Hello! 🫣
I had this idea: thenamesh academic rivals?
Gil is a top student, mostly getting a mark of 100. but whenever Thena asks her rival what he got he always says a lower point (for example he says 97 and she got a 98) , hiding his exam behind his back 🫣
Thena glared at the chair next to hers as it was taken.
"Uh," Gilgamesh attempted - yet again - to strike up a casual conversation, "hey."
Thena tapped her papers on her desk, waiting for the professor to come in, as well as tell them how they would be conducting the labs with their students for the day. "I trust you've already looked up what your score for the mid-term was."
"What was yours?"
Thena clenched her teeth in her jaw. It didn't matter what she got, he would get just the same, if not better. She had worked her whole life to become a historical scholar, as was expected of her. And this guy always managed to stand shoulder to shoulder with her, seemingly without so much as blinking. "I achieved 98. I believe the two point demerit was due to my oversight in the essay section."
Gilgamesh merely nodded, offering a nervous kind of smile. "Ah, well, the essay parts are always the toughest."
She slid her eyes over to him. She didn't truly wish to know, but she also couldn't resist knowing. "And you?"
"Ninety..." he trailed off, as he always did when they were discussing their academic performance. She glared at him to finish, "seven?"
Thena smiled, although she did her best not to appear smug and unbecoming. "An admirable mark."
"Thanks," he laughed off, like it was nothing. Professor Stoss was a famously tough professor despite his young age, and getting any good mark from him was already a feat.
Thena did somewhat believe that the affability Gilgamesh possessed made people go easier on him. And even then, she had to concede that he was intelligent and competent in their field of study. It infuriated her.
She had the weight of the world on her in the expectation to perform. She was even a teaching assistant entirely to advance her studies and career. Otherwise, the interaction with other students was far too much for her own preference.
But Gilgamesh said he was good in historical studies merely because his mother had possessed a fondness for them. Thena devoted hours to studying and research and Gilgamesh worked part time at a diner close to the university. And yet he used to consistently beat her in every assignment and quiz and test.
Only in recent months did he seem to be coming just a single point under her, and even that was not enough. Thena had already heard from her own family how outstanding this no-name student was and how those in their field of work were asking about him.
"Did you...do anything this weekend?"
Thena looked over, somewhat astonished that he was still trying to make conversation with her.
He shrugged, tapping his fingers anxiously on the cover of his textbook. "I heard there was a fancy party for the TAs, I mean. I assumed you went."
Thena frowned. There was indeed an event for the faculty and their chosen assistants--those who showed promise enough to earn extra credits in teaching. She hadn't attended because she felt no need (nor did Phastos, in her defense). "I assumed you had gone."
"Oh, no," Gilgamesh smiled down at the desk. "I take the late shifts on weekends. They're long, but we don't get many people, so I can get studying or work done, y'know?"
Thena swallowed her words. She had all this envy for his natural skill, but his work was just as legitimate as hers. And he worked to pay his rent, living off campus, while she lived in a dorm for female academic leaders. Gilgamesh stole his time studying as opposed to building his entire life around it.
"You deserve to enjoy yourself a little."
She looked at him again, still frowning. "I beg your pardon?"
"S-Sorry." He went back to staring down at the tattered edges of his textbook. But she kept looking at him, waiting for him to elaborate. The silence worked, dragging his words out of him. "I just mean...you work really hard, right? You're always top of the class. You should be allowed to have some fun, sometimes."
She did work hard. She devoted every waking moment of her life to her studies, and the one person who continuously thwarted her attempts at perfection was the one to point it out?
It would be easier to be angry with him if he were dislikeable in any way. As it stood now, all she had to go on was that he always beat her in academic achievement, and so effortlessly at that. But even with that, she had to concede that he worked just as hard, if not harder than her for it! And it was infuriating!
"Sorry," he repeated, looking away from her glowering at him.
She sighed. "No, I'm sorry. It was an innocent question."
