"I just, uh... Thanks for yesterday..." He almost never thanks anyone. This is very awkward.
Metatron's sephirah flutters a tiny bit. Because yes, Andras doesn't thank many people. He can show gratitude, of course but the words... the words are special.
He's an ancient entity whose power overshadows certain gods, and yet here he is, throat tightening with emotion. He doesn't want to embarrass Andras. So he does his best to get himself under control, and gently guides Andras's hands to his lips so he can feel the smile.
"I'm glad it helped," he murmurs. He can't quite keep the tightness out of his voice. "I like being able to help, you know? Anything... for you. Really."
Ah fuck.
He tries to laugh a little to break the tension. "You looked fucking hot doing it, by the way."
@fallen-guardian ;; Liked this for an interaction.
[🎲] He had gone out to the casino again. It had become a regular occurrence, and one no one seemed to be able to stop him from doing. Alastor included. Not that the man had been paying him much attention since his return to the hotel. The asshole had found other forms of entertainment besides bothering him.
Husk was mourning the loss of a dear friend. Not that Angel was dead or anything, but it felt like he was. He was gone, and there was nothing he could do to fix it.
So he drank and gambled and lost himself in the moment. It was all he could do to feel something.
He stumbled out of the casino, swaying from intoxication. His head was spinning and he had a long walk home. He couldn't seem to walk straight as he started down the sidewalk, swaying back and forth. The sinners he past all looked like they had twins. What a funny sight...
It had been a while since he had let himself get this bad, but he didn't seem to care. It numbed the pain he was feeling and that's all that mattered right now. He needed to feel something.
Coming around a corner, he was not fast enough to stop himself from bumping into someone. With a wince, he stumbles back and falls onto his ass. "Fuck..." he growls, ears pinning back, "Watch where yar goin'...!!" He'd feel bad for that statement in a minute....
Sometimes stories are better for having some mysteries left unsolved. Especially in speculative fiction, and especially on the worldbuilding side of things.
Two examples spring to mind: Tom Bombadil and Goldberry of J. R. R. Tolkien's Legendarium, and Kris Straub's short horror story Candle Cove. This ended up being a rant, so cut for length.
For those of you unfamiliar with Tom Bombadil (he was omitted from the Jackson films), he's an enigmatic figure associated with nature who saves the hobbits from an evil tree. This is oversimplifying things a bit. The main thing about Tom and his lady Goldberry is that whatever they are, they are powerful enough not to give a flying fuck about the rest of the plot. Tom Bombadil actually plays with the One Ring and puts it on with no ill effects. This is an object that Gandalf and Galadriel were too scared to touch for fear of being corrupted. Tom is totally immune and totally unconcerned about Sauron.
Tolkien outright said he didn't want to explain Tom and Goldberry because he thought the story was richer for having a few figures of enigma. He outright denied Tom was any kind of established god like the Ainur, nor their creator Eru. The point of Tom and Goldberry, thematically, is that there are still mysteries in the world. Particularly there is delight in nature for its own sake, without trying to possess or control it.
And yet people will not stop trying to make them fit into nice easy to understand boxes. They will not allow Tom to be enigmatic. I see people triumphantly declare they've figured out what he is (and invariably it still ends up as "Ainur" or "Eru") and ffs, people, not only are you missing the point of the characters but you're doing it in a way befitting of someone like Saruman. Saruman would have absolutely tried to hunt Tom and Goldberry down and dissect them just to understand what they were even if it destroyed them in the process. Yes this is me being dramatic, but again the point of the characters is to hint at things unknown and unknowable. If you take that away from them you might as well remove them totally.
I could stick with the Legendarium and go on about Ungoliant, the star-eating giant spider... but for the scary side of things, I'd rather switch it up with Candle Cove by Kris Straub.
In its original form, Candle Cove is written as a series of messages on a message board discussing old kids' shows. As the chat progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that this show was not something any children should have been allowed to watch. I don't want to spoil the experience, but suffice it to say Candle Cove appears to have been more of a supernatural phenomenon than a TV show per se. Straub is very good at turning the narrative screw slowly and leaving the reader disquieted.
And then you have a pack of fans who went ahead and did things like made episode guides for it. Some went as far as making imaginary production notes. And they just kept going. Here's a brief quote from an interview with Straub for his own feelings on the subject:
Dustin Koski: Which, if any, of the unofficial sequels written for it are your favorites?
Kris Straub: Oh man, none of them are my favorites. The reason is that they all try very hard to explain what Candle Cove is, when not knowing is why the story resonated. There’s this string of fanfics where it’s revealed that Candle Cove is the work of an old Nazi named Altman Bachmeier. You tell me why a Nazi would be hanging out in West Virginia or Kentucky in 1971, and why he’d bother making a puppet show to scare kids. I guess “Nazi” is shorthand for “the most evil thing anyone can think of.”
Emphasis and bolding mine.
Listen, humans figure stuff out. It's something we're comparatively very good at. And the thing about figuring something out is, usually it makes it less scary. Usually. Understanding some kind of phenomenon de-mystifies it. Even if it's still very dangerous, if we understand the mechanism behind it we usually feel like we have a modicum of control. In real life we try to explain things to ourselves, and even if the explanation is wrong it makes us feel better. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that.
We do not need to apply this kind of thing to horror stories because the point of horror stories is to be scary. Understanding the nature of what's frightening just... makes it less frightening. And apparently people do enjoy that. One thing any longtime denizen at the r/nosleep subreddit can tell you is that the longer a horror story is drawn out, the more it devolves into action rather than horror. And people like that. They love it. They love getting explanations because their main drive is curiosity and investment in an unfolding narrative. Not a love of horror.
