Monstrous sons and their mothers who started a war in their name.

Visenya Targaryen and baby Maegor / @orlaite2, House of the Dragon, The Girl with No Shadow / Joanne Harris, Dune Part Two / Denis Villeneuve

Yknow. I do forsee a potential plot point for Netflix-levania to somehow have Dracula as a villain back, even with the end of the previous series. Obligation. He's no longer the weary widower, and with Lisa's return there's closure. He's lived as a man. He understands man. He may not even hate man. Maybe.

And yet he's back because the other Vampires are fucking it up and now daddy's home to bring back order. He's no longer gunning for genocide, but honestly, the politicking of the vampires who are so far up their own asses, they need to be reminded who's really in charge. His death left a power vacuum, a particularly annoying vacuum. Maybe the little things of humanity irk him, but vampires are everything they have but turned up to 11.

So at the end it's a formality. He'll come back, clean things up among vampire society, make enough of a mess to get a Belmont to kill him, then turn in for another 100 years.

Does this make him too noble? Probably. If you want the grandiose "What is a man" Dracula, you can extrapolate from "It's an obligation" and have him actively resent people pulling him out of the afterlife from Lisa so fucking much, that he leans too hard into the role. The part of him who's evil out of obligation and the part who's evil out of resentment begin to blur the lines. Is he the lord of darkness because that's the role he's been cast and is simply going through the motions or his he just so simply done with the whole process that he refuses to give up an inch of power to any other Vampire (or human) because they're all just children in his eyes?

It could still ultimately culminate in a Soma Cruz plot line where after 1999 he quits so hard that he refuses to even return to the role properly but it doesn't matter because his mere presence fills the vacuum, even when he does nothing (not for the lack of trying from others).

Maybe that's a bit petulant in its own right. YMMV, but I think that's the point. For being such an archetypal lord of all evil villains, how he fills it is shockingly dynamic. He's evil for evils sake, a beacon of arrogance, or a truly tragic villain. Depends on what's needed. If he does come back, I do want to really see a "Castlevania does Bram Stoker's Dracula. Genuinely. It's just an adaptation for the original novel because that's Canon to the original Castlevania timeline, and it'd be funny to properly reveal that Quincy Morris is a Belmont (And his son fights WW1 vampires and grandson WW2)."

@cultidol

Hi

I live

School ends soon so more free time (to sleep lol)

These are all the rainbow shapes! Minus the white one thas a secret

Dove isnt there too because thas you :)

Starting Over.

I started using Tumblr a million years ago when I had no idea how to use social media or build a brand or a following or anything.

I eventually jumped ship, and now I can't get back into my old one, so here we are.

Clean slate.

It's appropriate. My sister passed recently and that radical, awful, painful change has transformed my relationship with my art & writing, media, work, life...

So I build again.

The next few months I will work on getting the extant Wolfeater X HawkStar stuff up.

I've been doing a page-a-day (weekdays only) since Dec 25 2021, and while a few setbacks, hospitalization, my sisters death, and the like, have broken the cycle a few times, I have generated a ton of pages.

The next step is to compile and edit for a digital release to make them properly readable. My current audience is all over on FaceMetaDumpsterFire and I am ready to walk away. I know at least a few of my fav people over there are ready to rejoin the Tumblr Renaissance as well, so hopefully this won't be too lonely for too long.

So stick around.

Stories both true and ridiculous are forthcoming. Often with pretty pictures. Probably more often with strange and uncanny pictures. As is my vibe.

The fiction is my mirror dream realm. The Memoir my waking hell. (and of late bountiful purgatory, though I have not yet written those chapters. Perhaps here I shall.)

It's all connected.

I am the World Walker.

I can belong anywhere but I am of no place.

I am the 🧙👑🤣 (Witch King of Mirth).

It's up to you to decide whether I am a clown or a bender of reality.

