Dandy in the Underworld - Notes
At some point, I wanted to write a fic based on Russian mythology. What came to mind instead were two old Russian language films of my childhood: To Kill the Dragon and Princess and the Pea.
To Kill the Dragon was a fairytale turned social commentary, in which there was a dragon who looked like a man, except he was very much a dragon, except you never saw him turn into a fire-breathing flying beast, except it was obvious all along that this was exactly what he was. Just ‘cause you didn’t see him swish a tail didn’t mean he didn’t have one. I’m not a big fan of animal transformation fics, nor of the S6 canon glowy-hand dragons who still turned into fire-breathing beasts. So I tried for the more subtle, less scaly version of a monster that - I do hope - slipped past everyone’s radar while Dean was busy faking it.
I don’t remember if “he who kills the dragon becomes the dragon” bit of mythology came from that film or from elsewhere. And on the subject of dragon mythology, there is no better place than Las Vegas for the guardian of treasure to hang out.
The particular version of Princess and the Pea had a large chunk of it dedicated to the Prince’s travels around neighboring kingdoms in search of a wife. One of the princesses he met liked to play a game with her suitors: she’d think of three objects, which the suitor had to guess. She’d marry whoever guessed all three, but no one ever could, and her father’s castle was littered with the bones of those who failed. The princess did that because she was secretly seeing a troll and was trying to avoid marriage. The prince followed her one night and saw her dance with her troll lover. The troll suggested the objects to think of, and the prince overheard and was able to guess all three, though he didn’t marry the princess in the end. Incidentally, her troll turned out to be an enchanted prince, causing me massive disappointment back in elementary school or whatever. And as much as I love me some troll-fuckers, that part is perhaps for another story.
The guessing game sounded like a cool idea at first but soon revealed some deep problems that come with borrowing from fairytales: there is fairytale logic involved. How is it even possible to guess what object someone is thinking of, given the endless choices, once, never mind three times? And why can’t the dragon pick the object himself but must consult someone else, and consult him out loud, conveniently, for the hero to overhear? And once the hero guessed the first object, wouldn’t the dragon know that his source of inspiration has been discovered? Also, it’s a pain in the ass to write a scene, where the central tension starts with a simple question and ends with an equally simple answer. Given all that, I tried hard to navigate my way around the obstacles but probably clipped one or two logic!fail rocks anyway. Apologies!
I didn’t want to write 10K of outsider POV. But I did want a secret diversion plot, and the only way to keep the secret was to avoid Winchester POV until the very end. Many thanks are owed to sonofabiscuit77 who convinced me that 10K of outsider POV wasn’t so scary and was worth a shot. One drawback of this POV is that the story came out a bit too cryptic, with all the things Ivan sees but doesn’t understand left for you to figure out.
Ivan was named after Ivan the Fool (or Ivan the Prince, or former progressing to latter), a popular character of Russian fairytales. “Dandy in the Underworld” is a song by T.Rex that initially put me in mind of him.
I hope y’all enjoyed.