#acot | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pupyr0arz · 6 months

Text

Werewolf!sam/dean. Continuation of I could eat god. Wip.

Scene sam is shaving, dean is on the bed. Dean is dancing around the wolfism. Sam lets him

The silence is the strangest thing about their new morning routine. He would’ve expected a joke, being called a Sasquatch, the endless complaining from his brother that happened if he ever grew anything like a 5 o'clock shadow. Instead, he wakes with what feels like a full beard, and if he isn’t feeling like lying to himself that day, looks like one too. He slinks into the bathroom and doesn’t leave until it’s gone. Dean doesn’t say a word, just pretends like the shuffling sound of Sam getting up didn’t wake him up in the first place.

It feels like a regression to months ago, what feels like years now. When Jess was raw and sharp between them, and Dean was all harshness and catching edges as he watched Sam’s every movement like he would cut and run. Sam was almost tempted to then, if to just prove that he would, could, untangle himself again.

Now Sam just aches at the glances and aborted twitches, wishes he could reach out and hold Dean’s hand tight and assure him he won’t leave. He can’t, now. He’s Dean’s problem. That smarts. It used to be ruffled hair and sitting in the backseat instead of shotgun.

Schrödinger’s dilemma, if it exists when unadressed.

Sam’s shotgun is still back at that city. Dean had stepped over it, not glanced at it twice. Dean’s sits in the trunk. Loaded. Like always. Sam knows it’s lead, when it should be silver, but he didn’t see for sure.

Dean silently buys him extra razors. The shirt he was wearing is replaced, folded neatly in his pack like Sam put it there himself.

He makes himself scarce in the morning, scoping out diners. Sam’s never been hungrier in his life, not even when he was more spine than sinew, all growing pains and spite.

Sam orders salads. Gets water, chicken if he’s feeling adventurous, eats croutons dipped in ranch and celery sticks. Dean pushes him plates after he finishes, and he eats them too, licks the plates clean of grease. On paper, to the waitress, to the world, when they sit down it’s salads.

Business as usual.

It would be easier to just keep a beard, but Dean has always resented anything that makes him look older, divorces Sam from the child in his mind and the wound is too raw to want to rock the boat in Dean’s affections. It would be easier to admit, to allow their rocky routine they patched together fade into something new, but Dean has his teeth in their childhood and Sam isn’t strong enough to worry it out of his mouth.

At this point, Sam is half convinced there isn’t anything he could do to truly chase Dean off other than leave himself, but he’s not going to aggravate him. He can’t be left alone with this.

Besides, he doesn’t feel like it would be right. It’s irrational, but it feels like he might as well toss the books hidden in the bottom of his duffle and his Stanford hoodie if he hands this up too. Like if all they had in the world would crumble away if they dropped these rituals, all signs that Sam and Dean from before any of this would fade in the sun.

They cling to the normalcy of before for their own reasons, he supposes.

Sam should bring it up, should break the thick layer of ice over the subject. He deserves to know, if anything, and the worry eats away at him day and night. Except, he doesn’t. He lets them have their little games, dancing around the subject over and over again, lets the silence fill the car and ferment.

Sam tried once, on the third day after. He had taken a jackhammer to it and swung gracelessly, had screamed and even cried a bit, pointed and pushed and yelled.

Dean had said a single word on the subject, pulling Sam off the floor and wiping the blood from his face and hands, picking splinters from raw skin. Just one small word, said so, wretchedly Sam had shut up and sat down. The shotgun stayed in its place in the truck.

They don’t have any direction now. Sam had dug for the burner connected to Dad, and hadn't found a trace. Either Dean was hiding it, trying to keep Sam safe in some asinine way, or things had gotten far worse than he thought.

notes to self: Sam originally doesn’t notice how hungry for meat he is. Dean feeds this and then eventually just confronts him with human flesh. Sam is like wtf—oh. Dean is only going to do this when he’s sure sam WILL eat it bc he’s not playing abt this. Sam eating=people dying whatever. Sam will get used to it and so will Dad they Have To no other option in his head

#awow/acot #sam/dean #sam winchester #dean winchester #wincest #wip #supernatural

14 notes · View notes

liketwoswansinbalance · 4 months

Note

What is your favorite thing about SGE series and why?

