“In alchemy, all sorts of substances with various properties might be used, both magical and chemical. Some of them can influence the alchemist’s mood or behavior. But that being said, if your main concern is Satan’s recent disposition and wellbeing, I imagine the explanation you’re seeking is a bit less…esoteric.”
Existing Sucks So Let's All Be Shadows!
Ship: Nothing to speak of, really.
Chapter Word Count: 3.4k
Hosted on AO3.
Wow, after over seven months of silence, I've finally released another chapter of my godforsaken nightmare creation that haunted me every day I was away, whispering in my ear, telling me of all the narrative foibles I would inevitably make as the story approaches its climax, but even though you're paralyzed by fear of failure, you can't just sit there and watch Jujutsu Kaisen because I'm going to make you feel guilty about it Satan-centric Obey Me!: Nightbringer fanfic!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
“You’re an avatar of sin too. Your brothers aren’t the only ones who changed when they arrived in the Devildom, Lucifer.”
I updated my public confession that Lucifer would scare the shit out of me and it's rubbing off on my MC riveting Satan-centric fanfic set in the NightBringer timeline!
Existing Sucks, So Let's All Be Shadows!
Ship: Satan/GN!MC
Chapter Word Count: 4960
Chapter CW: references to alcohol use
Hosted on AO3.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
We're going Satan POV, looking back into the mental archives filed away under "Satan's First Year ♥️ "
---
I screamed until my throat bled, and after that, I screamed in choked, gargled bursts of sticky blood and saliva.
After the rage, the blinding heat, the blood, the broken nails and torn hair and shattered restraints… After that, there was him.
I hated him.
I knew who he was; what he was to me. It was instinct, the way a baby knows its mother. Lucifer was my mother.
I’ll never forgive him for that. I’ll never forgive him for making me.
He made me. He put me here, a struggling, suffering, raging mess of tissue and blood and bile and hate. Babies nurse, I’ve read, instinctively. So did I. I nursed on his shame.
---
That's right fellow sheep, I'm going FREUDIAN. I'm getting WEIRD. Lucifer as father? Yeah, sure, fine. Lucifer as MOTHER? NOW we're talking. This is where the weirdness is. This is where we get into the weeds. 16 chapters in and MC finally shuts up and goes away for a second so we can stare at this abomination; an amalgamation of flesh and hate; the embodiment of shame and failure; the broken, bloody mess born in trauma and death...!!!!!!
"Back then, in those early days, he treated me like I was his child. I was his child. He gave birth to me. He nursed me. He raised me. And just like so many parents since the dawn of time, he made me into a miserable facsimile of himself. I was Lucifer, but worse. I was Lucifer, but broken and ashamed and out of control. I was Lucifer, if Lucifer hated Lucifer."
I've updated my excuse to write a lot of run on sentences expressing intense rage in highly physical and metaphorical ways treasured Satan-centric long-form fanfiction set in the Nightbringer timeline! This time, MC stands in a corner, Blair Witch style, and Satan recounts his early days in the Demon Lord's castle, the time Lucifer gave him a shining scroll, and what happened when he read it.
Existing Sucks, So Let's All Be Shadows!
Ship: Irrelevant this chapter, to be honest. The focus is on Satan and Lucifer's relationship.
Chapter Word Count: ~4500
Chapter CW: More violent than most chapters, but nothing gory. A depiction of manual choking.
(Excerpts are below the cut.)
Hosted on AO3.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
The first thing I knew was a white hot pain. It exploded through me, starting at my core and bursting outwards. I was on fire. I was dying.
It’s ironic that birth and death must feel so similar.
---
“This was inside you all along, Lucifer! Look at me! I was inside you! This is you! I am you! ”
And he sighed. He looked so tired, so pathetic. He ruffled my hair with a gentleness that ignited the rage inside me to a maddening level. And he said to me:
“I am me. You are you.”
I told him to eat shit, and he shrugged and cleaned me up.
---
In some ways, I was as naive as a child. I remember the mystery of my first snowfall, touching it and putting it to my lips and staring at the impression of my handprint in the white blanket on the ground. But there were also plenty of things I never had to learn. I knew how to read and write; I understood, conceptually, that there was a Celestial Realm and a Devildom, and which one I was in. I knew that Lucifer had brothers and a sister, and I knew the sister was gone.
---
I was six weeks old, and I was terrified, and being terrified made me so angry. I struggled to swallow the rage, but it was only a matter of seconds before I choked out the first coherent thing that entered my mind, the words crescendoing into a grating scream by the end.
“They’re not my brothers!”
My vision wobbled, my head ached, and my muscles burned with an energy that could only be expelled with violence. I broke free from the chains around my wrists, and soon I was throwing things. Whatever I could get my hands on.
---
I felt so weak. I felt so helpless. I stood there, struggling to free myself, and he stood over me, my fists trapped in his hands, and that same, awful, pitying look on his face that he used to have back at the Demon King’s castle was on his face. Seeing that look…
“Why do you look at me like that?!” Hot, angry tears blurred my vision and burned my eyes. “Your face always makes me sick, but I can’t stand it when you look at me like that! Why can’t you hate me?!”
