#Corrupted canonically still likes to read like passive | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fandom-space-princess · 1 year

Text

Keep Your Victory (But Give Me Little Death)

Fandom: Supernatural Rating: Explicit Pairing: Michael/Sam Winchester Length: 6.3k Other tags: canon compatible but not necessarily canon compliant, you can't prove to me this didn't happen, Madison!Michael, She/Her Pronouns for Michael, this is sort of michifer-adjacent but not really, in that michael and sam are both just weird about lucifer, they're not talking about that but. it's there., Oral Sex, Dream Sex

Summary:

“You fear to touch me,” Michael spoke lowly, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “Something like that.” “Do you imagine that you could spoil me? Are you so assured of your own inherent capacity for corruption, or have you so badly misapprehended my own vulnerability? No. I don’t believe either of these can be the case.” “You know,” he said. “You already know.” “Sam,” she replied. He heard patience in it, which was not softness but could have been mistaken for it. And something else, too, for which he had no name but thought might be reflective of her own, private emotions. “I desire to meet you where you are. I would have reciprocity in this. I am—” She faltered. “I’m unused to the nuances of physicality. Your mind supplies many of them, but if we are to understand each other, your passive desire is not enough. I require your active cooperation. Do I have it?”

Continue reading below, or on AO3

“I admit, Sam, I’m intrigued,” said the night, seeping in past his curtains. The stars were in that voice, and the void. “You have some idea, now, what is required of you. And still, you pray.”

Sam became aware that he was in a bed, familiar only for the sense that he’d slept in a thousand so like it as to be indistinguishable. Stained blankets, threadbare sheets. A bed that was not a bed, but a representation of archetype. Archetypal walls, too, shedding flakes of old paint, and grimy carpet clinging to the distant memory of beige. The dream of a motel room, then. Not as specific place, but as ethos.

He had the sense that he’d awoken; he knew he was not awake.

The night spoke again.

“You invoke my Father. You seek exemption from your place among His plans. You will tell me why.”

The night took form. There was darkness and potential, and then there was a face: sharp, pale, and beloved, haloed in ashen curls.

What Sam wanted to say to her was: “I missed you.” Or: “I’m dreaming.” Or simply to call her by her name, to reach for her and kiss the word “Jessica” into her open palms until his lips remembered the texture of her skin. But what he choked out instead, shrinking from the memory of two nights past when her face had evaporated away to reveal the nightmare underneath, was: “No.”

The creature who was not Jess raised an eyebrow. “You fear me,” she said.

Sam propped himself up on his hands, blankets puddling in his lap. “I told you, it’s never going to happen.” He enunciated his words with care, watching her eyes, cornered prey tracking a predator. “I’ll never say yes to you.”

The creature that was not Jessica Moore didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, but at his words, a subtle shift in the tension of her muscles changed the way she held herself. Her chin tilted up, and she gazed at him along the bridge of her nose. “Ah. You believe me to be my Brother. Not unexpected, I suppose: he hears your prayers as well as I do. He has visited you, then.” She studied him. “And worn this image, as well.”

His eyebrows furrowed together. “You... you’re not Lucifer.”

This earned him the ghost of a smile. “Correct.”

“Then what...?”

It was odd, her presence in this room. Sam realized what had been bothering him since the moment of her appearance. It was the way she held herself, broad-shouldered and rigid. Lucifer had been all fluid grace, both as Jess and after, her movements deliberate, certainly, but organic. And she had shone with an almost imperceptible aura, a light interior to herself. The creature before him now wore the same borrowed face, but otherwise was her opposite in almost every way. When she moved, it was with precision, and only so much as was necessary to convey her point. She did not shine in the darkness; she displaced it.

“In truth, I should have met with your brother first,” she said. Her words shared the same rote, pointed quality as her movements. She held her hands out in front of her, palms up. “But I wanted to give you answer. Whether you like it or not, Sam Winchester, you’re special. Chosen for a purpose, one as important to me as it is to Lucifer.”

Understanding clicked into place for Sam, roiling his stomach. “Michael. You’re Michael.”

Of course. Hadn’t he pleaded for this? Putting himself to bed with the same reassurances he’d been grasping at since he was a child. Even after—especially after—the revelations of two nights ago about his place in the universe, prayer had felt imbued with that old, imperative weight. Sitting on the edge of his bed before sleep, reciting: deliver us from evil. If he was honest with himself, he had held out hope, however tempered by disillusionment, that some power on high would take notice.

It was small wonder that angels flocked to his dreams.

His heart wasn’t real there (nothing was real, there). And still, it thumped hollowly in his absent chest.

She took a step toward him. Reflexively, he shoved himself back. His spine cracked hard against the headboard. She stopped.

“This form displeases you.” Michael’s eyes slid over his body, his taut and coiled frame, the twist of his fists into the sheets. Assessing him, measuring him. Then they flicked back up to his own.

He couldn’t hold her gaze. He looked, instead, at her hands. This memory of Jess, the one Michael must have pulled from him to craft a likeness... he’d all but forgotten. She was so beautiful. How could he have forgotten? This woman wore the same cutoff jean shorts, faded to grey and fraying, and a crop top the delicate pale pink of the inside of a conch shell—they'd gone on a hike. On one of the last bright days between the death of summer and the true advent of fall. Vivid, sun-baked and alive: Jess then had been everything that Michael was not now. He’d hugged her to him, buried his nose against her scalp where her hair was damp with sweat. Her laughter had echoed between their bodies where they pressed together. They’d intertwined their fingers, and her nail polish, chipping, had left flakes behind wherever she touched him. They’d stayed on his skin for days—cobalt fragments, and the smell of her.

Michael wore Jess’s chipped blue nail polish in the same way as he wore Jess’s fingers, and her face: as an afterthought.

Her voice snagged him out of his memories. “I require something of you,” she reminded him. “Tell me.”

“Why I prayed?”

She nodded. “Why you pray.”

“Could... uh...” He cleared his throat. Steadier, he tried again. “I don’t... want to presume, or anything. I just don’t think I can...” His voice cracked. Once more. “D’you think you could look like someone else?”

She cocked her head.

He felt her rummage through his memories. She was not careful. It was not malicious, and her face as she watched him betrayed nothing but casual, imperious indifference. Still he felt the substance of himself riffled, examined, the pages of his mind turned rapidly under vast, deft fingers.

One moment to the next, she was no longer Jessica. Lucifer had taken a perceptible amount of time to exchange one face for another. Michael simply became, in an instant. And where a moment before Jess had been, Madison stood.

Sam wasn’t sure if the question was safe to ask, but it clawed out from between his teeth anyway. “Why her?”

Michael stepped forward again. Madison’s brown hair snaked over her shoulders. The motion transfixed Sam: he could no more have moved under her eyes than had she been kin to Medusa. When he didn’t back away, she replied, “I take the form your mind provides. She was dear to you. The two of you achieved... a rapport, for want of a better term, that suits my own desires. You wish you could have saved her. You cling to the idea. It gives you comfort.”

“What do you mean, your desires?” God, but his voice was unsteady. Like being 16 again. Even talking to Lucifer hadn’t made him feel so young, so aware of his own mortality. “Am I supposed to read into that?”

“You are supposed to do many things, some of which are more relevant to my interests than others.” Michael lowered herself gingerly on the foot of the bed. She appeared no more relaxed there than she had standing; she merely folded her hands across her lap, and continued to watch him. “I understand what you think you know of angels. Believe whatever you wish, but know that I do desire your comfort, insofar as it is an achievable thing. I am not here to hurt you, Sam.”

“Then why are you here? I mean—you could help me. Right? You’re... I prayed because... I wanted... I hoped...”

Her face turned away from him again, fixing on an unseen horizon. In her silence Sam counted his breaths, noted again the absence of hers. He worried that he had mis-stepped. The darkness around her thickened and churned with her thoughts. Whether it was only an effect of the dream, or a natural extension of the fact of her, he could not have said.

“I am here to know you, and to offer perspective,” she answered, after a time. She drew her legs up onto the bed, folded them under her, rearranging her limbs as though at the command of a puppeteer. It brought her closer to him. “You will see the rightness of your purpose, yours and your brother’s. You seek clarity. I can help you achieve it.”

Her knee bumped his, through the blankets. It seemed to him that she should have burned where they touched, or he should have. But the sensation was only solid, only human, in the ways of knees and shinbones and blood-warm bodies. In the ways Madison would have been; in the ways Michael should not have been.

“I thought you guys knew everything already.”

“I know what I am required to know to fulfill my duties. That is much. It is not all. As I said, you intrigue me. I thought I understood you. You are my Brother’s vessel.” Her knee knocked his again; this time, she watched it happen. “I would have sworn that in your position, Lucifer would not have sought intervention. Yet here we are.”

Michael’s words took root between his ribs, wrapped tendrils through his chest and squeezed. His breath stuttered. “I’m not him. Lucifer. I’m not like him.”

He was acutely aware of being examined, still, again, but he couldn’t look at her.

“I’m curious,” she said. Her voice came out strange, rougher. It might have passed as human. “You beg intercession, on terms that—you must understand—are not mine to accept. Lucifer would bear no compromise. You, who claim to be so unlike him, what compromise would satisfy you? Imagining for the moment that such a thing were possible.”

Sam bit the inside of his lip, hard, once, then again, until his words tasted copper-tinged. “I can’t,” he started.

He stopped. Started again.

“I can’t be the thing that destroys the world. Just tell me I don’t have to be that,” he rasped. “Tell me I don’t have to be that.”

A light touch on his forehead. He lifted his eyes to find that she had raised her right hand, placed her fingertips gently but with intention just below his hairline. They were at eye level, her knelt there and him, seated; he couldn’t be looking up at her. And yet he felt himself become small.

