Working for Mammon
A/N: I can't get this dumb spider clown out of my head oh my gosh. Also you're a singer here. Jack of all trades ig. enjoy!!
Fizzarolli was his money maker- compared to the other business and people Mammon invested in, they were nothing compared to the imp. The only one who ever came close to the clown’s revenue was you. You were a close second. There were moments where your sales would rival Fizzarolli’s and you were the starlight in the sin’s eyes, only to be replaced by someone that burned brighter than you ever could. Then, of course, the imp goes and quits and you’re bumped from being second place, to first.
Being number one comes with a lot of responsibilities. Sales cannot falter. You cannot falter. Not even for a moment. Any grand gesture or event that there is must be perfect. You’re marketable. And because of that, the Sin of Greed treasures oh so much. You may be a lower class demon, but you belong to him. Leaving you alone can bring all sorts of trouble, trouble that he isn’t going to tolerate. He dresses you in fine clothes, adorns you in sweet things that came from your pay- you deserve to own something nice that you worked so hard for is what he tells you. You are protected and cared for, treated like porcelain and pressured into a diamond.
Ever since the abrupt departure of the imp clown, it’s clear that the Sin of Greed has a bit of an attachment issue. He hardly likes to leave you unattended just in case people start to whisper to you about just how covetous he is. He lost quite a profit with Fizzarolli and the Sin would never say it out loud, nor even entertain the idea, but it left him rattled. He treated him better than the underlings, but that isn’t saying much. Maybe he was given too much freedom and became involved with Asmodeus, and that put some wicked ideas into his head, but it’s a mistake that will not happen again. You have guards that take care of you, and there’s hardly a moment when Greed isn’t seen with you in public. He likes to know where you are- always calling and messaging, appearing if you haven’t answered within five minutes. He always has this scared look in his eyes, and he hands always clasp around your biceps, and it’s silent, as if he’s trying to contain his anger, and trying to mask any worry that he had, but it’s always noticeable with the appearance of his many eyes and the frown that’s stitched onto his face. He’s consuming, taking and wanting, and it’s never enough.
It comes to no surprise that the Sin of Greed desires to be around you at all times and in doing so, he always has a hand on you. It was different in the beginning. It felt possessive, like a child gripping onto their blanket, held in a fisted hand that won’t let go no matter how hard it’s tugged at. You remember the sore feeling, the way you were dragged around like a dog and unable to go anyway without his approval and without him. Now, it’s different. He holds your hand softly, interlaced and pulling you closer to him. You can lead him around so long as you squeeze his hand. In public, he has you pulled close to him- hands around your shoulders as he whispers for you to not mess up the performance, an arm pulling you close to him as you walk through a crowded area. He can’t seem to let go of you.
Your attention has to be on him constantly. In public during a talk show, you sit beside him and you look up at him, your hand interlaced with his, another free hand on your knee- the benefits of having multiple arms. You have to talk about him, mention how wonderful he is, and not look away. It feels marketable, there’s no intimacy to it. It’s all for show. But then you go to his home, and he whines and grumbles about everything and nothing at all as his head lays in your lap. He only sighs and mumbles something barely comprehensible when you begin to scratch the crown of his head. Or he’ll pull you close to him in private, watching some random movie, all for an excuse to have you close to him, desperate to just touch you, his hands scratching lightly at your side and splayed over the top of your thigh. He’ll twist at your hair and trace shapes against your skin, and sometimes, you forget that he’s a Sin.
No matter how you look at it, you have to be marketable. You have to sell plushies, prints, keychains, chips and sodas and endorse perfume and clothes. And you have to sell sexbots. It took time to convince you to agree to have your likeness placed onto something that was going to be used for lewd purposes. It took even longer to convince Asmodeus to create them. But it was all worth it. The profits that came in were amazing, better than he could have ever expected. However, you still belong to him, and it comes to his attention just how creepy fans could be. Were they like this with Fizzarolli as well? No, surely he would have noticed.You’re no different than the imp that you replaced. But when he sees a fan try to get a picture of you in your dressing room, he feels angry. Rageful, even. He sees how panicky you get, and he loves how you cling to him in fear and for protection, but he hates seeing you so sad. For a brief moment, he reconsiders recalling the sexbots, but then he gets a notification that the bots are out of stock. He tells you that he’ll hire more security for you with a kiss on the top of your head.
