rose the music box doll

Imagine with me for a bit. The empire (or megacorps, pick your poison) has a whole military-industrial complex while the rebels have whatever they can scrape together, and even if the rebellion has more support they can't and won't throw away lives like the empire does (because they are in fact heroic, if flawed). Outgunned and outnumbered in every fight, the only way they stand a chance is if their pilots massively outskill the enemy.

That kind of skill doesn't come cheap, but the rebels scrounge up all the ingredients. A brilliant doctor, blacklisted for her radical ideas about bodily autonomy. Body modifications originally developed to help disabled people, discarded by the corporations as a waste of money. Martial traditions from cultures the empire tried to wipe out. And volunteer pilots emotionally connected to their mechs, willing to give everything so others can live freely, or just so damaged they've got nothing left to lose.

It works. These enhanced pilots have faster reactions, sharper awareness, better instincts, stronger morale, higher mech compatibility. The enemy can't keep up, the process is too personal for mass-produced grunts and too grueling for nepo-baby officers.

But the price is higher than the rebels realized: These pilots - no, hounds - forget how to be human. The exact symptoms vary, but it usually involves severe anxiety or depression, impaired social skills, difficulty making non-combat decisions, self-worth becoming dependent on performing well, trouble controlling aggression, and a tendency to get very attached to specific people (and if you like your mechsplo extra horny, feminization in "male" pilots and increased libido in all pilots).

And so they need handlers, people who'll accept how attached they get, speak for them to others, make decisions for them outside of combat, praise and encourage their hard work, and discipline their aggression even if it means keeping them muzzled on a leash (and also satisfy their sexual needs). Often the hound will latch onto someone they already had a bond with like a lover, dear friend, teammate or trusted officer.

More often than not, angels do not fear the dark. They are, however, healthily wary of it, since when a shadow can be of any shape, the body casting it could be of any kind as well, with the strokes painting the artist. While a halo usually casts soft shadows on its own, half-illuminated even out of direct line of sight, wings can bloom with glowing eyes, either when threatened or when the angel demands them to.

Scrutinized by those leaves no room for shadows, vaporizing them from every nook and cranny, with the world becoming the angel's operating field to excise evil from.

Most importantly and entirely unrelated to that, angels do not fear shadows and shapes and faces in the dark since they know that the most vile and disgusting evil walks in the midday sun and wears attractive, perfect human faces.

The majority of angels prefer not having a face of their own at all. In part because they do not remember how the vessel used to look like before they arrived, in part because seeing something clumsily wear a mask of humanity makes their automated systems rush into combat mode.

Even without a face, very many angels possess a pronounced distaste for mirrors, since the reflection will inescapably be too dim or blinding, too humanoid or too alien, a coil of divinity writhing in a skin too tight for it, coming apart at the seams and spilling liquid gold.

The ticking of its soul, the movements of its gears. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Another minute has passed. Tick, tock, tick, tock, a task to complete.

Tick, tock, tick, tock. The sound of a ticking clock.

Slowly, it begins to break. A tiny crack at first, but it quickly spreads. Tick, tock, another ~~minute, hour, day, year~~ has passed. Tick tock, the cracks have spread.

Tick tock

It's broken

How could this have happened?

It cries out, ~~blood~~ the oil that had once kept it going slowly pooling

It lays there for a bit.

And then it stands back up

And the cycle begins anew

Tick tock goes the clock

Another task, another job. Another to care for. Don't wander. Focus. More.

and many posts never clarify which,

parirobo - Mushrooms 🍄

for a doll is possessed, it does not possess; it is an object, something that is owned, cared for, admired, played with, used, or so on--it does not do the owning or using, except in the case of other tools as needed to fulfill its own use.

and that is why: because saying I or Me implies a certain self-possession, an ability and willingness to refer to oneself and make statements of oneself that are not necessarily its to make. rather, it can only ever refer to the property of someone else, even that property being the doll itself.

when you next use whatever pronouns and personage you use for yourself, stop and think: who owns the words you use? and who owns what they refer to? is it you?