#askeme

Uh... yeah Emily had the right idea so...Hug @ethan-eats-cookies because he’s basically like a little brother to meMarry @rosesfor-emily because she’s my best friend and she already agreed to itAaannnnd kiss @yourmanyilmaz because welll... he’s good at it? Oh and uh... yeah he’s my boyfriend so...

Thank you so much for sending this, I’m glad people liked Devour. My memory must be super bad as I can’t remember my exact reasons for things here, but I wrote a lot so maybe it’s all good :D

For reference, anyone reading this, this is from my Halloween oneshot fic Devour. It’s an AU where Gluttony’s hunger pangs affect Pride a little too much.

Now, for this segment, it’s part of the third scene in the oneshot, though I think I wrote it fourth. Pride has been living purely through his shadow for years after devouring his container, enough for Amestris to have become repopulated after the Promised Day.

In the first plans of the fics I remember Pride was going to still have his container at this point, but I thought it was more appropriate to separate Pride’s life among humans and his new life here as more of an animal; Besides, Pride does not know Cretan/Aerguan/Drachman, so hearing all these unfamiliar voices that he cannot understand drives him further into his feral state, in his solitude with no one to talk to, it’s no wonder he loses his grasp on language and eventually loses his ability to speak.

I wanted some parts of Pride’s personality to remain at this point, he is still vain in his shame of his unstable body leaking and interfering in his ability to hunt, and he still gloats and relishes in the suffering of the humans he catches. At the same time he has become complacent in this new life, and it’s Father that brings him back to reality.

Hunt. Eat. Eat more. Sleep. Life seems so much simpler now. It thinks it could get used to this, at least until Father—

It blinks, confused.

Fa-ther?

Father!

Even though Pride suffers a lapse here in remembering Father, his love for Father endures even after he forgets his own name in the next scene, though by that point Pride has long since forgotten why he wants Father to come back, and his love has distorted into wanting to eat Father instead, as eating is the only thing he has ever associated with a positive emotion by then. As ever, Pride puts Father before himself in every sense. Though there are no mentions of Father in the final scene, Pride is still using his chair as his ‘nest,’ and in what could be Pride’s very last moment of lucidity he is still ashamed of his altered teeth, the corruption of his true form compared to Father’s, and caused by his eating Gluttony, the whole cause of his undoing.

Ok we’re actually to the extract in the ask now…:

It pictures him in its mind, yearning. Not the form Pride had known for so long, or his shadow. No, the form Father had chosen for himself, his form as a God.

The glorious image blurs, it cannot see him as it longs to, any of him. It should be burned into its psyche, even from that glimpse upon the Promised Day.

Of course I used the super reverential word ‘glorious’, befitting a God. Even now Pride adores Father, and he is naturally distraught that he cannot see him perfectly in his mind. Of course this could also be in a literal sense, as he did not get a good look of Father’s front on the Promised Day, and longs to physically see him again so he can fully appreciate his new form.

At the same time I chose ‘any of him’ to denote that it could be interpreted that Pride could also not envisage his Father’s regular form either, a much deeper disgrace, given Pride’s hundreds of years of memories with Father.

How could it possibly forget something so precious? Pride quashes its shudder before it can form, its eyes screw shut. It has not forgotten.

Pride’s endless devotion makes any kind of lapse in his memories of Father particularly shameful, and possibly the only thing that could force such an emotional reaction from him, his so many eyes that were so self assured and focused on his hunt before closing, as if it physically hurts him. At the same time the human is still in his grasp, so he may be stifling his reaction to spare himself any further embarrassment.

It only need be patient, be a dutiful child and rid Central of these irksome humans until Father’s return, and then Father will…

Recalled to himself, Pride tries to give some deeper meaning to his eating the humans as an excuse for his insatiable appetite, that it is what Father would want. I also wanted to connect to Pride’s desperate longing that Father will come back once he eats all the humans, in the same way at the start of the fic he thought Father would want him to clear Central of all the dead bodies.

Father…When Father sees Pride, his firstborn, like this…

But of course, angst gets in the way of Pride’s futile hope. Pride’s already ashamed of his oozy shadow, how will Father react to Pride’s disgusting sharp teeth, will he be ashamed of him, will he punish him for devouring his container and Gluttony, will he even fix him? Pride always held his true form in such high regard, a perfect replica of his Father, but here he is, living like an animal and doing nothing but eat. I used the specific term firstborn here because…er…I watched Thor: Ragnarok the day I wrote this and Hela said it a couple of times >__>

EAT

The hunger purrs, and Pride obliges the impulse, shredding the human’s soft skin, letting the angry spurts of blood coat it.

Now the turning point of the fic, I feel, is that Pride does not attempt to resist his hunger, in order to escape his shame and doubt, and also to vent his frustration, hence the ‘angry’ spurts of blood.

Earlier the hunger was always described negatively, screaming, but here it purrs to him. Pride cannot accept his pathetic situation, nor can he accept that Father might not come back, or what might happen if he does. And how could he ever doubt his Father? Where earlier in the fic Pride ran away to read books to escape his problems, here he gives in because eating is something simple, he doesn’t have to think to kill and eat pathetic humans.

This is reflected in the subsequent scenes in the fic, Pride retreats into his baser hunger to stop himself admitting the shame of forgetting his name, or not recognising his own reflection. At the very end Pride does try to resist it and remain in control of himself to avoid biting through his Stone, but by that time it is too late, and the brief flashes of his true personality are merely that, and Pride may never resurface again. Poor Pride…I hope the Stone biting killed you so you needn’t hunger anymore…

Anyway, I said way too much, and it’s pretty much just saying what happens. I think I failed…oh well, time for bed.

Yay!  Thanks for the submission.  From the ship askmeme here: still taking questions if anyone wants to play!

5. Nicknames? Pet names? Any in-jokes?

Weirdly, considering their lifestyle, not a lot of extra names!  Whisper’ll shorten it to “D” a lot of the time, if she bothers to use his name at all, which isn’t often.  Pet names are for when they’re in cover, real names are for suckers, and they’re both weirdly reticent to use even their actual code names all that often.  You’ll notice they almost always call each other “partner” instead of “Deacon” or “Whisper.”  They are literally the only people in the entire Railroad who haven’t noticed they do this.

The “caveman versus astronaut” joke is the gift that keeps on giving, and that is 200% Whisper’s fault.  

36. What’s their greatest strength as a couple? Their weakness?

Д: Strangest food you’ve eaten?