app for discedo
Name: Amy
LJ: ladyvoldything
E-Mail: ipokebadgerswithsticks@yahoo.com
IM: socksaresocky
Characters played at Discedo: Nobody~
Character's Name: Chuck Shurley, also (not actually) known as (but still is): God, the Man Upstairs, the Big Kahuna, Allah, El Jefe, the Alpha, the Omega, the Father, the Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth and all that is seen and unseen, Yhwh, Jehova.
Series: Supernatural
Timeline: The End of 5.22, "Swan Song," when Chuck is shown vanishing into thin air and has been revealed inexplicitly to be God.
Canon Resource Link:
Wiki links.
The tricky thing about Chuck/God is that He wasn’t revealed to be God until the season 5 finale, and it was done wordlessly- so while Chuck Shurley the dude is in the series enough, we’re never given any information whatsoever about God’s motivations in the series. He’s a character who functions and moves the plot in huge ways through His total absence, so I’m forced to extrapolate based on the family dynamic shown in Heaven and Chuck’s voice-over in the season finale, and themes presented in the show and reinforced time and again. Information about his history that I include here is also entirely head-canon that I have designed to bridge the sizeable gap between God the Almighty and Chuck Shurley the drunk whore-loving prophet, since there obviously had to be thousands of years of metamorphosis from the Power we see in the Old Testament to the guy who’s committed to almost total non-interference and is the weeniest, weakest man in the show.
Basically since God went out for cigarettes and never went back (as mentioned in the show), my headcanon has filled in the gaps between then and Chuck showing up. It’s a long series of Him taking human forms and getting more and more into it until he basically went native, leading to the extremely human, extremely flawed exercise in vulnerability of a man we meet in season 4.
Personality:
Chuck is a bit of a nervous guy- it comes from having spontaneous prophetic headaches and a life as filled with nonsense as his is. An insane fan base, characters who routinely knock angrily on his door demanding spoilers, and a vastly inadequate supply of beer and clean underwear plague his life like so many white-trash locusts. When confronted with these and other such insurmountable obstacles as dropping his toothbrush or answering the door twice in one hour, Chuck's usual response is to blink a few times and stare in frustration. But please don't be fooled by his veneer of flailing incompetence; he's actually very smart in certain ways, and that intellect shines through in his rare moments of mental clarity between drunk spells or crippling frustration with the stupidity around him. When he isn't watching Maury or abusing his brain with whiskey, Chuck has a perverse, witty, often self-deprecating sense of humor. He knows when he's messed up and isn't afraid to call himself on it- to a point.
Not to say that he's a complete genius. Some would call him a creative genius, surely, but Chuck at times has a startling lack of common sense and a tendency to jump to conclusions. The pizza guy's late? Oh god, he probably ran his truck off the road. He won't worry too much about those terrible doomsday conclusions, of course, just call up Domino's instead of Pizza Hut; what's certain death (or certain inconvenience) when there's laziness to be had? Anything you or I could do, Chuck can do slower, later, and in his boxers.
He’s not constantly a falling-apart mess, though- when put into high-stress or high-stakes situations, he can snap into competence he didn’t know he had and short-lived leadership skills that last for all of five minutes. Inevitably he has to hand over the reins or take a powder so he can put his head between his knees and breathe. Life is stressful, bro. But he gets by, and when he’s not being massively selfish he does his best to help other people get by, too, because he cares about them.
All of them. That’s the biggest secret, the deepest layer to his onion- how much he cares. Because he isn’t just him, he’s Him. And He cares about every single one of His creations. Castiel once called them all works of art- God sees them as perfection incarnate, every last of them. Not that it stops Him from having His share of criticisms, of course- on a fundamentally deep level He knows that His plan is just, and that comfortable confidence used to give Him the emotional freedom to criticize and alter over the course of history- just look at the ancient Israelites.
Lately He doesn’t meddle, at all, and He’s pretty okay with that. There are times, of course- underneath the alcoholic prophet and the basket case is a deadbeat father who’s haunted by deep-seated guilt about his abandonment of the angels, even though He knows with even more certainty that it was the right decision. He disengaged because He had to- and in the process, that’s meant disengaging from most of his power- He doesn’t use his power but rarely, and has narrowed his already limited so-called “omniscience” so as to know try to preclude the existence of free will. It’s reflective of a very strange quality for the Almighty to have- humility. His ego quieted after Jesus.
