i'm kitkat she/they 30. i will die for cdth hennessy and you can't stop me. on loving luz noceda lockdown 24/7. diseased horror writer. we post bullshit here sir
After Nova ascends, Rowan is the only one to understand the true weight, because his mother tells him.
She puts her hand on his shoulder, and she smiles as she explains, and she says, "You won't tell your brother or sister, will you? It'll break their hearts."
Rowan will not tell his brother or sister. It would break their hearts.
"It's a shame it couldn't be you," his mother adds, not for the first time. "John tried so hard for you and your brother. When we heard we were having twins, we thought, well, it must be his blessing! But, well. I suppose you can still help from the sidelines."
It is a shame. Of the three of them – his baby sister Nova, his twin Finn, and himself, who shares Finn's face and his voice but not his good nature – Rowan would make the best light god. Rowan knows the stakes, which is more than either of them can say, and Rowan does not flinch about what needs to be done.
Or if he does, he cuts that part of himself away and kills it. Surgical excision, surgical precision. Nova cannot survive such an operation, and Finn cannot keep a secret, so he'll take it in their steads.
-
Moira is a problem.
The city's earth god is a bitter woman who only wants to watch the world burn. She does not have a single redeeming quality: She wants Nova to die. She wants the city council tortured. She wants everything to go her way, all the time, and she's never satisfied, and she never stops whining about how John "raped" her, as if a couple rounds of bad sex are a worthy enough excuse to torture Rowan's baby sister forever.
Moira is a problem. And Nova loves her, because Nova can't help loving her. Moira, too, must love Nova, somewhere deep down inside, but she's too busy starting drama and playing the victim to accept it.
Years go by.
Moira does not relent.
Nova starts to crumble.
Nobody is stupid enough to give Moira access to weapons. Rowan has access to drugs, but gods can't die from an overdose, because nothing can ever be easy. Finn has a thousand guns for personal and professional use, but Rowan is not stupid enough to implicate his twin.
Instead, he asks Finn about work. He learns the names of unfavored coworkers at the precinct. He makes the right calls and places incentives in the right pockets to station a bad cop at the Centerspire. What's best is that the guy's shittiness isn't due to slacking off, like Finn's other pseudo-enemies. Instead, it's from an obnoxious, performative servant-of-the-people facade. It's the kind of guy who'd go to his captain about his buddies taking bribes. The kind of guy with an inscrutable honor code even stricter than Finn's.
He's the kind of guy who might break the rules to help an unhappy earth god. The kind of guy who might become an extremist.
Stealing the gun is easy. Handing it to Moira is easy. She takes a break from her bitching just long enough to crumple with helpless, sobbing gratitude. One last dramatic performance to manipulate an onlooker's emotions. Rowan wishes she wouldn't.
He waits in the room until she's done the deed, just to make sure she doesn't take anyone else with her.
Then he leaves before the sound can bring Nova running.
-
The new earth god is a problem.
He's a problem in a different way from Moira, though. Unlike Moira, he adores Nova. Unlike Moira, he's calm, for the most part, aside from when he's trying to kill himself, which is often. Unlike Moira, he's gentle, with an unrelenting streak of kindness, and he lets Nova fuck him, and he only fusses a little about the sex and the pain and the restraints, because Rowan usually keeps him too doped-up to know what day it is.
It's kinder to make sure he's drugged.
Rowan's learned from past mistakes, here.
Nova loves the god, though. She can't help it, no more than she could help her love for Moira. And the problem with Nova's affection is that she wants to give everything to the object of her desire – everything Nova wants, everything the other person might want. She's a generous spirit. It's why she's so beloved by the public.
The new earth god is not good at accepting kindness or accepting worship. This is somehow even more of a problem than the worship itself.
Nova threatens to kill the city.
Rowan has to pull a lot of political strings very, very fast.
-
Nova sets the new god free, because she's a fool, because nobody has ever made her fear for her life.
The new god finds his temple.
This is a special kind of problem.
Rowan knows it, as he stands underneath the opening of the dank cave, as he watches the boy in the shadows. There's a light in his eyes that cannot be explained by the dim gray sky far above. There are vines crawling up his legs, around his arms, curling around his throat, and there's something oppressive in the air. Pressure. Static before a lightning storm. Like maybe the entire system will crumble around them.
Rowan thinks, Oh, we're fucked. We're fucked. We are fucked.
"Hey, shithead," Finn says from his position beside Rowan, and his voice is shaking, because they're all dead, and he must know it, even if he doesn't know everything. "Let's – let's just head back, okay? You're scaring Nova shitless."
The god tilts his head. He smiles. His teeth gleam. There is nothing of the gentle boy left in him at all, because he's hungry. He's been starving for centuries, and he knows exactly who's starved him.
Rowan thinks, Finn, kill him. Kill him now.
Rowan thinks, I could do it. I'm close enough to grab the gun.
Rowan thinks, Nova will never forgive me.
He can't afford to get on Nova's bad side. He needs the good luck, and besides, she needs him. More than she'll ever know, she needs him.
He closes his eyes and prays.
Rowan lives. Finn lives. The earth god lives.
The city's power shifts.
Rowan goes to the one person who will understand.
-
"Well, that's a shame," his mother says. "Maybe if we talk to her...?"
Rowan shakes his head.
"It won't matter," he says. "She doesn't care about herself. She doesn't care about her power. She'll keep letting him take what he wants, and if you tell her any of this, she'll–"
"Kill the city, I suppose," his mother finishes, with a tired sigh. "Our little hero."
