#skekgra the conqueror

[the-shy-lonely-weirdo]

Pride 11: GraGoh

Literal Soul Mates!

[knightscanfeeltoo]

My Four Favourite Gay Couples, Canon or Not...

[sunderedandundone]

Hey folks -- since the next chapters in the two major Dark Crystal stories I’ve got going are still, ahem, delayed, please enjoy this first offering of a chain of related drabbles/draft excerpts I’ll be posting over at AOOO in their stead. Lots and lots of our favorite Desert Hippies, *mostly* in their pre-hippie stages.

[thewiglesswonder]

Nothing really makes a Dark Crystal rewatch like finding out you have the entirety of skekGra and urGoh’s puppet show memorized.

[gr3ml1ngu7z]

This is what I imagine Skekgra looked like when he was the conqueror👊

(also I believe him and the hunter were besties and you can’t take that from me😭)

[gretchensinister]

I know it's fairly popular to give SkekGra a lot of angst about his deeds as the Conqueror/having the nail put in his head by the other skeksis/other things he did or were done to him among the skeksis. And there is no Thra-rapy, especially in the middle of the desert.

However, I think this would actually be way less of a problem than is sometimes assumed, actually.

I write urdrupes as psychedelics, and other stories that feature them seem to do so as well, and if I remember correctly the canon says that urdrupes enhance one's connection to Thra, which, if that's the way a drug effect is described, it's definitely a psychedelic.

Well, what's one of the most promising research avenues for clinical psychedelic use? It's treatment of PTSD, as a tool to open up self-compassion and move beyond the traumatic experience.

SkekGra, away from the Castle, taking urdrupes in a safe and loving setting with UrGoh is, like, the best thing he could be doing in order to NOT be wracked with angst and guilt and nightmares.

(Also, in terms of addressing one of the general Things The Fuck The Skeksis Up--one of the other significant clinical research uses for psychedelics is to reduce the fear of death for terminally ill people. Take an urdrupe with your mystic and stop maniacally grasping for more life in ways that harm everyone around you.)

Cites:

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan (2018) (also a netflix series)

I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World by Rachel Nuwer (2023)

[locksnek]

SkekGra and skekLi having a bit of harmless fun in the bathhouse, but then it turns out other Skeksis are nosy.

A story about friends facing an unexpected ordeal (skekGra in his Conqueror incarnation believes that Skeksis do not have friends, shh, let him have his delusions). 🫧 🫧 🫧 🫧 🫧

Please note this is rated M and has strong E leanings, therefore do not engage with the post if under 18, and read the tags under the cut before clicking into the story. Cheers!

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Fandoms: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV) The Dark Crystal (1982) Relationship: skekGra/skekLi (Dark Crystal) Characters: skekGra, skekLi, skekSo Additional Tags: Bath Sex, Public Sex, skekgra likes to pretend he doesn't know what affection is, nobody tell him it would injure his pride too much, Friendship, shared ordeal, Skeksis, skeksis politics, mature themes, Canon-Typical Violence, maybe slightly more than canon-typical violence, skekshod cameo, skeklach cameo, Old Work, previously unpublished work, re-written, dunno that I'd consider it quite explicit enough for E rating, but if i'm unclear on the ratings let me know, lots of my work there's lots of sex but more implied than described, so i don't always know how to rate it

[anchasvtt]

Your illustrations about SkekGra's exile made wonder. Were SkekGra and SkekSo a couple before Gra's banishment?

Nope, they might seem like one because skekGra was that kind of friendly extroverted dude, who was on good terms with almost every other Skeksis out there. Victorious, outgoing, always delivering the best jokes /to the point skekLi started to not like him: skekGra was unintentionally depriving him of his job lol/

But the Conqueror's "betrayal" shocked skekSo to the core and gave rise to the development of his paranoia, which will get only worse over the centuries

[tdc-incorrect-quotes]

UrGoh: I need someone... to be my friend. Someone who... won’t run away. Maybe send me... an angel? The nicest angel... you have.

SkekGra the Conqueror: [MANIACAL LAUGHTER]

[skekheck]

I have a question regarding skekYi and skekHak. So I’ve read the Creation Myth comics, but I don’t think either of them are ever named. On top of that, on the wiki I see that skekHak is called the Machinist of Merchant, and that skekYi either never had a role or was the Steward. I gotta ask, where is this information coming from? Both their names and their roles because I can’t find them from any book materials.

I did a bit of digging to get the following information, but I'm not sure if this is complete or correct as the places I found them were barely sourced. If anyone knows where I can find the following or have additional information I can check out, please let me know!

