#but the human version can be manipulated for funsies

[raeofsunshin]

Bonus Aunt AU shenanigans: I like how these turned out- anyway! Spinning Bill taking a human form as an intentional manipulation tactic around in a blender. Rough Dreamscape Bill designs timeline for funsies. More info under cut :3

mildly ooc probs but I’m here to have a good time not a canon time/lh - more facts!:

- Started out as a “sneakier” way to keep tabs on the portal. This random lady misses her son and keeps falling asleep all the time, perfect in. Did not go as smoothly as planned but uhhhhh shhhhhhhh he’s got this.

- don’t ask him why his sonsona ages it’s for realism stfu

- Selene straight up assumes her mind has just recreated a human version of her son as a coping mechanism. She did research. What else could it be.

- it started getting more obviously Bill as time progressed out of a kind of. Desire for acceptance type beat. He’s giving up the pretense for reasons that definitely aren’t “rly wants his mom to like what he is now”

- Gave tf up recently and just told her, unfortunately for him pretending to be a dream for 30 years doesn’t help your “trust me on this” cred. The person she thinks is her brains manufactured coping mechanism son saying he’s her son didn’t really change much

- he didn’t try as hard as he could’ve but like. He’ll be here soon! They can talk then! Why reveal himself now?? (local triangle is still uncertain she’ll accept his whole deal. He has not explained any of it, naturally.)

This is *my* silly kids show au I get to put as many triangles as I want in it.

[new-berry]

Today I should be cleaning the garden getting it ready for the new fence.

Edit/ I’ve been thinking about the “how do you write?” Question. And so this is how I write, I think. I have left the first go at the paragraph I wrote, but when i go back to something I usually start from the top and work down, I know this is horribly inefficient. So for funsies I have put the second version of the first paragraph.

Jude, second person, sex and surgery

In the office the doctor's hands are sure, he’s explaining how your body works. Holding a porcelain model of the human arm in his hands. The skin around it is beige. He beckons you closer, rolling the ball around in the socket. “This is how your shoulder moves,” he tells you.

Second go:

In the office the doctor's hands are sure. He’s showing you how your body works. Manipulating a porcelain model of the human chest and arm on his desk. There are delicate veins flaring out in red and the muscles are blue. The skin around it is beige. He beckons you closer, rolling the ball of the shoulder around in the socket, the handless arm spinning hypnotises you for a moment. “This is how your shoulder moves,” he tells you.

The rounded end of the bone grinds roughly in the basin of the socket. “It can dislocate forward, backward or downward.” He frowns at you, accustomed to athletes.

“You should have surgery right away.” He’s disapproving but resigned. He starts a low losing debate with the club doctor, they change to Spanish but it makes no difference.

“Take your shirt off. Jude?” You startle aware, but sit in the bed when you’re directed too, pulling your t-shirt over your head. Girls like it when you pull a shirt off one-handed. Reach behind yourself and grab your shirt at the small of your back.

[pidgecv]

early morning ramblings///

posting this for funsies

pidge talks about romance as horror for far too long and makes no sense in the process 2024 colorized

