can u infodump about Solomon. Please. I know I’ve heard a bit about him but go wild. give me the full essay. if this is a movie theatre I’m sitting there front row very excited 🥹🖤🫶‼️‼️
JUMPING UP AND DOWN SO FAST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SOLOMON VALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this cringe fucking loser (<- said in a way that makes it clear i want him in a way that would get me burned at the stake)
(please forgive the fact that all the images are full size, i've literally been trying to fix it for 15 minutes and tumblr just reverts it back every time and i'm literally so mad about it)
yes i can infodump about him. yes i always can. this fucker altered my brain chemistry at 15-16 years old and continues to make me ill to this day.
welcome to the first introduction of magicverse on this blog hehehe my true agenda all along
(CW: child abuse/abuse in general, kidnapping, sort of graphic violence, sexual abuse (implied)/sex as a self-defense mechanism... basically any warning you'd put on astari*n's story can be applied here. they're shockingly similar. i would avoid talking about some of this stuff if it wasn't so important story-wise, sorry ^^;)
anyway. look at him again. your reward for opening the readmore
okay so, i'm gonna have to elaborate on some worldbuilding first because otherwise a lot of this doesn't make sense.
there are six major types of entities in magicverse, with some notable offshoots. but in the context of solomon, i will be mainly referring to three: humans, sorcerers, and demons. humans are exactly as they are in the real world, living normal lives unaware of magic. sorcerers are, in essence, humans who can see and interact with magic, with an additional thing: humans can't see them, hear them, or interact with them. magic still affects the real world, but to humans it looks like natural disasters or other strange phenomena, rather than what it actually is. demons are creatures that were originally humans, but were turned (similarly to vampires! except demons have to actually kill them rather than just biting) and are no longer human. they can interact with both humans and sorcerers, as well as anything in between, including magic. however, they can't manipulate magic.
USUALLY.
however! you remember that "notable offshoot" i was talking about? that's solomon, and his "siblings". but i'll talk about them later. for now, i'm going to talk about solomon and his "superior", servius.
solomon was born a sorcerer. you'll notice that in my description of demons, i said they were originally humans. and, the vast majority of them were, because turning sorcerers was forbidden long, long ago, by the sort of governing body that exercises control over demons, the "high demon council" (i'd like to find a better name for this someday but have never gotten around to it). however, servius, cocky piece of shit that he is, decided that he wanted to overthrow that governing body, and take control of the demons himself. and in order to do that, he needed an army. or, if not an army, an extremely powerful weapon.
and what extremely powerful weapon was available to him? sorcerers. because why would turning sorcerers be forbidden if it didn't pose a threat? but servius isn't particularly strong for a demon, and certainly not strong enough to take on a full blown sorcerer by himself. so, you know what he did?
he started hunting down sorcerer kids. impressionable, still weak enough prey. and solomon was the first.
sylvester vale was 9 years old, an only child, and so, so loved. his parents adored him; he was their whole world. he was a little shy, loved candy, and hated brushing his teeth.
and servius caught him on his way home one day, cut his head off, and made a puppet out of him. turned him into solomon.
the thing about demons, see, is that they can't disobey the orders of their "superiors", aka the ones who turned them. their bodies react when their superior speaks, whether they want to obey or not. suffice to say, it was disgustingly easy for servius to turn a boy into a weapon, horrifyingly simple to do whatever he needed to to get solomon to lose every ounce of defiance he had.
solomon doesn't remember his life "before". he doesn't remember his parents, hardly remembers even having any. it's been 150-ish years since then, after all, and everything servius did to him erased every bit of the boy he was before. the only remnants he has are the jagged scar on his neck and his fucked up teeth.
the other thing about demons is that, despite the fact that they can shapeshift, there are certain things they can't shapeshift away, usually "imperfections" of some kind that are either indicative of something from their prior life or scars from the way they were killed. solomon has both. like the universe getting one last spiteful laugh lol
anyway. so, once servius felt like he'd sufficiently erased every bit of "sylvester" from solomon (so, when solomon was older, about 16) he started training him. and it was true that a sorcerer-turned-demon was far more powerful than any normal demon, even if solomon was still just a scrawny, fucked up teenager. not only did he have the superhuman strength of a demon and the ability to shapeshift, he also still had his magic. a demon with magic, and not only that, but he still had the ability to interact with humans. and that was a strength that no one else could claim.
so, that cemented the plan: to craft superweapon demon children, and twist them, and break them to obey servius's will. to eventually overthrow the demon society as they knew it.
