#who's an eldritch being beyond what feeble mortal minds can comprehend

[cassie-likes-fanfiction]

I know that fans commonly hc Vee as genderfluid or a demigirl, and I get why - I love that headcanon, too - but I'm also mildy amused by the alternative

that Vee, the shapeshifting basilisk from the Demon Realm who's free to assume any form she wants at any time, has no qualms whatsoever about being a girl all the time (she tried other forms once, on a whim; wasn't interested)

while her non-magical, completely human joyfriend Masha is the one who challenges your preconceived notions of gender on a daily basis

just makes for a very fun subversion of expectations on the whole "genderfluid shapeshifter" trope

[eversea143]

Who’s The Collector?

(Spoiler Alert!)

Long post warning too ‘v’

I’ve recently seen For The Future (incredible episode can’t wait for the final *squee!*) and I’m, well, having some deep thoughts about our fan favorite god-child.

I’ve already seen dozens of theories on who/what The Collector is. A lot has been (dis)proven with the recent lore-dump that we got in the episode. I’m having a lot of fun seeing how others are digging into the deeper lore and the how’s and why’s of TC’s past and the apparent species he’s a part of.

And I’m not saying any of them are wrong!

But here’s what I think:

The Collector is, in a sense, an eldritch being pretending to be a mortal.

‘What?’ you might ask? ‘He’s powerful, sure, but an eldritch being???’

Well, let us delve for a moment into what the word ‘eldritch’ stands for. There are a few descriptions, but the one it serves here is as follows:

“Something unknown, beyond the realm of our understanding and perception of reality.”

Crude and simple, but it sort of fits doesn’t it? We don’t know much about The Collector. We know they look like a child, have yellow-blue skin, unphatomable power and wants to make friends. We know (now) that they’re from a species of seemingly ageless celestial beings who go from world to world, collecting the flora and fauna to preserve it and keep it from fading away through time.

But what else do we know? We don’t know how his powers work, why his people collect living creatures besides the obvious, or how their society works if they even have one. We don’t know why our Collector stood out from the others, why he looks back on his people’s history with disgust and contempt. We don’t know what landed him in magical prison or what his connection with the Titans is.

And at the end of the day, we’ll likely never know the full story. Why?

Because The Collector, our Collector, has lived for millenia.

And that’s a long time! Too long for our feeble minds to comprehend! We can’t make sense of what it means for a living being to be a child yet at the same time live for hundreds of thousands of millions of years. We might get close, but we’ll never truly know.

It’s beyond our realm of understanding.

We are Mortal beings, living finite lives on finite worlds with finite resources. We are relient on physical sustenance to survive and are fragile when it comes to the great forces excuded by the stars. We rely on the complexity of magnetic fields and layers of ozone to not be exposed to toxic levels of radiation generated by our own sun! The very thing that also gave us our life!

But guess who aren’t like that? The Collectors.

They live for a very long time, if not practically forever! TC has yet to sustain an injury and we haven’t seen any depictions of Collectors dying, so we don’t know if they’re essentially ageless or truly immortal. They are immortal in every way that matters, at current.

(The fact that our dear Titan BL sealed TC away instead of killing him is in an ambigious area because either he couldn’t kill TC, physically, or wouldn’t kill TC because ‘literal Dad here’ and ‘morals?’)

So yes, Eldritch Being.

But then what about the ‘pretending to be a Mortal’?

Let us recap what we know about Collectors, as a species. They collect stuff, primarily living creatures because something (sympathy? empathy? Desire?) brings them to do so. They preserve beings from different planets to keep them out of Time’s reach. But rue those who stand in their way, they will scorche the sky and rain fire down upon anyone who opposes them.

Overkill much?!?

It’s pretty extreme, even when you try to look at it from their perspective. Oh, you don’t want us to collect your people? Well, screw you, we’ll bring some carnage and genocide make sure you never can! IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE! Why destroy the creatures you’re trying to preserve just because they don’t want to get turned into statues or scrolls?!

