#the beat of a stillborn heart. || HEADCANON

[quasimyth-a]

even though cynthia will always remain physically 18 since that’s when she died, she has shapeshifted to have a 47-year-old face. this is because she wants to set realistic expectations for young girls (and older women too!) about what they should look like when they age. there’s already so much expectation for celebrities to look younger and younger, and she just wants to give a giant middle finger to that. and tbh she’s not planning on stopping aging herself through shapeshifting until she’s in her fifties or sixties. she’s going to keep it real.

[talonwings]

Hello, I’m highly into your gargoyle fWhip stuff atm:

I imagine the reason why Gem is so drawn to the amethysts was because she was stillborn as a child. Her heart wasn’t beating, so their family called the wizard to try and save her. They did, the only way to save her was to infuse her with their magic. It turned her heart into a living amethyst, holding that power.

FWhip had always heard that story, but then he fell into the hole with the corruption. Then the wings grew. Then he felt his chest and he didn’t feel the soft pitter patter of his heart.

He may be more alike to his sister now than before.

hi,

this headcanon hurts me, i can't stand it, you're a genius, thank you for your contribution

[darkpoisonouslove]

Erendor x Samara Headcanons

This somehow happened... even though they are literally my least favorite Winx characters. I wanted to develop them somewhat more so that I could stop despising them so much. I think it worked... even though there are some problematic things.

TW for mentions of murder and infertility.

It was a semi arranged marriage in that Erendor was the one who was having negotiations with Samara’s family since he was already king. His parents were currently residing at one of their numerous estates, however, and were as removed from the ruling of the kingdom as possible since the monarchy was hanging by a thread. Erendor had to find a way to settle the growing tension for which he needed some strong allies and it just so happened that Samara’s family was the most influential.

Samara was actually a second child but her elder sister was already promised to a nobleman from another famous lineage and pulling that apart would be bad for the monarchy as well as the other family was bound to turn against them. So Erendor was to marry Samara and have the endorsement not only of her family, but also the new house that her sister was to join soon. They had a perfunctory engagement that only served to not make it look like the situation of the monarchy was so dire that Erendor was taking desperate measures to stabilize it. They married as soon as possible to fortify the alliance and start working on continuing the royal bloodline.

Samara was extremely good at pretending and showing exactly what was expected of her. Her mother had been dragging her to beauty pageants ever since she’d had anything to show in the talent portions of the competitions and she’d learned from little to read what people expected from her and then show them just what they wanted to see. She could get under anyone’s skin and steer them into doing whatever she wanted. It was the skill she’d perfected while her sister had spent more time in education as they’d hoped for a better marriage for her. Samara’s mother had hoped exactly for that result as it gave them guarantee that Samara would be able to control her husband while they controlled her to give them even more influence and power.

Erendor was wary of Samara at first. He was way more observant back then when the future was being built on a day to day basis and he’d seen enough to know she could charm anyone, which made her the one with the real power in their marriage. He had to win her over on his side if he wanted to ever have any real control over Eraklyon and that would be a challenge since she already had everything she could want, including the crown. He could never beat her at her own game so he tried a different approach by being dangerously honest with her which threw her off every time to give him an opportunity to peek under her facade and get to know her better.

He learned that the price of her smile was a ring on her finger and the price of her heart was holding her hand in his. She was indeed used to getting everything she wanted but he hadn’t known she wanted commitment to her that her family had never shown as they’d been using her ever since she’d learned to walk and freedom that she could only get if she had more power in her grasp than her mother held. He paid enough attention to her to learn how to never disappoint her with a gift and gave her the choice of what to do with the power she held – give him equal control of it by taking his hand or keep being pulled like a doll by the strings her mother had wrapped around her until death cut them off. He gave her the decision to choose whose hands to put the control over the kingdom in and that was more than her family had ever given her.

Her mother never expected that Samara could choose her husband over them. She’d never thought that a man could win her daughter’s trust after she’d raised her to view people as means to an end because that was how they’d view her. It was too late by the time she realized she’d made a mistake by demonstrating that to Samara herself. Her daughter had all the important people in her hand and she put them in Erendor’s pocket to throw her family so out of the loop they would never be able to come back. They lost any control they had not just over the kingdom but over most of their estate and assets as well and had to leave Eraklyon before Samara bankrupted them completely. She didn’t spare the family her sister married into either in case her mother tried to make her comeback via them and all the wealth was distributed to the struggling economical branches to patch up both the holes in the kingdom’s resources and those in the people’s trust.

