Anne Considers The Question With More Seriousness Than Perhaps Is Deserved: Its A Clear Come-on, And

Anne considers the question with more seriousness than perhaps is deserved: it’s a clear come-on, and even though she doesn’t rise to the bait, she’s still feeling dangerous.

“It’d be none of my fuckin business if ye was, frankly,” Anne answers honestly, shrugging, and adds, “but aye. Prob’ly hers.”

Anne fingers the broken half-glass on the table and considers it before nodding, as if having made a decision. “Aye. Tint cunt like ye, might bleed out—and then I got a corpse t’deal with. So. Glass t’her face, knee t’the big fucker’s nose—this is assuming I get on the table, mind—maybe a boot t’yers.” Not the girl, one of the dodgier looking bastards with her; he clearly doesn’t appreciate being called on, like she gives a rat’s ass. “Don’t fancy my chances if ye’ve got knives, but it’d take a real mad bastard t’start shooting in here. Everyone here’s got a fucking gun and more lint in their heads than sense.”

She’s made a good show of hiding it, but Anne hadn’t been expecting that voice out of that body: the big eyes, the cutesy curls, the fact that she all but needed a high chair at the goddamned table—but she had a voice as rough and hard as a fucking brick, if not worse. Anne feels a bit dazed by it, like it’d hit her in the back of the head and left her stunned. Gotham really does take ‘em fucking young—here sits some mobster’s brat, to guess from her company, but instead of spoilt she sounds days away from taking to chain smoking.

Anne shrugs again, unbothered and probably starting to feel the effects of the last few drinks. “Why, whose face would ye recommend? And don’t say mine—‘cording to ye, I’m the one using the glass.”

@babydxhl sorry not sorry 🤷

Even in a city full of psychopaths, Anne somehow manages to stand out. At least right now there’s a fair reason for it: no one sits or idles at her booth, despite the place being jam-packed. And it’s not because of the blood or the broken glass, but because of the way Anne had calmly reached up and smashed a man’s face into the table, causing the blood and the broken glass. His weak moans have long since faded, having been dragged out halfway to unconsciousness by the security Anne’s surprised to learn is actually here.

The problem with standing out is that she isn’t supposed to do that yet. Her job was to work her way inside of the Iceberg Lounge, scope the place out, and find a new friend for Jack. Someone suitable to their cause—tough, unfucked with, and looking to raise a little hell. Jack’s exact words had been to find “the craziest, best-known psycho in town” and arrange a meeting for him. Anne…was reconsidering things now. Quite a lot of things. Including Jack.

She’s knows the feeling of eyes on her because they so seldom are. Even when she’d been dolling out the what-for for the fuck-nut who’d copped a feel, people hadn’t looked; acts of violence were common here, even if the woman engaging in them was not. (Truthfully, she had been mistaken for another femme fatale altogether from the back, and so most people looked pointedly anywhere else to avoid the ire of the woman she wasn’t.)

Anne looks up and meets those eyes head-on, her expression dispassionate and uninterested, though her look becomes somewhat pinched at the brow as she takes a look—a real look—at the person staring back her.

Christ Almighty, but Gotham takes ‘em young! She takes another swig directly from the whisky bottle before thumping it back down on the table.

“I’d offer ye a glass, but half of it’s stuck in some arsehole’s face. Aren’t ye a bit young t’be fuckin about in a place like this?”

BUT THEN ALSO, in an alternative universe where I don’t have to play Dio and consider that side of the field, Anne as one of the champions. …not…Dio’s. Obviously.

But Anne, this passionate, intelligent, hellcat of a young woman whose father is on Council and she keeps insisting he fight and he keeps existing he can’t and I’m going to have to rethink my timeline for the trials—maybe every six instead?—because one year one of their sacrifices dies last minute at the port or w/e and Anne immediately, unflinchingly volunteers. None of the other sacrifices from her island will go near her. (What kind of a psychopath volunteers to kill or be killed?)

Your muse takes pity on Anne early on and helps her out with something. They get the drop on her and don’t kill her, or they give her water or another rare supply, they join her side during a dogfight—and Anne starts traveling with them. She won’t say why. They or someone else suggests she feels a life debt and when she doesn’t correct them, it’s assumed that’s the issue. So they travel together. Best challenges.

