☆ love; heretical and divine
{☆} characters tsaritsa
{☆} notes cult au, yandere, drabble, gender neutral reader
{☆} warnings blood
{☆} word count 0.8k
To love a God is heretical. It is an act of blasphemy– it is to drag them down from their throne of hollow gold, to topple the pedestal the worshipers uphold on their shoulders like lambs at the herders heel. It is the act of forcing them to their knees and ripping that beating heart of glorious gold and beautiful, cruel divinity from their chest, so pure it burns.
To love a God is to make them sin. To make them painfully, horribly human.
To love a God is to sin.
The love of a worshiper is no love at all, brilliant in its raw purity, untainted by sin. It is fear and obedience masked by adoration so overpowering it corrupts. It makes the lamb so unquestioning in it's faith it will never question the knife that cuts, the teeth that rip, the claws that tear. If the Creator deemed them unworthy of the very life crafted by their hands, then they must have committed a sin so grave there lay no salvation for their horrid soul.
But she is no worshiper– her lips speak of heresy as easily as she breathes, her words nothing but lies, cold and cruel like the ice that crawls along her skin like webs.
She loves a God like a lover should.
A damned sinner reaching longingly for the heavens.
She loves a God in the subtle brush of their lips, their muffled voices behind closed doors as they indulge in curiosity untamed. She is a sinner through and through, but she feels herself fall further with every brush of her hand across their cheeks, every touch she bestows upon them like a lover. She memorizes the imperfections of their body like memorizing a map– every scar, every mark, every line drawn on their body like a canvas, her touch the brush that stains the pristine white.
No devoted lamb shall ever see the painting they create in these stolen moments– it is for the eyes of a heretic so vile it makes them shudder, their body dirtied by the love of a woman so vile even their divinity is obscured by the ice.
The lambs may be satisfied with fleeting glimpses of gold and empty words from lips that guide them to the jaws of the wolves, but she is not. Her hands crave them like a starving hound, aching to touch that imperfect skin hidden by the veil of gold that obscures the painfully human body beneath. She longs to free them from the golden cage that binds them– to see their wings blot out the sky, their divinity tainted by sin and making them all the more beautiful for it.
It is a longing that leaves a festering wound that cannot heal, will not heal. Even if it could, she would not let it.
For as much as she tries, deny it as she may, she is no better then the blind lambs following the herder who holds a blade in their hand, glittering like gold in the sun, stained by dull red.
She is a fool, and what a fool they make of her with the touch of their hands against her skin– so cold it leaves frost on their fingertips. Yet they do not fear the cold, mapping out every inch of her imperfections, carved into her body by her own hands.
She has always been a heretic, cursing the divine until she could speak no more, but if divinity can be found in them – in this love that consumes, that burns her hands and her lips – then she is a Saint, praying at the altar until her throat bled.
But in the end, she has and will always be a cold woman with hands stained with blood. Until it is all she can taste, until it is all she can smell, until it is all she can feel. These hands of hers, heretical and divine, will bleed the God from their veins– she will become the wolf to their lamb until the rivers of Teyvat run gold with their ichor, until the gold bleeds into red, the taste of their divinity on her tongue.
Until she drags a God from their lofty throne and makes of them a monster.
There is no greater triumph to the heretic then to love a God into sin. To make a God sin to love.
To love is to be human, and they are no God.
Even if she must tear the gold from their very being until all that's left is something human. Even if Teyvat crumbles and decays, even if it begins over and over again..
She will do it again and again, until the gold can bleed no longer. Until her sins grow too great for Teyvat to contain.
To love a God is to devour, and be devoured. An endless cycle of sin that dulls the glow of gold into something new– something horrifying and divine, in it's own right. Something just as horrid as her, just as divinely corrupted by the sins she carries on her shoulders like a trophy, as gold as the sun and as cold as ice.
Divinity, carved into something human by love all consuming, until it all bleeds away and they begin their dance anew, for as many cycles as it takes.
An eternity, if she must, of dooming this world of theirs to fire and decay for a glimpse of the being snared by their golden shackles.
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estoril 2011:
Towards the end of the second session of free practice, Valentino Rossi eased off the throttle, allowing Casey Stoner to get past. Rossi says he backed off to take a breather, before putting his head down for a final attempt at setting a fast time; Stoner says Rossi was waiting for him to get a tow. Stoner says Rossi's so desperate for a fast lap he'll wait for a tow; Rossi says that this happens in every practice session, and if Stoner is sick of people getting tows he should go race on his own.
