#faustusposting

[helsinore]

faustus: if you loved me you’d let me go [be selfless where i never was]

mephistopheles: if you loved me you’d let me drag you down [to be with me forever, because misery loves company, and i love yours the most]

[internalscreeching]

Solo ttrpgs are so funny

Yes I have a vampire in the back of my brain. He sucks so much (sometimes literally). I really need to get back to playing him (filling out writing prompts about his antics).

And no-one else knows about Faustus, my absolute bastard of a man </3

[helsinore]

so faustus is like an adhd chad and mephistopheles is like the part of the brain that goes "deadlines are real" and then faustus because he's an "a is for alpha" adhd gigachad is like "i think hell's a fable" because the deadline isn't real if you don't see it and then like an hour before he's about to have to turn in his final project of going to hell he starts to realize he can no longer procrastinate by playing flight rising or bullying the pope on twitter or jorking it in the club and he's like "fuck i'm so cooked!!!" and then mephistopheles sends him to hell. average adhd experience.

[helsinore]

anyway never kill yourself. the tragical history of doctor faustus by christopher marlowe

[helsinore]

Okay well faustus had to be in denial about going to hell and freak the fuck out at the 11th hour about it and desperately try to get out of it because yeah no shit, but also if THIS is hell (play the globe production where rory pond beams psychic damage right into the not so young sheldon) then of course faustus and mephistopheles have to break up. You can't have besties or lovers in hell. Hell is pain. Hell is heartbreak. That's why you carry it wherever you go. And since Mephi is damned, he has to be hurt by Faustus want to leave him after all this time (implying that Faustus really did see Meph as nothing more than a distraction/toy, even after 24 years) and since Faustus is going to hell, he has to have a nasty breakup to send him on his way there. Break his heart, and keep it broken forever, trapped with your bitter ex. That's hell.

[helsinore]

TLDR: I think Mephistopheles fell in love with Faustus over those 24 years, and seeing Faustus try to escape his damnation at the 11th hour made Mephistopheles feel like that love never meant anything at all. #breakup

[helsinore]

Butch Faustus? 👀👀👀

So Butch Faustus is this, like, shard of a concept that I’ve been toying around with in my head for the past few days — I think it started with my post about “what if faustopheles…but women” and then I started thinking about it and into my head popped this snippet of prose that’s like…Femme!Mephistopheles smoking in Faustus’ bed and she chats up the Good Angel (in the newest iteration in my head, the Evil Angel is also there, but might not talk to her?) while Faustus is asleep. This is early on, I think? It might be just after the deal (which was consummated like a marriage in this version, lol).

I don’t have much on the setting, I think my visions are that Faustus is relatively young (in his 20s?) and he’s in academia, either as a [grad/phd] student (Victor Frankenstein of him, I guess) or as a professor (young sheldon ‘excelled very fast but now we’re here’ style or the guy from the love hypothesis by ali hazelwood if you’re familiar ) i think my designs for him are like. pale. shitty hair. top surgery scars? certified weirdo. believes he will figure out the cure to cancer at age 30 and then, having solved everything in the universe, keel over and die, tbh.

Femme!Meph has a very specific design in my head, she looks south asian which…could be problematic, but one of the things that stuck out to me when the groundling pit watched Faustus was the immediate hunger that Faustus has for Conquering The East. He’s not the only one (the other guy says that line about spanish lords and slaves…) and also just — “Lucifer, Prince of the East” as a title sticks in my head. I know that it’s because East is where the sun rises (and Lucifer = Venus = the morning star) but also, uh, the East, y’know. Meph is still a demon and I don’t think all the demons look like people of color, but I guess I’m struck by the idea of…leaning into the fucked vibes. I don’t know. The thing about Faustopheles is that I think they love each other but the relationship from the START is fraught. Which is added to I guess by a potential this-demon-is-dealing-with-racism aspect. Faustus-demanded-Meph-assume-a-more-pleasing-form-and-this-is-the-form-catered-to-Faustus-even-if-maybe-he’s-only-ever-dated-white-chicks, I don’t know. I do know that Meph looks very (western?) feminine in dress when she first comes to earth but then she starts adopting Faustus’ clothing style + potentially branches out towards her own. But by the end I think we’re full circle. She plays Helen, of course.

The Good Angel is, like, Joan of Arc with a shaved head in appearance in my head. The Evil Angel might be a businesswoman in a pants suit. Unsure. Maybe I’ll make some picrews. That’s as far as I’ve gotten, though. I’m not sure about Wagner and the rest (maybe Wagner is Faustus’ TA??). I just know that Faustus is Shitty and Meph serves cunt. And that Meph smokes in a way that is both ‘the comfort of the smoke is that it’s familiar even if she detests hell, because the familiar is always comforting,’ and ‘for the first time in centuries she can actually feel the effect of the nicotine.’

[helsinore]

Faustus spewing before I forget

Update: I had to finish drafting this in a doc because it got too long. Gonna break it up into portions that I’ll reblog. Lord help me (-Faustus). 

recently watched the globe's production of dr faustus with a bunch of people (the one with arthur darvill? I didn't know rory pond could serve that much cunt) and I had thoughts / other people had thoughts and I'm going to compile everything I think was my thoughts but other people's thoughts from the watch party might also cameo. - I didn't realize that Mephistopheles and Faustus really were that gay. I mean. I had heard tales of it but it was one of those situations where you didn't really know until you see it, you know? - Also I DID know who the Good Angel and the Bad Angel were from Wikipedia but I didn't expect the yuri. Also every time Mephistopheles interacted with the Good Angel I felt insane. - Which means the Angels are literal (which. no shit sherlock I guess) but also that means there is an angel called The Bad Angel who sits on your shoulder and tells you that you are too damned to ever repent and that your ass is going to hell forever. And this is an angel. - Terminal Hazbin Hotel watcher moment from me but Lucifer in the play was gripping onto two different other guys/beasts/demons for the entire duration and someone made a comment on how it symbolized how Lucifer is both clinging onto others in terms of his influence/power over them, but also needs to cling onto others to keep himself from falling further -- and that's relevant to Lucifer in Hazbin, because in S2 of Hazbin we learn that Lucifer can't do harm against the sinners because HIS eternal punishment is that he cannot harm the sinners. He is just stuck with them. Forever. Even if he has power over the hellborn and is the King of Hell. Something in both cases about Lucifer on some level being damned even if he's extremely powerful.