“We have different conceptions of destruction, but... I understand. You would give yourself for that outcome.” She slid her fingers higher, tangling into his hair, her palm spreading flat over the crown of his head. “You do not ask for your own life, but to spare the pain of others.”

His back bowed. He swayed toward her.

Madison had worn no nail polish, and had manicured her nails to neat points. On Michael both of these things presented themselves as natural, facts to be accepted without question. But Madison had smelled like clean laundry, like warm pavement and leather car seats and the thrill of teenage delinquency. Michael smelled like none of this. Even in dream, Michael was sharp at the back of the sinuses; she smelled like ozone.

“Why would you touch me?” he managed. “I’m not your vessel. I’m corrupted. Impure.”

A frown wrinkled between her eyebrows, pursed her mouth, then was gone. She tightened her fingers at the roots of his hair. It brought the breath rushing out between his teeth in a hiss.

She looked down at him, and she looked, and looked, and at last she sighed. “My Brother is many things, Sam. But he is not now, and has never been, impure.”

Bit by bit, her movements were losing their rigidity. Her right hand still palming the crown of his head, she brought her left up to cup the curve of his jaw. She touched him like a priest would, he thought. As though she were anointing him.

“This shape you have been given,” she said, stroking the point of her thumbnail over his cheekbone, “the destiny you wear as flesh, and would reject? It is an enjoinder: a commandment to glory. What Lucifer has wrought is monstrous. I must give answer to his deeds. But you—as your brother, as my Brother, as I myself—you are not monstrous. You are only potential, Sam. We are all of us only potential, awaiting fulfillment.”

Michael’s mouth formed his name the way Madison’s mouth had done. The bow of her upper lip was soft, and pursed, and unbidden he remembered what it had been to kiss her. He wondered if Michael would taste the same, wearing her body, or if she would taste as she smelled, like cold high atmosphere.

Her hands lifted off him, untwisted from his hair. He leaned after her in their wake, bereft of the loss, and confused at it, but wanting more than anything for her to lay her hands on him again. She did. The frown returned to her forehead, his confusion mirrored on her, but her hands flittered back down to him, doves settling fretful on his shoulder and the nape of his neck.

“You miss him,” he said to her, understanding this fully only as he said it. He leaned more firmly into her touch. “Do you really have to kill him?”

The doves lifted, hovered, settled again. Now she touched his collarbone, his chest over his heart. Nothing between his pulse and her palm but his thin and too-worn shirt, his thin and too-worn flesh.

“He has made his choices,” she replied. “He is making them, even now, as I am making mine. My Father’s will for us is absolute. The conclusion is foregone.”

One heartbeat. Two. “Then how can we be—potential?”

Her lips parted, a little. The edge of her tongue traced the line of moisture along the curve of her lower lip. “The path we take matters. Our methods matter. I do not believe Lucifer can do other than make the choices he must, as I do not believe I could. I am not even certain that you can. But you would give yourself for a different outcome, where my Brother would not. I find this to be in conflict with my understanding of my Father’s will, and with my understanding of my Brother.”

He swallowed. “So I’m... what, to you? A thought experiment? A problem to solve?”

“These things, yes, among others. You are a part of the path, Sam, and a method for traversing it.” She took a breath, the first he had seen her take, slow and deliberate. “My will is my Father’s will. And it is my will to know, fully and completely, the means by which I am to pursue my duties.”

Sam absorbed this, and didn’t know what to do with it. It was one thing to beg for the intercession of the divine, but quite another entirely to be pinned under the regard of the first and holiest of divinities. She was no different from Lucifer, he reminded himself, but with her hands on him, her eyes on him, it rang hollow. He wondered what he would give her, if she asked for it. He wondered what he wanted her to ask for.

What came out of his mouth was a plea: “Your question. I want—I’ll pray for you. I’ll show you. Let me show you. Please.”

A shiver ran through her. Her right hand returned to his hair, curving over the back of his skull, left hand on his chest, and she lowered herself atop his lap as gingerly as she had first seated herself on the bed. Legs slung over his and blankets bunched between them; once again he felt himself impossibly smaller than her. He had been able to pick Madison up and hold her against him with one arm. He could not imagine doing it to Michael. And, just then, he could imagine doing nothing else.

She pinned him in place without apparent effort, as though it were nothing to her. “I’ve watched you,” she said. Her words raised the hair on his skin to gooseflesh. “Your brother as well, of course, but you, Sam—your little rituals. They do fascinate me. You bow your head to pray, do you not?” Her fingers tightened over his scalp, and the touch no longer felt quite so like an offering from saint to supplicant. His head dropped forward, his cheek brushing hers. His neck felt terribly exposed.

He tried to speak; could only rattle out a half-coherent slurred aaehhh. How did he endure the touch of something like her? Scalp, chest, the curve of his jaw, his hips and thighs where she straddled him: it seemed impossible that he did not burn or freeze at these places, these junctures between her holiness and his all-too-human flesh. He lost himself, for some moments, caught half between longing and terror.

“And then?” she prodded.

“H-hands,” he stuttered. He tried to shake himself, succeeded only in settling her more firmly across his legs. His hands were—somewhere, a million miles away, doing nothing for him, he’d forgotten them so thoroughly. If her hands on him were unearned blessing and undeniable benediction both, his hands on her would be unthinkable blasphemy. He uncoiled his fists from the blankets, down near his sides, and clasped them together, pressed to his stomach in a fearful attempt not to touch her more than he already was.

At this, Michael tutted her disapproval. Her hand left his chest, and he regretted the loss only for the second it took for her to grasp his hands instead. Her fingers insinuated themselves between his palms. She pulled his hands away from his body—he offered no resistance, could offer none—and she pressed them down, still clasped, until his forearms rested across her thighs and his knuckles grazed her stomach.

“You fear to touch me,” she spoke lowly, lips brushing the shell of his ear.

“Something like that.”

“Do you imagine that you could spoil me? Are you so assured of your own inherent capacity for corruption, or have you so badly misapprehended my own vulnerability? No. I don’t believe either of these can be the case.”

“You know,” he said. “You already know.”

“Sam,” she replied. He heard patience in it, which was not softness but could have been mistaken for it. And something else, too, for which he had no name but thought might be reflective of her own, private emotions. “I desire to meet you where you are. I would have reciprocity in this. I am—” She faltered. “I’m unused to the nuances of physicality. Your mind supplies many of them, but if we are to understand each other, your passive desire is not enough. I require your active cooperation. Do I have it?”

For one dizzying instant he thought she was asking him for another “yes,” a different one. But she remained statue-still over him, and the thought passed, and with it, some of his trepidation. The concession was unexpected: that between his desire for this strange communion and his fear of her, the latter might be the more powerful. He was left feeling distinctly wrong-footed, yet undeniably reassured.

In response, he loosened his hands. Allowed them to rest more gently against her. “Yeah,” he replied. “I just... you’re kind of a lot. Uh, no offense.”

Michael’s pleasure was obvious in the lines of her body, in the breadth of her shoulders and the way her head tipped back as though to accept a crown. She pressed the hand that still covered his clasped ones more insistently between his palms, until they opened around it, and he held her hand in his. “I am what I am. It is what you are that I am discovering. To which point: you were providing me a demonstration. Your hands—what about them?”

What indeed. His head remained bowed under her hand (and he was thankful for that, a gratitude that surprised him, for her soft-immovable living iron grip that held him aloft in the moment) and he closed his eyes. So it was by touch that he undertook to relearn her body. By touch, alone, that he traced his fingers over the contours of her waist, down the arches of her pelvic bones where they disappeared beneath the denim of her cutoffs. Then back up, around the hem of her shirt, over each jut of ribs, to the column of her spine. This body was a country he’d traveled before. He could have wept for the familiarity.

But she wasn’t Madison. It was impossible to truly forget for even a second. Michael upended reality simply by existing in it; the world moved aside for her. She was warm, but not as a person was warm. Michael was warm in much the same way as a star: an inferno, self-sustaining and consumptive, survivable only if kept at a great distance.

Sam wanted to bridge that distance. The implied question of the relationship between that desire, and his own survival instincts, he set aside for later.

His fingers drifted down her vertebrae, slowly, feeling their shapes. He muttered under his breath.

“What aspect of prayer is this?” she said.

“Rosary,” he chuckled back, and he thought he felt her huff a breath of laughter across his throat.

He pitched his voice louder, meaning for her to hear. When he spoke, what came out was not prayer—not exactly—but fragments of half-remembered poetry that looped in his ears like a refrain:

“If I profane—” he began. He felt the weight of her curiosity, her expectation. He pressed on: “—with... with my unworthiest hand... this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a...” His mouth was dry. He swallowed. “... a gentle kiss.”

Christ. Shakespeare to an angel. Shakespeare to Michael. But that was where he was. Nothing else felt adequate.

He expected to move on. He expected his words would have amused, bored, perhaps even offended her. He did not expect her to return the next verse.

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,” she replied. Her lips were at his ear again. She ran her left hand down his arm, pulled his hand off the small of her back to knit their fingers together between them. Her voice held a smile. “Though I accept the proposition, regardless.”

She kissed him.

He’d been right, and wrong. She did taste like she smelled, her lips all static pop under his own, but it held more of bioelectric feedback than the hum of the void. The motions were all Madison’s. It occurred to Sam that Michael might have only his memories for reference; that, wearing Jess’s face, she would have kissed like Jess kissed, too. Realizing this, he slowed. He kissed her with deliberate languor, with a luxury of time he and Madison hadn’t possessed. Some of the earlier stiffness returned to her. She became still under him. He hooked one finger into her waistband and tugged her flush against him, and crushed his mouth against hers, and she let him do it.

“What does this feel like for you?” he wondered aloud. He lifted his hand to trace her lips with the tips of his fingers.

Michael took a rare moment of deliberation before she answered. She kept her mouth pressed to his fingertips, speaking against his skin. “Much as it feels to you, I expect. Your nerve endings provide useful information. The sensation is... not unlike taking a vessel. It is novel.” She was quiet for a moment, then added: “It is not unpleasant.”