It went downhill from there: Stoner says the signal he gave to Rossi - tapping the rear of his bike - was intended as a call to heel, Rossi being "like a dog who follows you everywhere." Rossi in turn said that if spent his time tapping the seat hump of his bike every time someone followed him, he would have broken several hundred of them.
post-race estoril test 2011:
News has now emerged that Casey Stoner waited on the race track to impede Valentino Rossi’s smooth running on the Monday test at Estoril. This is supposed to be his retaliation for a similar move by Rossi during free practice to get a tow behind Stoner. When Rossi was asked if this was true he answered in the affirmative but also added some controversy by saying that this rivalry was fun. Wonder what Stoner’s response would be.
and:
The first reports on Mediaset - reporting rumors passed on by "a little bird" from the MotoGP paddock present at the Monza World Superbike round - suggested that Stoner had run Rossi off the track once during the Estoril test, having first circulated slowly, waiting for the Italian, then blocked Rossi again a second time later on. When asked by journalists at the opening of a store in Milan for Enel, the Italian energy company that sponsors the Ducati factory team, Rossi claimed that Stoner had indeed obstructed him a little, riding on his line as the Italian approached. "To me, it looked like he did it on purpose," Rossi told the press, before then passing the incident off as "not a big problem". In the end, Rossi told reporters, these little quarrels between the riders were "just a bit of fun."
So far, of course, we have only heard one side of the story, from the unnamed MotoGP source at Monza, then partially confirmed by Rossi in Milan. Identifying the source at Monza would be difficult, given the number of Italian MotoGP riders and team members attending the Monza World Superbike round. And Rossi's version of the story is much milder than the original claims, Rossi only claiming that Stoner rode on his line and got in his way, rather than waiting for him and running him off the track.
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corey commentary: the official making of h40 🎃🔪
honestly i feel like this book really helped me refocus my thoughts on corey and brought me back to basics for the first time in a while.
i've split this post into a few specific topics based on my own thoughts and the book details that i found most interesting. a lot of this i've talked about before but i'm bringing it back with evidence babyyy.
WARNING for suicide and suicidal ideation, murder, manipulation, mental health issues and crises, and passing mentions of child abuse.
costume
corey's costume was developed in reverse (pg. 176), starting with his final look, the leather jacketed bad boy, and working backwards to the opening scene look, the good boy on his way to the sock hop.
i love that this was the process, i think that's so interesting from both a design and character perspective. taking him from what he became to what he was? it feels sort of like they were centring nostalgia in a way, starting with who corey became and then looking back to who he was (and who he will never be again). it kind of makes his downfall even more heart-breaking to me.
rohan mention's wearing coreys clothes in his real life and how no one even looked at him (pg. 184).
in the commentary he also mentioned wearing corey's glasses a lot to get into the character mindset.
very interesting that we have tried and tested proof that corey can literally fade into the background and go unnoticed. it must be a combination of trying to be visually more plain but also a very quiet demeanour. but then you have the angle of corey being forced to reduce himself to as small and quiet and invisible impossible. i like the way corey both wants to be invisible (to avoid confrontation) but also desperately wants to be seen and heard and believed and understood by someone.
frame of mind/suicidal ideation
rohan mentions that there's an element of corey having not been able to kill himself before, because it was too hard to do, but looking into michael's eyes he realises he can just "call it quits" and let michael do it. then, after he is spared by michael, it gives him "permission" (pg. 198)
i think it makes a lot of sense though that michael letting him go is what tips corey over the edge, maybe reinforcing his own buried guilt (if michael let him go, he must be evil, right?) and making it feel a lot easier to make horrific choices (murder) while also making his emergency exit plan (suicide) feel easier too, if he wanted to.
corey being "tainted" by the shape because he's so close to being that anyway (pg. 172).
i don't personally believe in evil as an actual supernatural force in these movies, but corey is definitlel portrayed as more susceptible to michael's influence, even if michael does actuall demand anything of him.
i think @/slutforstabbings was the one who mentioned this to me. but when corey meets michael he is mentally and physically more susceptible to reacting irrationally in a very real-world sense. he has a history of abuse, experienced a major trauma (the accident), been under intense stress (the party), and had a recent head injury (the fall from the bridge and smacking his head in the sewer). these factors all contribute to a mental health crisis and drastic change in personality.
i feel like this confirms that corey was likely headed for (possibly another) breakdown in the future, but the events of the party/meeting michael just triggers it sooner.
emotional control
rohan mentions corey purposely doesn't feel anything since the accident (pg. 188).
this might have been my favourite detail that gets mentioned. i've always thought that corey's way of surviving post-accident was to just shutdown completely and switch off all his emotions. it's interesting to know that rohan was playing him that way.
and also a lot of the time when corey does feel strong emotions, they are turned in on himself to try and keep them private, like his anger at terry results in him hurting himself (accidently) with the milk bottle, or him regularly climbing over the bannister at the allen house but not being able to let go while during the day he thinks about some outward expression of rage through the blowtorch at the garage.
