On having finished Heroes season 1
Sep. 22nd, 2007 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_pryssOK, so there's this passage in the Kalevala where Lemminkäinen gets himself killed, dismembered, and thrown in a river. His mother takes a big copper rake and dredges the river again and again, pulling out Lemminkäinen's body bit by bit. Then she puts him back together again. There's this amazing list of all the parts she pulls out:
...She dragged it once, dragged it twice;
she gets her son's shirt, to her distress of mind the shirt.
She dragged once again; she got his stockings, came upon his hat,
His stockings, in a great state of grief, his hat, in anxiety of mind.
...The third time indeed
she got a sheaf of grain in the iron rake.
It was not a sheaf of grain, it was really reckless Lemminkäinen,
the handsome man with a far-roving mind caught fast in the teeth of rake
by his ring finger, his left toe.
Reckless Lemminkäinen rose up, the Kaleva descendant came up
in the copper rake to the surface of the clear waters.
But a little something was lacking, one hand, half his head,
a lot of other bits and pieces, his life to boot.
...She drags once more with the copper rake
along the river of Death's Domain, both longways and crossways.
She gets a hand, gets the head, gets half the backbone,
the other half of the ribs, many other bits and pieces.
Out of these she constructed the son, made reckless Lemminkäinen.
She joined muscles to muscles, fitted bones to bones,
members to members, veins to breaks in veins.
(From the Magoun translation, Canto 15, lines 195-554)
So here's what I'm thinking.
Peter went boom, right? (Though clearly not until Nathan had dropped him and flown far, far away to safety.) Anyway, Peter explodes and all his indestructible parts part ways and fly down to earth in a veritable rain of Peter bits. And they can't regenerate by themselves (I'm thinking in particular that the heart and brain probably need to be in proximity) so Nathan, poor, brave, stoical, determined Nathan goes looking for all of Peter's bits and when he has enough of them, lays them on a couch or something and watches in sick fascination as Peter's body creates itself anew from these charred, filthy, mangled pieces.
Traumatic, right? And also awesome.
...She dragged it once, dragged it twice;
she gets her son's shirt, to her distress of mind the shirt.
She dragged once again; she got his stockings, came upon his hat,
His stockings, in a great state of grief, his hat, in anxiety of mind.
...The third time indeed
she got a sheaf of grain in the iron rake.
It was not a sheaf of grain, it was really reckless Lemminkäinen,
the handsome man with a far-roving mind caught fast in the teeth of rake
by his ring finger, his left toe.
Reckless Lemminkäinen rose up, the Kaleva descendant came up
in the copper rake to the surface of the clear waters.
But a little something was lacking, one hand, half his head,
a lot of other bits and pieces, his life to boot.
...She drags once more with the copper rake
along the river of Death's Domain, both longways and crossways.
She gets a hand, gets the head, gets half the backbone,
the other half of the ribs, many other bits and pieces.
Out of these she constructed the son, made reckless Lemminkäinen.
She joined muscles to muscles, fitted bones to bones,
members to members, veins to breaks in veins.
(From the Magoun translation, Canto 15, lines 195-554)
So here's what I'm thinking.
Peter went boom, right? (Though clearly not until Nathan had dropped him and flown far, far away to safety.) Anyway, Peter explodes and all his indestructible parts part ways and fly down to earth in a veritable rain of Peter bits. And they can't regenerate by themselves (I'm thinking in particular that the heart and brain probably need to be in proximity) so Nathan, poor, brave, stoical, determined Nathan goes looking for all of Peter's bits and when he has enough of them, lays them on a couch or something and watches in sick fascination as Peter's body creates itself anew from these charred, filthy, mangled pieces.
Traumatic, right? And also awesome.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2007-09-22 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 03:47 pm (UTC)Stop snickering. His dismembered skeleton. His skull. And she's all, "It's not working! Let me leave!" after a while, and she's holding his skull, up, and all of a sudden, it feels a little heavier, and she can see through the eyeholes, the underside of where the jaw isn't attached, that something... pink and fleshy is starting to grow from the base of the skull and she freaks out and drops it.
And Nathan's like, "Pick it up!" And he grabs the jaw and gives it to her, and she puts it on, and the tendons reach out, like tentacle to grab the jaw. And she puts it on the spine and she starts trying to arrange the bones, but the spine/head part is already reaching out, like some ghoulish squid, pulling the bones in with tendon-tentacles and starting to sprout burn-victim looking flesh.
Only, the process takes *days* and she has to sit there, beside it. And Nathan leaves the hotel every once in a while to get food, but comes right back because he wants to be there when Peter wakes up.
And she asks, "What if he comes back... wrong?"
And Nathan's like, "As long as Peter comes back, I don't care."
And she's like, "Neither do I."
And they maybe get to have an honest/awkward/tense series of conversations as the hold vigil over Peter's repairing body.
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Date: 2007-09-22 04:01 pm (UTC)I also can't work out if I'm more disturbed or fascinated by YOUR BRAIN. How did you even come up with that?!
What if he regained consciousness before his body was entirely done regenerating? Imagine Clare and Nathan being in the middle of a heart to heart, and suddenly they hear this clicking sound, and they turn around to see Peter wiggling his bone-and-tendon fingers, and trying to put his kneecap or something on because that bit isn't done yet, but each time he balances it where it should go, it falls off. And he tries to talk, but his tongue isn't back yet, so he just gargles at them, and then sort of tries to smile, and it's that that makes Clare heave, more than all the body parts putting themselves back together.
Or something O_O
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Date: 2007-09-22 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 06:22 pm (UTC)Of course
JesusPeter has enough love for both of them. ;)Oooo, you could totally model a story along these lines after the whole Jesus/Rock/Tomb christian story thing. The easter one. There we go, thank you wikipedia, where would I be without you?. Only, who would be Mary and who would be Mary Magdalene between Claire and Nathan.
Okay, now I'm thinking about Mary/Mary Magdalene femmeslash that takes place while they're waiting for Jesus to come back.
I think I get extra going to hell points for that.
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Date: 2007-09-23 05:39 am (UTC)She joined muscles to muscles, fitted bones to bones,
members to members, veins to breaks in veins.
==>
Liitteli lihat lihoihin,
luut on luihin luikahutti,
jäsenet jäsenihinsä,
suonet suonten sortumihin.
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Date: 2007-09-23 10:28 pm (UTC)