Then there’s the constant riot of prayers and deaths parading through his head, that he’s managed to lock away in a corner of the unimaginable vastness that is his mind. Some he can’t lock out- the visions come by (contrived) order of the angels, and sometimes he manages to hear snippets of angel radio in His mind. But He always knew most of what was going on, and- and fuck, it broke His heart. God plays favorites, and blatantly. Nothing hurts him more than the suffering of certain of the angels- on the whole, he sees them as falling far short of expectations, but some... the four archangels and Castiel, largely, can motivate Him to rare action, and it’s during those moments that one can find more raw love in Him than a human mind is capable of comprehending. Nothing horrifies him more than the thought of one of His children needing him, and being genuinely unable to help. Of course, His definition of “needing” is different than anybody else’s, and usually requires that things be far more dire than the others involved would prefer. Chuck is happy to help people out in human ways, but He still believes firmly in the power of human choices.
Powers & Abilities: The first thing I want to note is that once Chuck learns in game about the purpose of the chip and the ramifications of removing it - namely, the risk of powers going haywire and malfunctioning without his intent - he will decide privately to never have it removed, due to the massive danger inherent in powers like omnipotence going wonky.
Omniscience:
This one is pretty easy, on the surface.
Except it’s not that simple, not by a long shot. Chuck keeps His divine nature and abilities stuffed behind a locked, chained, deadbolted door in the back of His mind, and almost never accesses it for fear of unleashing an avalanche that would unravel the carefully constructed mortality and limited scope He’s set up for himself. Chuck has no desire to undam that river, so He shuts his omniscience off 99.9% of the time. The first time he got a vision was a genuine surprise to him- he was pretty sure “Chuck Shurley” was one of the prophets supposed to foresee the Winchesters, but didn’t know when the first one would happen.
His reasons for shutting it off are manifold, though- it’s not just a self-serving matter of status quo: it’s a matter of principle and belief, too. How can there be any true free will if some higher power knows all the outcomes and has everything predestined? No. Never. He’s lived for billions of years with the passionate belief in free will and the power of human choices, and he isn’t about to go fucking that up now. So strong is his will on this point that His omniscience is actually sometimes limited- by his own design. There are many instance where even if He used his omniscience to its full extent He wouldn’t know the outcome of a certain event- if and only if the outcome is dependent on human choices. If it’s determined by luck of the draw, that’s something Chuck could know. If it depends on what someone will say when asked to make a hard decision, then there’s a good chance He won’t know until they make their choice.
There are some things that filter through regardless of what He does about it- passive senses, for instance. He can tell when someone isn’t human, and can sometimes tell exactly what they are. It’s a lot easier when the someone is from Supernatural (i.e. from His universe and one of His creations). But by and large, most of what he knows that he shouldn’t comes from his visions.
Omnipotence:
He can do anything. Literally. He can do anything. You name it, He can do it. Reverse death, create pocket realms, unravel the fabric of reality, turn this Universe around and make a new one, turn you gay, turn your mom gay, bone your mom. Well, not that last one. Well, he could. But He’s kind of a spazzcase with sex. That’s not the point here. Chuck is capable of literally anything in all of Creation, and has the Universe to prove it. He can elevate angels to higher rungs of power, restore them from the dead, erase addictions, create new planes of existence, and do absolutely anything. He is God. The end.
Except. Remember that door? Chuck is capable of anything, but that doesn’t mean that he will. On any given day, He only allows enough power to filter through to refill his flask with his mind. Even parlor tricks like Gabriel was shown doing, like magicking up food and bitchez, aren’t up his alley. He likes living in the gritty, crappy parts of life, as long as he always has booze.
At this point, he’s gone so long believing that he shouldn’t do anything and gotten so out of touch with omnipotence that he’s essentially psyched himself into believing that there are some things he actually can’t do- but don’t worry. He can.
STD Resistance and Visions (yes, this gets its own heading):
Prophetic visions are the tools that Chuck uses to navigate the Supernatural universe with any kind of agency over the events around him. They’re how He influences outcomes, because that’s okay: it’s not divine intervention, it’s a Prophet doing what they do and trying to help people in their own small way.
He gets visions of future events a few times a week that come in the form of excruciating headaches that lead him to drink until he passes out, then when he wakes up he writes like a man possessed until it’s all out. Usually his visions outpace events by a few days, but sometimes when it pertains to big, important things he can have visions months in advance.
