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ghostdude101, who wanted Weregild verse, in particular Win, Lose, or Draw, with an eye towards character construction/interactions. At least, I think that's what it was. *sheepish* Since that story was essentially Gabriel's POV on Cas meeting the Lokasons for the first time. Heh. (Incidentally, is there a canon collective name for that family?)
ghostdude101, who wanted Weregild verse, in particular Win, Lose, or Draw, with an eye towards character construction/interactions. At least, I think that's what it was. *sheepish* Since that story was essentially Gabriel's POV on Cas meeting the Lokasons for the first time. Heh. (Incidentally, is there a canon collective name for that family?)Character Interactions in Weregild verse
*rubs face* I'm not sure how to go about this. The characters in Weregild are basically my interpretations of the source characters (SPN Gabriel, Norse myth Loki & family), and how I think they'd interact with each other under certain conditions. We're taking Myth!canon all the way up to Loki's binding, but presuming that Ragnarok is still only prophecised, not actually happened yet. If we take that Loki was bound sometime before the Christianisation of the Norse lands, and that Gabriel came to Earth after appearing to Mohammed in the early middle ages, then we're talking first interaction somewhere in the early half of the second millennium, and whatever number of centuries to get used to each other after that, until the Apocalypse and its associated watersheds and aftermath. That's where these characters are coming from, where they are.
In terms of sources ... My knowledge of Norse myth is actually fairly shaky, based on stories I remember from when my granddad used to read to me as a kid, and some research online. All in English translation, because I don't have any of the Norse tongues. So ... The Weregild versions are ... Um. Possibly not very accurate interpretations. Gabriel, of course, is my Gabriel, not necessarily the one we see in-show, though I do try to keep him recognisable -_-; Same with Cas. Yahweh ... hmm. Elements of Chuck, and then more blank-slate elements from my own interpretation of what he must have been thinking over the course of SPN.
*frowns* For the purposes of Weregild, there were ... certain elements of each character pulled forward into focus. Mostly those elements I thought would appear in reaction to the other characters. Quite a lot of the stories are dealing with family, the losing thereof, the regaining thereof, what you fight for, what betrays you, what you have to let go. That's largely because one of the two main characters is Gabriel, and that's a huge part of his character from the show, and partly because the other one is Loki, and between Odin-as-blood-brother and the loss of his children for so many years, Loki has quite a lot in common with Gabriel. And ... quite a lot of what Gabriel has in common with that family are ... the painful parts of his past. The betrayals, the wars, the fighting, the pain. You see that most clearly in his interactions with Fenrir, I think, and Loki himself. The other two, not so much, because Hel took what was done to her and founded a kingdom upon it, and Jor ... Well. My version of Jor is more or less easy going, until you actually push him into confrontation (if he wasn't, I imagine Earth would have suffered a whole hell of a lot more from the Midgardsormen's wrath).
Adding Castiel into that mix ... Cas has a lot of the same things in common. He and Gabriel went on rather similar journeys, only Castiel's was much truncated, and rather more intense (figuring this shit out in the middle of an active Apocalypse is not the best way to go about it). Heh. Jor is Gabriel's favourite, because Gabriel likes to think he's nice unless pushed, but I think for Cas, it was always going to be Fenrir. They have a certain ... savagery, in common, a certain honour. Echo Tyr in Uriel, I think. Equal and shattering betrayals, the loss of faith. And in both cases, they were betrayed not because the other hated them, but because the other loved a cause more than them. Because Uriel believed Lucifer could save them, and Tyr believed his duty, first and foremost, was to the Aesir. Heh. Dark, but fascinating, echoes between them.
So. Win, Lose, or Draw. We have Gabriel vs Jor, Castiel vs Loki, Castiel & Jor, then Castiel vs Fenrir while Gabriel, Loki and Jor look on. And we have multiple facets of each character coming into play.