Art credits to myself, Kateryna Paramonova and Dasha Paramonova

New tab (bandcamp.com)

Religion's Political Grip: Faith or Control?

Do You Worship God or the System? Exploring Religion’s Political Grip. The Blurry Line between Faith and Power.  Are you kneeling to a hidden system built to control instead of a higher power? Are you worshiping God or the system? The line blurs when religion and politics are entangled. Imagine two colossal gears, one representing the divine and the other the machinery of government. Continue…

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What are some underrated horror films? I have watched all the popular ones and need more! Thanks!

mentally prepare yourself because im ready to give a gumbo list (this has been sitting in my inbox because i had to ask all my friends and this is the list we came up with):

curse of the demon (1957) the serpent and the rainbow (1988) paranoiac (1963) the old dark house (1932) countess dracula (1971) golem (1920) haxan (1968) island of lost souls (1932) mad love (1935) mill of the stone women (1960) the walking dead (1936) the ghoul (1933) tourist trap (1979) the seventh victim (1943) ganja & hess (1973) dead of night (1945) a bay of blood (1971) let's scare jessica to death (1971) alice sweet alice (1976) the deadly spawn (1983) the brain that wouldn't die (1962) all about evil (2010) black roses (1988) the baby (1973) parents (1989) a blade in the dark (1983) blood lake (1987) solo survivor (1984) lemora: a child's tale of supernatural (1973) eyes of fire (1983) epitaph (2007) nightmare city (1980) slugs (1988) death smiles on a murderer (1973) intruder (1989) short night of glass dolls (1971) the children (2008) alone in the dark (1982) end of the line (2007) the queen of spades (1949) the housemaid (1960) tormented (1960) captain clegg (1962) the long hair of death (1964) dark age (1987) the crawling eye (1958) the kindred (1987) the gorgon (1964) wicked city (1987) baba yaga (1973) 976-evil (1988) bliss (2019) decoder (1984) amer (2009) the visitor (1979) day of the animals (1977) leptirica (1973) planet of the vampires (1965) lips of blood (1975) berberian sound studio (2012) a wounded fawn (2022) matango (1963) the mansion of madness (1973) the killing kind (1973) symptoms (1974) morgiana (1972) whispering corridors (1998) dead end (2003) infested (2023) (this just came out but im adding it) triangle (2009) the premonition (1976) you'll like my mother (1972) the mafu cage (1978) white of the eye (1987) mister designer (1987) alison's birthday (1981) the suckling (1990) graveyard shift (1987) messiah of evil (1987) out of the dark (1988) seven footprints to satan (1929) burn witch burn (1962) the damned (1962) pin (1988) horrors of malformed men (1969) mr vampire (1985) the vampire doll (1970) contracted (2013) impetigore (2019) eyeball (1975) malatestas carnival of blood (1973) the witch who came from the sea (1976) i drink your blood (1970) nothing underneath (1985) sauna (2008) seance (2000) come true (2020) the last winter (2006) night tide (1961) the brain (1988) dementia (1955) don't go to sleep (1982) otogirisou (2001) reincarnation (2005) mutant (1984) spookies (1986) shock waves (1977) bloody hell (2020) the den (2013) wer (2013) olivia (1983) enigma (1987) graverobbers (1988) manhattan baby (1982) evil in the woods (1986) death bed: the bed that eats (1977) cathy's curse (1977) creatures from the abyss (1994) the dorm that dripped blood (1982) the witching (1993) madman (1981) vampire's embrace (1991) blood beat (1983) the alien factor (1978) savage weekend (1979) blood sisters (1987) deadly love (1987) playroom (1990) die screaming marianne (1971) pledge night (1990) night train to terror (1985) the devonsville terror (1983) ghostkeeper (1981) special effects (1984) blood feast (163) the child (1977) godmonster of indian flats (1973) blood rage (1980) the unborn (1991) screamtime (1983) the outing (1987) the being (1983) silent madness (1984) lurkers (1988) forver evil (1987) squirm (1976) death screams (1982) jack-o (1995) haunts (1976) a night to dismember (1983) creaturealm: demons wake (1998) the curse (1987) daddy's deadly darling (1973) nightwing (1979) the laughing dead (1989) the severed arm (1973) the orphan (1979) not like us (1995) prime evil (1988) the monstrosity (1987) dark ride (2006) antibirth (2016) iced (1988) the soultangler (1987) twisted nightmare (1987) puffball (2007) biohazard (1985) cameron's closet (1988) beast from haunted cave (1959) the she-creature (1956)