The monarchy was saved and the two of them were left with their blooming alliance. They got along perfectly when he asked her opinion on everything and let her handle most of the diplomacy, only ever interfering when his presence was needed. Outside of the throne room, their shared time was limited by mutual agreement. Samara liked to use her newly found freedom to choose her personal endeavors herself and Erendor could use the break on his ego (he knows he couldn’t have done it without her but sometimes it is still hard to swallow his pride even though Samara has never flaunted the fact in his face, perhaps due to her own experiences of being dependent on someone else).

Besides, it takes them both a little while to process whatever slips into one of those honest conversations they tend to have in the middle of the night–there’s always room for Samara in his bedchamber and she’s rarely refused an invitation to go as well–or early in the morning over breakfast. He still catches her off guard–and himself, too–when he admits something that requires trust that their mutually beneficial deal does not justify. Samara actually likes it because it feels like she can trust it’s real and she’s even confessed a couple of things herself on her own initiative even though the word love has never been approached by either one of them. Erendor’s honesty is always blunt and has zero romance to it but Samara prefers it that way as she’s not sure how long it will take her to trust romance.

It all seemed well until they learned that Samara had fertility issues that got in the way of conceiving an heir. Samara retreated and locked herself into her bedchamber. She wouldn’t even let Erendor in, let alone go to the throne room or even the dining hall. Erendor had to forbid all maids and other servants from going to her until she came out, steaming about him breaking their deal that they were equals and he couldn’t control her. Not the best plan to get her to talk in hindsight but he didn’t have much choice.

They talked once Erendor explained himself and she calmed down. She was upset not only over the discovery of her problem but also over the fact that all their efforts in putting the monarchy back together had been wasted. Erendor tries to reassure that nothing has changed – she is still the queen (aka indirectly reassuring her that he wouldn’t divorce her over that which not only went through her head but she was also leaning towards after he broke their deal). They can still adopt a child and the monarchy will have an heir. Samara warns him that his brother will not stand to have someone outside the bloodline take the throne from under his nose. She knows the ambition and bitterness of being a second child and her family wasn’t even in line for the throne. Erendor promised they would figure it out but, meanwhile, there was a war brewing between the Ancestral Witches and Domino and his alliance with Oritel was enough of an excuse to buy them some time to think.

As it turned out, the solution presented itself. The royal dog breeder almost lost control of the hounds as she prepared them for a hunting session. After Erendor only didn’t bite her head off in the literal sense, Samara had her turn as well which saw the woman breaking down and confessing that she’d found herself pregnant and abandoned by both the father and her family. Samara instantly pieced together the plan that could be the solution to all their problems and after Erendor agreed, they offered the woman to give her baby to them. They would make him a prince and she could see him grow with every one of his needs taken care of if she would keep her mouth shut about the deception they were pulling. They reached an agreement and brought their scheme to fruition by presenting the boy as the royal heir while the official version was that the dog breeder’s baby was stillborn.

Distrustful of the emotional goodbye the woman said to her child, Samara decided to tie up their loose ends. Erendor had already dealt with the doctor supervising the birth through semi-legal means and it was just the mother that could reveal their ruse. Samara poisoned the dogs with a mix just strong enough to drive them mad with pain but not kill them so that they would attack their breeder and tear her to shreds. It happened almost as she’d planned it but before the dogs could be put down by the guards, they slipped away, having been pulled out of the effect of the poison by the grief over killing their caretaker. The woman had an unusual gift for training the animals and immense skills to top it off that Erendor could have never rivaled even despite his time in Red Fountain spent taming dragons. She was known as a dog whisperer and the animals had all formed a bond with her that was unbreakable so when they killed her, they turned into mindless beasts with the rage and pain of betraying their own mistress like that.