the mirror scene symbolises the first time corey feels in control (pg. 198).
i've written about this a lot before, but i very much agree that the mirror scene is a moment of processing both "what the fuck just happened?" but also "this is what control feels like". corey's whole breakdown, starting from killing nelson, is about regaining control over his own life, even if it means un-restraining himself and doing horrific things.
killings
ryan turek (exec.) and paul logan (writer) specifically state how ends is essentially a revenge movie, with corey's kills start as revenge killings, but if he survived the kills would get more random (pg. 167).
i feel like this highlights the way that corey's connection with the shape is cut short, unlike michael who had it for decades. the shape (or the idea of it) lets corey get his revenge, but after that he could keep going, he'd pick up momentum and he wouldn't be slowing down.
this seems like this is pointing towards killing being corey's method of control rather than some more direct desire to kill.
he becomes "addicted" to violence and he knows it (pg. 191).
"addicted" is a super interesting word choice and i feel like it fits perfectly. corey starts with revenge, he has his reasons, but as time goes on he could find a reason for anyone if he wanted to.
if corey survived ends and got away, he'd be living his own life for the first time ever. i think there are a lot of things he'd over indulge in, and killing being an addiction plays heavily into that -- there would be nothing to tell him to stop.
high priest!corey
rohan specifically describes corey leading doug to the sewer as him bring michael a "sacrifice" (pg. 206).
vindication !! @/slutforstabbings once said to me, while we were talking about the ritualistic nature of corey and michael's relationship and killings, that corey replaces nelson as michael's high priest, as the person who brings the sacrifices and channels michael to the outside world.
manipulation
rohan says that corey "plays" at being the shaking little boy again when he jump scares laurie while waiting outside for allyson (pg. 204).
i love this, because i fully believe corey thrives on manipulation. i think corey is fundamentally a good person anyway, but in dealing with joan he knows how to make himself inoffensive and agreeable, and i think he knows that that "character" is a safe bet to keep people happy.
and the novelisation confirms that this almost works !! laurie thinks he's just awkward and still upset from the night before. the thing that makes laurie doubt how genuine he is, is that she can see how he changes -- she can see the way he switches from one demeanour to another. proof right that he can play at being who he needs to be in the moment.
but then, by the time laurie shoots him, corey really is just a scared little boy who is in way over his head and unequipped for the situation he finds himself in (pg. 226).
corey is unprepared and unpractised -- he doesn't have the experience that michael has in bouncing back. he isn't michael. he's fucked up big time, his plan has fallen through, and he's backed himself into a corner. all the terrible things he's done, everything he's been through, the taste of control -- it's all for nothing is laurie can get the upper hand on him like this.
he's scared and out of his depth but he's dangerous, but corey ends the film the same way he starts it, in a situation he has no control over and with only himself to blame. only this time he's having the last word, he's going to do what he could before and he's going to take laurie down with him.
relationships
rohan said ronald is "the loveliest thing" in corey's life, and that the gesture of giving the motorbike is "beautiful [but] manly and detached" (pg. 182), which is a way more sympathetic view than i have.
this is a wayyy more sympathetic view of their relationship than i have. i do like this angle though, the idea that corey and ronald did have some sort of relationship but that neither of them can express it very well, that they're taking the stereotypically masculine route of small gestures and not a lot of words. which seems at odds with what corey really needed from the only male role model in his life, but it's kinda sweet that corey must like ronald enough for him to be a good part of his life, rather than just neutral.
maybe the takes about ronald being a good stepdad aren't wrong 👀
corey falls for allyson most deeply when he sees how she is on the edge just as much as he is (pg. 215).
this made me wonder if allyson and corey could have ever been together without the events of the movies? if they still met by chance, would they get along? would the attraction still be there?
their relationship is based on parasocial affection and shared similar traumas, there's a certain emotional intensity there that translates to them making rash decisions and commitments that i don't think they would otherwise.
joan's last words (in an even more extended death scene) are begging "michael" not to hurt corey (pg. 222).
joanne baron has talked about joan's motivations and perspective in some interviews, so this scenes lines up very well with what she's said previously. joan has never treated corey like a person, he's an object for her to control, but her two moments of concern for him (when he comes home the morning after the party and her death scene) come from a seemingly natural and genuine place.
also, the biggest factor that made me loose my mind over this: she doesn't know it's corey killing her. she begs this masked murderer not to kill her son, not know that it is her son beneath the mask 💀
she's begging someone not to hurt corey after years of being the one who has hurt corey. it's too late to turn back, it was always going to end like this, but can you imagine what went through corey's mind in that moment? that his momma wanted him to be safe but never made him feel safe when she had the chance.
me whenever there is a direct quote from rohan in this book:
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