Newsies au where mike and ike hate each other. And not in a brotherly manner but in a gut wrenching enemies sort of hate.
Imagine a dystopian world where there’s a war raging on and the newsies are in the middle of it. What once was a striving united land is now devided into several factions who are on a civil war with each other. There’s even a rebel faction that wants to put the war to an end instead of having one faction win and letting their leaders’ authority reign, bcs in all honesty each faction acts like a shitty political party that desires nothing but control over the whole land.
Mike and Ike started out with the same political alignment—actually aiding the war by becoming agents, spies, or assasins, idk i haven’t figured that part out yet— but something along the lines happened and Mike defected because he no longer believed in the cause of the political party he’s been supporting for so long. It really tore Ike’s heart apart to see his brother leaving. He felt abandoned by his own brother and grew to hate his guts. They’d be sent to the field and sometimes come across each other and Ike never hesitated to try and kill him first though deep down he never want to hurt his own brother.
But get this: the cause that Ike once believed in turned out to be just a guise. The faction is just another greedy political party. And Ike is left confused. He’s been brainwashed by propaganda and doesn’t know what to believe in anymore. Where else would he turn to if not his own brother who’s been waiting for him since the day he left to join the rebellion.
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as much as I love 141 medieval au's here the reader is a noble lady saved from her marriage or some lone townswomans rescued by the group of knights (looking @ my own nun!reader in this) I do love the notion of a lady knight.
A badass woman with no name or backstory that's taken up the life of a sellsword- who scoffs at the notion of "honor" when spilling blood on your blade- death is death. Honor means nothing for God or king.
Her hair is cut close to her scalp, because it's all too easy for somebody to grab a handful of those soft locks and be at the perfect position to slit her throat in a fight. Covered in scars and carried by aching bones that broke years ago but never quite healed properly.
Maybe Price is a king who sees this helmeted figure fighting at a tourney for his name day and asks for their name- their noble house only to learn you have none. Simply a desire for the money awarded to the winner.
Maybe Gaz is beloved prince who often sneaks out from his guards nose to mingle with the common folk- who enjoys sitting in a tavern with others and singing songs while drinking ale with a pretty little thing on his lap until he's walking back to the palace and finds a blade at his neck in a dark alley as you warn him that noblebloods should never walk unaccompanied- it makes the job far too easy.
Maybe a beautiful noble lady is sent to stay under the eye of a royal family in discussion for marriage- when the house offers to gift her one for their personal guards of the 141, she insists she more than happy with her own- you. The silent armor-clad figure standing close to her side. (yes I miss domentzia. she's my wife and always will be).
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My birthday was a couple days ago, and I got to see my bio dad for the first time in a while. He surprised me with the fact that I have a little half-sister, whom I've never met and who was adopted about two years back.
So, I wondered if any situations in BB mimic this or have a theme of "secret siblings" or "secret family"?
Sorry if this is a weird ask; this blog is honestly just such a cool little place and I love the way you approach the subject matter and take the flawed misogynistic foundation of the WC books and make them so much better (JUSTICE FOR BUMBLE!!!). I've also learned a lot about healthy and unhealthy relationships here and am really glad for your deep dives on Squilf and Bramble.
Thanks, Bones!
Not weird at all! I really like exploring all the little nooks and crannies of complicated familial dynamics. I think one of the untapped strengths of WC (that the writers seem to be unaware of) is how their MASSIVE cast allows them to present all sorts of unique dynamics. So I like to pick up on it, since they don't.
For secret siblings...
I'm pretty heavily leaning towards Ambermoon being adopted by Wildfur, as a surrogacy. Something feels correct about it. Especially since Icecloud is getting retooled into a post-Battle of the True Eclipse birth, and a major supporting character in AVoS-era stories as a friend of Alderheart.
Thinking about it, I should zoom in and expand this. Maybe have Icecloud, somehow, acquire forbidden knowledge that would invalidate the Queen’s Rights and he (transman) struggles with if he's going to use it to expose his parents as an excuse to help Ambermoon.
(Especially since Ambermoon and Icecloud are basically nothing alike. Amber is independent, bold, and vain. Ice is jessie pinkman big-hearted, disorganized, and deceptively meek if you look past his "chill" demeanor)
But that's wip-- there's also Breezepelt and the Three, who are going to have an actual friendship. In particular I can't unsee Breeze and Lion having a deep one. I know I commit the Cardinal Sin of borderline himbo-ifying Lionblaze in BB, but I can't help it.
