Jack's Puppet
"I think, therefore I am."
Lupine Tree
is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Fan Fiction by wille179. It is the story of Lumber Jack, a timberwolf who gains the intelligence of a human to become something more.
It shares continuity with Split Second, while the human's soul comes from the dying universe of Black Queen, Red King, as the author writes all his stories in a Shared Multiverse.
Has since been unofficially canceled as wille179 has left the fandom.
This story provides examples of:
- And I Must Scream: Twilight's tree. Despite having been hollowed out and filled with sources of fire, the tree is still very much alive. Only Jack can hear its mad screaming.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: The Flowing Stone Deer are a race of faceless, deer-shaped, liquid animals, akin to a Slime Girl. This is Muzen, one of the flowing stone deer.
- Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Very downplayed. Jack is the only sapient individual who reproduces by flowering and fruiting, rather than the more traditional mammalian/reptilian ways.
- Blob Monster: Cheif Hiram of Eezdraug. He's an entire lake of slime, and has boats and such sailing his surface.
- Blood Lust: Jack drinks blood as a part of his normal diet, but since he gained is intelligence, he's occasionally fantasized about drinking the blood of those around them. Or, in the case of the Flowing Stone Deer, how he would even make them bleed in the first place.
- Blood Magic: Jack can become more powerful by drinking blood. Tirek's blood, in particular, made him grow much bigger and gave him a new puppet with Tirek's form.
- Body Horror: Twilight's tree. See And I Must Scream above.
- Brandishment Bluff: Downplayed. Jack's Taur puppet draws a functional but crudely made bow and aims it at Clear Glass, but knows that the bow is likely to break if he draws it to full strength. His aim is terrible as well, according to his narration.
- Dire Beast: Monsters inside the Everfree Exclusion Zone are big. Very Big. The orochi, as Jack refers to the eight-headed snake, has eyes large enough to fit two of his puppets inside a single socket.
- Fantastic Flora: Timberwolf trees, poison joke, leaves with healing properties, zap apples… this world is full of strange plants.
- Hermaphrodite: Jack, like all flowering plants. He also doesn't identify by any animal gender type, but never bothered to correct anyone when they assumed he was male.
- Glowing Eyes: Slightly deconstructed. As a timberwolf, every single one of Jack's puppets has glowing eye sockets. Jack wishes for real eyes just so he can roll them.
- Hive Mind: Jack's puppets. Every timberwolf tree's puppet collection acts like a Hive Mind, but Jack's collection is by far the largest.
- First-Person Perspective: The story is written in strict first person. Jack narrates as if he knew there was an audience, but he never acknowledges them.
- Ignorance Is Bliss: Twilight never suspected that her home, the library in the oak tree, was conscious, let alone fully aware of the fact that it had been hollowed out and filled with fire sources. Jack forcefully corrects this ignorance.
- Invisibility: Clear Glass is a unicorn who can do this with magic. It turns out that his ability is useless against Jack, who could smell him and see his hoofprints in the grass.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The "Other" was a human soul that was brought to Equestria by Discord and would eventually fuse with a timberwolf to create Jack. However, the transition destroyed their identity completely beyond any hope of recovery (type 1 Laser-Guided Amnesia).
- Marionette Master: This is how all timberwolves hunt. Their wolves are nothing but puppets for the tree.
- The Order: Celestia mentions having the Paladin Order observe Jack because he is a demon.
- Order Versus Chaos: Jack bats for team Chaos. Part of his soul was saved by Discord, and Jack is a chaos demon. And, as it turns out, the Tree of Harmony was willing to attack Jack to fix the "chaotic hole in his heart," whatever it meant by that.
- Our Centaurs Are Different: Jack makes a wooden wolf-centaur using the blood of Tirek.
- Our Demons Are Different: Discord reveals that Jack is technically a demon by Equestria's definition. What this actually means is unclear, but it was enough to make Princess Celestia nervous.note
- The Paladin: Clear Glass, who was assigned by Celestia to observe Lumber Jack.
- Perverted Drooling: In a bonus side story entitled ''How Lewd,'' Jack reacts this way to Fluttershy in a bee costume. When Applejack ask him why he's staring at her like that, he answers:"Ok, imagine both the literal and the innuendo-filled meaning of what I'm about to say: A bee flies towards my flower. It lands, and its head descends into the depths of my flower. The pollen it's carrying gets deposited. That pollen makes my flower grow a fruit with seeds that sprout into more trees. Now, if you imagined a stallion and a mare doing it, congratulations; you got the point. See, for me, a bee landing in in a flower is exactly like you saying a [redacted] landing in a [redacted]. Fluttershy is a giant, flying bee; Fluttershy is a giant, flying di-"
- Plant Person: Lumber Jack, after his awakening. Physically, aside from higer intelligence and larger size compared to others members of his species, he is indistinguishablenote from them. He just refers to himself as a person instead of an animal.
- Primal Fear: Fire. Jack, being a tree, is terrified of fire. As Applejack puts it, "Trees can't run away." It's hinted that all trees are scared of fire... for obvious enough reasons.
- Punny Name: Lumber Jack chose his own name for the sake of the pun.
- Pun-Based Title: Lupine Tree is a pun on "Pine Tree," "Lupine" (a flowering plant whose blooms grow in long strands), and "Lupine" (relating to wolves).
- Rage Breaking Point: When Jack has to apologize to Twilight and Spike, he's already upset. When he sees the horrible state her library is in (it's a hollowed out but still 'living' tree), he stomps out. But when Twilight tries to confront him about it, he loses his temper.
- Shared Universe: A shared multiverse, to be specific. Lupine Tree is more closely related to Split Second than Black Queen, Red King, however.
- Uplifted Animal: Unintentionally triggered by Discord, Lumber Jack's new intelligence is the driving plot point of the story
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Cheif Hiram. When he wished to talk to Muzen and Jack, he created a minotaur-like body out of his slime.note
- When Trees Attack: Jack turns downright murderous if an intelligent creature enters his grove. He managed to control himself and not hurt Rarity, but Tirek was not so lucky.