One night—maybe early on, maybe not—Anne saves their life. She sits watch over them while illness or infection takes hold and makes sure they don’t hurt anyone, or she stops them from falling, knocks something poisonous or venomous away and, okay, debt repaid. Right? Except Anne’s still traveling with them. And even if they haven’t bonded well, even if they’re not family or lovers or friends or even that well-liked, Anne respects the gesture your muse offered in her time of need. She isn’t used to seeing that. It seems something worth looking around for.

And also cool fights and puzzles and shit.

I actually have a very stupid and corny plot thing I wanna do with Greek mythos and Hunger Games vibes, but I wanna do it separately if I’m going to do it with both of my muses. And I do wanna do it on both my muses, but it makes more sense to post this here first.

I think it could make a really sick plot to grab like 3-5 of the most famous mythic tasks and weave them together into a story of young heroes coming forcibly of age. We all know the by-now-classic set up for battle royales: competitors are grouped into increasingly shrinking numbers among themselves in an effort to survive the coming battle royale and perhaps even win it. This would be its usually-serialized subgenre, where as the number of competitors dwindle, the complexity and danger of the games increase, eventually leading to a “winner take all” scenario. Our protagonists are meant to beat the games by playing them and coming together as an unexpected team to overthrow the controllers and change the rules themselves.

In this iteration, we borrow from Greek myth and further enmesh it in the knots of YA fiction tropes, just like battle royale/competition narrative itself is. 😈

All their lives, these competitors have only known the thirteen islands. If there is a world outside of those islands, no one on them has ever laid eyes on it—and vice versa. The islands have been locked into an authoritarian peace, existing at once as sovereign island nations and also co-governmented parties beholden to the Athenian Treaty. Once every twelve years, the twelve islands select six boys and six girls to serve as sacrifices on the thirteenth: a wild, overgrown, ungoverned island where no man has ever been invited to settle. The island’s bounties in treasures—jewels and gold, scientific and historical findings unmatched—are matches only by its bounties in monsters. Any and all things found unfit have been cast out to that island, in irony or in jest named Elysia, including monsters mortal and immortal alike. For twelve months* the sacrifices must survive Elysia, its dangers and the dangers of other islands’ alike. The last sacrifice alive at the end of the trials is given wealth and acclaim alongside their home, and for their survival is granted a life free of care and discomfort. There have been years without living sacrifices, but never a year with more than one by the end of the trial. Perhaps more distressingly, few of the survivors live to see the next trial.

*I’m not sold on the timeline but I was spinning a narrative, okay?

You digging the setup? It’s all very self-indulgent. On Elysia the sacrifices have to survive 3-5 (let’s make it 6, for the math!) individual trials chosen out of Greek mythology—the first of which, obviously in my mind, is the Minotaur’s Labyrinth. I see these islands as being the new microcosm in which the Greek gods exist—but it’s hardly a naturally-occurring event. The Theogony is pretty clear about their prophecies: the last-born son will overthrow his father and bring the world to a new age. The Titan enacted this fate on the Primordial. The Olympian enacted it on the Titan. Ultimately, Zeus refused to be usurped, striking a deal with Fate herselves: separate his family’s tapestry from his own. He was warned it wouldn’t work, but he believed he could outmatch Fate: he returned that night and knotted and stole his family’s tapestry. Knotted, it cannot continue until it is untied; stolen and taken from the rest of Fate’s tapestry, it cannot rejoin with the world. Thirteen islands. One to eternally worship only him, and twelve more for his family—who would pay their dues, or risk him ripping them out of the tapestry and sending them further away, into isolation. He’s only done that twice so far, having once ripped Athena and Ares away at the same time. He knotted and hid both individually, and kept them apart from everyone and each other for 72 years. Athena for figuring out something she wasn’t meant to know (where he had hidden the tapestry) and Ares for happening upon them at a bad time (as he was banishing Athena). The other Olympians, needless to say, have been prompt and punctual with their sacrifices.

Mwah! It’s beautiful. I love it. I’m obsessed! It writes itself!

For the sacrifices, finding a way to beat the odds and the island; for the gods, balancing sacrifice, seeking to regain balance. Or did you think they didn’t fight against including Ares and Athena’s sacrifices at the next trial? Zeus demanded more and suggested mercy for it—and laughed when he got nearly six times the sacrifice at no cost to himself. Resisting sending one meant sending two, and resisting that meant sending six and yourself exiled for a time.

