#because you allow this fictional white man to activate all the ugliness you have inside you | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rotttnapple · 5 years

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let's talk about Cain:

Cain is, among other things: homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, racist, aggressive, and highly possessive. He's a great big asshole manbaby, in short, and absolutely deserves a swift kick in the nuts at all times.

but Ed!! you're saying, aren't you trans? Aren't you a big gay?? yes, yes I am, which may make it seem odd that I would actively write and develop a human trashcan like Cain Harris

But two things that really gets my giddie going are human behavior and, lord save my soul, redemption arcs. Cain (along with baby brother Charley) was born into a very religious household, and not the 'accepting' or 'progressive' sort, more or less the kind that would have happily burned a woman at the stake on the off chance that she might be a witch.

Cain was always the Holy Son to Elijah Harris, the heir to the throne, the one who could Do No Wrong. Cain, essentially, grew up on the knee of his father, whereas Charley was more of a 'momma's boy'. This is really the key of what makes these two brothers so different from each other. Part of it also has to do with their inherent nature, essentially their inborn personalities, but much of it has to do with how they were nurtured throughout their respective childhoods.

If you were to take these two and put them in a more normal household, not the witch burning sort, Cain most certainly would have grown up to be a reserved, quiet man, and his brother more outgoing and bubbly. Cain would certainly possess some of the dumb shit views he has today (there's a 'man' and a 'woman' in a homosexual relationship, for instance), but he wouldn't be hateful or harmful, just uneducated, but accepting, and typical of someone who has over time absorbed dumb shit misinformation that has unfortunately spread. He would also be very willing to listen to proper information and change these views accordingly. He would have also very likely come to accept and understand his own homosexuality far sooner in life.

Instead, before he was even old enough to understand he was taught that homosexuals are 'sinful' and 'broken', transgenders are outright freaks of nature, extremely wrong and extremely bad things. He was raised on the knee of a man staunch in his (many, and disgusting) views that a woman's duty in life is to produce children, cook, clean, and shut up. He was taught that it is a husband's duty to 'correct' a willful wife - Cain and Charley's mother, Catherine, was a far different woman before her husband's iron fist.

But ED!!! You're yelling now, you're making it sound like these behaviors should be excused!!

Absolutely not. Such behaviors - products of nurture, should not, and should never be excused, as they are absolutely inexcusable. They may not be products of nature - who one essentially Is - but they should also not be allowed to continue. To carry on being an actual walking turd is just unacceptable, and Cain has been that person for a very long time.

But the difference between Cain Harris and his father Elijah Harris is his willingness to change, his willingness to learn.

As Cain has grown and developed as a character he has come to accept his own homosexuality, something he took and buried deep, deep down inside of himself. His excuse for not 'finding a wife' and 'settling down' is that he hadn't found the 'right girl' - he hadn't found the white, meek and mild Catholic girl of his father's ugly dreams. As he has grown, he has fallen in love with an incredibly willful man of color, Dorian Pavus, who does not, under any circumstances, allow his backwards bullshit to carry on.

Cain has, slowly but surely, come out of the flaming shitcan he has been rolling around in for most of his life and that is why I write him.

Cain will never be a kawaii!!! uwu sweet baby, his history will never change, will never be excused, but he himself is changing, he is trying, and it is very interesting to write. He is fiction, but with a base in very real humanity. I never expected him to engage in the arc he has but I have to admit, it's great. It gives me some hope in a small way that people in real life have the potential for change themselves.

Next time I'll talk about how his relationship with Dorian has brought out things of his nature, because honestly that man is what he's needed since forever.

#;cain #character development #tw: homophobia #tw: transphobia #shit views in general #its like hes finally learning how to be an adult #actual trash baby cain harris #his relationship with dorian has done so much for who he is #he loves dorian so deeply and it challenges everything he was raised to believe #his views of dorian at times are unhealthy (i.e dorian can literally do no wrong) but he'll never be perfect either #hi my name is ed and i write some weird shit sometimes #hit me up if you wanna fite in the parking lot of Denny's

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screechingsandwichbasement-blog · 7 years

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Puns and Ammunition (Original Fiction)

“How many floors left?”