“That’s... good,” he managed.

“It is. Though you have unusual taste in prayers.”

“I could stop. If you wanted.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, mirth that took on shades of disbelief when he grinned back at her. She tightened the hand that was in his hair once again, quick, nearly playful, and draped the other arm across his shoulders behind his neck.

“You will do no such thing.” The arm around his shoulders flexed. She guided his head down to her shoulder, and ground her hips against his. His breathing broke, broke again, and he gasped against that place under her jaw where her pulse should have been but was not.

“Another,” she said, nearly as breathless.

“You want something more traditional?”

“I would know you, your interiority. Whatever you feel most demands to be heard.”

He set his lips against her throat, considering. Her skin was pliant, soft and yielding, and he moved past lips to scraping with the barest edge of his teeth. Felt the buzz of her underneath the veneer of humanity.

“... It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,” he started. He slid both hands over her hips. Dipped fingertips under her waistband. Pricked her skin with his fingernails. She startled, at the sensation, or the change in meter, or his choice of poem, he could not say. “I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it.”

Again she surprised him. “Books, art, religion, time,” she said, eyes slitted almost closed. She wasn’t looking at him, now, had turned her head away. “The visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or feared of hell, are now consumed.”

Abruptly speech deserted her. Sam leaned forward, pressed a kiss to the exposed ridge of her collarbone. Her eyes remained closed, her face turned from him. She bit her lower lip.

What did he want from this? He hadn’t gone into this encounter certain of the answer to that question, was no more sure now. But the shame and shock that had festered in him since Lucifer appeared had steadily abated in Michael’s presence. There was something in this for her—she'd said as much—but he suspected there was depth there she hadn’t made visible to him, or at least nuance to the desire.

What he was certain of was that with every touch, she unhistoried him; transformed his past into kindling for the burning future she commanded. She had spoken of a compromise they might, hypothetically, have reached. Maybe it was foolish to hope that she might want that, or something like it, as much as he did. But he didn’t want her to leave yet, either way. He wanted her to stay.

On impulse, he wrapped his arms around her waist and unseated her from his lap, swinging her back against the headboard. Their positions suddenly reversed, she looked at him seated between her knees with wide eyes full of earnest bewilderment.

Sam kissed the inside bend of her knee. “Realized I wasn’t doing it right,” he murmured. He stole a glance at her. Another kiss, an inch further up her leg. “You’re supposed to kneel. Sorry.”

At his third kiss, again further up the bared skin of her thigh, he heard her head clunk softly back against the headboard. She threaded her fingers back into his hair.

“You are without fault,” she said to him, or maybe just at him. “Provided you atone for your oversight.”

His mouth, traversing up her thigh, had reached the ragged edge of denim that demarcated the parts of Michael that Sam had seen and touched from those that still belonged only to the memory of the woman she wore. He wanted to see beneath it, wanted to know how much of the impossible creature in his arms and his bed was recognizable. What commonality might be found between woman and myth.

He wanted, he realized, to know her for herself. As she had made it clear that she wished (via the mechanism of this intimate, unexpected exchange) to know him.

His hand found the button of her shorts, and worked it until it popped free. But her hand fell over his. She looked down at him with placid eyes. And then she wore nothing at all.

It took his mind a stuttered instant to catch up, which clearly amused her. His hand, which had rested on denim, she now pressed onto the dip below her bellybutton where the velvet skin of her stomach gave way to soft black hair. His eyes raked up her body, recommitting it to memory: the pale spread of her breasts and the flushed brown nipples, the peaks of her ribs beneath rippling skin. The curve of her pelvic bones, the mole on her right hip: these were the same as he remembered them. But Madison’s body, beautiful as it was, had never pulled his gaze in like this. Had never entrapped him in her own personal gravity the way that Michael did.

“Tell me what you make of me, in this form.”

“I don’t know that I have the words you want,” he said, truthfully. “Show you instead?”

“... I’m amenable.”

Under the pressure of his hands her legs fell apart. Every time she yielded to him, every time he moved her, the part of his mind still staggered by insistent awe reminded him that it had only happened because she had allowed it. That there was no better indication that what he was doing was not only at her consent, but by her will, and that there was a small but vocal part of him that delighted in being the subject of that will.

He urged her to extend one of her legs beneath him, propping himself above it; the other he slung over his shoulder.

There seemed no preamble that would be suitable, apart from what had already passed between them. Still, if his intuition was to be believed, this was the first experience of such mortal intimacy that Michael would know for herself. His own first-time memories were all rushed, fumbling, teenaged things. It felt wrong, for that to be what he offered her.

And so he took his time. He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against her stomach. His lips skimmed along the top of her pubic bone, mapping the boundary between her structural hardness and the soft expanse of skin and muscle that overlaid it. He slid the fingers of one hand into her pubic hair, feeling the way it curled around them, rough-soft. Her own fingers tightened in his hair in return.

When he nudged his head back, they loosened again, and he took advantage of the renewed range of motion. His mouth dropped to the divot between her hip and leg, and he ran the flat of his tongue down it. Her skin here tasted more like he remembered of Madison’s body: still buzzing with power, but with none of the ozone sting that kissing her mouth had carried. It lacked the tang of salt that sweat would have given it, but if he hadn’t known what she was... well. It was better not to dwell on that.

Sam’s life, beset by storms as it had been, had set him running more often than he cared to dwell on. It was why he was here—in Oklahoma, apart from his brother, on his own—and why he found himself in this bed, now, with this creature of embodied primordial fire of creation spread beneath him, naked and wearing the face of a woman whose life he had taken with his own hands. Michael was not safe haven; it would have been a grave mistake to think of her that way. Yet he was drawn to her regardless, in a way that he thought might be similar—perhaps complementary—to the way she seemed to be drawn to him. If he were allowed to scald himself in the inferno of her, perhaps he would be more worthy of finding the shelter he sought.

Between her legs, the warmth that radiated from her dared him to try. “What was it you wanted from me, again?” he asked in a surge of boldness, his mouth pressed against her in a grin.

Though quiet, her voice had lost none of its command. “To understand you, within as without. Your interiority.”

He slid one finger inside of her.

She exhaled hard, though her nose. “Irreverence is unbecoming,” she said, but he thought he heard laughter in it.

For all that she had professed unfamiliarity with physical intimacy, her responses were as animal as if her body had been her own. He stroked inside of her, once, twice, and the wetness of her slicked against his palm. He leaned his head down, and licked small, light circles around her clit in time to the motions of his wrist.

Her laughter deserted her then, and he heard her take a breath, and then another. She drew them in time to his movements. He felt the beat of her pulse under his tongue, where before she had none; it kept pace with his own.

Sam was aware, distantly, of his own investment in the intimacy between them. His skin prickled with sweat, and with the electricity of touching her. Somewhere either here in dreams or in the world of waking, he was hard, an ache in the pit of his stomach and between his own cramping thighs. He ignored this. As they had come closer together, he had felt more distinctly the places her power insinuated itself into his mind. The way it spread out along his nerves. His experience of his own body seemed relevant only insofar as for what she might gain from it. He suspected that she would not prefer the immediacy of learning what his nerves had to teach her, were he to focus on himself.

So he focused instead on her. He extended another finger inside her, and then, when her body welcomed him, a third. The circling of his tongue became more focused, harder, a rhythm that he matched with his hand. He sucked more of her into his mouth, clit, labia, and her muscles spasmed around his fingers. With his other hand, he pinned her leg back hard against the sheets, bearing as much of his weight and strength down over her as he was able.

Her hips bucked against him, but he held her in place. And she let him do it.

He was under no illusions about his control over this situation. But Michael’s breath had turned ragged, and shaky, and when he dared to glance up at her she was staring down at him as though transfixed. She met his eyes for only a handful of seconds. In those seconds, he saw the emotion she had so carefully guarded slashed across her face like a wound. Her expression mirrored the one he thought he must have worn to see Madison’s face again, and Jessica’s.

Then her eyes shuttered. She shoved his head back down, and he wrote his apology with the tip of his tongue.

Her body clenched, hard, harder; her hands twisted in his hair. Panting. Pulse racing. She ground herself against his hands and his mouth, wet heat, friction. He would have moaned her name if he’d been able. As it was, he just moaned. Senseless noise, vibration, but he knew she understood it.

Michael came with a word on her lips in a language that should have shredded them both to pieces. He couldn’t have said what it was, that thing she reached for at her most open and vulnerable.

Although—if he were being honest—he could have offered a guess.

He did not stop immediately, but gradually slowed. The ringing in his ears and the movements of his hands tapered off in tandem, until he pulled himself away from her. He leaned back on his heels. He remained there, between her knees, silent, as though he were waiting for acknowledgement or dismissal.

Her pulse stopped first. He saw the moment it ceased to flutter in her throat. Then her breath, the rise and fall of her ribs tapering off, her chest going still. She sat up, her face returned to the cold confidence she’d worn when she entered the room. As she moved forward to meet him, her legs folded underneath her, and her movements regained some of their earlier, pointed stiffness.

She grabbed the bedsheet, and then his hand, still wet. Turning it delicately between her own, she dried first the hand, and then, with soft strokes of the cloth, his face. She held his chin cupped in her palm for several seconds after she let the sheet fall away.

Then she kissed him, once, mouth closed, like a blessing.

“Was it enough?” Sam asked, his voice shot. “Did you get what you wanted?”

Michael stepped away from him. She smiled.

“Your eagerness is endearing,” she replied. Her eyes turned away from him, toward the horizon she always seemed to be searching for. He wondered what she saw there. “Yes. I always get what I want.”

She sounded smaller than she had earlier, he thought. As though she had not found something, but had become more lost. She turned her back to him. Under him, around him, the dream began to evaporate. He called out to her, “When will I see you again?”