Hollyleaf ended up nabbing a bunch of his most violent roles to make her villainous descent smoother narratively, so BB!Lionblaze's story ends up being more focused on Ashfur's abuse, comic relief with cats in other Clans (something that the very serious Jay and Holly have a hard time providing), and the emotional fallout of the big reveal and Bramblestar's turn on them. Breezepelt slots neatly into that.
They were friends. Lionblaze's whole life came down around the reveal, everyone looking at him and his siblings differently, like they're suddenly something terrible. Why can't we find a silver lining, Breezepelt? Why can't we call ourselves brothers if the whole world is going to do it anyway? So much is changing, but THIS doesn't have to, we will take their weapon and turn it to armor, my ally, my friend, my brother.
(and when Breezepelt is lashing out at the three because of the Dark Forest's influence, Lionblaze is there, taking the blows and trying not to give in to the impulse to send him flying with a single paw)
There's also Harespring and Kestrelflight of WindClan and Owlclaw of ShadowClan. All of them are from a single litter between Whitewater and Mudclaw. She was going to raise the three of them alone as ShadowClan cats, but when the sire was smote, Whitewater felt they were cursed.
She was able to give the oldest two to their bio-uncle, Torear, but the weather was so bad that day and the runt was so sickly and small that it surely would have killed him. I don't think Owlclaw ever finds out why his mother always treated him with suspicion, but it did mess him up horribly.
Over in BB!DOTC, Thunder Storm is getting more half-siblings earlier. Clear Sky and Falling Feather had two daughters-- Pale Sky and Tiger Sky.
I want to explore the way that the various stages of Clear Sky's life acted on his kids. How any little curiosity Thunder Storm had about the life he might have had if he wasn't abandoned is crushed by seeing kittens who weren't. How Clear's favoritism of his oldest child set the trio against each other from the start. How this idea of "love" is toxic yet intoxicating.
It feels good to be the golden child. The power it gives you over his sycophants is satisfying. To know you, and you alone, have what someone else craves. Problem is, that's conditional, and it's cruel.
What Thunder Storm learns from his time with his biodad is that Clear Sky is not his father at all. He's taught him exactly what he DOESN'T want to be. There may be similarities-- in temperament, in physical prowess (though BB!Thunder is three-legged, he's still ripped), in taste and senses. But Thunder Storm's father is Shaded Flower.
(BB!Gray Wing died in the first book, rescuing Shaded Flower from being trampled by a horse. Xey're a patron of wisdom, Shaded Moss is taking the role of fatherhood to Thunder)
His sister is Rainswept Flower. His mom is Bright Storm. If there was a bond he could have had with Tiger Sky and Pale Sky, it dies simply and cruelly on the knife they used to cut each other out.
Pale might have wanted to mend it, she was the gentler one. But she dies in the First Battle along with her mother. Tiger Sky is too stubborn to accept any help, should Thunderstar offer it, and Thunderstar isn't in the business of begging for others to like him.
Naturally I'm lowkey obsessed with them lmao. I need to make a BB!DOTC overviewww
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Not to get pedantic (oh who am i kidding that’s most of this blog) but I am genuinely fascinated by the potential applications of the established canon in HoO and TOA that the gods canonically have both historic and regional forms, and can appear as specific versions of those forms and have kids of those specific forms, which influence what powers the kid has/what pantheon they fall under/etc etc (and also the implication that demigods can be born under multiple forms of a singular deity). This is somewhat backed up even earlier in the first series when we’re told that Percy has earthquake powers because of his father being Poseidon “The Earthshaker” (which is Mycenaean Poseidon) - which could also tie into why Percy generally takes leadership roles, is hopping in and out of the Underworld a lot, and is apparently particularly powerful for even just a Big 3 kid, since all that would line up with Mycenaean Poseidon being generally put at the head of the pantheon and also being a chthonic deity.
Now this gets really interesting when we start looking at deities being combined and conflated, because a.) the Romans weren’t the only ones doing that and b.) the Romans had their own gods originally, they didn’t just take the Greek ones and slap a new name on them. They merged a lot with their own preexisting deities alongside adopting worship of deities from other cultures as the Romans spread (and the Greeks also did this), and c.) the ancient Greeks and Romans did exist at the same time.