This is a fault of her parenting, Rowan thinks, but he has the good sense not to say it. If his mother had just shared the burden of the knowledge equally between her children, all three of them could have killed their warmth. But now Finn has his honor code and Nova has her bleeding heart, and no one is left to do the dirty work except for Rowan himself.
"We can still make it work, I think," Rowan says, because the alternative is to simply wait for a bullet to tear through Nova's throat.
"Oh?"
"Yeah," Rowan says. "Yeah, it's okay. I have some ideas."
when the subject of "why do people believe things that are seriously wrong and harmful" comes up it feels like you kinda hear one of two perspectives:
"oh, that's easy! it's because they're fundamentally Bad people who want to hurt others and choose their beliefs to justify that! :) hope this helps"
or
"they just don't have access to the same information we do. look at this person who was raised in a cult! don't you feel sorry for her?"
and like, yes, fine, some people were in fact raised in cults, but what i wish people would understand is that the bulk of it is just normal human flaws, like:
they want to believe stuff that makes them feel smart and cool and like they've figured everything out (you also do this)
they want to believe stuff that makes them feel like their emotions are justified and grounded in reality, and that the people they want to hurt deserve to be hurt (you also do this)
they form conclusions before they've processed all the relevant information, and cling to that first impression even when new info comes to light (you also do this)
they pick up beliefs from the people around them because they want to be liked and fit in, not because the beliefs are good or true (you also do this)
they come up with reasons that the stuff that benefits them (and the people they like and identify with) is actually overwhelmingly best for everyone and obviously the right thing to do (you also do this)
they pay more attention to stuff that supports what they already believe and avoid looking in places that might show them otherwise (you also do this)
they listen to people who talk like 'one of them' and ignore others (you also do this)
they come up with reasons to dismiss people with conflicting viewpoints as obviously in bad faith or ignorant or a shill or evil (you also do this)
they fail to take their own beliefs seriously sometimes, and take their beliefs way too seriously other times, in a selective way that lets them do the things they already wanted to do (you also do this)
the very ways they construct the ideas of 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' and 'belief' and 'understanding' are biased so that what they don't want to believe comes under lots of scrutiny and what they do want to believe receives less (you also do this)
you, dear reader, are presumably right about everything and were correct to die on every hill you've ever died on, but the difference between you and someone who's wrong about important stuff doesn't look like "well they're inherently evil and i'm not", it probably looks like a combination of:
natural environment (they would have been exposed to different information than you regardless of their choices)
being in the right place at the right time (your particular profile of flaws and virtues happened to be what was needed to lead you to the right conclusions, they had the opposite experience)
random luck (you doubled down on what felt right to believe but wasn't, but it turned out to be inconsequential, or even right for different reasons, while they doubled down on what turned out to be a horrible mistake distorting their entire worldview)
you do less of the things in the previous list, and over time the difference between you and them adds up
and, look, i also do these things. the nicest and most thoughtful people i've ever met do these things. if you meet someone who never does any of these things, i dunno, give them a fucking medal or something.
i know you're doing your best. we're all doing our best.
People in the notes being like "these are weaknesses of neurotypical people; my autism means I don't have these flaws": yes you do, and this post is about you specifically. People who believe that they're somehow magically immune to cognitive biases are the ones who tend to fall victim to them the hardest.
the horror of being "god's favourite princess". literally one of my favourite horror themes. the god loves you and it's so scary.
it will always choose you. you cannot die. you'll always come back because it loves you so much. you are its right and left hand, its eternal weapon. it will drown you in its light. light as horror. darkness as horror. what if it thinks you are its best friend.
you are god's favourite princess and it's terrifying.
Your writing has been such a huge inspiration for me in terms of exploring themes of people who are Horrible to Each Other with Nuance and Love and Hate and Odd Power Dynamics involved and I’m phrasing this as a joke but I really do appreciate it like everytime I’m like hmm…. Is this Too Dark…. I’m like well if that one guy on tumblr did it then so can I. Amen 👍
tried to pitch IWTV to my sister's best friend and forgot i was talking to a normal human woman so i was like "it's INCREDIBLE. it does this fascinating exploration of historical race and class in new orleans and every single character is godawful, everyone is HORRIBLE, they make SO MANY BAD CHOICES, the fandom gets into these bloodthirsty debates about who is the abuser and abused at any given moment" and she was like "....kitkat, i gotta be honest. you are not selling me on this."
i've always hated this image because it implies i would try to sleep as far away from the corpse as possible. i would not fucking do that. i would tuck them in and get right in beside them. shame on you.
found a website yesterday that runs classic computer games in a windows 95 emulator on browser so i can resurrect my childhood from my chromebook. doomscrolling replaced????
The BEST trope is when a character tells another “let’s run away together, we can leave all of this behind and start a new life somewhere” and gets rejected. And then the rest of the tragedy unfolds
finn and/or rowan (nova's very normal nice brothers)
camde cozia
Voting ended onJun 28
can't include characters from side stories and AUs since i only have twelve options 😔 so i just picked the top 13 most relevant people in the main draft.
i'm sorry you're dealing with the pain and suffering and horrors. you can kill all of your characters if you want to. i will protect you from the hordes.
finn and/or rowan (nova's very normal nice brothers)
camde cozia
Voting ended onJun 28
can't include characters from side stories and AUs since i only have twelve options 😔 so i just picked the top 13 most relevant people in the main draft.
so far ruby is losing in the poll. people do not understand that she is a loafbearing pillar. if we protect her we can outsmart kitkat and save all the blorbos. probably.
so true. she IS bearing loaves. ruby WILL feed all your faves and there's nothing you can do about it.
