[fanmix] The Way Down [Supernatural, Ruby and her religion]

[vanitashaze]

For Tuesday, whom I understand has been feeling rather under the weather. It's not your Sweet Charity fic, but it is Ruby! Religious Ruby, at that, and actually the converse to an earlier Castiel fanmix.

Oh God this is so tl;dr.

CASEY: Some demons lie. But some are true believers.
DEAN: Believers in what?
CASEY: You think humans have an

Comments

[airspaniel]

This is really interesting to me, apart from being an excellent collection of music.

While I'm not convinced that the demons have "religion" per se, as that seems awfully formal and codified for what we've seen of them in the show, there is absolutely an all-consuming faith that some of them, notably Ruby, display. A single-minded devotion that is so intense and so genuine, that it's difficult to fathom, even for those who may themselves be religious or spiritual. I'm glad to see someone other than me is thinking about this.

ETA: How great is that Ben Harper/Blind Boys album? Goddamn I listen to that thing for DAYS on end. Perfect.

And I'm totally in the middle of writing a fic centered around Ruby that isn't all OMG bitch breakin' up my broyay. ^_~ So that'll be done in a week or two.

[vanitashaze]

I agree with you in that there doesn't seem to be any canon evidence of a "religion", per se; however, I don't think they ever specifically said that they didn't have one, either, which makes it interesting to play around with the possibilities. vinylroad's Prayer of St. Francis is one fic that does this, and pretty well. I don't agree with all her points, especially Ruby being "called" by the priesthood - but the idea of a demon priesthood (a certain class/type of demon devoted to the faith) is fascinating. After all, though demons are agents of chaos, they do actually have some structure. As shown by Azazel, they have hierarchies, and the crossroads demons (as well as Alistair and the "disaster demon" of one of the earliest episodes) show that some, if not all, follow very specific roles and perform very specific duties. Also, demons use magic - not just Ruby does this, but Meg, too - which has a great deal of its root in imposing an order onto the chaotic, random world. Coupled with the fact that all of the demons were once humans (religion

[airspaniel]

Man, I've been a fan of the Blind Boys of Alabame for a while, and when my boyfriend gave me that album a few months back, I nearly died. There was a Firefly vid?

...link pls?

And I see what you're saying, and I think mystic order is closer to what I was thinking. As for the hierarchy and structure, I've always thought of Hell as a bureaucracy, with most demons the lowly peons and IT guys and so forth, with a dozen middle managers hanging over their heads, and a dozen managers over those managers, and so on in that fashion through some kind of infernal corporation, with Lucifer himself the estranged chairman of the board or something like that.

...It just now occurs to me that that is a strange way of looking at it. 0_o My vision of Hell is apparently a lot less Dante and a lot more Office SpaceBut the use of magic and rites definitely indicates a much more arcane system of communication and worship. It's really interesting to think about. Thanks for the heads up on the fic. I haven't poked around in fandom too much, so it's