We have playfulness and forgiveness between Gabriel and Jor, because the kid is his favourite, but is also somewhat intimidating when Gabriel doesn't have Loki to hide behind anymore (the teeth, why had he never noticed the teeth?). That first section was mostly amusement, because crossing Christian myth (Jonah and the whale, Leviathan), with Jormungandr, and then subverting both of them, tickled my fancy. And also, because Gabriel is really, really cute around Jor. There are darker things underneath it, Gabriel's fear that the family will reject him now that he's no longer joined to their father, and the echoes in some ways of Enoch (Jor is a son of Giants that no Flood could drown - which might be a part of why Gabriel favours him). Heh. But this is just a more playful, relieved and sneaky interaction.
Cas and Loki, on the other hand, is somewhat more fraught. I'm guessing that was a much more complicated discussion, and touched a lot of sore spots for both of them. Not quite sure what it involved, but Loki's first reaction when Gabriel shows up is to wrap himself around him possessively (remember, in-story, they haven't been in separate bodies long, they're still kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the other to leave them/cast them out - Castiel, as a member of Gabriel's old family and having proven himself worthy of Gabriel's loyalty, would be a threat to Loki in that regard), and Castiel admits not long after that he feels he has a lot to prove, for the Apocalypse and the cost to innocents, the cost to Loki. Gabriel had to intervene in 5x19 because Cas had practically sacrificed himself just before, meaning that Gabriel and Loki were dying while Cas was lying uselessly either in a fishing boat or a hospital bed. I don't ... think that sits well with him. But they pull humour back, over that. Because they're Tricksters (and yes, Cas totally counts, sneaky sonnova), and that's what they do.
Meeting the rest of the family, Cas with Jor, with Fenrir ... It scares Gabriel to death. With the appearance of Castiel, like with Yahweh in Weregild, he's suddenly torn between his new family and his old, and it's not like the Apocalypse, where enmity is the standard. Castiel could go either way, which means Gabriel has to ... to prove to him that he made the right choice, that his family is worthwhile. He wants Cas to accept them. Because he doesn't have much other family left, and it's hard to hope when you're not used to it, but harder not to, when you have this chance. It's very much meet-the-inlaws, this story. Except ... where it's not. Where it's something else.
Because the Lokasons are not just adjuncts to Gabriel. Loki, Jor, Fenrir, they're all people themselves. And Cas. Castiel is tough enough, and willing enough, to risk himself to fly onto Hel's home turf, to go to another realm entirely and be vulnerable before them. Mostly, perhaps, because Cas is used to that, used to doing that for when it matters, used to standing up for himself when he shouldn't be able to. He's used to taking that risk, and Gabriel is worth that to him. Admittedly, for largely tactical reasons, but still.
And Jor, the monster, wanting to be accepted by someone who can play with him, who looked at him without fear and thanked him without prompting. Cas has a certain ... practical outlook on people, mostly because the past two seasons of SPN have beaten it into him, and Jor finds that ... a thing of hope. Keep in mind, Jor doesn't get to talk to a lot of people, imprisoned beneath the ocean, and of such monstrous form that most people's initial reaction to him is to attempt to stab him. Even in (deathly) human form, courtesy of his sister, he fears rejection. But Cas, being an angel, has experience of vessels himself, so.
Fenrir ... I'll admit. The person I was most watching during the confrontation between Cas and Fenrir was Loki. Because ... oh, because there's such a tangle of things in that, in what Loki's thinking there. Here's where the real test is, here's where Castiel proves whether or not he can handle their family, here's where the potential for violence crests highest, and Loki is right there. Anticipating. He's holding Gabriel back, keeping him from intervening, because ... Because he's been betrayed, him and Fenrir, most of all, because they don't trust, because they want to test, because if there is violence, if Cas turns on them, they will destroy him, before he has the chance to hurt Gabriel, to lure Gabriel away from them ... There is so much running under that encounter, for Loki. So much fear/anticipation/determination.
And Cas, hiding his fear, understanding he's being tested (if anyone understands what that feels like, it's Cas), chin up and facing them down. Reaching out to Fenrir (the hand, Tyr, Fenrir will never again accept the offer of a hand, I think), not flinching or striking when Fenrir, so cautiously, refuses it. Accepting this tentative acceptance, not pushing. And grinning, just a little, at Loki's shock about it. At Loki's almost annoyance that Cas didn't give him an opportunity to say "I told you so!" and strike him down.
