Sympathetic Magic
Oct. 14th, 2025 07:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hat_writes_stuffTitle: Sympathetic Magic
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Blurr, Shockwave
Word Count: 1,863
Rating: G?
Pairing(s): Shockwave/Blurr
Warnings: On-screen arguable attempted suicide (if it doesn't save Shockwave, it'll kill him, and I wasn't sure which it would do while writing it)
Author's Notes: Once again, this is based on Keferon's Spellbound AU. Not only is the primary plot of Spellbound wrapped intimately around suicide, assisted suicide, and the right to death, this fic here is about the canonical moment that it happens. I love the AU but you do what's best for you.
If I need more warnings, PLEASE tell me, I've been staring at this for so long that my brain is just going, "Did you see the art? THE ART! The COLORS!" so I have probably missed something important.
This is... almost just a narrative version of (my interpretation of) the latest update, I add a little bit in there because I have certain views about what Our Heroes could do with this spell, and I'm not sure they would have occurred to Blurr in the moment. Maybe if Shockwave had put him on the spot to explain himself.
Summary: Almost from the very moment Blurr agreed to help the enslaved demon Shockwave end his existence (as his life had ended long ago), Blurr has been trying to get Shockwave to reconsider, gently, without making it an order the demon is bound and compelled to obey. (He also accidentally managed to fall in love with the demon he summoned. Whoops.)
They're out of time. Shockwave's first, worst master wants him back, and complete destruction seems like the only possible escape.
Blurr has one idea left to try, a twist to the spellwork necessary to destroy a demon that should, if Blurr is very, very lucky, succeed in nothing more and nothing less than the complete destruction of the demon Shockwave.
The shrine is covered in touch-me-nots.
He'll never be able to look at those flowers without thinking of Shockwave, Blurr knows that-- he's known that since he had to run out his feelings (however well that worked). They're pink and faintly purple, touch-me-nots, the color of fresh energon quickly fading out. Bright life and the shadow of death-- and if Blurr reached out a finger to poke a petal, the entire blossom would vanish.
He still isn't sure if the flowers come back after a living thing touches them.
But they might still give him one more chance.
"Clever little thing. You can only touch the dead. Could you tell me if there's still something I could save? Clever little thing. Please. If you find him to be alive, don't let death touch him."
If Professor Skids could, as a student, make an artifact that could interfere with-- something as powerful as the making of a demon (Blurr has to be careful, even in how he thinks, he has to be so careful what he invokes here), if one student could create and a school full of students could power an artifact that allowed Shockwave to keep his memory instead of forgetting, then maybe, just maybe, Blurr can make a potion that can part the judgment from the judged.
He swore to destroy Shockwave, to end his existence because his life ended long ago. If this works the way Blurr wants it to, Blurr will destroy the demon Shockwave and nothing else, and then the mech can do whatever he wants.
Incorporating the touch-me-not is delicate work-- first, because Blurr himself can't touch the flower directly, then, because he's working with death-bringer magic. Technically, the glassware should tell not only the death-bringers' magic but the touch-me-not to behave not as what they are-- flame, sound, a lover's memorial-- but as spell components, adding their qualities to the potion Blurr needs to craft for Shockwave. But he's working under pressure, and he's not at his most rested, and he still really wants to go stab the guy who was threatening Shockwave. It could still go wrong. He could fumble the Predacon flame and blow his own face off. The death-bringer magics could destroy the fragile touch-me-not petals instead of combining with them. Shockwave could be actually completely dead, save for the demonic magic that isn't technically alive, and Blurr will have to watch him burn away.
But if he gets it right, the three ingredients will work together, two to destroy the demonic, dead, unliving aspects of Shockwave, and one to have them shrinking away from the first brush of anything mortal. If there's anything of Shockwave left that still technically lives, this will--
(He wants, he wants, he wants, he wants Shockwave alive and whole and accepting of that, not angry about that, but as much as Blurr might want to be praised and scooped up and spun around and kissed and thanked, Shockwave is his own person and Blurr will accept whatever he does with what Blurr's trying to do.)
-- spare him. It will spare him, it may not save him, because that jerk seemed to have it out for Shockwave in particular and very personally, and Shockwave may still want an escape from him that nobody can drag him away from.