The hounds got lost in the forest to spread all over the kingdom and terrorize it for years to come. With everything else that was happening, Erendor’s focus was not on getting rid of them. The alliance with Domino was broken to the result of losing an entire city and being plagued by guilt. Without their strongest ally, the kingdom was soon swallowed in wars and debates over the future of the monarchy. The hounds were yet another crisis that was pulling Eraklyon thin over all the fronts it was stretched on.

The problem only got solved once Sky signed up for Red Fountain. Along with Brandon and a handful of other soldiers, he tracked down the hounds and killed them to stop them from wrecking havoc. Curiously, they didn’t run from him or try to attack him which he found odd but shrugged off as his gift for taming dragons obviously working on other animals as well (they never had hounds in the palace again after the “accident” with the last dog breeder). The last hound was the only one that put up a fight but it turned out it was because she had a puppy she was trying to protect. Unusually for dogs, it was only one. A small white female dog. It was so little Sky could snap its neck with two fingers but he took pity on it and took it in, swearing to his parents that he could tame it and make sure it would never hurt anyone. He named her Lady to further his point as she was extremely well behaved and obeyed every one of his commands, even letting Samara pet her despite her obvious dislike of the queen.

Lady was put down after going rabid out of the blue and attacking the queen. Samara didn’t like having to worry whether the dog wouldn’t tear her to shreds if Sky weren’t there to stop it so she got rid of it as well. Over the years she’d tried to provide for Sky both the warmth and discipline he would need to turn into a good prince as she didn’t want him growing up the way she had and being a pawn in the schemes of others. There was a certain duty to be upheld as an heir to the throne (of a country falling apart no less), though, which was why she and Erendor were pushing the marriage with Diaspro on him. The girl was more than respectful towards them despite being a spoiled brat otherwise and she was a princess aka their best choice for his fiance. They could use an alliance amidst the brewing situation in the kingdom.

With the years and the state of Eraklyon going downhill after the alliance with Domino fell apart, keeping the kingdom afloat was weighing down on Erendor on top of the guilt her felt for his deal with the Ancestral Witches and he became more selfish and rudely outspoken. He didn’t care much about diplomacy when he was counting on Samara to take care of it. She herself started falling into the rabbit hole of being queen and having the power to make everyone bow to her, however, and she abandoned her persuasive way with words for more forceful approach. After the whole fiasco with the dog breeder, she had to make sure nothing else would go astray to topple their unstable thrones and she had less and less patience for coaxing people to go her way rather than coercing and even forcing them to. The image of the monarchy was falling apart once more which was why Erendor was so hasty about passing the title of king down to Sky. Their son was very well liked amongst both the high society and the commoners so they had to leave the power in his hands at least in appearance.

[pinkpintolesbean]

Chapters: 6/9 Fandom: Hades (Video Game 2018) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game) Characters: Thanatos (Hades Video Game), Zagreus (Hades Video Game), Nyx (Hades Video Game), Hypnos (Hades Video Game), Achilles (Hades Video Game), Hades (Hades Video Game), Megaera (Hades Video Game), Cerberus (Hades Video Game), Orpheus (Hades Video Game), Dusa (Hades Video Game) Additional Tags: Short Stories, Childhood, Friends to Lovers, ThanZag - Freeform, Cute, Fluff, Angst, suicidal ideation at one point but nothing happens, achilles is such a dad, drunk than, Sexual exploration, Burns, than with long hair, achilles is the hair guy, headcanons, life and death, stillborn zagreus story, mom nyx, mostly canon-coherent, Hades - Freeform, Porn with some plot, Sex, Abandonment, Forgiveness, than is physically incapable of hurting him, Sleeping Together, soft bois, Falling In Love, Love at First Sight, Childhood Stories, Adolescence, Growing Up Together, Cuddling, Crying, Lots of Crying, short-haired than, good boy zagreus, Nectar As Lube, Young Love, First Kiss, Growing Up, Cats, zag dies as he always does, soft, than's a cat person, Hurt/Comfort, Pain, Preteens, Gay, Training, blowjob, bj, Public Sex, Bukkake, Swallowing, Kiss of Death, than is a quick learner, wood, Massage Summary:

Zagreus leans in, pressing his cheek to Thanatos’ chest, listening to the strong beating of that powerful heart. Totally enamored. Painfully in love.