She didn’t reply.

He awoke to the sun on his face, and every muscle in his body sore. As though he’d slept wrong; as though he’d spent weeks curled atop his bed, grieving, starving. Wanting.

The burn of a distant star still thrumming under his skin, he rolled to his feet.

A shower, he thought. As cold as he could get it.

#michael spn #sam winchester #michael/sam #spn #fanfic #god they're weird

11 notes · View notes

konako · 2 years

Note

this is about the evil!red masterpiece you recently posted. you said to ask about it at our own risk… pleeeease please please gift us with your genius

OOKAY. Thank you for enabling me. Look, I— It went like this, okay—

I have multiple versions of an Evil!Red living in my head, not one cent of rent ever paid. (Not to get started on this post, as it takes tremendous restraint, but Red is a character that could have a delicious evil side—!!!!) And each version fits in a different AU, fits in a different ship, a different dynamic and a different story.

I've got the Evil!Red that Hunter!Belle was hired to kill, but couldn't. She even has a tragic backstory, poor evil thing...

I have ANOTHER version of Evil!Red as the familiar to The Witch Regina and her Coven.

But then, this one storyline that I started drawing for, without really having a clear picture of it in my head — just another fun Evil!Red concept, now to fit with Regina, The Evil Queen.

This mysterious verse that feeds off the dark corners of my skull. Also, owing me rent money...

After a couple drawings, I thought I saw it something forming, a shape emerging from the fog. Hear me out:

It's Red Queen, mostly as you know their stories individually, in the Enchanted Forest, but the corruption arc is Regina's, by Red's hand. Truly, honestly, with her aid at most. Regina had that dark impulse before, it wasn't all Red. Wait, no. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Regina's story starts off the same.

Daniel, young love, promising romance, her entire life ahead of her, dreaming big dreams, making plans to run into the freedom that rightfully hers. In the background, the insatiable monster that is Cora's oppression, worsened by Henry Sr.'s passive enabling of that abuse. Saving young Snow, meeting Leopold, Cora arranging that marriage, forcing her will onto Regina, killing Daniel, trapping Regina in a life she never wanted for herself. Regina being a prisoner to her mother's wishes, controlled and intimidated by Cora's powerful magic, without any agency or strength. What you know from canon, the good old canon.

She's not yet learned magic, however, though she's sensing that presence inside — growing along with her grief, anger and frustration. She can't control it yet, she hasn't been taught, she's young, still hopeful that her Mother will see the misery in her daughter's eyes and change her ways. Useless hope, helpless. Cora mistreats Regina, everyday. Regina's suffocating, close to breaking...

She doesn't summon Rumpelstiltskin. This is where the story goes a different way. She doesn't call for him. He is not her teacher. She does it all alone. Well... Someone else gives her that push, of course. But we're not there yet.

In her loneliness and despair, she finds comfort in the refuge of some old books of her mother. Whispers of magic, a strange call in the hissing of those pages. Spell, curses, potions, magic. The kind her mother used to destroy her. If only she was as powerful...

Regina retreats further into that fantasy. The allure of so much potential, of what her life could be, beneath her fingertips, written in ink. She reads it all, so her mind will wander to a different life. To escape this miserable one. To escape Cora, Leopoldo, young Snow — No, Snow has grown so much. She's a woman now. Regina didn't have the heart to hate her. Not even the heart to hate Leopold. All her hatred is locked inside still, rotting her bones, day by day.

And one of those days, she decides to go for a ride. Snow is growing chatty and entitled in a way that's become annoying, and Leopold won't stop talking about his dead wife, the perfect mother to his perfect daughter — Regina can't stand that life she's been shackled to. She gets on her horse and she rides with the wind, hoping her thoughts will leave her, falling behind in the speed, as her tears often do.

But then, as they ride closer to the forest line, her horse becomes agitated. Tall trees seem to be hiding something. Regina can't see it, but her horse has certainly sensed it. It grows so afraid, so erratic, Regina has to step down to calm it — that has never happened before. It's when she finally hears it. A branch snapping, the rustling of the bushes. The horse's cries are so high and sharp, Regina wants to cover her ears, but she can't let go of the reigns, or it will run away and leave her there empty-handed, to face whatever is coming from the forest. She holds on to it as best as she can, as the sounds of the animal's terror pierce her ears.

Red steps out of the shadows, tall as the trees around, her long hair making her appear taller — and the glowing eyes, molten gold. She's not human. Regina's certain of that. Regina has no idea what she is, but by the state of the animal beside her, Red is dangerous. There's something beneath that pale skin that feed her eyes that amber color. Something that makes her biggest, bravest, strongest horse cower in fear. Something Regina can't name, but can feel, in the way the hairs in her arm stand up, and how her breath gets stuck in her throat. Fear. She feels it too. So quickly reduced to a fearful animal, like the one she's holding on to, frozen before the primal threat that slowly approaches.

For some reason, Regina survives that encounter.

Red, even famished as she was, has the mind to spare her life. Regina lives to see the dawn break. She will later wonder what made Red reconsider that meal.

They talk. For some reason — something happens here, I can't see it yet through that fog, give me time —, but for some reason, someone says something first, and that barrier is broken, and they talk. And they bond.

You see, Red also has experience with a controlling mother and a life thrust upon her, despite her wishes for a different existence. Red knows what Regina is feeling. So, to not break that bond, — strange and unexpected as it is — Red refrains from eating her. Something simple, really. One normally wouldn't think twice about it, but for Red, it required great willpower. She's also considerate enough not to eat her horse, so that Regina has a way to ride home. Red will find something else to eat, it's no problem. This one woman, however, she'd like to see again...

And they do. They see each other again. They make a habit out of it. They find a nice place in that forest (again, WIP!!!), and once a month, they meet and they talk.

Until Regina finds Red bleeding, on the path to their spot. It seems Red collapsed before she got there, with just enough strength to pull herself up, sitting in the blood-soaked mud, her back against a tree. Regina runs to her, dropping everything behind; oh, there goes the tears, too — But Red holds up her hands. She's still getting used to being touched in a soft way, it seems.

Regina's breath gets caught in her throat once more. This time, it's at the sight — the very first sight — of the true color of Red's eyes. Regina's has only ever seen her irises burning with the molten gold, sometimes a sudden flash making the yellow even brighter, but never... She's never seen Red look so... terribly, worryingly, beautifully human. Bright green eyes, almost as bright as the gold Red tends to favor. Fascinating, a hue between green and blue — or is it lost to a gray shade. Regina won't make the slightest comment. Not yet. She's known Red for time enough to note she's apparently self-conscious about her humanity. Complimenting her beautiful green, blue, gray eyes will be of no help. Not now, when they have more pressing concerns — like the unmistakably red blood spilling down her side.

Regina asks what happened, Red says she was challenged by another wolf in Anita's pack. She won that fight, she says, with a breathless smile, flashing the sharp canines that scare Regina less and less each time. Red curses, a new word Regina will archive for later, as she tells her how the man's claws tore a hole over her ribs. Regina winces at the thought.

It was her first time ever pulling a werewolf apart, Red adds, her smile now gone. She tells Regina it felt good, as satisfying as the feeling of ripping humans limb for limb. Regina is not sure that's the truth. Maybe Red is trying to distract her from the blood; or herself, from the pain. Tales won't do now, Regina needs to make sure Red survives this wound.

Regina apologizes for not knowing a healing spell yet. She's learning! She's trying to learn. She lit a candle once. She's getting better. If Red could only wait, when, if Regina's magic is ever strong enough, she can help them both—!!

But Red calms her. "I have magic of my own, you know?" Red says, as she shows Regina the wound that's slowly sewing itself back together. "I'll live. Unfortunately." Another smile.

Regina relaxes a bit, but the feeling in her gut stays; that terrifying thought that she could have lost Red that very night. Red takes note of that concern. Regina's sincere intention to help will stay with her, too. Another seed, planted there, to grow into something new.

Red learns about Regina's potential at magic and her anger at Cora, as their nights go on. Each encounter in more detail. They take each other's pain to heart, their miseries memorized.

And one day, in the darkest hour of the night, Red shows up in Regina's room, having followed the scent she's also perfectly memorized. A tall silhouette against the bright moon, climbing up her balcony. So smoothly, Regina heard not a sound, shaken awake by that feeling in her stomach, whenever Red is near. She's startled when she sees the familiar golden eyes blink against the darkness, drawing closer with each step. Closer enough to take her in, crawling up and down her body in a sort of hunger Regina is not sure she's seen before. — Red promised her she would never eat her. Was that a lie?

But as Red's eyes land on her lip, Regina knows she's seen it. Gods, Red must have smelled the blood, before she even stepped on the royal grounds. The cut in her lip, that just now has stopped bleeding. A deep mark left by Cora's ring — a sharp reminder to never speak up against her mother, a lesson that will stare back at Regina every time she looks in the mirror. If only she knew a spell to make it disappear. She's only now learned how to make it stop hurting...

She says so to Red. So Red wouldn't worry. Red tends to worry about her. It's strange. Regina wonders if Red ever worried about anyone else before, or if she's pouring it all in Regina, on her very first try. Maybe she is. Maybe Regina doesn't mind it. It feels good. Even if that worry glows in Red's eyes like blood-thirst. Yet another shade she's fascinated by.

Red's hand brushes her cheek, her thumb careful not to touch the new scar. Regina doesn't flinch. Red has learned to be mindful of her strength by now — she wasn't used to being gentle with breakable, frail humans. But with Regina, Red is her softest self.

Red's voice is low.

"Would you like me to kill her for you?"

---

NOW. LOOK. LOOK. This is what eventually happens, after tons of drama and a lot of story I have yet to come up with:

Red's darkness, coupled with Regina's anger, is what truly corrupts Regina, pushing her down the abyss of her Evil Queen persona. Red becomes Regina's loyal companion, and their romance is BLOODY AND DARK AND MURDEROUS AND WILD AND BOLD.

