#and have the queen choose her as its puppet for that reason

[herethereverywhere]

making myself sad thinking about rachel going to the queen willingly by the way

#sonder thoughts #this is something ive been thinking about for a while of like #yes the bayou crew let rachel wander into the woods but how did the hive take her #and my brain has decided the worst most deeply painful route for me specifically #is to have rachel be so bone deep empathetic and love wildlife #and have the queen choose her as its puppet for that reason

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

i wish i knew how to make a fire emblem bc... game ideasce. waugh.

brief summary: emotionally detached lesbian leader of a mercenary group saves a sweet peppy manakete woman (who does look like shes 20 and not 11) and ends up getting hauled into her adopted unadopted father's capitalistic quest to conquer all the (lycian alliance like) other nations on his continent. manakete woman is like hey um this is fucked up why are you lostening to this guy and the leader is like well i have mysterious reasons. they do a few war crimes before they realize Why : evil cult of guys who wanna revive a fell dragon are working in the distant Hugeass Empire to do just that and need manaketes to do this... but they scared them all off by existing so theyre trying to bribe people to do it. the warring alliance are too busy at war to do that, the nation of knockoff laguz are too busy giving a shit about other shapeshifters, and the other less defined nations dont have the manpower to capture a fuckimg dragon. the merc leader realizes this and as she has become a little gay but mostly besties w her manakete friend, she begins working against her father unfather to stop this shit from happening. she unconquers the other nations in the alliance but given she and her band defeated and killed the leaders of the nations they have no leader and given her band is now the strongest... people just start following the merc leader anyway. it helps that most of the leaders of the allied nations were assholes making the commonfolk do battle for their personal gain, and the merc leader does her own battling. merc leader lesbian is crowned the first queen of this new united kingdom (against her will) and is bullied into marrying Someone bc thats how royalty works and she chooses someone from her merc band Of Course.

20 year timeskip.

the new nation has become a safe haven for manaketes and all sorts of outcasts as Her Gay Highness has worked tirelessly to make sure the people who made her queen dont regret it because she has thinly veiled anxiety issues about her worth as a person. thanks guy (the lord who made her conquer in the first place) who adopted this war orphan from the streets and then unadopted her when his wife finally bore him a child. oh speaking of children given its been 20 years, characters who youve paired can have kids. but you gotta pair em before the timeskip, and only two characters always have a kid and thats the merc leader and the manakete girl best friend (gay). hey remember that huge fuckoff empire to the east? Yeah theyve launched a fullscale war against the laguz nation to just force them to hand over any manaketes after the evil cult installed a 14 year old puppet emperor. the laguz nation goes Ah Fuck Ah Shit Ah Fuck and asks their good buddies the combined kingdom to help them which they Do. but by the time they get there, the losses are extreme and the king of the laguz nation is dying. the ex merc leader helps his successor into her role and the two women go "oh yeah we're going to fucking destroy the evil empire" and then they do. The war is hard and sucks but eventually they fight their way to the evil cult. a few things happen : 1 the manakete who the ex merc leader has been besties with for 20 years is the DAUGHTER of the fell dragon the cult is trying to resurrect. the merc leader freaks out, and because of her trauma about people she loved abandoning her, kicks the manakete woman out of the band and Also Take Your Damn Kid. and your spouse unless the spouse is the merc leader in which case a truly heartwrenching cutscene plays. 2 : the cult members immediately find snd capture the manakete woman and are preparing to kill her kid and use the blood of the fell dragon to revive it. the merc leader hears about this and decides the final battle has to start Now to save them because holy shit that was a mistake obviously theyre not working together. 3 : yknow who WAS working w the cult? all the nobles who hate the merc leaders unnoble blood. so the cult know theyre there. whoops. they fight the cult but just barely lose, and fhe manakete woman's kid is Slain. the fell dragon rises, not bc of the blood, but bc the fell dragons only daughter got So Pissed. turns out the fell dragon isnt actually that cruel, not in life anyway, but given how he was revived by anger snd not by true love he comes back Wrong and the cult descend on him and tear him apart and eat his flesh & use his bones as weapons. oh they dont worship him they want to use him to kill all shapeshifters and anyone who works against them forever. they can, however, use this pissed off manakete by casting a spell on her and having her fight her former friends. Huge fuckoff battle. It ends w the lesbian merc leader slaying the leader of the cult and, agonizingly, the friend she saved forever ago. the manakete returns to normal once the mortal blow is dealt, and thanks the mercenary leader for saving her once again, and begs her to remain a peaceful and kind leader for the rest of her life. she dies. the merc leader is Only Anguish. the world is saved at what cost?

epilogue : the merc leader rules until she dies, ensuring that the still-combined nations of the west, the newly managed empire of the east, and the reconstructed laguz kingdom to the south are all on good terms and recovering well from the war. manaketes establish their own nation after being given land from each nation where they meet to own for themselves. the leader of it is revealed to be the manakete bestie's other child she had borne RIGHT before the war began who she had only implied existed in her supports w her eldest child and a few others. merc leader leaves behind a vast and tumultuous legacy, but her child rises to keep her ideals alive and make sure nobody can accuse her of having no worth. she chose peace and love and thats what is important at the end of the day.

various paired endings. if the merc leader and manakete bestie got married (the canon route but w/e), the merc leader never remarried and vowed to see her wife in anime chess heaven. its very gay. end credits.

oh i forgot to mention. there is an avatar character who can marry anyone who likes that gender as every character now has a canon sexuality. the avatar character is the m/cs childhood friend who does nothing in the story but is Kind Of Cool. goodnight

👀 love the concept

#there is actually a half finished plot of a hypothetical fe game in my drafts. i should finish it soon #long post #fe #fire emblem #i should make a tag for these #emblems beyond our reach

[starkskeep]

I speared a prince

I speared a prince aegon ii targaryen imagine

Pairings - Aegon II Targaryen x Martell!Reader

Summary - You are the Princess of Dorne and will rule the land after your father. A diplomatic trip to King's Landing where you were only supposed to return with information had you returning with something much more important.

Word Count - 4.5k (holy shit)

Warnings - Vague descriptions of a brothel and prostitutes. Reader is the poster child of Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss. Manipulating Aegon is her only goal. It's ok. He's better because of it. Kinda dialogue heavy. I couldn't help it. Aegon is one of my favorite personalities to write about. Smut.

A/N - Aegon in this imagine is not the same Aegon as in the books or the show. He is not married to Helaena nor is he a disgusting pig of a man. He is still the family's disappointment though.

It was one of the few times Dorne has sent a delegation to King’s Landing, but your father had just ascended to power and wanted to usher in a new age of cooperation. It was some celebration or another, possibly a name day or an anniversary of some arbitrary event. In all honesty, you could not bring yourself to care for the official reason for your visit. You were actually sent to King’s Landing to see if and with who Dorne should align when the war everyone knew was to come finally rears its ugly head. Your father knew of King Viserys’s diminishing health; everyone in court could see him withering away upon the throne and rumors spread quickly. Your presence in the capital was meant to scope out if choosing an heir to support could potentially bring any benefit to Dorne or if it was better for your kingdom to stay away. 

There had been an argument before you left Dorne. You had made it quite clear to your father that if Dorne was to support a claimant to the throne, it would have to be Princess Rhaenyra. If you were to support Prince Aegon, it would undermine Dorne’s own line of succession and put your own claim to the ruling of Dorne in question. This opinion stayed with you as you were welcomed into the Red Keep. You could see how the Hightower queen stared at you with thinly-veiled judgment. She would have no doubt raised her children to be mindless puppets of the Seven, complete with all the pompous arrogance that came with stuffing down one’s desires for the sake of appearances and the opinions of others.

There were two benefits to your visit. The first was that the crown princess was also at the capital. In all honesty, you admired Rhaenyra Targaryen. She had been able to hold onto her position as heir despite the many lords attempting to convince the king to change his decision. She was as beautiful as she was powerful and your eyes rarely left her figure when you were in the same room as her. Knowing that she was unlikely to invite you into her chambers, you decided to merely look up to her. So your eyes shifted to the second benefit of King’s Landing: Prince Aegon Targaryen.

The Targaryen prince was an utter mess and you loved it. He didn’t bother to conceal the small smirks when nobles came up to sing their praises to the king and the queen, his constantly disheveled appearance, and the complete and utter lack of decorum when attending court; you wanted to take Aegon and mold him into your perfect companion. A man like him did not belong trapped in court. He needed to be in a place like Dorne where he could let his inhibitions roam as freely as a dragon should. Yes. He would be your perfect consort once you finally became the Princess of Dorne after your father passed. You would make this trip to King’s Landing end with you and Dorne benefiting unilaterally from it.

A night after yet another long and boring feast found you entering a brothel on the Street of Silk. If you didn’t find a woman who appealed to you, at least you would be able to drink without judgmental stares from fellow nobility. You also found that the women in brothels tended to look more kindly upon fellow women, allowing them a quiet place to drink away from grabby men in exchange for some coin. So far, the attention from the men in the brothel remained on the women rather than on you in the corner. Thus, it came as a great surprise to you when your idle observation of the scenes in front of you was interrupted by a familiar voice. 

A cheeky smile danced upon the prince’s lips as he spoke to you. “My lady, what brings one as beautiful as yourself to a place such as this? Would it be the company or the drinks that attract you?” Noticing your lack of interest in replying, Aegon continued to pester you. “I do not believe that we have been formally introduced. I was preoccupied upon your arrival. I am Prince Aegon. It is a pleasure to meet you. A woman who often looks as interested as I feel in court is one that I would like to get to know.”

Surprisingly, Aegon was able to draw laughter from you which you quickly stifled with a sip from the goblet in front of you. “I know you jest. I would never allow my disinterest to show so blatantly. Besides, we were introduced to each other two days ago and even sat across from each other at one of the dinners. I have heard the rumors but do you truly drink so much that you are unable to remember the events from only a couple days previous?” You eyed Aegon up and down as you spoke, admiring him but also looking for his reaction. This prince was oh so pretty. You wouldn’t mind having him in your bed: whether it was for the night in this brothel or more long-term, you would enjoy breaking this Targaryen. 

Your words elicited a light chuckle from Aegon. He took his time in choosing how to reply to you. It had been a long time since anyone had made him genuinely laugh and he did not want to displease you in a way that would cause you to stop. His words often easily offended those around him but this is the first interaction where he actually cared how he came across. “I am willing to beg for your forgiveness if you require me to. It seems that only your beauty caught my eye at the feast.” Aegon’s hand brushed past your chin, finding its resting place against your cheek, “The drink does dull my senses quite a bit, a feeling I am very fond of. Though it is not enough to make me forget the short-term. You still have not answered my question.” His eyes roamed from you to the drink in your hand, to the women of the brothel, and back to you. “Is it the company or the drinks that brought you here?"

“Unlike in Dorne, the people of your father’s court are quite uptight. They would not know how to act if they allowed themselves to indulge in the pleasure that one’s body has to offer. A brothel in the city is the only place I could be satisfied tonight. What of you my prince? Why come here to chase pleasure? Surely a prince such as yourself could have anyone in his bed. You would not need to leave the safety and comforts of your chambers.” You lower your chin in order to gaze upon Aegon from underneath your lashes, flashing a sly grin in a way that has enticed many before him. “Unless—let me guess—there is someone that doesn’t allow you to express yourself? It is hard for me to believe that having a grandfather as devout and pious as yours in a position of power would allow you much freedom.”

Your words were sharp and true. The pierced Aegon as if it was an arrow shot by the most talented of archers. He has often been called a drunk, a fool, or sometimes far worse to his face and behind his back. His father made no attempt to know the children he sired with Alicent, his mother seemed to only gaze upon him with contempt and disappointment for as long as Aegon could remember, and his grandfather only whispered poison and treason in his ear. Your words contained not the whispers of disappointment, but the whispers of a promise. You made him want to feel rather than dull his senses. “That, my lady, I cannot deny. The Seven forbid such pleasures and indulgences so I am forced to get them where I can. A brothel is a good enough location. Whores can be paid to keep silent if you slip them enough coin. Aegon took your cup of wine from your hand and downed it in one gulp before motioning to a nearby woman for more. “It is too much of a coincidence that we are at the same brothel tonight. So tell me, did you plan this? What do you desire of me?”

Scoffing, you take a new goblet of wine from the serving woman. “I do not desire anything from you, Prince Aegon. I entered this brothel first. I am not a seer. I did not know that you would be a patron of this establishment tonight.”

Aegon’s smile turned impish. As he moved to sit closer to you, the grin never left his lips and his eyes never left yours. He felt fire in his veins that he has only felt while on the back of Sunfyre. The prince feels far more intoxicated by your presence than wine has ever made him. “Then it seems that the gods have brought us together tonight, no matter how much they may frown upon our actions. Although, now I am even more curious as to why you are in King’s Landing? Are you to become a temptress plaguing my waking thoughts?”

Oh. This prince had a surprising way with words. You liked the idea of becoming his temptress, but you could not let him distract you. You had to choose what you are to say carefully. Aegon obviously desires acceptance and someone to give him the attention that he has lacked since childhood. You would not play his mother; as a princess, you are far too superior to debase yourself by coddling men in such a way. Instead, you will play upon his insecurities until you held him in the palm of your hand. “Do your parents not share the activities of court with you? I joined my uncle on a diplomatic visit to ensure that the ties that bind Dorne to King’s Landing are still strong. Your sister, Princess Rhaenyra, was the one to organize it. I quite admire her. She seems to be a competent woman. The meeting is between the king, my uncle, and Princess Rhaenyra. She is your father’s heir. If you are curious as to the nature of it, perhaps you should ask your sister for the details of the meeting.” You observe the wayward prince in the aftermath of your words in order to see how they strike.

