DETACHABLE HEARTS: THE MEME

[likespurple]

The Detachable Hearts Meme

(content warning: blood/gore)


What if you could give your heart away... literally? A cousin of tropes like Soul Jars or Beating Hearts, a universe of "detachable hearts" proposes that the heart can be removed from the body without impairing cardiovascular function, and shared with or given entirely to another person. They say the burdens of someone else's soul are easier to bear than one's own, after all... but you should be careful about what happens to your heart.

• Respond with your character(s) and put their name|canon in the subject bar. Feel free to include any special notes about your character's heart.
• Reply to others.
• Although this meme is perhaps best played on a case-by-case basis, prompts for inspiration or RNG usage have been provided below.

1. Introduction: You've just learned about how hearts work! How do you and the people around you react to this knowledge? What kind of person would you like to hold your heart someday? Do the two of you agree or disagree?
2. Weight: You've grown up and your heart has gotten heavier. How are you supposed to tolerate this? Whose presence eases your pain?
3. Exchange: You've found the one, the person who'll give you their heart and bear yours in return, and now you're both ready to find something sharp and make this final. How does it feel? What do you do now?
4. Mistake: You've just cut out your heart... and it's been refused or rejected. Are you bleeding out on the floor? Will that person provide medical attention or call 911? Or is this the end? Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.
5. Bereaved: The bearer of your heart has died. How do you go on? Do you retain that person's heart or is your ribcage empty? Is someone else interested in that real estate?

Comments

Annie Leonhardt | Attack on Titan

[hollowheart]

[speakveryclearly]

[IN ANOTHER LIFE]

I'm not sure if like is a concept that can be accurately translated across cultures. Isn't it different for you and us, physiologically? [And God only knows how that plays into a shape-shifter's body.]

You have this notion that every single desirable emotion would be directed to one person... and consequentially hate has no place in the healthy cardiovascular system. [She draws a horizontal line below her breasts, across her upper ribcage.] And for us the conciliatory emotions, pragmatic analytical interpersonal ones, they're concentrated separately over here. [The right side of her chest.

The upper left remains unindicated.]

Godot | Ace Attorney

[waitingforhim]

abed nadir | community

[coolcubed]

[ my weakness. can also come in evil goatee flavor? ]

[hollowheart]

Would you look at that. [There is interest. In fact, there is some very evident interest that even the poker faced Annie can't quite conceal. It's marred by a tug at her mouth that shapes her lips into a smirk rather than any polite show of appreciation.

And while she's quick to hide her personal investment in this concept she's been ham fistedly trying to implement for years, the smirk remains.]

That's awfully convenient now, isn't it? Partition your heart and shove away all these pesky emotions where they belong, separately.

[speakveryclearly]

Depends on your point of view. It means you can't get rid of them all at once. You have to give each part to different people.

[There aren't enough hosts left, of course, though that might change if she gets through this trial. There couldn't be anybody for her. She doesn't deserve it, if she fails at the task before her.

At the start of the game she made a casual proposal to Kaoru, thinking the other designated killer would probably be a worthy host for her diamond, and then discovered. Annie is not afraid of blood, and unlikely to recoil at a bright green hue of it. She has a really fantastic pair of...

Ribs.]

I keep wondering, whether the mammalian heart is therefore a stronger and more comprehensive organ, or if the significance assigned to fond likemindedness and physical attraction is just greater.

[If she were just a little more cynical she would say she had no way of finding out. As it is she won't rule out the experiment categorically.]

[hollowheart]

[Having a heart is an utter weakness.

The thought makes her sigh, running a finger along the brim of her glass. Having a hear gets in the way. Having a heart that consolidates all human emotions is a burden.

Having a human heart will be the death of her.]

Have you ever ripped out a heart while it still beats? [She asks idly, her hand closing around her glass, the moisture beading outside it dampens her palm.]

It's still alive for minutes, even with the arteries ripped and bleeding. It keeps on pumping in your hands, like a little pulsing machine, expanding and contracting as it struggles to live.

But once it's dead, it's as good as any husk. A heart is only as good as what gets pumped into it.

[speakveryclearly]

[She has to think about this. It's not impossible her memories could contain such an event, but unlikely: The censorship is mainly a veil for her, no outright censorship of the blood and gore.]

I'm afraid I lack any recollection of that particular sort. [She avoids describing her inexperience as outright unfortunate, thinking that would be rude somehow, to suggest to the poor sweet child soldier who hates violence. That's what humans call her - in peacetime. Annie grew up in wartime, didn't she? Kanaya has still not heard nearly as much as she would like about the institution, imperial or otherwise, that produced the most interesting girl in this mansion.]