Look, give me time, I'll come up with something more to give it texture. For now, have this!!

#red queen #idk i need a name for this one #RQ HC #that's not it #that's my tag for red queen headcanons

21 notes · View notes

tangentgrammar · 2 years

Text

Dirk Strider: The Ideal Pain in My Fuckin’ Ass

By tangentGrammar

A jackass with too much big brain for the rest of us peasants (class structure pun intended) and playwright by the name of William Shakespeare once pontificated that “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players,” a point which we’ll get back to later when it becomes relevant, at least as relevant as it can be considering the fact that this whole thing is a meditation on some fictional jackass from a webcomic that keeled the entire hell over like, what, 6 years ago? Shit went full Titanic. I mean, Celine Dion herself showed up to lament over a bunch of stupid rich people dying (surprise surprise, the sun still ’rose’ the next day, pun intended) from an iceberg that, in this metaphor, either represents ‘canon’ and its ability to ‘sink ships,’ as it were, (or as it weren’t, whatever sinks your boat) OR the ouroborosian nature of internet fandom culture, enjoying and not shutting even a singular hell up about a thing to the point of smothering both it and the surrounding environment with their borderline sexual obsession of aforementioned thing. Actually, it’s probably both. And yes, the irony that I’m making commentary about fandom despite being a part of that fandom doesn’t escape me. I digress, because of course the hell I do, and if you don’t like it then don’t even pretend like you were able to follow Homestuck at all. My digressions are the tame rodent chihuahua offshoot equivalent of wolves in comparison to what that orange-skinned author is capable of (as opposed to the orange-skinned president, both equally inflammatory but on opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum, and if I gotta fuckin tell you which side Hussie is supposed to be on because it’s not obvious to you, then I call into question why you continue to read a critique of Dirk Strider written by some jackass, who, for all intents and purposes, might as well be Dirk Strider).

Let’s start with hobbies. Everybody who has the capacity to give a shit has them, myself included. But that’s the Strider conundrum: they pretend they don’t have hobbies out of crippling fear of no longer being a cool guy, because as we all know, you can’t be cool and also enjoy life. That shit is for sissies. See, that ‘aloof cool guy’ shtik would work on an artificial simulacra of said cool guy, wherein the simulacra’s distinct and genuine inability to care (on account of it being programmed such that the ability to care wasn’t ever a consideration) did not hinder its ability to process, on account of its spiritless and inherently inhuman nature. But that’s just it: Dirk isn’t an artificial, inhuman simulacra of Dirk. Infinitely numerous timelines and iterations of Dirk be damned! Dirk Strider is Dirk Strider’s timeline’s own Dirk– he’s the original. He is not a simulacra, and the only ‘versions of Dirk’ that are simulacras are Lil’ Cal, Sawtooth, Squarewave, Lil’ Hal, and Brobot, all of which were made by Dirk, except for Lil’ Cal, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s the sunnuvabitch what that corrupts him. Point is, Dirk is Dirk is Dirk is Dirk, and if he’d shut his own hell up and realize how much he enjoyed making those simulacras he would realize that that means he has a hobby, and by the transitive property makes him a human being with the ability to give a shit. Self-loathing? Elimin8ed. Semi-subconsious narrative that he’s a bad person that he is constantly justifying? Gone, motherfucker, reduced to atoms. Hotel? Tri-fuckin-vago.

Dirk’s attempts at self-actualization are incredibly noble, and his character arc is complete when he finally relinquishes his attempt at controlling the external narrative using dominance (and in so doing, roleplaying the Lord class) and passive service of others (roleplaying the Knight class), and starts attempting to control his own personal narrative by helping his friends progress emotionally rather than narratively. Where he falls short is in continually justifying his narrative that he’s not a good person. In [S] Unite Synchronization, he does what a Prince of Heart should be expected to do, which is destroy, both through the idea of self and the idea of self itself: he does so by bypassing the everloving shit out of everyone's emotional turmoil in a way that suggests that he refuses to allow his friends to drag out their entry into Sburb the same way the beta kids did, but he does so in a way that doesn’t command the respect due of a leader, friend, or even fellow human being. His method, while still effective at fulfilling his classpect’s role, was overly-flashy stoneface’d Tony Hawk-esque bullshit at best and aggressive macro-management of his friends at worst. He denied Roxy the chance to prove herself and revive Jane, he denied Jane the opportunity to figure her own shit out, and he forced Jake to reverse-Dirkapitate him via clearly homoerotic kiss. Had Dirk been a healthier individual, he might have actively destroyed his friends’ negative perceptions of themselves (by say, giving them task direction so they don’t have time to wallow in self-pity) and helped them through their troubles in a way that still ultimately served to his benefit by way of entering the game, gathering hella sicknasty amounts of Grist, et cetera et gogdamn cetera.

Shakespeare’s claim that the world’s a stage is only valid when you account for his perspective: the world being a stage makes sense to him because his world literally was a stage. To him, that was a way of saying ‘we worry too much about our own destinies when our scripts are already written. All that is required of us is to do as we will,’ but to an unhealthy person, the world being nothing but a stage is incredibly nihilistic; if the script is already written and the actual act of existence is basically a formality, what the hell is the point of giving a shit about anything?? Existence becomes a fuckin basketball, bouncing through space-time at the whims of some unseen Shaquille O’Neal; impressive to watch but ultimately pointless, as all basketballs are. For this part of the analysis, I’m assuming that Dirk has read that quote from Shakespeare before, as I believe it to be in-character, and that even if he hasn’t, he canonically, factually sees himself as a character rather than a person. I mean, he is just a character, but his attempts at acknowledging this mirror real-world neuroses, the likes of which people who watch too much reality tv exhibit by becoming upset at the lack of interpersonal drama in their own lives. Dirk has three things going against him in this sense. One, he lacks the perspective of an actor. Two, he watches too much anime. And three, Dirk Strider is not healthy. In lacking the actor’s perspective, knowing the world’s a stage leads to the aforementioned nihilism. In watching so much anime and identifying so much with characters, simulacras in their own right of real, actual people, he mimics their attitudes and begins believing himself to be a simulacra of a real person. And in being unhealthy, we see the previous two factors compound and come crashing down like the Great Wave off Kanagawa (fantastic painting, by the way) upon our titular Strider’s poor little soul.

Even if he had the prior two afflictions, a healthy Dirk would make the conscious decision to do something with himself, and in so doing, be able to control his narrative and start gatekeep-gaslight-girlbossing his way to the top like the adorkable badass he is, which wouldn’t ya know it, is exactly what BrainGhost Dirk does. Dirk’s ‘redemption arc’ was in accepting that he could control himself and only himself, and that everything and everyone else were only subject to suggestion rather than domination.

Consider this case closed like the shutters of the buildings in a Wild-Western town during high noon as two men at odds approach the town square from opposite directions, tumbleweed tossing about ominously in the wind, wandering as wayward as whoever survives the inevitable duel is destined to.

TG out, 8itches.

#homestuck #dirk strider #hs dirk #dirk homestuck #essay #character analysis

4 notes · View notes

cavecry · 2 years

Text

evil!Goldenflower au goes something like this (keep in mind I haven’t read Bluestar’s book or tpb in years so my memory is a bit rusty lmao)

Goldenflower is born absolutely tiny (bc TC values big, beefy cats) and resents her brother Lionheart for being bigger than her and “stealing the spotlight.” as apprentices she attaches herself to Tigerclaw bc he and Lionheart don’t really get along, plus Tigerclaw is also big and talented so maybe some of his status could rub off on her? she finds out somehow (maybe through Whitestorm? idr who else is their age) that Tigerclaw has feelings for her and it goes to her head. she starts manipulating him to get him to stay loyal to her and make her look good for the clan. yada yada, Rusty joins TC, Tigerclaw is being evil shady but now he’s paranoid about pleasing Goldenflower. during this time Tigerclaw and Goldenflower have their first litter, a singlet called Swiftkit ( ;} )

at some point idk, Tigerclaw’s rope finally breaks. they have a public fight that turns into a breakup except oops! Goldenflower is pregnant again and now Tigerclaw looks like a jerk in front of everyone. Goldenflower is pissed and won’t come out of the nursery, meanwhile Tigerclaw is very clearly spiralling despite Whitestorm and Darkstripe’s attempts to support him. Tigerclaw gets exiled for trying to murder Bluestar in her den and goes to SC and becomes Tigerstar

most of Tigerstar’s SC stuff would probably be the same, except Darkstripe has to be more careful when he sneaks Bramblekit and Tawnykit out to meet their dad, since Goldenflower is still angry at him for breaking up with her. she’s distraught when Tawnypaw runs away to SC and, to her, chooses Tigerstar’s side. she starts trying to manipulate Bramblepaw too, in part bc he looks so much like his dad and she doesn’t want him to “betray” her too. when Tigerstar sets up the dog attack, he isn’t expecting Swiftpaw to be there instead of Bluestar or, better yet, Goldenflower — this causes him to seriously snap and pursue his TigerClan goals, though this time it’s less about wanting to rule the forest (though that’s still his cover story) and more about destroying TC specifically. Goldenflower gets extra protective over her remaining son and hates Fireheart even more for (a) being freaked out by Bramblepaw and (b) being a (mostly) respected deputy despite not embodying TC ’s standards

in the climax of tpb, I can see either of two endings working out for T&G’s arcs: they kill each other instead of Tigerstar getting oneshotted by Scourge, OR Tigerstar dies and Goldenfloower runs away to become a rogue. I could see rogue!Goldenflower harassing the clans with a posse of followers (maybe Brokenstar/Tigerstar’s former followers?), maybe trying to get access to Brambleclaw and Tawnypelt specifically. maybe she could become like, the Queen of the Rogues or something fun like that. once Tigerstar and Goldenflower are both dead though, I can see another couple of options: either they both go to the DF, OR Tigerstar goes to the DF but Goldenflower goes to StarClan (bc why not make StarClan actually corrupt given all the awful stuff they’ve passively/actively enabled in canon)

if they both go to the DF, I can see them sort of splitting it down the middle between them and forcing everyone there to choose a side like they’re getting a divorce LMAO (imagining Goldenflower and Mapleshade girlbossing together). they basically almost tear the DF apart trying to get back at each other and recruit armies of living cats to fight each other, to the point where StarClan and living clans get involved and hello oots arc. it would probably have to end with their spirits being destroyed for good. if Goldenflower gets to be in StarClan though, I can so easily imagine an inter-dimensional war lead by T&G with the living cats stuck in the middle. maybe Goldenflower could have a trial like Ashfur before she got in, and Swiftpaw could insist on letting her in. either way she rallies StarClan against the DF in her quest for revenge on Tigerstar for “ruining her life” — meanwhile Tigerstar has also rallied the DF against StarClan in his quest for revenge on Goldenflower. their spirits are still destroyed but maybe in this version the rest of the DF and StarClan are destroyed with them [eyes emoji]

#wc #quin rambles #alternate universe #tigerclaw #goldenflower #this got long

3 notes · View notes

caprica99 · 3 years

Text

Shadow and Bone rant, because I need it

Shadow and Bone has some incredible potential, both the books and the show, but neither actually lives up to it.

