Grand Karcist Ion - Tumblr Posts
SCP Foundation art, Old Art Collection, CotBG and Sarkicism. Featuring Yaldabaoth, Mekhane, Grand Karcist Ion, Builder of God Bumaro & an Archon.
Based on:
Sarkicism Hub by Metaphysician
Church of the Broken God Hub by FortuneFavorsBold
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(Overly-contrived ship stuff incoming, because it’s the sort of thing that I feel like I’ll never actually be able to get across in fic without spelling it out somewhere.)
With Bumaro/Ion, there’s a part of my mind that goes “this is practically a crackship, there’s no way to make it IC, you can barely even ship it seriously.” But then the majority of my mind overrides that and splits into two parts that are like “just treat it like crack, who cares if they’re OOC,” and “try to make it IC anyway!” Which is a pretty absurd impulse when you’re dealing with characterization that’s at least [insert percentage] fanon to begin with.
So the dynamic that I end up with is something like Bumaro (or “Bumaro,” aka the guy from the Bronze Age) being an ordinary footsoldier from the first Nälkä-Mekhanite war who sees Ion end his entire civilization. But because of the premise, he has to survive, right? And in the process of going through all this, and repeatedly surviving encounters with “The Actual Leader of the Opposing Army” in battle, which he 100% expects to die from—he eventually comes to believe that Mekhane has something else in store for him.
It’s much less “woohoo I’m the chosen one,” and more “there’s no other plausible explanation, this is the only thing I have,” and all the while it’s left ambiguous as to whether he’s right, or whether it’s more like a combination of extreme luck and the Pygmalion Effect. But in the end, it’s what makes him drink the ichor of Mekhane and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Meanwhile, Ion sees this rando evade him over and over, apparently with the blessing of Mekhane, and it only confirms his view that the gods are ultimately uncaring. Even towards their own followers. That they’re willing to tacitly manipulate one person’s life for their own ends, regardless of whether he actually wants to be chosen.
And at some point Ion still gets banished/sealed away/killed(?), presumably with some level of involvement from Bumaro, if not directly by him.
But the dynamic before that is what I find really interesting, because on one hand you have Bumaro basically wanting Ion to be some sort of end-all-be-all cosmic foe/final boss, because it’s the only thing that would confirm his emotional crutch of a theory about why he’s still alive, which is that Mekhane wants him to personally kill Ion. On the other hand, Ion kind of just… pities him. And he probably doesn’t “care” about him personally, because this is a random enemy footsoldier(-turned-divine-sacrificial-lamb) we’re talking about, but Ion is still someone who generally wants to help people. So he would want Bumaro come around to his point of view ideologically, and realize that Mekhane’s taking advantage of him—whereas Bumaro wants Ion to match his image of him on an emotional level, by seeing him (or maybe just the CotBG as a whole?) as every bit the nemesis that he sees in Ion.
And obviously there’s the guilt over having some degree of actual, personal hatred for someone he’s supposed to regard as a cosmic foe in a more detached way, because the ichor did change Bumaro into… basically a vessel for part of Mekhane. But is it enough to wipe away all trace of antipathy for someone that he sees as (and sort of is) personally responsible for the deaths of people he probably cared about, and the collapse of his civilization?
I guess it’s sort of a moot point because Ion’s not even around in the modern day. Still, I used to think that his hypothetical reaction to Bumaro becoming the CotBG prophet would be something like “wow, the random guy actually made it that far, that’s interesting.” But under this premise, I think he would probably be more disappointed that Bumaro became such an embodiment of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If by any chance someone actually tried to read this, and stuck around until here, feel free to talk to me about your headcanons for this or other maybe-crackships with highly niche characters.
TL;DR - I try to come up with a very contrived, convoluted headcanon to justify Bumaro having at some point had a one-sided hatecrush on Ion.
I have now realized i am a whore for bumaroion
Nadox: Whoa, why are your tongues purple?
Bumaro: I had a blue slushie.
Ion: *Smirking* And I had a red one.
listen all i’m saying is that ion and abel both overthrew daevon according to file and tales alike, and that they could have been in the city at the same time. so me crackshipping them isn’t that much of a stretch