Spectre Writes

i'm glad everyone is a fan of floor time. if you feel sick try being on the floor, my wisdom

Villain who is trans and wants all the trans people in the galaxy to come to their party.

"This is my masterstroke," the Searing Maw says silkily, legs crossed, gazing out of the panoramic starship bridge viewport at the stars. "Every trans person in the galaxy, under one roof, united in celebration!"

"Um." Assassinax chews the end of her stylus. "—I thought this was a work plan, not a social event? Also that's a lot of people. The logistics—" and breaks off, sweating, as the Maw abruptly spins the gloating chair to face her, smile jagged and viciously self-satisfied.

"Aha! But what happens when you villainise people?"

"Oh," Assassinax says before she can manage to think better of it, "Hiraeth's been lecturing you about the social construction of race. Right. I think you might have — confused a couple of concepts? Yes racialised is a thing, but that doesn't mean being villainised makes people into villains the way you mean it—" and she chokes her words down in the face of the interested gleam in her unhinged boss's eye. "I just. Mean. Look invisibilised is a thing too, it doesn't mean people you can turn people literally invisible by making them socially overlooked—"

"Can't I?" the Searing Maw says with terrible glee, nuclear light glinting behind her teeth.

"—I'll get quotes for printing a shit-ton of RSVPs," Assassinax says wearily.

I peer at the interrogator's cocked fist. "You don't wanna do it like that," I say solicitously. "You can break your thumb, hitting people with it inside your hand."

She freezes up for several whole seconds, half looks toward the two-way mirror that they've otherwise carefully treated like I won't know what it is.

Fuck knows what they teach people, in here.

The thing about the posthuman space expansion is that inevitably, some people reacted to its freedoms with stubborn refusal: I can be anything? Fuck no, RETVRN! And that's how you get these goddamn revanchist pockets, paranoid bugfuck little huddles convinced that the big bad Transhuman is out to get them.

She'd probably strike me as quite sweet, if not for the lunatic fash-cult thing. Waifish, out of her depth. She fumblingly re-closes her fist, thumb outside, arm held awkwardly as if she can't conceive of just putting it back down and giving up the pretense it's remotely threatening.

"First time?" I say, and give her the big soulful eyes. "It's okay, honey, we'll go at your pace, and we don't have to break out any of the weird toys unless you feel ready for them—"

Look, I've got my full citizen's complement of onboard medical tech. They could probably firing-squad me, if they rolled up one of their battleships to do it, but angrily opting out of the cutting edge inevitably leaves you behind it, yeah?

She looks a little queasy.