welcome-to-oslov

[welcome-to-oslov]

Trip to Harbour

Tilrey always on my mind:

While obviously not blond, throwing out this cute man here as feeling kinda like the essence of Tilrey on his Harbour trip, perhaps almost upon arriving at the True Hearth, looking at a map to reach it.

Didn't Gersha want to shave off that newly-grown beard, after all?

Thanks as always to the wonderful @welcome-to-oslov for creating the Oslov world! Fics here

[welcome-to-oslov]

Speaking of therapy for Tilrey, I suppose that Oslov therapist would feel pleased with herself:

"He couldn’t help cowering as the driver mounted him. He focused on deep, healing breaths, ushering Jorning into himself rather than resisting it."

Still, she should know she's either complicit in the system that keeps youth like Tilrey and Stefan in positions like this and/or vastly overestimates how much these "tools" would truly help, or be capable of being harnessed or held onto in the moment 😢

TMI time: I confess that when I wrote that character I was thinking about a therapist I once had. Who was very lovely and not complicit in an oppressive power structure at all, I swear, but she was obsessed with breathing and wanted to bring everything back to that. (Maybe she was just frustrated with how my brain works, and I can’t blame her, lol.)

The breathing stuff actually did help me with some serious stress. I use it all the time and it’s great! But I still think it’s treating a symptom and not the root cause (in Tilrey’s case, oppression and systemic inequality). So when I was trying to imagine an Oslov therapist, that came to mind. 😏

[welcome-to-oslov]

You've probably seen the Guy Pearce statement vs. Kevin Spacey video confrontation from yesterday. Really interesting to see a long-accused harasser/assaulter confidently & aggressively hit back directly at someone who shared his story 😳

Made me wonder about who in Oslov might aggressively & confidently deny Tilrey's victimhood, to his face, if he ever asked for acknowledgement of what they put him through.

Saldegren, for example, obviously has a refusal to comprehend what's actually gone on between them, as we saw in Oslov Unraveled. And he did have that confrontation with 30s (20s?) Tilrey when Tilrey tried to stand up for himself and tell Saldegren to stop having "reminiscing" convos about him with others. Tilrey asking this, with the emotional way he asked, was in a way the kind of indirect demand for acknowledgement of what they did to him that he might barely been comfortable making. Yet, in the face of that, Saldegren showed some teeth in his steely resolve that made Tilrey back down.

Curious if post-Oslov Unraveled Tilrey would ever want to put an end to that passive aggressive things unsaid sickly equilibrium that gaslit and oppressed him for so long. I know he wants to end it for society and for others. But himself?

I just watched the video. Granted, I don’t know what happened between them, but wow, the way Spacey just dismissed the possibility that he made Pearce uncomfortable. “Grow up” is classic gaslighting. 😡

That scene where Tilrey calls out Saldegren has always been one of my faves, so I just reread it—Tilrey is 43! 😳 I had forgotten. (So has Saldegren, apparently, because he’s shocked to hear it and calls Tilrey “boy” even after he’s reminded.)

But anyway, to your question. When Tilrey called out Saldegren, Saldegren pulled rank and was basically like, “When I degrade you, it actually makes you seem unthreatening and not like the potential traitor/rebel you are, so I’m doing you a big favor.” Post-revolution, he can’t claim to be protecting Tilrey anymore. Given Tilrey’s age and new position, there’s a good chance that more Councillors will start treating him with respect—or at least pretending to.

This is also another case where Tilrey might be quicker to stand up for someone else than for himself. If Stefan is now on the Council, he’s definitely gonna get the harassment that Tilrey used to get, even if it’s less overt. I can imagine a situation where Tilrey calls out the harassers and insists on a formal apology to Stefan. And if he catches someone doing that to Ceill or Janta, all hell might break loose. He would absolutely use his authority to make an example of that person.

I kinda want to write this now—Tilrey’s righteous rage! Harassment is such an insidious offense and so hard to call out, but if anyone could do it, he could.

[welcome-to-oslov]

Not as high-brow as your other reader lol, but if we're back to doing reccs (!!!), I stumbled across a random fic the other day that is really good for power imbalance, dubious consent, and psychological abuse issues.