Like, we know in terms of the Greeks and Romans that if their godly parents are “equivalent” then their demigod children are siblings, just like if Greek demigods have the “same” godly parent then they are also siblings. However, very few Greco-Roman gods are one-to-one, and a lot are like three gods in a trench coat, and then if you want to get into historical forms then you can start running into weird things like “Well, if you go back far enough, these two Greek gods may have originated from the same thing-” and also if we’re talking historical forms, again, the Greeks and Romans existed at the same time! Which means there would be historic forms of godly parents that are both Greek and Roman! So like, where do we go from there? Would Hazel be equally siblings to a child of Plutus as she is to Nico because both Hades and Plutus were conflated into Pluto? Orcus was also conflated with Pluto - does that mean when Nico killed Bryce Lawrence, he was killing his half-brother? (cause then that parallels just a couple chapters later when Will faces off against Octavian-) Are there demigods who, depending on their godly parents’ form(s), are technically both a Greek and Roman demigod? If Hermes and Pan possibly originated from the same god, does that mean all the satyrs are siblings with the Hermes kids? If we want to get into all the nonsense of Dionysus’ origins and Zagreus and Hades, does that mean Nico is technically siblings with Dionysus kids? Does Dionysus joke about this during their therapy sessions? Are some demigods in certain cabins siblings with kids in other cabins but each others’ siblings aren’t siblings depending on what form their godly parents were in?
I have a headache now.
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Just had the sleep-deprived idea of combining my Cryptid Batfam Au with @phoenixcatch7 's Possessed Doll Au into a combo au, some distant timeline where the two combine and meld into one thing.
Honestly would be slightly body horror probably, maybe with Bruce starting with building wings and then it... escalates. There's a reason that people don't go down in the caves under Gotham, and Bruce is incredibly lucky that It welcomes him.
Perhaps welcomes him too much, what with it seeming to build him another body each time he gets injured, even if it's just bruising. Not to mention that another is forming when he takes Dick in, and then another when Barbara joins them.
There's something not quite the same the first time he wakes up in a body that is his but not, something organic but not. Testing on it is fine, small tests that is, anything larger and his head starts to pound and ring.
It's easier to just accept the shadows' gifts than question it.
Honestly I like to think the body is something between inorganic and organic, like veins of flesh and fur wrapped around bones and metal. Like a flesh puppet of sorts, starts all skeletal and mostly metal and wood but the veins of black and red start to grow over time as the whispers about the Bat spread.
Honestly I also like to think it's more animalistic than the original possessed doll au, the wood easily mistaken for things like chitin, especially with the segmentations.
Combine the chest cavity with the harness that the kids cling to, and you have a back cavity lol. The 'Spine' seemingly splitting open to hide things inside.
Bruce probably does have clothing for the body, but I wanted to figure out the general body first lol.
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(OLD OC SKETCHES)
Meet Sunnabelle Von Sunnoviche, final daughter of the Sunnoviche family. Peeking from behind a window, she witnessed a wizards final spell, one that reduced the world to a wasteland.
Her noble blood damned her to [HELL], but unwanting to suffer with her family, she made a deal with the devil. She now hunts in his name.
The top of her head was taken by the blast on that day.
The fires of her spirit have boiled her blood into a super-heated plasma.
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*Grabs Venus, Alopex, and Mona Lisa*
YOU'RE COMING TO 2003 LAND WITH ME
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having mommy issues be like I hate that you know me I hate that we’re related I hate that you birthed me I hate that you don’t know how to love me properly I hate that you can’t see how much you hurt me I hate that I’m expected to love you
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Had a weird Hollow Knight-related dream a couple days ago, so I decided to draw a major scene I remembered from it dgsgshf
More context will be in the tags, for those interested!
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Hank Pym taught me that there are choices beyond programming! Janet Van Dyne, that there was beauty in the smallest of people. Pietro Maximoff, that if one's father is evil, it does not mean the child must be! Clint Barton, that there is no such thing as a powerless man! And Wanda, my dear Wanda... taught me that even an android can love!
Universe X #X by Alex Ross, written by Jim Krueger and drawn by Dougie Braithwaite
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I had an Isaac run where it was so stressful my heartrate was at a 145bpm and it persisted for 6 hours. After that, like every day that followed, my heart would just suddenly shoot up to 120-140bpm for an hour if I so much as thought about something I've been stressing over recently. Everybody encouraging me to go to the ER. And I'm just like "Oh please I've actually always been like this, I'm fine." Had to chop down my Adderall dosage. But I swear I've felt like this since high school, but I guess the medicine enhances the feeling and that feeling was ANXIETY.
