Adam design? Any changes for his personality or demeanor?
Oh boy.. get ready for the infodump..
Note: He still has his ridiculous helmet, I love his expressions in that thing so much. So do the exorcists since I think that the mocking element of it is an interesting decision.
In this au, hellborns are not exempt from the annual extermination. Since they don't have souls, they're deemed evil indiscriminately. The only ones exempt are the sins and the Morningstar Family.
The extermination only takes place in the Pride Ring as further punishment for Lucifer and Lilith, watching annually as what they built is destroyed all over again.
(Hellborns with the means typically exit the Pride Ring during the annual extermination. If you can't, well, you're fucked. It's another layer of why what Blitzø is doing as an imp is considered so groundbreaking, but back to Adam)
He is NOT "indestructible" like the exorcists. Like any average Winner, he can be harmed. Therefore, he attacks from afar with his guitar being considered a long-range weapon.
He and Lilith originally split not because he was a prick who ordered her around, but rather, he was eager to please Heaven, and she wasn't.
Lilith was a free thinker from the start, a dreamer, while Adam narrow mindedly focused on what he had before him. This led to a lot of clashes, her refusing to be subservient to heaven, rather than subservient to him.
(I know that's the original story, but I just don't find it as interesting for the route I'm trying to go with a truly corrupted Heaven in this au.)
She would flee the garden and take comfort in the arms of Samael.
This led to Adam feeling bitter. But he ultimately elected to let it go as he was promised companionship with the much more likeminded Eve.
However, in trying to rid Eve of the qualities that made Lilith so disliked, she became naive. A trait that Adam thought was cute at first, but she just... wasn't Lilith.
Eve was a replacement, and it was apparent, but Adam once again let it go because it was the will of heaven, and he'd already failed to keep one bride.
Then Lucifer gave Eve the fruit and unleashed all of the badness onto the world, and Adam witnessed the war that broke out in Heaven, seeing the devastation first hand, reinforcing his notion that Heaven is always right.
Alongside sealing an ever growing hatred for Lucifer. He'd charmed away his first wife and filled her head with delusions, casting her to eternal damnation. He'd corrupted his second wife and used her as a vessel for evil. (That wasn't his intention, of course, but that is the narrative that was reinforced in Heaven's mind to fuel his desire to uplift their "values".) And he'd destroyed the once beautiful gardens he'd called home, casting Adam and his children to the earth, severing the divinity they'd held.
Lucifer truly took everything.
That's why, when the extermination was proposed, he was more than eager to lead the new order of angels to go down and keep Hell at bay.
Michael, the actual leader of heaven's army, refuses to set foot in Hell and was more than eager to pawn off the responsibility onto Adam vs. Having to go down there and face his brother yearly, taking more from him than he already has.
(Michael's guilt will be touched upon later, it's important.)
Adam is the actual lieutenant, but Lute (Luael) is still his sidekick of sorts. Lute embodied his hatred for hell. Exorcists have very little sense of self. Their only purpose, as mentioned in the post on them is to fight, nothing more.
Hearing Adam talk about what Lucifer did alongside other tales of the horrors of hell is what led her to push herself as hard as she did to excel above her sisters. She reminds him so much of Eve due to that frankly naive devotion, and it's another layer of why he initially kept her around.
(Sorry to guitarspear shippers, but their dynamic is going to be inherently unhealthy in this au. Idk if they'll end up together. It depends on how their own arcs pan out as I expand on this further. But as of right now, he fills the void for her, and she's a stand-in for what he's already lost. They are not well 😔 this is also why he eagerly made the deal to sneak Lilith into heaven on the condition that she divorces Lucifer. He would jump on the opportunity to be taken back.)
ANYWAYS.
He's not really crude when he meets Charlie like in canon. Yes, he was kind of funny at times, but I want to take a more serious approach.
He comes off as inherently bitter towards her because she's not only the daughter of the man he hates but a reminder that Lucifer took Lilith from him.
The condescending attitude remains, but instead of just laughing her off, I think he unloads all of those millenia of anger onto Charlie.
He waited until that moment to announce moving the exterminations up purely out of spite.
Trying to hurt Lucifer indirectly by hurting Charlie.