I have multiple favorite things, so you can expect me to elaborate for a while.

One of my favorite things from the series is Soman’s novel concept of "psyche travel," and for christening it with an actual name.

I’ve only seen this concept in a few other, more science-fiction or speculative type of stories, like the Divergent series, The Giver quartet, "The Veldt," a fascinating short story by Ray Bradbury (which TOTSMOV41 is very much inspired by) and the Artemis Fowl series, which involves time manipulation that wasn't strictly time travel (which is far more commonly seen in fiction). And I love Soman's more fantastical spin on psyche travel! To me, the concept was previously called "mental landscapes" or simply "simulations" of reality. "Psyche travel" as a term is just far broader and more versatile, and I feel like you could do more with it, experimentally.

In fact, I would've loved it if Soman could've left more room in his tight plots to explore human consciousness and "the cauldron of the unconscious" more in TCY, so I will be doing exactly that with the themes in my longfic TOTSMOV41. If anyone wants to know more about TOTSMOV41, I'll redirect you to this table of contents/introductory post.

My fic's entire premise reflects how much I loved that one scene in ACOT. It was absolutely brilliant, especially with the edited views of what reality once was, how subjective memory could be. Plus, in that moment, ACOT managed to combine a few of my major interests: psychology and how generally error-prone the human mind and memory are, surreal imagery in literature, and delving further into SGE’s soft, irrational/nebulous, thematically-relevant magic system. (The way I see it, problems are more often unintentionally created than intentionally solved with magic, and we understand little of it, what goes on magically, really, and can't logically extrapolate what the characters could possibly do said magic. So, the magic is framed as unstable and flexible, even while it does reflect the state of the world and the important relationships in the tales. Thus, that's how I might classify the SGE system. You're welcome to disagree on which type of magic system it is though!)

The following points are probably more obvious:

First, Soman’s prose and images overall are enthralling, and his use of VERBS, especially, rivals few authors that write for a younger demographic, at least in my opinion. It’s often just so well done. It's the little things, like using "scalded" or "pinked" instead of "blushed" that I love. Soman's use of language is so inventive at times, and I love trying to imitate it. Verbs can make or break a piece of writing in my mind.

Also, I love the extravagance and length and readability of this particular book one sentence that I think is underrated for the sheer exasperation embedded in it:

“After chastising her for slipping in the Ever ranks, explaining every assignment thrice, and berating her to cover her mouth when she coughed, Pollux finally left in a circus of hops and falls.”

It’s fabulously sweeping and exhaustive.

In addition, the third person omniscient pov is less common nowadays, I think. So much of middle grade and YA is in first person these days, so it may be a trend, for its immediacy. Though, I tend to prefer third person, even if my preference also generally depends on how well the work was executed.

I love SGE for its basis in fairy tales since I loved reading the classic Grimms' fairy tales before I discovered SGE—they were probably my favorites for a while (and still sort of are, alongside SGE). And they inhabited my storytelling before I ever discovered more subversive things existed. Thus, it's the overall darkness and the dramatics I find compelling about Soman's work.

The cleverness in the writing, when it’s well-executed, is phenomenal. And this applies to two aspects: first, Rafal, obviously, and second, the plot structure itself.

When I say Rafal, I mean specifically during the moments in which he shows off his conniving craftiness, his prowess at outfoxing others. And I love any instances of scenes in which he tricks or outwits people and systems.

Someday, I’ll have to remember to discuss the Fala-shoe-fairy-kiss scene from Fall, one of my favorites ever, in a future post. Those particular thoughts must be somewhere in my scads of drafts... I’ll have to look for them. For now, I will give you any thoughts I have now:

I'm referring to the scene in which Fala lures a fairy with a golden kiss and traps it in his shoe without a single word of verbal explanation, and he expects everyone to intuitively follow his genius thought process, the solution to their dilemma. Then, everyone, except Aladdin, manages to catch on, when they watch his demonstration.