As someone who does genuinely love horror, this is very frustrating. I'm going to end with one of my favorite horror story conclusions from a tale called The Upper Berth, which uses ambiguity to heighten the discomfort. The glorious, terrible discomfort:
Well, do you want to hear any more? There is nothing more. That is the end of my story. The carpenter carried out his scheme of running half a dozen four-inch screws through the door of one hundred and five; and if ever you take a passage in the Kamtschatka, you may ask for a berth in that state-room. You will be told that it is engaged—yes—it is engaged by that dead thing.
I finished the trip in the surgeon's cabin. He doctored my broken arm, and advised me not to "fiddle about with ghosts and things" any more. The captain was very silent, and never sailed again in that ship, though it is still running. And I will not sail in her either. It was a very disagreeable experience, and I was very badly frightened, which is a thing I do not like. That is all. That is how I saw a ghost—if it was a ghost. It was dead, anyhow.
35. how would your muse react to someone flirting with them?
29. how would your muse react to someone teasing them?
SHIPPING QUESTIONS FOR THE MUN - SFW EDITION! (29 is from the NSFW edition)
35
In general he'd shut that kind of thing down or ignore it. Might be outright insulting, frankly. If it's someone he knows pretty well, he might flirt back, he doesn't really flirt casually. There has to be a genuine spark of something there, he doesn't find flirting fun in itself without that.
29
Depends. Is it acceptable to immediately throw them over his shoulder and take them somewhere to have his way with them? Can he just fuck them where he is? Because he is quite inclined to do that. This dude has passions.
However he is capable of being patient and playing the game for the pleasure of it. He will promise retaliation at an appropriate interval. He might even try teasing back. This is fun for him, and one of the few ways he enjoys having his patience tested.
Chuckles warmly as he wraps his arms around his lover and blankets them both in his wings. It means a lot to him that Andras feels this safe... and it is also completely adorable, though he'll be discreet about that.
Still not beating the feline allegations, lover, he thinks.
FOR EVERY 🎤 SENT, I WILL LIST A SONG I ASSOCIATE WITH MY MUSE.
Have the song that prompted me to reblog this meme: The Music and the Mirror. Note the actually singing bit ends around 3:41; the rest of it is music for a big dance number. All the bolding is mine, for emphasis.
Give me somebody to dance for
Give me somebody to show
Let me wake up in the morning to find
I have somewhere exciting to go
To have something that I can believe in
To have something to be
Use me
Choose me
God, I'm a dancer
A dancer dances!
Now, stay with me here, because this is one of those songs that is more metaphorical than direct. In context, this song is about a dancer who is much too good "just" to be in a chorus line, but she can't get work anywhere else and she needs to dance. She's singing to the director, but what struck me is that there is more than a little touch of prayer in the lyrics.
For Metatron this works oddly well in terms of beseeching his own Creator to "direct" him like he did in the old days. By default I write Metatron as an ex-god, which doesn't usually come up, but it works just as well if he were always an archangel. The point is, one way or another he has always been subordinate to El/Elohim. He chose that, very deliberately.
Give me somebody to dance with
Give me a place to fit in
Help me return to the world of the living
By showing me how to begin
Play me the music
Give me a chance to come through
All I ever needed was the music and the mirror
And the chance to dance for you
But for the past few thousand years, his god has been effectively silent. In Canaanite mythology the creator god El was actually rather shockingly hands-off in terms of rulership, usually delegating to a son. I tend to translate that into the Abrahamic mythos as archangels having considerably more free reign than in canon. But there was still a level of instruction there, a clear hierarchy.
Give me a job and you instantly get me involved
If you give me a job then the rest of the crap will get solved
Put me to work, you would think that by now I'm allowed
I'll do you proud
Throw me a rope to grab on to
Help come to prove that I'm strong
Give me the chance to look forward to saying
"Hey, listen, they're playing my song"
Play me the music
Give me a chance to come through
All I ever needed was the music and the mirror
And the chance to dance
So this is basically Metaron begging his Creator-- his parent-- to give him a chance to perform his function with, yes, an audience. Because an audience means something you can use to judge your own actions. You can tell whether or not you're getting approval. Metatron desperately misses being directly told whether or not he was doing the right thing. He understands why that doesn't happen anymore, that's the worst of it. He can't even really complain. But he misses it anyway.
I tend to think of archangels are very closely tied to their functions. And over the aeons, as they develop distinct personalities, there is tension between the person and the persona, as it were. This is by design. But it still hurts. Growing pains, call it.
He's in a tough spot because regardless of verse, there is exactly one entity he would be willing to obey implicitly. He's not really a "follower" outside of that. It's... tiring.
The journalist Hunter S. Thomson complained that America was raising a generation of "dancers", that is, people who preform and don't step out of line. Mr. Thomson was not thinking of the more creative aspects of dance. But in the sense he meant, yes, archangels absolutely were "dancers". And now, in my writing, they can't be. And it hurts. It's natural, it's for the best... and it's a rare, lonely kind of agony sometimes.
Play me the music
Play me the music
Play me the music
Give me a chance to come through
All I ever needed was the music and the mirror
And the chance to dance
Loyalty is missing a dot for similar reasons to Andras; I wasn't sure quite how to represent that Metatron doesn't compromise his convictions for anybody. It would probably effectively be five since there is essentially zero chance that would ever been an issue, even in some pretty extreme cases I can think of.