As I understand the chips and how they work, I think the only thing he would be left with is his omniscience, and I plan on curtailing that
What items will they be bringing with them?
On his person will be jeans, socks, sneakers, a white button-down shirt, and Batman boxers. A glass of scotch in his hand and in his pocket there’s a flash drive. Said flash drive has various zip files containing all of his unpublished manuscripts, including the one he wrote in Swan Song, and digital copies of all of his published books, as well as scanned-in concept art for an upcoming TV show deal he was involved with.
Third-Person Sample:
Thread context. This is action sample:
[Chuck doesn't get angry very often. Annoyed, maybe. Exasperated- sure. But anger, rage, and white-hot fury are the provinces of greater men, of hot-blooded men, of gods. Something distant and acutely painful snaps in the back of Chuck's mind and as he stands there, rooted to the spot and taking in the scene before him, every pitiful movement and slurred sound from Cas usher in a new wave of sickening shock until He can hear nothing but the roaring in His ears and see nothing but Castiel's blood on Dean's hand. Cas, Cas, Castiel- the baby angel, the one who gave everything, the willing sacrificial lamb on Dean's altar, His littlest and best son strung up now and making those horrible, awful noises that should never, ever, ever come from the mouth of an Angel.
He doesn't even realize that he's moving until he's already there. Not until his fists are balled in Dean's jacket does he realize that he crossed the room at all, in a torrent of wide-eyed shock and quick fury, and it's all instinct that leads Him to pull Dean away from Castiel and punch him full in the face with all the force of a very literal angry god.
Fuck, it's so satisfying to hear the bones crack. His fist connects with Dean's face with inhuman strength, splintering a cheekbone, breaking his nose, and caving in his eye socket until Dean's eye burst in his head, and for a split second Chuck's fist in inside his face and Dean is on the edge of a messy, disgusting death. By the time Dean reels back from the blow, he just looks like he was punched by someone really intent on making his nose bleed, all excess damage healed.
He grabs Dean by the jacket again and shoves him hard, almost throwing him away from Cas but just barely remembering to control Himself this time rather than throw him through the wall.]
Thread context. This is my secondary sample, to showcase my writing style.
With a snap and a twist, a Coyote falls dead. Anansi, the Raven, that old fool genius. The wingéd thing beyond time.
Death, it is said, is the only being older than the ever-powerful Almighty Himself. He and Death have sat down before, for the omnipotent immortal version of shooting the shit over beers, and after so much time the Horseman-who-is-so-much-more can't be said to remember whether he or the Alpha-Omega is older. There have been so many planets-galaxies-universes that the æons run together somewhat, and the original kernel of existence is but a mote in the unrelenting endlessness of time. If the Creator-that-may-not-be knows differently or can clearly recall who it was who first emerged to greet his other and equal, to begin that first of partnerships, He is not saying. Since beginningless time death has thrived in the voids and the darkness and the space between vibrant, thriving life, and God has long since forgotten how not to depend on that force which He considers to be His other half and perfect equal. By His own reckoning, He created Death, and Death will reap Him. So: nothing to remark upon. The trillions upon trillions upon countless, endless, nigh-meaningless deaths of His own worshipers and haters and the countless who never knew a kind of god have blurred into a dull throb that long since quieted to a constant, simmering, easily ignored presence. One more death, anywhere, of anything (no matter how large) is as a drop of water in the ocean.
Somewhere, Gabriel falls dead, and God takes notice.
There's a pause, a gasp, a record-scratch of time punctuated by a glass slipping from lax fingers and falling falling crash in a gorgeous Little Bang of shining glass and clear-as-crystal vodka. As a little bearded man drops His glass with a wholly ignored shatter a sheaf of papers falls from his hand, dropping neglected to the vodka spill and even a minute later, after clear alcohol has seeped into the pages and run the black ink beyond recognition He does nothing.
There's a sense of time to be understood here; a certain change of perspective part and parcel with omniscience. Time is a toy to be played with, a path to walk and cheat on and loop around, and sometimes to stop and sit in the dirt and play cards on. He is standing at a railing on the roof of a tower in a shining silver-steel-crystal city spun out into the sky where the atmosphere opens to the heaven, and Earth itself in this age is as limited as phones and radio and smoke signals once were in those sad little dark ages. It is the twilight of World War Ten and He is in the most beautiful city in the world since Pompeii; it's twenty minutes before the bars close on the eve of an election on a rainy autumn night in Bethlehem, and a baby is crying. At any moment there is Every moment, and is it a wonder that God stands to the side unmoving? To change one tiniest spark of action or thread of reality would cause a cataclysm of parental hovering and catastrophic I told you so and He can't. He was conscientiously objecting before the Quakers ever made it cool.