No idea what the fandom is, but it's some sort of sci-fi space world where apparently humans had colonized various planets, so now there are humans from all over. The humans from Mars have apparently been enslaved by the humans from Earth. The group we're with are some sort of rogue spaceship team comprised of humans from various planets. But then one day the team lands somewhere where the society discovers their human-from-Mars teammate isn't enslaved like he should be... so one colleague takes it upon himself to become his enslaver. To help him, of course. And the colleague insists that it's important he get himself into the headspace of how he would actually feel if this were all true. Just to help avoid actual capture, of course. (And wait... how would the human-from-Earth colleague know, anyway...)

archiveofourown.org/works/12018603/chapters/27201696

I like the sound of this! Checking it out immediately.

And thank you! I’m so into these recs, high-brow and low-brow and everything in between. 🥰 AO3 is one of the few things not scaring or depressing me right now. That and nice long immersive fantasy books where rapists, tyrants, and the like get their just deserts.

[welcome-to-oslov]

Hello! I was just reminded today of a fantastic author whose play I saw in New York a few years ago and I think you'd really love.

Edouard Louis is a young French public intellectual, known for his autibiographical novels about traversing the path from growing up poor & lower class in a northern French industrial town to discovering his love for literature & philosophy as a teen and young man - which, along with his burgeoning recognition of his attraction to men, estranged him from the society he grew up while opening the door to his new life in France's upper class.

His book A History of Violence was adapted into the play I saw, and the entire thing revolves around a sexual assault he went through - all taking place in that apartment before & after, but bringing the audience through so many themes about life, the self, class, society, etc that makes anyone reflect on who they are and want to be.

His debut novel The End of Eddy waa written when was 21 and is great too! He also just had a new one come out a few months ago that I can't wait to get to.

Anyway, just saw an awesome interview with him that reminded me & realized this might be up your alley too! Gotta hand it to the French, their cultural discouse is a million miles above ours 😅😭

Ahhh, thank you! I hadn’t even heard of him, I’m embarrassed to say, though I’ve read a lot of older French lit. It’s a long time since I was up to date. I’m fascinated by stories of brilliant young people trying to move up the social ladder, as I’m sure you can tell, and France has such a history of great novels like that. Anyway, I read the Guardian piece about him, and I’m very interested in checking out Change and A History of Violence now!

That interview reminded me of the Genet book I struggled through with a dictionary because it wasn’t easy to find mm/gay literature in pre-internet times! 😅

[welcome-to-oslov]

Ooh! I just thought of a "what if" scenario I don't think we've considered before.

What if: Tilrey *had* just been sent home to Thurskein, after Malsha or after Verán or after Linden? How would he have coped & reacted?

I don't think an AU of that would be particularly interesting haha, but curious just as a thought exercise.

Maybe going home right after Malsha would've been his best chance to heal somewhat back into a normal Skeinsha kid (though he could never be the same person he was/would've been), but idk; he was already pretty damaged in his thinking by that last chapter with Malsha.

I feel like going home after Verán (rather than being moved into Linden's) he might just be so cynical & depressed it'd be hard to re-adapt -- but going home after those first couple months with the Island Party would've been an enormous relief & probably his best chance for second lease on life (thinking around the time he was sobbing on the icy balcony about not wanting to become a block of wood, after making it clear to the therapist that he wished he could be let out of this 😭)

Being shipped back to Thurskein after Linden... well, we haven't yet gone through with him his time with Linden 😬, but I think the Tilrey who showed up back home would've felt as unrecognizable to his Mom as he does at Gersha's door at the beginning of ASB to those of us who first met him in AKoB 😢.

You know, I never thought about how it must feel to meet him in ASB after you’ve only known him in AtKoB! That really would be sad. And excruciatingly sad for his mom, too, if he’d gone home then. He wouldn’t have known how to interact with anyone. His head would still be in “serve/please Upstarts” mode. I can even maybe imagine him making friends with Supervisor Fernei just to get near someone who has contact with the Upstart world. I think his mom is already with the rebels by then, so maybe she and Dal could deprogram him. That’s what it would take!

I agree with your speculations about what would happen if Tilrey returned after Malsha or toward the start of the Island period. He would still miss Malsha, I fear, but the adjustment would be easier. He might be the one who radicalized his mom instead of vice versa. He might even return to Dal and hope to rekindle their relationship. They might make a try of it, even marry, but I suspect that wouldn’t go well in the long run. He would still have nightmares, and she would try to help and not know how. He might become dependent on her strength instead of finding his own.