Is it a sick enjoyment? Do they not know any better? Is it in their nature to destroy what opposes them? You’d believe that beings living for millions of years would eventually understand that there are legitimate reasons that what they’re doing is wrong, right?

But that’s the gist of it. Collectors collect living beings and destroy those who stand in their way. It’s clearly been like that for generations, eons perhaps, and so far they seem to be doing just fine.

And then our Collector pops up. He’s just a little one when his people find the Demon Realm, curious and learning.

He watches his people as they start collecting. Watches as they discover the Titans who, for good reason, oppose what’s happening and begin fighting back. Before all this it’s likely the Collectors had never faced a species before who possessed powers that canceled out theirs, so at least the Titans had some foothold to work with!

But a child immersed in a war they don’t understand? Don’t know the reason for? They’re young, just trying to make sense of everything around them. This are their people, right? And they’re trying to collect, right? So why are they fighting those big creatures?

It doesn’t make sense, not to them. Young children are curious and want to know everything, the rhyme and reason behind every act and deed. But the simple platitude of ‘this is how it’s always been’ isn’t working. Not this time.

So where would you look for the answer to a question your ‘parents’ can’t give a good answer to? Why, the ones they’re fighting of course!

But those big Titans are scary and might hurt him, so why not see what the small ones have to say, huh?

Enter stage, the Titan’s young. Their children, so curious as children are. Kept away from the hardships of their parents’ war. All of a sudden this magical child, just their size, just pops in! And starts asking questions to which they don’t have an answer for! What will you do?

Well, he’s their size, right? Why not play a few games! Have some fun!

I like to imagine little TC was so confused when the Titan kids tried to show him what games are. His people don’t seem like the types to entertain their own with silly little play when there’s collecting to do. Eventually he warmed up to it, started liking these games, wanted to play more. And his people likely wouldn’t agree, so why not keep it a secret? Why not keep sneaking out and play with his friends?

Eventually the Collectors find out. Perhaps even force poor TC to watch as they murdered his friends in front of him. Go ahead, let’s traumatize this kid because he isn’t listening!

So then what? He lost his friends, lost his only link to something positive and good. He’ll want that back, please and thank you.

So he runs away. Runs away and maybe, just maybe, runs into a Titan who could see past the whole ‘being of the same species as my kin’s murderers’.

But there’s still a snag in his plan. You see, The Collector isn’t Mortal.

Never was, likely never will be. He’s a being who lives for eternal ages and requires nothing to survive. He can be in space and be just fine, whilst Titans would likely still choke or explode because they’re organic beings.

But he’s gotten a glimpse of what it means to be Mortal. He saw the Titan kids, saw as they played and ate and slept. Watched as they were told stories by their parents and played games. This is all TC knows about being Mortal.

So he begins acting like it. Acts like a Mortal child who wants to play games and be put to sleep and eat food and have friends. They’re good enough at it that they even fool BL until something or another (perhaps the true power of TC coming out when their friend is endangered?) makes it clear they’re different and scary and dangerous and might just very well end up hurting or killing his child because they’re careless with their powers!

Like, seriously, TC likely was meant to learn how to control his powers but snuck out before he could, so now we don’t just have an Eldritch child on the loose but one who’s practically an aimless missile and potential ticking timebomb if not handled carefully! When he dances his magic literally turned a whole island into his personal playground! His powers are solely connected to his emotions and practically had no aim when it engulfed the Isles, only directed with the recollections TC had of what it meant to be a Collector and how he could use that to keep on playing.

He’s a Collector, it’s what he is meant to do (no it isn’t that’s just what his people did but he doesn’t know what else to do so why change that-) but surely he could do better, be better? Keep collecting without having to murder those who oppose him and instead make friends he can play with for forever and ever and ever!

But deep inside, a part of TC had been fooled by his act as well and now he’s not just an Eldritch Being pretending to be a Mortal.

He feels like one, too.