There. That is where you will hit him. Aegon disguised his reaction by drinking another goblet of wine faster than you have ever seen. If you were a lesser woman, perhaps you would have been impressed by that worthless talent. But you weren’t and now you had the ammunition you needed. He shrugged and shifted uncomfortably in his seat after setting down the cup. “Perhaps I shall. Once my sweet sister is done playing politics, I will ask her.”

There was no need for you to stay after that. Your words had sunk deep enough and would no doubt linger upon his mind in the days to come. Standing up, you walked in the direction of a woman in such a path that caused you to be in the direct line of sight of Aegon. Electing to ignore Aegon even though you felt his eyes burning a hole through the back of your head, you waited until you were about to enter the room with the woman to send a wink and a smirk in Aegon’s direction. 

You stood anxiously outside the doors to Rhaenyra’s chamber. After returning from the brothel the previous night, you requested delivery to the princess of your desire for a meeting. You needed it to occur first thing in the morning. If the news had gotten to the queen and her father of your encounter with Aegon, there would be the risk of them forcefully keeping the prince away from you. Fast actions were needed in order to prevent that from happening and you were not a woman to sit idly by. Luckily, you were pulled out of your thoughts by the announcement of your arrival. It was finally time for you to meet Princess Rhaenyra face-to-face.

She rose to meet you when you entered. It was a good sign, in your opinion, that she was willing to respect you and listen to what you had to say rather than brushing you off as a young girl unaware of courtly politics. “Princess Nymeria. It is a pleasure to meet you. It was a surprise to receive a note from you, though not an unwelcome one. The events of court leaves one with very little time for privacy.” Her voice was deep and melodic. If you hadn’t already had one Targaryen in your sights, you may have changed your reason for this meeting. 

Sitting in one of the chairs the princess gestured to, you made yourself comfortable. For this meeting, you would need to present yourself as a composed young woman sure of herself and her actions. Gaining Rhaenyra’s trust was your most important objective. Without it, everything would fail. Knowing of her notorious distaste for half-truths and political maneuvering, you decide to be completely honest with her. “As I am sure you are aware, the official reason for my visit is to join my uncle in strengthening the ties between Dorne and King’s Landing. Unofficially, my father wanted me to gather information on who to support in their bid for the Iron Throne: you or your brother.”

Rhaenyra did a good job at keeping her expression neutral but you could see how your words angered her. Her jaw clenched and she tightened her grip on the arm of her chair. A voice like ice in deep contrast with her dragon blood met your ears. “And who does your father favor?”

Good. You needed her intrigued. Having her ruffled may also help you, but you would need to tread carefully in order not to push her over the edge. Remaining relaxed, you attempted to assuage her. “You know how fickle men are. I am my father’s only daughter. Like you, I am also my father’s heir. Though I am not at risk to have my succession questioned as you are, I understand the feelings of inadequacy that sometimes arise. Thankfully, my father trusts my judgment and holds my advice in high regard. Who he favors is who I favor, and I would rather see you ruling the realm instead of your brother.”

Rhaenyra’s hardened exterior softened slightly at your admission. Having the loyalty of a powerful house would please anyone engaged in battle, and House Martell was a valuable ally indeed. She was much less brusque in her reply. “It satisfies me, Princess Nymeria, that a woman such as yourself is able to see the way that things should be. Too many women of my father’s court would rather see my brother on the throne and accept the way that things have been. Though, forgive me for being direct as I do not wish to offend you, what is it you want in return? I am not so simple as to believe you would come to me without requesting something of me. You could have easily had your father declare his support when the time comes for me to ascend the throne.”

Your grin was reminiscent of the vipers that roam the Dornish deserts. “It seems that you have adapted to a life of politics quite well, Princess Rhaenyra. I have no doubt that you will make a great and powerful ruler. There is something I want and unfortunately, it is something that I cannot take myself. Do not fret. What I want will also benefit you greatly. In fact, it will give you even more power over the lords who do not desire to see a woman upon the throne.”

“Let’s hear it then. I am happy to make a deal but I must first know what it is you want. I must know what it is you hope to gain from my agreement. In times such as these, a promise is nothing but words on the wind and winds are prone to change direction from one day to the next.”

“I am in complete agreement with you. Words are not as binding as actions. When I take my father’s place as the ruler of Dorne, the man who I am married to will be nothing more than my consort. He will hold no power over me. Nor will he hold power in the Dornish court except what I choose to bestow upon him, and I am not the type of woman who would willingly share her power.” You pause in order to let your words sink in. “During my visit here, I have spent some time with your brother, Prince Aegon. I want him to be my prince consort. If he marries me, he would have no claim to the throne as there is already an heir. My duties to Dorne would overshadow whatever machinations against you are already playing in the background. There is the issue that Queen Alicent and her father hold significant power over the small council. They would never allow a marriage to occur between the prince and me.'

“So you are asking me to petition the council on your behalf to allow a marriage between you and Aegon, correct?” Rhaenyra raised her eyebrows in both surprise and intrigue. The idea of betrothing Aegon to someone that would tamper his claim had never crossed her mind nor had it ever been suggested to her. “A bold and brilliant plan. I will raise it to the small council upon their next meeting, without a doubt.”

“You may have misunderstood me, princess. I don’t want you to bring it to the council. If that was all, I would have my father or my uncle do so but I know the results would not be favorable. What I want is for you to bring the request straight to your father. Everyone in the realm knows that the king favors you. If you were to ask the king to give Prince Aegon to me, there would be no need to involve the small council. King Viserys’s word is law and I do not doubt that he would agree to whatever you ask of him. The queen and her father would not be able to stop me from marrying your brother if it was the king who betrothed us.”

You left the princess after being dismissed. There was no question in your mind that she would successfully fulfill your request. There was no cost for her to do so and only benefits in return. You were proven correct that evening when the King announced at dinner that his firstborn son would be marrying you as a way to deepen the relationship between House Martell and House Targaryen. Your uncle seemed surprised but was used to your scheming often leaving him unaware of the future. He gladly accepted the congratulations from those around him. 

After nodding to Princess Rhaenyra in gratitude for her help and thanking King Viserys, you looked toward where Prince Aegon was sitting next to his mother and Otto Hightower. It seems as if none of them were told that this announcement would be made or even that this betrothal was occurring. The queen and her father were whispering furiously to each other and to Aegon but it looked as if he was ignoring them. A common theme during any dinner. Instead, his attention was solely on you. 

The weeks that followed your return to Dorne were filled with letters from King’s Landing. Rhaenyra often wrote to update you on the attempts to dissolve your union but the Hightowers. Nothing was ever successful. She assured you that the king was holding steadfast in his decision. That put you at ease. You were also receiving letters from Aegon. He was practically begging for a reply but you chose not to reward him with one. Keeping him in suspense would only make him yearn for you more. 

One day, the roar of a dragon interrupted your duties. A servant rushed in to announce that Prince Aegon had arrived and was refusing to leave without meeting with you first. You should have known that he would be too impatient to wait for a reply. A short time later, the doors to your chambers opened and a rumpled Aegon was revealed to you. Noticing the fire that burned in his eyes, you quickly dismissed all the servants and attendants that were hovering around you. 

You moved over to a chaise situated near the opening to your balcony. Sitting down, you crossed your legs and reclined your arm against the back of the lounge. The perfect picture of nonchalance. Wanting to see how he would play this game, you waited silently until Aegon chose to speak. “You have been ignoring my letters.” He finally did break the silence after watching you move. At least he had the decency to wait until you were comfortable before doing so. Maybe it would not take as much work as you thought to properly train him. 

“I have been busy. There is much to do before our wedding ceremony. I also am my father’s heir. There is much I have to do in order to ensure Dorne’s success.” You pretend to be more interested in the charms of the bracelet that adorn your wrist instead of your betrothed moving towards you. 

Aegon scoffs as he sits down next to you. “You have not been too busy to reply to my sister’s letters. She happily informs me every chance she gets that she has received yet another from you. It is embarrassing. A wife should respond to her husband and pay him even the barest bit of attention.” He pouts as if he were a child.

Getting to your feet, you walk over to a table that is laden with fresh fruit delivered to you earlier that day. Popping a grape into your mouth, you take your time to savor it because you know it will set Aegon on edge. “I find her correspondence intriguing. Princess Rhaenyra is an inspiring woman. Your sister and I are both our fathers’ heirs. We share many of the same circumstances. It is no surprise that she and I would become close in our commiseration. If you had more duties, I’m sure you would understand.”

Aegon huffs in annoyance at your continued movement. He wants nothing more than to take you into his arms, so he does just that. The prince was never that good at waiting for what he wanted and it is surprising that he lasted as long as he did. You lean against the table behind you and wait for him to get closer. When Aegon finally makes it to you, he grips your hips and pulls you flush against him. One of your hands slides up to his chest as the other wraps around his neck. Never being the tallest in his family, you stand at almost the same height as Aegon.“You are here now. You forced my hand in acknowledging you, my prince.” Whispering the words against his lips, you capture them in a bruising kiss and instantly take control. 

With a groan, Aegon pulls away. He is panting with desire. “Many may think me a fool, but I know enough to understand that you planned all of this. If you did not want me to visit you, you would have replied to my letters. You would not have caused me to resort to drastic measures such as sneaking away from King’s Landing in the dead of night just to fly to you.”

Raising an eyebrow in surprise, you up the ante of your game. “If no one in King’s Landing knows that you are here, we do not have much time before a search party is sent out. It is possible that your brother is already on his way here with his mighty dragon to steal you back.” You push yourself up to sit on the edge of the table. Wrapping one of your legs around Aegon’s waist, you pull him closer to you. A coy smile lingers on your face as you reach down and undo his trousers. “We have precious little time, my prince. We should make the most of it.”

Aegon is practically speechless. His previous experience in brothels had the women doing all of the work but he was still in control. Right now, he is completely at your mercy. One would think that a prince of the realm would not want to relinquish his power so easily, but Aegon was putty in your hands as soon as he laid his eyes on you. 

You pull his cock out of his trousers. There is little you need to do except for a few pumps of your fist to get him completely hard. This man is aching for you. Pulling your dress off, you lean back and prop yourself up by your elbows. “Show me how much you want me, Aegon.”

Slamming into you, Aegon wastes absolutely no time in proving to you the depth of his longing. His fingers dig into your hips, no doubt leaving crescent shape indents for you to find tomorrow. It seems as if Aegon wants to punish you for ignoring him. Not that you mind. Everything you did was to get him here and ensure that he was all riled up for you. A sweet lover is a boring one. You want him to be rough and wild and he is definitely delivering.

Aegon sets a brutal pace. Each impact of his hips against yours pulls you against the table. One of his hands has moved to finger your clit. Each brush sends an electric shock of pleasure through your body. Not wanting to be outdone, you wrap one hand around his neck. The other grabs him by his hair and you dig your nails into his scalp. Pushing yourself up, you bite and pull his bottom lip. He lets out a pitiful whimper and you soothe the pain with a kiss. There is the coppery taste of blood so you lick away the drops that came from your bite. His lips will be deliciously bruised tomorrow. There is no battle for dominance—you are completely in control of the situation. Soon, you felt your peak approaching. Your moans grew breathier. You raked your nails down Aegon’s back. The wave finally crested and you clenched around Aegon’s cock, completely overcome with pleasure. A few moments later, Aegon reached his own climax. You felt him release his seed inside of you. Overcome by exhaustion, his entire body went limp and his head fell to your chest. You pulled his head away from your breasts with a yank on his hair. “Now there’s no reason for your family not to push the wedding forward. Soon you will be mine in entirety, my prince.”

masterlist

#aegon x reader #aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen imagine #aegon targaryen fanfic #hotd imagine #hotd one shot #aegon targaryen one shot

[lya-dustin]

Someone will remember us

Chapter 41

Cw: animal death, sexism, mentions of death in childbirth

Gif by @ben--solos

Though much weakened by his ordeal, King Viserys soon resumed the rule. To celebrate his recovery, a feast was held on the first day of 127 AC. The princess and the queen were both commanded to attend, with all their children.

--- The Rogue Prince, or, A King's Brother: A Consideration of the Early Life, Adventures, Misdeeds, and Marriages of Prince Daemon Targaryen

----

Dragons do not decompose like the other animals; they take longer as their scales are harder than the strongest steel.

Not a single dragon has turned to stone like Ghar did.

The eggs that didn’t hatch became stones, but never a dragon that had lived.

Ghar who had made a nest on grandfather’s stone city and died there.

Ghar who is given a funeral and placed in his own altar amongst the great dragons.

Elēnar Ōghar, five and ten years old, claimed by Princess Aemma of House Targaryen and House Velaryon.

There is no mention of the king, it was a secret that the dwarf dragon had attached himself to a dying Viserys.

A man could not survive with his dignity intact if it were known that a dragon that was more of a lapdog had claimed him as an owner.

“My granddaughter claims it is an ill omen.” Otto Hightower comes to stand with her and she fights the urge to run.

“It may as well be the dying of the dragons.” Aemma points to the last claimed dragon to die, Balerion. Grandfather had been twenty when his dragon died. Viserys Dragonsbane, the first man to kill a dragon after Maegor the Cruel.

An ill omen then and an ill omen now.

Less eggs were hatching since the Black Dread died, then the queens started producing fewer eggs if they had any at all after Queen Aemma died.

The last time Syrax had a clutch of eggs was when Joff was born and only one egg had hatched. Syrax was the only other dragon besides Vhagar to successfully bring forth a clutch of eggs these past four years.

It didn’t help that Dreamfyre and Meleys had lost interest in their mates, the Cannibal ate most young dragons and Sunfyre like Vermithor tended to kill whatever hatchling Silverwing managed to have.

“And yet Vhagar has brought forth an egg for the second time in its life.” It, not she as the dragon likes to be referred as.

Vhagar was the queen of the dragons and demanded that you remembered that.

