#rria (tries) to write

[rriavian]

Do you think Morpheus knows deep inside that Corinthian is his mirror? The reflection of his own darkness and desire?

Jessamy my beloved! I love getting asks from you! They are always the most interesting questions to really make me think about how to put my thoughts into words! <3 Sorry it took so long to answer this one (think I broke my record for time taken to answer an ask eek)!

I had this typed out nearly ready to post but got very distracted by Corintheus week! Can't believe it's February already, I hope you’re having a good New Year so far 😊

Does Morpheus know that the Corinthian is his mirror?

I think that Dream does, and that in some ways he holds himself responsible for the difficulty of it, because I think we can all agree that it’s a lot for any singular creation of his to embody. On the flipside of this you could argue that Fiddler’s Green is supposed to be a reflection of the light—the ‘heart’ of the Dreaming, a representation of pure life giving creation—with Gault as the fluid, transformative, link between all three of the major arcana. I think I’ve talked briefly about this before but it’s relevant again for this question.

Her place as a link between the two extremes, and her transformative powers, makes sense for why Gault would want to become a dream (and perhaps another reason why Dream agreed in the end) but it also suggests how complicated the facets of Dream’s identity are.

(I could probably make an entire separate post on this but! Moving on!)

All three major arcana reject him just as the rest of his creations do, are the last to return to the Dreaming and none of them do it by choice. Even Fiddler’s Green needs to first be tracked down. The Corinthian is found at the convention where Dream takes responsibility for making him the way he is, designating his rebellion as his own failure. The Corinthian was his masterpiece but I think Dream might now consider that as designing too ambitious a spec, the coding perfect but corrupted in the end. I think that assessment could be why he highlights the Corinthian’s purpose as being a dark mirror for humanity instead of one for himself, despite how closely those two things seem to be bound.

Not necessarily changing his mind, just changing the emphasis.

But, as I said, I also think Dream made the Corinthian for it. To be able to take it. Or at least hoped that he would—another reason why he might have said that he’d had so much hope for him, why Dream was so disappointed—not constructed to be given a burden, not supposed to be that at all. In many ways I think that’s why he’s a major arcana. But the Corinthian also has his own unique darkness, perhaps finding its origins in his creators but without its place in Dream’s larger puzzle it expresses differently, the exploration of what happens to a counterpoint to a dream that isn’t held internally.

The Corinthian is far more selfish with his darkness, lives out all that desire and need the way Dream can’t (and won’t), can embody it wholeheartedly because he’s not supposed to be balanced in the same way.

Yet in doing so he offers balance; can offer that to Dream, the same way he allows darker human impulses a chance to take center stage.

An outlet for it all.

All of Dream’s creations in some way seem to be that, a combination of the restriction of a role and the individuality of personality, might have a set purpose but have choices in how they carry out what they are. The same as Dream really. They are concepts personified, ideas and emotions that might originate in another, whether it be humanity or their creator, but they’ve been given their own voice.

It's no one way dictation…a dialogue with humanity because their function is to speak back.

So yes, I think that Dream knows that the Corinthian is his dark mirror far better than the Corinthian himself does. I think he knows how important he is in a way the Corinthian doesn’t see (the way the rest of his creations sometimes can’t see about themselves either).

I think the existence of a dark mirror (and other such representations) are a way in which Dream keeps emotionally healthy, just as they are a way for humans to keep emotionally healthy, and you could even argue that it’s how his creations keep themselves healthy too. Change and growth are certainly positive aspects of life, but like anything that’s not necessarily universal, because so is embracing what you are. Who you are. Without referencing my own neurodivergence too much, I think we can all understand circumstances where forcing oneself to change is far from a good and healthy thing.

Acceptance of the parts of oneself that we struggle with/have a tricky relationship with is a big part of what dreams and nightmares help humans to do.

It’s a big part of what a nightmare does.

Ok, this is getting long, so I’m going to make one final point. So I think that Dream could have spent centuries living vicariously through the Corinthian’s nightmarish nature and then finding that crucial mechanism corrupted, poisoned, when the Corinthian suddenly started killing dreamers in the Waking World. I don’t think that’s one of Dream’s desires at all, secret or otherwise, and I think it repulsed him to the point of potentially threatening to destabilise the rest of the system.

Perhaps Dream found his own darkness felt tainted by a reflection that (however intentional the rejection was) no longer wanted to mirror him.

In killing dreamer's the Corinthian was showing how he no longer wanted to mirror humanity (wanted to take from them instead, thought that a better match for what he was made for) and in doing so denied not only Dream, but his own identity too in no longer wanting to be what he was. For someone like Dream I think killing the dreamer’s would have been deeply offensive, an incredibly personal insult, a perversion of his function and an attack on what agency he has to fulfill it.

Whatever disgruntlement Dream may have with his role, he was then faced with the result of how instead of having a healthy outlet, those feelings could have been twisted/warped within the Corinthian's own unique mix of individuality and function. Perhaps in many ways it felt like being forced to kill his dreamers with his own hands.

And I think that was why when Dream found him in Berlin he was so quick to decide to unmake the Corinthian on the spot.

[rriavian]

I've got no idea if this counts as dedication to my craft or not but I'm working on the 4th version of a 7000 word fic and I'm currently copying and pasting it into a new document in small segments and proceeding to rewrite it line by line.

This might be a cry for help, or at least a tormented scream into the void, or maybe even some sort of bizarre pep talk. I'm about half way, though it's unclear if I'm having a good time, and there's not so much hope at the end of the tunnel as the certainty of clicking the X at the top right of the document when I'm done.

This isn't even the first fic I've done this with