“Well, I’m not the one who didn’t bother to study the map before we got into here.”

“And I’m the one that will never hear the end of it. How many left?”

“Not sure. Didn’t exactly count the numbers on the outside of the building.”

Clikkik. Deft fingers loaded another round into the chamber, a bandit with callused pads and nails bitten to the quick. His partner peered up towards him through a tangled mop of stringy hair, whiter than his skin when it wasn’t streaked with blood and ash like it was now. Like snow that used to sparkle, before it started being all that crumpled up mush by the side of the road, tangled with all the mud and rocks that the cars would kick up. Mars wasn’t sure which he liked better. The clean canvas or the filthy fucking mess. He could see the appeal in either. He could see the danger in both.

“How many floors left, Mars?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many bullets left?”

Mars jangled his Hummingbird C/9G around, as if he could count the individual bullets inside the thing just from the damn sound of it. Krieg could feel his teeth grit in annoyance. Was he the only one taking this seriously? He scarcely even knew the mission. He’d been briefed last minute, as per usual. Been thrust out into the field like a good little soldier. He knew the drill by now, he knew to put one foot in front of the other and make due with whatever it was he had. It generally wasn’t much, and yet here he was, still alive, still partnered with some nimrod who thinks he can get an exact answer out of the universe just by banging on it with an open hand or hearing the sounds it makes when he shakes it like a snowglobe.

“Mars.”

“Like, six?”

“Can you take this seriously? We could actually die here.”

“That’s funny, that never bothered you before.”

“Losing?”

“Dying.”

He hated these kinds of moments. When he could watch those two Martian eyes, two tones of red, the dance they played when they locked onto his own. Ugly, piercing, gray, domineering. Narrow slits to Mars’ wide, curious things. They could see straight through him sometimes. Mars’ mouth cocked into a rare, wide smile, something big and genuine that wasn’t just this little tip at a corner, this little quiet smirk that knew far more about the world than Krieg could ever know if he actively, earnestly, constantly hunted for it. The truth hit Mars like a cool breeze, pumped life into him, like he got more powerful the less he cared.

Krieg never understood that. The truth hit him like a goddamn brick wall to the face. The truth hit him like too many glasses of bourbon and left him in a shaking rage, quelled quiet in him like a thunder. Wrapped tight nails around his voice like his cigarette smoke, dragged him around through the gravel. He’d watch Mars sometimes with this unsustainable fury, unable to understand how everything came so... easily to him.

It wasn’t that it did. Nothing ever came easily to anybody who wasn’t stupid or looking for the trouble they were sure to find if they went looking. It just looked like it did. That was the troubling part. Krieg looked into Mars and saw a lake that reflected himself back. Sometimes he liked what he saw. Sometimes he saw them powerful, like gods or the beasts of old, leviathans. Sometimes... Sometimes they were just scared and human.

“I’m going to join the 27 club like Kurt Cobain,” Krieg informed Mars drily, loading his last shell into the sawed-off shotgun. It was a chewed up, dirty, nasty looking thing that Mars couldn’t stop jeering him on about. ‘Gonna get us killed toting that old sucker into fights,’ he’d say, and Krieg would tell him, with teeth, ‘It hasn’t lost me one yet.’

“He ate a shotgun, you know. Shot himself with his toes.”

“His boots were on in the photographs.”

“Huh?”

“So he couldn’t have used his toes.”

“That’s what I always heard.”

“You heard wrong.”

It was Mars’ turn to feel exposed this time, could feel his Adams’ apple bob in his throat as he swallowed, looked carefully down at the man in front of him. Krieg was one of their syndicate’s top hunters, a crack shot and mean as something feral with a serrated blade in his hand. He was quiet, thoughtful. He had this sarcastic, devil-may-care humor that as practically muttered under his breath. Anybody who didn’t spend a lot of time with Krieg thought of him as dull, vanilla, without ambition. Mars was partnered with him over the span of a couple months, and he didn’t get the idea. Seemed like all he heard out of the guy were these quick asides under his breath, dry remarks that so easily cut to the core of the problem of whoever they were discussing that it would catch Mars off-guard. More than once he’d broken out into loud, raucous laughter at some inappropriate point, having to duck out of the room, neither of them ever able to contain themselves. Krieg was funny as hell. Most people just didn’t bother listening to him.

