This portrait hides an story from our imagination

[GoddamnHero]

Today, I come with this art from Rebecca Guay, artist that haves a lot of works, some of them to the Wizards of the Coast, that makes Magic The Gathering cards. This one is from a card called Path to Exile. But that's not what it really matters, what matters is:

What story do your imagination think when you see that portrait?

[JennyDK]

Fairly simple idea that springs to mind:

A mother who had a son who went to war. Unfortunately, he did not make it through and was deadly injured in battle. His body was afterwards brought home and according to tradition, his corpse was sent out to sea, to the afterlife.

[ThatLewdCat]

How about this... What if I tell you that its in fact a sci-fi picture? Or rather... A lil weird sci-fi themed idea came to my mind!

Long green fingers were flipping through pages of a primitive paper book while the universal translator device scanned the printed writings on them. Researcher Katarau of the Oktanti Xeno-Exploration Institute spent several hours on scanning and cataloguing books that her crew found in that ruined building that seemingly served as a book storage. Or possibly a library? Nah, too disorganized... Unless “they” had different sorting and storage methods than the Oktanti, which is possible.

According to the dates at the first page, this one was printed around the last century before the Extinction. A catastrophic planet-wide nuclear self-annihilation of a whole species who called themselves Homo Sapiens, Humans of Planet Earth.

What happened? Oh, that is already known for sure from other sources. Males of this species rebelled, started an uprising to overthrow the dominating rulers - females of this species. Many last writings of these “rebels” were found in shape of unsent dead-man’s letters, manifestos and simply notes to each other. They claimed to be sick and tired of being pushed around, controlled and humiliated for being... Well, men. All their writings share the same idea - “the dark ages of misandry should come to an end”. Looks like that didn’t end well for anybody, considering how most of the planet is now a radioactive wasteland. And not a single Human around to tell the tale about it.

Katarau stopped the book scanning process all of a sudden as her big red eyes saw that one of the pages did not have text in it, but a picture instead. This pulled the researcher out of her deep thinking and got her curious. With the help of her friendly AI and the ever-expanding database (she’s not the only researcher who does this!), Katarau managed to actually learn a bit more about the book she held in her hands. One of many examples of “rewritten fiction” - plenty of those from around the same years this book was published.

This one in particular... Book of fairytales. A “new age” version of a human classic... “The sleeping beauty”. A reversed and highly altered version of the original. It’s the man who is locked in a magical eternal sleep. And it’s a strong, heroic woman who comes and saves him from it. Only to “adopt” him i to her harem of men, one among many under her heel and on a leash.

And it’s not the only piece of fiction that was entirely flipped around during those years... Good thing the Oktanti researchers managed to find a barely intact primitive data storage with some human male’s work of comparing and preserving the originals - like if he predicted such devastating events and hoped for someone to actually learn the truth behind the disaster. Not to repeat the same mistakes. Not to give any one gender too much power over the other to a point of slavery, humiliation and abuse.
 

I surely hope that it wont come to this in our real world, even though... there is a certain super-strong feministic trend in the last few years...

Edited January 31, 2021 by ThatLewdCat