And what about Bror? Would Tilrey miss him intensely? If Tilrey returned to Thurskein later, after Linden, I can just maybe imagine Bror requesting a transfer to Thurskein to be with him—which you can do, especially if you have strings to pull. (It’s much harder to move from a Laborer city to Redda than vice versa.) So then we have an interesting scenario: Bror in Thurskein trying to adjust while he helps Tilrey heal, but also missing the family he left behind. Poor Bror—but I guess that’s a possible path to an HEA for those two.

[welcome-to-oslov]

"He’s created a fiction of his own strength, toughness, and resilience that has served him for decades. Of course it’s not purely a fiction. Those qualities are also him. But underneath somewhere still is that frightened boy, and he affects Tilrey’s behavior in ways Tilrey might not even recognize till after the fact."

Man, I feel like if Tilrey were made to read AKoB he'd curl up catatonic in a ball 😭

Makes me think of how stupid Saldegren has seen Tilrey for who he was all along, despite never *seeing* him or the situation. In Oslov Unraveled, his remembering Tilrey's first years in Redda: "frightened and intimdated by Malsha, hardly more than a schoolboy."

Saldegren remembers him as who he was, but from what you wrote Tilrey can't bear to see himself back like that. 😢

I doubt he would be able to explain logically what he blames or hates his young self for. For not suceeding in protecting himself from all that, since it did happen? For changing in ways he didn't want to? Maybe it's down to his old habit of grasping desperately for some sort of control: if he truly stopped hating or blaming his young self (or himself now), that means he would have to accept he'd had no control. 😢Understandably that would be too terrifying to accept while he was still in the middle of it; I guess resisting letting that hope go is one of the parts of young Tilrey he's still carrying inside him - even later in life when he's safe(ish) now.

Maybe he's scared he'd discover that those qualities of his you listed that feel so critical to him for his survival - strength, resilience, toughness - actually ARE fiction, if he ever let himself look too closely at the face of young Tilrey. 😢💔

“resisting letting that hope go is one of the parts of young Tilrey he's still carrying inside him - even later in life when he's safe(ish) now.”

Great point—I never thought of it that way! His obsession with control is like the last gasp of the younger self he refuses to be. And maybe Tilrey even knows that, but reaching for control is such a reflex with him that it’s very hard to unlearn.

He doesn’t want to feel like a victim, like someone who is passive, and he will twist reality any way he needs to to get there. But I do think he makes a lot of progress over the years as he interacts with other victims/survivors and learns about the systemic reasons for what happened to him (inequality, corruption). He can judge someone else (Stefan, say) more kindly than he judges himself.

Okay, so I keep ranting about Robin Hobb and I don’t want to spoil her plot twists. But can I just praise the fantasy metaphor she created for someone who copes with trauma by entirely rejecting his past self and shutting himself off from his humanity? It’s taken me like 2,000 pages of this trilogy to get there, but it’s so good. Anyway, that’s informing my thoughts about Tilrey right now, though Tilrey managed to hang on to enough of his past self not to become a full-on murderous sociopath.

[welcome-to-oslov]

So, we all know actually-helpful therapy doesn't really exist in Oslov (that was such a great chapter when he was sent to one!). We've also seen the things he's healed a bit & struggled to come to terms with things over the years, both early in his post-kettleboy era and later in life.

If Tilrey *could* have accessed real therapy at some point in time (now? While he's living with Gersha? When he's set free? Older? Now that Oslov is free?), I'm wondering:

What feelings/trauma do you think he would struggle most with allowing himself to think about/work on?

What things do you think he could've healed much better or faster if he'd had skilled help? What kind of therapy/therapist do you think he could've felt safest with to let himself be free to heal?

This is a great question! I wish I were better qualified to know what kind of therapy really would help Tilrey.

I think he would struggle most with accessing and coming to terms with his past self—the naive teenager who was thrust into this situation and had no idea what to do. Who truly believed that things like this couldn’t happen to someone like him. Who struggled, protested, cried. Over the years, Tilrey has shut himself off from younger Tilrey. He’s created a fiction of his own strength, toughness, and resilience that has served him for decades. Of course it’s not purely a fiction. Those qualities are also him. But underneath somewhere still is that frightened boy, and he affects Tilrey’s behavior in ways Tilrey might not even recognize till after the fact. He makes it much harder to trust or love or have hope for the future.

I think Tilrey needs to learn to love his past self and forgive the younger him for how he reacted in the moment to a situation he couldn’t handle. And it’s not just a question of loving the past self enough so it stops bothering him. He needs to be there for it always, to accept that he carries that inner weakness and grief with him and it’s okay, he can still also be strong.