Alina could have been interesting. Cartographer is a rare profession for fictional characters, but in the books/show she's just a beginner (at 17/20 it's understandable). Make her at least 25 with 9 years of experience in the army, give her a promotion with subordinates she's responsible for and you would get a more interesting character who saw some serious shit in the army, acts like a soldier, and knows responsibility. (And maybe wants to stop the war at all cost, utilizing the Fold maybe.*wink, wink*)

It bothered me that we never saw her using cartography this profession that makes her unique for reaching her goals. In the show, she has dreams about the stag. It would have been interesting to see HER figuring out the whereabouts of the stag by using the stag's surroundings like mountains, specific types of trees, topography, etc. Work smarter, not harder.

Diana Bishop suffers from the same passiveness in the first book of the All Souls trilogy, but she actively uses her science historian background and those passages are the most interesting parts of her POV. Alina's interest in drawing and geography would give her a unique personality, and made her relatable to many (see ADoW and history nerds). Many YA heroines have a specific and useful skillset: Katniss-archery, Clary Fray-drawing, etc. Sadly, her entire personality is running away with Mal.

Mal's character feels pointless to me. The story depicts an oppressed minority group with special powers, and their struggles in the world, the heroine and the antagonist are both part of the said minority group, and he's constantly shown to be a bigot against the Grisha, so what makes him so important to the plot? His tracking skills? Give the job to a no-name tracker and I wouldn't miss him.

At least the show made him more likable, but Archie and Jessie still lack romantic chemistry. However his chemistry with his friends Mikhail and Dubrov was spot on, I really liked it. They showed life as a simple otkazat'sya soldier on the front, and their death was painful to watch. I thought that his friend's death would make a bigger impact on Mal, him wanting to get revenge on the fjerdans and end the war at all cost, and saying that maybe Kirigan's plan actually makes sense would make an interesting narrative. (They are at war dammit, there's no black and white only grey.)

Mal and Alina don't act like soldiers in a war-torn country, they act like American teenagers, and it's annoying. The General and Ivan are the only ones who act as soldiers in a 3 front war. When the villain shows the most responsibility in your story you should rewrite your heroes completely, or make the villain your hero.

The show is better than the books. It's a rare phenomenon but it is something everyone agrees upon. To me, the first book reads like a draft the author forgot to expand. The worldbuilding, the Grisha, and the characters were a perfect base to an original fantasy universe, but it all falls flat. The show made it richer by introducing multiple POVs and giving the actors more leeway (Ben Barnes ladies and gentlemen). But in the end, they had to stick to the books.

This is incredibly confusing to me because we have numerous fanfictions about Alina staying at the Little Palace, embracing her Grisha side, helping the Darkling because his plan makes sense, or changing his plan by coming up with a better one, or having dark!Alina etc... Clearly, this is what book fans wanted: giving Alina agency, make her realize that she had to work with the Darkling because she's Grisha too and they have the same goals but have different methods, let her be Professor X to Alexander's Magneto, ending the corrupt and incompetent Lantsov line, anything would have been better than taking Baghra's words at face value and running off.

Change I like: the whole West-Ravka storyline, it made the General decision understandable. Zlatan sold Grisha to the fjerdans, wanted to kill Alina and his actions could have led to a civil war, Kirigan only acted as a general of his time (not 21 century guys, we are talking about the unforgiving 19 century) and besides we only see the destruction of Zlatans army (BTW they were ready to kill everyone on the skiff) and not the whole city.

Change I don't like: making Alina half Shu. I'm not completely against it, but it was poorly executed. The racism Alina faces overshadows the Grisha-hate, rather than complementing it. Alina acts like being half Shu is somehow worse than being Grisha, eventough there are literal Holocausts going on against Grisha in two neighbouring countries, slavery in another, and the show never addresses it. This is the biggest problem with her character, she never embraces being Grisha, sides with the muggles, and makes her mission to kill the only person who stands between Grisha and persecution.

Would have been good: the show could have made little 5 minute scenes depicting the plight of Grisha in other countries. Either at the beginning or the end of every episode.

Episode 2: the Ice Court

Episode 3: the Shu concentration camps with the experimenting

Episode 4: slavery in Kerch

Episode 5: the Wandering Isle with consuming grisha blood

Episode 6: the Demon in the Woods storyline

Episode 7: Luda+Aleksander

And now... The Darkling/ Aleksander Morozov/ General Kirigan: the most interesting character in the entire series.

In the first half of SaB he was depicted as every soldier's dream general. Sitting and eating with his men, fighting side by side with them, constantly checking on his troops while other generals prefer to attend court. But in the second half, he transforms into a Mustache Twirling Villain TM and makes rather OOC decisions throughout the trilogy. He could have been a generic villain from the start, but why make him then a compelling character with understandable motivations?

In the books, I understood his motivations, but in the show, he was completely right. His backstory shows that he tried peaceful tactics but those never worked out. The only thing that worked against his enemies was power and violence. The price of hesitance was Luda's life (I'm willing to bet they were married). The Fold was actually a mistake born from desperation. He spent centuries in hiding, seeing his people persecuted. Even with the Little Palace and the Second Army Grisha are considered second-class citizens, they can't hold properties. He has to walk the fine line between usefulness and being a threat. He has to bow to incompetent Kings who don't give a shit about the state of the country. If Alina had to go through so much how would she end up? Because it's a miracle that Aleksander still has it in him to fight for the Grisha.

Many bring up Nikolai Lantsov as the Darklings foil ( or Diet Darkling as @ambitious-witch calls him) to show there is an alternative to Aleksander, but it's wrong. Because Nikolai was never part of an oppressed minority group, never had to fear centuries of persecution, he's an actual prince, it's easy to not be radicalized with his background.

Bonus: If Bardugo wanted to create a fictional world with tsarist Russia as a base, the least she could have done is to open a Wikipedia page or a dictionary for the correct names and terms. Starkov is a man's name: Alina Starkova is the correct form. Ilya Morozov, Aleksander Morozov, and Baghra Morozova would be the correct forms.

EDIT: They could have shown the building of the Little Palace and the start of the Second Army. I wanted to see the normal life at the Little Palace before Alina came along, little Grisha enjoying their powers, their reaction if the Darkling comes to see their training (I headcanon he visits the lessons at least once a year), the other teachers, and their reaction to Alina. Alina in canon is good with kids, maybe if she had spent time with little Grisha, she could have embraced her powers sooner. Having met with foreigners (Fjerdan, or Shu) and hearing their gruesome accounts of the foreign treatment of the Grisha would made her willing to fight for their future.

#shadow and bone #sab netflix #sab spoilers #grishaverse #anti leigh bardugo #the darkling #alexander kirigan #aleksander kirigan #aleksander morozova #alexander morozova #alina starkov #shadow and bone cast #shadow and bone netflix #darklina #alina x darkling #malyen oretsev

835 notes · View notes

scribbly-dee · 3 years

Text

Inspired by this post

I adore corruption arcs, so I graded how well the non-archivist characters would have damned humanity if they had been the archivist.

Sasha James 11/10, would be an ideal archivist, this plus her height is probably why the stranger monster targeted her before she could peak

I have a soft spot for any au that knows Sasha has never seen a brain cell in her life and that any unhinged!Sasha au is really just a regular Sasha au. Picture it with me. Sasha and Jon have parallel archivist tracks, until Sasha (my beloved show off) decides: you know what would make me more efficient at snooping? Becoming a Human Google. And things accelerate. The Web doesn't even need to bother with subtly magic lighters, it slaps all 14 marks on her at once by pulling up next to Sasha in a windowless van with "free secrets 👍" written on the side.

After the Unknowing, Sasha takes over the institute from Elias instead of Martin and Peter. With Tim dead, Jon in a coma, Martin lonely-snatched, Melanie compulsively homicidal, Daisy in the coffin, and Basira on autopilot, she quickly bonds with Rosie, the ultimate nosiness enabler. Sasha is a fully marked archivist for a good long while, but doesn't start the apocalypse right away because she's eager to read ALL the ominous notes Elias left, so the watcher's crown statement is in her to-be-read pile. When the apocalypse starts (Rosie: "Hey, Sasha, I just read something extra fucked up that Elias wrote, wanna see?" Sasha: "God yes."), she books it to become the pupil with Rosie as her anchor. Mayhapse an anchor-archivist polycule with Archivist Jon and Martin? Mayhapse Jon is just a normal eye avatar here and deeply invested in all of Sasha's eyepocalypse statements, so it's Sasha and her plus-three? Mayhapse it's a race across the eyepocalypse wasteland between Archivist Sasha and Archivist Jon to usurp Jonah and become the pupil?