Plothole! Foul! You’ve got twelve Olympians, thirteen islands, and you specified the thirteenth belonged to one of the twelve! Idk, but it actually makes more sense to me if at least three of those thirteen islands are actually more proxy-islands. Even in this reality I’m dictating, I would like to leave room for the creativity of others—but like. Y’know how the Big Three are sun, surf, and souther? I really don’t feel like the islands that would be counted for Olympians would be dedicated to them. Not in this reality. It would be more like…it’s generally assumed Zeus is worshipped everywhere on these islands, and probably is, so the island counted for him in twelve could be given to Persephone, for example! Not an Olympian, but a major mythical figure. Or maybe Helios, for the same general reason but more of a sun-and-fun-in-gold theming and higher insurance policies for self-proclaimed geniuses and their children. So generally Poseidon’s place would be more this sea-that-isn’t-a-sea, and Hades’ this place of death that still isn’t the right one but okay, you get the point. An island each for Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Dionysus, Hephaestus, Hera, and Zeus, plus three more for funsies! And it’s just that none of the mortals knows the thirteenth island is Zeus’ and they just think, not unfairly, worship of each of the Big Three must just be widespread across all islands.

Ren, was Hunger Games just about child sacrifice? No, that’s also just—right out of the Greek myth playbook. The literal exact same chapter as the labyrinth. Because it’s just a suped-up version of that essential story. I like the investors and intrigue angle, all the nonsense before they arrive at the arena. The interviews, the galas, the drama! Glamor and glitz right up until shit gets gritty again. Mind games and faux-high society bullshittery. The tuxedo episode in Squid Games. That shit.

The gods only allowed to send gifts and advice to their sacrifices to Zeus—their champions, if they’re to be heroes. Needing these people to garner favor to survive. One prayer for help for you is good. But what could one hundred do? Dio having his heart broken over and over again until he stops getting attached, stops trying to save them. The delicious drama to be dug out of that alongside a literal life-or-death narrative of increasing importance to everyone involved, sacrifice or otherwise.

How sick is that?!

-sighs- I want it.

tell me your honest opinion of my portrayal

It’s hard to find a good place to be left the fuck alone in the Republic of Pirates. Luckily, Anne’s managed just that, squeezing into the small alley and following its blind turns until she’s come back out onto the tiny public outlook just at the hill above the docks. She’s joined a few minutes in by a man who knows well enough to mind his own fucking business and they stand in the amiable silence of two people ignoring each other as flashes of sunlight dazzle the water below. Before she can lean over and really let herself go enough to start figuring things out, though, four new strangers turn up. Four new strangers who don’t know well enough to mind their own fucking business, dumb enough to go sticking their noses where they aren’t welcome—sniffing for crumbs around the “captain’s strumpet” with ugly laughs and lingering leers.

“ Fuck off, ” Anne warns them once, hoarse. One makes a crude joke about fucking but not off. He’s on the ground before the others even have a chance to get a proper laugh in, clutching his gut from the unexpected blow.

If Anne killed every man she fought in this damned port, it’d be half corpses before noon. She fights like the hellcat she is, but never once do her hands touch the sword or the knife on her belt, except to keep other hands off them. She doesn’t grab the knife in her boot, nor the one hidden away in her trousers; she fights with surprising honor in that way. In the ways in which she utilizes literal tooth and nail, actual blows below the belt, feinting and thrusting and letting the broad little idiots use their own momentum against themselves, however, she certainly fights dirty. The one she got in the gut staggers back up just as she fells another with a hard knee to the groin, though he finds himself dazed and in his back almost as quickly as she can grab him.

That’s when the first stranger who arrived decided to step in. Anne hadn’t thought twice about him, wouldn’t have blamed him at all for staying all the way out, for watching, for leaving, whatever he did—this is one of the roughest ports on some of the toughest waters in the world, no one stuck their neck out for anyone else without the certainty of a payoff for it—but here he was.

The man in the ground, clutching his jewels, doesn’t stop sobbing when the first stranger whistles, but otherwise, all eyes find a way to his face. The stranger repeats a familiar phrase—a refrain echoed everywhere in the Republic—but this time, the braggarts listen. The standing two help their fallen companion, one under each arm; their thrown companion gets to his feet on his own, clearly still winded. He glares, and she spits, straight into his eye. She watches their retreating backs as they limp away in shame, only bending to fetch her hat (snatched off in the scuffle) when they began to take the first turn.

