, staring at her with an almost angry look of defiance on their chubby little face.

“Hi,” Gerda says, for lack of anything better to say.

“Hullo,” the toddler says, slow and wary. They don’t sound frightened, but their eyes dart around the cockpit in a way that suggests they’re looking for a rescue, or an escape.

Slowly, Gerda stands up properly. The kid clenches their jaw as they stare up at her. Gerda crouches down, a little awkwardly between the two pilot’s seats, and offers the kid a smile. “I’m Gerda, and this beautiful lady is the Tanager,” she introduces, patting the pilot’s seat as she names the ship. “What’s your name?”

The kid’s eyes narrow at her. “Cresh-Cresh-Twenty-Two-Twenty-Four,” they say, rattling the number off by rote, and a chill goes down Gerda’s spine.

“That’s a number, not a name,” Gerda says, very softly. The kid – Gerda is not going to call him by a registration number, she is not – only blinks at her, not even confused past the wariness he’s still regarding her with. “Is that what people call you here?”

The kid nods. “My brothers call me Twenny-Four,” he offers.

“Brothers?” Gerda asks, pulling up a mask over her growing horror, a mask she hasn’t wanted to use or had to use in years. A mask she’d hoped she’d left far behind her. “I have a brother, too. Well, he’s my wife’s brother, which makes him my brother, but there’s only one of him. How many do you have?”

“Ten-thousand-one-hundred-and-five,” the kid answers, then shrugs. “Less than that.”

Gerda’s going to scream. “Less?” she asks, even though she doesn’t want to know. She does not want to know. …She needs to know, anyway.

“The defective ones get taken, and they don’t come back,” the kid explains. They – he, probably he if he’s calling them all brothers – still haven’t stopped watching her like she’s a threat, despite the factual, bland way he’s been answering her questions. He’s one eerie kid, Gerda can’t help but think. His vocabulary is too good and his diction is only slightly warped by childishness. “Some didn’t come out of the tubes right, but they took Eighteen because he cried too much and Twenny-Six because he was growing feathers instead of hair.”

“Do you know where they took them?” Gerda asks around the lump in her throat.

“The decommissioning centre,” the kid answers dutifully. Gerda closes her eyes and takes a moment to just breathe through the horror. Kids. Babies, killed because they cried too much. Gerda’s no stranger to the horrors of the galaxy, but there’s something about the clinical wording and the kid’s well-trained apathy that shatters her own carefully built defences.

[sunlitmcgee]

this is the last thing I'm goinna be able to write for the rest of the day because I don't think I can physically write more after That

and of course, the parents. the parents of the children who have to fight against this admin and his army because there's hardly any other adults around to help. we've got like 5 other people who know how to use a sword. he has to talk to the parents. of course. of course he has to turn and talk to the parents while their kids all play together outside and run around in their little uniforms. He has to talk to the Parents.

[shadows-colours-critical]

Now, I may be reaching but, it’s possible that Dominik’s story is about a victim becoming an abuser and how their actions can negatively impact others. To him, since he had a rough upbringing, seeing people like the lilium family makes him enraged.

Yeah that could be plausible, but it still doesn't excuse the fact he canonically has slaves and child soldiers in the factory, isolates, kills, and abuses workers and children, experiments on, and kidnaps children.

I could care less about his background, because his actions aren't excusable even if he's a child abuse victim himself.

[atangledfate]

"Who's that?" Vex @ whisper/Tangle

She turned her eyes away from Vex, the memory wasn't good, it still haunted her. She wasn't even sure why she still had it but, she did all the same. The kids lined up in rows, each in a GUN uniform, and each carried a rifle like any good little soldiers should. They couldn't have been older then 10 in that picture.

✋... that's a picture from boot camp...that's my platoon from my days with GUN... that was our graduation photo... ✋

She tapped the green furred ocelot

✋ Slinger... he and i would join the Diamond Cutters later... but not before we became Dogs of War...✋

[huntress-cori-voidchaser]

Daughter of the Void (Pt.4)

-------------------------

Cori figured that if she were going to make friends, it was highly probably that the best place for her to start was going to be an area she would be more familiar with- the archery training grounds.

She thought, perhaps, that if she showed enough skill, people might be more interested in a friendship.

Stormwind didn't necessarily have a separated area for archery, the command center housed a hunter-specific trainer, but the surrounding area was simply full of training dummies being pummeled by all manner of races and classes.