But Blurr will have tried, one more time, and fairly importantly to Blurr, he won't be Shockwave's summoner anymore. Shockwave won't be forced to obey Blurr, to answer Blurr. Shockwave will be able to say no to him, to lie to him, to deny him, to fight him if he wants to. Which means Blurr can offer Shockwave all the things he wants to give, ask for all the things he wants to beg for.
And go-- Pri-- frag, Blurr wants to beg.
He doesn't. Blurr doesn't beg. That's for after, if there's an after, but he's wanted to for so long.
Blurr finishes brewing the potion without destroying himself or a small chunk of the forest, silently thanking Swindle for selling quality glassware.
There are words, between him and Shockwave; Blurr doesn't say goodbye, and neither does Shockwave. (Blurr doesn't say I love you, and neither does Shockwave.) But it's Blurr who has to step back, to draw a ward, for a hundred reasons, some obvious enough, that Shockwave knows about... but Blurr... Blurr isn't just holding the ward, here. He's guiding the spell, to keep the components working together, to keep them contained and directed, rather than running wild through the shrine.
It's good that it's a shrine, Blurr thinks.
(Shockwave drinks, and doesn't hesitate, liquid death washing into his jaws, over his optic, down his neck.)
It's good that it's a shrine, a place of power, and to a point it's good that Blurr doesn't know who the shrine was dedicated to-- he can't feel anything that would conflict, with what Shockwave wants or what Blurr is trying to add to what Shockwave wants, with what the magic needs to do. So it probably never was a space sacred to-- to a creator, given the base of the spell is absolute destruction.
Shockwave drinks.
("I want them to remember me as I was," he said, in front of his own statue, when Blurr was first trying to save him, trying to show him that if things could change for mechs like Blurr, maybe things could change for demons, too. If this fails, Blurr won't be able to remember Shockwave as he was. He will always remember what's about to happen, instead.)
Shockwave drinks, and Blurr kneels, his sword a conduit, letting him shape the magic in his spark to something besides speed.
(If Blurr has to remember Shockwave, if this ends the way it would without the flowers, he'd want to remember Shockwave laughing. Teaching. The admission Shockwave would want to travel with Blurr if things were different. The times they slept curled around each other, Blurr getting to use Shockwave's thick, elegant, impossible neck as a pillow. The safety of being carried (of being a racer, carried, not just matching someone's pace but surrendering to it, not just not going as fast as possible but not going under his own power at all) in arms as long as he is tall, on shoulders broad enough to lay across.)
He can't stop the death bringer magic from destroying. There's heat pouring off of Shockwave, and a terrible low sound making his plating shake, and Blurr--
Blurr doesn't--
Blurr steels himself.
This is the spell.
This is his spell.
What is demonic must be destroyed, there is no other way to free Shockwave.
(He doesn't want to have to watch this. The smoke, the steam, rising off of him, the way he crumples, sags, the way he gives in and doesn't fight, Blurr doesn't want to see this, to have this in his processor, he doesn't want to remember him like this--)
But what is Shockwave, what lives, any scrap of vitality even if it's so deep as the glimmer of his spark, need not die today.
Not with the components in Blurr's potion, not with Blurr in control of his own magic.
Blurr is always in control of his own magic, anymore.
Blurr shutters his optics and tries to use his arms to block the smell, molten metal and something poisonously bitter, and Blurr must steer the spell.
Clever little thing, if he lives, whatever of him lives, don't let death touch him, clever little thing. Little flower, little flower made for a dead love, who will never know the touch of the living, don't let anything bring death to him. Please, clever little thing, little flower, please.
Blurr feels something happening, but can't tell what--
Demon's cry, given in friendship, shake the halves apart, pull the mech away from the demon, kill the pain, kill the fear, but listen to the clever little flower and slide away from the teacher, please.
It's not the spell going wrong, something outside it, around it--
Predaking's fire, melt the demonic away, dissolve into smoke and steam, but sway like a clever little flower, like a candle flame in the breeze away from the mortal, the mech, who came to you so humbly, who swore your fire would harm none but him-- let it not harm even him. Burn, sear, melt, evaporate, destroy only that which is already dead, please.
Please.
Please.
He dares to look and it's like looking at ink in agony.
Please, and Blurr is no longer sure which component he's directing, entreating. Please, and it's more like a prayer-- not to-- not to certain parties who might make everything worse. Please, Blurr prays, fervent and unwisely, to anyone who'll listen.
Slices of color flash through the writhing ink, crimson and lilac and periwinkle, a blue that's almost his own.