it took a long time for servius to find other targets. sorcerers are few and far between, and sorcerer children even moreso. so it was just solomon for a long time, and in the meantime he learned to do as demons do: haunt the streets, pick targets to turn, make more. it was a good distraction, if anything, to drown himself in city nightlife and bars and sex and doing what he had been taught to do: kill. he got so good at it that he did it without thinking, because it was all he really knew how to do. for about a hundred years. he turned into a charismatic, flirtatious, murdering monster. a good, true villain. back then, anyway
there were others that servius tried to turn, over those years. but they were failures, either failing to turn and just dying instead, or simply being impossible to break and being killed for real (the holy water kind). and solomon felt nothing. but then servius got sick of doing it himself, and went, hm! well, i have a superweapon, after all! might as well finally use it! and sent solomon to do his dirty work.
now, you may be wondering, "grims, wouldn't they have to obey solomon then?" well not if solomon dragged them back to servius instead of killing them himself.
which was the plan. but the first time, solomon fucked up. lol
i have this other oc, lavern, who was solomon's first target. and solomon would've been able to handle it pretty easily. except that when he got to the point where he could drag him back to servius, he had this momentary thought of like, "okay, well, if i turned him myself though, i could get the upper hand on servius". because, like, it's not like he loved servius. he hated his fucking guts. but there was nothing he could do. so he thought, well, if i turn this kid, maybe he can be my weapon. and he started to do it, started to kill him. but about halfway through, he suddenly felt sick, realizing this must've been what servius felt when he turned solomon, and he stopped.
unfortunately, something went wrong, and lavern ended up becoming some weird half-demon half-sorcerer amalgam that kind of just made him weaker instead of stronger. and solomon is saddled with the guilt of permanently fucking this kid up because he got greedy. but it's only a little guilt, because we must remember solomon was kind of a piece of shit at this point. 👍 he does end up hiding lavern in his apartment though because he feels bad. he kind of ends up like a little brother to solomon, and that's where solomon's "siblings" start.
servius got mad at him for this, of course (solomon lied and said he failed and the kid died) and never let him go hunting for him again. soon after that, servius hunted down a couple of other kids, an 8 year old and a 16 year old (and he was REALLLLLLY lucky on that one), and successfully turned them. lili and jem, solomon's other siblings. and servius began calling them "horsemen," some tongue-in-cheek joke because he meant to make a fourth one. solomon, death. lili, famine. jem, war. and the last would be pestilence.
but he never got the chance to make a fourth one. there's a long story about the first person solomon ever fell in love with, the thing that changed him from this mostly heartless monster to something salvageable, but it's something i kind of want to rework because it involves an oc that is not mine and that feels wrong to still use. the plot would remain the same, but the details would need to be different. but the jist is, solomon sticks his neck out for someone he really shouldn't have, because he got stupid and possessive of an enemy, and it leads to him saving them from being permanently obliterated, and in return they eventually kill servius in a blind rage because servius tries to get solomon to kill them. and they basically destroy themself in the process. and solomon is left alone again. :)
so for about 20 years, solomon's alone with no servius and just his siblings, one of which (jem) hates him so much and keeps trying to kill him, and the other two who he has no idea how to deal with. and he has this new problem of having grown to care about someone enough to fall in love with them and then losing them and having no idea how to deal with these feelings he now knows he's capable of. and it sucks, and he's miserable, and he starts randomly taking jobs just to fill his time.
and that's how he meets meko, a sorcerer, and solomon's future husband (seb's oc who i literally go fucking crazy over!)
i'm only saying how they met because i think seb would be disappointed in me if i didn't. we were like 17 when we came up with this so please forgive how juvenile it is though it's in character JKSHJDKJSD. but anyway uh, it was originally just a joke, but i had solomon working the night shift as a cashier at a sex toy store because he would do that (he enjoys people watching). and meko, yknow, being a sorcerer, figured he could just go in and steal whatever he wanted because it's not like anyone would be able to see him, right? but he didn't expect a demon to be working the register LMFAO so uh. yeah. solomon calls him out on it because no one else is there and meko being meko is like "hey i'll suck your dick if you let me go" because he's. normal. solomon doesn't take him up on it but it's still funny to me. also meko's first impression of solomon is, and i quote, "That has to be the palest motherfucker I've ever seen in my entire fucking life," which i still think is a hilarious first impression and also extremely true.
anyway uhhhh jem shows up and tries to kill solomon again when meko's there and solomon has to save him, but then it ends up with this whole debacle where solomon takes meko to his pocket dimension apartment but can't get him back out immediately and it's a whole ridiculous way to meet. but they just keep running into each other over and over despite not trying to and they disastrously fall for each other because they're equally weird and chaotic. but meko is terminally ill and doesn't tell solomon until he's so weak he can't hide it, and solomon loses it because. well. the other person he loved died unexpectedly and it's Bad. so solomon, despite his better judgment, offers to turn meko into a demon (or, well, a horseman, but, semantics) to "save" his life. so he wouldn't have to lose him. and meko lets him.