relationships as a vessel for psychological horror has always been something that fascinates me. take killing stalking for example. a viscerally disgusting and terrible work of horror fiction that i honestly find really compelling conceptually. now did SOME of the fandom™️ completely miss the point and just go “omg yaoi” yes, they did. and yeah the story is like,, not my thing exactly in execution i didn’t finish the comic itself. im not the biggest fan of gore and it crossed my personal line into shock horror (got a bit too into the wrong kind of uncomfortable) but it’s all preference. however, the inherent horror of things like stockholm syndrome, or the idea of a frankenstein being infatuated with his monster not because of who they are but because he made them are both SO interesting. imagine a person loving someone who they have manipulated and abused past the point of humanity. not romantically necessarily (though yeah that’s totally a thing, that all-consuming fascination being misunderstood as a sick romance) rather like a personal project they’re absolutely obsessed with. their creation. except that creation has feelings as well. or maybe in extreme cases, used to at least. problem is it’s difficult to write platonically, since a lot of that stuff can come off as romanticizing abuse and it’s a very delicate topic. deffo easier to have someone eat their own arm and call it a day. going back to stockholm syndrome, in a way it’s a removal of agency (which is a staple of horror media lol). so the horror could be applied both ways, the obsessed and the obsession. the monster and its twisted creator. the inhuman and the inhumane. idk it’s just so damn interesting. it gets complicated and tricky to pull off, but horror doesn’t mix well with cut corners. i may try and expand on this sort of idea but in a far less extreme way for the swapverse. absolutely nothing romantic, in fact i headcanon (or i guess canon?) both versions of cleo as aroace (fully, not just somewhere in the middle of the aroace spectrum but completely disinterested in romance and sex repulsed) ((mostly just wanted to explore familial and platonic bonds without having to consider any sort of romantic stuff)) (((yes s!cleo had a boyfriend pre apox. it was qpr, they were both aroace but were besties for the resties and were gonna marry for tax purposes))). but i’d love to pull off a platonic obsession. jo would absolutely obsess over her work. she would be so proud of herself for creating cleo. living (debatably) proof of her skill. her magnum opus. every success of cleo’s is actually jos, but also every failure is taken the same way. jo sees it as her own failure, and takes out that selfish anger on cleo or even V sometimes. cleo struggles with her humanity. she was one of the first infected. not patient 0, but one of the first. early enough to have been institutionalized and studied at least. and jo has twisted her memories so much that cleo doesn’t know anything about herself except that she belongs to jo. she’s property, a dangerous weapon. that’s what makes their deaths so poetic. jo dies at the hands of V, through her own weapon. because while cleo hit the detonator, it was V who rigged the bomb. Cleo and jo depend on each other so much. the way you need the sword to cut but the sword needs you to polish. to sharpen. even to forge. of course V is the only one who survives. cleo was never going to be able to live without jo and vice versa. they weren’t friends. they weren’t family. they were something else entirely, something torturous and hateful and tragic. a dynamic of lies and manipulation and cruelty. they died as they lived, together. while the original final lives cast was threatened by the new world, they managed to overcome it by being a team. in the swapverse, the outside world was never the threat. they dominated the apocalypse, thriving compared to the og crew. but they were torn apart from the inside, and they couldn’t overcome it. yet another reflection of the original cast. i was gonna type more but hit tumblr limit goodnight fazgang

[squilko]

hiiii can i have a list of your ocs please (perhaps with a short description of their story as well) id love to send questions about your ocs but i barely have anything to work with so far

*LOOKS AR YOTU WITH MY BIG EYES HI ILY

i have soo many ocs... my main two are blue and yellow... they have a bunch of different little outfits but these are their cold weather fits...

they r two little girls from space... very much opposite twin dynamic...sent to earth to destroy humanity..! but... they havent... they think its pretty neat down here..

TALIA!! my special girl... stargirl who is somehow good at everything she does and loved by most... and definitely NEVER manipulates anything! (she definitely uses her powers to alter reality)

navy and red.... ( older versions of blue and yellow who have travelled back in time.!!) navy has grown very bitter and tired... red is a little tired but! she is still mischevious...

olivia and danna... sorry there be blood.... girl and her ghost sister... danna never got the chance to be alive... made a pact with a dog devil that if she fed it enough shed get a chance to live for reals... unlucky for them the devil is very VERY hungry...

old art so their designs arent super up to date... my villian ponies... well. creatures. a group of outcasts from pony society gather under the same mysterious pony... using the power of friendship for eeevil... they arent really canon compliant tho i like to change the story however i see fit for funsies... a changeling a draconequus a kirin and a batpony..

FAIRIES.! and their statue friend... they live in a garden and are guarded by an angel statue who moves by daylight... the fairies take on human form and use their magic to live in human society :3

i have a lot more but i wanted to use groups of them rather than singles...

[jackiebrackettt]

the other version of the demon au is they don’t know each other and rand tracks kian down to a club (<- not demon stuff just there for funsies) and kian starts flirting with him so he has the brilliant decision to. go along with it. so he can closer to kian and Confirm he’s the demon + kill him or whatever. anyway hits rand with falls in queer love beam*

(*aka they talk enough that rand kinda feels sympathetic and offers to try and find a way Out of the deal so he can become human again bc kian doesn’t like doing demon stuff he was just manipulated into it at a low point in his life)

(also in both versions of the au everyone later finds out that rolan is actually a demon. this is news to him as well)

[girlyliondragon]

On the topic of supernatural debates since you're this into them, what's your stance on the one with werewolves? Namely the Alpha/Beta/Omega thing?

I'm gonna throw my own hot take on this that absolutely nobody's gonna like if they're a stickler for realism in fantasy. But I do NOT mind the Alpha/Beta/Omega thing. I've talked about it in the tags for one post before but I will go on about it full swing here. And to clarify, I am obviously not gonna be talking about the dirty version of the trope, just the ranking system version of it.