So, suffice to say, playing The Binding of Isaac™️ almost gave me a heart attack.
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I was reminded of the time that tumblr tried to make "monster high but with tumblr sexymen", and one of the characters was (obviously) the daughter of the once-ler.
And the funny thing to me about that is that in the canon of the illumination lorax movie, the once-ler is heavily implied to have an estranged daughter. I don't know all the sexymen off the top of my head but I think he might've been one of the only ones referenced in that trend who actually had a daughter in his own canon.
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thinking about the identity crisis i went though as a kid cuz my parents had told me very simply that my mom was pashtun and my dad was punjabi and they were both from peshawar and that was that. understandably they had simplified it so much for me cuz i was a kid, but whenever other brown people asked where i was from or "what are you" and i mentioned punjabi and they'd be like oh wow where? lahore? and i'd just be like nope lol peshawar and they would press me about how my dad could be punjabi if he was from peshawar and i just didn't have an answer. when i got a little older, i started saying well borders are manmade, you don't necessarily have to be from one ethnicity cuz you're from a certain area (and i was right! i just didn't know at the time why i was right).
as i got older and i found out more about our family background, it all made more sense to me as i came to know that the punjabi side of us was allegedly from a great-great-great grandfather from gurdaspur who had moved to bannu way back when. but as my interest in linguistics and anthropology and history grew, i realized that my old explanation of "borders are manmade" was true anyway!!! prime examples being speakers of Hindko and Derawali, as well as the Hazarewal community in general. anyways, i could go on about this, but it's all just so endlessly fascinating that i wouldn't know where to stop so i'll stop now.
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i'll have you know there's nothing worse than abnormality
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finally introducing the other character who also occupies a part of my brain:
Meet Giewont!
while the creator of it, Maria Leszczyńska, originally intended to make a war machine, she struggled a lot with finding resources then. however, with her and her family's life deeply affected by both world wars, the idea never left her mind. inspired by utopian idea of glass houses from a novel "the spring to come" ¹, she created her machine from glass. it would be cheap to make, yet durable, available as help to those in need, able to do hard work in times when it was needed - but if fragile peace was in danger again, it could fight alongside other soldiers. as if to set that role of protector in stone, she named it Giewont ². to test her creation, she gifed it to her brother Andrzej, who owned a small farm near the seaside.
Giewont worked as much as four men, not needing to be paid or fed like people would. it was a perfect solution for everybody, the new industrial revolution. that was, until about half a year into her work, glass started to shatter. it turned out not to be as durable as the utopian story made it to be, especially in contact with rough farm tools. small cracks also started to appear after they worked outside in winter, with low temperatures on the outside and hot steam circulating inside. with her fingers and edges getting sharper every day, Giewont was forbidden from taking care of animals anymore, as she would injure them. she was given the only task with no way to injure others - they recieved a showel fully made from metal and was ordered to dig. she did as she was told, even though the work put strain on her already-falling-apart fingers.
but when one day, when returning home, she noticed daughter of Andrzej, Aniela, swimming too far away from the shore and having trouble coming back, long forgotten wire snapped into its place as she jumped into the water to save her. while Giewont did bring her back home, carrying her in their arms, the girl had severe cuts on her body from coming in contact with robot's sharp hands. furious with his sister creation, Andrzej took it outside, desperate to destroy it. blinded by anger, he didn't even notice the storm gathering over the horizon
Andrzej took the metal showel and struck Giewont on the side on their head, then again, until her body fell and crumbled to pieces. He covered it with sand and raised his hands to deal the final blow.
that's when the lightning struck.
and the man fell to the ground, dead.
the sand melted from the heat around Giewont, filling the empty spaces and connecting the pieces back together. raising from their shallow grave, with body more rigid than what she was used to, she took her shovel and decided to bury the man, with what respect they had left for him. that was, after she dealt the final blow herself.
although miraculous, the lightning didn't return her to the previous state of being. their motions were stiff and some parts of theirs got lost forever among the sands of the beach. the part of her head where the first blow was dealt never worked properly again, rendering Giewont deaf in one ear (or whatever was left from it). however it did some good as well, as it widened the space around her mouth, finally making them able to talk - even if it was simillar to a whistle. determined to help people but with a body that kept hurting everyone around her, Giewont set off into the world, trying to find a home and piece herself together, leaving parts herself and a dead body behind.