[imperialvestra]

ooc: so this is probably not a popular headcanon, but based on how byleth’s heart starts beating at the end of crimson flower when the crest stone is destroyed... what if byleth wasn’t actually stillborn.... what if rhea was lying the whole time...........

[masterskywalkers]

I see a lot in Three Houses fic and headcanon the risk of Byleth dying in childbirth, and while I can totally see it in some romantic routes ... in others, I don’t so much. 

Perhaps I’m just overthinking, but here’s my take on it.

To me, the risk is born mostly out of Rhea and her playing around with Crests. In my understanding of what we’re told, Byleth’s mother died in order to give Byleth her own Crest and a chance to live, knowing that Byleth would have been stillborn otherwise (she was born without a heartbeat after all). It was a choice of the mother or the child, and the mother naturally chose her child. Whether or not the fact that Rhea gave Jeralt some of her blood for healing purposes ruled into that factor is a whole other matter, but I felt as if the emphasis was strongly on ‘stop creating / messing around with Crests for your own unnatural ends because look what it does’.

If Byleth romances and has a child with Dimitri, I imagine the risk of death in childbirth is a very real and frightening thing - and the concern comes a little more naturally in my mind. Dimitri lost his mother not long after his birth and Byleth lost her mother, and Dimitri has lost so many people in his life that the very real threat of loosing Byleth to a force he has no control over is terrifying to him. Dimitri’s mental health is still incredibly delicate, so the fear of loosing Byleth ... of course such a thing would set him over the edge. 

Because Byleth still has her Crest in this route - something which I feel is an unnatural factor and knowing of the failures of those who have carried the same Crest within them in the past (we know from what Rhea has said that there have been many tries to get to a stage where she feels progress is being made) - I can imagine pregnancy being a very trying and difficult experience for Byleth. More draining than usual, even. i sort of play with the idea that Byleth and Dimitri only have a son because the pregnancy is so hard and Dimitri does come so close to loosing Byleth through it, and it’s just something they don’t want to risk a second time. 

They got lucky once, blessed with a child and the recovery of the mother. But Dimitri can’t loose her, and Byleth doesn’t want to push him over the recovery he’s made in his mental state. Also, she’d quite like to be alive to see their son grow up too. 

Yet through a route such as Crimson Flower, where Byleth lives without a Crest ...

... Then I think things play out differently. 

Sothis never truly leaves Byleth, and it’s my belief that in giving over her powers Sothis always gives a dormant gift to Byleth that doesn’t trigger until she looses her Crest. And that is the gift of her own life. If the Crest is the only thing keeping her alive after all then she should in theory die after Rhea does, yet that fact that she lives and her heart starts beating for the first time makes me believe something (Sothis’s dormant gift) triggers. Even Edelgard - someone who isn’t a stranger to Crest experimentation - tells Byleth that she doesn’t know what will happen to her after Rhea dies.

In my Crimson Flower route, Byleth romances Hubert, and I’ve mentioned before that in my headcanon at least, they have a bigger family together. This is mostly because I think that Byleth’s pregnancy goes smoother without her Crest as things are more natural about her, and there’s less of a risk of childbirth. Sure, there’s probably still hesitancy and fear in relation to how her mother died, but that’s again a natural fear and not one that’s aided by the unknown of what her Crest can do or how it can influence her. 

I actually think Byleth’s Crest hinders her in a lot of ways, even if it is the most successful of Rhea’s attempts of reconnection. It’s an unnatural thing she’s been doing - enough that even Seteth reacts like ‘Rhea what are you doing’. It makes her no better than Those Who Slither in the Dark, even if her reasoning is purely out of grief and loss. There’s enough hints that she’s been doing this for a long time with a long list of failed attempts after all. 