lottienat is interesting to me bc there is a level of bitterness that comes from betrayal to them. Natalie seems to feel betrayed by Lottie and Lottie’s faith and that makes me think that there was something else between them before the crash.

Maybe nat just respected Lottie a lot (it seems like that in the pilot) but I think that they probably had some sense of camaraderie and understanding before and some closeness that Lottie’s “witch messiah” shit (as nat puts it) destroys it in nats mind.

But the interesting part to me is that Lottie still trusts nat (last scene at the cabin) she craves to be understood by her again in a way, to not be lonely.

Jessica and atreides!reader angst? (Mother and daughter angst then yn slowly turns into evil which jessica slowly realise the pattern was repeating)

Metamorphosis

Lady Jessica x Daughter!reader

(Not beta read, we die like Feyd-Rautha)

author's note: If you guys can't tell I really like writing angst. This is also the longest thing I've written so far :). Also trying a new formatting type.

warnings: mentions of death, mommy issues, mentions of blood, mentions of Paul after drinking the water of life

wc: 1145

Lady Jessica did her job halfway right. To ensure she completed her Bene Gesserit mission, gave birth to twins. A boy named Paul and a girl named (Y/N). While the loophole was clever, the Bene Gesserit could not use the daughter she had given birth to. They said she had tainted her womb while bearing a son. 

Her father, the Duke Leto Atreides, was the only one who actually taught her important things. When she was little she would sit in a stool pulled up near her fathers desk and watch him go through paperwork and meeting notes. While he trained his son to become duke, he trained his daughter what to do in case something happened to Paul. He didn’t brush her off. 

Lady Jessica focused most of her time on Paul. His training, his skills, and his talent. While (Y/N) was taught how to use the Bene Gesserit ways by other members and not her mother. While those tutors did their job well, and she was learning quite a lot, (Y/N) found that her brother, a male, was progressing much faster than her. She was proud of her brother. It wasn’t her brother’s fault, it was her mother’s. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A younger (Y/N) and Paul sat on the damp grass on Caladan on a breezy afternoon. They watched the sun lower into the sky and begin to graze where the horizon met the sea. (Y/N) took small daisies from the ground and started to make a flower crown out of them. 

“You know Paul, if you continue to improve at this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if you were better than our mother.” (Y/N) praised as she continued to pick and tie other flowers together. 

“No, no, no,” her brother replied modestly, “what she is teaching me is all of what she knows. Sooner or later I’ll plateau.” 

“You never know,” (Y/N) chuckled, cheekily, “Maybe one day she’ll go to you for advice.”

When (Y/N) finished the thin crown, she placed it onto Paul's head.

“There,” she said, “I now dubbed thy, Duke Paul Atreides of Caladan. Who will be an excellent and fair ruler.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The only thing that (Y/N) had against Paul, was that her ability to use the voice was much better than his. Paul sounded like a dying horse and (Y/N) could command hundreds of people with her voice. (Y/N) found incredible joy from this. But this fact scared Lady Jessica. 