Please, let there be something I can save. Please let me free him. Please let him live, please don't take him from me, please, I love him, please, I can't tell him so if he isn't free, please, please, let this work, let there be something alive, let me be his equal long enough to say something worth saying, please, please. Please...
There's something under the spell, something rising, Blurr thinks, but it's subtle, slow, hesitant. An answer, but an answer murmured at a terrible distance.
Blurr can't let anything spill out of his mouth, but-- if something is listening, approving, maybe whatever's there will help. So Blurr doubles his efforts, at holding the spell, shaping it, guiding it, at pleading.
At praying.
Even if he won't stay for me, please, if there's anything alive in him now, I can inter him like a person-- please--
Is he--
The black smoke roils away, and there's a mech inside held aloft, floating, a shape Blurr knows, soft and limp like he's sleeping.
And he's broken, he's a mess, he's so gray, so cracked and chipped and bent and mangled-- his poor hands, he can't even see Shockwave's wings-- Blurr bows his head. Please--
But as the last of the smoke, the last of the demon, fades from a purple haze to clear air, Shockwave tips, powerless, and whatever entity that was is suddenly a lot less important than not letting Shockwave hit the floor of some ancient shrine.
Blurr dashes forward to catch him.
Blurr has been running a powerful, experimental spell.
Blurr collapses, exhausted, under Shockwave'sdead weight, in a circle of fading magic and purple ash, frame drained and processor spinning. He has to. He has to-- he can't stay here like this, he has to move, get up, check Shockwave over, he has to--
"Shockwave?" Blurr starts. "Shockwave. Shockwave, please..."
Original Ending Notes:Okay so first of all please excuse me--
THE BACKGROUND CHANGED COLOR THIS IS NOT A DRILL it's not the Senator Shockwave blue OR the Blurr blue, either, from flashbacks or that vision Drift sold Blurr. THIS IS A NEW BLUE it is a very PURPLE blue. BLURR'S TIPPETS ARE PURPLE that could be just a brushwork thing but his little streamer doodads (tippets, they're tippets, they're worn a little differently than Medieval ones but they serve the same visual purpose) aren't blue. THE COLORS okay. The colors in this. What. Keferon. THE COLORS I want to know what it means.
So. Okay.
Oh my god okay Blurr found a third option and I really hope it works. I don't know if 'gray' means 'dead' in Spellbound generally-- Rung wasn't, but Rung wasn't dead, just disassembled. (Rung this is legit traumatic, you can easily point at this instance as a reason you don't want to get involved with the council.) Maybe all his paint has just sloughed off over the years? But if Blurr needs fuel and rest after handling demonic magic, imagine how much worse off Shockwave is! I hope Blurr has so many healing potions on him. Because it looks, from the first panels of this update, like the touch-me-not inclusion was spur of the moment.
What else do I have to yell about. I admit I had a moment where I let Blurr be aware he finds Shockwave attractive as a demon and I think I stumbled across 'carry me' as a speedster kink.
WHO IS THAT TINY VOICE COMING IN FROMTHE OTHER SIDE THE RIGHT? ... I dunno, I know who I want it to be, but I'm just screaming in fanfic. Maybe it's Rung, Blurr's To Whom It May Concern prayer reminded him of Prima. Maybe it's Prowl because the art for the Mimics masterpost (and the fact that Sentinel hasn't been poisoned yet) sure implies a downer ending to Mimics! Maybe it's nobody, really, just Blurr's intrusive thoughts feeling magical because he's doing a lot of magic. Maybe it's the Matrix itself, not liking how it's been used. Maybe it's Unicron, you read it how you want to read it.
(I wrote it as Prima, long dead but still a Prime, still connected somehow magically to reality through the Matrix and Rung's apology flowers handwavey mystical magical mumbo jumbo and look I titled this thing Sympathetic Magic for several reasons. I'm as culturally Christian as the next white American, but I was raised by lapsed Catholics and I've vibed hard with polytheism since the Greek mythology unit in I want to say sixth grade, and through that lens I kinda see Primes as a cross between saints and demigods-- and poor Spellbound Prima was just a big, boisterous, well-meaning guy trying to be Superman... but he was the first guy to exist after Rung, so nobody knew that a regular guy couldn't be Superman until Prima burned himself trying.)