She was as arrogant as Aemond sometimes.

“She, Vhagar hates being called it.” Aemma corrects. “First Moondancer and now Ēbrior.”

“The Valyrian God that ate its own children?” he asks waiting for her to elaborate on the name.

“Vhagar coiled with a dragon called the Cannibal, seemed fitting.” Aemma said making the man she loathes chuckle. “Besides, my son will choose the name for his dragon when the time comes.”

“Son?” Hightower latched on the word and Aemma knows he is trying to catch her saying something he and his supporters can use.

“I have five brothers; I know the signs. I will have a son, so if the lords wait long enough, they will see a king once again.” This is the longest conversation she has had with the overreaching snake.

Aemma prays it lasts a little longer.

“If they aren’t patient, what then, your highness?”

“Their good names will be soiled; the ringleaders will be executed and perhaps the lesson will be remembered far longer than the one Jaehaerys taught his uncle’s followers.” The princess hides her smirk as she lights a candle in front of Quicksilver, Aenys’ mount. “To quote him, every person in Westeros is House Targaryen’s hostage, if they wish to supplant the King’s heir with their puppet, they will pay for their treasons with fire and blood.”

“Your grandmother has taught you well, your highness, a shame the two of you could not have been men.” Hightower says thinking it is the highest praise he could ever give a woman.

Gods, she couldn’t wait until this man was dead.

He is the curse that’s befallen on her house.

He is the reason their house has begun to decay just like the king.

-----

They were happiest in those four moons away from everything.

They were free to be themselves ---not that either had any fucks to give about people’s opinion to begin with---- and best of all, free from the headache inducing bullshit in court.

His eye plagues him from time to time, migraines or just the damage leftover from his disfigurement. This day is one of those.

Aemond used to rest his head on her stomach and she’d stroke his hair until he fell asleep. Then her belly grew and now she cried because she had enjoyed that moment of intimacy between them.

The babe is strong, kicking like a mule and refusing to give his poor mother any peace unless Aemond draped his arm over her belly.

He is seven and ten, six moons older than Aegon was when the twins were born.

And just like his brother, he does not feel up to the challenge.

Not that he will tell anyone, no, he is a Targaryen, he is a prince and he must always be in control.

And unlike Aegon, he will be a good father and husband.

“What are you thinking, Aemond sapphire-eye?” she asks as he rests his head on her shoulder as she reads.

“If all their progresses were like ours, it is no wonder the Old King always loved traveling.” He lies and hopes she doesn’t pry, but his Aemee knows him too well.

“You know, I am scared too.” Aemma was not taught to swallow her feelings and thoughts and make sure no one knows.

No, Aemma was taught to express such things and worse, talk about them.

Teora had been a wonderful mother to her, but Aemond wished she had taught her to repress things like all the nobles teach their children.

“Hm,” he scoffed. “Your mother and father despite their faults were good at being parents, my mother’s love is conditional on me not being a disappointment like Aegon.”

He speaks nothing about his father, who would he say was his father, Viserys who was too ill and indolent to care or Cole who would have done more if his post allowed him to?

Gods, he is going to fuck up their son.

But that is not his biggest fear, no it pales in comparison to the real thing. Like comparing the now defunct Ghar to Vhagar.

“And yet, that feels trivial because you are the one who may die and leave me to love the child that killed you.” And if her vision comes true, their son will be left orphaned because Aemond’s fucking father did not bother codifying the amendments to the law of primogeniture nor keep his grandfather away from the honeypot.

“I am not dying, and you are not dying either. Aemon will have two parents, an army of nurses and four younger siblings.” She takes his hand and comforts him when he should be the one comforting her. “We won’t fuck up our son, this I promise you, Aemond.”

----

“I have a new job for you.” Mysaria toyed with the silver in her hands as Talya finished her report.

The Pearl was to have a son, Hightower did not trust the One Eye and the King was given a month to live as all his sores reopened following the death of the little dragon.

The winds of war could be felt, the Greens and Blacks alike readied themselves for it while maintaining the façade of peace.

“Whatever you ask for, my lady, I am your servant.” The woman said unprompted.

“I need you to gain the Princess’ trust, I need you to tell her about the tansy tea the queen has.” Mysaria ordered.

The Green Queen had warmed up to the Black Princess, the realm would lose its chance for good rulers if this friendship was allowed to continue.

-----

The Princess is writing in her diary when Talya is allowed an audience with her.

She was not like the Queen, the queen may be kind, but never friendly nor even treating her as an equal like the Pearl of Dragonstone does.

Septa Teora had been like that, so nice and good. If her children take after her and not their father, the realm will thank her.

“Has the Queen sent you, Goodwife Talya?” the princess asked closing the journal shut.

What had been in there that Lady Misery had read? What was so secret about it?

Could it be true that the girl is a lightskirt like her mother, or that she is mad?

“No, my lady. I came by my own accord.” Talya had been trained enough no to fuck it up. “I, there,” she feigns nervousness and clears her throat for effect, “I know things that I am afraid will be used to hurt you and your unborn baby.”

The princess falls for the lie like the gullible little girl she still is.

At first, she doesn’t believe it, but then, remembering how awful the queen was to her and her brothers as a child, she starts to consider her words as truthful.

“The Queen has had me copy the maester’s recipe for moon tea, this morning she asked me to purchase tansy and pennyroyal for her.”

Talya swallows her guilt as the princess gasps and places a hand on her swollen belly as the handmaiden plays on her secret fears just as Lady Misery told her to.

#aemma velaryon #someone will remember us fic #aemond targaryen x velaryon!oc #oc fanfiction #ocappreciationtag #fyeahhotdocs #asoiaf fanfic #hotd fanfic

[spiritualbambi]

pick a card: when will your material gworl era start?+details

pile 1 -> pile 2 pile 3 -> pile 4 -> pile 5

JOIN MY DISCORD

MASTERLIST

MY KOFI

INSTRUCTIONS: breath in, breath out and choose whatever picture that draws you in the most!

NOTE: it’s completely fine if you are attracted to more than one pile - the universe probably wants you to see some other messages. this is also general reading, not everything may resonate! enjoy!

PILE 1

in 3-5 months, baby! get ready because that material gworl era is running at you with full force. get your finest pink suitcase out coz you're travelling to new lands, somewhere you've never been. a new phase, freshness is in the air. lots of new experiences, exploring, shopping, clubbing, partying, driving, flying - everything that you deserve is finally arriving! don't miss out on any opportunity, you've waited too long for this. recently you may have been feeling like your life is dull and boring, like you're missing out on life, but the universe has been listening to your calls, so get ready! use the time till the material gworl era start wisely - take your time to care for yourself, put yourself first, treat yourself to a refreshing face mask, a nice bowl of salad and a glass of fresh juice, daily affirm to unlock the best version of yourself! the universe loves you <3

PILE 2

in 6-12 months your life will meet a stunning new start. you may be starting a new career point, maybe rolling into a new school, university or job. in this phase you are a queen, you are in control of your life. someone roll this a girl a red carpet, because that's how you're entering your material gworl era - like a hollywood actress with ten oscars at age 18, like a billion-dollar businesswoman with fifty mansions all over the world, like an undying english royalty. people are afraid of your power, people surrender to you, they KNOW who you are and what you can do. no one wants to get on your bad side. if they did, they have a death wish. you're in control of your destiny, your future is what you create, what you think of. your thoughts materialise themselves into reality.

PILE 3

your material gworl era is taking a vacation in hawaii and will show up at your doorstep in a year! you'll have to wait a year or so, but that's pretty near. it's for a reason too. you have something unfinished yet in your life that you need to painfully finish. you can't be accepted into the material gworl era with some sort of debts, after all. however, when the time finally comes... you'll be ready. and you'll know. you'll feel. you are the master material gworl, blue print of them all. head up, shoulders back, giving that off duty model walk. you're having drinks in most favourited cafes, bars and restaurants with your most loyal fanbase, or as others call them... "friends". you're mysterious, serving everyone that egyptian cat eye look. ah, so charming and so dangerous.

PILE 4

for this pile i'm not getting years, but rather an age. you will reach your best in your 20s. parties, parties, parties and one more time parties. you are a vip at them all. you don't even need to ask, they see you - they let you in. your existence talks by itself, you don't even need to move your mouth. you are the best of them all. glitter, pink, diamonds - that's you. you are paris hilton but just prettier, smarter and way more iconic. everyone wants to be friends with you, you are getting exhausted like "leave me alone, i want to drink my 10k pink champagne in peace..." jennie from blackpink would be swinging arms at others to prove her worth to you as a friend. no one can be as good as you, all of them end up as miserable copycats. everyone is just your circus puppets, and you are their cruel master.

PILE 5

your material gworl era is changing its route constantly. i can't tell the time even! i guess you are powerful, huh, able to control your destiny to the fullest. but when you choose to live your dream life fully, everyone's going to be jealous. these disgusting rats are secretly praying for your fashionable downfall. poor them, they're not going to get what they want. you are cherished by the highest forces, who can even try to stop you? you are a spoiled beverly hills girl in her pick juicy couture tracksuit. you are a nyc it girl. paris is baking you croissants privately. dior, chanel, prada are sending you love letters, begging you to be their model; you sigh, tear their already 100th letter this month and lay in your crystal bubble bath.

#pick a card #pac #pick a pile #tarot #tarot reading

[clarionglass]

okay i know i seem like i'm just a tma au generator but consider. tma strange the dreamer au (why yes i have been rereading laini taylor how can you tell)

martin, a war orphan and foundling raised by a woman who hated him, who always found his refuge in fairytales and daydreams. now, he has grown into a young man who has found his place as a librarian in the Great Library, humble and unnoticed--but he remains haunted by the twin mysteries of a legendary vanished city, and the magic that stole its name from the world. the dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around, and though he fears his dream chose poorly, it nonetheless stays curled around his hearts. (counterpart: lazlo strange)

tim, called the godslayer. a hero from the lost city who has stepped straight out of the pages of martin’s books, and who presents an opportunity that the humble librarian cannot let pass. a great man, and, rarer yet, a good one. but he is shadowed by the terrible events in his, and his city’s, past. what is it the godslayer killed that went by the name of god? (counterpart: eril-fane)

sasha, tim’s second-in-command, who waits for him back in the unseen city. warm, friendly and quick to welcome, she accepts martin into her hearts and her home with ease. but even so, she is painfully aware of the reason why there is an empty room in her house that martin can fill, and she wishes, desperately, that someday, tim can return home. (counterpart: a mix of suheyla and azareen)

melanie, a fierce warrior of the unseen city accompanying the delegation of foreigners that tim has collected. bears a strong animosity to whatever the cause of the unseen city’s misfortunes may be, for good reason. (counterpart: a mix of azareen and tzara/any member of the tizerkane)

basira, who is everything that martin isn’t: the queen’s godchild, talented, wealthy, universally beloved, and a true member of the godslayer’s delegation. a brilliant alchemist, who discovered the secret of the universal solvent, and remains the only person to successfully transmute lead into gold. however, she owes a debt to martin blackwood, a poor nobody librarian--a debt she can neither repay nor understand. (counterpart: thyon nero)

and daisy, another of the unseen city’s warriors. a keen hunter, who despite her best interests is drawn to the aloof golden alchemist who they have taken on as a potential saviour of their city. (counterpart: ruza)

and, hidden in the citadel above the unseen city:

jon, godspawn, grotesque, gifted. the muse of nightmares. every night, he breathes his soul out in a hundred velvet-winged moths, through which he can enter and shape the dreams of those sleeping in the city below. he used to sow fear, meting out punishment for the Carnage and ensuring it will never happen again. but his presence in the dreams of those tormented by the gods has granted him understanding--and compassion. (counterpart: sarai)

annabelle, the oldest of the godspawn, and their saviour, on the day of the Carnage. she is manipulative, fiercely intelligent, and fuelled by an unending hatred of the humans that butchered the children she could not save. this vicious nature is at odds with her physical appearance, as for reasons unknown, she remains frozen in the body of a six-year-old child, unaging since that fateful day. her gift is the binding of ghosts, tethering souls to her with a gossamer web of will, and she takes delight in puppeteering them around. (counterpart: minya)

georgie, the orchid witch. she can coax life from the smallest of seeds, but also take it away. jon’s closest friend, kind and naturally protective. (counterpart: sparrow)

agnes, bonfire. passionate and tempestuous, with a gift to match--she can set herself alight, a pillar of human flame. however, she wants nothing more than to experience true freedom, rather than being stuck hidden in the citadel. (counterpart: ruby)

#tma #the magnus archives #strange the dreamer #other minor characters of Course #e.g. leitner working in the library martin worked in #gertrude has to be in this somehow #clearly the Big Avatars are the gods #elias/skathis peter/letha nikola/isagol for definite #not too sure abt the others yet but they'll come #if this interests you please hit me up! i would Love to ramble about this #also i'm not 100% sold on all the characters so if you have more thoughts i would love to bounce em around #plus i need to find a feral (fifth godspawn) - there are just too many avatars to choose from lol #clari speaks #clari writes #i genuinely adore laini taylor's writing style so i kinda want to do this just to attempt to mimic it #but i have too many wips as it is :/

[3wisellamas]

Some Cyber World (+ Dark World in General) Headcanons??

-Cyber City is fittingly VERY densely-populated, however surprisingly few of Cyber World's citizens are actually represented by physical objects in the Light World, since it being connected to the internet means a LOT of digital denizens can also live there. The internet outage in chapter 2 meant that most of them were MIA while we were running around the city, however.

-The Cyber Fields are kind of a mix of suburban and rural -- While most of the population lives in the city, there's a couple of small communities spread out there.