footnotes below the cut:
1. "During one pause in their journey, the elder Baryka tells Cezary of an entrepreneur who, along Poland’s Baltic coast, devised an ingenious method for manufacturing durable glass from the vast reserves of pristine sands that had lain for eons beneath coastal peat fields. By a massive Rube Goldberg-type arrangement of channels and a creative method for harnessing the westerly winds (the storytelling here is a literary engineering feat in itself), an incursion of the sea provides power for converting the extracted sand into glass. From this vitreous wonder substance, prefabricated houses of glass are built inexpensively. The houses are strong as steel, hygienic, and easy to heat in winter and keep cool in summer. Whole villages are built with houses of brightly colored glass. Life becomes less of a struggle for mere existence, more civilized, and without the need to toil incessantly. People eat less meat or no meat at all, and begin to revere farm animals as sacred beings. For the reader, the digression serves to freshen the mental palate. For Cezary, however, the story is altogether beguiling, raising the utopian prospect of a more wonderful life, reunited with a homeland that might have been his to begin with and a father he has just rediscovered" - via neh.gov
wow thanks for skimming through footnotes as well! as a reward, here's the first ever design of both Janka and Giewont (which proves they were both created around the same time :] )
2. "Those knights had been in a deep sleep for hundreds of years and they only would wake up if it is time to fight on a great battle. When this day comes, the earth will move, there will be thunders that would shake the sky, many trees will fall and break, and there would be noises when the Border Mountains will break. On that moment the knights will take their horses and they will gallop to fight for Poland once again." - the legend of the sleeping knights
a lot had changed since that time :]
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I really have a love/hate relationship with Daemon.
On one hand, he is just such a deliciously rotten character, utterly unapologetic about his own self-serving and destructive nature. He represents the ideal Targaryen royal, self-important, and fully convinced of his own blood superiority, perfectly encapsulating everything that is wrong with the Targaryen dynasty. Every time I read about him or watch the show, I love trying to figure out what makes him tick.
On the other hand, his stans drive me up the wall.
Like, what do you mean he is a devoted husband? He literally killed his first wife, groomed Rheanyra to use her as a placeholder for Viserys, married Laena as a childbride and fucked/married Rheanyra immediately after her death 😭
A loving father? He straight up ignored one of his daughters for not being a dragonrider and doesn't show any interest in any of his kids, outside that one time, he shows Jace how to use death threats to coerce vows of fealty (which totally not concerning).
And before anyone brings up Fire&Blood.
No, he doesn't really appear better there. In the book, he is described to have a preference for "deflowering maidens" in the brothels of Fleabottom.
He doesn't murder Rhea, but he still uses misogynistic language to insult her appearance every chance he gets.
He also 100% groomed Rheanyra even if you discount Mushroom's account. No matter the details, he was suspiciously close to her, and used this relationship to ingratiate himself to her and use this as soon as the opportunity presented itself to marry her (potentially having had a sexual relationship prior to the marriage). This is literally a textbook case of grooming.
The only relationship he had that was potentially healthier was his relationship with Laena, and even she was still pretty young.
This is also why I have a hard time taking anyone serious who genuinely believes he didn't have a sexual relationship with Nettle (or worse, romanticises it).
Let's be real for a moment.
Do we really think that the guy who, across multiple decades and many different sources, has repeatedly been described going after young girls, didn't sexually pursue this one super vulnerable young girl whom he is described to have been suspiciously close to? Really?!
No matter how you look at it that man is just NOT a good person!
You can find him a compelling character, but to argue that he is this morally complex person is just straight up wrong, that's not to say that he can't be complex in his characterisation, but morally speaking that man belongs in hell.
A lot of his stans like to use this quote as a way to justify their belief that he is at least partly good:
Over the centuries, House Targaryen has produced both great men and monsters. Prince Daemon was both. In his day there was not a man so admired, so beloved, and so reviled in all Westeros. He was made of light and darkness in equal parts. To some he was a hero, to others the blackest of villains.
However, they also like to conveniently forget that this quote in written in-world (by Maester Gyldain, I think).
So... No. This doesn't tell us that Daemon is actually secretly a great person or whatever. It means that the person writing is recording what people in the world of Westeros thought of him.
And I don't know about you, but a great man in Westeros isn't necessarily going to be what I would describe as a great man irl.
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