(Also I'm pretty sure we're supposed to look at Prima and see parallels to Orion or Shockwave... but look at this. Look at it. That's Blurr. "Exhausted and yet still feeling guilty for not being enough." Prima couldn't do enough to help enough people. Blurr cannot be enough for Shockwave to live for. You see why P Align Right is basically saying 'be smart about it, take breaks, but keep freeing people now that you know you can'?)
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Blurr, Shockwave
Word Count: 1,863
Rating: G?
Pairing(s): Shockwave/Blurr
Warnings: On-screen arguable attempted suicide (if it doesn't save Shockwave, it'll kill him, and I wasn't sure which it would do while writing it)
Author's Notes: Once again, this is based on Keferon's Spellbound AU. Not only is the primary plot of Spellbound wrapped intimately around suicide, assisted suicide, and the right to death, this fic here is about the canonical moment that it happens. I love the AU but you do what's best for you.
If I need more warnings, PLEASE tell me, I've been staring at this for so long that my brain is just going, "Did you see the art? THE ART! The COLORS!" so I have probably missed something important.
This is... almost just a narrative version of (my interpretation of) the latest update, I add a little bit in there because I have certain views about what Our Heroes could do with this spell, and I'm not sure they would have occurred to Blurr in the moment. Maybe if Shockwave had put him on the spot to explain himself.
Summary: Almost from the very moment Blurr agreed to help the enslaved demon Shockwave end his existence (as his life had ended long ago), Blurr has been trying to get Shockwave to reconsider, gently, without making it an order the demon is bound and compelled to obey. (He also accidentally managed to fall in love with the demon he summoned. Whoops.)
They're out of time. Shockwave's first, worst master wants him back, and complete destruction seems like the only possible escape.
Blurr has one idea left to try, a twist to the spellwork necessary to destroy a demon that should, if Blurr is very, very lucky, succeed in nothing more and nothing less than the complete destruction of the demon Shockwave.
The shrine is covered in touch-me-nots.
He'll never be able to look at those flowers without thinking of Shockwave, Blurr knows that-- he's known that since he had to run out his feelings (however well that worked). They're pink and faintly purple, touch-me-nots, the color of fresh energon quickly fading out. Bright life and the shadow of death-- and if Blurr reached out a finger to poke a petal, the entire blossom would vanish.
He still isn't sure if the flowers come back after a living thing touches them.
But they might still give him one more chance.
"Clever little thing. You can only touch the dead. Could you tell me if there's still something I could save? Clever little thing. Please. If you find him to be alive, don't let death touch him."
If Professor Skids could, as a student, make an artifact that could interfere with-- something as powerful as the making of a demon (Blurr has to be careful, even in how he thinks, he has to be so careful what he invokes here), if one student could create and a school full of students could power an artifact that allowed Shockwave to keep his memory instead of forgetting, then maybe, just maybe, Blurr can make a potion that can part the judgment from the judged.
He swore to destroy Shockwave, to end his existence because his life ended long ago. If this works the way Blurr wants it to, Blurr will destroy the demon Shockwave and nothing else, and then the mech can do whatever he wants.
Incorporating the touch-me-not is delicate work-- first, because Blurr himself can't touch the flower directly, then, because he's working with death-bringer magic. Technically, the glassware should tell not only the death-bringers' magic but the touch-me-not to behave not as what they are-- flame, sound, a lover's memorial-- but as spell components, adding their qualities to the potion Blurr needs to craft for Shockwave. But he's working under pressure, and he's not at his most rested, and he still really wants to go stab the guy who was threatening Shockwave. It could still go wrong. He could fumble the Predacon flame and blow his own face off. The death-bringer magics could destroy the fragile touch-me-not petals instead of combining with them. Shockwave could be actually completely dead, save for the demonic magic that isn't technically alive, and Blurr will have to watch him burn away.
But if he gets it right, the three ingredients will work together, two to destroy the demonic, dead, unliving aspects of Shockwave, and one to have them shrinking away from the first brush of anything mortal. If there's anything of Shockwave left that still technically lives, this will--
(He wants, he wants, he wants, he wants Shockwave alive and whole and accepting of that, not angry about that, but as much as Blurr might want to be praised and scooped up and spun around and kissed and thanked, Shockwave is his own person and Blurr will accept whatever he does with what Blurr's trying to do.)
-- spare him. It will spare him, it may not save him, because that jerk seemed to have it out for Shockwave in particular and very personally, and Shockwave may still want an escape from him that nobody can drag him away from.
