IC CONTACT

[ukan]

This is Lark Tennant, leave a message.

[Or a note, or a drop-by]

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audio

[ukan]

Really. You weren't carving sins into people before him. At best, he's enabling you, and you're enabling him. At worst, you're making each other into animals.

I'm not going to change who he is, and neither are you. But I can offer him smoother ways to get what he wants. He'll be smarter when he does get back to you. What he does with that is up to him. We're both just going to have to be patient to see what he chooses.

cw: child death

[classifieds]

Lark, I locked my little sister in the back of our family car and pushed the car into a lake. She was pissing me off and I wanted her gone.

[ Which is to say: she's done worse than carve sins into people. No point in trying to hide what brought her here anymore. Tess knew, Jon knows, it's out there. ]

We are animals. We can embrace who we are and be happy or spend the rest of our miserable lives pretending to be something else. I seem to be the only one who wants him to have the former.

[ukan]

His happiness--and yours--aren't my main concern. If torturing people makes you happy, I'm fine with you being miserable. Same goes with him.

[classifieds]

Well, thanks for being honest.

I don't expect you or anyone to have sympathy for me but I hope you understand that I'm not going to willingly pursue my own misery, and I hope he won't, either.

[ukan]

And I hope you understand that the rest of us aren't going to stop pushing you to find other things that make you happy.

[He meant what he said: the safety of the ship trumps anything she feels.] I've never met a one-note person. Whatever else you are, no one has had a chance to see it yet. It doesn't mean it isn't there.

[classifieds]

Power makes me happy. Authority makes me happy. Being given a chance to compete and prove myself makes me happy. Being useful and significant makes me happy.

Unfortunately, being brought here has clued me into the fact that I'm a cosmic fucking gnat and the only way for someone like me to have any of that here is to either be a kiss-ass or a sweetheart, and those aren't my style. Life's not fair and sometimes you only want the stuff you can't have.

[ukan]

And what would you do with authority around here?

[classifieds]

Get the inmates on as organized of a front as possible so we can have some leverage and power as a group instead of being on our own until people get invested in us emotionally.

[ukan]

[Huh.]

That's not a bad idea. God knows plenty of you are ignored until you pull the right strings.

So say you get the inmates organized. What then? Wardens still have the keys and the Admiral listens to warden requests faster than inmates'.

[classifieds]

We unite and use our collective power to apply pressure. Think somewhere between a union and a gang. Enough of you care about your deals that us icing you out would ruffle some feathers.

And yeah, wardens could also unite and push back, but frankly I don't think you lot could agree on a pizza topping.

[ukan]

You'd have to rely on inmates who don't care about getting off the ship.

[classifieds]

Yeah, and all the inmates who have become full time warden suck-ups. But there's a middle ground between "screw your chances at graduation" and "completely ignore anything bad going on so you can focus on yourself".

[ukan]

How would you handle it when things go tits up? Say an inmate kills another inmate for some stupid, personal reason.

[classifieds]

So you're supposed to talk to the shot caller - yours truly - before you do shit like that. Sometimes a bitch needs stabbing and I say ok. Sometimes I tell you to knock it off and focus.

If you just go ahead without asking, or you go against my call, that's gonna get some retaliation.

[ Yeah, she's still a prison gang leader at heart. ]

[ukan]

That's fair.

[He means it. It's how wolf packs are run. His is tighter, more efficient and less brutal, but the basics are the same: you go through the leader to get things done.]

I don't know, Carol. It seems you could do a lot of good for the inmates here. Especially those who get overlooked.

[classifieds]

I'm not here to stick up for any poor neglected souls. It's simply the the method of organization that gets the best results.

Not that most of the inmates here would ever respect me as a leader, anyway.

[ukan]

Anyone can lose their powers at any time. If you're better at coping without them, if you have the strong ideas, you win.

[classifieds]

Losing your powers doesn't mean you lose your muscle mass or your combat training. I fucking hate it, but if I'm being honest most guys could kick my ass if they wanted to.