Lady Jessica was afraid of the power her daughter held. She knew of her hatred against her brother who took most of the time spent learning. Of course this all wouldn’t matter when the Duke died and they lived in the desert with the Fremen. Until Paul had a war forged in his name and (Y/N) had nothing but her brain. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Y/N) was standing in front of the giant pool of water, watching her reflection rippled and ebbed. As she stood there, she imagined a war that was fought in her name instead of Paul’s. Tons of water, from people who died while waiting for the ‘Lisan Al-Giab’ If this was my war, no one would die. She thought. After a couple of minutes a Fremen woman came by and poured the water of another warrior. If my mother and her witches hadn’t meddled, we wouldn’t have this mess. She stood there for hours, hours past when the sun went down, pondering her existence and her brother’s willingness to say he was the messiah. 

“Are you going to keep looking at your reflection or are you coming to bed?” She heard her mother say. 

“Does it matter if I stay up late? I’ve nothing to do on Arrakis.” (Y/N) responded, sounding completely uninterested in talking to her mother. 

“It does matter, you need sleep in order to thrive.” Lady Jessica declared. 

“Don’t try acting like you care now,” her daughter bit back, coldly, “don’t try acting like a caring mother. Go spread more rumors about Paul.” she sighed out. 

“They aren’t rumors, (Y/N),” She retorted, “It’s what he’s going to do. You and everyone else here realizes who he is and his potential. You need to help Paul.” 

(Y/N) bundled her hands into fists at her sides. Her knuckles popped at how hard she was squeezing them. Your son has changed far beyond what was expected. she thought, you barely recognize him anymore. 

“Would me dying for your cause be sufficient?” (Y/N) uttered under her breath as she continued to look at her reflection, “Should I stand out there and be a martyr? The loving sister of the Kwisatz Haderach…” 

Lady Jessica breathed in sharply and said nothing in return. She took her hands and put them over her stomach where her other child was. 

(Y/N) turned around to look at her mother, “You agree don’t you?’ she assumed.

Still, the Lady said nothing and just looked at her daughter. She met her daughter's eyes. The blue within blue encased her small pupils and her skin looking paler and deeper set than when they had left Arrakis. 

“Why aren’t you speaking?” Her daughter whispered, “Tell me what you think!”

“I think you as a martyr would do as much damage as if you were alive,” She voiced, “your death would be mourned. But, it would not change anything.” 

The sudden use of the voice surprised and startled Lady Jessica, “You imbecile, you using the Voice on your own mother.” 

“You didn’t seem to mind when Paul used it on your old reverend mother,” (Y/N) stated, “Paul and I did the same thing, use the Voice on a reverend mother.”

“You used it on your mother. Paul seized the moment so he could speak.”

“You were never a mother.” (Y/N) asserted, “you were a housemate, an incubator 

at best.” 

This stunned the reverend mother. She had never heard her daughter speak so unrighteously and sternly. It was almost like she had never really known her. The (Y/N) she knew, the sweet girl who collected wildflowers that had grown on the cliff sides, had died when they landed on Arrakis and was replaced by someone cold and quiet. 

“I’ll help my brother.” (Y/N) expressed as she moved closer to her mother, “I’ll do as he says. No matter how much you go against it. It doesn’t matter if he asks me to burn temples or castles, or even destroy planets. As long as I don’t have to follow you.” 

As she concluded her announcement, she turned to hastily walk out of the dark, humid cavern. 

Leaving Lady Jessica on her own; to see what had become of her daughter who would burn down the world if given the chance and her son who slipped unnecessary blood in the name of war. 