Yes, it doesn't apply to rl wild wolves, we know the story and I don't want anyone explaining it again, but these are NOT real wolves these are werewolves. This is fantasy. The rules of real life and nature do NOT apply to fantasy and never ever should unless the person in charge of the thing wants them to. Nobody is spreading misinfo by still using the ranking system in 2021 either and the fact that I feel I have to disclaimer just because I'm fine with this trope is sad. To vaguely shit on people who still wanna use the rank dynamic that seems to have existed for so long in fiction just because you're a stickler for realistic wolves is not only restrictive, it's not fun and makes you look like an ass. (And yes before anyone tries the manipulative "nobody does this" thing I can confirm have actually seen it. :U)

Werewolf packs from what I've seen in popular media seem to always consist of strangers or at least unrelated folks getting into packs. So the "Werewolf packs should be family packs/blood family" thing by itself doesn't even work unless the pack you're creating is already a nuclear family to begin with, which wouldn't be hard if you're going by the "Lycanthropy is genetic" thing but not everyone does actual blood families with these guys. And not everyone is gonna be all "I bite you now I adopt and so you are my child". Not everyone's gonna be like that? Telling people "Werewolves do not work like that! They should be family packs! Because WOLVES IRL DO NOT USE THE SYSTEM!" Is NOT the gotcha people who say this seem to think it is! These are NOT real wolves Karen these are (usually) anthro wolf beasts who's blueprint is off of HUMANS and are more than likely gonna be complete strangers to each other and are only ever gonna be "family" in declaration only outside a few close-knit instances. If there is any blood family, assuming the genetic thing isn't being used for the whole family as is, it'll likely be just the pups that come out of anyone coupling within the pack and that seems to be how it is with a lot of things that do werewolves so that seems to be as far as blood goes there. And it's not done a lot if at all considering people like using teenage boys in Werewolf media as well. 😬

Plus what if there IS a pack that works off those dynamics? What are people gonna do then? It's not hurting anyone to use it in that one instance is it? I've used it for my non-earthly species before and had a lot of fun working around it. With Werewolves I just remove all the patriarchy shit (Especially since the Werewolf I do develop in my AU is a woman so patriarchy my ass :P) and everything else and just try and rewrite things to be a little more tolerable, and then it'd be fine with me. No Twilight Werewolves here, or anything from mainstream media and live action really because I hate the popular werewolf media and how they use this system. But nobody actually tries to deconstruct it or make it less eck.

So the jist is use the trope if you want, you're not "spreading misinfo" for using it just for funsies and frankly I'm sick of people trying to gotcha others that use it. Just have fun, its your story and your world. If there are actual problems in it then yeah, make the changes you need to. But the Alpha/Beta/Omega thing in of itself has stopped being a problem every since people learned it wasn't real and it never was an actual problem again after that outside of media trying to be showy, because we have internet now unlike before to teach our kids. You do you.

And now I'm gonna go shield myself with a table before the hounds come.

[paragonrobits]

for a while i’ve been musing on the idea of ‘what if Brian Banner, Hulk’s abusive father, was actually an early super villain’ so here are some thoughts for that!

the first point is that my take on him is a mix of his interpretation from the 2003 Hulk movie and the way he’s been depicted in the current run of Immortal Hulk. On the one hand, you have a very manipulative personality who is extremely prone towards flat out constantly lying to everyone when he doesn’t have a self-serving memory; he may well even believe his own lies, in a very mundane way. The flipside of this is that, by combining his original depiction as someone who felt threatened by his infant son’s intelligence and his mother’s love for him instead of him, is an attention hog who desperately craves people constantly paying attention to him, lashing out and going to extremes to force people to pay attention to him, particularly Bruce.

Essentially, he’s a self-centered egomaniac who refuses to ever admit anything is his own fault: a standard abuser with a massive inferiority complex.

As for what he IS, again, I’m drawing from the Ang Lee movie, where he was presented as a combination of Absorbing Man (taking on the properties of matter, able to drain the Hulk’s power) and the minor antagonist Zzzax (an emphasis on energy draining and transformation from that); specifically, I’m suggesting making him be an AU version of Zzzax, with some elements of Absorbing Man. A key point here is that he is literally a leech, sucking away power and influence from others, a toxic presence that has little power on his own. What makes him dangerous is how ruthless he is, and his manipulative abilities. He CAN drain power from others and become as strong as them, but on his own, he’s not much more than a unpleasant person even the worst of the supervillain community doesn’t like much.

His powers simply leech things around him. Materials corrode visibly in his presence, though not enough to cause true structural damage, and he takes on their attributes as he does so. Energy and life force are sucked dry, causing things to flicker or weaken over time. Even grass and plants die around him, so that he’s a walking wasteland. It’s also a very notable inversion of Hulk; where Hulk bleeds, new life sprouts from his blood where it touches the ground. But wherever Brian Banner walks, things get worse.