That was Mars’ secret. It was his favorite one, and he kept it in the pocket of his shirt over his ribs like a brand. He’d feel his heart beat against that sometimes, when he wasn’t careful, and he cursed the feeling until it went away and he could flow easy again, ride the wind and follow the breeze where life took him.

Krieg wouldn’t know how to swim downstream if someone pointed him there with neon flashing lights. He just stood there stubbornly in the middle of that river, let it beat up against him like an old, wizened rock.

Mars didn’t understand him for a second.

“What’s up with you today?”

With a flash of eyes up towards Mars, Krieg’s shoulders bristled up towards his ears. He always knew. Somehow, he always knew when things were different. Like the difference between a static shock and a fork in a power outlet; it just felt wrong. Krieg felt wrong, when he did. And it made Mars’ water boil, turned all of his television channels into static. He hated the feeling. He didn’t like when Krieg was upset, because as a general rule, it didn’t seem like anything ever could push Krieg over an edge. But everybody had one. So where was his, and would Mars like it when he found it?

Maybe he’d just already walked off it.

“Do you ever wonder if there’s a point to the chaos?” Krieg asked suddenly, harsh smoke in his lungs, a cigarette pinched between his teeth.

He raised shaking fingers to it, blood-spattered, and deftly ashed the end of the filter, staring down at the toes of his boots instead of into those piercing, haunting eyes.

The two of them sat in the middle of the mansion’s courtyard, wedged in tight in the garden’s hedge maze. The diamonds were more well-protected than they’d hoped, and there were far more crew members than they could have ever counted on finding. Krieg and Mars sat back to back like the old days, back in the trenches, back when they’d first been enlisted in the Moontab Boggies, an ugly war with a cute name to dress it up in a tidy, neat package. What had been advertised as easy clean war had actually been scrappy guerilla warfare and pinkertons executing innocents in labor camps. The two had a bond that ran deep, deeper than blood. Every time Mars said ‘soulmate’ Krieg would take his face and push it into whatever object was nearest; walls, doors, trees. But Mars wasn’t wrong.

“Why would you ask me about something like that at a time like this?” Mars asked with a cocked eyebrow. Krieg’s fingers fiddled with his cigarette, and he held it out for the other man for him to take.

“Forget it.”

Mars plucked the roach from Krieg’s hand and scowled like a child, puffing at the end of it and unloading his magazine so he could count shots. “Eleven rounds,” he said, and then, “Tell me what you mean.”

“We’re dying, Mars.”

“We’re always dying. Tell me what you mean.”

“I don’t think I’m meant to make it to the retirement home.”

“Me neither, so tell me what you mean.”

“Are we just living to die?”

“Isn’t that what everything’s doing? Isn’t that kinda the whole point?”

Krieg paused and blinked back at Mars. For a moment their eyes locked, and Krieg could swear the guy could see straight through those whites and into his brain. “Food for the worms.”

“Or flowers. Guess it’s whatever suits your fancy. Live in a pile of cat shit, for all I care.”

Mars laughed brightly and Krieg could feel his back shake against him. It made him feel a burst of warmth up his spine, spread through his chest and, despite himself, he let out a low chuckle. Equally despite himself, unlike himself, he reached up and carded fingers through Mars’ hair, knocked some of that stupid mess out of his eyes. Mars never brushed it, and it tended to fall all around his head like a fucked up cloud, could never see his face. Krieg sighed. Mars blinked plainly at him, unmoving like a trigger finger, that laugh in his throat like it had caught there and had never quite left.

“I miss you.”

“I’m right here.”

“You’re never here. Not completely.”