[agentromancff-blog]

⎣ elena satine, cisfemale, she/her ⎤I just saw [ NATASHA ROMANOFF ] walking around new york. they’re [ 112/LOOKS LIKE 30ish ] years old and go by [ BLACK WIDOW ]. they had kids with [ MARIA HILL ] and I’ve heard they’re [ IN A CIVIL PARTNERSHIP ]. they’re also [ AN AGENT OF SHIELD ]. at their best they’re [ STRATEGIC & INTREPID ] but at their worst they can be [ MANIPULATIVE & CIRCUMSPECT ]. ( ty, she/her, 21, est )

{ trigger warnings : mentions/implications of death, abuse, alcoholism, violence/murder, pregnancy, hospitals, war, & mental illness }

last intro for the day. im sure everyone knows the loml aka natasha romanoff so i tried to keep this mostly headcanon & relevant information based~ 

ABOUT NAT //

because im very upset about what the mceu did to my poor baby,,,, they did her DIRTY guys,,,,, my nat is much more heavily influenced by the comics

this means shes much more of a hardened, elite super spy, more cold and callous, etc... 

so here’s a brief recap of my version of nat’s backstory that i’ll be using: 

it’s sort of a combination of both origin stories. 

so i imagine. 

shes related to the last ruling czars of russian

when the place she was living in caught fire, her mother tossed her out the window and ivan caught her. he raised her as his foster daughter. he turned her over to the red room and she was raised & trained by them

she has false memories conditioned into her mind through psychoactive drugs, conditioning videos, hypnosis, and torture, of her cover story outside of the red room. aka as a dancer for bolshoi theatre. but she also learned ballet in the red room. 

after her red room training was complete, natasha worked for the KGB and was set up in an arranged marriage with her first late husband, alexi

she was told her husband died in a rocket crash, and donned for herself the alias black widow

it’s later revealed that all this happened when she was very young, natasha left at some point and married her second husband on a battlefield at war. where she confessed to being pregnant. she gave birth to her baby on the battlefield, rose, who was born a stillborn because of the serum and experiments that altered natashas physiology and rendered her incapable of having children 

her life’s been a constant string of. getting Fuckt Over by people. ivan at some point attempts to seduce her, plants nanites in her that spread to every person she touched, then every person they touched, and turned them into merciless monsters who started beating each other to death. shes been brainwashed by her masters countless times. and i mean,,, her entire training as a child revolved around her growing up to be a seductress and assassin which,,, okay nat. my poor baby. 

she tries very hard to be better. but at the same time she’s still,,, she does really shady shit sometimes i mean,,, she surgically removed her face and swapped it with yelena belovas,,, to give the woman a mental breakdown and convince her that shes natasha,,,,

soooooo here’s more about where i see her personality wise and where shes at in life rn:

if anyones read the 2019 Black Widow series, thats a pretty good indication of the kind of natasha romanoff i’ll be writing 

i listed her as cisfemale but ive always headcanoned that natasha would love the opportunity to explore gender in a more diverse way, ideally as a more genderfluid character, since she’s constantly had femininity shoved down her throat and was forced to weaponize it. but it’d take being around the right people and being in the right environment where she was comfortable to let down those walls. aka. might take a hella long time so it’s probably something i’ll explore with her in the future 

canonically natashas gone off to fight rebels in wars when she’s needed someplace to get out her black widow training and conditioning and murder impulse. i hc that she probably falls off the grid and goes to war every now and then to fight. it’s hard to have a family when she’s constantly fighting her conditioning and trying to repress her innate instincts to kill. between nat and maria, nat was,,, oddly enough probably the more absent parent of the two 

nat loves motorcycles. and guns. she also has a bad habit of stealing everyones clothes because she rarely wears anything of her own 

she has an issue with attachment. to the point she literally refused to admit she was adopting her cat, liho. but she’s started making an effort for maria and her family’s sake -- though she hates feeling like she has attachments to things/things that can be used against her. so she gets kind of. weird about it sometimes. 

no one knows about rose or her marriage save for a handful of people -- aka someone who had found out about it and blackmailed her with it. aka the daughter of the person who helped her deliver the baby on the battlefield. nat is also really weird with babies for this reason. 

my nat is an alcoholic. she’ll never admit it though. in the comics she drinks,,, every day. every time that she comes home from an assignment, she drinks. usually its wine but she’ll often go for harder stuff (typically russian stuff) when wine isn’t enough. 

