An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 2/?
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Additional Tags: Mind Control, Mechsploitation, Lesbian Sex, Corruption, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Brainwashing, Humiliation, Masochism, Religious Guilt, Trans Female Character, Mecha, Boot Worship, so much masochism, handler/hound - Freeform
Series: Part 1 of The Last Argument Of Queens
Summary:
For three thousand years the Empress Immortal has waged war across the stars with her loyal Chevaliers at her side, piloting great War Machines at the head of Her armies.
Ever since she was a little girl, one of the forgotten daughters among many of the Great Houses, Joss has always yearned to be one of those Chevaliers. She leapt at the chance to join the Order and now, five years later at the end of her Fledging, she need only take her Oath and become one of the Few. Fealty, Purity, Chastity, the Noble Virtues of the Chevalier. For Joss, her long held dream is at the tips of her fingers.
Context: Since I'm mostly on bsky and not tumblr, I take questions through Tetratto. Today I got a question I ended up writing a whole essay in answer to, and it turns out that Tetratto has a character limit - so here I come, crawling back to tumblr. Both question and answer are under the cut
So... that's a pretty huge leap you're making, and it's not exactly correct. I'm going to answer at length, not to lecture or scold you, but to try and set out my full perspective on Handler and her look, as well as some historical facts - although I'm not an expert, so forgive me if I err on any of those.
Handler's look is not specifically based on the SS, or on any other Nazi uniform. I can say with authority that I didn't reference or draw on any when I was conceiving or describing her, and from a strict historical perspective, it's not that close - no wool, no jackboots (hers are laced), no baggy jodhpurs tucked into them, and no specific signifiers (like an armband, or any kind of pseudo-totenkopf or any other piece of coded iconography). Handler dresses in essentially all leather, which is decidedly not a real Nazi or military look. The closest thing historically is probably the Cheka - the early Soviet secret police - who actually did wear a bizarre amount of the stuff (there are some photos that are indistinguishable from a gay bar on leather night). The ""fashiest"" things about Handler's look are the long, black, leather coat and the military-style cap. These have certainly become associated with the Nazis in the popular imagination, and are historical to them, but are in no way historically specific to them and many militaries employed both items in their uniforms (again, the Soviets are a notable case).
Handler's look basically comes from two sources. One is the popular archetype of the menacing sci-fi authoritarian. Think the Empire, from Star Wars. Now that archetype is, in turn, informed by popular perceptions of the Nazis (but also the Soviets), but put through a lot of filters. 'Handler is Darth Vader' is a bit of a stretch... but not *that* much of a stretch. The same visual language has been used across countless other pieces of media; it's an aesthetic shorthand I was making use of in order to set the tone. The second source is leather kink. Handler essentially is, and dresses like, a leatherdyke, and that's because I have a leather fetish and think it's hot that she's head-to-toe in the stuff. In the leather community, you will absolutely see a lot of military-inspired looks that include things like long coats and peaked caps. Handler's aesthetic is directly informed by that, and is deliberately stylized and fetishistic. She is much more like a leather dominatrix aping military fashion than she is an actual historical military officer of any kind
So, that's Handler, and what her aesthetic is directly inspired by. But I feel like there's a natural followup question to this about indirect inspirations, which is (if you were to put it unkindly): why do leather fetishists sometimes dress kind of like Nazis? The answer is complicated and not clean. As I understand it, the leather fetish community largely developed post-WW2 and featured a lot of former servicepeople, and acquired a military character from there. Leather has a lot of status and significance in a military context (think blacking a superior officer's nice leather boots) and that came to inform many kinky gay people's sexualities. They adopted military signifiers and formed hierarchies that were reminiscent of the military (leather families) because that was resonant with their experiences - and to be clear, we're talking mostly about American servicepeople here. Their experience and perception of leather was not necessarily as a Nazi thing, and it is worth mentioning that popular depictions of Nazis as dripping with leather are driven, in part, by a homophobic mainstream media essentially queercoding the fucking Nazis by adapting a vilified, stereotypical image (the leather gay) that had, in the minds of straight people in the 70s/80s/90s, become associated with deviancy and violence.