-That place where you fight Spamton NEO is an actual part of the city, specifically its Bad Neighborhood -- there's a secret passage between it and Queen's basement meant for if she needs to make a quick exit (like in cases of, say, a crazed puppet taking over her mansion by force). However, there are REASONS why you have to go through so many locked doors and gates to get down there, and it's also usually closed off from the rest of the city as well, for safety reasons. If you weren't on rails the entire time (and you didn't accidentally clip right through the floor like in a Bethesda game), you'd probably see lots of glitches, viruses, corrupted data, and old Spamton ads that no one ever bothered to take down / replace.

-Werewires aren't just Queen's attack dogs, they also serve in administration positions and offices throughout the city, as well as guards / police -- their wires act as a sort of hive mind, allowing them to communicate with each other and Queen directly. Pre-Knight, the transformation was completely voluntary, with some choosing to undergo it and some choosing to remain Plugboys instead.

-Werewires are also completely blind due to the wire literally taking up their entire face, and communicate mostly via sign and body language.

-In contrast, though? Werewerewires are indeed exclusive to Queen's mansion, and serve as her personal bodyguards, her last line of defense after the Swatchlings and Tasque Manager. It takes a LOT of strength to absorb the wire like that, which means they're pretty rare (like, the number that exist at any given time rarely gets into the double-digits), but they're still blind and speak via sign language like all the other Werewires.

-Music equipment robots like SCC actually used to be pretty common sights throughout Cyber World, the fourth most common Darkner species after Plugboys, Addisons, and Swatchlings! However, given their nature, Queen's ban on music unintentionally DECIMATED their population -- SCC's rebellion is about a little more than just fighting for their right to party!

-Also, speakers are the most common of these robots, given that Cyber World is in a computer lab!

-Swatchlings are flightless birds, however this does not stop them from trying. They can hover a little with their wings!

-Names:

Robots (other than Queen): Either really, really mundane (like just normal people names) or really, really weird (like Cakes), but almost always puns of some kind or follow a theme. It's also seen as perfectly normal for them to change their names when they think of a better one (and sometimes their gender while they're at it...) They HAVE serial numbers like Queen's, but they're entirely separate from their names.

Plugboys / Werewires / Werewerewires: Their serial numbers are their names, like Queen's, and may or may not shorten them into proper (and more pronounceable) names (though usually not -- you just learn to deal with names like 57-TE46V83 or J49N6-1C83.)

Swatchlings: Every individual one has an assigned Pantone number or hex code, which serves as their real "name", however they usually go by nicknames that match their color.

Addisons: Also tend to have punny names, but also almost universally have last names, which they pick themselves, usually just whatever makes them sound more marketable.

Other Cyber World denizens: Also tend to take the serial number approach, but are much more into using more pronounceable nicknames than the Plugboys. This is how you get things like "The Hacker" or "Frommt" -- those aren't their actual names, just what they go by.

However, Nubert is Nubert. There is no other name/number that can capture my man's majesty!

-There are actually Rudinns, Hathies, and whatever the generic Clubs and Spades are in Cyber World! However, there's very few of them, with their own small community out in the Cyber Fields, and they have a much more digital / computer-y look to them, given that they're from the Solitaire program rather than actual cards! (They're freaking regional variants like in Pokemon...)

-There's a number of gangs and criminal syndicates in Cyber World that mostly operate in the Dark Web, outside of Queen's reach -- Pre-Knight, her biggest priority was tracking down and reprogramming them into law-abiding citizens, which is why among certain circles she gained a reputation for being a harsh ruler. They mostly deal in hacked data, stolen passwords, crypto, and NFTs. Needless to say, The Hacker has links to ALL of them.

-There's a thriving fashion industry in Cyber World run mostly by the Swatchlings -- most clothes that people wear do indeed actually change color if exposed to different temperatures! Though, it takes a little more than just talking about summer heat or cold pickles in front of them.

-The Lightner internet isn't normally accessible to Cyber World's denizens, the Addisons and Poppups aside; only Queen has a really good connection to it, and everyone who wants to search for something or know anything about the Lightners has to go through her. She absolutely uses this to control people and secure her rule over them, but pre-Knight she did genuinely like looking things up for her citizens and making them happy.

-Everything in Cyber World is stuck around 1999 / 2000 because one of the computers in the librarby (possibly even Queen herself!) actually suffered the Y2K bug and glitched. It still all functions fine, but it's just kind of in a Groundhog Day-ish loop with the new millennium rolling over but then glitching and getting reset back to 1999 every New Year, and most of the Darkners in residence don't actually realize or care that it's been like that for over two decades now.

-There is very, very little water in Cyber World -- it's actually considered a very dangerous substance, and controlled appropriately, with special licenses and stuff needed to even touch it. What comes out of all the sinks and makes up that big lake behind Queen's mansion is actually something else, either oil / mineral oil, coolant, liquified data (a la TRON), battery acid, isopropyl alcohol, or maybe liquid shadows or something (since it's the Dark World). Or, more likely, a mix of all of these (drinking it is NOT advised!)

-Light works in reverse in the Dark World -- every "light" you see is actually something casting a shadow, with darker places appearing brighter and more saturated and brighter places being dimmer and more monochrome black and white. The only exception to this are Dark Fountains -- they really are as dark as they appear, like straight-up Vantablack, and even if there's no "light" at all around them they'll still be perfectly visible.

-If any actual light shines in the Dark World (like, say, if a Lightner took a flashlight in with them), everything it touched would either be cast in shadow (for dim lights like a candle) or become completely pitch black (for brighter lights), and if you shine real light on any Darkner it both temporarily blinds and causes them pain, and makes them appear as their Light World counterpart instead (or makes certain digital ones, like Addisons, vanish entirely!) Darkners have an instinct to fear and avoid real light at all costs, though, so don't try it!

-How I honestly headcanon Dark Worlds work is, they always exist as a series of parallel dimensions to the Light World, whether there's a Fountain or not -- a Dark Fountain merely connects a part of the Light World to its corresponding Dark World (and creates connections to other nearby Dark Worlds as well, hence why the door between Castle Town and Card Kingdom can no longer open, the connection's no longer there), and gives them and their Darkners forms that Lightners can perceive rather than the abstract concepts they usually exist as. This is why even a world like Cyber World, which canonically has "existed" for only one day, has all that history and backstory to it (most notably Spamton's whole deal with the year 1997) -- it's only been a PHYSICAL world since the Fountain's creation, but it's been around as a NON-PHYSICAL world for much longer!

-Related, when Kris seals a Dark Fountain, the Dark World still exists, it's just that the connection between it and the Light World is severed, and it all goes back to being abstract and formless, save for the Darkners they recruit and take back to Castle Town of course.

-I also think time works a little differently in the Dark Worlds, too, passing much faster than in the Light World -- which is why a chapter's entire epic adventure can happen in only a few hours. It also means that, even if the Cyber World Dark Fountain was created earlier that day in the Light World, to the Cyber World Darkners it's actually been a LOT longer, like a few weeks or so, giving Queen some time to really change things. (It also means that Card Kingdom's been abandoned for a REALLY long fucking time, in King Spade's eyes, and why Jevil says he'll sleep for "the other 100 years" when you Spare him...)

#deltarune #emheadcanons #emtheories #? #there's a little overlap #i will definitely come up with more but this is just a starter pack!

[mst3kproject]

The Neanderthal Man

Since I'm taking a break from fishmen, I might as well let Bigfoot catch up a bit.  The Neanderthal Man isn't exactly a Bigfoot movie, but it’s along the same lines and its entire starring cast has MST3K pedigrees.  Robert Shayne was in Indestructible Man and Teenage Caveman. Richard Crane was Rocky Jones, Space Ranger! Beverly Garland was in Swamp Diamonds and Gunslinger. Even the composer, Albert Glasser, wrote music for Invasion USA, Last of the Wild Horses, and almost all of MST3K’s Bert I. Gordon movies.

Some little mountain town in the middle of the Sierras (which the Portentous 50's Narrator takes some trouble to tell us is a primeval place where 'the defacing hand of civilization has fallen but lightly') is having a rash of saber-toothed tiger sightings!  At first these are laughed off, but when the game warden himself sees one cross the road in the middle of the night, it's time to do something about it.  The warden shows a cast pawprint to Dr. Ross Harkness in Los Angeles, who is interested enough to come up and see for himself. Local Mad Scientist Dr. Groves pooh-poohs the whole thing, which is enough to tell me that we're not dealing with a local cryptid here.  Somebody is making prehistoric monsters.

So... I may not have actually run out of movies, but I seem to be running out of plots, because this is a remarkably similar movie to Monster on the Campus. The major difference between the two films is that Dr. Blake turned himself into a caveman by accident, while Dr. Groves here is doing it on purpose.

Another difference is that Monster on the Campus' story, while silly, was linear – events escalated in a way that felt logical, and there were reasons why things happened when and where they did.  By contrast, The Neanderthal Man feels like a first draft.  At the beginning of the film, we're dealing with the saber-toothed tigers that Groves has been creating by injecting cats with his de-evolution serum.  We hear about these slaughtering game and livestock, and it seems like only a matter of time before they move on to human beings.  The beginning of the film is quite upfront about the fact that Groves is responsible, too, as it is only mildly mysterious in its depiction of one of the creatures escaping his lab.

Sometimes the saber-tooths are represented by an actual tiger, usually filmed from behind or at a great distance so nobody has to put the prosthetic teeth on it.  They do have prosthetic teeth, but they're only visible in a couple of shots. Imagine being at a bar and some guy tells you his job is sticking fake fangs on real tigers for a caveman movie!  For close-ups, there's a hilarious puppet head that looks like the sort of thing you'd see mounted on a frat house wall as a joke.  The director had the sense not to linger on this in motion shots, but later we see still photographs Groves has supposedly taken of his experimental subjects and they're even stupider-looking than we imagined.

Anyway, this goes on for a while with rising action, as the game warden goes to get Harkness and they manage to shoot one of the animals, only to have it vanish from the kill site when they try to show it to Groves (the movie never bothers to explain how that happened, incidentally. The ending suggests that the creatures change back when they die, but there's definitely no dead kitty cat at the scene, either).  The whole movie could easily have just had the cats and their creator as the antagonists, perhaps even ending the same way as Dr. Groves proves his work to the other characters by injecting himself. That's not what happens, though.  Instead, the story mostly forgets about the cats one we find out Groves has also been carrying on human experiments.

(Before himself, Groves' first experimental subject was his disabled Latina housekeeper.  Another series of photos show her half-transformed into a cavewoman who for some reason is wearing drag queen false eyelashes.  And as long as I'm talking about the movie being gross and bigoted, there's a bit where a woman is violently raped.  This happens off camera, but the audience is not allowed to entertain any illusions about it.)

The problem is that before we see him give himself an injection in the arm, we have had absolutely no indication that Groves has been giving his serum to anything besides the cats! Cats are stealthy, cryptic creatures and if one of those has been seen wandering around killing things, then surely a full-on caveman beating people to death would not be able to stay out of sight!  If what we were seeing were the first time Groves had tried the formula on himself then that would be an explanation, but his notes reveal that he's been doing it for so long that he's on the verge of losing control of the transformation and permanently reverting to a pre-human status, as indeed he does for the climax.  Much like the stupid dinosaur in The Beast of Hollow Mountain, the movie's main monster is given no build-up whatsoever!

There's worse yet, though.  The main characters, Dr. Harkness and Groves' daughter Jan, are barely involved in the 'caveman' part of the plot. They get phone calls about the various murders that Groves is committing in caveman form, and they snoop around the lab to figure out things the audience already knows.  The same story could have been told without them, perhaps with the game warden and the hunter as protagonists, and it would probably have been more interesting. The script also repeatedly has Dr. Groves wander in and bluster about how the tiger sightings are hallucinations and tall tales, which seems a little unnecessary when we already know he's responsible. The film-makers can't seem to decide whether they want us to know that or not.

Dr. Groves wears glasses.  Maybe the reason his primitive alter-ego is angry and breaking shit (although it does politely open and close the window it climbs out of, which made me laugh) is because it can't see. This is also my theory about why the Hulk smashes, and what do you know?  In Avengers Endgame he's got Hulk-sized spectacles and only smashes when he's told!

The direction of The Neanderthal Man can probably best be described as 'serviceable'.  It shows us what's going on, but doesn't particularly add anything to the proceedings.  The 'Neanderthal' mask is immobile and uninteresting, not much better than somebody's Party City Sasquatch costume.  Even the eyes are just painted on, meaning the poor guy in the costume can’t do much because he can’t see where he’s going.

The dialogue is often very strange, with characters talking like they're in a Jules Verne novel. If only one person did this, it might seem like a character quirk – it works for Dr. Groves, for example – but it's everybody. Seeing the cat carcass is gone, Harkness declares, “I refuse to believe in the supernatural!  There must be some logical cause and effect to this unholy adventure!”  Groves' fiancee Ruth berates him for ignoring her, saying, “I want you, the man I once knew!  The good companion, the cheerful friend.  I want the happiness we once found in each other.”  It's bizarre to listen to, and often audibly awkward for the actors.

Monster on the Campus was kind of trying to be about how humanity must choose to evolve away from our inner savage, although the finale didn't bear that out.  There's a scene in The Neanderthal Man in which this movie seems to be trying to go in the opposite direction, saying that we were never savage to begin with.  Dr. Groves is speaking to a panel of scientists about the size of the brain in various 'primitive' species of human.  He points out that by the time we reached Homo erectus we were already working with four times the cerebral jelly of a chimpanzee, and argues that our ancestors would have been recognizably human in their behaviour and problem-solving capacity.

(Amusingly, his chart of human evolution includes Piltdown Man, which was proven to be a hoax literally a few months after this movie's release.  What makes this even more tragic for the writers is that their list of primitive humans seems to be the only place where they actually did any research.)

