id 1: fic ‘end this ridiculous game’ by yours truly. paragraph reading: “[Why? Is no one allowed to touch them except your dearest Soul?]” Mind couldn’t restrain the sentiment. He was the only one Soul would touch like that. Or, that’s what Soul said, but he must have been lying. [Mind didn’t move on, but Soul did? Discarded it all, as if Soul wrist deep in his flesh didn’t matter?]. end id
id 2: lyrics from casual by chappell roan reading ‘Knee-deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out / Is it casual now?’. end id
something something i think the theme of apostasy is or should be how you can move on when it feels like you’ve been killed in every way but the physical. and eye au is that but also eye is there and we love them ^_^
warnings for the au: incredibly toxic religious beliefs written by someone who has never been religious, domestic abuse and violence, toxic relationships between everybody in this au, choking, eye gouging and reopening the wounds from that, wingcutting
naming scheme:
heart before the juno incident: N/A
heart before the mind incident but after the juno incident: acolyte (this was MEANT TO BE like, somebody who is converted to a religion, and i swear to god it was whenever the naming scheme was decided, but apparently it’s not soo)
heart after the mind incident: apostate (as in “a person who renounces a religious or political belief or principle”)
mind: blaspheme
soul: prophet
events i guess:
after juno incident
>(heart shoots mind, attempting to kill him, and shoots his neck instead of his brain (which would have killed him). soul, as punishment, gouges his eyes out with his trident.)
heart goes to apathy as usual
>(APATHY here is self inflicted and takes the form of heart laying in his room not doing anything).
>one of the conceits of this au is that soul believes in whole in a religious way. he worships him. his belief is that heart and mind are pieces of a Whole and whenever they unify in a proper way, and believe in Him, then they will become Whole. heart and mind are pieces of Him and are not human in their own right, and their existences will always be less than living until they finally decide to become Him. soul is like a splinter, he is meant to facilitate the process of becoming Whole however he has no place or identity in his own right, and where heart and mind will take up a new form of existence by becoming Whole soul will just stop existing. soul is meant to be a sacrifice.
soul sees it as an opportunity to convert heart. he genuinely believes this is the right thing to do- it’s not only Holy and correct but becoming Whole is a better existence than anything else. however this is less ‘read my pamphlet’ and more ‘i’m going to choke you now (because humanity/life is divinity and something we cannot attain without it, and the instinctual want for air is Holy because it’s a sign of humanity, more than anything else we have. and suchlike)’. aka let’s justr say this is not a fun time for heart.
this could be considered one of the divergences between apostasy au and canon, but the real divergence (yes i believe in religious soul all the time and also i think he Probably could have done this shit in canon apathy idk) is that whenever heart is in need of help determining whether soul is correct or not, so he goes to mind (the Logical one, the one who would tell him what he used to know was true- that soul wasn’t right): except mind doesn’t answer, no matter how much he knocks. mind, who despite everything always helps him in the face of soul, who is the only help he can get right now because he can’t think straight and soul is the one doing this to him- doesn’t answer. heart just kneels in front of mind’s door, defeated and bleeding from the scars soul reopened (iirc this was like, him trying to press a point, mostly, besides the natural soul urge to inflict pain) not knowing what to do at all.
so, sometime after that, soul succeeds in his conversion attempt. this section is called apotheosis - the elevation of someone to divine status; deification.
he and heart get into the most toxic relationship of all time, where sometimes they go on dates and kiss and suchlike and sometimes soul chokes him or pushes him under the water while calling him a good angel. both of them see both of these things as romantic, and see nothing wrong with it. it’s both an act of affection and soul deifying being a sacrifice, practicing it over and over- he is obsessed. it’s necessary to him, it’s more than necessary to him it’s Holy and he must recite it over and over and over again. that’s besides how much he loves it. hms are fixated on violence, soul is NO EXCEPTION, and not only is he no exception he likes the power. soul, even if he genuinely is the most powerful of hms, feels like the least, feels like a cornered animal constantly in the scope of a gun. he likes breaking and controlling someone who was once so powerful and outspoken, he liked treating heart like Whole treats him in his dreams, he likes being a prophet and acting like a god. he loves heart and he loves feeling heart squirm in almost-death throes under his hand. this is romantic to him (and it’s romantic to heart), just like heart trying to kill mind was romantic.
segway ! anyways solar eclipse is real here. they were never established but the fights were also homoerotic 50-100% of the time and the juno incident was romantic even though it was also a traumatizing murder attempt. things can be multiple things.! heart and mind see violence as romantic because of the vulnerability and hurt and because when everything is violence, violence is everything, and because they can’t be Actually Romantic and because they’re fucked up. so yeah.