---
Within the hour, I was rampaging around the house. Mammon tried to get me under control, but he was never able to contain me. Only Lucifer ever did that.
Well. Lucifer, and you.
“What happened?” he kept asking. “What the hell happened?!”
But I was Wrath, and Wrath doesn’t speak with words.
Hello friends and acquaintances. I feel awful I’ve been taking so long with this new chapter of LABS, so I’m dropping a preview here today! Thanks to everyone who has been so patient with me, I greatly appreciate it!!
———
Satan had once told me he wasn’t a shut-in by choice, but that seemed to be changing. He spent days locked in his room now, making no attempts to escape. There was nothing to escape from, after all. He wasn’t being tied down by Lucifer. He wasn’t ‘grounded’ or facing discipline of any sort. But now…
“He’s worse than Levi,” Asmo told me as he painted my nails on his bed. “At least Levi comes out for meals and responds to our texts. Satan’s just dropped off the map.”
“Did something happen?” I asked.
“I was hoping you’d tell me that,” Asmodeus sighed. “Sometimes he tells you things he doesn’t tell the rest of us.”
“Well, he’s cut me off the same as the rest of you,” I informed him, and Asmo gasped.
“He isn’t taking your texts?”
“No.”
“He won’t let you into his room?”
“No.”
Asmo stared at me blankly for a moment, then resumed painting my nails, but I could tell his mind was working. After a minute or so of silence, his eyes lit up and he slammed his fist into his palm, sending a glob of nail polish flying at my cheek. “The angels!”
“What?” I asked, wiping it off with my finger and clandestinely smearing it off on Asmo’s sheet. Asmodeus, meanwhile, screwed the cap on the nail polish and scooted up higher on the bed, grinning like he was sharing gossip at a slumber party.
“He started acting weird when the angels showed up! Right? You remember how he was at that dinner. ‘This all sucks,’ and ‘you’re not even my real dad—’”
“I don’t think he said—”
“And then after he spent the day with Simeon, that’s when things got really weird!” Asmo looked impressed with himself for putting these pieces together. “You don’t think he’s jealous of their skin, do you? He seemed to be really fixated on that. I mean, I can’t relate, being me, but I’m sure hundreds of people have looked at my skin and craved whatever vital essence of mine keeps it looking so radiant all the time. It’s just one of those things, you know?”
“Satan spent the day with Simeon?” That sounded…weird. Simeon was open-minded enough, but the thought of Satan wanting to be near either of the angels… Earlier, he’d behaved as if it was almost physically painful.
“Oh, yeah,” Asmo nodded, staring at me with wide eyes. “I mean, it was more like three or four hours, but that’s a long time to spend with Satan! It happened back on one of the first days the angels were here. And like I said, he started getting weirder and weirder after that.” He opened the cap to the nail polish again and dipped the brush inside. “But who really knows what’s going on in Satan’s mind, anyway?”
“Not me,” I snorted, holding out my fingers again so Asmo could finish painting them. I sighed softly. “Not a clue...”
*rises from the dead as i get my biannual muse to write lets all be shadows again*
Trust me, I'm as surprised as anybody.
[context: radio broadcast]
“This new strange illness, colloquially known as 'Dagonitis' after the first prominent victim of the condition, was first reported on social media on May 16th. Cthulhu the Unknowable, a close friend of the affected demon, took to Devilgram to post an image of Dagon in a catatonic state, which he captioned #SaveDagon. In the intervening time, thousands of concerned demons have taken to social media to express their concerns for Dagon and others displaying similar symptoms using the hashtag #SaveDagon in their posts. Official reports suggest this condition is now affecting almost 1% of the population, but our latest data suggests that number may have risen as high as 3% in recent days. That’s almost one in thirty, Marbas.”
“Shocking stuff, Abriel. Officials have so far failed to comment on the situation outside of noting that it’s ‘unfortunate’. When asked about the apparent epidemic by journalists on his way from the street to his castle, Lord Diavolo, acting as spokesman for his father, said he had a team looking into the issue, and that there is no need to panic.”
Ah, a brilliant idea, Me. To go on long hiatuses as soon as the plot starts heating up just so this stuff feels as uncanny as possible because of the complete lack of momentum going into it.
Well forgive me for falling in love with strongest-jujutsu-sorcerer-of-modern-times Satoru Gojo and forgetting Obey Me! existed...again.
(No, I haven't actually been involved in the JJK fandom, I'm just silently pining all on my lonesome. The older I get, the scarier fandom becomes.)
Anyway, if anybody is still interested, I'm working on Chapter 21, where the actual cataclysm I've been promising in the story blurb since the release of the first chapter is fully introduced. Hooray.
And I'm really sorry for all this disappearing for six months stuff I've been doing since last year. Writing this fic was a lot easier when it was mostly just a character study. Now that I have to put together an actual plot instead of just talking about feelings it's hard.
