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Fan Works
The Hunter was steeped in the abyss... a cold, terrifying abyss that swallowed everything. He was no longer human because he had willingly thrown that away for reasons she did not want to speculate.
She was certainly not sleeping that night.
She was certainly not sleeping that night.
Film
Sam: What are they?
Strider: They were once Men. Great kings of Men. Then Sauron the Deceiver gave to them nine Rings of power. Blinded by their greed, they took them without question, one by one falling into darkness. Now they are slaves to his will. They are the Nazgul, Ringwraiths, neither living nor dead. At all times they feel the presence of the Ring, drawn to the power of the One. They will never stop hunting you.
Strider: They were once Men. Great kings of Men. Then Sauron the Deceiver gave to them nine Rings of power. Blinded by their greed, they took them without question, one by one falling into darkness. Now they are slaves to his will. They are the Nazgul, Ringwraiths, neither living nor dead. At all times they feel the presence of the Ring, drawn to the power of the One. They will never stop hunting you.
"...And in that darkness, he surrendered himself completely to powers so evil and perverse, that as he emerged, no part of the human man that was Xerxes survived..."
— Queen Gorgo on the rebirth of Xerxes as God-King, 300: Rise of an Empire
Literature
The creature I had killed, the strange beast of the unfathomed cave, was, or had at one time been, a MAN!
— Final line, "The Beast in the Cave", H. P. Lovecraft
Dragon: Mannequin. Original name Alan Gramme. Tinker, originally went by the name Sphere. Specialty is in biomes, terraforming and ecosystems… or it was. He became newsworthy when he took on a project to build self sustaining biospheres on the moon. He had ideas on solving world hunger, and building aquatic cities near cities plagued by overcrowding. And he was putting it all into effect. Until—
Armsmaster: The Simurgh.
Dragon: His wife and children were killed in the attack, years of work ruined. Everything fell apart. He went mad. He cut himself off from the rest of the world. Literally sealed himself away.
Armsmaster: The Simurgh.
Dragon: His wife and children were killed in the attack, years of work ruined. Everything fell apart. He went mad. He cut himself off from the rest of the world. Literally sealed himself away.
— Dragon and Armsmaster discuss who Mannequin was, Worm
The police looked, but William was never seen again, and a new clown was added to the act of the Circus Caliban when it next appeared in a forest in a country far, far from this one. He was smaller than the rest, and seemed always to be looking into the laughing audience, searching for the parents that he still hoped would find him, but they never came.
And his teeth fell out and were replaced by sharp, white hooks that were kept hidden behind shields of plastic; and his nails decayed to hard yellow stumps at the end of soft, pale fingers. He grew tall and strong, until at last he forgot his name, and became only "Clown," and a great clown he was. His tongue grew like a snake's, and he tasted children with it as they laughed, for clowns are hungry and sad and envious of humanity.
And his teeth fell out and were replaced by sharp, white hooks that were kept hidden behind shields of plastic; and his nails decayed to hard yellow stumps at the end of soft, pale fingers. He grew tall and strong, until at last he forgot his name, and became only "Clown," and a great clown he was. His tongue grew like a snake's, and he tasted children with it as they laughed, for clowns are hungry and sad and envious of humanity.
— Some Children Wander By Mistake, by John Connolly
The old Thing in the ground had lived for five hundred years, and as long again had lain undead in his unhallowed grave. Above him, in the gloom of a glade beneath stirless, snow-laden trees, the tumbled stones and slabs of his tomb told something of his story, but only the Thing himself knew all of it. His name had been... but no, the Wamphyri have no names as such. His host's name, then, had been Thibor Ferenczy, and in the beginning Thibor had been a man. But had been almost a thousand years ago. The Thibor part of the Thing in the ground existed still, but changed, mutated, mingled and metamorphosed along with its vampire "guest". The two were one now, inseparably fused; but in dreams that spanned a millennium, still Thibor could return to his roots, go back to the immensely cruel past...
— Necroscope II: Wamphyri
"I began this account in the first year of my stewardship, in the first throes of my metamorphosis when I was still mostly human, even visibly so. The sandtrout skin which I accepted (and my father refused) and which gave me greatly amplified strength plus virtual immunity from conventional attack and aging — that skin still covered a form recognizably human: two legs, two arms, a human face framed in the scrolled folds of the sandtrout.
Ahhh, that face! I still have it — the only human skin I expose to the universe. All the rest of my flesh has remained covered by the linked bodies of those tiny deep sand vectors which one day can become giant sand-worms. As they will... someday. I often think about my final metamorphosis, that likeness of death. I know the way it must come, but I do not know the moment or the other players. This is the one thing I cannot know. I only know whether the Golden Path continues or ends. As I cause these words to be recorded, the Golden Path continues, and for that, at least, I am content.