And Gabriel, at the end of that. Looking at his family, his families, and thinking, for the first time, that there might be hope for both of them. Seeing the testing (he knew, if perhaps not quite consciously, what Loki and Fenrir were doing), feeling the thrill of hope when Castiel passes, at least for now. Yahweh was one thing, but Yahweh has less authority now than He once had, and isn't quite the same thing. Castiel knows exactly what Gabriel has done, what he's been through, what he's found outside of it, a family that Heaven does not own. Castiel understands that. And Gabriel ... hopes.
The interactions between them, all of them ... I'm not sure how to explain where it comes from. All of them are ... are people, all of them have pasts, and pains, and hopes, and fears, and reasons. Loki's fear to lose Gabriel, here. Jor's desire to be accepted. Fenrir's protection of his family, and awareness of a similar spirit in Cas. Cas' courage in the face of power, and tactical awareness of what Gabriel could mean for him, and his desire, echoing Gabriel's, for family that will not strike at him. Gabriel's hope, and desire, and confusion, should it come down to it, about which of them he should protect. It's all ... tangled together, in this, all of them tangled around each other. There are threads, pulled to the surface of the interactions as needed, as prompted in reaction to each other. I'm ... not sure how to explain it?
Most of these things are not conscious thoughts for me, when I'm writing. They're ... I build models, in my head. Of, well, most everything. It's how I understand the world. Everything I know about a thing, all those facts about it, what they resulted in, by what processes, are all bundled together in my memory, and built into models, such that I do not necessarily need to consciously remember specific details at any one time, but call up the model entire, plug new information or a proposed situation in, and see how the model runs. This, these characters, these interactions, are something similar. Each character is an individual model, set in the proposed situation, conscious of input from each other, and set in motion. That's why where a story ends up need not be even remotely similar to where it was supposed to go when I set out. The models run ahead of my consicous thoughts. The story shifts around them. The characters ... interact. Heh.
Of course, those interactions are only as good as the models, and thus the understandings, they are based on. *shrugs sheepishly* I don't usually start out with large casts interacting. Far too many variables. You need to build, to that. Heh.
Um. Does that ... make anything resembling sense? Any of that? *ducks sheepishly* But. Meta on characters interactions in Weregild. Does that suffice?
*rubs face* I'm not sure how to go about this. The characters in Weregild are basically my interpretations of the source characters (SPN Gabriel, Norse myth Loki & family), and how I think they'd interact with each other under certain conditions. We're taking Myth!canon all the way up to Loki's binding, but presuming that Ragnarok is still only prophecised, not actually happened yet. If we take that Loki was bound sometime before the Christianisation of the Norse lands, and that Gabriel came to Earth after appearing to Mohammed in the early middle ages, then we're talking first interaction somewhere in the early half of the second millennium, and whatever number of centuries to get used to each other after that, until the Apocalypse and its associated watersheds and aftermath. That's where these characters are coming from, where they are.
In terms of sources ... My knowledge of Norse myth is actually fairly shaky, based on stories I remember from when my granddad used to read to me as a kid, and some research online. All in English translation, because I don't have any of the Norse tongues. So ... The Weregild versions are ... Um. Possibly not very accurate interpretations. Gabriel, of course, is my Gabriel, not necessarily the one we see in-show, though I do try to keep him recognisable -_-; Same with Cas. Yahweh ... hmm. Elements of Chuck, and then more blank-slate elements from my own interpretation of what he must have been thinking over the course of SPN.
*frowns* For the purposes of Weregild, there were ... certain elements of each character pulled forward into focus. Mostly those elements I thought would appear in reaction to the other characters. Quite a lot of the stories are dealing with family, the losing thereof, the regaining thereof, what you fight for, what betrays you, what you have to let go. That's largely because one of the two main characters is Gabriel, and that's a huge part of his character from the show, and partly because the other one is Loki, and between Odin-as-blood-brother and the loss of his children for so many years, Loki has quite a lot in common with Gabriel. And ... quite a lot of what Gabriel has in common with that family are ... the painful parts of his past. The betrayals, the wars, the fighting, the pain. You see that most clearly in his interactions with Fenrir, I think, and Loki himself. The other two, not so much, because Hel took what was done to her and founded a kingdom upon it, and Jor ... Well. My version of Jor is more or less easy going, until you actually push him into confrontation (if he wasn't, I imagine Earth would have suffered a whole hell of a lot more from the Midgardsormen's wrath).