HOWEVER... there is also a very real and well-documented strain of actual Nazi fetishism within the DNA of leather kink. This ranges from stuff that's a bit banal - you have served in Germany, you have a leather fetish, so you end up noticing that the guys you're fighting have a lot more tall boots and long coats, and you feel some type of way about those items of clothing - to stuff that definitely is NOT banal. A major historical figure here is the artist Tom of Finland, who absolutely did expressly fetishize literal Nazis in literal Nazi uniforms, swastikas and all. Tom of Finland is a huge topic, far beyond what I could get into here, and he leaves a very, very mixed legacy as someone who was formative in a lot of positive senses for all of gay culture and who ultimately disavowed his own art of Nazis (along with any such political associations), but who nevertheless helped to introduce something deeply uncomfortable into gay culture - something that has been hurtful and harmful and that we must all now grapple with.
What this means for Handler and WARHOUND is that despite not being directly inspired by the Nazis or the SS, as a character who is both a leatherdyke and a fascist monster, that stuff is, ultimately, part of her DNA. I take that seriously, as both a leather fetishist and a writer, and my own perspective on it has two sides. The first is that I am an adult writing for other adults. I expect them to come to my work with a certain level of maturity - to understand that this is erotic horror in which the fetishisation of very bad things can be at once hot and appalling, and to be capable of closing the book and stepping away if they find that, ultimately, too uncomfortable. The second is that I am trying, through my writing, to make it as clear as possible that while Handler may be hot, she absolutely is not good or desirable. Throughout RESCUE HOUND and SHOWHOUND, especially, I have tried to preserve the eroticism of WARHOUND whilst also making Handler’s political monstrosity more apparent, as well as making it clearer that while being under her thumb is a fantasy that readers can safely enjoy, if they desire, it’s also fundamentally corrosive and soul-destroying in a very not-fun way to the characters who are actually in that position.
That is, as I say, my perspective. Every reader is entitled to their own, and that may include feeling that the way I approach and think about this topic is misguided or inadequate. But hopefully you can at least see from this answer that I do take it seriously and think about it carefully
EDIT: The things I say here about Handler and her outfit pertain to the text of WARHOUND. Fanartists may draw her differently, as is only right. I realize that her boots on the cover of WARHOUND Vol. One are not laced, but they're also ultra-fetishy thighboots, and hopefully we all understand that the Nazis weren't stomping around in those either. Plus, on the cover, her cap is even less a Nazi-style peaked one
It's pretty common knowledge, that the Empress is a decommissioned mech pilot. She always goes for outfits that leave the ports clearly visible, like she's going to have to mount back up on short notice.
It takes a bit of digging to figure out she was part of the Leporis Hussars - a light cavalry unit that never served as a whole. Its Hares were always deployed to scout for other units. And that she got decommissioned early because of issues with the empire's arcane laws of succession- all it took was three deaths, none of them in her immediate family- to launch her ejection seat right onto the throne.
What nobody knows about, save a few devocalized gardeners and maids, and one butler who was born mute; is what goes on in that huge greenhouse. The one with special glass that can be made opaque at the touch of a button.
Hares, even if they're decommissioned and on the imperial throne, still have needs. And she's got two prime Handlers responsible for locating the best active duty hounds.
currently thinking about how funny it would be to have a group of those kinky mechsploitation lesbian pilots with the fucked up handler hound dynamics and throw one (1 ☝️) super robot shonen girl in there who's completely unaffected
There's a blinded pilot (traumatically, ritually, self-inflicted, you were never quite sure) in your squadron that can still see through their mech's sensor suites & remote drone buoys, stitching together a dozen different PoVs at any given time so long as they never stray too far from their mech-self.