this line in the description for Yellowjackets really gets to me. "25 years later, they discover that what began in the wild is far from over." time and time again im just struck by how effective this show is at saying exactly what it feels like to go through life as a woman. you still have this girl inside you who is wild and childish and scared. she doesn't know how to move her body she doesn't know how to ask for what she wants she's a freak she's an idol she's a mess she's a messiah she's a witch and a wicked little beast she's the best friend a girl could have. but it's time to be an Adult Woman now! congratulations, you're out of the woods! we know that was confusing and traumatic for you but rest assured thats all done. maybe you'll have a husband and a teenager of your own maybe you'll be a politician maybe you're going to run a mlm. it doesnt matter, just make sure you're unrecognizable from the wild animal you were. you're supposed to be unrecognizable. you're supposed to have it together, you're supposed to be boring. strawberry lube is for bisexuals and goths. and teenagers. Please be more boring. this Whole Thing this whole charade of adulthood doesn't work if you don't keep it together. grow up! so you do. for a while it sticks. your family is doing fine, your career is doing fine, your meds are working fine, maybe you've been to a few rehabs but this last one was going fine. and 25 years later you look around at the not-real life you're supposed to want to be a part of, the one you put together exactly as per the instructions, and you realize... it doesnt end. you aren't out of the woods you're just stranded in a different part of them. you probably have another 25 years to go, minimum. "I think shit is gonna get a lot worse out here." your life is far from over but you can't keep living it like this. numbing yourself with substances to make it tolerable, or going full speed ahead toward something you don't even really want just to prove you're Doing It you're Assimilating, or feeling insane for still being haunted by 'ancient' history that really didn't happen that long ago, or cooking a fucking meatloaf for the husband that doesn't get you and the daughter that doesn't want to. if you're going to survive the monotony of adulthood the way you survived the chaos of adolescence, you're going to have to get wild again. you're going to have to go back. because the wilderness can be terrifying with its harsh elements its cruel indifference its lurking predators and blah blah blah but do you want to know what's even scarier? that endless stretch in all directions of sameness. stump, tree, stream, moss. stump, tree, stream, moss. have we passed this way already, have we taken this route before? tree tree tree tree tree for miles and miles and miles. that is the wild, too. unending. repetitive. barren. where it ends, so do you. it lasts your whole life, and it's far from over. you've got to find a way to survive it. again.

Somehow I have made it this long without realizing that none of the screen adoptions of Dune so much as mention the Butlerian Jihad. Like I guess it's burned into my brain so hard I sort of assumed it was part and parcel of the universe. Don't get me wrong, I think that's probably the first thing you learn if you want to dive deeper into the setting, but it still hits me like if the LotR movies showed us the big flaming eyeball tower and was like ‘Oh, that's why there are bad things, but don't worry, that's just background stuff.’ Yeah, you can understand the movie, but if the story is just like Frodo vs. The Witch King you are losing out on any of the conversation about the corruptive allure of power or theological undertones. So without further ado let's pretend this is for the benefit of interested new fans roped in by the movies and not part of my desperate attempt to silence the howling specters of literary analysis that live in my blood.

The Butlerian Jihad is an event set ~10k years prior to the events of Dune in which humanity won their freedom from the machines that they had enslaved themselves to. As a result, it is a religious taboo to create a machine that thinks like a human. That's frankly the bulk of the information presented by Frank Herbert in the text without dipping into books 7+, but whether or not those are canon is frankly an enormous can of worms, which really makes sense when you consider the size of the worms. But boy howdy, Frank loved his subtext and parallelism. Everyone has a foil character, every theme is hit from multiple angles, and Villinueve has been doing an excellent job of capturing a lot of that in repeated imagery and dialogue. The Butlerian Jihad happens off camera, but it's themes are absolutely critical to the big picture.

The Butlerian Jihad was a holy war. It was not merely a rebellion against the machines, it was a crusade against them. The prohibition against thinking machines isn't just a law, it's in the pan-universal Bible. Absolute psychopath Pieter DeVries himself claps back at the Baron for insinuating he might have a use for a computer, and this is a guy who has been hired specifically for his preternatural absence of morals. Let's hold onto that idea for a minute. 

