hehe. mim @l0stmyfr0g .hehe. giggles

he dreams of the house he grew up in. he dreams of his family, his sister and his brother.

there is something hanging over them, a violent dread that clings onto their shoulders and tugs at their throat. she tries to tell them but her tongue can’t shape the warning. it sits sluggish and heavy in their mouth and spins their words into a muted gurgle.

he strains his lungs until they ache and he coughs up blood. their shriek emerges from their chest as nothing but a whistle, like wind working its way between a crack between stones, or the empty spaces between ribs long dried by the sand and bleached by the sun.

they dream of a fire. they see the melting of flesh and the charring of bone. she smells it in the air.

he wakes up wailing like a child. in the dark, he sees the flesh of his chest pulse and shift before falling still, invisible threads grasping their heart and forcing it to slow from its thudding.

I've actually thought about this before!

I think c!Mim would be an avatar of The Corruption or The Flesh, and a victim of The Desolation or The Eye.

Let's get into this in a bit more detail:

The Corruption

Wiki definition: The fear of corruption, disease, filth. Fear of the feelings of disgust, revulsion and the things or beings that might evoke such feelings. Manifests as mould, bugs, rot, decay, infection, the feeling of one's skin crawling.

c!Mim is not a stranger to disease- in fact, sickness was the catalyst for their interest in reversing death. When they were around nineteen or twenty, a plague came to their village. I would describe the epidemic as somewhat similar to the septicaemic plague, a category of plague which includes fever and chills, bleeding from the the mouth and nose, and gangrene in the extremities. Unlike the bubonic plague, buboes do not form. The plague in c!Mim's village is similar to this, except that the gangrenous tissue forms on the proximal sections of the body- e.g. torso and upper arms, rather than the distal fingers and toes.

The health Council of the village (picture a group of older individuals wearing historically ineffective medical gear e.g. plague masks) were reliant on older forms of medical belief. Prior to the discovery of pathogens, there was a belief in Europe that disease spread through 'miasma', suggesting that disease was caused by 'bad air'. Fun fact, the name malaria directly translates to bad air: mal (bad) aria (air) due to this particular theory.

c!Mim grew frustrated, seeing the village as refusing to move on from archaic beliefs (although these theories were considered modern and true at the time of c!Mim's upbringing). This frustration was exacerbated when their childhood friend, Emyr, fell sick. Later, the frustration turned into desperation as c!Mim themselves fell ill with the plague.

At this point, it probably seems like c!Mim would be victimised by The Corruption rather than be an avatar of it. However, c!Mim's Invention does take the form of a giant amalgamation of fungi, a hivemind taking over the earth and trees surrounding it. It's through this infectious being, a direct mirror of the very thing c!Mim is attempting to defeat, that they are able to transcend disease itself. It is through the infection that they cultured and accepted into their body that they were able to escape death itself.

Perhaps in the past, they would be victimised by The Corruption, but I believe that now they would be an avatar of it.

The Flesh

Wiki definition: Born from the fear held by animals bred for meat, and in the human realisation that we are just animated meat and bones. Often manifests as strange bodies—bodies being unnaturally twisted, reshaped, and butchered.

I think this one is pretty self explanatory, so I'll only put a brief justification. Some of the reasoning could be related to some parts of the backstory detailed in the Corruption section above.

The main reason c!Mim would be an avatar of The Flesh is due to the reshaping of their body. When they died as a result of damages from the fire as well as organ failure from the plague, the Invention worked to reconstruct their body out of mycelium. This was a slow process, and took several decades before c!Mim's new body was fully functional.

During this time, the Invention made a few mistakes. It drew DNA from other animals buried in the dirt nearby, resulting in c!Mim's non-human appearance. When c!Mim woke up their new body was a massive source of distress.

The Flesh can also be related to c!Mim's immoral experimentation on living animals.

c!Mim would be an avatar of The Flesh, but not willingly.

The Desolation

WIki definition: The fear of pain, loss, burning, and destruction, especially with a senseless cause. Manifests as fire, wax, heat, burns, destruction of potential.

c!Mim lost everything they had ever known after their death. When they woke up under their Invention, they wandered back to their village with no idea how long had passed. All that was left was rubble and an old, thin layer of ash and dust across the earth. c!Mim broke down there and then, sobbing and screaming into the emptiness of a village who never loved them.

They never found any closure for their grief. They wondered whether the destruction was a result of the fire, or just of the passing of time. They wondered how many died, and how many were their fault.

In the years following, they discovered the real properties of their Invention. They were unable to die, and injuries healed quickly and without scarring. They didn't age. This gave birth to a whole new fear: that they would lose everything once again. Every friend that they met was shadowed below the inevitability that c!Mim would outlive them all. They would live their whole life in front of c!Mim's eyes, and die there too.

c!Mim keeps detailed journals which include sketches of those in their life, because they fear that one day, after decades have passed, they will begin to forget.

Also, it's very on the nose, but c!Mim has an aversion to fire. They would be a perfect target of The Desolation.

Last, but not least:

The Eye

Wiki definition: The fear of being watched, exposed, followed, having secrets exposed. Can also pertain to the drive to know and understand, even if your discoveries might destroy you.

If you read my fanfiction and are somewhat familiar with The Magnus Archives, you may have noticed my references to The Eye. There are multiple forms in which The Eye manifests in c!Mim's lore, both before and after their death and rebirth.

Prior to their death, they grew more paranoid as they fell further into immoral and cruel practices. The judgment from their peers followed them everywhere, and stuck in the back of their head. c!Mim became nervous and found themselves looking over their shoulder to make sure they weren't being watched and that nobody would witness what they were doing. They had multiple heavy locks on the entrance to their lab (their lab was situated underground, and the entrance was a staircase near the edge of the forest).

After the reconstruction of c!Mim's body by their Invention, they attempted to integrate back into society, which had changed immensely since their death. There, their fear of being watched took a new form. They grew fearful that those around them would notice their lack of injury, and the way they never aged. c!Mim fears the day that somebody becomes aware of the evil they had committed all those decades ago.

The Eye is also a relevant fear for c!Mim in the sense of the pursuit of knowledge despite the consequences. This is fairly self explanatory.

Anyways

the goat is agata. goats are associated the devil and the occult- in c!mim’s eyes, agata is responsible for the suffering of the village. she was intelligent, yes, but she was violent. if you looked into her eyes, really looked, you would see no light, no glimmer. they were dark and flat like ink on a page. as the head of the council, she rejected c!mim’s studies for years, always with snideness and a laugh. she revelled in the cruelty of it. towards the end, when everything began to truly unravel, she disappeared. the day before it all ended, she was found, cowering in a dark room and unrecognisable. she had contracted the plague and it was destroying her alive.

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the boar is cassie. boars represent ferocity. they are opportunistic feeders and take what they can. a hunter and a friend to c!mim, he was bold and dangerous with the crossbow, but her smile was contagious and her personality inescapably friendly. He and c!mim were friends, but not close enough for him to fully understand what c!mim was attempting. In the end, when the fire raged through the village and a corpse burned in the lab, she was filled with spite she had never felt. chasing c!mim to the edges of the village where the treeline started, he raised his crossbow and aimed. the flames in his eyes- was that a reflection? or was it hate? she made a decision there, and spun around to run back into the blaze. if he could save anybody, that would be worth more than revenge. either way, the injuries on mim’s body would probably kill them regardless. he hoped they would.

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