But Blurr will have tried, one more time, and fairly importantly to Blurr, he won't be Shockwave's summoner anymore. Shockwave won't be forced to obey Blurr, to answer Blurr. Shockwave will be able to say no to him, to lie to him, to deny him, to fight him if he wants to. Which means Blurr can offer Shockwave all the things he wants to give, ask for all the things he wants to beg for.
And go-- Pri-- frag, Blurr wants to beg.
He doesn't. Blurr doesn't beg. That's for after, if there's an after, but he's wanted to for so long.
Blurr finishes brewing the potion without destroying himself or a small chunk of the forest, silently thanking Swindle for selling quality glassware.
There are words, between him and Shockwave; Blurr doesn't say goodbye, and neither does Shockwave. (Blurr doesn't say I love you, and neither does Shockwave.) But it's Blurr who has to step back, to draw a ward, for a hundred reasons, some obvious enough, that Shockwave knows about... but Blurr... Blurr isn't just holding the ward, here. He's guiding the spell, to keep the components working together, to keep them contained and directed, rather than running wild through the shrine.
It's good that it's a shrine, Blurr thinks.
(Shockwave drinks, and doesn't hesitate, liquid death washing into his jaws, over his optic, down his neck.)
It's good that it's a shrine, a place of power, and to a point it's good that Blurr doesn't know who the shrine was dedicated to-- he can't feel anything that would conflict, with what Shockwave wants or what Blurr is trying to add to what Shockwave wants, with what the magic needs to do. So it probably never was a space sacred to-- to a creator, given the base of the spell is absolute destruction.
Shockwave drinks.
("I want them to remember me as I was," he said, in front of his own statue, when Blurr was first trying to save him, trying to show him that if things could change for mechs like Blurr, maybe things could change for demons, too. If this fails, Blurr won't be able to remember Shockwave as he was. He will always remember what's about to happen, instead.)
Shockwave drinks, and Blurr kneels, his sword a conduit, letting him shape the magic in his spark to something besides speed.
(If Blurr has to remember Shockwave, if this ends the way it would without the flowers, he'd want to remember Shockwave laughing. Teaching. The admission Shockwave would want to travel with Blurr if things were different. The times they slept curled around each other, Blurr getting to use Shockwave's thick, elegant, impossible neck as a pillow. The safety of being carried (of being a racer, carried, not just matching someone's pace but surrendering to it, not just not going as fast as possible but not going under his own power at all) in arms as long as he is tall, on shoulders broad enough to lay across.)
He can't stop the death bringer magic from destroying. There's heat pouring off of Shockwave, and a terrible low sound making his plating shake, and Blurr--
Blurr doesn't--
Blurr steels himself.
This is the spell.
This is his spell.
What is demonic must be destroyed, there is no other way to free Shockwave.
(He doesn't want to have to watch this. The smoke, the steam, rising off of him, the way he crumples, sags, the way he gives in and doesn't fight, Blurr doesn't want to see this, to have this in his processor, he doesn't want to remember him like this--)
But what is Shockwave, what lives, any scrap of vitality even if it's so deep as the glimmer of his spark, need not die today.
Not with the components in Blurr's potion, not with Blurr in control of his own magic.
Blurr is always in control of his own magic, anymore.
Blurr shutters his optics and tries to use his arms to block the smell, molten metal and something poisonously bitter, and Blurr must steer the spell.
Clever little thing, if he lives, whatever of him lives, don't let death touch him, clever little thing. Little flower, little flower made for a dead love, who will never know the touch of the living, don't let anything bring death to him. Please, clever little thing, little flower, please.
Blurr feels something happening, but can't tell what--
Demon's cry, given in friendship, shake the halves apart, pull the mech away from the demon, kill the pain, kill the fear, but listen to the clever little flower and slide away from the teacher, please.
It's not the spell going wrong, something outside it, around it--
Predaking's fire, melt the demonic away, dissolve into smoke and steam, but sway like a clever little flower, like a candle flame in the breeze away from the mortal, the mech, who came to you so humbly, who swore your fire would harm none but him-- let it not harm even him. Burn, sear, melt, evaporate, destroy only that which is already dead, please.
Please.
Please.
He dares to look and it's like looking at ink in agony.
Please, and Blurr is no longer sure which component he's directing, entreating. Please, and it's more like a prayer-- not to-- not to certain parties who might make everything worse. Please, Blurr prays, fervent and unwisely, to anyone who'll listen.