“You’re one to talk. What’s going on?” Mars sounded genuinely concerned now. In fact - if Krieg were to hazard a guess, and it only was a guess because he honestly wasn’t sure if he had ever witnessed the emotion on Mars - he would guess that Mars actually sounded scared. It almost took him aback.

“Nothing,” Krieg replied, moved to take his hand from Mars’ head, but Mars gripped his wrist tight and held him there. “What are you-”

“Two shells and eleven bullets are not gonna get us outta this place. You know we’re gonna die here.”

For a long while, Krieg was quiet. Thoughtful. It would still be some time before the guards found them in this maze. Even if they knew where they had gotten up to within the building, well, there was the problem of maneuvering the maze itself, which was difficult when the walls were always shifting - physically, the walls were set up on mechanisms that allowed them to move, parted new ways for people to walk through. This place was advertised around for miles, a tourist trap by day and by night, somewhere within in, housing some of the most expensive goddamn jewels known to the planet. Nobody had ever solved the thing, so who would have known other than the architect?

There was a hesitance in Krieg’s voice when he finally spoke, guarded, almost a stutter. It was so unlike his usual assuredness. “I.. I think, I. I realized that I’m not ready to.”

“Die?”

“No. I don’t want to, Marsha.”

Mars bit his lips together, had to fight bursting out into more of that telltale laughter. “That’s an unfortunate time to decide that, Kreefer.”

Krieg flicked at Mars’ arm. Mars’ reflexes being what they were, he disarmed and lashed out quick, wrapped his fingers around that other wrist. Krieg dropped his shotgun in shock, jumped like he’d had a cattleprod put to his ass. They weren’t back to back anymore; face to face, but Krieg was trying to yank his arms out of Mars’ grip.

“Let go, you piece of shit-”

“Stay with me.”

“I said let go!”

“I said stay with me.”

“I shouldn’t have fucking touched you, just leave me where-”

“Krieg.”

Krieg’s eyes landed on Mars’ own, wild like an animal’s. His fingers froze in contorted shapes, everything stone-still like a bowstring drawn tight.

Mars kept his fingers firm around Krieg’s wrists, watched him wary through those mismatched eyes.

“There’s nowhere else to go, my guy. You know this is right where we put ourselves.”

“Let go of my wrists.”

“On your deathbed, maybe.”

“I thought that was where we were.”

“Don’t be such a pussy. Come on. We’re getting up. We can’t hide forever.”

Mars staggered to his feet, dragged Krieg up by his forearms. The two of them swayed like they were drunk, but they kept their balance. “Christ,” Krieg blasphemed, swore aloud and finally yanked his hand free from Mars’ grip. Mars held his hands up and back, palms out, white flag. Krieg brushed off his jacket with a few hard, panted breaths, shot daggers out his eyes at Mars and then defiantly snatched up his pistol, kicked the shotgun over to his partner.

“You ram. I snipe. Got it?”

Mars’ eyes rolled skyward, but he clicked his jaw around and reached down for the shotgun. His fingers almost hesitated before he grasped the thing. This time it wasn’t because he was worried about how faulty it was or how chewed up and ugly the damn thing looked. He’d seen the gun go in and out of hundreds of missions around the globe. He knew what it was capable of and how well it was kept. This time, it was because he was so keenly aware of the fact that it was Krieg’s gun.

Krieg, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any such reservations. He stared at Mars like he had grown another head, pistol raised impatiently as he started backing out one section of the maze, watching Mars the whole time. “The hell are you waiting for? An invitation? Slap on the ass? Let’s get a move on!”

“Rrrrrrauauugghhh!!” Mars snarled angrily, grabbing for the gun and running after Krieg in a dead sprint. He knew the walls would close up around Krieg if he didn’t; he’d lose track of him. He wasn’t about to lose a good partner. “For the record,” he continued loudly after Krieg, who had started to break into a run as well, “I never wanted to do any of this!”

It was Krieg’s turn to laugh, and he called back over his shoulder.

“And yet here you are!”

#writing #fiction #i have no idea what this is #but i have missed writing!#please rb or like if you read #thank you!#my writing

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