mind is alone while heart and soul are gallivanting (? if choking can be described that way) and he tries not to be jealous of both of them (because he and soul also had something including soul wanting to Make Anew (like he has done to heart) and mind wanting to be Made Anew (into a perfect logical robot but also just in general) and like homoerotic surgery and such) but he fails. and is alone and is very sad and is a victim of divorce. he starts laying in the bathtub (empty . with his clothes on.) after soul and heart steal something from his room that was originally something of whole’s. he hates seeing soul steal his boyfriend i mean break heart into something he’s not supposed to be although he wanted to do that to heart too, so it’s both genuine wanting better for heart and also just wanting to be the one with the hand around heart’s throat. he tries to deny that he feels anything as he tries to convince heart to come back to him, them, but eventually he’s broken down enough that he admits he loved heart. he loved heart and he wants heart back.
and he tells heart this but he doesn’t listen and he can’t listen. heart wants mind back just as much as he doesn’t. he wants mind back so bad but also he feels like he can’t want anything but soul and Whole. heart doesn’t know how to think or feel or breathe and he can’t be violent and he can’t be himself and he can’t be Anything and isn’t it blasphemy to Own or to assert an identity of your own and not of Whole’s? heart enjoys being around soul, he really does love him, but it’s all Wrong sometimes and he doesn’t understand Why and everything should be Right and he shouldn’t want mind. heart basically does not know how to be intelligible at this point he simultaneously has a lot to say and nothing at all. he used to have concrete easy ideas but now all he has is noise and what soul told him and both.
so basically. this is one of the best things that could happen to soul, heart is. um. doing variously, mind is not doing good at all ever
anyway. apotheosis lasts for a While. mind doesn’t think there is anything he can do. but someday he breaks. and stabs soul 37 times in the chest. that’s a reference but that’s also just what he does, he just stabs soul a lot one day out of pent up feelings about Everything. this is also homoerotic especially because soul and mind literally have not touched each other since before the juno incident (oh and also they have some degree of toxic yaoi fueled by wanting each other soooo bad but hating each other and fighting over the same guy in apotheosis, just putting this here cause idk where else) but anyway he does that (while heart listens. totally not traumatic at all slash jay(oking)) and then takes heart while soul is lying dead on the floor. the stabbing is called the mind incident
>but not dead. hms only truly die whenever their cores (heart, brain, eyes) are broken beyond repair (headcanon stolen from doctorobjectum and probably more people). if they sustain a fatal injury but not to their cores, then they go into a coma until their body repairs it ! so after a week or two or three or whatever, soul wakes up alone on the kitchen floor (where the mind incident happened) not knowing what happened or where his heart went (oh also he wants to own heart so bad but believes he doesn’t deserve to own anything so it’s . this thing with him)
and after is called apostasy because heart stops believing in Whole. well, eventually. at first he wants to go back more than anything. and also mind begins to cut his wings off - not the feathery ones he had before the divergence, but butterfly wings (transformation, the Soul) that sprouted from his back somewhere in apotheosis (and idk where i should’ve said that tbh). the reason he does this is because he can’t come to terms with the idea that they’re permanent, because the butterfly wings are representative of how soul has changed heart irreversibly- mind never thinks this, but it’s the reason why he is so caught up on cutting them off being the solution- because he thinks he can cut out soul’s disease to bring the ‘real’, past heart back, even though he just. can’t. and if he comes to terms with the fact he can’t, then he has to accept the ‘real’ heart isn’t the real heart after all, and is never coming back. but he refuses to accept that. and mind is obsessed with neat solutions. honestly read of infectious diseases for more info- which i wrote a while before this au, but the reasons why mind insists on plucking heart’s flowers despite the pain and the blood there are pretty similar. i should both write something that goes further into the au behind of infectious diseases and a longer fic about the apostasy wingcutting, but i have a longfic to get to :((
but someday he does accept that wingcutting doesn’t work, and that the ‘real’ heart is never coming back and suchlike, and then and only then is when heart and mind can move on.