Slices of color flash through the writhing ink, crimson and lilac and periwinkle, a blue that's almost his own.
Please, let there be something I can save. Please let me free him. Please let him live, please don't take him from me, please, I love him, please, I can't tell him so if he isn't free, please, please, let this work, let there be something alive, let me be his equal long enough to say something worth saying, please, please. Please...
There's something under the spell, something rising, Blurr thinks, but it's subtle, slow, hesitant. An answer, but an answer murmured at a terrible distance.
Death and death and fly-from-life, powerful knife and careful scalpel, love is insufficient, but always try, always fight.
Blurr can't let anything spill out of his mouth, but-- if something is listening, approving, maybe whatever's there will help. So Blurr doubles his efforts, at holding the spell, shaping it, guiding it, at pleading.
At praying.
Even if he won't stay for me, please, if there's anything alive in him now, I can inter him like a person-- please--
You worship at his shrine and brought him to worship himself and you were right. Don't stop even if he leaves you. You were right at the start. You were right.
Is he--
The black smoke roils away, and there's a mech inside held aloft, floating, a shape Blurr knows, soft and limp like he's sleeping.
And he's broken, he's a mess, he's so gray, so cracked and chipped and bent and mangled-- his poor hands, he can't even see Shockwave's wings-- Blurr bows his head. Please--
He is free. Don't stop. Rest. Be wise. Do this again, again, again. Free them all if you can. Don't you dare stop.
But as the last of the smoke, the last of the demon, fades from a purple haze to clear air, Shockwave tips, powerless, and whatever entity that was is suddenly a lot less important than not letting Shockwave hit the floor of some ancient shrine.
Blurr dashes forward to catch him.
Blurr has been running a powerful, experimental spell.
Blurr collapses, exhausted, under Shockwave's
Fan the spark.
"Shockwave?" Blurr starts. "Shockwave. Shockwave, please..."
Original Ending Notes:Okay so first of all please excuse me--
THE BACKGROUND CHANGED COLOR THIS IS NOT A DRILL it's not the Senator Shockwave blue OR the Blurr blue, either, from flashbacks or that vision Drift sold Blurr. THIS IS A NEW BLUE it is a very PURPLE blue. BLURR'S TIPPETS ARE PURPLE that could be just a brushwork thing but his little streamer doodads (tippets, they're tippets, they're worn a little differently than Medieval ones but they serve the same visual purpose) aren't blue. THE COLORS okay. The colors in this. What. Keferon. THE COLORS I want to know what it means.
So. Okay.
Oh my god okay Blurr found a third option and I really hope it works. I don't know if 'gray' means 'dead' in Spellbound generally-- Rung wasn't, but Rung wasn't dead, just disassembled. (Rung this is legit traumatic, you can easily point at this instance as a reason you don't want to get involved with the council.) Maybe all his paint has just sloughed off over the years? But if Blurr needs fuel and rest after handling demonic magic, imagine how much worse off Shockwave is! I hope Blurr has so many healing potions on him. Because it looks, from the first panels of this update, like the touch-me-not inclusion was spur of the moment.
What else do I have to yell about. I admit I had a moment where I let Blurr be aware he finds Shockwave attractive as a demon and I think I stumbled across 'carry me' as a speedster kink.
WHO IS THAT TINY VOICE COMING IN FROM
(I wrote it as Prima, long dead but still a Prime, still connected somehow magically to reality through the Matrix and Rung's apology flowers handwavey mystical magical mumbo jumbo and look I titled this thing Sympathetic Magic for several reasons. I'm as culturally Christian as the next white American, but I was raised by lapsed Catholics and I've vibed hard with polytheism since the Greek mythology unit in I want to say sixth grade, and through that lens I kinda see Primes as a cross between saints and demigods-- and poor Spellbound Prima was just a big, boisterous, well-meaning guy trying to be Superman... but he was the first guy to exist after Rung, so nobody knew that a regular guy couldn't be Superman until Prima burned himself trying.)
(Also I'm pretty sure we're supposed to look at Prima and see parallels to Orion or Shockwave... but look at this. Look at it. That's Blurr. "Exhausted and yet still feeling guilty for not being enough." Prima couldn't do enough to help enough people. Blurr cannot be enough for Shockwave to live for. You see why P Align Right is basically saying 'be smart about it, take breaks, but keep freeing people now that you know you can'?)