The problem with Dr. Groves' theory is that he already knows it's wrong. We soon learn that he's been experimenting on himself with his serum for a while already, and his notes show that he knows very well he regresses into a near-mindless animal.  The movie does not even try to reconcile these ideas.  If Groves were continuing his experiments in the hope that perfecting his serum would give him a more accurate reconstruction of ancient man, that would be one thing, but the script never goes there.

So now that we've had two 'man turns into caveman by injecting science juice' movies, of course I have to ask which one is better.  Monster on the Campus wasn't a good movie but it was definitely an improvement on The Neanderthal Man in several respects, and although I don't have any way to find out for certain, I suspect it was an intentional remake.  It's definitely more entertaining and gets bonus points for including the Meganeura dragonfly, but nothing in it is nearly as funny as The Neanderthal Man's fake tiger head.  I guess if you're gonna watch one or the other, stick to Monster on the Campus, but if you're gonna watch both, start with The Neanderthal Man and do them in chronological order, the better to spot the inspirations and references.

Before I go, a fun paleontology fact: current thinking is that the saber-toothed cat's eponymous fangs actually didn't show when it had its mouth closed!  There are zero cave paintings or ancient sculptures of a saber-tooth cat with teeth visible, and when scientists looked at the structure of the enamel in the canines, it suggested that in life the teeth were hidden by big, fleshy, St Bernard jowls.  Google 'smilodon lips' and behold how this looks fully three hundred percent more ridiculous than you're imagining.  I love nature.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the neanderthal man #tw: rape #50s #curiously caucasian cavepeople

[reversemoon255]

(This is the second of a three-part series chronicling the story, concepts, and original Pokémon that appeared in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign I worked on for several months. This entry will be more focused on a lot of my original designs and how their encounters would play out, rather than concrete story. Also, much of the art was done by @extyrannomon on Twitter, and I suggest you check them out.)

Dungeons ‘n’ Dragonites - Phase 2: Ultra City

The Queen Durant would prove to be a difficult foe, able to use all manner of elemental attacks to strike from a distance to compensate for her low speed. Furthermore, she would have full command of the Duranthill, using her followers to guard herself. As the battle rages, the team slowly begin to evolve, and their newfound strength and Types, along with the aid of the Princess, would have them see victory.

I was unsure as to the ultimate fate of the Queen. Either having it disappear into the tunnels alone, or be sucked into another Ultra Wormhole like the Poipole. And with the Queen vanquished, the Princess would choose to become partner to whoever she felt most worthy (a combination of good role playing and damage dealt).

I designed every Pokémon in this campaign under the pretense that it could actually exist. The Queen and Princess fall under the category of “Rare Variants.” There’s only one queen in a colony of thousands of ants, so it makes sense for it to be rarely seen. They’re still Bug/Steel, but special attackers, with the three spheres on each of their abdomens made to mimic the pattern of Tri-Attack, symbolizing their ability to use those Types.

As for the Starter evos, Flymph has evolved into Epipesis, gained the Electric-Type, and become a full Dragonfly. Calfyre into Steared, staying mono-Fire, but growing considerably (4 feet at the shoulder, the largest mid-stage Starter). Squisque into Knaval who’s now Rock, because he’s a rock lobster! And Utaw into Uteteo who may still be pure Fairy, but has gained some gold adornments.

=====

My working title for this campaign was “Ultra City.” Hinted at by the appearance of the Poipole early in the game, my intentions would come into full swing during this portion, with boss encounters against many of the known and some unknown Ultra Beasts. I had a few encounters planned, from a pickpocket Pheramosa that they’d fight in a mall store room full of mannequins, to a Blacephalon that had kidnapped several children, hypnotized them, and had them watching his performances, to a beach episode where there’s just a Buzzwole hanging out and not causing trouble.

Things would take a twist when a Guzzlord would take over the abandoned district, raining destruction down from its highest building. The crew would have to climb a multi-floor dungeon in order to battle it, many scared and aggravated Pokémon blocking their paths. After reaching the top however, after initiative had been rolled, a mysterious Pokémon would descend from the sky, felling Guzzlord in a single strike...

Majra, the Dragoon Pokémon (a slurred portmanteau of Magic and Dragon). A Dragon hunter with a unique ability, “Hunter of Evil,” that removes all its resistances but makes it immune to Dragon, Dark, and Ghost. This Pokémon came about as I was trying to create a dramatic encounter that would interrupt an expected one. As I was thumbing through DnD and fantasy ideas, the idea of a Dragoon who furiously hunts Dragon-Types came to mind. Ice/Fairy seemed the perfect combination, and the sentient suit of ice armor fell into place soon after. As Pokémon don’t typically hold weapons, I made him part scorpion, having him hold his tail as a workaround, and also informed how his extremities would look. The Haxorus skull buckler also helped drive the Dragon hunter aspect home.

Ultra Beasts were the second category of original Pokémon in my campaign, and encompass all purely original Pokémon (including the Starters). However, I didn’t want to just haphazardly make a ton (as commissions cost money), so I gave myself the condition that if I made an Ultra Beast it had to play with weaknesses and resistances in a way to trip up experienced players, hence Majra’s ability.

Majra would not attack our players in their first encounter, unless someone was using a Type he hunts. He would be a reoccurring boss character, helping or hindering the players depending on their enemies or allies.

The next unique encounter would have been a tutorial battle against another Rare Variant, a Shiinotic possessed Parasect. Every boss encounter is technically 4-on-1, so I wanted to give a Pokémon a reason to have multiple turns, and fused or symbiotic Pokémon felt like a naturally occurring way to have that happen. I created this Shiinotic as a way to teach the players how these Pokémon work.

As Shiinotic is a bio-luminescent mushroom, I wanted to have Parasect faded in color from its light. I also thought it’d be a nice touch to have Shiinotic’s spindly fingers act as puppet strings to move Parasect’s arms around. It would have been encountered after a swarm of scared Paras started flooding out of the sewers near everyone’s school.

Then would be Fortifiend, who would be encountered a few times as an easily circumventable castle wall in the middle of the street before Majra would eventually attack it, forcing our players to take a side in the battle (with Fortifiend possibly joining them if they help it). His ability would make all attacks not very effective while it had over 50% HP, and the opposite when under 50%. Despite the name, I pictured him being very nice, and giggle whenever he heard someone compliment his stone structure.

I imagined that the world he came from had naturally occurring stone structures similar to him, and his folded castle form was a sort of net to help him catch large prey; partly why he doesn’t attack the smaller people and Pokémon of the game’s dimension (he’s around 30ft tall). He could be encountered anywhere, so he wasn’t a full quest; just a fun “what the heck is this” moment to confuse players.

Also, while it wasn’t purposeful, Fortifiend and Majra both also matched the DnD aesthetic. That definitely helped them stand out as some of my favorites, and Fortifiend barely missed the final pass for the last round of commissions.

Then was the twin encounter of Feyerre, a Fire-Type igloo and snowmobile Pokémon, and Eyescse, an Ice-Type pyramid and four-wheeler Pokémon (probably the most Ultra Beast-esque concepts I came up with). They would be messing with the weather across the city, causing disturbances until the players eventually found one of them, in when the other would appear. Their ability would flip their weaknesses and resistances, and they would have an attack that could do the same to a target. And fun fact: there’s meaning to the color and number of their eyes! Feyerre’s are F.I.R.E (Fire=Red, Ice=L.Blue, Rock=Brown, Electric=Yellow), and Eyescse’s are I.C.E (Ice=L.Blue, Sea=D.Blue, Electric=Yellow).

But their defeat would incur the wrath of a mysterious Pokémon they had encountered a few times:

“As you turn around, you see a grey Charizard standing there. It stares at you for a moment, wide-eyed and unblinking. Then it begins to open its mouth, wide, wider, and wider still, stretching beyond what should be possible. Then a hand reaches out of it...

“Suddenly you’re falling. The lights and sounds of countless unknown worlds whir past you incomprehensibly as you plummet through time and space. You try to close your eyes to shut out the flurry of stimuli, but it’s impossible to drown out as your minds begin to feel the strain of the void. Then, after what feels like hours, time seems to stand still as the heavy rain of an unknown world hits your face. For a brief moment you are able to take in the desert that surrounds you before a flash of lightning illuminates the sky, revealing a titanic silhouette looming above you before you are once again thrown into darkness. And as you come to outside the warehouse (where you encountered Feyerre and Eyescse), in the distance, you hear what sounds like laughing.

“Fofofofofo...”

The final original encounter I had planned for Stage 2 was Meadew. It would have been wandering the city, spawning grasses and flowers wherever it went. However, while beautiful, the sudden growth would be causing havoc and destruction to all the buildings and vehicles it could root into.

Unlike the other Ultra Beasts, Meadew’s ability didn’t affect its weaknesses, but instead created Substitutes since I wanted a way for it to form its own adds (the concept behind its inception). However, it wasn’t without a Type gimmick; rather than an ability it has a signature status move called “Radiance” that raises its attack and special, as well as give it the Fire-Type, making it Grass/Water/Fire (the 3 Starter Types). It would invoke this after its adds were defeated, but could be talked down through diplomacy, unlike some of the other encounters.

=====

I’ve mentioned Rare Variants and Ultra Beasts, but there was a third Type of original Pokémon that could appear: Mutant Evolutions. Essentially, evolutions like Probopass or Leafeon where being in an energy charged area or coming into contact with a huge ore deposit (what I interpreted the Mossy and Icy Rocks as, since they became Leaf and Ice Stones in later Gens) could force an unusual evolution in a Pokémon already shown to be susceptible to unique evolutionary conditions. Due to a future encounter, I already knew there would be large Metal Coat and Ice Stone Ore deposits in the mountains to the north, so I wanted to do some test prototyping using each of those items, whether I used those evolutions or not.

Poliwhirl is already shown to be capable of multiple evolutions, all of which use items, so I thought having it come into contact with a massive amount of Ice Stone Ore (since it should be chemically similar to Water Stones) could force a Mutant Evolution. This is Policuti, from the Latin Cutis meaning skin, and Poli-Cutis would mean “multiple skins,” as it wears the shed skin of preevolution. And being freshly shed is why its skin lacks pigment. It’s just a cute little frog in a raincoat! Also, the swirl on its jaw is actually its tongue.

Since Magneton evolves into Magnezone through being electrically charged, I thought about how it might evolve if charged with Steel energy. I imagined it being magnetically attracted to the Metal Coat Ore, fiercely trying to pull itself away, being stretched and elongated in the process, resulting in the bullet train Pokémon Magneline. The Mutant Evolutions weren’t supposed to be anything important to the story or that they’d run into in the wild. They were more so surprises to excite the players who would be expecting something, well, expected. I had considered doing at least one for each player if they caught a compatible Pokémon, but as no teams were filled out, I was merely left with my prototypes. The only reason I had these two commissioned was because I was very happy with their designs.

=====

As we reach the end of Stage 2, the reoccurring group of rowdy Onix would return once more. Following them deep into their tunnels, our heroes would come across a massive chamber with a giant metal stalagmite and frozen stalactite in the center of it. The Onix would then appear, twisting around them, forcing their evolutions. One into Steelix, and the other into Glacix...

#Pokemon #dungeons and dungeons #DND #dnd homebrew #durant #shiinotic #parasect #poliwhirl #magneton #onix

[jyndor]

I’m rewatching the Puppetmaster for ~research~ and ugh.This is such a good episode but I cannot stand the treatment of Hama and also Katara’s special bending ability. And I’m gonna talk about it because I can’t help myself. But I also want to offer a solution maybe something that the writers could have done instead. Granted I’m a white US American so while I am about to talk about imperialism, anti-indigenous racism and racialized misogyny, I am coming from a position of privilege here and ymmv. It’s important that we as fans (especially white fans) acknowledge the things that our favorite stories can do better so that we can make our fandoms safer for everyone.

And btw fans of color have been talking about this so I definitely am going to be quoting some phenomenal bits of critique I have read on here. Also you should follow @shewhotellsstories and @visibilityofcolor for anti-racist fandom commentary.

I am also going to talk about grooming, so just be aware if that is a trigger for you.

I. Hama as a Campfire Horror Story Monster

The episode starts out with the Gaang camping in a creepy forest telling ghost stories to each other. Set to spooky music, Katara tells a story about something that happened to Kya, a friend named Nini (likely) dying in a snowstorm and then haunting her family’s home as a ghost. Immediately after, Toph hears people screaming under the ground - and then Hama finds them and invites them to her inn.

Every so often, Hama says something spooky with the spooky music playing. Katara immediately takes to Hama, but the others (especially Sokka) find her pretty unnerving. Katara says she reminds her of Gran Gran before Sokka starts snooping around and finds a bunch of puppets and a comb from the Southern Water Tribe. It’s the standard horror movie fakeout.

Every so often we get an artfully placed hint about Hama’s agenda - pulling water out of thin air, showing Katara that “plants - and all living things” are made of water. And oh yeah, she makes herself ice claws. Cool skill, but in the context of the episode, a little more unnerving.

The “moon monster” that Old Man Ding mentions, the alleged Moon spirit, turns out to be Hama (of course) and the tension builds to a peak as the Gaang rush to save Katara from the “dark puppetmaster” that has imprisoned the villagers.

Meanwhile Hama and Katara stand under the full moon washed in spooky cool lighting with an ominous breeze around them. You see Hama practically transform into a monster in a way sort of reminiscent to a werewolf - her fingers become claw-like, her veins pop out. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it’s a coincidence that as she reveals her true agenda, she becomes less human in appearance. Which... okay I’ll get to that later.

While I can’t say that Katara fits the Final Girl trope very well, I do think it’s interesting to note that horror movies often do feature women as heroes who defeat the monster/killer/whatever and usually the Final Girl is used to allow audiences to experience the full horror of the villain, which absolutely is how Katara is used here. Yes, her friends come to help, but she saves everyone in the end (my queen).

So here’s why that’s bullshit.