it’s very rarely depicted in the comics (likely because she covers it up with sfx makeup) but nat has a red room tattoo on her left shoulder. she cant bring herself to remove it, because she wears her black widow name also like a badge of pride. she’s reclaimed everything that’s happened to her -- that tattoo is no different 

nat very rarely wears jackets. she doesnt need to. she got used to training in the bitter russian winter wearing next to nothing -- she’s very acclimated to the cold. 

she has flashbacks, particularly pregnancy related. also canon in the comics -- when she got injured in her stomach she had a ptsd episode of her stillbirth 

similar to my hc about her gender tho natasha hates bra shopping and hates bras in general. unless theyre sports bras. she finds them so uncomfortable and will only really wear them with the intention of seducing someone

i think the most important aspect of my nat tho is that she never does anything for just one reason. it could be the most simple action like. eating eggs for breakfast. but theres going to be a million and one explanations for why she specifically to eat x amount of eggs cooked x way on x day at x time for x meal. this is even more evident in relationships. sure, she does things out of the “goodness of her heart” but there’s always going to be ulterior (not necessarily malicious tho) motives to it, too. nothing is ever just. surface level with her. 

oh yeah shes also the worst person (or best depending on your perspective) person to bring to a party i mean,,, playing truth or dare? ur Fuckt. playing card games? look at that Poker Face n her ability to read people. playing board games? say hello to a master tactician who also happens to be a perfectionist overachiever and one of the most competitive ppl in the world thx

anyways thanks for reading all my rambles about my little murder baby aka the actual love of my life. i’ll probably remember more headcanons as time goes on. but thats all i can think of at the moment!! so yesss i cant wait to bring my murder baby to you to awkwardly and anti-socially love you all in her own way.  

[omgkalyppso]

@sevarix-writes I think my problem is the wiki and people treating headcanons like canon. Like even right now it says:

After giving birth to Byleth, she soon discovered that her child lacked a heartbeat. Out of concern for her child's life and already on death's door herself, she pleaded to Rhea to implant the Crest Stone of Flames into Byleth. Rhea obliged and the transplant was a success, but the removal led to her untimely death.

But what the hell is their source on this?

As far as I recall, the in-game wording is just that Rhea could only save one of the two of them and gave Sitri a choice, and not that Byleth was born without a heartbeat? Just that the doctor who checked Byleth at Jeralt's request (well after the birthing process) discovered that post-surgery that Byleth didn't have a heartbeat.

I will admit that I believed / headcanoned that Byleth's heart didn't beat because Sothis was dead, rather than because Byleth was stillborn.

Did Sitri's heart beat? If it did — why? If it didn't — why wouldn't Jeralt know this / why would Jeralt be surprised when Byleth's didn't????

[quasimyth-a]

cat

[quasimyth-a]

cynthia has trained personally with giratina and also regularly uses her giratina abilities to spar with her pokémon while training. she thinks that this makes her the strongest champion in the world. little does she know, i’m one day going to write a battle in which my wallace @hisvanity proves her wrong. >:333333

[unusual-ly]

My headcanons, mostly covered across my fics:

early versions of the Z-band were developed in the years after the outbreak, the first being a shock collar

the “zombies” are not really zombies but mutants. They appear dead and certain systems/functions in their bodies fail e.g. extremely decreased heart rate (which is the main function of the Z-band, to replace the need for a heart beat). The mutant theory is widely accepted as fanon

I don’t really know how to describe the state I think zombies are born in. Something similar to stillborn but they aren’t actually dead. They’re heart rate is at the lowest it could possibly be and they “wake up” once their Z-band is put on. I wrote a scene describing the process in my fic Something He Said. Still need to figure out what happens when a baby is born and not issued a band

the zombies age normally, with or without Z-bands

the fear of fire is instinctive, and gets worse without a Z-band as they’re in a feral state because the mutation essentially resets the brain to basic instincts

I slip stuff about zombism and zombie biology throughout all my fics. Heartbeats, muscle elasticity, removable limbs, Z-band functions, zombie healing, the need for zombie foods, dulled senses (tho that one’s based on Word Of God canon from the production designer’s website, he said things like light gardens come from zombies craving for sensory input) etc etc

No idea about racial segregation between humans in the ZOMBIES ‘verse :/ I’m stumped there

