#starlit thoughts

Throughout the first arc of Hidden Depths, he's built up to be this utterly ruthless and lethal packmaster (gang leader), and while we only get to see a tiny bit of that, we do know that the city is terrified of this guy and so is Carr, even though she works for him.

We get to see more of his fucking scary side over in the Hidden Depths AU (sorry Resh, appreciate your sacrifice lol). And while most of Shattered has been focused on breaking him, the fact that it's taken almost 180k words to properly do so probably speaks volumes.

So like, he's been established as this pinnacle of badassery. He leads the most notorious gang in the city. Likes to play with his prey and keeps trophies of his kills in his office. Can take punishment that would reduce other people to shivering wrecks barely identifiable as human.

But in this backstory, he's not there yet. Subtract 15 years or so, and you have a 17 year old kid who just got taken out of a life spent with a horribly abusive dad who's been putting him in illegal ring fights since he was an even younger kid. Aside from being put on display for these fights, he was relatively isolated.

Like. Imagine him going from that to suddenly finding himself living with multiples of people, who are in a gang, no less. That's gotta be overwhelming. He traded his dad for Shindra (the old packmaster), and it seems like a good trade... until it isn't. He's part of the pack but not really. He doesn't know anyone, not even Shindra, really.

There's nobody on his side. He has no one.

The other gang members see him as easy prey. He can fight, oh he's very good at that, but he doesn't have stealth training, can't read tells, doesn't know the rules of the underground, and fucking no one has his back. Shindra does what she pleases with him, subjecting him to a level of abuse he has little to no experience with. He can't leave, he gets in trouble for protecting himself, he gets in trouble for not protecting himself, and there's nothing he can do about it. He's given an illusion of power (serving as a bodyguard for the packmaster) but in every other aspect of this new life, he has no power whatsoever.

And he's so fucking angry about it, but underneath? He has to be terrified. He's powerless and terrified and there's no way out and no way forward.

Obviously, he eventually found a way forward. Of a sort. It's still a hard and lonely life, but it's more of a life than that shitshow. But back there? He doesn't know he'll get out, doesn't know things will get worse before they get better.

i don't think writing prompts is for me, but i have so many tropes i've probably written into my stories. considering taking little snippets from them as trope examples and posting them.

would anyone have any interest in that? i'll probably do it anyway (unless i forget 😂) but validation is always nice <3

Like. C'mon, man. Even scary murderous crime lords deserve to have people who care about them!

Someone left me the absolute nicest ao3 comment after finishing Hidden Depths and like

[ID: Spams the kudos button with such strength I break it. So I spent all night reading the first arc, and the Litterally all day, since the moment I had enough charge, reading the rest. Heckin addictive fic!!! And the ace qpr? I have never seen a qpr represented like this before!! To be honest I haven't seen an ace relationship like this anywhere! Ever! Thank you so much for writing it this way, it's given me inspiration for how I want/ hope my own relationship to be. Finally given me something to define a qpr other than vague words and confusing concepts. /end ID]