He looked at her, completely astonished. She would like to snap at him for thinking she couldn't even just apologise for being overly adversarial with him. But that would defeat the point. "Well, I know you don't really like small talk."
It was that she wasn't good at it. She angled herself in her chair, destroying her perfect posture to face him somewhat more properly. "Should you not have also...enjoyed yourself? When do you have time to socialise if you are either studying or working?"
"Well, I have friends I can see in my other classes," he shrugged.
Oh. Yes, of course. Thena felt her hackles raise again at the idea that she was so unfamiliar with the idea of having friends in any of their classes. But she was trying to be nicer to him.
"But," he offered another sheepish smile, bending closer to whisper like children trading a secret in grade school. "This class is my favourite."
Thena just stared at him. She supposed that made sense. He always said he had the same like of history and classics that his mother had. But the idea that she was included in the categorisation of his favourite anything; a warm feeling spread in her chest.
"The lovebirds are here already."
Students began filtering into the small lecture hall, facing them seated at the front of the room. The one who made the comment plunked down close to the door. Another one looked in their direction, "don't you two ever sleep in?"
They got jokes and insinuations that they were together all the time. Apparently, everyone could see some kind of brewing, invisible tension between the two of them. Thena always found it ridiculous.
"We don't-!"
The student startled, as did the rest of the room slowly taking their seats. The declaration was sharp, and loud--far louder than was needed for a room this size.
Thena felt warmth rush to her cheeks, first for the outburst, then the realisation that it seemed overeager to deny something that wasn't even said. She cleared her throat, turning towards the board (since she had shot to her feet in her denial). "Sit down and start copying."
The student body present groaned but obeyed. Gil was the far preferred teaching assistant because he didn't scare anyone, and even if they under-performed, he had kind encouragements as opposed to scathing condemnations.
"Guys, come on, you heard her."
Thena barely glanced over her shoulder. There was nothing new about their students complaining about her teaching methods. But Gil usually didn't take quite so stern a tone with them. Even in her defense.
He peeked at her with a smile, perhaps hoping to show that he was indeed her ally and not her enemy.
Thena whipped her head forward again. So long as they were pitted against each other in any setting, he was no friend of hers. No matter how winsome his smile was.
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The idea that Dancer didn't and couldn't have known that FCG was a person, and is thus absolved of any responsibility for treating them like an object comes up every once in a while, and, like. Folks. She knew FCG had enough capacity for thought to be worth lying to. She lied to him about having made him. She cannot have considered them basically a toaster. Like, are we imagining that Dancer is out here lying to Pussy the Second to make herself seem smarter?
She bought FCG and restored them, and knew from that restoration that a lot of the technology behind FCG was beyond her understanding. She knew FCG could talk and reason, which is something no automaton we've ever encountered is capable of (excluding aeormatons). She spent four years with him, watching him be very very noticeably different than other automatons. She didn't need to know that he was an aeormaton or what aeormatons were historically capable of; she had all the evidence she needed to understand FCG as a person, and she just didn't.
Like, I can fully believe that she understood all that, that FCG has the capacity to think and feel on some level, and just decided that none of that made them a person. Cause that's the way FCG has thought about themself since their introduction. They think, they feel, they want things, just not how a person would. Not important, not weighty enough to matter.
And I think that matters when thinking about her! Specifically when thinking about her relationship to FCG. Dancer fucked them up! She raised them, he didn't know any other life than the one she built for him till murderbot mode. And I do think she has some responsibility for that. I don't think you can just say that she didn't know any better. She knew a lot! And she could have sought out more information on ancient automatons and their capacities. And she didn't! She knew enough to know she didn't understand FCG and how they worked, and she just. Decided not to do anything about that. She just decided that the thinking feeling robot that she bought should just be a thing that she owns and makes use of, and who cares where it came from or what it might do in the future.
I don't think she's a monster or anything, but it's wild how allergic this fandom is to considering her to have profoundly hurt the person she BOUGHT AND OWNED. Particularly given how gung ho this fandom tends to be about characters having the right to enact bloody vengeance on anyone who has ever made them feel bad.
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