But in this moment a writer in Maryland stops and stares into cool nothingness, and feels a bright light go out like a physical pain that hits Him hard. Have you ever had an asthma attack? Have you ever been deprived of breath? Not just in the breathless, nervous-or-about-to-be-kissed sense; in the real, existentially terrifying sense of not knowing whether the next breath you take will be enough to keep you alive. It robs one of their feet, stability, their faith in their own body and their place in this universe, and this writer in Maryland feels that through to His bones and a deeper place that would drive most of us mad from the revelation.
Somewhere, Gabriel has died, and He has felt it. Once now He has felt and acted upon the death of an angelic child, but never- never did it feel like this, like the icy hand of death closing around his own lungs. Sometimes, interference is the only option.
He finds a thick, tangled, sticky rope of unreality and pulls.
First-Person Sample:
Okay, let’s take another question. What, I’m sorry- can you speak up? [A voice from the audience calls, "Are Sam and Dean destined to always keep dying and sacrificing for each other?"]
Oh. Oh. Um. Well, that’s actually a pretty interesting question, and I like that you use the word ‘destined.’ Destiny is kind of a theme in the books, which I’m sure you’ve noticed, and it’s really tied in with their relationship as brothers. They’re the center of the books, and that’ll always be true, even when I start publishing again and we see a little more of their destinies fleshed out. It’s a big thing that whenever the guys start choosing things over their family or not standing by each other, they fail. It’s how it’s always been, how it’ll always be. They need each other and when they aren’t together it all just kinda breaks down. And here’s just a little spoiler for you- but that’ll always be true in the books. That the whole point of it all is family- it’s being there for each other. So don’t you worry- I’ll never get away from the theme of Sam and Dean. I’ll always be writing their story.
Uh. Next question?
Links: I’ve played him on sixwordstories for months, as well as in the game Bullets In A Bible and the game Silent Jersey- but all content of SJ is locked to members only.
LJ: ladyvoldything
E-Mail: ipokebadgerswithsticks@yahoo.com
IM: socksaresocky
Characters played at Discedo: Nobody~
Character's Name: Chuck Shurley, also (not actually) known as (but still is): God, the Man Upstairs, the Big Kahuna, Allah, El Jefe, the Alpha, the Omega, the Father, the Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth and all that is seen and unseen, Yhwh, Jehova.
Series: Supernatural
Timeline: The End of 5.22, "Swan Song," when Chuck is shown vanishing into thin air and has been revealed inexplicitly to be God.
Canon Resource Link:
Wiki links.
The tricky thing about Chuck/God is that He wasn’t revealed to be God until the season 5 finale, and it was done wordlessly- so while Chuck Shurley the dude is in the series enough, we’re never given any information whatsoever about God’s motivations in the series. He’s a character who functions and moves the plot in huge ways through His total absence, so I’m forced to extrapolate based on the family dynamic shown in Heaven and Chuck’s voice-over in the season finale, and themes presented in the show and reinforced time and again. Information about his history that I include here is also entirely head-canon that I have designed to bridge the sizeable gap between God the Almighty and Chuck Shurley the drunk whore-loving prophet, since there obviously had to be thousands of years of metamorphosis from the Power we see in the Old Testament to the guy who’s committed to almost total non-interference and is the weeniest, weakest man in the show.
Basically since God went out for cigarettes and never went back (as mentioned in the show), my headcanon has filled in the gaps between then and Chuck showing up. It’s a long series of Him taking human forms and getting more and more into it until he basically went native, leading to the extremely human, extremely flawed exercise in vulnerability of a man we meet in season 4.
Personality:
Chuck is a bit of a nervous guy- it comes from having spontaneous prophetic headaches and a life as filled with nonsense as his is. An insane fan base, characters who routinely knock angrily on his door demanding spoilers, and a vastly inadequate supply of beer and clean underwear plague his life like so many white-trash locusts. When confronted with these and other such insurmountable obstacles as dropping his toothbrush or answering the door twice in one hour, Chuck's usual response is to blink a few times and stare in frustration. But please don't be fooled by his veneer of flailing incompetence; he's actually very smart in certain ways, and that intellect shines through in his rare moments of mental clarity between drunk spells or crippling frustration with the stupidity around him. When he isn't watching Maury or abusing his brain with whiskey, Chuck has a perverse, witty, often self-deprecating sense of humor. He knows when he's messed up and isn't afraid to call himself on it- to a point.