it's a scene i've wanted to write for YEAAAARS but solomon kills him by stabbing meko in the back while he's holding him. and he feels so sick the whole time because he told himself he'd never turn anyone again and much less a sorcerer, but here he is killing the man he loves and turning him into a monster just like he is and technically fulfilling servius's wish by making a fourth demon-sorcerer. but it's worth it, he tells himself, if he gets to keep meko with him.
and like, he doesn't regret it, but it's guilt that still haunts him even in current day. he still has nightmares about it. it sucks. it's bad. i'm sad about meko and solomon sorry i think about them a lot
but anyway look at them
absolutely obsessed w/ them. they're gross <3
anyway uh last but not least, after they've, yknow, settled a bit, solomon accidentally stumbles upon two demon kids (twins. they're literally like 4) who got turned and abandoned by their parents, and solomon feels sorry for them and picks them up, not really intending to keep them but not wanting them to rot on the street ("i'm not running an orphanage here but god i just can't leave em there" he says, lying about not running an orphanage). and he gets attached, because of course he does. and that's how meko and solomon end up with adrian and blaine, two absolute freaklets.
and that's (mostly!) the solomon story, skipping over or skimming some major things LOL i love him so so much i'm sorry
oh uh bonus trivia:
he has a giant scraggly black cat named death who can talk and also turn into a horse (though i haven't decided if i want to keep the horse thing. it's kind of a leftover thing from the original horseman idea that i only halfway scrapped). they fucking hate each other but death sticks around anyway and solomon has no idea why. he actually likes the kids though and solomon is baffled and confused by this
"sylvester" was actually trans and was still like, settling into that when he got killed, and solomon has literally no memory of this and thinks he's amab because he's been shapeshifted as such for so long. it's kind of funny to me but also sad :(
i didn't really get to mention this but solomon's magic type is teleportation! or, like, more specifically teleportation/pocket dimensions sort of? it's a little nebulous but basically he can teleport himself and also summon things from other places as long as he knows exactly where it is. so he has like, a shit ton of knives and other weapons stored at his apartment and can just summon them at will. he can also teleport other people but it takes a lot of energy and he has to be touching them
demons all have, like, "true" forms and solomon's is his original body carrying its own head + goop wings and stuff. i wish so badly that i could draw so i could design it but aughhghhg.
when i originally made him, i was trying to prove i could make an "irredeemable" character because a friend thought i couldn't, and i was like, oh yeah? and i made him and originally he was but then i. got attached . and redeemed him. so i failed. LOL oops
i think that's all for now !!! i love him so much. guy who rewired me. i'm still fucked up about how similar he and astari*n are and it further proves that i could never put solomon in the public eye because people can't help being freaks. but i digress
solomon vale NUMERO UNO!!!!!! he's a disaster! mwah!
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I've been on a bit ob a Russell Crowe movie binge in the past few weeks and since he is almost sixty now, many of the movies I've watched were consequently older movies. and when I watched them, it struck me again, how much hollywood has changed in the last few decades when it comes to depicting men.
take Gladiator for example from the year 2000. Russell Crowe plays basically an action hero in it. he is a big, muscly dude, who is very strong and uses that strength to defeat his enemies. and this is what he looks like:
looks like a strong man, right?
in the same year, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine looked like this in the first X-men movie:
in 2013 the same character played by the same actor looked like this:
it's a bit much, isn't it? I mean, he looks so skinny.
and if we go even further back: look at what the womanizer character Face from the A-team looked like in the 80s show vs the 2010 movie reboot:
maybe the difference isn't that big but it really startled me when I watched that movie for the first time. in my mind there was no reason why Face should be particularly muscular since he is the charming one not the one known for being particularly strong.
if we go even further back, look at the charmin womanizer character Hawkeye in M*A*S*H from the 70's.
I know he's a doctor and there is no reason for him to be ripped but I got the feeling if they did the show now, he would be.
I don't know what my point really is I'm just saying I got a bit nostalgic when watching these men. I cannot be the only one who'd rather see more of this:
than this:
also, as a sidenote: Russell Crowe gained a lot of weight for the nice guys and he is a fucking powerhouse in that film, like, when he punches someone, you really feel it because of the weight that is behind it and the shere mass of his body.
(even if this may look different, he's about to break Ryan Gosling's character's arm. I couldn't find a gif of him punching someone but I swear it looks painfull as hell.)
so, in short: can we get big, heavy action guys back? cause I'm tired of seeing these skinny, despite being muscular dudes who look dehydrated as hell and on steroids.
and can we stop making characters ripped just for the sake of it? cause I'd rather cuddle with a guy looking like Hawkeye than one looking like Face from the new A-team movie.
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