Things about the Zombies-verse I probably shouldn’t think about because it’s a DCOM but I do anyway:

If the Zombies universe is our universe but with the supernatural elements, what happened to real life racial segregation 

how do zombies have kids? before the z-band, they would have just been regular zombies, shuffling around and focused on their next meal.

how dead are the zombies? how can a zombie child be born as an undead person if the definition of being undead is returning from the dead? are all zombie children born as stillborns and then come to life? 

how deeply does the z-band affect the brain and body? can they age, wearing the z-band? can they age without the z-band?

is the zombie fear of fire innate for their whole species, or is it generational trauma passed down from the early days of humans vs zombies?

literally everything about how zombie biology work

[quasimyth-a]

because she can manipulate probability, time, matter and the laws of the natural world among other things to a certain extent, cynthia used to be sought after to grant wishes. people flocked to her thinking she was some sort of miracle worker who could grant them anything they wanted, even hailing her as a vessel of arceus (oh, the irony) who could bend the universe to her will. and for a time, she did give them what they asked…

until the wishes became outrageous. some people would ask her to make their team the strongest in the world, or get revenge on people for the pettiest reasons, or make them the most attractive and smartest person on earth--that kind of shit. at first she just turned them down and sent them away, but after a while, she got an idea. when these assholes started forking over their cash, thinking she could be bribed into doing anything they wanted her to, she would take their money…and then find loopholes in their words to fuck them over. 

those who asked to be “the most beautiful” were indeed made the most beautiful…by garbodor standards. those who asked to have the strongest teams were given the strongest teams, but then they later turned on their masters and left them with permanent injuries. those seeking revenge on people who did nothing wrong soon found the consequences they attempted to impose imposed on them. people started having lawyers write their wishes in order to avoid this. she outwitted them all.

sometimes, bad people are stupid enough to say that they’d be willing to pay any cost in order to have their wish fulfilled--or stupid enough to let her write the magically binding contract in the language of the gods (to make it “more official”). as a result of this, she has owned the souls of dozens of people. she let most of them go because they learned their lesson, but it’s been decades for some of the people under her thumb and they’re still the same assholes that they were when they took her false deals. this means that when they die, they’re going straight to the distortion world, where they will further be trapped until they commit to changing and growing. it could be as short as a few months before they wake up, or it could be as long as an eternity. only time will tell.

why did she do this? because she was just so fed up with the ratio of shitty people asking for absolute BS to good people who just wanted a bit more in their lives to get by. simply turning away the people that she saw had wicked souls wasn’t getting them to stop, so she decided that by imposing consequences on the wicked, they would stop coming to her. the problem is, bad people are usually completely unaware that they are bad, so that didn’t work either. eventually she just got so goddamn tired of cursing people and stealing their souls that she just went “fuck it” and closed up shop. to this day she refuses to grant wishes, no matter how much the wisher might need it.

[quasimyth-a]

cynthia, unlike so many of my other muses, is not a child prodigy. this is really important to me because i’ve played so many child prodigies that it’s getting kind of old, especially since those muses are the ones that are more like myself. in fact, she used to struggle as a trainer when she was a little kid, to the point that her brother cyrus would subtly look down on her for still being stuck on like her third or fourth badge when he had already finished all eight. she and her brother had the same problem: their lack of emotions hampered their connection with their pokémon. but her brother, unlike her, had the aura of a god that drew pokémon toward him--and unlike her, he had mind control. so unlike her he could overcome this weakness of his without actually addressing it.

honest to god, she’s a late bloomer. her pokémon journey was more of a research journey than anything else. she didn’t fully get the hang of battling until she was like twenty and even that got interrupted by the fact that she found out all her pokémon all supported team galactic, which back then she saw as an unforgivable betrayal. (if you went back in time and told twenty-year-old cynthia she’d eventually forgive them, she wouldn’t believe you.) what really didn’t help was that her strategic acumen was much stronger than her ability to lead a team, so even once she excelled at the core of battling, her team was still kind of a mess--especially in double battles. 

getting the cold shoulder from giratina when she went to the distortion world was what caused her to question her own behavior and become a better trainer. she became aware that she was treating her own pokémon like how giratina treated her, esp. after she became giratina’s vessel. like giratina with her, she tried to care about her pokémon, but her general apathy still shone through, and she realized that if she were ever to become a better trainer she would have to work through that. 

in the past, she envied those like wallace who had things come naturally to them ever since they were kids. but nowadays, she 1) knows that even for child prodigies shit isn’t easy at all, and 2) recognizes the value of having to work your way up on nothing but blood, tears, toil and sweat.

