i don’t know if i’m ever gonna write the fic but i’ve been thinking abt like. the eternal stockade. the implications. lup, a lich who was trapped in a dark featureless cell for a decade completely isolated with nothing to keep her sanity but her own mind. she has to put people in the eternal stockade. how many liches does she see herself in. how many liches started out just like her. how many liches are truly too far gone. and the only liches we ever see other than her and barry are edward and lydia. they’re certainly evil, but mad? they seem pretty sane. they’re not, like, tattered echoes of souls, they’re definitely still people. even as much of a grudge as lup surely has against them, wouldn’t they remind her incredibly strongly of herself? do they deserve to be trapped just like she was? for eternity? isn’t eternity what turned john to existential despair in the first place?
[ID: a digital coloured sketch of Raphaella la Cognizi as a bird-like creature, from waist up and in profile view. The picture is in brown and orange tones. Her head resembles the head of a barn owl, with wide, glowing yellow eyes, a small bump where a human's nose would be, and feathery "ears". Her mouth is slightly open, showing a beak instead of teeth. She looks like she's smiling deviously. Her neck is long, with long feathers that resemble light brown hair. One of her hands is visible, it is bird-like, with two opposing thumbs, each on either side of the hand. She has big claws. She is hunched and appears to be interested in something off-screen. Her big brown wing is open and covers up the rest of her body. End ID]
Concept sketch of my new JJBA self insert and her stand, BellaDonna (who will eventually be known as Madonna). Inspired by the song 'Like a Prayer' by...well, Madonna! @sapphire-heart-tippy
(lore dump under the cut, TW for mentions of animal injury and religious trauma)
My self insert (who will also go by Jane) grew up in a deeply religious family and tried to be a good jehovah's witness child that made her parents proud.
One day, she comes up with the power to heal various injuries and ailments, almost to the point of being able to revive the dead. She figures she's given this power by the lord himself and vows to do good with it, but when she's found using them to heal a bird that had been wounded by a cat, her mother falls into hysterics thinking that she MUST be possessed by the devil to have such abilities.
She's punished and shunned by her community while her mother prays for a cure and though she tries to repent her power doesn't seem to go away, so eventually her mother snaps and drags her into the wilderness and attempts to throw her to the bottom of an old well.
Her Stand, which had previously not manifested physically, appears then to cushion her fall and eventually she manages to pull herself out of the well with her Stand's help, who she now believes to be a guardian angel. But not wanting to return home, she runs away to face the world alone, growing jaded and bitter over time. She loses all of her faith, and the power to heal inverts itself, becoming a sort of poison. Something that LEECHES life, rather than heal it.
When she's an adult (my age irl so 25 I guess) she's made her way by becomes a bounty hunter/assassin using her Stand and eventually catches the attention of Dio. Who takes her in and explains to her what her Stand REALLY is, promising to teach her how to properly wield those powers if she agrees to serve him. She reluctantly takes his offer, but starts to see him as a familial figure, since no one else had ever tried to nurture or even accept her gift. Dio is the one who giver her Stand the name BellaDonna, after the deadly plant!