I no longer feel the sandtrout cilia probing my flesh, encapsulating the water of my body within their placental barriers. We are virtually one body now, they my skin and I the force which moves the whole... most of the time."
Ahhh, that face! I still have it — the only human skin I expose to the universe. All the rest of my flesh has remained covered by the linked bodies of those tiny deep sand vectors which one day can become giant sand-worms. As they will... someday. I often think about my final metamorphosis, that likeness of death. I know the way it must come, but I do not know the moment or the other players. This is the one thing I cannot know. I only know whether the Golden Path continues or ends. As I cause these words to be recorded, the Golden Path continues, and for that, at least, I am content.
I no longer feel the sandtrout cilia probing my flesh, encapsulating the water of my body within their placental barriers. We are virtually one body now, they my skin and I the force which moves the whole... most of the time."
— Leto Atreides II, God-Emperor of Dune
"Too fiercely did the lust for that dreadful knowledge burn within her and twice more she transformed into insect forms. Then on the third and last time, her powers failed her and she became a monstrous hybrid terror — part wasp, part spider.
The other werlings ran to her aid, calling out the unlocking passwords, but they were useless, for the frightful shape that Agnilla had assumed was entirely new, and over it these ancient charms had no control. Desperately they implored her to wergle back, but the previous transformations had afflicted Agnilla without her realizing. Each time her mind had suffered and now it was too late. Agnilla Hellekin no longer existed. Her mind and will had fallen into that of the nightmare she had become, and so the greatest of our kind was lost.
When the werlings realized there was no hope of her redemption, they were forced to drive the vile creature from the wood and out over the Hagburn. There, in the deep forest beyond the holly fence, she made her awful abode and it is said by some that she dwells there still: Frighty Aggie."
The other werlings ran to her aid, calling out the unlocking passwords, but they were useless, for the frightful shape that Agnilla had assumed was entirely new, and over it these ancient charms had no control. Desperately they implored her to wergle back, but the previous transformations had afflicted Agnilla without her realizing. Each time her mind had suffered and now it was too late. Agnilla Hellekin no longer existed. Her mind and will had fallen into that of the nightmare she had become, and so the greatest of our kind was lost.
When the werlings realized there was no hope of her redemption, they were forced to drive the vile creature from the wood and out over the Hagburn. There, in the deep forest beyond the holly fence, she made her awful abode and it is said by some that she dwells there still: Frighty Aggie."
— Finnen Lufkin, Thorn Ogres Of Hagwood
Agnieszka: If I'd kept going, would it have — made one of those things?
Alosha: Made you into one, I imagine. We had an apprentice go missing five years ago, the same day a hydra crawled up out of the palace sewers and attacked the castle: we thought it had eaten him. We had better take poor Georg's head off the wall in the parade-room.
Alosha: Made you into one, I imagine. We had an apprentice go missing five years ago, the same day a hydra crawled up out of the palace sewers and attacked the castle: we thought it had eaten him. We had better take poor Georg's head off the wall in the parade-room.
— Uprooted
"What happened? Why, I got what I wanted. I went to Fillory and I never came back! I wasn't going to go back to Earth after I'd seen Fillory. I mean, you can't show a man paradise and then snatch it back again. That's what gods do. But I say: down with gods. It's amazing what you can accomplish if you put your mind to it. I made some very interesting friends in the Darkling Woods. Very helpful chaps. Mind you, the kinds of things you have to do to work that kind of magic — well, your humanity is the first thing to go. You don't stay a man once you've done the things I've done. Once you know the things I know. I hardly miss it now."
— The Beast, The Magicians
Beneath Irem, there dwells a creature that was once human, but is no more of our race. Humanity is not a quality that persists unchanged and unquenched throughout eternity, but is limited by the circumstances of place and time, and this being of darkness lost all human nature uncounted ages past, before the city of many towers fell to ruin. She may be called a witch, though this term and gender possess little significance, for she is so changed that no trace of the attributes of a woman remains on her stunted and deformed body, and her witchcraft is not the art practised in the habitations of human beings.
— Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred, by Donald Tyson
"I...she...has used so many bodies, so many young women..." [weeping] "And now she has no body at all? She is a creature of Death? This is what I have become?"
Live-Action TV
The Man In Black: But before I was trapped, I was a man, James. Just like you.
Sawyer: I'm havin' a hard time believin' that.
The Man In Black: You can believe whatever you want, that's the truth. I know what it's like to feel joy... to feel pain, anger, fear... to experience betrayal. I know what it's like to lose someone you love.
Sawyer: I'm havin' a hard time believin' that.
The Man In Black: You can believe whatever you want, that's the truth. I know what it's like to feel joy... to feel pain, anger, fear... to experience betrayal. I know what it's like to lose someone you love.