The Sin of Greed likes to act like he’s in a romantic relationship with you. He plans your outfits to match with his. It doesn’t have to be a direct copy of what he wears- honestly, he has some semblance of tact- but he wants to coordinate with you. The colors have to bounce off each other, the theme of the outfits, the jewelry, and accessories. He wants to match with you. It’s easy for people to start rumors that the two of you are together, and he doesn’t stop them. If people think you belong to him in a romantic way, it doesn't matter. The rumors do encourage him to be more touchy with you, to hold you closer and have a reason to not let you be alone. Sometimes he’ll play it up, talking about how pretty you are, and how your singing voice is even better in person and people should really buy tickets for your next performance. He’ll even mention how in the next act, he’ll come in with some throwing knives- just a bit of a kick to add to your performance.
When he books you at a more high-end event, he likes to have you sing ballads. You confess to him that you don’t know where to look during those types of songs. The more energetic ones are easier because you’re constantly moving and performing, but ballads are softer, and you can’t just look at strangers. He’d never admit to anyone that it was just a way to get you to look at him as something more than a manager. He tells you to look at him- to sing to him. During those few minutes where you long for him and declare your love and how you’d wish to kiss him again and again, nothing else matters to him. You sing to him, not to the others. You care only for him during those minutes until the song pauses and a new one comes along and you sing to him again and again. And what is he but greed personified, and the desire to hear you tell him that you wish for him and no one else, keeps your nights busy until your throat is too sore to sing.
As a clown, he takes great satisfaction in knowing people are laughing because of him. It fills his pockets with green and it keeps the masses entertained enough to keep coming back. It didn't matter who was laughing, it just mattered that he was getting paid. But then he makes you laugh. And it’s nice, and loud, and it’s your laughter that has him pausing and feeling his face grow warm. It’s uncontrollable, and your smile is lovely. Ever since he found out he likes your laugh, he does his best to keep your laughter going. He wants to hear it, to drown in it, to memorize the sound and never let another soul hear it.
Mammon is a manager first and a sort-of-romantic partner second. He pushes you to be better than perfect. You can't afford to lose money. But when you’re at your limit, when you’re too exhausted and irritable, there are few times where you actively fight back and grow resentful and it frightens him. You don't talk to him, you avoid anything of his, you detach yourself from him.. Even if he does hold your hand, he can feel how cold you are. He hates how you affect him so much. If he makes you upset, he makes up for it but it's always half-hearted. Mammon tells you that he didn't mean to push you so hard, but he wants you to be perfect. He cares for you so much, he knows that you can be better than the imp. So he sits beside you, grumbles something that isn't an apology and he looks so sad, you can't help but forgive him. He'll pull you close in private and tell you how you did such a good job, that you're his treasure and star and where would he be without you.
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this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it
and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?
anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode
two hours later edit: you're allowed to reblog this! sorry about the confusion
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What do proshippers generally believe about shipping real people? Stuff like creator x creator or celebrity x reader?
That it falls under the umbrella of "you should be allowed to write anything you want". Once again, it's not my personal thing. There's no real life pairing I read for, and the whole "blank x reader" is not appealing to me at all.
But I have no problem with people writing that stuff, or knowing it's out there. I saw someone a while back say that it's basically just writing about another character, and I agree with that. No matter how much a creator posts or how open a celebrity seems with their personal life, we're still only seeing a tiny snippet of their lives. We have no clue who they are when the cameras aren't recording because we just don't know them. And whatever someone chooses to write about is mostly stemming from that particular persona that they happen to put on for the world and that's it. It's completely separate from our reality because they're basically just writing about another made up character
The problem I have, and it's what I imagine most proshippers also take issue with, is when people start blurring the lines between fiction and reality. To me, there's a world of difference between posting something on ao3, and speculating on secret relationships in the comments of someone's youtube video. Or between talking about something on tumblr, and tagging the person directly on twitter.
I just don't understand people who condemn rpf and talk about how gross and invasive it is, but think it's funny to tag celebrities on twitter to bring up (what they think is) cringe-worthy fanfic tropes that people have written them into. Or people who print out fanworks to shove into an actor's face at a meet and greet and ask them what they think about it. That's where the lines get crossed, to me.
I think ao3 and tumblr still have an air of mysticism to them. A little secrecy, a little privacy. In the sense that someone in the public eye would have to put in a little work to find this stuff for themselves. They'd have to go to the site and search themselves up to find anything. As opposed to just about anyone in the world being able to force this content in their line of sight with a simple @ on a site like twitter.
So to me the problem isn't that this content exists. The problem is when people don't know how to keep fandom stuff private. Write all the rpf you want but remember at the end of the day these are real people, not your blorbos. You don't know them. It's inappropriate to say these things to them personally (which yes, also includes tagging them on twitter or in the comments of their videos). But it's also inappropriate to run up to them with other people's content just to say "look what these FREAKS wrote about you!!" And I think people either forget or just genuinely don't care about the latter.
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