Andsilvered - Yet Another Of Devotion's Casualties

'ao3 needs a like and dislike button'

what you need, my algorithm-rotten minded friend, is a grip

ok i'm sleepy and having emotions and i'm not gonna grab my copy to pull the specific quotes but. you remember that scene in htn where mercy and augustine are arguing. i think it's the "you have rendered yourself unlovable" one. and augustine tells her that he could kill her if he wanted. he could do it without a second thought, could stub her out like a cigarette beneath his shoe, and john would forgive him? john would understand? augustine is his favorite, and they all know it, to such a degree that mercymorn ceases to matter in the slightest?

cool great. now remember that time when john killed mercy? without a second thought? stubbed her out beneath his shoe? and then he turned to augustine and he said, you understand why i did that, right? you know that you're my favorite? you know i love you? she doesn't matter. we can put this behind us. augustine, can't you forgive me?

and augustine says no, john. no, i can't.

cause i'm thinking about that and i'm tearing my hair out. i'm eating the drywall. her death was too far. it was too far and augustine couldn't forgive him. he was right about john, probably more right than he realized, but he could never have brought himself to do it. it was unforgiveable.

Just some totally normal teenagers

i don’t think the emperor or any of his surviving original lyctors can possibly comprehend how grateful they should be for whatever harrow’s done to scoop gideon out of her brain because if harrowhark nonagesimus was in possession of the the full knowledge that her first enemy and only friend in the whole world Gideon Nav had given her life so that Harrow could sit at a dining room table while God and his first two saints got wine drunk and argued about which of the cavaliers they’d murdered to achieve immortality was the most bangable and made your mom jokes then i do not believe there would be any force in the known or unknown universe that could keep her from deicide

still not over chapter 13. dorian killing the one person who loved him as something more than just a pretty face because that’s all dorian saw himself as. basil seeing the torture dorian’s soul has endured but still believing he is not yet lost. and the action of killing basil being the point of no return for dorian. only the artist could have helped his art, but the death of the artist leaves his work finished, no matter what.

i would be feral abt t4t paldulcie

adds such a great layer to the ambiguously erotic long distance mentorship situation… dulcinea as a trans elder… i’m frothing at the mouth

SEE i wasn't thinking of Dulcie as a trans elder in this situation, I think Juno Zeta would put her her son on blockers aged 10 and be the kind of mom to have a toddler portrait tattoo redone to be like, still extremely binary but now the baby is dressed in blue with a baseball cap.

specifically I want to explore the experience of being trans and having these kind of... long distance, no faces, text only relationships where you can feel fully affirmed and the disconnect that then exists between your real world experience, and how this interacts with of course also being critically ill and not wanting anyone to see you because of that. the compounded body horror and also then, intimacy when there IS someone you trust to see you sick, see you naked, and the way that interacts with the vulnerability and exhaustion of sickness,

and there's another layer I really want to explore regarding how critical illness i.e. cancer can often impede or slow medical transition while ALSO drastically shortening the time in which one has to make these decisions. to quote my favorite movie "there is still time", but what if there isn't? what is there ISNT time? what if you're dying, and you want to die in the body you want to be remembered in, but you don't know if you'll get there? there's a horror in that. this quote from harrow the ninth:

"“The only thing that ever stopped me being exactly who I wanted,” she said, “was the worry that I would soon be dead … and now I am dead, Reverend Daughter, and I am sick of roses, and I am horny for revenge.”"

i think this would add to Palamedes' like... "i need to cure her i need to save her" and also heighten Dulcinea's rebellious streak (she wants cigarettes!!! she hates roses!!!) while also interacting with how she DID, in fact, decline Palamedes' proposal. she decided to stay where she was. there's so much here. im getting dangerously close to getting really personal here on tumblr dot com but im shaking the bars of my cage

actual tears running down my face

“Queer people need to get weirder-” you can’t handle like. A lesbian.

I know Abigail saying Ianthe was "never quite the thing" is probably meant to reference some kind of political beef between them, but I just have this mental image of 14 year old Abigail being handed baby Ianthe at whatever the evil necromancer equivalent of a christening party is and just immediately deciding that this baby's vibes were weird.