Not to say that he's a complete genius. Some would call him a creative genius, surely, but Chuck at times has a startling lack of common sense and a tendency to jump to conclusions. The pizza guy's late? Oh god, he probably ran his truck off the road. He won't worry too much about those terrible doomsday conclusions, of course, just call up Domino's instead of Pizza Hut; what's certain death (or certain inconvenience) when there's laziness to be had? Anything you or I could do, Chuck can do slower, later, and in his boxers.
He’s not constantly a falling-apart mess, though- when put into high-stress or high-stakes situations, he can snap into competence he didn’t know he had and short-lived leadership skills that last for all of five minutes. Inevitably he has to hand over the reins or take a powder so he can put his head between his knees and breathe. Life is stressful, bro. But he gets by, and when he’s not being massively selfish he does his best to help other people get by, too, because he cares about them.
All of them. That’s the biggest secret, the deepest layer to his onion- how much he cares. Because he isn’t just him, he’s Him. And He cares about every single one of His creations. Castiel once called them all works of art- God sees them as perfection incarnate, every last of them. Not that it stops Him from having His share of criticisms, of course- on a fundamentally deep level He knows that His plan is just, and that comfortable confidence used to give Him the emotional freedom to criticize and alter over the course of history- just look at the ancient Israelites.
Lately He doesn’t meddle, at all, and He’s pretty okay with that. There are times, of course- underneath the alcoholic prophet and the basket case is a deadbeat father who’s haunted by deep-seated guilt about his abandonment of the angels, even though He knows with even more certainty that it was the right decision. He disengaged because He had to- and in the process, that’s meant disengaging from most of his power- He doesn’t use his power but rarely, and has narrowed his already limited so-called “omniscience” so as to know try to preclude the existence of free will. It’s reflective of a very strange quality for the Almighty to have- humility. His ego quieted after Jesus.
Then there’s the constant riot of prayers and deaths parading through his head, that he’s managed to lock away in a corner of the unimaginable vastness that is his mind. Some he can’t lock out- the visions come by (contrived) order of the angels, and sometimes he manages to hear snippets of angel radio in His mind. But He always knew most of what was going on, and- and fuck, it broke His heart. God plays favorites, and blatantly. Nothing hurts him more than the suffering of certain of the angels- on the whole, he sees them as falling far short of expectations, but some... the four archangels and Castiel, largely, can motivate Him to rare action, and it’s during those moments that one can find more raw love in Him than a human mind is capable of comprehending. Nothing horrifies him more than the thought of one of His children needing him, and being genuinely unable to help. Of course, His definition of “needing” is different than anybody else’s, and usually requires that things be far more dire than the others involved would prefer. Chuck is happy to help people out in human ways, but He still believes firmly in the power of human choices.
Powers & Abilities: The first thing I want to note is that once Chuck learns in game about the purpose of the chip and the ramifications of removing it - namely, the risk of powers going haywire and malfunctioning without his intent - he will decide privately to never have it removed, due to the massive danger inherent in powers like omnipotence going wonky.
Omniscience:
This one is pretty easy, on the surface.
Except it’s not that simple, not by a long shot. Chuck keeps His divine nature and abilities stuffed behind a locked, chained, deadbolted door in the back of His mind, and almost never accesses it for fear of unleashing an avalanche that would unravel the carefully constructed mortality and limited scope He’s set up for himself. Chuck has no desire to undam that river, so He shuts his omniscience off 99.9% of the time. The first time he got a vision was a genuine surprise to him- he was pretty sure “Chuck Shurley” was one of the prophets supposed to foresee the Winchesters, but didn’t know when the first one would happen.
His reasons for shutting it off are manifold, though- it’s not just a self-serving matter of status quo: it’s a matter of principle and belief, too. How can there be any true free will if some higher power knows all the outcomes and has everything predestined? No. Never. He’s lived for billions of years with the passionate belief in free will and the power of human choices, and he isn’t about to go fucking that up now. So strong is his will on this point that His omniscience is actually sometimes limited- by his own design. There are many instance where even if He used his omniscience to its full extent He wouldn’t know the outcome of a certain event- if and only if the outcome is dependent on human choices. If it’s determined by luck of the draw, that’s something Chuck could know. If it depends on what someone will say when asked to make a hard decision, then there’s a good chance He won’t know until they make their choice.