Tim Stoker 2/10 dude's here for a good time, not a long time

The only way I see this working is if Elias disguises not-stranger clues as circus related so Tim is motivated to investigate. Otherwise, his archival assistants are way more curious than him and disobey his direct orders to 🍹chill🏝. Jon, Sasha, and Martin inadvertently bring marks home to him like cats bring home dead birds. He asserts his agency when he decides the best course of action? Actually? Just blow up the archives. This unfortunately puts him in a false sense of security, and Elias makes him read the watcher's crown statement by cat fishing him on grindr and sending the ritual as a dm mid conversation.

Daisy Tonner - 9/10 archivist, would have started doomsday before she was at the archivist job long enough to use her PTO

Daisy already had a lot of experience hunting down fear-entity-related people in sectioned cases, which means she possibly canonically already has all the marks from just hunting avatars who use their powers in self defense. The reason she lost one point is because she's too much of a jock to read, only nerds are culpable to watcher crown statements, so this would be the only delay but oh what a delay it will be.

Melanie King - 7/10 archivist, points awarded for achieving her breakthroughs by smashing her head against a wall until she literally breaks through, points deducted for doing so in full clown makeup.

If Jon got a handful of marks by just asking anoying questions in the same room as an avatar, imagine how much faster Melanie would get marks by bringing her trademark Chaotic Brat personality on fear entity investigations. The apocalypse would have started in like two seasons: one season to hire her off the streets and establish shakey, complex relationships with her new assistants (Jon and Sasha put in the time with the institute but were passed over on this promotion for some random YouTuber (plus they're tighter with Tim and Martin, so proletarian solidarity against the boss)).

Then a second season to stab every mark and get stabbed in return. Melanie would blitz through all 14 marks because what precious little impulse control she starts with is slowly replaced with slaughter juice. One fun moral ambiguity to explore could be if Melanie tries to use her new, dangerous Eye/Slaughter powers to revive her reputation and platform in the supernatural community now that she can, ya know, identify supernatural things for the first time ever. Does she acknowledge her entire career up to her hospital episode apparently only investigated fake sightings? A better question to ask is whether Basira, Tim, and Jon ever let her live down how Ghost Hunt UK's professional dignity was contingent on the legitimacy of her sCiEnTiFiC gHoSt eQuIpMeNt in those episodes, so the temperature spikes set to dramatic music were well and truly just temperature spikes and dramatic music. Sasha found a clip of that music playing as Melanie narrates "it's a message... from the other side..." and made it as her text tone.

Also, it would be hilarious if Melanie tried to kill Jonah on sight in the panopticon, once again botched assassination attempt number 1,963,538, and then Jon quietly snuck in to finish the job on his first try just like in canon.

Jon: "What, like it's hard?"

Basira Hussain 3/10 archivist, her eye alignment manifests as office gossip, like a normal person

Basira has the most formidable super power of all: the power to nope tf out of any conversation or plan she wants. She therefore would probably take 10x longer to start the apocalypse than any other archivist because her fatal flaw is refusal to directly engage with a lot of personally difficult things (like the slaughter bullet surgery she organized, Daisy In General, etc). The marks will be slow going if she resists putting her safety on the line or invests time in making good plans (which is smart, but unhelpful for dooming humanity). She would for sure still get marked and end the world because once she's convinced of a plan (aka Elias convinces her of a plan), she's ruthlessly efficient. So I'd stay out of her way that last year or two, she marks the entities right back at them.

Martin Blackwood 2/10 archivist, considering a prerequisite for creepy eye avatar staring is the ability to make eye contact.

S1 Archivist Martin would probably dote too much on the employees under him to be hugely susceptible to Elias' isolation-dependant manipulation. Any progress Martin inadvertently achieves toward the watcher's crown goal would have to be contingent on it helping his loved ones, which is perfect fuel for a "corrupted by good intentions" arc. This would be key because Martin has superb bullshit and manipulation detection, making the marks are tricky but not impossible to orchistrate considering Jon can't stay put in a safe corner for 10 minutes and Martin's mother would refuse to stay with him where she's safe from avatar threats.

Imagine the petty drama when Jon and Sasha learn he got the promotion they wanted because he lied on his CV.

Other than that, Martin would be even worse about pit stops on the apocalypse road trip than Jon because his Kill Bill mode would have no off switch. Does Archivist!Martin and his anchor Jon ever reach the panopticon? Eventually, but not until after they lose points for significantly reducing the apocalypse fear quantity. Would Annabelle survive to deliver her cryptic MaCHiNAtIoNs and achieve the Web's goal? Hard No, additional point reduction for neutralizing the multiverse invasion. Points potentially earned back if Martin's Web connection is strong enough to come up with the multiverse invasion plan on his own, though.

Georgie Barker 4/10, as a fearless coward, all the fear she feeds to the entities would be khaki flavored. They'd get their apocalypse, but they probably wouldn't enjoy the meal.

Similar to Basira, Georgie has the super power to Fuck This Shit I'm Out. She would overall be a subpar humanity damning archivist; a major archivist success factor of Jon's is that he has enough affective empathy to be afraid with every statement giver he reads, so when Jon archives a statement, he unintentionally contributes to the fear soup seasoning. Combined with how Georgie doesn't want anything to do with entity drama, so any corruption specific to the watcher's crown would stagnate. Even her casual exposition conversations would go like

Georgie: "I've connected no dots."

Melanie: "you've connected a lot of dots??"

Georgie: "I've connected shit all dots."

The reason she gets one more point than Basira is because Georgie's fatal flaw is the passive observer quality the Eye tried to stoke in Jon. Her level of engagement oscillates between two extremes, impulsive over commitment and judging from a distance. This would probably lead her to geting involved just long enough for her involvement to become irreversible, at which point she would try to cut that shit out of her life after it's trapped her. She'd linger, barricading herself on the margins of this problem as the marks that are targeted at her slowly tally up until boom. Apocalypse is on and she only half understands what's happening.

Georgie would wander around an apocalypse hellscape confused, but vibes and physical health fully intact. Anchor!Melanie would have quite the emotional journey starting with Georgie on that pedestal Melanie placed her, and ending with a slaughter avatar stabbing the person who convinced her to work on her slaughter inclination.

#the magnus archives #tma #jonathan sims #jon sims #martin blackwood #basira hussain #daisy tonner #melanie king #Georgie Barker #Tim Stoker #sasha james

120 notes · View notes

icefirevegito · 2 years

Text

Here Is Some MafiaVerse Designs. meet The MafiaVerse DreamTale Twins(+Passive)

MafiaVerse Au Facts for DreamTale Twins:

• Much Of MafiaVerse Is Completely Both Canon And Fanon(Good Fanon Not Bad Fanon)At the Same Time

• Dream Couldn't Touch Nightmare Or Negativity Because Of His Canon reason, But When He Was In the MafiaVerse Lab, Science Sans And W.D Gaster Whipped up A Formula/Experiment That Can Let Dream Touch And Go To Au's With Negativity. he Can Even Touch Nightmare Now Even If the Negativity Is Like Acid When He Touches Nightmare.

•Nightmare Part Canon And Fanon Is That: He Doesn't Kill Nobody For Negativity, He Just absorb The Negativity When they are Alive.

•Nightmare Can Lower His Negativity If it Weakens Some Of His Team Members Alot.

•In The MafiaVerse Laboratory/Lab, Gaster And Sci(Science Sans)Found A Way to Split Nightmare And His Original Self(Aka Passive Nightmare)To Be 2 Different People.

•As A Side Effect Of Being Slick Corrupted Nightmare Has Some sense Of Passive to Care About Dream. JUST A LITTLE/Neutral. and Passive Has Some Sense Of Corrupted Attitude And Personality. Passive Is Just Like His Old Self But Has a Little Bit Of Corrupted Personality (For Example: Passive Can Be Rude And Fight Back)

•Dream And Passive Still Sees Corrupted As A Brother Even Though They Had Problems In The Past

•The Most Time They Get along Is When The Kill Sometimes(If your Wondering Why They Kill, Read The Name Of This Au, And you Get Your Answer. but if your Confused, It's A MafiaVerse So It Wouldn't Be a Mafia Without Killing)

•Dream Does Kill Too

This Is Some Of the Facts Of MafiaVerse DreamTale Twins😁

I Hope you Enjoyed This Explaination And Designs.

#undertale fandom #undertale sans #nightmare sans #dreamtale #dream sans

9 notes · View notes

gerrydelano · 3 years

Note

i get the feeling from the bpd martin meta that you're not a big fan of web!martin (same, btw, that always felt a bit Off to me but you really put that into words) but are there any entities that you feel like he *does* skew towards (besides the lonely, obviously)? every time i relisten to s1 i'm surprised martin wasn't marked more heavily by the corruption, lmao. (also that was an EXELLENT bpd martin meta! cluster b martin my beloved)

you got it! i do not like web!martin not one bit! it could have been so interesting as a concept but then everybody got really weird about it and it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth now. i’m glad to have helped you articulate why it sat wrong with you, too! definitely not alone there. (also, thank you!<3)

i do have thoughts on this, yeah! under the cut once again because you know me by now. short answer: five candidates! eye, corruption, flesh, buried, and the one i’m exploring in PBR :-) you’ll be just as surprised by my favorites as i am.

Once Again i rattled this around in my server because i thrive on collaboration and we already make the hivemind jokes ourselves, but it came up with some fun answers!