Cori eventually managed to find herself an unused dummy, close enough that other people could talk to her if they wished, but far enough that a stray arrow wouldn't hit someone. . . Too hard, that is.

She steadied her bow, eyes fixed on the sliver of a stuffed bag that wasn't covered by the training dummy's wooden shield. She let loose the arrow, which hit its target with a loud thunk into the center pole, causing some small glances her way.

She did this a few more times, mostly hits, occasional misses, but she couldn't help but be distracted by the wondrous sparks of magic from the nearby practicing mages.

She'd always wondered what it would be like to practice magic, it looked so. . . Enthralling.

“Faster reflexes! I've seen ghouls tougher than you, girl!” Cori tilted her head slightly at the commotion from across the training grounds, turning her attention to the scene.

There were two women by a single training dummy. One was tall, a night elf, with frost bitten scars across her pale pink face, deep magenta hair. The other looked young, though her pale and gaunt features seemed to age her beyond her years. The two of them had icy blue eyes, the glow of which seemed to engulf their eyes down to their sockets.

Cori took a cautious step toward them, intrigued by the seemingly playful banter they'd been exchanging.

“Oh yeah? Well I could slay a hundred ghouls before you could even take down one!” The shorter woman spat back, there was a grin on her face, her teeth seemed pointed at the end, in a sort of rigid way, almost as if they'd been forced into that position.

“Hush, girl, we have a spectator.” Said the taller elven woman, nodding towards Cori.

“Oh good- maybe they can tally our scores, so you know how bad I kicked your ass!” The human girl said, walking over to Cori.

“I'm sorry I- I didn't watch- I don't know what you were uhm- competing? About?” Cori said meekly- this whole friend thing might be a bit harder than she was expecting.

“The least you could do is tell the poor girl our names before dragging her into your petty games,” the taller woman said, rolling her eyes.

“Right- well I'm Nyx Venomfang, that overly formal know-it-all is Nocturna Deadblade,” Nyx spoke quickly, before pushing Cori down onto a nearby seat and grabbing a sword from its rest on a nearby fence.

“Am I a know-it-all? Or are you just immature?” Nocturna chuckled.

“I've been seventeen for probably a decade or something, forgive me if I'm not just the Picture of maturity.” Nyx spat back, her face scrunched up in annoyance.

“I'm fifteen-” Cori said hurriedly, the two just stared at her with mild alarm.

“Fifteen and she beat up a training dummy in a few minutes with a couple of arrows? Now I've got to see this,” Nyx gestured to the training dummy a few feet away from the one she'd been using. “You- me- first one to trigger the alarm in their training dummy wins,” she stated, dropping into an offensive position and readying herself to swing at the dummy.

Cori pulled out an arrow from her quiver, setting it against the bow and waiting for whatever signal she was supposed to receive.

“Ready. . . And. . . Fight!” Nocturna bellowed, pacing back and forth behind the two.

Nyx's alarm went off first, which, to Cori, made the most sense, considering she was working with a melee weapon, rather than a longer range bow.

“You were close! I'd love to see how you do in a real fight,” Nyx said, shaking Cori's hand after they'd put up their weapons.

“I don't think I can be in a real fight any time soon- I'm still in training. . .” Cori said. She would've loved to go out and explore with the two, but she still couldn't quite shake those voices, even now she could feel them crawling around in her head.

“No way you're still training- hunters don't need pets to go out into the field y'know- Nocturna and I were just about to pick up a bounty in Westfall for solving a murder- pretty standard stuff if you ask me, you're coming with us,” Nyx said, as though this was a definitive fact and not just a request.

“You- you don't understand- I could be dangerous! I've got- I've got these voices and-” Nyx held a hand up to cut her off before she could finish her sentence.

“Apahpahpahpah- no buts, we've got voices too, we're death knights, basically running on bloodlust constantly, no carnage for to long and we go a little crazy, yet here we are amongst the living all fine and dandy, yeah?” She said, smiling. Cori paused for a moment, if these two had been swept into the thrall of death, and they were still here. . . Could that mean?. . .

She couldn't dwell on it now- she'd just made her first ever friends! She couldn't ruin that with her own pent up issues.

“Oh. . . Well- when you put it that way I- I guess I could come with you- but I haven't got the slightest idea what I'm supposed to bring with me! I don't exactly have much- I've only been here a week or two-” Cori said.