There are some things that filter through regardless of what He does about it- passive senses, for instance. He can tell when someone isn’t human, and can sometimes tell exactly what they are. It’s a lot easier when the someone is from Supernatural (i.e. from His universe and one of His creations). But by and large, most of what he knows that he shouldn’t comes from his visions.
Omnipotence:
He can do anything. Literally. He can do anything. You name it, He can do it. Reverse death, create pocket realms, unravel the fabric of reality, turn this Universe around and make a new one, turn you gay, turn your mom gay, bone your mom. Well, not that last one. Well, he could. But He’s kind of a spazzcase with sex. That’s not the point here. Chuck is capable of literally anything in all of Creation, and has the Universe to prove it. He can elevate angels to higher rungs of power, restore them from the dead, erase addictions, create new planes of existence, and do absolutely anything. He is God. The end.
Except. Remember that door? Chuck is capable of anything, but that doesn’t mean that he will. On any given day, He only allows enough power to filter through to refill his flask with his mind. Even parlor tricks like Gabriel was shown doing, like magicking up food and bitchez, aren’t up his alley. He likes living in the gritty, crappy parts of life, as long as he always has booze.
At this point, he’s gone so long believing that he shouldn’t do anything and gotten so out of touch with omnipotence that he’s essentially psyched himself into believing that there are some things he actually can’t do- but don’t worry. He can.
STD Resistance and Visions (yes, this gets its own heading):
Prophetic visions are the tools that Chuck uses to navigate the Supernatural universe with any kind of agency over the events around him. They’re how He influences outcomes, because that’s okay: it’s not divine intervention, it’s a Prophet doing what they do and trying to help people in their own small way.
He gets visions of future events a few times a week that come in the form of excruciating headaches that lead him to drink until he passes out, then when he wakes up he writes like a man possessed until it’s all out. Usually his visions outpace events by a few days, but sometimes when it pertains to big, important things he can have visions months in advance.
As I understand the chips and how they work, I think the only thing he would be left with is his omniscience, and I plan on curtailing that
What items will they be bringing with them?
On his person will be jeans, socks, sneakers, a white button-down shirt, and Batman boxers. A glass of scotch in his hand and in his pocket there’s a flash drive. Said flash drive has various zip files containing all of his unpublished manuscripts, including the one he wrote in Swan Song, and digital copies of all of his published books, as well as scanned-in concept art for an upcoming TV show deal he was involved with.
Third-Person Sample:
Thread context. This is action sample:
[Chuck doesn't get angry very often. Annoyed, maybe. Exasperated- sure. But anger, rage, and white-hot fury are the provinces of greater men, of hot-blooded men, of gods. Something distant and acutely painful snaps in the back of Chuck's mind and as he stands there, rooted to the spot and taking in the scene before him, every pitiful movement and slurred sound from Cas usher in a new wave of sickening shock until He can hear nothing but the roaring in His ears and see nothing but Castiel's blood on Dean's hand. Cas, Cas, Castiel- the baby angel, the one who gave everything, the willing sacrificial lamb on Dean's altar, His littlest and best son strung up now and making those horrible, awful noises that should never, ever, ever come from the mouth of an Angel.
He doesn't even realize that he's moving until he's already there. Not until his fists are balled in Dean's jacket does he realize that he crossed the room at all, in a torrent of wide-eyed shock and quick fury, and it's all instinct that leads Him to pull Dean away from Castiel and punch him full in the face with all the force of a very literal angry god.
Fuck, it's so satisfying to hear the bones crack. His fist connects with Dean's face with inhuman strength, splintering a cheekbone, breaking his nose, and caving in his eye socket until Dean's eye burst in his head, and for a split second Chuck's fist in inside his face and Dean is on the edge of a messy, disgusting death. By the time Dean reels back from the blow, he just looks like he was punched by someone really intent on making his nose bleed, all excess damage healed.
He grabs Dean by the jacket again and shoves him hard, almost throwing him away from Cas but just barely remembering to control Himself this time rather than throw him through the wall.]
Thread context. This is my secondary sample, to showcase my writing style.
With a snap and a twist, a Coyote falls dead. Anansi, the Raven, that old fool genius. The wingéd thing beyond time.