This is going to be a problem.

On the one hand, she’s glad to be spared the rest of the fight, having come all the way here for some peace and goddamned quiet to begin with. On the other…not finishing the fight means there’ll be a story now of Rackham’s whore needing someone else to save her. Something that will no doubt spawn a repeat incident in the near future. Anne sighs and brushes the hat off, donning it again without flourish.

“ I appreciate the sentiment, ” she quips, eyeing the man as she does so, “ but I had that under control. ”

Strong nose and jaw. Salt and pepper hair and beard. A short bastard, but no less imposing for it, with dark, piercing eyes and two tattoos Anne knows immediately: the x and the swallow. Eyes so pale a green they seemed almost colorless narrowed to sharp shards of sea glass. She knew of someone, didn’t she?, fitting this description. The details are hazy, but—yes, yes, she knows this man. Shit. The knowledge of that crashes over her like a wave and leaves her struck dumb, almost staggering back with the force of it: Israel Hands. Second to none other than than the devil himself, Blackbeard. Legends she has long stood in awe of, even to the point of chasing sad shadows of their presence—Anne is breathless, and a little star struck, and fighting her every impulse so it won’t show.

Shit. Leave it to her and her thorny, idiot tongue to lash out at the wrong person. Anne winces and belatedly adds, “ …sir. ” But it sounds sour and forced even to her ears. Christ alive. Anne slams her eyes shut in frustration and tries again, although gratitude sounds clunky on her tongue.

“ That is to say—thank you, Mr. Hands, sir. ” And? Surely there’s more to say in this moment than just that, but nothing comes to mind that it isn’t completely idiotic, and Anne refuses to look any more the idiot than she already must. If only she could have stopped her idiot tongue in time. “ I didn’t realize ye were in port. ”

Small talk. Dear God. May the earth open its mouth and swallow her whole before she has to face the consequences of trying to make small talk with Israel Hands.

It's hard to find a good place to have a smoke on the Republic of Pirates. Luckily, the reputation of 'Izzy Hands' gives him some respect. People know not to try and stick their hands anywhere near him, lest they lose it.

It's not so much the bothering him directly though. It's the tendency for a fight to start right next to him.

Israel looks uncomfortable as he watches a group of four men corner some woman. She's taller than the lot of them at least, and he doesn't really care about the end result, just that they're only ten or so paces away and he's trying to fucking relax.

He's still smoking as fists start flying, acting as though he doesn't see a damn thing. Not his fucking problem. If he got involved in every fight he ran into on this damned port, he'd never leave.

What does catch his attention is the way she fights. Whoever she is. It should be over fast, but it isn't. She bites and kicks and seems half feral. Izzy ends up watching the show that unfolds before him, the way she slips away, the way she punches. It's almost familiar in its ferocity. Reminds him of when he was still on Hornigold's, trying to defend himself from the fuckers twice his size. Stabbing people with dull forks and all that.

It's not until there's only two left standing that he interrupts, whistling to grab everyone's attention.

" Fuck off. " He looks at the two men, gesturing idly over his shoulder with the cigarette between his fingers, his hand falling to his sword at his side, a warning. " Find someone else to bother. "

@neverhangd

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What is this setting?: verse blurb | video glance | wtf is is this?

Anne sat away from the noise and the thrill of the boardwalk, balanced on the bike at the far end of the parking lot. She tapped the cheap box of smokes against her hand even as she lit one—down to her last two, she’ll quit after this box—and pocketed the vanity lighter she’d stolen the same night as the bike and the jacket. No one fucked with her when she wore the stupid jacket. She should know, she experimented, leaving it in her pack in some towns and not in others. Hell!, even half an hour apart, she was left alone more wearing the jacket than not. James’ stupid biker club seemed to hold some notoriety after all, though this is the first Anne’s seeing of it.

Deep breath in, she’s a bright cherry glow alone in the dark. By the time she exhales, blowing smoke up into the night sky, she knows she isn’t alone. She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath in without the cigarette, wishing the bastard had waited ‘til she’d finished before showing up.

“So, believe it or not, I know a little bit about ye. James…was a stupid, mouthy bastard. He didn’t say everything, but he said enough.”