timeline (fics linked without an author are by me, the other author isn’t specified because it orphaned its fics (and deleted itself from the internet)):
- juno incident (before divergence)
- apathy / conversion (proselytism)
- apotheosis (the period where heart believes in whole: “the elevation of someone to divine status; deification”) (Speak From The Heart by not me, the lamb, split opinions, a shadow is not cast by nothing, Domestic Bliss by not me, that time is over now, persistence predator by not me, The way she shows me I’m hers and she is mine by not me, My Brain Is Rotting In Places by not me)
- mind incident
- apostasy (this can’t be called ‘alive’, by heart by not me, Who Are You? by not me, Solace And Suffocation by not me)
oh also there are variants
the two apostasy variants (i’m not counting 2d/desire and design or ld/longing and distance because those are more creature au) are the plural aus, where heart/mind are plural due to The Events Of Apostasy. (what if both? = sure why not but that’s not that much of a Variant it’s more of a Variation, unless it gets further elaborated in future)
juno flavor
blaspheme is plural and out of his desire for heart to come back and also sudden inability to . exist . he unintentionally creates a heart factive called juno! who helps him with these things.
iirc juno is pretty close to heart. he might be a bit softer, his violence is Just an expression of love and has no hatred or Real desire to Maim about it. but the main difference is that he has a specific Role - to help mind - which he values as more important than everything else. he also. might not have that much of an identity on his own besides being Heart. he struggles between being as similar to heart as possible and trying to best fulfill his role.
oh also he is extremely scared of soul. he doesn’t want to be Corrupted or anything. he doesn’t want soul to realize he exists so if he is fronting he tries to mask but he. is probably not good at it
he probably has weird feelings about acolyte/apostate also.
subject to addition if i remember what the fuck the deal was with juno because i honestly don’t. i don’t remember anything. he’s just a guy
eye flavor
okay that sounds weird but like anyway. in the midst of proselytism, heart needs someone to guide him, someone who isn’t soul !! and also he just wants someone who he doesn’t have to be afraid of. who won’t hurt him. and he wants mind back. he almost just wants somebody to tell him whole is real. thus eye
eye is Heart’s Eye in that they help him See (I DIDNT EVEN EXPLAIN THE SEEING THING FUCK) Whole. they don’t really have a name or anything. they don’t care much about Identity, all they want to do is help heart.
Eye is modeled off mind, although the more present they got the less they got like him, so they can be a bit ‘cold’ and ‘logical’ although as they are they really don’t have an attachment to the idea of ‘logicality’. they talk very formally and use no contractions. soul is ‘their prophet’ and heart is ‘their heart’. their goal is to help heart See the ‘right’ way and to protect heart from anyone who might hurt him, including soul. heart needed someone who would never hurt him, so they’re a complete pacifist, more so than everyone else, and to them violence is always the wrong way to do things. they are religious but in a different and more lenient way than soul is. they do not believe in the choking thing and they think that the parts can own and have identity and don’t have to think of themselves as parts. they can kind of just chill until they become Whole. they know that Whole would hate what soul does, and they see the way soul Believes as heresy.
they disagree with soul at times. soul is their Prophet and the one that taught them and acolyte to See, and they owe maybe everything to him. however they loathe how soul treats heart. soul acknowledges their existence. at the beginning, they and soul were friends, maybe more, and they could disagree and soul would let them. also soul would kiss them and they would do homoerotic surgery together sama mind. (the kneeling thing - will be explained later - might’ve started here or later.) however one day soul punished them for ‘going too far’ in his eyes, and exposed his true feelings about how eye was even less to Whole than he was, and how they had zero right to believe in these ‘heresies’. they appropriated the surgery they did for fun and because they liked it and used it as a punishment, without eye’s permission, so eye would learn better and so eye wouldn’t impede the Whole somehow. also it was a power play. after that their dynamic was never the same. eye pretends they aren’t hurt whenever soul opens their ribcage or forces them to kneel for hours on end, but they are hurt. they see it as their fault, though, that soul hurts them and that they feel the urge to snap their mouth shut when they’re around him. they think they and soul are still friends/more, just sometimes they go too far. they say they and soul are still on the same level of power. but they’re more affected than they pretend. (kneeling and desperately apologizing as trauma response fire text gif)
they have Feelings about mind. they kind of hate him for how he treats apostate. (before the mind incident they don’t have many feelings on him? he probably confuses them, it’s odd that he’s their source.) oh also they kind of hate him for stabbing soul 37 times in the chest. actually not kind of. and also they don’t like how he pretends they don’t exist. which he doesn’t. as another way to deny that soul hurt heart irreversibly (and also if this is a Game that heart is Playing then that’s similar to heart playing ‘games’ before the juno incident and shows he can still be silly). so yeah they do not like him at all and try to protect heart from him (but fail). mindeye selfcest would be fun though
eye loves heart a lot! it might be duty/the reason they exist to them but that doesn’t devalue their feelings at all. they love him and would do anything for him and they would do anything to just get to live with him, without anyone that could hurt him, and have a proper relationship …
i think that’s it but there might be more idk. bye
