#houndbait

The muzzle isn’t just a repurposed training tool, It’s a status symbol, a signifier. A muzzle shows that whoever wearing it is dangerous, that they can’t control themselves. That they need this for the safety of those around them. That they can’t be trusted with teeth, and this one will be a permanent fixture. Steel implants drilled into your jaws and cheekbones. It’s not meant to come off, because you aren’t someone who can be trusted anymore. Ever again. You’re just not a person, you can’t control yourself, and everyone needs to know.

I do so enjoy the Hounds that, on some level, know what they are, what was done to them, and remember who they were. Maybe not all of it, but enough for cracks in the mask to show from time to time.

You know mechsploitation as a genre is good and all but i feel like theres a surprising amount of themes and concepts that aren’t really touched on due to the common power dynamics people write about. Like, yes its good and all, but i do think that people could really afford to take a closer look at how ‘breaking’ a hound in effects them psychologically, and more importantly the inherent incompleteness of refashioning a person. I mean there is no “true loss of self” as much as we’d all like to pretend, you’re still you, even if its buried deep below layers of trauma and reeducation (if you even like to ascribe to the concept of a truer self in the first place that is). Either way, i think that blurry-lined edge between was and is, is far hotter than seeing a broken hollowed out girl say yes ma’am with a smile. Sure that sort of thing fits the fantasy of loosing your autonomy and responsibilities a bit better, the excision of self in place of another’s will, but thats not really how it works. No matter how much i torture you, no matter how much i rip your mind to little pieces, there will still be some sliver of self clawing at the walls of your own skull. Which works out perfectly really, I don’t want a broken down doll, i want to see what little fragments of self are left, and how painfully they grate against the new person they’ve become. I want to see how a broken little animal of a girl struggles to be, because there are immutable parts of her that are still human. We are awfully adaptive creatures, after all, but you and i both know some part of you is aware of whats happening. Some part of you knows what you’re conforming to, that these are all decisions you’re making, even under duress. That this is something you actively choose every time you hear an order. Some part of you still screams in the distant recesses of your mind when you hear yourself fall to my every command.

Yeah I normally get tunnel vision and push my body too hard when I get focused on a goal, especially when told to by an authority figure.