— Lost, "The Substitute"
"You must excuse me. I have not spoken with these lips in a long time. My name is Saymon. That is the name by which this body was once known."
— Saymon, Blake's 7
Subcommander T'Pol: Did you find the research team?
Captain Archer: There isn't anyone on that ship we can help anymore. [...] Target their warp core. Hit them with everything we've got.
Captain Archer: There isn't anyone on that ship we can help anymore. [...] Target their warp core. Hit them with everything we've got.
Tabletop Games
"I was like you, once... clinging to life and blind to the truth... when I uncovered the truth, I, too shuddered and paled with fear. Deep within these catacombs, I was remade..."
Remember the NWO's Inner Circle? The Progenitors' Administration? All of our old masters and the greatest of Enlightened minds were lost to the Anomaly, but not all of them were killed. Some found refuge in temporal anomalies, where they lived for months when mere hours passed for us. Others were subjected to raw forces that twisted their Inspired Science into something no longer human: they've always been twisted and perverted by Void Adaptation. They pursue exaggerated and abhorrent versions of Technocratic Empowerment, and seek to force these terrible visions on the whole of humanity.
— Mage: The Ascension — Convention Book: Void Engineeers (revised)
What emerged from the Warp when the Death Guard fleet broke out bore little resemblance to what had entered. The gleaming white and grey armour of Imperial Champions was no more, burst and shattered from the horrific bloating of infected bodies, scabbed with boils, putrescence and the filth of corruption. Their weapons and machinery were now powered by the sickly sorcery of Chaos, glowing with lambent green luminescence and oozing gangrenous pus. The name Death Guard would pass into secondary use, as the walking pestilence-carriers became a terrifying sight across the Imperium. To their victims, to their erstwhile allies, even to themselves, they had become the Plague Marines.
— Index Astartes: The Lost and The Damned, Warhammer 40,000
Video Games
"I am wretched... But I AM STRONG! I am Zerg! I am... the future!"
— Stop Poking Me! quotes for StarCraft Infested Terran
"I may have to call in sick today. I'm feelin a little... touch of something."
— Infested Terran SPMnote , StarCraft II
"Were you a dude but wish you were not a dude? Then Wilhelm is the dude for you!"
— Anthony Burch on Wilhelm's decent
into this trope, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!
into this trope, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!"In case you fail to realize... the things you hunt. They're not beasts. They're people."
— Djura, Bloodborne
"The Dreamers' dreams dissolve both bone and the fetter of identity. The infected human might eventually become a shade. They hearken to the mutable signal. They can melt into puddles of pure Filth and take on new shapes. They can join into composite monstrosities. They are ready for new stages of blasphemous ascension. They realize that they are the dream.
We see the Shade Stalker. Reality bubbles and drips where they step. Did you know they were human once, sweetling? It is hard to tell, harder to fathom. They have become so like the Dreamers, little fractal effigies. The changes you see are only the tip of the black iceberg..."
We see the Shade Stalker. Reality bubbles and drips where they step. Did you know they were human once, sweetling? It is hard to tell, harder to fathom. They have become so like the Dreamers, little fractal effigies. The changes you see are only the tip of the black iceberg..."
— The Buzzing, The Secret World
"That's where they come from. That's why they hate us... that's why they need us. That's why they take us.... that's why they feed us."
— Hespith commenting on an example of this, Dragon Age: Origins
"Man once, now monster!"
— Ghoritch, Total War: Warhammer II
Web Animation
Trogdor was a man
I mean, he was a dragon-man
Or maybe he was just a dragon
But he was still TROGDOR!
I mean, he was a dragon-man
Or maybe he was just a dragon
But he was still TROGDOR!
"Trogdor", Strong Bad Email #58 "dragon"
Web Original
Imagine if it was your job to teach people lessons like "teachers are actual humans!" How long would it take until you went mad? A year? Six months? For little Carl McCready the answer is far less. These new "Popsicle Pete" ads vanished almost immediately. Carl didn't appear in comic books for a year. To the rest of the world, his suffering seemed to finally be over. The rest of the world was mistaken, and it was going to pay.
A year after his disappearance, the night's cervix opened and gave him back to us. But he wasn't the same. The old "Popsicle Pete" was gone. His name was no longer something he won in a contest. It was him. Popsicle Pete was among us.
His adventures became dark orgies of madness. Behold his deeds.
A year after his disappearance, the night's cervix opened and gave him back to us. But he wasn't the same. The old "Popsicle Pete" was gone. His name was no longer something he won in a contest. It was him. Popsicle Pete was among us.
His adventures became dark orgies of madness. Behold his deeds.
Western Animation
"You're such a hypocrite. You talk big about protecting humanity, but after everything you've done, you're barely human yourself!"
— Luz Noceda, to Emperor Belos/Philip Wittebane, The Owl House, "King's Tide"