I see two possibilities here, centering on the crucial point: when Bruce confronted him on his mother’s grave prior to his first true Hulk out, did he kill him, or not?

Option one: Bruce did not, though perhaps not for lack of trying. During one of the earlier times of the rise of superbeings, Brian was transformed by the same kind of gamma events that produced the Hulk’s other antagonists, into his present form; he sort of drifts from place to place, being an unbearable little wretch. He’s something of a precursor to the Leader, in that he’s a mastermind, or at least he wants to be, but lacks his charisma and genuine competence.

Option two: he’s dead, he’s dead as hell. Bruce DID smash his skull against his mother’s gravestone. But gamma is weird, and when the events began, it made a hole through reality, and Brian came through it; he attained a new form in the same way as Zzzax (an energy draining form, perhaps after repossessing his old corpse and rejuvenating it by draining the life force from others), and back from the dead, he’s out to torment his son and everyone he views as responsible for his problems (which is everyone but himself). One interesting possibility is that he’s a Ghost Rider antagonist as well; he’s not just a dead man, he’s one that came back to life through the wrong channels (perhaps related to the mysterious Green Door that the various Hulks have seen) and Ghost Rider is compelled to pursue him for that reason alone, let alone that his sins demand vengeance. The screaming wrath of the Hulk was born from this man’s cruelty, and wherever he goes he spreads more suffering and loss.

For this latter idea, it also makes for an interesting visual: he is a walking corpse. Yes, he’s regenerated his body and healed it, so he’s technically alive from a biological stand point. But he looks... wrong. His skin is this ashen, translucent color. His muscles have grown in erratic ways and are mismatched sizes, and he stares REALLY uncomfortably at everything, like they’re nothing to him. It’s a visual contrast with Hulk, who is VISIBLY a monster, but is quite peaceful when left alone. Brian Banner looks more or less human, but the closer you look (and the longer he goes without leeching something), the more wrongness stares at you.

As far as his place in the villain community goes, I see him as being an outcast that not even the worst of them like to be around; sure, there are some real monsters in the Marvel universe. Bitter robots with misanthropic streaks; actual bonafide Nazis (some made of bees, some just super messed up looking); mutants who are eager to screw their own people over to make a quick buck; superpowered brutes who dont care to do anything but hurt people for the funsies. But none of them like Brian Banner. The man’s a chidlish, self-centered abuser who refuses to ever admit blame for his own misdeeds, and to even hardened villains, that’s just... petty.

(Depending on how hard you want to lean into his scientific background, you can also make the argument that other science guys in the Marvel universe are at least vaguely familiar with him. It’s mostly in a ‘oh, that guy, fuck that guy’ sort of way.)

[phantom-of-musicals]

"Who seems a beast but secretly dreams of beauty..." or "Why is 'Phantom of the Opera' NOT a 'Beauty and the Beast' story"

So yesterday, I was listening to "Phantom of the Opera (POTO)" and I noticed that though majority believe that POTO is "Beauty and the Beast" with a tragic ending, I see it as more of a "Hades and Persephone" type of story.

Anyway, I keep mentally comparing the Phantom and Christine to Hades and Persephone. I mean, the Phantom kidnapping her and showing her his world... Not returning for six months... Yeah, the sources vary so... Depends on your views!

Ok, let me start getting into what all the adaptations got wrong. Christine did NOT have any romantic connection whatsoever to the Phantom. For one thing, she has a boyfriend! A boyfriend who actually cares for her well-being and is actually pretty loyal to her! And majority of the adaptations get this all wrong! But why does this keep happening? Why do a lot of adaptations insert a "Beauty and the Beast" subplot between the Phantom and Christine?

Maybe it is to give the Phantom some emotional depth and show that he's not entirely a killing machine bent on blood? And during the scene where Christine kisses him, perhaps it is from that one little scene where people later recreated the story thought "Hmm, there might be more to the kiss than what meets the eye?" I mean, I'm all for that, but c'mon! Christine would never fall for a guy who kidnaps, murders and threatens her to marry a guy who plans on killing her boyfriend. She wouldn't!

Their relationship was not one of growth and development, but of stalker and prey! Don't bring Love Never Dies into this because it's a complete disservice to the Leroux novel!

Now lots of people give Christine some flak for choosing Raoul over the Phantom but if you think about it, she made quite a clever choice. The Phantom lied to her about himself and he manipulated her religion and memories of her father! He killed people, blackmailed people AND dropped a chandelier and abused her both mentally and physically! And y'all blame her for choosing a guy who did NONE of that?! Sheesh!