I don’t remember the therapy term for this—“parts theory” maybe, something like that? But I’m not sure how much Tilrey would benefit from talk therapy. In any one-on-one situation with an authority or expert, he will revert to his kettle boy training and tell them what he thinks they want to hear. A therapist who could call him out on his deference might be good. His role-playing with Einara kind of worked similarly, even if she wasn’t doing it for his benefit. She kept triggering his deference/submission responses while also challenging him on why he was responding that way. But she couldn’t teach him to love his past self, because she hasn’t learned that lesson herself.

Given that Einara helped him to some extent, I think Tilrey might like some kind of peer support group where he could talk to people who had gone through similar things. Even better, he could lead the group, which would make him feel like he was still being strong and helping others. I can see such groups forming in the Brothel, or whatever they end up calling it post-revolution, for sex workers who were exploited and now can choose whether to continue to do that work on their own terms. Tilrey would hear so many stories, some like his and others different, and in the process he might develop a new respect for his younger self who coped with an impossible situation in the only ways he knew how. 😢

I honestly never thought technocratic “meritocracy” (never truly based on merit) would be a possibility in my lifetime. But now that it is (maybe?) happening, I’m all the more aware of what that mentality does to everyone who is labeled lesser because of a test score or an accident of birth. When you’re trained to think your misfortune or oppression is always due to a lack of personal merit, you turn all the righteous anger on yourself, and Tilrey is exhibit A. (I think Bror is better off because his family didn’t absorb this Upstart mentality.) So anyway, sorry to get briefly political, but yeah, perfectionism is a destructive creed.

[welcome-to-oslov]

Tilrey is always top of mind for me after a new Oslov universe chapter drops! Two in one week, how lucky are we 🤗

So, I'm thinking about his age again during this terrible time in his life, which molded him for the rest of his life.

The age he is, college age, 18-22 (barely turned 18 when this all began and was literally still in high school when Makari took him for Malsha's ownership) is such an important age of personal growth.

Curious what areas of personal growth you think Tilrey missed out on during these 5 years with Malsha, Veran, Linden?

Very interesting question! All that was stolen from Tilrey.

Oslov doesn’t offer as many opportunities for young adults to have personal growth as our culture does, especially if they’re Laborers, but we still see some of that happening with other characters. Vera flirts with being a Hargist (cultural rebel) at University. In Thurskein, Dal seemed all set to marry Tilrey before he left, but then she falls in love with a woman and becomes a rebel. Adelbert gets obsessed with streams and wants to be an actor.

So, what kind of personal growth/exploration could Tilrey have had? Laborers don’t do University, so he would have started a job immediately, maybe working under his mom. I can see him getting disillusioned with the system his mom was upholding and no longer trusting her as an authority. He soon would’ve realized that her boss, Supervisor Fernei, was corrupt and generally evil. Would he have accepted that with regret, the way his mom did? Or quit to do something else? Or secretly joined the growing resistance?

At some point Tilrey’s relationship with Dal would have fallen apart—hopefully before they married and had kids, not after! Strange as it may seem, I think he would have wanted to be monogamous and she might have cheated first. But once that happened, Tilrey could explore his attraction to men at his own pace, without anyone forcing or rushing him. Maybe he would have a phase of sleeping around, but I think he would settle down with one partner fairly quickly, imitating his mom’s devotion to his dad.

And then there’s the AU idea where Tilrey manages to be the token Laborer who gets Raised. (I can see him applying!) If he got Raised and went to University in Redda, we’d see some wild and perhaps even chaotic personal growth for sure. Upstarts would still be trying to exploit and manipulate him as a vulnerable young person, but he would have more power and status to resist them. Who knows what he’d get into! Or maybe he’d just study obsessively and still not get a great job after college because of silly ideas about art and personal fulfillment—no, wait, I’m thinking of me now. 😅

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Oh Tilrey: for all he's been through, he is still innocent enough to think, "He didn’t like Jorning’s casual assumption that scenes like this would recur."

Tilrey! He thinks the first encounter with Linden happened like it did because he did something wrong or said something wrong or didn't figure the guy out well enough. He thinks this second encounter... well, I think he feels like he doesn't understand why it went how it went. It was all so sudden and fast-moving and brand new and longer-lasting than he expected.