The confrontation with Emily still happens, and I'd imagine it's relatively the same. But it's only after Charlie argues with him that he goes on a tangent on how useless hellborns and sinners are, ending with him declaring that he can't wait to come down again and exterminate them.
And everything after that's still the same.
He failed to complete the extermination, and thus, instead of being reincarnated, he was damned to hell. Which comes as a nasty shock.
He'd spent his entire existence devoted to heaven. He'd done all they asked.
And yet here he is.
It's a harsh reality.
He struggles to acclimate to Hell. But he does end up at the hotel where he'll have to face Lucifer head on in the hopes of working his way up to redemption. (That will be fun to explore later)
SO YEAH
Sorry for the rambling, that went into quite a bit more than his personality, but I hope that explains it well?
Idk, ig I just thought a more nuanced approach to Adam as a character would be interesting. Like he's got every right to be angry at Lucifer, but I want to go the "hurt people hurt people" route. He thinks he's justified in his path to vengeance because these are "bad people" (some absolutely are AJDJSJDJS) anyway. And Heaven does everything it can to reinforce that notion, using him until he becomes a liability with his inability to control his own anger.
57 notes
·
View notes
really love how throughout a lot of smith and jones martha is really skeptical and apprehensive towards ten (+ one of my favorite exchanges between them - "what, people call you 'the doctor'?" "yeah?" "well, i'm not. far as i'm concerned, you've got to earn that title."), not taking everything he says at face value, even doubting the fact he's an alien until over halfway through the episode.. And like. i really truly think the thing that wins her over isn't him kissing her or any of the other insane mixed messages he manages to send, it's this scene here, where he /earns that title/ in her eyes:
(+ david's bit in the commentary, where he says: "[the doctor] has actually sacrificed himself, and - i would say, that that final act of selflessness is what finally, eventually, welds martha to him. [...] and she now returns it. she returns that act of selflessness.")
this is what their relationship is built on. it isn't about martha being the second-best replacement to rose or a rebound or whatever. bc it isn't really about rose. it's about doctor-in-training martha meeting someone (quite literally, "the doctor") whose ideals she aspires to, and doing her best to be the same person to him as he is to everyone else. it's about ten in return admiring her intelligence and inquisitiveness and how she cares for human life, recovering his compassion, letting himself lean on her for support - and then remembering at the most inopportune moments that he's supposed to not need anyone and be on his own forever. And around in their little nightmare loop they go where they save each other over and over until one of them breaks
i've seen ppl look at martha and go "why she does she admire/why is she so in love with ten if he acts like that to her?" or something along those lines and like. it's not just the fact she's in love with him (in fact i'd argue she actively tries to push it aside post-gridlock). it's the fact that she knows he's the kind of person to put everyone else's lives/well-being over his own. she trusts him to save her when she's in trouble even though it's been like two days at most that they've known one another bc she recognizes that same "deep all-encompassing drive to help others" in him. and she also recognizes, much much earlier than him, that he needs someone to save him, especially when he's unwilling to save himself. and yeah for a bit she thinks he returns her feelings and is just playing hard-to-get, but she realizes pretty early on that this probably isn't the case, and i think that realization fully solidifies here:
(this is when she's listening to ten talk abt gallifrey). And idk it might just be me but i think this expression isn't just her empathizing with his loss. it's also guilt, for wanting something from him that he's clearly unable to give when he's wracked with so much grief. (and you see it in the next episode, where tallulah asks if they're together and martha says for certain that they're not, and that he doesn't know about her feelings for him. she keeps everything to herself bc she now knows that when he shut her flirting down at the end of 3x01 it was the genuine reaction of someone who a) isn't interested and b) is scared of getting close with someone else again)
freema described their dynamic as "she's keener than him" and i think about this all the time. martha doesn't really take what ten throws at her. what she does instead is constantly poke holes in his already-failing front of "i will show someone the wonders of the universe so i can ignore what is wrong with me". what she does is stand up and fight him when he tries to go off on his own. what she does is put aside her well-being in favor of helping someone - just like what she saw him do for the people in the hospital when they first met. tldr, that's the doctor and his doctor and rip martha you would've loved who's gonna save u now by rina sawayama
377 notes
·
View notes