Adding Castiel into that mix ... Cas has a lot of the same things in common. He and Gabriel went on rather similar journeys, only Castiel's was much truncated, and rather more intense (figuring this shit out in the middle of an active Apocalypse is not the best way to go about it). Heh. Jor is Gabriel's favourite, because Gabriel likes to think he's nice unless pushed, but I think for Cas, it was always going to be Fenrir. They have a certain ... savagery, in common, a certain honour. Echo Tyr in Uriel, I think. Equal and shattering betrayals, the loss of faith. And in both cases, they were betrayed not because the other hated them, but because the other loved a cause more than them. Because Uriel believed Lucifer could save them, and Tyr believed his duty, first and foremost, was to the Aesir. Heh. Dark, but fascinating, echoes between them.
So. Win, Lose, or Draw. We have Gabriel vs Jor, Castiel vs Loki, Castiel & Jor, then Castiel vs Fenrir while Gabriel, Loki and Jor look on. And we have multiple facets of each character coming into play.
We have playfulness and forgiveness between Gabriel and Jor, because the kid is his favourite, but is also somewhat intimidating when Gabriel doesn't have Loki to hide behind anymore (the teeth, why had he never noticed the teeth?). That first section was mostly amusement, because crossing Christian myth (Jonah and the whale, Leviathan), with Jormungandr, and then subverting both of them, tickled my fancy. And also, because Gabriel is really, really cute around Jor. There are darker things underneath it, Gabriel's fear that the family will reject him now that he's no longer joined to their father, and the echoes in some ways of Enoch (Jor is a son of Giants that no Flood could drown - which might be a part of why Gabriel favours him). Heh. But this is just a more playful, relieved and sneaky interaction.
Cas and Loki, on the other hand, is somewhat more fraught. I'm guessing that was a much more complicated discussion, and touched a lot of sore spots for both of them. Not quite sure what it involved, but Loki's first reaction when Gabriel shows up is to wrap himself around him possessively (remember, in-story, they haven't been in separate bodies long, they're still kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the other to leave them/cast them out - Castiel, as a member of Gabriel's old family and having proven himself worthy of Gabriel's loyalty, would be a threat to Loki in that regard), and Castiel admits not long after that he feels he has a lot to prove, for the Apocalypse and the cost to innocents, the cost to Loki. Gabriel had to intervene in 5x19 because Cas had practically sacrificed himself just before, meaning that Gabriel and Loki were dying while Cas was lying uselessly either in a fishing boat or a hospital bed. I don't ... think that sits well with him. But they pull humour back, over that. Because they're Tricksters (and yes, Cas totally counts, sneaky sonnova), and that's what they do.
Meeting the rest of the family, Cas with Jor, with Fenrir ... It scares Gabriel to death. With the appearance of Castiel, like with Yahweh in Weregild, he's suddenly torn between his new family and his old, and it's not like the Apocalypse, where enmity is the standard. Castiel could go either way, which means Gabriel has to ... to prove to him that he made the right choice, that his family is worthwhile. He wants Cas to accept them. Because he doesn't have much other family left, and it's hard to hope when you're not used to it, but harder not to, when you have this chance. It's very much meet-the-inlaws, this story. Except ... where it's not. Where it's something else.
Because the Lokasons are not just adjuncts to Gabriel. Loki, Jor, Fenrir, they're all people themselves. And Cas. Castiel is tough enough, and willing enough, to risk himself to fly onto Hel's home turf, to go to another realm entirely and be vulnerable before them. Mostly, perhaps, because Cas is used to that, used to doing that for when it matters, used to standing up for himself when he shouldn't be able to. He's used to taking that risk, and Gabriel is worth that to him. Admittedly, for largely tactical reasons, but still.