With that being said, it's likely their names were canonized publicly on the official Dark Crystal website. They are the only Skeksis without titles. Strangely skekHak's other half, urHom, is the only one of the two pairs to have a title (he was called "the Carpenter"). To my knowledge, there is no official reading material that states which Skeksis is who. It likely may come from outside material, like interviews, though I have not found them if they exist.

In the J.M. Lee novel continuity, only skekYi died at the beginning. (This part I was able to find in Flames of the Dark Crystal so likely the rest of this paragraph can be found in that book or the other three but I don't have the time to verify.) SkekHak, on the other hand, survived and was known as the Machinist. He was responsible for remodeling the Crystal Castle to suit the Skeksis' tastes. SkekYi apparently is known as "the Deceased" in the novels, but I can't find where this is said (if it ever was).

It's been changed for AOR, though. In the Crystal Calls, at the 19 minute mark, there is a billboard with 17 out of the 18 Skeksis titles (skekGra is missing from the list). However, there are three unique titles we've not seen yet: Spy Master, Steward, and Merchant.

(This was pulled from the Dark Crystal Conjunction on Facebook (I believe)). The new Skeksis are highlighted in red meanwhile the original Skeksis from the movie are in black. So people have assumed the Spy Master is skekUng's original title (especially because it's so similar to Garthim Master). And we know skekGra was known as the Conqueror and later the Heretic so it's safe to assume Steward and Merchant belonged to the last two Skeksis. However neither Skeksis were given an official title designation and this could likely be retconned in future material.

Something to keep in mind is that the Dark Crystal's continuity is fickle. Everything is considered canonical yet is continuously changed and contradicting each other. So what is true in the tetralogy is not true for the AOR continuity and vice versa. Both may not be true for other reading material as well. It is mainly based upon which media you are referring to. You will also notice a lot of this is speculative so I would treat it as such until we get official confirmation. (Or sources are provided. This is why citations are important).

[prolix-principality]

Two Too Terrible to Bear - Fablegate

Oh this was such a satisfying read, so peaceful and bittersweet.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32893024

Age of Resistance: urGoh, skekGra, misc characters 6 chapters; 4,062 words. ~ “For once you were Conqueror, I now brand thee…” The Emperor raised the hammer high above his head. “HERETIC!!” Then the hammer came down. ~ Warning: food, mentioned canon atrocities, brief dead bodies/excrement/violence, bodily injury/first aid

[sunderedandundone]

Dark Crystal fridge moments, Skeksis edition

So what DOES SkekGra mean by "cursed"? As in, "I lied, I cursed, I killed, I hurt, I maimed!"

Like yeah I guess they COULD mean they were a pottymouth, but that just seems kind of hard to buy? It doesn't really seem to be in the same league as even the lying -- to say nothing of the other stuff?

(I mean, one could make this case, though I think you'd have to work it. You'd have to posit that Thra societies actually did have some significant blasphemy taboos, like Christian societies pre-20c. Earlier generations of cussing were more likely to involve blasphemy than scatology or the f-word, because that was actually more scandalous; it wasn't till later that words like "Goddamn" etc came to be considered blonde brew in comparison to "MFer." Thus why we have so many minced oaths involving God, Jesus, etc that now sound so precious and prissy to modern ears. So like, if Gelfling of the Conqueror era really had a bug up it about people taking Thra's name in vain, for example, then I could see it. If you worked it, I could see it, BUT. ^^) Seems much more likely to me that they must have meant...like...CURSING, not cursing. O_o

So then the question becomes "Whoa. Skeksis can curse? That is, I always figured mystical assholes like SkekZok could probably curse somebody if they really wanted, but just your basic workaday military commander Skeksis can fling curses too??"

Exactly what kind of curses could they lay on people? Disease? Transformation? Really shitty luck? Riverwater turned into blood? Water and wine turned to vinegar? Ear mites? Only able to laugh like a Skeksis from now on?

THE POSSIBILITIES ARE LITERALLY ENDLESS

[fishfingies]

The Emperor's first guard dog

[image description: A young skekSo facing the right. He has a smaller crest and long black hair and feathers with faint teal and magenta sheen. He has a natural beak and his skin is a darker and brighter purple and a small beard. skekGra's silhouette in armor towers behind him and roars, dripping blood and saliva down his face. His ripped cape extends in front of skekSo. end id]

[loveforskekshod]

[gretchensinister]

And another thing! (More Dark Crystal interpretation and headcanons.)