As for the kiss... My personal interpretation is that Christine wanted to show the Phantom that she was pretty much willing to give up her freedom for Raoul and the Phantom, touched by the gesture, realizes true love is sacrificing something for the ones they love. So, he lets Raoul and Christine go after realizing that he has to sacrifice in order to earn love!

So if it is not a "Beauty and the Beast" story or a romance, what is it about then? Well, it's a gothic thriller. It's meant for scares and adventure... And to show how obsession could blind someone... Tbh, the Phantom's 'love' could be easily labelled as an obsession, like, he thinks he owns Christine and treats her as an object rather than a human! And the entire point of letting Christine go was to show how he matured over the story, realizing his own selfishness and to ensure redemption in the audience's eyes!

It's also a story on "Beauty VS Beast", y'know, the Phantom is the Beast while Christine is the Beauty. Or really, to me, it's a coming-of-age story of a woman getting autonomy and overcoming the trauma of an abusive relationship. She went through the loss of both parents, manipulation, being stalked, and knowing that the person she loves most has his life on the line - because of her. And then she literally gets off of her knees and shows her abuser the first form of kindness he has ever known. Not even the Phantom was strong enough for that; he gave up on the world far too early. Christine is the embodiment of courage and kindness; she teaches us to love and forgive those who have been awful to us, and to protect those we love even if it means our own suffering. But she no longer succumbs to the Phantom and makes sure her abuser never hurts anyone EVER again. Seriously, this girl is AWESOME! And this was in the 18th century! It's really sad that such a great character is overlooked by many...

It seems that Leroux really understood women... That we can be emotional, we are vulnerable but not weak... And emotion really helps us when we keep them in control! So the moral of the story is: Don't let selfishness blind you, kindness does not equate to weakness, true love is sacrificing something for the ones you love and "Phantom of the Opera" is NOT a "Beauty and the Beast" story!

And for funsies, even though she's never played Belle before, here's former LND and POTO Christine Anna O'Byrne singing "Home" from the Broadway version of "Beauty and the Beast". 'Cause why not?

[hostnamexception]

TWO HEADCANONS FOR YOUR MUSE THAT YOU’VE NEVER TOLD ANYONE : 1. in her younger days, HER actually interfered with intergalactic politics on a huge scale. she staged coups and revolutions, sparked prison breaks, puppeted leaders of multiple civilizations, and made entire alien races “disappear” just for funsies. she quit after a few gigayears, out of boredom, and went quiet-- hence her current mythological status. 2. from the surface of HER’s planet, Medha, the night sky is completely black. no stars are visible at all, due to the molecular cloud she’s deployed surrounding the system. it’s more than a little unsettling.

THREE THINGS YOUR CHARACTER LIKES DOING IN THEIR FREE TIME : 1. HER plays a lot of video games. sometimes she plays using her vessel and a controller rather than manipulating the game directly with her programming-- it’s her own version of a handicap, although she’s still an absolute bastard to play against. 2. she compiled/recovered quite a bit of security footage from zim’s former base, and has fun stitching together montages of his more embarrassing moments. 3. she really enjoys baking as a scientific endeavor. she can make a really simple but mouth-watering batch of cookies one day, and the next she’s doing shit with cake that a human wouldn’t even be able to conceive of.

SEVEN PEOPLE THAT YOUR CHARACTER LIKES / LOVES : 1. @di-stri-ai the number one bestie 2. @exirkeninvader the adopted prodigal son 3. @cubicscubedemon the Worst(tm) 4. @legalizingeverything​ the adopted prodigal daughter 5. @vortship​ the curious test subject 6. @mr-pulvis​ the gamesboi 7. canonically speaking, HER has been known to express a certain liking for Gaz, effusing such generous praise onto her as: “she’s the only human with her head screwed on right.”

TWO THINGS YOUR CHARACTER REGRETS : 1. sabotaging @exirkeninvader‘s plans... well, she regrets being caught. 2. being unable to find any medhastrians to exact her revenge upon. she’s been tracking the few who fled the planet before its meltdown her entire life, but so far has come up empty-handed.

TWO PHOBIAS YOUR CHARACTER HAS : 1. swarms of small bugs (ants, gnats, little cockroaches, etc.). the idea of anything getting underneath her metal casing and nesting there makes her want to scream eternally. 2. no longer being needed (or wanted) by her favorite individuals.

TAGGED BY : @vortship more or less!

TAG TEN PEOPLE TO DO THE SAME: anyone who wants to! plus all the people i already tagged :>