Here's an (exaggerated?) approximation of how I'd imagine his internal monologue could've gone:

Watch and learn, youths. I’m better than you. In innumerable ways, and this is one. But fear not! I will lead you to success. No one else is capable of doing it. Yes, I will take on this burden myself. Give me all the credit. But don’t even bask in my cleverness, even if it deserves your attention. My actions speak for themselves. Just get the task done. Now. We don’t have all day to dilly-dally like inane cowards.

I will redirect you to this post, if you would like to read more about how I happen to interpret Rafal's "trickery," or rather, absence of trickery, perhaps.

And for my second spiel on the series' cleverness, elaborating on its predictable unpredictability, on a structural level, even if I only saw it in hindsight:

I love any kind of legerdemain or sleights of hand, or twisting of plots, except the devastating Fall one, I suppose. And there is something very characteristic of SGE I've observed: there are often, very, exceedingly late third act turning-points. These points are likely hallmarks of the series, to the extent that I've come to expect them by now, especially after Rise, and sometimes, I'm probably actively on the lookout for them when I read other books. Besides, Soman likes to lull readers into a false sense of security, that much we can probably confirm.

Furthermore, these turning-points seem to take two forms and you can literally only expect one of two things to happen.

It's either: 1) the characters reach a point of what should be a settled peaceable resolution, that is then rapidly negated, or 2) the characters reach a darkest-night-of-the-soul moment, the prospect of temptation in the story, often for an individual, and wishes are granted (often in subversive, unfulfilling ways to almost everyone's dismay).

Examples:

1) In Rise and TLEA: you think you are safe, that you're out of the dark Woods (which often represent the darkness of the soul or the human psyche as a symbol) but you're not. There is no built-in "warmth" to the narration, as Soman puts it in one of his interviews. This all is literally the narrative's "liar's tell" or "slip" in the third act, a revisiting of conflict, the reopening of the tale. You know there is more disaster to come. The ride is not over yet, however much you may think or desire it to be so.

In AWWP, characters say and believe the wrong things, are misled, and narrowly miss a possible "happy" ending because Sophie felt alienated enough to choose Rafal, who chose her.

In TLEA, we think everything is resolved, but all of a sudden, we get one more little impact, a jolt, that not all is well or completely restored, the moment Aric kills Lady Lesso.

In Rise, when Rafal is revived and reclaims the Schools from Vulcan, setting everything back into their original, proper forms, back to order, we think we've averted all crises, and have reverted back to the status quo. But, that resolution, again, is only momentary. Supposedly, Rhian's Evil, his rot, was awakened, and the moment Rafal considers leaving again and does, to seek out a new replacement student, is when the plot begins to race downhill again. When Rafal leaves, he leaves a gap for Rhian's poor judgement to bleed through, and Rhian hires Hook, effectively setting off the second wave of awful plot events in Fall. Rhian sort of resurrected old conflicts, and breathed new life into them.

2) Before the Great War in TLEA and the climax, we get tonal signposting that nearly "all is lost," that we're approaching, marching towards our imminent demise. There's an ever-present fog of "Abandon all hope, ye who enter" because if there's anything Rafal's good at, it's cultivating an air of stifling oppression. Hence, we have the narrow aversion of the darkest moment:

Agatha (unlike prequel Rafal with Evil Rhian) doesn't use the wrong emotional appeal. She gets through to Sophie, she and Tedros aren't executed, and Sophie destroys the ring, killing Rafal. Despite everything that said otherwise, that said Good would lose.

Lastly, a few other bits I appreciate are the roles the Seers play in the series, the meta aspects of the Storian (or Lionsmane) and the tales in general, and the names of a lot of the proper nouns such as the kingdoms—I don't know why I love some of them. The alliteration is oftentimes fun, and the names feel right and plausible.

8 notes · View notes