I love you Acele: the organized crime refugee, survivor of violence, always on party drugs, the teenage girl hanging out with adult men because there's no better option, who makes weird conceptual sound art even after her boyfriend sells most of her equipment, who gets screamed at by a cop and decides to give him therapy, who somehow still thinks people are sweet.
I love you Cindy: the homeless artist squatting in the coalroom, who does massive street art challenging the occupation, belongs to a famously violent gang but likes people too much to go around stabbing most of them, and terrorizes the rich lady into leaving her block.
I love you Soona: the antisocial programmer, who loses her job and her dream and dedicates herself to finding out why, worries about the unemployed writers, moves her professional-grade computer into a busted-up old church to run science experiments, who lets the homeless ravers move into the church with her so she can use their sound equipment, who makes the ravers listen to her thoughts about elves.
I love you Billie: the working-class woman with an alcoholic husband, who shrugs off intrusive questions and accepts a hug for the sake of the working class, who tells the weird intrusive cop that he isn't a fuckupatoo after all, who sewed a blue lining into her husband's ratty old jacket to keep him warm.
I love you Lilienne: the single mom who survives selling fish to rich people she'll never see, who carries a sword around, who sees a cop that reminds her of her dead alcoholic husband and takes the time to be kind to him when she doesn't have to be.
I love you Isobel: the old washerwoman who has stayed when all her children and neighbors have left, who takes in the drifters and strays who pass through the village, who won't give them up to the cops even when they find a bullet in her spare room, who calls the cop a dark omen but also lets him stay for free.
I love you Elizabeth: the local girl who went off the law school and came back a firebreathing socialist, who can stop the head of the local gang in his tracks just by saying his name, who never concedes an inch to the cops, who will try to reason with armed mercenaries and put her life on the line to protect her people. Who will run the union one day if she lives.
I love you Neha: the dicemaker who bounced back from the death of her first dream, who makes dice into art objects (the cursed die!!!), who remembers all the failed businesses and weirdos, who knows how precarious the world can be, but moved into the most cursed building in Martenaise and made a corner of it into somewhere cozy, sunlight, and safe.
I love you women of Martenaise: you live in the ruins, one of the worst neighborhoods in an occupied city, the beachhead that no one ever bothered to rebuild. You live in grinding poverty, where every government and school of thought has failed even more than they have in the rest of the city. You refuse to let Harry intimidate you, but (some of) you help him anyway—not because he's a cop, but because he's a man who has hit rock bottom, and you all know what that's like. Some of you fight for causes and some of you make art and some of you care for your families, and all of you give what little you can spare to make your community just a little bit better.