It's so strange for the stratification of quality, when you have that chromatic commonality. You're all the same inside, with red blood, I mean. [She can smell it, too; though Susan's suggestions have smothered the scent's power over her, that doesn't mean it isn't there at all - bitter cranberry candy she could eat for hours at a time, if Annie let her, but the girl would probably not allow that degree of vulnerability.] We associate that color with the heart, too, even though it's never the literal hue of our blood.

Lightning }{ FFXIII/FFXIII-2

[strikeoflightning]

[hollowheart]

I wouldn't expect you. What a dinner conversation to be had, hmm? [She fakes her attention on the rest of the drink she's been warned not to indulge in as she takes Kanaya's words. Were they all the same, really? Annie's human shell was very convincing, from her unassuming fair head to her toes. In her mind, she knows she stands out, not quite belonging to either race.]

Let us say I do lack a heart, [She offers at last, glass woefully empty and pushed away] Would I still deserve to be liked?

[And painfully enough, her heart is the only human thing about her.]

[speakveryclearly]

What lighter topic is there, the latest television shows? We actors are off the clock at this point, and they don't give us the screens to watch our competition on any other channels. [Her desperate sarcasm can't brighten the mood; her flickering skin can't do that either, nor her eyes like lamps.]

Reducing worth for affection to capacity for that physical exchange is an inherently incredibly speciesist notion. [She pushes the question What Equivalent Of That Did Rin Have out of her mind.] I don't think your intelligence and matter of fact manner would lose their charm were they produced by a literally heartless being. [Unspoken, too explicit: Your body would not be any less beautiful were it to belong to a doll, though it would be much less exciting.] You deserve at least as much affection as anyone else in this manor, though that's just my personal opinion.

[Kanaya has found herself leaning in very close to Annie, staring at her intently.] I do deeply doubt you don't have one, just for the record.

[hollowheart]

You're completely sidestepping the notion and believe of good people deserving only good things, and bad deserving only the bad. It's an essentialist view, but still widely spread.

[She looks up, meeting Kanaya's eyes with the intensity only the confident and slightly tipsy possess.]

I am not a good person, miss Maryam. [And perhaps neither are you, but it is neither here nor there.

Treacherously, the heart in this much frailer body beats rapidly in her chest at the proximity. Its pace is alien to her, and one she associates with running and danger and adrenaline. Right now, she feels like running, but where?]

[speakveryclearly]

We didn't have good people or bad on Alternia, miss Leonhardt. [Nobody else can hear her put the planet into the past tense: The motive is still up in the air, humming in the minds of everyone around them. There are probably cameras and microphones.] If we described trolls it would be in a manner that conveyed meaning. We had competent technicians, effective soldiers, or disloyal subjects.

[With that opinion established - it's much too high, absolutely unreasonably so - she can finally make the proposition:] All I have is something for you in my room. Do you want it now or tomorrow night.

[This is really a way of asking whether she wants it at all or not, that would just soften the rejection. The increasingly strong perfume of blood might be enough to tide Kanaya over.]

[hollowheart]

Disloyal subjects. [She rolls the words on her tongue, tasting their meaning. Disloyal to whom? Where does Kanaya stand on that obedient ladder?

She tilts her head back at the effort, studying the lines of Kanaya's shoulders as she proposes it, the body language she knows too well, but did it extend to Kanaya's race? The mansion is terribly dull, and this tugs at something in her core that isn't sated enough; curiosity. Tucking her legs under her on her chair, her eyes flicker back up.]

Keep the lights on tonight.

[speakveryclearly]

Okay.

[She feels like a bundle of nerves - not the fun kind, but for the first time since she found out what would happen during this show, she has a good feeling, and the thought of the future fills her with excitement instead of dread.]

They're probably going to kick us out soon. [She begins to straighten back up to standing, prepare herself to draw away. She doesn't want to, but in a few short hours they'll be alone together. Barring the room search, nobody else has ever entered Kanaya's respiteblock, in her entire life and undeath, and the bristles on her skin are all high, hazy in between the white light.]

[hollowheart]

[Helping herself into the Sapphire Wing after the second week is nothing short of suicidal. At least, Annie has the decency not to go through Ukraine's recently vacated room, opting for the bathroom window. It's a short drop from Opal's, mastered by now.

It's late enough in the evening to risk going down the hallway undetected, but not late so as not to chance rightfully questioning eyes.

She's still clad in her slacks and blouse from earlier, even if her nonchalance has lessened, since then. Her fist hovers outside Kanaya's door for a moment before she decides to knock, quickly.]

[speakveryclearly]

[Her speed abused, Kanaya is there to open the door so quickly that the hem of her thin white nightgown flutters around her calves. (Its neckline on the other hand plunges, almost though not quite low enough to reveal the hole in her torso.) "Hi", she mouths. If Annie comes in promptly, the door closes behind her, keeping the light (on but sensually low) shut within her room.

