#I'M STILL DEVELOPING THIS MAN ARGHHH | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beliscary · 3 months

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@necromycologist #👀 prev im begging you to elaborate on your vision for them

oh my god. im so sorry. I have can't shut up disease. so many series spoilers here we go

for context, these were my tags on user cemeterything 's post featuring this gem:

#nick & sam mutually in the trilogy postcanon I made up in my head #shut up you're not transmuting into a sword and/or stone and I'm not becoming primordial destructive light let's think this through #very much IF I CAN'T NEITHER CAN YOU

ok I gotta bring up Nehima

The ancient Clayr made sure that the sword Nehima and the Dark Mirror found their way to Lirael. Lirael in turn will find Sameth, who passes the bells and the Book on to her. Eventually, she passes the panpipes and then Nehima on to him so that he can forge what they will need to defeat Orannis. This sword bears the inscription: 'Remember the Wallmakers. Remember me.'

Now, here's this passage from the very beginning of Abhorsen, which has been the rock in the shoe of my brain since I read it:

"He was a Wallmaker as well as a royal prince, but what did that mean? The Wallmakers had disappeared millennia ago, putting themselves into the creation of the Wall and the great Charter Stones—quite literally, as far as Sam knew. For a moment he wondered if that would be his destiny too. Would he have to make something that would end his life? At least as a living, breathing man? For the Wallmakers weren't exactly dead, Sam thought, remembering the great Charter Stones and the Wall. They were more transformed, or transfigured, not that he fancied that either. In any case he was far more likely to simply get killed..."

Nehima made something that ended her life, at least as a living, breathing woman. 🤷‍♀️

With Sam's canonical fear of capital D 'Death' Still Very Much Existing, I feel like the best course re: future character development would have been to dig into the tension between immortality as a construct/weapon vs. accepting death and deciding to be fully human. Is that very narrow eternal life as a part of the Wall, or a weapon to be wielded, or a Charter Stone… tempting? terrifying? Does he feel becoming some kind of weapon or tool is inevitable? Has he ever wondered what the inscription on whatever remains of him should be? Has he written it somewhere and burned it like all those letters to his parents he was too afraid to send?

Time and again in the books, Sam thinks to himself how glad he is that he's not the Abhorsen and how happy he is to be able to make things, to be Of Use to the Abhorsen/the Kingdom. He feels awful about what he considers his moments of cowardice and his abandonment of his responsibilities. I think he's in the perfect pressure cooker to be an enormous idiot about what duty calls him to do, while also struggling internally with his own fears. 'I can make this ultimate sacrifice... and also not die.... am I being a coward.... no one has to know.... is this a fate worse than death?... maybe I deserve that. maybe what I deserve has nothing to do with it, and this is simply what I must do, just as the Abhorsens must walk in Death...'

I think Nick needs to kick him in the shins about it (ughgbhfhfhh there's that part in one of the later letters Nick writes in the books that's like 'come here and tell me I'm being a stupid asshole so I stop being a stupid asshole'... fave. this vibe, both ways.) Sam never got to see Nick possessed by Orannis so I feel like Nick should get to deal with Sam, sometimes unsettling conduit for The Charter's intent. ('I Didn't Get Possessed In His Place And Temporarily Die For This!')

and Nick!!! arghhh WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE THE SURVIVING VESSEL OF ORANNIS?! his skeptic's worldview is shattered! he's traumatized! he's IRRADIATED! he has sooo much to feel guilty about and thinks he has to make up for, especially with regards to what he thinks he owes the Kingdom and the survivors of Forwin Mill.... but his very existence disrupts the Charter. Not too long ago, he was walking talking anathema to life itself. also he has these weird temptations to shuck off his mortal body and become a being of pure Free Magic??? Is it worse that he's still alive, because he's so dangerous? He came back from Death, why him when so many others died? Shouldn't he have just taken what was left of the hemispheres' powers to the grave with him? I'm sure he gets in his head about 'I need to do something with this life I got to return to because otherwise...'

obligation v. guilt v. desire. basically so much trauma and also Need To Make It Right. Sam would kick him in the shins about it except then he'd have to recognize the self in the other and 😬 he's probably still emotionally recovering from Nick saying those exact words to him and coughing his dying blood on his face. I digress

I think too that even though nick's irradiated and the Charter goes all wonky around him, the fact that the baptism took and the mark stays Means Something, and I choose to believe that in this strange way Nick is the new walking talking Destroyer, and that remnant of the Destroyer which exists as Nick wants to be a part of the Charter this time around, and with Sam having so many of the bloodlines it's just.... the most bizarre mutual understanding of what being alive means, as kids who used to vault desks at boarding school and also as... living manifestations of the cycle of creation and destruction. and they both have to constantly grab each other by the scruff of the neck to remind each other they're allowed to live too, not just throw themselves "into the making" like the Bright Shiners

(at my Most Bittersweet I think about how maybe it's Sam who passes away first, and until the very moment he goes, Nick can't quite believe he actually decided to die a man and not forge himself into some other thing. they had of course talked about it before but there was always a part of Nick that wondered...

and when he does cross into the River, Nick is the one to perform the final rites and burn his body so it can't be used because oh boy he Gets It)

#SORRY I'VE BEEN THIS WAY ABT THESE TWO SINCE LIKE 7TH GRADE #I THINK I STOPPED MAKING SENSE BUT. WHATEVER I LOVE THE WALLMAKERS I'M ROTATING THEM IN MY MIND ALWAYS #long post #under the cut at least dkfnf #also they should kiss #old kingdom posting

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