Probably my favorite scene in the first book is the one where planetologist Liet-Kynes is dying out in the desert. As the last of his strength fades to dehydration he hallucinates conversations he had with his father concerning terraforming Arakkis for human habitability. He's told that the means are not complicated. There is already enough water on the planet, the Little Makers just have it all trapped deep underground as part of the sandworm reproductive cycle. You just need to isolate enough water to start irrigating plant life, and once it's established that'll keep the water on the surface on its own. The hard part is making sure everyone on the planet is environmentally conscious enough to foster a developing ecosystem. Nobody can drink any of that water while it's being collected, because they'll just introduce it back into the water cycle where the Little Makers are. It's going to take generations, so that sort of water discipline is going to have to go above and beyond a social convention. People need to be willing to die before they'll take a sip and compromise the plan. Ghost Dad Kynes concludes that the only mechanism in the human experience to enforce this consensus is religion. 

In the context of this whole parallelism thing, you have probably noticed that the Butlerian Jihad is not the only holy war in the narrative. Paul sees a new jihad as the only way of creating a future where humans can flourish. Now you might be saying ‘Wait now, Machines. I thought the point of Paul’s holy war was to avenge Leto and disempower established power structures by taking away the control of the spice!’ And you’d be right. The thing is, without getting into spoiler territory, Dune Messiah is not going to be about how everything just gets so much better now that Paul has destroyed the economy, government, and untold billions of human lives. This isn’t the endgame. Dude can see the future and the way he does it involves looking into the past. Paul lives in a society defined by a holy war and his goal is to redefine society. 

Putting it all together you can see what I mean about the Butlerian Jihad being essential to the themes even though the story never shows us a thinking machine or a narrative beat where the absence of computers changes the outcome. It helps us see the big picture. I’ve seen a lot of dialogue lately on whether Paul is a tragic hero or a consummate villain and I’m not here to answer that, but I am here to underline the critical detail. Paul intends to be seen as a tyrant. Just like Kynes’ hallucination says, religion is the lever to make a value stick around forever. He wants to traumatize humanity to hate chosen ones and emperors the same way the machines traumatized humanity to change them forever. The Water of Life ritual doesn’t invert his values, it lets him realize these visions of war are the means, not the ends. He is absolutely not happy about it, but this is Paul’s terrible purpose. 

penny for your thoughts?

we talk about lily’s characterization as the “perfect” wife/daughter/mother but i think it might be more worthwhile to accept & interrogate this aspect of canon than to flatten her in the opposite direction in pursuit of making her unpalatable

i think we’ve all been idealized by someone else at some point and then hurt when knocked off that pedestal. lily is interesting to me because her entire life has been that experience, from every direction. it’s difficult & emotionally resonant when you realize someone sees you as more of an idea than a person because you want to go “i’m just a regular girl!!” but what gets me about lily is that like…. she isn’t.

i think she’s been treated like this her entire life (“please, i’m just a regular girl”) and then one day she discovers she’s Actually Magic. and she’s not just magic, but she’s The Brightest Witch Of Her Age. and she’s not just that, but capable of turning her son into a messiah just out of some nebulous inherent quality of her love? lily’s experience is unique because it’s like her life itself is the one trying to shove her on that pedestal, and the other characters reactions to her are just symptomatic

it’s this^ but i prefer the idea of a character fighting to be a person when it’s the narrative itself stopping her. i don’t think lily knows what being a regular girl looks like no matter how convinced she is. she’s doing her best approximation of one. and i think this makes her a sort of aberration

Paul Muadib Usul Atreides being a fairy princess is such a joy though Our boy has the voice of a siren, his granddad is a ruthless evil king, his father died nobly and heroically, his mother is a witch he has the long lashes, bone structure, and curly hair of a young Greek god he has visions all day every day he's supposed to be a religious messiah but he's like "nah I'd rather work as a guerilla striker :DD" he cries at the thought of being a religious messiah he speaks to the dead speaks to possibly evil ghosts speaks to unborn children ooo he gets a massive murderous animal sidekick he talks to jewelry he knows if he drinks religious juice poison he'll die but by now he's pretty confident he's that messiah everyone's so excited abt so he drinks it anyways and promptly goes into a coma from which only true love's kiss may wake him oh oh hell, time to add yet another nickel to my pile of comatose men we're at two quarters by now