Framing Hama as a horror story monster make sense when you don’t think about the Implications of framing the indigenous woman POW living surrounded by people who have benefited from Fire Nation imperialism. It does - it’s a common trope: the reclusive witch who first seems kindly to some lost/wandering children before revealing her true intention - to use them for her own purposes. Yeah, I know they’re playing on Hansel and Gretel. But yeah, I’m gonna call bullshit on that too - drawing on a c*nnabalistic witch for inspiration when you’re writing an indigenous woman character is probably not the way to go.

II. Hama the Puppetmaster* and Groomer

A puppet master is obviously a puppeteer, and Hama has puppets (creepy though they may be). But in terms of the underlying meaning, she’s a chessmaster, an Emperor Palpatine/Dick Cheney kind of master manipulator who works mostly through other people. What most people would consider a psychopath (in layman’s terms). When her friendly mask falls, she is terrifying.

She is cold, calculating, manipulative as fuck - she isolates Katara almost immediately. Hama uses Katara’s desire to connect with her culture to groom her to become a weapon. It’s actually such a good example of grooming that it has to be purposeful:

Targeting a victim - Hama hears that Katara and Sokka are from the SWT. She also hears Katara tell a story about Kya. To Hama, a waterbender from her own culture is a hell of a target.

Gaining trust - Hama reaches out to Katara in particular, is especially kind to her, gives her individual attention that the others don’t get. She prepares a SWT feast for them and tells the Gaang about her heritage when they go snooping.

Filling a need - so once Hama has given Katara reason to trust her about waterbending, she promises Katara to pass on SWT waterbending heritage that only Hama knows. She fills a unique need of Katara’s.

Isolation - From then on out, we don’t see Katara with the rest of the Gaang until the end of the episode. Hama seems like a normal teacher but she does start to drop little hints, pushing Katara very gently to see how she will react to her real agenda and desensitizing Katara to what would otherwise seem unacceptable coming from someone else who hasn’t established that unique trust. “You’ve got to keep an open mind, Katara.”

So this would be the point at which Hama would make sexual contact but this is metaphorical so that obviously doesn’t happen. What does happen is Hama pushes Katara’s limits. She makes her pretty uncomfortable with the idea of killing the fire lilies for water, but when Hama appeals to their shared history of marginalization she gets over it.

Maintaining control: Hama makes her final move, which is obviously bloodbending, and reveals her true agenda - and when Katara refuses to manipulative living beings’ blood, Hama violates her bodily agency. And not only this, but she pushes Katara into bloodbending when she victimizes the Gaang, fully realizing her control. 

Hama sees it as a victory, and telling Katara breaks down at the end in one of the most emotional scenes in the show. She feels like so many of us have felt at some point: violated, betrayed by someone we trusted. And then they never really deal with that.

I actually think that’s the point of The Puppetmaster, especially given ATLA being a show for children. I think it’s supposed to be a metaphor for csa.

And... okay.

Undoubtedly it is important to send these messages to kids. And yes, people usually are victimized by those closest to them, by those in their own communities. But not indigenous women. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but according to the National Congress of American Indians, Native American women  and girls are more likely to be sexually assaulted by non-NA men. 57% of cases are perpetrated by white men. Not the people in their communities.

Choosing to tell this story with an indigenous woman POW (who very likely would have been victimized herself lbr) is a choice that I find really aggravating. When writers tell stories with a Point, it is incredibly important for those writers to understand the implications of what they are saying about the characters who they are using to make that point.

Like I’m not saying don’t make that point, or don’t use Katara (who would in real life be at a higher risk of sexual violence than the others) to make it, but why make the perpetrator someone who is statistically unlikely to be Katara’s abuser? I’m not sure I have a good answer to that question. My guess is, like with making Hama animalistic and about as unsympathetic as it gets, the writers just had blinders on about the cultural implications of what they were saying.

Not even considering the whole victimizing-the-“innocents”-of-the-Fire-Nation-town plot, Hama’s not a good person. This is probably because she was driven mad by the need for revenge, which, eurgh okay, but still it’s very apparent that she is not interested in winning over Katara’s support directly or honestly.

* also the antisemitic history of this trope hmm.

III. Hama and The Victims of Genocide Victimizing Oppressors #NotAllFireNation

Okay. So this is the part that I think annoys me the most because it’s so bad. Like, imagine for a minute that you’re a white guy and you’re gonna tell a story about a victim of genocide who is completely divorced from her culture and homeland, and furthermore is an escaped prisoner of war who has radicalized in prison - okay it just hit me, I know what they MIGHT have been going for, like maybe some kind of anti-Gitmo statement? But that didn’t happen. People who were stolen away from Iraq and imprisoned illegally in Guantanamo Bay, and who were released after being detained illegally, haven’t really shown any real radicalization. They’re pissed at the US for victimizing them, but like that seems pretty fair considering so many of them did nothing wrong.

That’s been the US government’s excuse for not releasing innocent people who were detained illegally. The idea that prisoners of war radicalized in Gitmo so they can’t be released because they’ll attack the US is propaganda. I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, but that’s where it comes from.

Considering the time period ATLA was written, considering how much of it was inspired by the US wars of aggression and imperialism, considering how political ATLA is (and why it was so popular during its initial run - during the years that Bush lost a ton of popularity) I think if that’s what they were thinking about, that’s not great.

But for all of Avatar’s good messaging on imperialism and war, it’s still written from a white US American mindset. Well surely I’m not responsible, surely you shouldn’t imprison and abuse me, a random white girl in the States. It’s my government, which I cannot control because of two-party politics or some shit.

So first off, that’s shitty because oppression is often about systems, not individuals. Sure we need to always consider the individual experiences of people who are victimized, but the people who are benefiting from imperialism? Me? Fuck if I care if someone in El Salvador or Iraq or Chile or idk any of the countries we have meddled in, let alone from a marginalized community in the United States, hates white US Americans for what our government has done - and that’s even silly because white US citizens support our government. Like we think the institutions are sound, although sometimes we don’t support the guy in charge. We think the cops are going to help us, even though that isn’t really the case.

Why frame it about what she’s doing to the Fire Nation civilians at all? Why make Hama the villain? I don’t think they wanted her to be unsympathetic, I mean they tell her story and I don’t think anyone would conclude that it doesn’t justify her desire for revenge, but why tell this story through a victim of genocide?

Recently I saw a post by @sunkin-akh where they point out that Hama basically quotes Malcolm X:

I was literally just watching the Hama episode again and I just noticed for the first time that while forcing Katara to bloodbend she says that they must fight back against the Fire Nation (and she used this exact phrase) “by any means necessary”, which is Frantz Fanon’s phrase popularized by Malcolm X during the Civil Rights Movement (iirc). They directly compared Black liberation to Hama’s evil acts and it disgusted me.

The full context:

Hama: The choice [to use bloodbending] is not yours. The power exists. And it’s your duty to use the gifts you’ve been given to win this war. Katara, they tried to wipe us out, our entire culture, your mother.

Katara: I know.

Hama: Then you should understand what I’m talking about. We’re the last waterbenders of the Southern Tribe, we have to fight these people whenever we can, wherever they are, with any means necessary.

I find that so appalling because it is framing resistance, specifically anti-racist resistance, as barbaric and monstrous. And given the way that Hama is portrayed at this point, about as inhuman as anyone in ATLA, that is extra gross.

Finally, after Katara defeats Hama, she is lead away by the authorities in CHAINS.

So now the FN cops are the good authorities who we’re gonna trust a SWT waterbender with? I mean she’s a villain so we’re probably not supposed to feel bad for her, like yeah sure the FN is usually bad but she’s a criminal so it’s okay that they take a POW back into custody.

No, no, no.

I know I am reading into this far more than the writers intended - but that’s kind of the point of critically engaging with media. Because shockingly writers don’t always question their choices - they are people and have implicit biases just like all of us. When those writers come from a privileged culture that has colonized the culture they are using as “inspiration” for their story, they need to be extra mindful of how they represent those people.

IV: How To Write Hama

Well, I’m not gonna talk over indigenous fans on this one on specifics, and you should read this rewrite by @kispesan​  but my thoughts generally are:

lose the horror framing it’s just not right for this context and this character

don’t frame Malcolm X as a villain because that’s nasty and racist

have Katara learn to use bloodbending in ways that she is comfortable with (and not just like once in one episode where she’s extra vengeful and the hero of the show doesn’t approve of her actions JFC) and don’t make the dark-skinned girl the only character whose special bending skill is dubious (I know she also has healing but still)

bring Hama home

have indigenous people in the writers room

Anyway, I’ve gone on wayyy too long. Let me know if I am speaking out of turn please if you feel that I am. and I’m sure I had other thoughts but if you want to read some other good pieces of Hama meta, I’ve listed some below:

post and another post by @marsreds​

this post and this post by @visibilityofcolor​

this post by @shewhotellsstories​

anyway katara is a queen and should have been allowed to heal, and hama never should have been irredeemable because if you can make iroh redeemable, if the show was going to redeem AZULA, you can make hama redeemable.

#hama #racism #atla fandom #fandom racism #katara #some amazing people on here who i hope don't get mad i mentioned them #grooming tw #racism tw #i sure hope i remembered everything i wanted to say butttt

[the-cat-at-the-theatre-door]

Apologies if you have already answered something like this but: Which superpower does each cat want (or already have...) ???

Oooh, interesting question! I don’t think I’ve ever answered something like this (at least according to my memory). 

So, CATS superhero AU let’s go. I will admit that superheroes/powers are not exactly my area of expertise, but I gave it some thought and:

Alonzo -  Bone Manipulation and elasticity - an obvious one, but I can’t see him with anything else. The boy can literally shift his bones around should he so choose. 

Asparagus Jr - N/A - one of the only cats in this universe who *doesn’t* have superpowers. Acts a bit like the Giles of the group, providing information and guidance. There’s a rumour that he actually has the power of Perception and Power sensing, but it’s brushed off as being intuition. 

Bombalurina -  Pyrokinesis. They don’t call her the red queen for nothing.

Bustopher Jones -  Superhuman Senses. He actually *can* taste which direction someone’s gone by residue left behind. 

Cassandra -  Intelligence Absorption. Lot of himbos coincidentally around her. 

Coricopat/Tantomile - Already 100% psychic and telepathic, but they also both have telekinesis (Tantomile’s is in way better control than Coricopat’s is - sometimes he’ll just send objects flying by accident by staring into space)

Demeter - Sixth sense and Plant Manipulation.

Electra -  Camouflage or “the Chameleon Effect” - basically she can disappear into her surroundings flawlessly. Her coat specifically shifts its patterns to blend in better. 

Etcetera -  Echolocation. That scream serves a purpose (it’s also *extremely powerful*)

Grizabella -  Imperceptibility of self - she went a touch too far with it. 

Gus - Spirit projection - the ability started becoming more chaotic as he began to lose control over himself and his memories - now figures can (and do) appear at random.

Jellylorum -  Healing Touch - she can only heal a certain amount of times before it stops working. She’ll absorb damage into herself and it will mirror in her own body while she works through it. 

Jemima - Empath. Extremely sensitive to the emotions of others, and can absorb a certain amount of them into herself (So also emotional absorption - think of it like taking the edge off a pain - she can’t make it fully go away but can help make it more tolerable). Also has a bit of lunar manipulation. 

Jennyanydots -  Omnilingualism - the reason she’s able to get on with the cockroaches and mice so well is that she’s able to understand what they say to her and communicate with them. 

Macavity - Well he already has “powers of levitation” so the boy can fly, but I think he also has a form of shapeshifting and definitely has Catoptric Replication abilities. 

Mr Mistoffelees - He’s already a magic user, so he’s got the electricity manipulation, but also dabbles in powers of Necromancy and Absolute Life creation (as evidenced by him manipulating trash into moving puppets and pulling kittens out of thin air)

Mungojerrie - Accelerated healing. Bruise? What bruise? Live to trip over himself and maybe lose a finger another day, my dude. 

Munkustrap - Cryokinesis. The yin to Bombalurina’s yang. 

Old Deuteronomy - Regeneration. Near immortal and pretty much completely resistant to injury - that’s why he’s still around and kicking. He also has Eidetic memory.

Plato - Force Field Generation. Has a whole lot of trouble using it correctly.

Pouncival - Superhuman leaping - like a rubber ball, there he goes. 

Rumpleteazer -  Kinetic Absorption and repelling - I'm rubber you're glue, anything you throw my way bounces off me and sticks to you ;D

Rum Tum Tugger - Light Manipulation (attracted to sparkling things because of this) and Metafictional Manipulation (he’s a storyteller for a reason)

Rumpus Cat - Laser vision, obviously. Dude has glowing red eyes. 

Tumblebrutus -  Gravity Manipulation. Uses it to his advantage. 

Skimbleshanks - Superhuman speed. Has occasionally gone SO fast that he’s slipped into the folds of other dimensions, but not quite full leap. 

Victoria - Astrakinesis. She can move the very heavens should she wish it (goes nicely with her Warsaw star-dancing). She also has a bit of cosmic awareness. 

#jellicles ask because jellicles dare #anonymous #AU #my headcanons

[otverzhennyy]

Viktor on every Harbingers.

As stated before, Viktor’s loyalty tend to be more to the people of Snezhnaya and the Harbingers than the Tsaritsa, who he sees more as a faceless tradition despite, yes, believing in the cryo archon’s mission. However, when it comes to his daily life, it is actually the Harbingers who possess his devotion.

Viktor is implied to have, at the very least, witnessed the harbingers which I imagine are during Fatui events, speeches and such, and is knowledgeable of both their way of work, their abilities, the personality they present, quirks and what the other Fatui think of them in general. This is a post based on the information we got so far in canon, the Commedia dell’arte and of course liberal interpretations to flesh out Viktor’s relation towards the harbingers, it is HEAVILY subject to change.