Death, it is said, is the only being older than the ever-powerful Almighty Himself. He and Death have sat down before, for the omnipotent immortal version of shooting the shit over beers, and after so much time the Horseman-who-is-so-much-more can't be said to remember whether he or the Alpha-Omega is older. There have been so many planets-galaxies-universes that the æons run together somewhat, and the original kernel of existence is but a mote in the unrelenting endlessness of time. If the Creator-that-may-not-be knows differently or can clearly recall who it was who first emerged to greet his other and equal, to begin that first of partnerships, He is not saying. Since beginningless time death has thrived in the voids and the darkness and the space between vibrant, thriving life, and God has long since forgotten how not to depend on that force which He considers to be His other half and perfect equal. By His own reckoning, He created Death, and Death will reap Him. So: nothing to remark upon. The trillions upon trillions upon countless, endless, nigh-meaningless deaths of His own worshipers and haters and the countless who never knew a kind of god have blurred into a dull throb that long since quieted to a constant, simmering, easily ignored presence. One more death, anywhere, of anything (no matter how large) is as a drop of water in the ocean.
Somewhere, Gabriel falls dead, and God takes notice.
There's a pause, a gasp, a record-scratch of time punctuated by a glass slipping from lax fingers and falling falling crash in a gorgeous Little Bang of shining glass and clear-as-crystal vodka. As a little bearded man drops His glass with a wholly ignored shatter a sheaf of papers falls from his hand, dropping neglected to the vodka spill and even a minute later, after clear alcohol has seeped into the pages and run the black ink beyond recognition He does nothing.
There's a sense of time to be understood here; a certain change of perspective part and parcel with omniscience. Time is a toy to be played with, a path to walk and cheat on and loop around, and sometimes to stop and sit in the dirt and play cards on. He is standing at a railing on the roof of a tower in a shining silver-steel-crystal city spun out into the sky where the atmosphere opens to the heaven, and Earth itself in this age is as limited as phones and radio and smoke signals once were in those sad little dark ages. It is the twilight of World War Ten and He is in the most beautiful city in the world since Pompeii; it's twenty minutes before the bars close on the eve of an election on a rainy autumn night in Bethlehem, and a baby is crying. At any moment there is Every moment, and is it a wonder that God stands to the side unmoving? To change one tiniest spark of action or thread of reality would cause a cataclysm of parental hovering and catastrophic I told you so and He can't. He was conscientiously objecting before the Quakers ever made it cool.
But in this moment a writer in Maryland stops and stares into cool nothingness, and feels a bright light go out like a physical pain that hits Him hard. Have you ever had an asthma attack? Have you ever been deprived of breath? Not just in the breathless, nervous-or-about-to-be-kissed sense; in the real, existentially terrifying sense of not knowing whether the next breath you take will be enough to keep you alive. It robs one of their feet, stability, their faith in their own body and their place in this universe, and this writer in Maryland feels that through to His bones and a deeper place that would drive most of us mad from the revelation.
Somewhere, Gabriel has died, and He has felt it. Once now He has felt and acted upon the death of an angelic child, but never- never did it feel like this, like the icy hand of death closing around his own lungs. Sometimes, interference is the only option.
He finds a thick, tangled, sticky rope of unreality and pulls.
First-Person Sample:
Okay, let’s take another question. What, I’m sorry- can you speak up? [A voice from the audience calls, "Are Sam and Dean destined to always keep dying and sacrificing for each other?"]
Oh. Oh. Um. Well, that’s actually a pretty interesting question, and I like that you use the word ‘destined.’ Destiny is kind of a theme in the books, which I’m sure you’ve noticed, and it’s really tied in with their relationship as brothers. They’re the center of the books, and that’ll always be true, even when I start publishing again and we see a little more of their destinies fleshed out. It’s a big thing that whenever the guys start choosing things over their family or not standing by each other, they fail. It’s how it’s always been, how it’ll always be. They need each other and when they aren’t together it all just kinda breaks down. And here’s just a little spoiler for you- but that’ll always be true in the books. That the whole point of it all is family- it’s being there for each other. So don’t you worry- I’ll never get away from the theme of Sam and Dean. I’ll always be writing their story.
Uh. Next question?
Links: I’ve played him on sixwordstories for months, as well as in the game Bullets In A Bible and the game Silent Jersey- but all content of SJ is locked to members only.