[quasimyth-a]

Giratina is probably one of the most hands-off deities that you could be a Vessel of. People think they’d be super controlling but honestly they don’t give a fuck—if anyone’s controlling, it’s Arceus. Legit when Giratina made Cynthia their spokesperson she was asking them about limitations like no sex, can’t eat certain foods, can only wear certain clothes and Giratina was like No, no, no, there’s no limits, you can do whatever you want. You can have sex in any way you like with anyone you like. You can shoot up every night and get drunk every morning. You can eat humans for lunch and walk around your backyard naked every day if you’re so inclined. As long as what you do doesn’t interfere with delivering my messages, you can do it.

[quasimyth-a]

if cynthia asks for you to “give” her your name and extends a hand to you while saying it, RUN FOR THE GOD DAMN HILLS. SHE IS TRYING TO CONTROL YOU. giving her your name when she asks for it in that specific way will literally give her your name, thereby putting you under her control. she does this usually with members of team galactic or other criminal organizations to get them to spill all their information (and to make sure they stay in jail if guilty). but she’s also done it to those she suspects of crimes so that she can ascertain the truth about whether they’ve done it or not. she avoids doing this in western countries where people are well-versed in the lore that you never hand over your name to anyone (and because they’re also aware that taking someone’s name to read their mind for criminal justice purposes is a human rights violation). but in east asian nations, where there are no such superstitions, nobody knows a goddamn thing and she can do as she pleases.

[quasimyth-a]

on cynthia’s relationship with giratina.

as much as she would like to think that giratina is her friend, things are more complicated. as a child she gravitated toward the great wyrm because she didn’t have any friends in the real world and even though she thought she was perfectly happy with no friends, she instinctively sought out that sort of connection. for a few years she thought they could be her friend. she now knows better.

the truth is, giratina is much more like an ally or employer than a real, genuine friend. giratina gives practical advice and shares many universal secrets with her…but they’re not very good at being there for her when she wants to vent or helping her emotionally. they’re extremely low empathy and have a hard time processing others’ pain, much less dealing with it in a way that is helpful. every time she tried to ask for help, they usually gave very blunt, unempathic and unhelpful advice--just the sort of advice one would expect from an ageless chaos god who doesn’t give a shit about humans.

they obviously trust her and respect her intellect a great deal because they chose her as their spokesperson, and they share secrets about the multiverse with her that they have never told anyone else. but that love is not a love between equals--it is the love of a superior for their subordinate. though cynthia knows she has more leeway in terms of how she acts toward giratina than other humans (especially re: standing up to them), she knows that she serves and retains her power at the master’s pleasure. if she crosses them in a significant way, she loses her vesselship as well as access to giratina’s vast and multiversal knowledge. she isn’t always happy with how she’s treated, but she’s quite hesitant to rock the boat.

there are many toxic behaviors that she modeled from giratina that she had to unlearn, and some of which she still repeats. namely, she had to unlearn their lack of empathy for living things--giratina is completely indifferent to the desires and emotions of the living, and cynthia learned very quickly in the real world that that sort of behavior didn’t fly. another behavior that she had to unlearn (and is still struggling with) is seeing nondivine beings as inferior. cynthia isn’t fully divine herself, but she does have semidivinity and she used to think she was better than everyone else because of it. she also learned a lot of manipulative behavior from giratina--especially with regards to getting people to serve her agenda or do things against their will, which @sinnohsavior‘s dawn has experienced firsthand. lastly, she learned the notion that hurting someone emotionally or leaving psychological scars “isn’t all that bad”…because after all, what are feelings to a being like giratina who has almost none? what are a few decades of human suffering from trauma to a being that lives billions of years? she has definitely hurt a lot of people because of this, and those people have grudges against her.

i would love a plot where one of those people went on to become a league member themselves.