do you think yourself to be better than the people written into myths?
do you think about orpheus and eurydice and laugh at their tragedy?
do you think yourself to be above orpheus' mistake, knowing better than to turn around, to lose everything simply to see if your love is following?
aziraphale followed god in his faith, praying, believing, begging her to take the shape of his wishes so his faith would persist. make it to the top, follow your faith to the end of the line, and your life will begin anew, better, solid, not a belief but a promise.
yet as he walked for six thousand years, he kept turning around, never stopping but hesitating, loosing his footing again and again. keep walking, crowley told him, walking along his own string of faith.
was orpheus' mistake truly turning around? we know how the myth ends, not how it could have gone, which means every belief carries a piece of truth in it.
upon reaching the earth, would eurydice appear behind him, warm, alive, real, or would he fall to his knees and weep in the shadow of a shade?
maybe he should have clung to his faith. maybe he should have turned around again and again and again, until he stilled and came face to face with his eurydice, his crowley.
faith in the gods, faith in god, is a never-ending staircase with a light always just out of reach. just one more step, one more prayer, surely now they have reached the surface? more dirt. always more dirt. no voice in the silence, no footsteps either, but when he turns he can see him breathe, can hear the air rushing through his body.
every breath a prayer answered, every step proof of faith, and orpheus never saw his eurydice again, so are we above them? are they? could you believe in someone and follow them out of hell based on nothing but a prayer?
one day, aziraphale tells him, one day. so crowley follows. so he prays. they slow, walking side by side, one forwards, one backwards, and with the first touch of light on his skin, hope begins to bloom.
at last, crowley thinks, and then he stops. orpheus turned, yet that is not what breaks their faith, it is aziraphale's foot sliding down a step, one single step. faith in the dirt they escaped, faith in the hells, faith in the voices echoing in the dark, faith in god.
never, he realises then, never faith in me.
eurydice returned to the shadows, but crowley is no orpheus, he will not dig with bare hands and bruised knuckles until the earth swallows him again. he will not sing a song of mourning and broken hearts.
crowley sits in the sun and waits. he won't climb. he will wait and he will offer a hand back to the light; it is his turn to turn around.
aziraphale faces another staircase and begins to walk, step after step after step. faith? after the next corner, surely. faith? any moment now. faith in the silent sound of his steps, faith in the love resting on the surface.
orpheus or eurydice, both damned, torn apart for eternity? whose faith broke and who persevered?
does it matter?
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Wednesday WIP
I was tagged by a gaggle of talented people:
@okdeannawrites, @whimsicalmeerkat, @dear-massacre, @endwersed
@hedwig221b, @eevylynn, and @equallyloyalandlethal
Anyone and everyone can participate in this WIP Wednesday; may you all have amazing days ahead.
WIP below the cut
The rest of the evening passed easy for him with his nightly workout, dinner in his apartment, the latest episode of his favorite show ‘Adolescent Vampire’, and a long, warm shower. He was in bed and asleep before ten which was rare, but needed. He just wanted the day to end and a new one to start.
Which meant something had to interrupt. His phone went off in the dead of the night and Derek jolted awake to answer in a familiar panic. “Laur?”
“Were you born or bitten?”
“Born,” Derek answered and glanced at the clock. The hands read a little past two in the morning, Derek sitting up and rubbing his hand over his eye. He took a slow and steady breath and realized that it was Stiles calling him, not Laura.
“And you’re an Alpha by…”
“Gaining my Alpha Spark by starting my pack in college,” Derek confirmed for him, heart returning to its normal pace. He had expected this question to come up earlier, it was always the question that someone asked when they found out both his sister and him were Alphas. “Contrary to popular fiction, you can become an Alpha without killing someone for it.”
Stiles’ fingers began typing and little sounds of active listening came through the phone. “That’s the whole true alpha thing right? That’s what happened to my friend, but he was told it was rare?”
Derek let out a little sound that was half skeptical. “It’s a little complicated, but it is harder for a bitten wolf. Your friend really is a ‘rare’ alpha according to Werewolf history. ‘True alpha’ was incorrectly translated propaganda from the 1560–1630 during the Werewolf Trials.”
“There were Werewolf trials?”
“Yes, it was actually around the same time as the witchcraft trials so a lot of the times people forget they happened.” Derek moved on the bed a little more as he felt his body wake up more than he would have liked. “It’s a whole thing, so –”
“I’m here for the details, Derek,” Stiles said eagerly, clearly actually interested in the history lesson.
“During the reading of the charges, they would say the term ‘scintillae alphae’ when leading them to trial, which directly translates to ‘spark of an Alpha’. Since the trials were through a lot of France, sometimes it would be written in French rather than Latin and would be written ‘susciter alpha’ which when translated to Latin again actually comes closer to –”
“True Alpha,” Stiles finished Derek's sentence, humming to himself. “So because someone couldn’t decide if they wanted to speak in Latin or French, my best buddy was told he was a rare, super cool True Alpha by a creepy veterinarian, when really he just had a spark of a wolf. Lame.”
Derek made a face at that, unsure exactly what a veterinarian had to do with anything.
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I swear I’m not a violent person, but if I see another fancast of Evelyn Hugo where they suggest a non-cuban/non-latina actress, I may slap someone – like the person who did the fancast.
I don’t think some people understand how important it is that a book so freaking popular, has a Cuban bisexual woman as the lead; and how low-key racist is that fact that they are trying to erase that an putting a white woman in her place.
The book clearly indicates several times that she is Cuban, that she has dark hair (dyed blonde), and that although she isn’t dark skinned she isn’t white passing either – hence the blonde dye.
And yet… all the fancast I see on social media are of white american actresses without any type of Cuban or Latin descent. I have even seen Taylor Swift of all people; and I say this a big swiftie, but Taylor isn’t an actress. A music icon, yes; an actress, no. And more importantly, she isn’t Cuban! (Not to mention the amount of Taylor Swift content under the Evelyn Hugo tags.)
What bothers me the most is that before Taylor Zakhar Perez was officially cast as Alex Claremont-Diaz, I saw the same behavior. People fan casted actors that weren’t Mexican or latinos, and they got defensive when you called them out on it.
Latinos, especially queer Latinos, are so underrepresented in big and popular productions… You doing fancasts where you erase the ethnicity of the character, are part of this same problem.
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