"He didn’t like Jorning’s casual assumption that scenes like this would recur." Tilrey... 😭 Still not understanding doesn't bode well for how hard it's going to be for him to come to understand 😭

Poor Tilrey—I think he suspects on some level, but he can’t face the truth that this might be his life now. It’s bad enough that he has to “perform” with Ansha, who at least is another kettle boy. But this?? He’s always struggling to adjust his expectations to a reality that just keeps getting worse. Always trying to believe he can maintain some sort of control and numb himself to what’s happening. 😢 But sometimes he can’t repress his hope and optimism for the future. Maybe that’s one reason he survives (and doesn’t jump from that building in the first scene of ASB).

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Just came here to say omg Verán is such a frienemy to Linden 😂

😂 They kinda hate each other and only banded together because they hated Malsha more. The whole Council tends to have a Mean Girls vibe—if only that didn’t rebound on poor Tilrey! 😒

[welcome-to-oslov]

"All the Kinds of Broken," Chap. 49

This chapter gets dark, please heed the warnings! Also, Jorning acts like a totally standard dick.

I think Tilrey in ASB is a little Stockholm-syndromed when it comes to Jorning. He needed a "friend" whom he didn't have to hide all the worst stuff from. Bror would have been that friend, or tried to, but Tilrey wouldn't open up to him about certain things. Hence his closeness with Jorning. But in this earlier chapter, he's very capable of seeing and judging Jorning's complicity.

As always, thank you for reading and for your wonderful comments!!

[welcome-to-oslov]

"All the Kinds of Broken," Chap. 48

This ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but the next chapter will come soon!

What a week, month, year. Reading Robin Hobb is keeping me sane right now. I'm only in the second trilogy. One thing I love is how she describes the aftermath of trauma in characters like Fitz, Kennit, Serilla, Paragon—all the wildly divergent forms that coping and not coping can take. I've forgotten who recommended these books to me, but if you're still around, thank you!

[welcome-to-oslov]

Okay, whew: "If he gets angry at those who are truly responsible, he might make the “mistake” of rebellion again."

Makes me think of the ask about what Magistrate Tilrey would think if he stumbled across his teenage testimony to the judge, locked in some drawer somewhere.

It wouldn't just confront him with how he'd felt back then, what he'd been going through, but also with his complicated feelings about his naiveté.

Because how naive of him was it to think a judge would listen to him? That rules - or anything - would matter, in the face of what the General Magistrate wants? That he himself would matter, as someone who deserves something - a life, freedom from harm? Yes, he was skeptical of the plan to do this, but he had enough trust in the system to go for it. It was all a lie all along - but even if it hadn't been, he was still too young & naive too truly know it wouldn't have mattered at all even if it had gotten to the judge.

Tilrey learned that soon, and the Tilrey who came to lead the rebellion certainly did. But looking back on his youthful, innocent naiveté - when he has a hard time seeing himself as innocent at all - would be grief that it's hard for him to feel not just about himself but about the society he wrestled with for so long, and is now tasked with changing. 💔

So much grief!! Because younger Tilrey was raised to believe in the rule of law and the justice of the meritocratic system. He had no idea just how corrupt and rotten it was. His mother was high up in the Thurskein government, and she was ethical, so he naturally assumed everyone else was, too, not realizing that her boss was on the take and doing whatever powerful Upstarts wanted him to.

If Tilrey had been more like Besha—selfish, and cynical enough to assume everyone else is selfish too—he would never have blamed himself and internalized all the cruel judgments people put on him. He would have known that a judge would ignore his testimony because he was a nobody accusing the General Magistrate. He spent way too long hating himself when he could have been scheming to bring down his oppressors.

But I think it takes some idealism even to believe rebellion is possible. So maybe Tilrey’s hidden, wounded idealism did help him in the end, painful as it was to him. He lost the naïveté, but he didn’t lose the belief that things could/should be better. He even managed to persuade a selfish asshole like Besha to join the rebellion, and he turned Einara’s destructive vengefulness in more constructive directions.

[welcome-to-oslov]

I've been re-reading Tales triptych and there was an interesting discussion in the comments from a few years ago.

You wrote of Einara & Tilrey, "But she does represent all that anger and vengefulness that he's been repressing much of his life."

I wish we could grab a drink & chat at length about why that may be! Why *did* Tilrey instinctually try to repress all the anger and vengefulness he should've justifiably felt? Both while young and older?