“Don't you worry your pretty little head about it, we'll help you out, friend- now c'mon- let's get going before somebody else solves that murder yeah?” Nyx said, grabbing onto Cori's hand and making her way toward the tavern.

Cori was starting to like this whole friend thing already. 

[first-frost-fallen-snow]

Frost's Backstory

Trigger warnings are in the tags for blacklisting reasons.

TWs: death, kidnapping, torture, attempted suicide, mind control, war, child soldiers, war crimes

.

.

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The day Frost was born, he accidentally killed both of his parents in an explosion of ice. In fact, he froze a block of people with his power. No one knew how he survived, but he continued to live as an orphan. He named himself when he was old enough to speak, and decided to keep the name despite how strange it sounded.

On the streets, he met someone named Floris. Floris became like a brother to him, and the two were never far from each other. During their teen years, a war began that threatened their world, and they were forced to make a team of beings that had magical abilities to try and save it.

In their adult years, they encountered the god of death and darkness itself, Didanu. In the battle, Didanu kidnapped Frost and fled the scene.

No one knew where Didanu had gone, and Frost was tortured endlessly. What he didn't know was that Didanu had infected him with the dark spirit of a general in Didanu's dark army.

After he was rescued by their team, he had premonitions of dark futures. He began to shut himself away from the team, and his mind was taken over by the spirit of Didanu's general. This was how he became Hailstorm, a mercenary that was at war with himself.

Once Floris discovered who Hailstorm truly was, he confronted him on a planet where Hailstorm had run off to. Hailstorm then used his own blade to end his life in attempts to destroy the spirit trying to control him.

Unfortunately, this was exactly what Didanu needed. Destroying the host was enough to weaken Frost's spirit and let the general take over, allowing DemonSharde to come to life. DemonSharde used dark magic to rebuild himself, basically becoming darth vader. (Mun note: I only realized that this was very much darth vader until now. Whoops.)

[sacrifical-lamb-core]

Imagine being little Jason Grace and being screamed at for not being able to see something and you get struck across your face for being a’useless little wretch’ and being yelled at constantly for something you really can’t help because it’s not my fault I can’t see but he doesn’t know that and he thinks he’s just being lazy or not trying hard enough and then he finds out he just needed glasses all along

[kadextra]

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was being trained to be a child super soldier and after my first tour of duty at 16, I met Danny DeVito and I just stood there flabbergasted by his grace and magnificence.

[holly-mint]

sasha dump over this year

[jewish-vents]

Pre-October 7th, I had some ex-evangelical friends and they would always talk about how horrible their upbringing was and describe it as abuse and refer to their families and churches as cults because they were basically born and raised for the sole purpose of spreading Christianity and right-wing ideology. They would talk about how they used to have fantasies about being murdered for being Christian and going down in history as martyrs. And about their fantasies of going to war against non-Christians and converting or killing them. They readily acknowledged that the way they were raised was incredibly fucked up.

And yet they applaud the people doing the same thing to children in Gaza.

They call it abuse when American Christian children are indoctrinated into violence and bigotry from birth, but call it resistance when Palestinian Muslim children are subjected to the same thing. They call their American Christian parents and pastors cult leaders for telling kids that their greatest aspiration should be martyrdom, but call Palestinian Muslim parents and teachers and imams "freedom fighters" for raising children to be suicide bombers and human shields.

It is so fucking hypocritical it's sickening. The exact same things they say broke them and destroyed them and fucked them up for life are being done to kids in Gaza and these privileged little assholes are cheering it on.

.

[the-catboy-minyan]

a man has committed suicide, set himself on FIRE, BURNED HIMSELF ALIVE.

and people are making fanart.

what kind of dystopia are we living in?

[shadows-colours-critical]

Corundum looks so silly I wish he was written better😞

If only Corundum wasn't a child abuser that works for a literal slave owner that experiments on children and sometimes kills them and turns them into child soldiers (Dominik.)

[this-earlobe-is-naked]

I’m so torn on this, because Percy especially doesn’t mention the ages of most people. The ones he does mention are at least 12/13 during the Battle of Manhattan. Obviously these are still children and it’s super gross of the gods to allow/require them to be their army (even more disgusting to think of an entire city of adults in New Rome, letting children protect/ die for them), but there’s something even worse in my mind to imagine an 8 year old in those fights. Let me know what you think, and please expound in the tags or reblogs.