And Jor, the monster, wanting to be accepted by someone who can play with him, who looked at him without fear and thanked him without prompting. Cas has a certain ... practical outlook on people, mostly because the past two seasons of SPN have beaten it into him, and Jor finds that ... a thing of hope. Keep in mind, Jor doesn't get to talk to a lot of people, imprisoned beneath the ocean, and of such monstrous form that most people's initial reaction to him is to attempt to stab him. Even in (deathly) human form, courtesy of his sister, he fears rejection. But Cas, being an angel, has experience of vessels himself, so.
Fenrir ... I'll admit. The person I was most watching during the confrontation between Cas and Fenrir was Loki. Because ... oh, because there's such a tangle of things in that, in what Loki's thinking there. Here's where the real test is, here's where Castiel proves whether or not he can handle their family, here's where the potential for violence crests highest, and Loki is right there. Anticipating. He's holding Gabriel back, keeping him from intervening, because ... Because he's been betrayed, him and Fenrir, most of all, because they don't trust, because they want to test, because if there is violence, if Cas turns on them, they will destroy him, before he has the chance to hurt Gabriel, to lure Gabriel away from them ... There is so much running under that encounter, for Loki. So much fear/anticipation/determination.
And Cas, hiding his fear, understanding he's being tested (if anyone understands what that feels like, it's Cas), chin up and facing them down. Reaching out to Fenrir (the hand, Tyr, Fenrir will never again accept the offer of a hand, I think), not flinching or striking when Fenrir, so cautiously, refuses it. Accepting this tentative acceptance, not pushing. And grinning, just a little, at Loki's shock about it. At Loki's almost annoyance that Cas didn't give him an opportunity to say "I told you so!" and strike him down.
And Gabriel, at the end of that. Looking at his family, his families, and thinking, for the first time, that there might be hope for both of them. Seeing the testing (he knew, if perhaps not quite consciously, what Loki and Fenrir were doing), feeling the thrill of hope when Castiel passes, at least for now. Yahweh was one thing, but Yahweh has less authority now than He once had, and isn't quite the same thing. Castiel knows exactly what Gabriel has done, what he's been through, what he's found outside of it, a family that Heaven does not own. Castiel understands that. And Gabriel ... hopes.
The interactions between them, all of them ... I'm not sure how to explain where it comes from. All of them are ... are people, all of them have pasts, and pains, and hopes, and fears, and reasons. Loki's fear to lose Gabriel, here. Jor's desire to be accepted. Fenrir's protection of his family, and awareness of a similar spirit in Cas. Cas' courage in the face of power, and tactical awareness of what Gabriel could mean for him, and his desire, echoing Gabriel's, for family that will not strike at him. Gabriel's hope, and desire, and confusion, should it come down to it, about which of them he should protect. It's all ... tangled together, in this, all of them tangled around each other. There are threads, pulled to the surface of the interactions as needed, as prompted in reaction to each other. I'm ... not sure how to explain it?
Most of these things are not conscious thoughts for me, when I'm writing. They're ... I build models, in my head. Of, well, most everything. It's how I understand the world. Everything I know about a thing, all those facts about it, what they resulted in, by what processes, are all bundled together in my memory, and built into models, such that I do not necessarily need to consciously remember specific details at any one time, but call up the model entire, plug new information or a proposed situation in, and see how the model runs. This, these characters, these interactions, are something similar. Each character is an individual model, set in the proposed situation, conscious of input from each other, and set in motion. That's why where a story ends up need not be even remotely similar to where it was supposed to go when I set out. The models run ahead of my consicous thoughts. The story shifts around them. The characters ... interact. Heh.
Of course, those interactions are only as good as the models, and thus the understandings, they are based on. *shrugs sheepishly* I don't usually start out with large casts interacting. Far too many variables. You need to build, to that. Heh.
Um. Does that ... make anything resembling sense? Any of that? *ducks sheepishly* But. Meta on characters interactions in Weregild. Does that suffice?
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