This list goes from who Viktor would like to work for the LEAST to the MOST. Viktor admires all Harbingers and see how incredible they are to the Fatui cause, but this is purely him speaking selfishly in terms of working under them.

SCARAMOUCHE Scaramouche is implied by Viktor to be pretty much universally disliked by the Fatui, which is supported by his shown temper. Scaramouche is one to belittle and not respect underlings, even potentially harming them physically through electro, and lead them with fear. Scaramouche throws emotional, gratuitous tantrums.

This is something Viktor cannot respect when strictly speaking of ways to run the chain of commands. This is no way to be a leader, not when you do not have reasons to apply this kind of authority. Scaramouche’s devastating power, however, is no joke, and given that the Tsaritsa has had her own reason to choose him, there is no question that Viktor would answer the man’s call and orders, but would he enjoy his daily working life under such a self-centered man with no respect for the lives he is responsible for but his own ? Not really. He’d sooner ask for a transfer... which is, unfortunately, not really possible within the Fatui, as you are to believe that where you are stationed is where you should be.

PIERRO Pierro’s crazed antics constantly have one question his state of mind, and his chaotic mockery and obvious bitterness are made for a sour association, where one can never really rest as the man is too unpredictable. Underlings unable to guess what his plans are, given he never tell anyone anything.

Pierro doesn’t care what happens when his subordinates are sent on assignments, not caring if they are casualties or not. As someone who values his life, even if he is loyal and swore an oath to the chain of command, Viktor much rather stay alive. The man is... devastating.

SANDRONE Sandrone uses underhanded tricks and manipulates people to get what he wants, hiding behind a face of kindness to the people. Although Viktor is one to recognize the grey areas of politics, which is, politics is everywhere in any social interactions, Sandrone stands out because he is not influencing people’s judgements, he is a hypocrite who takes advantage of commoners when they meet their lowest points.

This, alongside his eerie puppets... is absolutely terrifying. Viktor cannot help but, unlike Scaramouche where he sees the immaturity and lack of professionalism of one man, feel genuine fear... and fascination. The things he could learn from this man, he cannot even start to comprehend.

PULCINELLA Pulcinella is the harbinger in charge of the Fatui’s military and, alternatively, its recruits camp. Viktor would be more than happy to give his body for the nation if needed, even if the battlefield is not his ideal position.

Technically, all Fatui receives a form of military training. The difference with Pulcinella is mainly that the Skirmishers are constantly enhanced through the Fatui technology, modified as their body belongs to the nation. Viktor personally has no interest in being cut open and changed, as he spent a significant amount of time perfecting his form and knowing his own body. Not everyone has the mental fortitude to be more than happy to be pumped with drugged and have their brain reconstructed to be a better martial weapon.

PANTALONE As the one gathering all funds related to Snezhnaya and the Fatui, working for Pantalone is about contributing to the wealth of the nation, an absolute vital part which, however, comes with a ruthless environment. Whereas politics and influence are more subjective, wealth is about cold, hard numbers in an unsure, competitive scene.

Although Viktor is the first one to tell that there is no bad way to gather money and actually admire the length the man goes for the nation’s mission, what is more of a desk job with very little flexibility (the way political debates and diplomatic exchanges do) is bound to bore him out, thinking like his wits could be used elsewhere.

TARTAGLIA When there is need for intimidation, Tartaglia Childe is the one sent by her Lady Tsaritsa. When there is need for muscles on the field, Tartaglia Childe is also the one sent. Although Viktor’s hunting background would technically make his skills appropriate for the task, Viktor is still not one who actually enjoys applying, let’s say, physical matters, especially unconventional ones Tartaglia Childe is sent into : it is not a straightforward army VS army combat. It is something which require finesse... a dangerous game which doesn’t necessarily fit Viktor.

As for the young lord himself, although he is one of the most respectable harbinger, Tartaglia’s impulsiveness and free spirit is known to suddenly put operations into chaos, without him going through the proper channels. This, honestly sounds both thrilling, rewarding and amazing... which is not Viktor’s cup of tea. However, Tartaglia has been proven to be the harbinger who respects underlings the most as individuals, despite his casual attitude giving some rookies the false impression that he is a softie... it just makes getting a disciplinary action from him harder.

SIGNORA La Signora is her majesty’s most direct representative in the manners of political and courtly presence. Although working for Signora is a door to open many opportunities to political events for one’s ascension in their career, Signora knows the game... and plays it dirty. Many threats are given under technically diplomatic moves, and as someone who hates losing time on something else than her goals, she has no olive branch to any subordinate, who are pawns for her to be at her service like a mighty mistress... but her ways are always so bloody efficient, the results speak for her manners. Always ahead of the whole court. A queen in any place she walks in.

Technically, Viktor cannot complain about his position, although he is very disgruntled about being that low in the food chain... and extremely neglected. Sigh. Even if he is one to not bother about a pause to his advancements, Viktor cannot get, at least, the satisfaction of doing something for his home... because he’s not doing anything and he’s denying the fact that he’s been forgotten.

DOTTORE Dottore is the most cerebral and knowledgeable of the harbingers, with actual results and hard work to show. As someone in need of mental stimulation, Viktor cannot help but be mesmerized at the constant studying opportunity, under a man who knows exactly what he is doing, what he wants, and makes it clear.

The practical application of skills and sense of professionalism make Dottore both a harbinger Viktor personally admire greatly and would like to work under : with such talent which shouldn’t, for Viktor, be wasted for a single second, he is no scientist, but would gladly do anything to remotely be useful to him. Dottore is actually one of the three harginers where Viktor’s respect, for various reasons, actually cancel part of the fear he would normally get from a man doing such harsh experiments.

CAPITANO The first time Viktor laid his eyes on Capitano, he’d never forget. For whatever reason the man was in his region, probably some undisclosed assignments, he had never seen a man breathing so much charisma by merely existing. Amidst the men who’d try to appear strong and tall, Capitano didn’t have to be the tallest or largest to be absolutely mesmerizing. A man who commanded authority by presence alone.

He needed to be like him. And this is when a young Viktor decided to join the Fatui, not telling a single word that a single man triggered it all. Viktor doesn’t see himself as someone with particular talent, drive or patience to change the world... but if he could be half the man his idol was, that would be enough... but did he want to be the man, or solely be by his side, even if it meant potentially never working under him ? ... both.

As a recruit, Viktor would always run to the pavilion up the Fatui base to see Capitano entering the premises whenever his arrival was announced, watching from afar, get information on what the man had been up to. The stories of the man’s conquests, exploring uncharted territories while keeping such a solemn expression, an inspiring leader who’d run his affairs with the most unforgiving grip, to the perfection, with every bit of professionalism and no break in his composure.

If Viktor was to work under this man, he wouldn’t care a single bit about the treatment on his person. If he can be the slightest bit not indirectly, but directly useful to such a man, he would gladly serve him with every bit of devotion he has. Travelling at his side with the most powerful assets to the Fatui, each challenge only one exciting puzzle after one another.

If Viktor sees the holy Tsaritsa as the Fatui’s queen, Capitano is his King.

#.otverzhennyy ( headcanon ) #insert simp jokes here #this took me waaaay too long and it is SO confusing but I needed t oat least have something done for this

[lovee-infected]

GEO. What if for Vil's overblot the monster thing they have behind them is the hag? The one the evil queen turns into in the movie? What if the attack throws poisons apples? For that weird lace pattern they have over an eye I'm highly predicting to be an apple or crown shape. It's mostly just brain blurb but I had to get this out of my skull

OMG YES THE HAG- I've been really really curious about Vil's overblot design since Riddle's ovetblot during chapter 1🧐🧐🧐 And yes I think that they're going to use the hag designs for Vil's puppet! That's still debatle though, they can also go for the Evil Queen's original design but I'd say using the hag would be way more catchy. Also, I've seen some arguing whether they're going to use hag's facial design or not, so let's take the opportunity to talk about that one point as well!

The hag is technically Evil Queen's villainous symbol as she poisoned Snow white and died in this form and its much of an universal symbol now, literally everyone knows the story of the hag and the red poisoned apple.

But on the other hand, some theorized that in Vil's overblot! form, he will be the hag himself. You know, and utterly terrifying and ugly design which would give him the same energy as the original hag.

But to be honest, I doubt that they're going to change his face into something terrifying as the whole fandom are excited for his overblot form to be something unique, elegant and utterly villainous. A considerable variety of the fandom LOVE overblot designs and they're even more attractive and eye-catching than the characters' original form, so let's say that many fans are already expecting his design to be way more than just a screwed up appearance.

Also, there's a big difference between Vil and the Evil Queen, which might be another reason why the cannot choose to give him the exact design as her. The hag design was meant to be disgusting and terrifying, something to make the audience come to fear and dislike the Evil Queen as the villain of story. The impression was meant to be just bad as it seems, they meant to create an unlikable yet memorable design for one of the first disney villains and they sure did a great job! That's why I'm saying that giving Vil's overblot puppet a hag design would be more catchy and effective, it really gives off the dark and Evil vibes that it's supposed to give off.

But this also explains why they can't really choose to give Vil the same design as the hag, because most of the fandom don't want him to get that much of a disgusting and hateful design! Unloke the Evil queen, Vil isn't the villain of this story, so making him look unnecessary ugly and terrifying would just ruin his picture as one of the most important characters of the game.

To top it off, many fans would oppose to this attempt after they gave all of the previous dorm leaders a considerably attractive or in other words, HOT design. I don't think anyone would appreciate disney giving all of the dorm leaders extra charm beauty while Vil looks uglier than ever, so that's not going to be a good idea.

Moreover, they're ever of fandom's desires and how much many pomefiore stans want an iconic overblot design for this chapter just like the previous chapters. See, fans are certainly going to dislike it for taking away Vil's good-looking overblot form rights so I guess they know that this won't be a wise decision to make...overblot designs are one of the most significant parts of the game and not only pomefiore stand but also the whole fandom is looking forward to getting more of them, so they have to make sure that the overblots designs aren't going to be anything disappointing or bad otherwise a great majority of fans would end up being let down.

But, I'd still say that the hag is one of the crucial aspects of Evil Queen's presence, therefore I'd want them to use it somewhere else and not necessarily in just his overblot design! Imagine Vil shape-shifting into a hag to approach Neige through the VDC...I have no idea why that might happen but still...👀I'm surely intrigued to see more of both the hag and Evil Queen's aspects though the game!

#answered #twst #twisted wonderland #vil Schoenheit #pomefiore

[hunterxloser]

Here be rambling regarding Kite and the ending sequence of the chimera ant arc. I call it Seeing Double: a new alternative to the ‘fetus theory’ of Kite’s resurrection

I’ve seen people suggest that the #3 wand that Kite draws - presumably the weapon that Ging implies allows Kite to avoid death - works by having Kite’s consciousness piggyback on, and eventually override the consciousness of, the nearest fetus, in this case, the ant queen’s last baby. While nothing in canon explicitly precludes this theory, I find it unlikely for a few reasons:

Nothing about Kite’s reincarnation suggests that it is different from other cases of chimera ants who eventually regain the memories and personality of a person whose genes (i.e. body) were consumed by the queen. In the absence of other evidence, we should assume that Kite’s ‘resurrection’ follows the rules of the other cases, and consider how Kite might have been eaten, given that his puppet body is not visibly missing pieces.

I doubt Kite “forced to take another life” McPacifist-Until-Forced-Into-Violence would be comfortable choosing a hatsu to keep himself alive that comes at the expense of an infant creature. Perhaps he could justify taking over a fetus on the grounds that he is not killing it because its body remains alive, but this is hardly a compelling stance. Other things being equal, I find a hatsu which permits Kite to survive beyond death at the expense of another inconsistent with what we know about Kite’s character and values. (Though an argument could be made that this violation of Kite’s usual moral code would act as a powerful restriction/covenant to power the ability.)

Even if Kite decided that taking over another organism were morally acceptable, in designing this hatsu he would have had to specify that his consciousness would take over the nearest human fetus; otherwise he would risk being reborn as, statistically most likely, a fly or cockroach. Kite has lukewarm passions, and makes his decisions carefully. His hatsu would be well-designed (as crazy slots is, despite how annoying it is), and would explicitly preclude the possibility of being reborn as a nonhuman animal. Therefore his hatsu could not have resulted in his consciousness being transferred to the ant queen’s last baby: it isn’t human, and thus would be invalid as a potential host.

The fetus-hijacking theory, while not conclusively ruled out by the canon evidence, has no direct textual support and appears incompatible with Kite’s personality, and therefore this theory ought to be rejected if any other plausible mechanism for Kite’s resurrection is found.

I propose an alternative theory regarding the conditions of Kite’s ressurection and the manner in which the wand and its concomitant hatsu function, a theory which accounts for several otherwise unexplained odd textual features. We see that Kite’s formerly-dismembered puppet body is whole, if not hale. We know then that none of this body was fed to the chimera ant Queen, enabling his later resurrection in the ‘Reina’/chimera ant body. Rather, his resurrection must have occurred through some other means. I argue that the #3 wand works by producing a second body that shares Kite’s consciousness with his original body, a second body that may survive the death of the first. This theory has several upshots and supports:

Motif of reduplication. There is another case of curious, unexplained duplication at the end of the Chimera Ant Arc. Namely, the dictator Diego is shown to be still alive and in retirement, despite having been killed when the ant king took over his palace. The two Diegos are clearly not a case of simple decoy; they are perfect physical duplicates. I don’t argue that Diego’s double is connected to Kite’s double, speaking in terms of plot; I merely argue that the Diego ‘clone’ provides evidence that Togashi was thinking about doubles at the end of the chimera ant arc, and wanted to draw our attention to this. (More contentiously: there are also curious parallels between Kite and another character who is canonically shown to have a double: a white-haired, serious character with a two-syllable name beginning with ‘K-A’ and ending with ‘O.’)