I also read recently about how tyrants try to come to power: a blitz of insane actions to "shock & overwhelm you with your helplessness". Made me think that's exactly what Malsha did to Tilrey the first 24 hours he took him (the officers' brothel, the drugs, the bath, Artur), let alone the frog-in-a-boiling-pot of poor Tilrey's two years with him. And huh now that I think of it, exactly how his transition from Malsha to Island Party went (IntSec cell, the gangbang). And his transition to Linden (crazy beatings)! Mind blown at this pattern.

I would love to chat about that! 😊 I’ve been thinking a lot today (hmm, wonder why) about the “shock and overwhelm” thing. How the concept of terrorism was invented in the French Revolution as a way to overload your political opponents’ nervous systems with fear and outrage until they feel helpless and just shut down. Malsha is definitely an emotional terrorist, and everything Tilrey experienced has pushed him into a state of hibernation where he doesn’t dare to access his feelings anymore, especially his anger.

I just drafted a couple chapters of All the Kinds of Broken, and in one of them Tilrey sees protesters for the first time in Redda and doesn’t know how to react. He looks to Bror, but Bror doesn’t have the answers this time. They’re so shaped by the system that neither is ready to even think about meaningful rebellion—it’s terrifying. But of course they’re at the start of a long political evolution.

Thinking about Einara: Before she came to Oslov and experienced similar traumas to Tilrey, she was brainwashed by someone (Colonel Thibault) who encouraged her vengefulness. Anger gives her a purpose to cling to, a sense of self, and makes her immune to Oslov brainwashing. But Tilrey was raised in the system as someone who believed in himself as a good son, good citizen, etc., and felt invested in that. I think that’s why the shame that Malsha weaponizes against him is so devastating. All his anger is turned inward, at himself for making the “mistake” of going to the shirker meeting. If he gets angry at those who are truly responsible, he might make the “mistake” of rebellion again, and he doesn’t know if he can survive the consequences.

Is Tilrey also especially sensitive? Maybe so—Malsha certainly loves that in him. 😢 I think he is resilient, but it takes him a while—decades!—to come to terms with his anger.

Anyway, I hope to post those chapters pretty soon, once I polish them!

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Happy new year! So good to see you back 🤗

Speaking of exposés, this made me think of Tilrey's long ago document he wrote for that judge, falsely promised to him as a way out.

Now that grown-up Tilrey's taken charge of Oslov, what if he stumbled upon that heartfelt (if circumscribed) testimony his teenage self wrote, buried in a record book somewhere? I suppose he wouldn't find it anywhere, since it was all a trick, and last we know Malsha had gotten it (and knowing him probably kept it as a momento of his impact).

But what if he did read it again, especially now? Malsha no doubt enjoyed reading it knowing intimately what Tilrey chose *not* to include. Tilrey himself though reading it... whew. He'd know that even better Malsha and also know intimately how he'd felt all those years ago, trying to acknowledge that what was done to him was unjust, that he needed help, and trying to grasp for it. 😢

Happy new year to you too! I hope to get back to writing Oslov soon!!

Oh, poor Tilrey! I can imagine him digging up that document and just cringing over everything his younger self said. Or if some ambitious journalist type (imaginable in post-revolutionary Oslov) confronted him with it and asked for comment—ouch! (And it would get even weirder once they found out his rapists were his son’s grandfather and great-grandfather. 😳)

But I hope he would have enough compassion for his younger self to remember all the forces bearing down on him back then. Not just everything Malsha did, but also the impossibility of finding words to describe what Malsha did. It must have been so painful for young Tilrey to write that complaint in polite, neutral legal language, knowing most magistrates would just laugh and call him a whiner or troublemaker for not being “grateful” for Malsha’s attention. But he had to give it a try, and he did. 😢 And he got the last laugh, because his patient mastery of all that bureaucratic stuff helped him bring the system down in the end.

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Yikes

Just read the Neil Gaiman article in NY magazine (serious SA CWs for that, btw) and couldn’t help thinking of Malsha. I’ve barely read his work, so for me it’s less “The idol has fallen” than just a horrific study in how much brilliant, powerful men sometimes get away with.

A portrait of someone who was shaped by a hierarchical, abusive, tight-knit organization (which Oslov’s elite also is) and learned to essentially live a double life, presenting as sweet, harmless, and lovable while manipulating people into a position where they would participate in the nonconsensual erotic scenarios that he (probably? maybe?) used to process his own history of abuse. Using his natural empathy and intuition to figure out how to tie people in knots (literally or figuratively). It’s just so Malsha, and while I do think this kind of cruelty tends to come out of an abusive background and not inherent evil, that doesn’t excuse it. Choices were made.