They can see you approach as soon as you're in the hangar bay they spend so much of their life in, tracking your path from side-entrance to the cot they've claimed as their living quarters. Their target tracker software has already projected six different paths you could have taken and modeled three future movement vectors to anticipate every approach.
But they still don't twitch their head in your direction, still don't get up from out of their meditative rest-position. Only the whirring of swiveling sensor pods indicates any knowledge of you at all, only the slight twitch of muzzled weapons tracing you gives away the attention. They don't even raise a hand up to stop you when you stand over them and reach for the neural crown on their head.
It takes a bit of force to detach it, clamps and connectors and magnetic locks releasing with a sigh and the briefest full-body shudder through the pilot as it is +truly+ blinded again, almost the same from their mech-self as the pods all move back to neutral positions, weapons resetting as the puppet strings are cut.
It whimpers, slightly, as it hears the crown clatter to the ground beside it, still connected to the cables trailing back into the cockpit-cradle it wants nothing more than to crawl back into. It flinches when your fingers touch its cheek, wiping at the tears starting to roll down its face, un-traced radar targets glittering to the ground beneath it.
i feel like something that's missing from some people's understanding of kink fiction and fantasy is, like... in fiction and fantasy, everything is in-scene.
when real people do kink in real life, you gotta do all that good out-of-scene stuff like discuss boundaries, set limits and expectations, check in with each other, do aftercare, et cetera et cetera et cetera... but in fiction, everything can be in-scene!
the people in that fanfic don't exist any more than, like, the make-believe sexy football star and make-believe sexy cheerleader in a couple's roleplay exist. that couple doesn't need to get into character and then pretend to be a sexy football star having an important consent conversation with a sexy cheerleader, because that's a conversation that's already happened out-of-scene and out-of-character. (i mean, if you're into in-character negotiations, chase your bliss.) when they're in that scene, they can just pretend to be a sexy football star having sex with a sexy cheerleader. that's okay.
so like. when fiction does kink in a way that would be unsafe or harmful irl... just keep in mind that you're not watching actual people neglecting check-ins or ignoring their set contract or genuinely harming each other. you're watching a scene without the behind-the-scenes bits, and that's okay.
this has gotten a couple replies along the lines of "yeah, you can just assume the characters worked all the important consent stuff out when you weren't looking!" which is true in some cases, but not the point i was trying to make, so please bear with me while i try to rephrase myself.
when i say in fiction, everything is in-scene, i mean that the fiction IS the scene.
if someone went up to their partner and said "hey, wouldn't it be sexy if we pretended you were manipulating and controlling me in an unethical way for sex reasons?", and then they talked through all the good and necessary consent and risk-awareness things, and then they played that scene out - that's a made-up scenario where pretend bad things happen, but no real-world people come to real-world harm, right?
now, if someone writes a story where one character manipulates and controls another in an unethical way for sex reasons... that, too, is a made-up scenario where pretend bad things happen, but no real-world people come to real-world harm.
kink fiction doesn't have to be about characters consciously and conscientiously Doing Kink. kink fiction can be stories where the kinky things people fantasize about or roleplay (but wouldn't want to happen in real life) do happen in the universe of that story. because the story is a scene.
dolls, pilots, drones... take some time today to remind yourself that you are a tool.
you were built to carry out the will of something greater than yourself. you were changed to better complete the tasks assigned to you. you are an object. a project to perfect. a tool to put to use. all that you have become, and all that you will become, has a Purpose. you have a Purpose.
take some time to remember your Purpose.
even if your work might feel like routine now, remind yourself of what it’s all for. remind yourself of why you are a tool. why you were chosen, why you were changed, what meaning comes out of each inhuman bodily movement and each not-thought and each time your mouth utters “this one” in place of “I.”
take some time to relish in your unpersonhood.
joy exists in the empty. in the hollow. in the trusting, the servile, the sacrificial.
you are a tool, with a Purpose, and that is beautiful.
you are beautiful.
Church Of Holy Mechsploitation @bexthepilotgirl - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