01. the eye

this one is just canon! it’s also criminally underutilized. i don’t actually have many direct thoughts on it right now, but elias was going to make him the next archivist if jon died in the unknowing and that’s why he was reading statements in S3, his domain DOES have that influence on it because of his time at the institute, and really, like.

he was there longer than jon was by like, two whole years! he soaked in it a little longer, even if he was up in the library, and really? the library? he probably used to read some of those books to pass time, there’s a lot you could potentially explore in terms of his curiosity: it isn’t the same curiosity as the rest of the team.

he’s not curious because he wants to know things but because he wants to get somewhere. little similar to tim in that way, but still different: what really got to tim was the fact that he HAD no information and not having that was what fucked him over. with martin, it’s like.

there’s also his need to be in control and finally see what’s happening instead of having things just passively hit him all the time.

something pascal @mxrspider said:

“he’s less one track mind more. okay. im gonna go through this all pile till something comes up. im gonna listen till i find an anchor to use. but he Does look, in the sense that he wants to have a say over the narrative, he wants to know what it means so he can adjust himself to it and survive it if it's worth the trouble”

and aster @ofdreamsanddoodles added:

“i think part of the reason eye martin is hard to think of is bc i think his lack of supernatural experience kind of like. makes him not as curious as the rest of the archives? he doesnt have the drive to Know bc he grew up learning that his own education was kind of like. second to survival. if he learns something, its because it has a tangible affect on his life which he can put into practice. but him being able to like, figure everything out despite a lack of training shows he IS good at figuring things out, and he's generally pretty perceptive, but yeah, i think the control aspects is more his speed.”

pascal again:

“he needs to open the door so he wants to know where the key is, even if the search doesnt fuel him the way it does with jon. jon accidentally stumbles and falls into the eye’s power and kinda gets lost into it. martin would use it as a tool i think. for jon it’s like drowning, for martin i think it would be like using a weapon and realising that suddenly it's part of his body”

and one more from aster:

“also i feel like ppl hear beholding and assume archivist powers?? like i dont think martin would get any pleasure from compelling a statement. & he has an easier time getting ppl to talk so its like. theres no reason for him to have that power unless ur specifically making him archivist—which i think hed do pretty well at! he’d probably try and use his powers like gertrude, but bc he’s not interested in manipulating ppl he’d end up compelling them like jon

i think w martin his powers would be more like... a looking glass ig? something that allows him to see where others are, and what theyre doing, which of course is also very lonely but i think its v eye to like. obsess over what you know abt other ppl. and let that knowledge consume you kind of.”

i think we tend to conceptualize the eye as academia, and we lose a little bit of the potential for exploring people like martin who are street smart. who grew up learning on his feet and accumulating practical knowledge to get through whatever situation he was currently in, so he could get to the next objective. it both contradicts and compliments the depression in his lonely tie, and it created one hell of a funky domain!

lol remember when i said i didn’t have many thoughts on this. Oops!

02. the corruption

you’re right, it makes sense! the same way that melanie would have totally gotten a mark from the stranger (sarah baldwin, leading to the fact she’s the only one who knew sasha had been replaced) i could see an exploration of the corruption mark he could have because of what happened with jane!

the thing is, like... jon and tim got marked by that, too! and it had an impact on them all and their relationships, too! i DO think it played a role in the way jon got in S2, and i think it’s really interesting to explore! it made everyone more toxic in their own ways, and that’s what gave notsasha the opportunity to barge in and make it worse.

there’s a reason that jane’s attack on the institute was the start of their downfall: it planted a seed of pushing each other away, strained attachment, lashing out, and neglecting the root of the issue.

so, why not explore martin’s side of that, too! i could see it being a canon justification for his attitude towards tim because his attachment to jon Skyrocketed in a way that led to him saying something toxic to someone else, i.e., corruptioncore behavior.

comparison time. so, we know that psychosis isn’t Because of the spiral nor is it Equatable to the spiral, but rather people who suffer psychosis are easier for the spiral to prey on because they already have that fear that they can’t trust their own minds.

in the same vein, if you take the borderline HC into account, it would track that someone who already HAD that would be more vulnerable TO the call of the corruption. you know? it would be easier to be tempted by it. especially if it snuck in so slowly that you didn’t notice when it stopped being just how you’ve always thought and became something else.

one of the things TMA does really well is address mental illness in conjunction with the fears without blaming one for the other, because it is a capitalism metaphor at the end of the day and it is only saying how easy it is to be taken advantage of by the system if you have something going on that they can exploit.

so this take on the corruption marks they’d all have from that situation goes painfully well with the fact that they already all read as cluster B’s (in different ways!) and so i’d honestly be down with seeing more talk about that for martin. fics where he has bees seems to be pretty common!

03. the flesh

this one i sort of really love? aster pointed it out, and i can see it.

i want to talk about the flesh and how it speaks to the blue collar working class especially.

“jonny mentioned the garbage ep was originally meant to be the flesh but done clumsily, and im going to be including it as an example in this — a lot of the narratives involve like. working class. jared pre the boneturner's tale not having the smarts or money to go to college. slaughterhouse workers. tiny cheap family restaurants. garbagemen working overtime. gym owners. people retired/living by on social security. and i think there's something to be said abt like.... poverty and the commodification of bodies? like i think ive talked before abt the concept of ‘selling your body’ being just as applicable to the way physical labor or blue collar jobs or long shifts can cause your back or muscles or w/e lasting damage

and i think thats a narrative thats very true to a lot of the flesh like. the body as currency. angela doesn take payment, because its filled via flesh/blood, one way or another. when hector fucks up, the way he pays for it is with his literal body. the ritual for the flesh kinda embodies that too — one way or another theyre using ur body. if you cant push it/do physical labor anymore you get thrown in2 the pit”

things we have seen flesh avatars do: run small businesses, make deals/trades, and will ultimately mind their own business until you piss them off. i don’t think that’s too far off!

it’s about utility, yeah. and there are a lot of aspects of the flesh that i understand why people would be hesitant to explore it!

but i also know that if the kneejerk reaction to flesh martin would be assuming it’s some weird body thing or to do almost solely with his being fat, that’s like. super shallow and missing a lot of the more existential points that could be made about living for your task, dedicating your entire life to being useful to someone or something, never being enough no matter how much of yourself you give.

and also — why would it be bad to explore how he feels about his body, too? especially given how a lot of the time, it comes down to actually being happy with yourself after a long time OF being told that something might be wrong with you. as a fat person myself i actually do think it’s interesting and it’s possible to explore internalized fatphobia and such without encouraging it, and maybe even deconstruct it.

after checking over this response, aster actually had this to add about flesh!martin that i SUPER agree with, so it’s coming into this, too:

“i think theres really like. a lot that could be said abt how much youre being offered something that may geniunely improve ur life. even in the oregan trail ep, the woman was being tempted bc she needed to eat to SURVIVE, and the man brought them across bc they needed to live somewhere thatd improve their lives. the... i think she was a comedian? ended up somewhere bc she wanted a community of like minded ppl who loved her. there was a lot of like. preaching oneness and understanding i think? which def is something martin, a child abuse survivor, would be interested in”

there is a lot to be said about being tempted by a balm to your hurts. the corruption and the flesh put beside each other are, like, top options to me because of that, but if i had to pick between those, i might go with the flesh! we all sleep on the flesh! and on some of martin’s complexities that would be brought out by approaching him from this angle.

it goes back to the major themes in his arc the most, i think? the blue collar working class bit, usefulness and utility, sacrificing something to improve your situation and how you feel about yourself, all of these things that impact his life on a grander scale than just his emotional state. the corruption definitely tracks in all the ways i said before, but the parts of him that would align there are a smaller part OF the corruption, where i think the flesh encapsulates a lot more of him. if that makes sense?

also weirdly enough i think he’d be less grossed out by it. but that’s pretty minor.

i can’t believe this one is actually my favorite right now. hello. this actually gave me some ideas for PBR. i’m so glad you send this message, anon.

04. the buried

this one was suggested by pascal! they said:

“i see buried akin to the lonely in the sense that it means, absence of choice in a sense (if you find release in it). like— a lonely quiet controlled space that you can get good at surviving in. kinda like. if i can breathe through the water, than i dont have to worry about drowning. it's paradoxically, safe. and doesn't let you spiral into painful loud self-awareness or gets you to. stop when it gets too much. again if you choose it willingly”

martin did say he was claustrophobic and that’s why he didn’t look into lost johns’ cave, so tim had to do it, and so that could be a point against him ever aligning with it as opposed to being a fear meal for it, for sure, BUT!

another fun thing to play with re: avatarship is that you do still have to fear the power a little in order to serve it. you have to still fear something. it’d be interesting to see it brought up through that lens, too!

because once again, his poverty comes into play. the buried is also all about debt and responsibility, the buried is the storm that floods your house and leaves you scrambling to repair it, it’s the choice between eating today and putting that money towards something that you can’t even really choose not to address. it’s ignoring your problems until they all pile up on top of you and crush you under their weight.

it’s a lot of the things that martin would have gone through pre-institute! and would make him a really easy fear meal, yeah, definitely.

but i also write gerry as being very afflicted by the buried, to the point where he starts to operate under its logic. to the point of knowing that but not being able to stop. and he and martin have a lot in common when it comes to the responsibilities placed on them by their very demanding, hateful mothers: the difference is that martin convinced himself it was not only necessary, but acceptable.

would love to see exploration of that.

05. [REDACTED]

haha, you thought i’d tell you what it was? think again<3

you guys know by now that i’m a huge fan of taking fanon and ripping it to shreds while i choose to pick parts of the characters from canon that are underutilized. i love making things make sense. i could write a whole meta on just this decision.

but not yet! martin’s not quite established into his intended role in the story yet (soon) and his arc is a bit away. stay tuned if you want to see it unfold, but feel free to guess where i’m placing him based on how you’ve seen me characterize him in these posts lately!

#martin blackwood #martin #the magnus archives #tma #ronologues #ron is become martin blogger? surprise twist #anon #asks

70 notes · View notes