Precedent for body-doubling through nen. On the subject of Kastro: while it is plausible to assume that nen can do anything you can imagine - the only question is what price you will pay - there is an exact canonical precedent for someone creating a physical duplicate of themselves out of nen. It is not entirely clear whether Kastro’s double was conscious in its own right or capable of functioning independently, but it is noteworthy that Hisoka was only able to defeat Kastro in the absence of the ‘clone.’ If the duplication hatsu had been active at the moment of Kastro’s death, it is entirely plausible that the double might have gone on living and fighting as Kastro himself would have done, down to the psychological weaknesses that were his downfall. And even if this were not true, Kastro was an enhancer; Kite, as a nen user whose conjuror category is strong enough that his main ability is more or less a conjuror ability, would indisputably be able to create an even better double that would be able to carry his consciousness through a full, ‘new’ life.

Accounts for caracterization discrepancy. The fact that ‘Chimera Ant Kite’ exhibits strong, indeed irreconcilable, differences in character from the original Kite supports the theory that CAC is ‘really’ a chimera ant, generated in the usual way, rather than Kite’s consciousness transferred through some magically-pristine method into another host.

Accounts for why Kite was not fed to the Queen. Crucially, at the time Kite was dismembered, the royal guard were still loyal to the Queen. With his string bean physique Kite would undoubtedly not have been a delectable morsel on merely gastronomic grounds, but as a powerful nen user he would be singularly nutritious. Given this fact, Neferpitou should have fed him to the Queen. Instead, his body was turned into a puppet and used to train soldiers. Neferpitou’s use of his body for this purpose only makes sense if the Queen got an equal prize of her own; say, a whole identical Kite body to consume.

TLDR; the circumstances and causes surrounding Kite’s ‘survival’ as a chimera ant, while misty, are best explained by the theory that the crazy slots wand (weapon number 3) somehow enables Kite to duplicate himself. Following this duplication, both Kites were defeated by Neferpitou. One Kite was fed to the ant queen; the other was turned into the zombie/puppet version that Knuckle and Shoot apprehended.

#kite #kite hxh #hxh #hunter x hunter #meta #hunterxmeta #memecomradeoriginal #kaito #neferpitou #kastro #chimera ant arc #hxh spoilers #you'll all get rid of me when i die

[fucker-anon]

Puppeteer Headcanons

K so this mans has been living in my head rent free since I first laid eyes on them (like 2013) so here are my headcanons about their backstories, personalities, and more. Some are inspired by the original stories and lore, some are inspired by other bloggers, some are me self-projecting. Warning there are mentions of dark themes so keep caution. Also i am not a writer, (im sorry) @creepy-bi-day enjoy!!

Puppeteer~

Backstory: 

Puppeteer was born as Jonathon Blake on July 23, 1974

Mother was Hispanic, dad was American. He grew up speaking Spanish and English. He also never really got along with both sides of the family cause he’s mixed (they didn’t like that). They kinda preferred his siblings.

had 4 younger siblings (3 girls, 1 boy). He was 4 years older than the second child.

ever since he could walk he was obsessed with musical theater. For a while his family was able to Johnny to theater camp. Stopped after the 3rd child was born due to financial reasons

parents were working full time to take care of their family. meant Johnny was basically acting like a 3rd parent. good news was he was able to take care of all 4 of them and meet their basic need of being fed, staying clean etc. bad news it meant that he was taking care of them 24/7 and was constantly tired and not taking care of himself. Started to develop symptoms of depression, but couldn’t get help due to the stigmas around mental health + he’s a guy.

got worse in highschool when his work load increased and he wanted to do more in drama and music but couldn’t cause he had to take care of his siblings. He also didn’t make many close friends except for one girl in his drama class Erma. 

Erma was his best friend and they started dating in their second year of highschool. She helped him as much as she could with his mental health, their studies, and even helped babysit some days. They brought out the best in each other. 

Erma loved dance and wanted to become a ballerina, but her parents tried to keep her focus on studies. They did allow her to take theater which she also loved. Her parents were very strict and controlling so she had to hid her relationship.

It wasn’t until the second child turned 13 (johnny was 17), when she started to help out more with the other three siblings (12f, 9f, 7m). Thanks to her help and now they were in a better financial position, johnny was able to join plays and bands which had afterschool practices.

He was really good. He discovered he was born with perfect pitch and was able to get the lead in a play in his final year. This was also when he was able to score a scholarship so some of his uni fees would be paid for.

he decided to major in theater and wanted to go on Broadway or at least become a drama teacher

however when apply for uni, Erma’s parents discovered their relationship and they offered Erma a choice, break up with johnny or else they wouldn’t pay for Erma’s schooling. They hated johnny mostly due to racism and the fact that he wasnt going into a “stable career”. Erma choose to break up with Johnny but didn’t want to tell him these reasons cause she knew that it would upset him. So instead she told him that she’s fallen out of love and wanted to break up.

Johnny agreed mostly to make her happy, but this started his spiral downwards.

Johnny didn’t have any friends other than Erma, he also went to uni in a different city so he didn’t have his family there. His depression got really bad, and he ended up isolating himself and failing first term. He decided to kill himself via hanging. Problem is he wasn't heavy enough to kill himself right away, so he was suffering for hours. 

He spent his last few hours allowing himself to finally “be selfish” and allowed himself to be angry at his family, Erma, and his overall life.

due to this anger, he was able to come back as a ghost, wanting others to feel the same pain as him.

when he came back he was able to change his body into his idea of a perfect vessel, some improvement were making himself taller, better hair, clear face, smooth voice, bigger dick.  and now feeds off of negative energy

Personality:

cold-hearted, cunning, manipulative, a smooth talking, somewhat charming. this is the very carefully crafted version of Puppeteer, He’s the guy who could talk you into doing anything, mostly stuff like jumping off a bridge

however once you get close to him, you see more of Johnathon than puppet. He is very protective of his close friends, will fuss over them and scold them if they aren’t taking care of themselves

good luck getting there tho. After Erma he really had a hard time opening up to ppl due to his fear that they will all leave him at one point. 

Powers:

he feeds off of negative energies, the more trauma the better (finally imma a snack), so he usually influences his victims into a deep depressed state where they off themselves. However once he started hanging out with the creeps (mansion au), he really didn’t need to do that since everyone is a lil fucked up. He just feeds off a little bit of everyone, so that no one is really affected. At this point, he probably has enough energy to outlive the fucking queen

He’s a ghost so he can levitate at most like 10 m above the ground, and if he focuses, he can go through walls and become invisible. 

he has golden strings due to the ectoplasm inside of him (make his eyes and mouth glow to). This strings are like limbs, They are tough to break but if you do its gonna hurt him a lot. They can extend up to 60 ft, and are about 1 cm thick. 

Fun Facts (cause idk how to categorize these)

lots of trauma, need therapy. he feels a lot of shame for what happened and only opens up to his very close friends. again born in 70′s, theres the toxic masculinity and some internalized homophobia. 

still a theater kid!! love musicals and can still sing and play guitar. His vocal cords are a lil more sensitive cause the whole hanging thing, but as long as he warms up, can has the range baby. also has Macbeth memorized

can still cook. while he doesn’t like his past and doesn’t need to eat. He wrote down all of the recipes he knew and will sometimes make them again

dick is 6.5 inchs soft 7.5 hard, i know y’all wanted to know. if also like 6′2 tall. tall big boi

i hc him as pansexual. yea he rather died again than admit that he loves someone, but he won’t care about gender. he still is cis tho.

he does fuck. not often but occasionally. slightly lower sex drive than average 

grunge king. he grew up in poverty and he great at diy. very leans more punk grunge but can be soft grunge depending on his mood. love beanies and his hair is a little longer than chin length with lots of layers. He is tempted to shave off the sides of his head tho. also has grunge and punk music on his playlists.

bad with tech. like the opposite of ben. gets called an old man since he couldn’t figure out how the tv remote works.

he doesn’t grow facial hair, doesn’t like the look.

acts like he’s too proper to cuss, but he does.... a lot

experienced some racism while growing up so he does say ACAB

probably has some piercings or tattoos or both 

still is depressed, has some tough days, but doctor ej gets him pills to help and he has a good support system

shit this was a lot so Helen is next with another post. ill get into their friendship and relationships with other in a whole new post if yall like it. someone tell me if this gives joy cause i could write an essay on this man

#puppeteer #creepypasta puppeteer #idk how to tag this man #jonathon blake #creepypasta

[tenebriiis-archived]

{ 🙗 }  // { 𝓡𝓪𝓿𝓮𝓷𝓫𝓸𝓻𝓷 / 𝓔𝓶𝓹𝓻𝓮𝓼𝓼 𝓥𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓮 }

—  🙶 Persephone, still alive, exhaustingly alive, covered in flames 🙷 —                                      — Lola Ridge, from her poem “Hellish,”

— ⟡ —

( • I have personally settled this Verse as a Future Route / Possibility; be prepared for some self-indulgent angst below // - Tl;dr: She makes a deal with Raum & slowly loses her Fae Qualities over this power, she’s now impersonating each current Noxian Leader instead of using puppet mortals. May at some point fall into Insanity. )

— ⟡ —

After finally defeating the Grand General Swain in their long & calculated chess game; the Enchantress strikes a deal with the Demon of Secrets. Seizing the control over the Trifarix, & allowing every branch of the Black Rose Garden to spread, bloom & conquer every place Devouring every space on vines of triumph & flowers of delightful victory: On the following years; the Matron restores the control into one sole personality & reestablishes the Monarchy.

However –after the disastrous previous situations of deaf & insolent leadership of the Empire, after marionettes being so easy to fall–, Emilia firmly avoids placing individuals in the throne, & instead impersonates those who become the owner of the crown & tittle. Guiding the Nation on her own accord & following her own personal ambitions, along preparing for the inevitable return of her former Master as she’s still looking for a way to heal the dried lands once more & may stubbornly avoid rest until finding what she needs, but at the end of the night –the Raven Demon is ever surrounding her. 

Ever whispering in her ear, suffering the eternal nightmares that doesn’t allow her to sleep plainly anymore, haunting her terribly & awaking her absolutely terrified, visions of horrifying situations & possible results of the future…

In her despair, her confidence may shatter slightly & yet it doesn’t matter if her demeanor is peaceful & malicious on the outside: the worst part will ever be how she can feel Raum’s enjoyment over her demise. { The Demon only cares for its own pleasures & deals, not for the vessel he uses. }

… Slowly changing her into a more erratic, murderous & ferocious lady as the power & darkness of the creature blends with her own dark magic; tangling & eventually destroying even more of her fae nature despite how her sole craving on this deal is get the divine Eden the Noxian lands once were.

As first sign: Her gaze had turned into a permanent amethyst glow while all the gentle & luminous connection to the deepest parts of her core are slowly being cut away. One by one, all flowers her magic is able to create are dark & mostly poisonous species. One by one, most of her swarm of ethereal butterflies started taking the form of little crows  —or either die in her hands, lacking of all glow & dried of all magic.

Trusting none, not even herself; as both fearing & desiring to know every single information the powers of the Demon could offer her, she turns into an obsessive & devilish woman, utilizing all mediums to obtain what she craves, not matter how violent, malicious & vicious those could be considered, even for her own standards.

Some Details about this Verse: ⟡ She will eventually go Insane & losing entirely the sense of who she once was, fully engulfed by the sense of power & control. Despite still obsessing over recovering her lands & giving back the magic that was stolen, eventually she’s neither emotionally nor physically connected to the place anymore. ⟡ This is also the reason why she utterly goes ‘fuck Ionia, I will syphon the magic from them into those lands in any possible way I can find’ ; when originally she would merely wish to find a way to take solely relics or partial power as a manner to leak the power into the dried soils & recover them without fully damaging the First Lands. In this verse, she literally doesn’t care about them anymore. She just wants this one single goal to be accomplished (spoilers: in this Route, there’s no way for it to be possible) ⟡ Influenced by her nature, when the Raven wings are displayed; they hold a shape that almost resemble a feathery butterfly at the lower tips with longer feathers. { Similar to this Reference; just a bit longer } ⟡ The Verse is the same as Evil Queens Verse I have with @piltover-sharpshooter​ ; where she manages to seize Rell solely to infuse the Sheriff with the ferromancy power- This time, she has taken previsions however, adding sigils that could help her control the newborn ferromancer; given the chance Caitlyn would rebel against her. ⟡ The lesser fairies ever following her are presented with the choice to either embrace the power of the Demon of Secrets too or perish. Most of them didn’t wish to & actually are merely hoping once the lands are restored, their Nymph would be the same as before. Therefore taking the Crows form & equally becoming informants to her as the three-eyed Ravens, they pray for the day things will be the same as before. Still some of the fae didn’t believe it & considered LeBlanc too far gone, choosing to die in her hands instead. ⟡ Her kindness still remains however for those she considers her own children; such as Jack ( @zauns-insane-secret​ ) ; among anyone else who is able to reach that part of her heart. It remains untouched.  ⟡ There’s also the possibility that in this verse, Swain is still alive but those are ideas that would be have to be discussed if given the chance. There again; I don’t want to push anything over anyone; this is simply my take on one of many future routes I have thought ♥ (and also because I sincerely hated that this was just a ‘she’s in a costume’ kind of skin when it looks so amazingly designed.)

#You all know how my LeBlanc is gentle to some degree right? #This is the Verse she gets to the I'm tired of being nice; i'll go apeshit #{ Ｌｏｎｇ. Ｌｉｖｅ .ｔｈｅ .Ｑｕｅｅｎ } — Ravenborn Verse #Available Verses #very self indulgent #to be honest this is just me remaking a route of a verse I had with my Demon Shauna xD #long post #very long post #sowwy ;;