B) I realized this list’s organization makes no sense. ANYWAY. I understand why the urskeks had to be like, immediately calm and serene etc. at the end of the movie but I think that in a narrative that allowed the exploration of this moment there would be massive internal freaking out because (and here’s another headcanon that I will fully fight for) each skeksis and mystic is a full being after living separately for one thousand years! There can be no seamless merger, no instant undoing of that! Or at least, that’s what I’m going to assert, because I think it’s a massive disservice to all the mystic and skeksis characters to just have a thousand years of life experience count for nothing. I think that’s a pretty bleak idea.

Anyway, one of the reasons I argue for this is actually because of SkekGra. He was able to grow and change from being the Conqueror to being the Heretic and actively taking steps to end skeksis power on Thra. If a skeksis can grow and change, that means that they (and the mystics) are real, whole, beings, even if they started life as halves of their originating urskek. There’s something in them that is whole, and simultaneously something fragmented. (It’s one of those capital-M Mysteries.) Consider succulents. If you break off leaves to propagate them, for a limited amount of time the leaf is something that could (if you had magic) be put directly back on the plant and then yeah you’d have basically one unchanged plant again. But if you have the separated leaves grow independently for long enough, then you have a whole other plant. Magically putting them together is putting together two plants, not two plant pieces.

ALSO I’m a fan of when even magic doesn’t allow things to be fully undone. So, sure, the urskeks are reunited but they were two whole people for a thousand years. It’s a new problem. (lol maybe they left so quickly because they were on the very edge of coherence/keeping it together.)

B.ii) The ending of the Dark Crystal movie was a neutral ending/the urskeks didn’t learn what they could have. This hot take comes to you from considering that both the skeksis and the mystics overall distance themselves from the life of Thra, though with very different motives and results. The skeksis distance themselves from Thra by claiming to be superior to all beings on Thra and destroying whatever they feel like, but they also seem closed off from Thra by mostly staying in the castle and also with their customary 87 layers of elaborate clothing. On the other hand, the mystics distance themselves from Thra by remaining in their valley and being so little in the world that they’re not commonly known by most other beings. Also, I get the vibe that they try to take as little from Thra as possible, which isn’t bad, but I interpret it as coming from the starting point of “we shouldn’t be here and we deserve nothing”—an abjection vibe. Neither the mystics nor the skeksis are living as part of Thra, and as I said in A.iii I think that they are meant to be creatures of Thra, or at least try to be. (I fully don’t care if some art book contradicts this. I find this way more interesting.) The ideal is not to put oneself as superior to Thra, nor to leave it as untouched as possible, but to live on it, as a new part of it. (What is a planet but a superorganism? Also humans are superorganisms, too, on a different scale, and like, a lot of evolution on a microbial level involved invading or harmful microorganisms basically being given jobs by the organism/cell they invaded.) But most of the mystics and skeksis don’t interact with Thra on the level of being part of it, and they don’t grow and change enough to maybe become a secret third thing when they reunite. Their urskek forms are exactly what they were to begin with.

So even though the reunification at the end of the movie was formative for me, revolutionary even, when so much other fantasy relies on eliminating the darkness/evil, and this movie had the opposing beings reuniting, now I’m like, “actually you didn’t take that concept all the way.” The skeksis and mystics kept themselves apart from each other. So yeah, they reunited...but did they learn how to face their destructive/darker impulses? How to balance those impulses within a full being? Did they learn how to accept being in the world, and being part of it, neither withdrawing out of shame or destroying out of pride? I don’t think they did! The mystic halves and skeksis halves are both still present in each urskek, maybe even more separate than before, even if the body is whole again. Again, this is me, but I don’t want magic to instantly solve the problem of “I have the capacity to do harm and I have done harm, to myself and others, through action and inaction. Now what?” No instant enlightenment! >:(

My headcanon is that any mystic-skeksis pair that actually did the work towards unity and harmony instead of relying on the massive magical whammy of the Great Conjunction to become one again would perhaps be able to become a new kind of being, clearly moving forward instead of trying to go back (because you can’t go back exactly. Also I accept the non-movie (and non-show as well?) detail that the urskeks on Thra were banished from their homeworld in which case 1) as I said I don’t think they really learned anything by being separate skeksis and mystics for 1000 years so whatever led to the banishment has not been solved 2) maybe going back to the people that banished you is not the move—especially when I think some material says it was these urskeks being too individualistic—as in, having personalities—as in, deviating from a pure ideal—that led to the banishment. HOT TIP: If you’re banished from a group for being impure, don’t go back.)

[holic-user]

1. SKEKGRA KNOWS HOW TO MUSHROOM FARM.

2. THE NAIL WASN'T FROM THE SKEKSIS, HE DID THAT HIMSELF.