Kanaya had opened the door with her right hand; in her dominant left is the regulation pocketknife. Her grip is relaxed, she could even be said to toy with it nervously as longer-haired girls do with hair around their fingers; not the clench of the tool wielded as a weapon. The cabinet is behind her, and she takes a faintly haunted look back at it, realizing this too is visible to her guest.]

[hollowheart]

[A pocket knife. Annie can't imagine what good that would be against her. She's been stripped of her own after the trial at the pretense of keeping the girl harmless, and Annie's played along with the notion out of sheer indifference.

She would rather be in her own room, but this is the most interesting thing that has happened in the mansion so far, the deaths notwithstanding. Annie seats herself on the alcove that would have been the window the sill had the room any windows at all.

She follows Kanaya's eyes, glancing at the cabinet before looking back at her, quizzically. She doesn't need to speak so as to ask for an explanation.]

[speakveryclearly]

[Any guest could identify the orb as belonging to Kanaya: A shade of gray at the base, and the orange tones of her horns. Hiding its significance has been a struggle, one she regrets undertaking. If she were braver she'd make the argument herself, maybe even asked earlier for volunteers.]

It's another difference, I guess. I wish it was one more intuitively understood... Our race was one of formic creatures - like your bees or ants. Sterile individually. And from that orb would hatch our queen, our only hope. The last one was destroyed, by the only member of my own kind I've ever killed.

[She trusts Annie can fill in the rest. The disclosure hangs heavily for a moment before she follows it up with:] He did kill me first. That's the genesis of my pseudovampirism. So [the light glints off the harmless knife again] I don't have as much to offer as I might otherwise.

Tony Stark | MCU | OTA

[shwarm_after]

[hollowheart]

You... [The words died on her lips. Annie recalls when the moment the incentive that has pushed her to action came up for the first time. She remembers being pushed into a corner, her metaphorical fangs bared silently.

She recalls the animalistic urge to save herself.

She can't tear her eyes away from the orb, all too glaringly there even in the dim light. Swallowing, she feels the weight of saving a race behind her. When not on the verge of extinction, themselves, they were faced with the slow inevitability of losing their minds.]

You know there's a chance you won't get away with this, Kanaya. [Eventually, she points out the obvious, the glaring truth none of them are ever prepared to face.] What are you going to do?

[Is what her brand of sympathy and pit felt like?]

[speakveryclearly]

I have to admit I didn't have a very far-reaching plan. Hiding murder has never been my strong point, and neither has law. The situation promises to remain almost unbearable emotionally.

[She opens the pocket-knife.]

I had this - idea, though. Admittedly a half-mad one. You probably know what I want to give you by now, however unimpressive it may be. I just want as much of it out of my body at this point, and can't think of anyone who'd bear it better. And... you implied it was less convenient, for you, to have a heart, especially when public opinion of you is so low, which is a shame when I find you so likeable, and I thought - if I can't survive this situation, then I could at least get rid of it for you. Your heart might be an ugly thing, Annie, but I don't mind that at all.

What do you think? [So this is why she dressed this way: To expose the place she'd make the incision, not out of confidence in the appeal of her cleavage.]

Amelia Jones ✩ Nyotalia

[american_sweetheart]

[hollowheart]

[She thinks the knife will hurt quite a lot, and might not even do the job correctly, but it's the sentiment behind it.

Annie's entire life would have been easier without a heart to trip her up at every turn, and slow her down. It weighed heavily in her chest, pumping the blooded that thudded too loudly in her ears at night.]

You don't mind this small, insignificant thing. [But to take someone else's?

She knows, against hope, that Kanaya might not live to see the day after this one. And yet she's overtaken by green, inexplicable and irrational, to have something for her own.

She brings her hand up, curling it into fists. It's said that one's heart is the size of a clenched fist.]

If you live. [She says slowly, deliberately] You will have to take pretty damn good care of my heart.

[In the meantime, she will keep Kanaya's safe.]

[speakveryclearly]

It's the only item I could treasure as much as the one in my cabinet.

[Though not more. Her actions this week have proven that much. Nonetheless, her immediate next action is to press the point of her blade into her skin - she looks down, and then makes the curve along her chest, a careful 'C' that takes a small chunk out of her left breast, to minimize the spattering drops of bright green blood. Her eyes flick back to Annie, and the pain compels her to grin, before returning to the incision, where she's fumbling with two hands to simultaneously offer the knife to the other girl and open the wound to expose the prize. The edges of the other three organs are just barely visible, pale and mostly in shadow. They have an eerie quality of moving not so much through pulse as through ambient jostling, much like the tops of her lungs. The heart is the most attractive by far right now, flushed and engorged, illusion of movement enhanced by its sparkling jade coat.]