#and all the thieves feel like family. and not in the annoying fandom way; like

[samarecharm]

i love makoto so much but fanon does her so much better (the good parts of the fandom) because in the game her character is so lack luster. they butchered her confidant it is so borning and not even about her. they made her a cop. A COP. they pushed this "canon waifu" role onto her (before sumire came along and did it Even Worse). and it SUCKS because SHE IS SO MUCH MORE!!! SHE IS SO MUCH BETTER!!!! SHE COULD'VE BEEN SO MUCH BETTER!!! the way i feel about canon makoto is the same way i feel about the canon ryuji events post komoshida where he's horribly mistreated and used purely as comic relief: i ignore them <3 my game now <3 never happened <3 my ocs <3

You are so right. I generally apply this to all characters in p5 bc the game does such a shit job of staying consistent with character arcs and personalities. Theres a desperate need to throw in perverse jokes at the expense of female characters and a need to show that the police (as a whole) are reliable people who are not influenced by things like money and power; only the BAD cops do that. Not to mention this obvious fatphobia and homophobia but i feel likes thats a given.

But back to Makoto. Shes a victim of bad writing just like everyone else. Ryuji during the kamoshida arc was fighting with self loathing and genuine anxiety, and aside from the like. One comment on Panthers outfit in the metaverse, hes more than well behaved. All of that is shelved as soon as Kamoshida is gone and replaced with him being weird comic relief (and the focus of alot of sexual jokes that were nonexistent in the beginning of the game). Anns arc about self love and empowerment is completely dropped as soon as the nasty bad guy is put away (so that its good to be weird about her w the Good Guys). Makoto loses her a chunk of her personality to be the mature waifu which is INSANE to me bc shes like. Not okay or normal at all 😭😭😭 she THINKS shes responsible and so does everyone else on her team, but its an act! She doesnt know shit! And she doesnt know that she doesnt know shit bc shes respectful and adults dont care about anything as long as u respect them!

Its very telling that for literally every single thief (and goro), you can see the exact moment the writers gave up on adding anything of worth to their characters outside of the social links. Its like they didnt know what to even do w the characters at their disposal after their main arcs were complete. No mention of friends hanging out without you, no mention of having group hangouts. Everyone is treated as a core, important member of the friend group DURING their arc, but outside of it, they are acquaintances at best. Theres nothing in the game that convinces you that these guys are legitimately friends who care for each other and do Friend Things. And i describe it like that bc there IS a game that treats them all as friends, and its strikers! Strikers/Scramble genuinely feels like the game p5 wanted to be; a road trip w your team where they stay up at night talking to each other and hanging out and doing things together that dont necessarily include you, the player. Its refreshing and lovely but it sucks that u get that kind of attention to detail in a ‘spinoff’ title

#chattin #i hesitate to use spinoff bc its a pretty big game #and theres an amazing plot with wonderful characterization #and their handling of jails and jail owners is LEAGUES better than the bs they tried to make up w palace users #and all the thieves feel like family. and not in the annoying fandom way; like #were family in the same way a family is forged and tended to. i love you. no one is left behind. no one is made to feel inferior another #its really good and honestly if u want more interactions between everyone i really recommend a playthrough #but yeah #p5 sucks #i love it but i love the version of it i made in my head LMAO #maybe p5r did a better job w the dialogue and some questionable scenes #(i wouldnt know. i didnt play it lol) #so maybe thats what people need to be using as a point of reference #but i only plyed p5 so this is what i have; a group of people who show up for meetings and then go about their life #and that kinda sucks. why make this wholly unique experience in which these teens can only relate to each other #make them bonded over their shared experience w this unbelievable world #and then not only make them NOT interact; but have the end be ‘okay by akira.’ and leave it at that #they just. didnt know what to do w anyone #they needed their girls to be waifubait and the boys to be an afterthought #they needed a buffet of older woman for pathetic men to fuck through their self insert #and they needed a story convoluted enough to keep people stuck trying to figure it out themselves #its bad. its so bad. its so fucking bad. but i have to be here. WE have to be here. #bc who else is going to take these characters out of hell and treat them right ??!!!

[moonah-rose]

"We all loved you, Miss. Tilly. Even those of us with...cold hearts." - Arthur to Tilly.

"It hardened me, feeling that kinda pain." - Arthur to Rains Fall.

Gonna read too much into things again but my headcanon is that Arthur's clearly referring to his own "cold heart" there, thinking he probably wasn't able to feel again after the pain of losing Isaac, I'm guessing them finding Tilly was very soon after that tragedy and saving her helped Arthur through a lot of his grieving process.

Anyway might have planned out a fic last night where Arthur is about to go off to visit his son, John is being an annoying but cute little brat asking when he's gonna get to meet his "nephew" and Arthur jokingly promises the time after this maybe as they're "more or less the same age now" (Isaac is like 4 and John is barely 14 so he's teasing). But then Arthur is gone for a very, very long time. John is the first to get a bit worried but Hosea reassures him until he too starts to get anxious (Dutch only starts to panic when he thinks maybe Arthur has decided to stay with his "family"). Eventually Arthur comes back but he looks like he's aged a decade in a few weeks. He doesn't speak to anyone and John spots a headline in a newspaper about the gruesome death of some thieves nearby. Hosea is able to do the math and John overhears Arthur quietly confessing what happened, how he saw the two crosses and then hunted down the killers, then just butchered them slowly but obviously it didn't make him feel better. A few weeks pass and John feels like he's lost his brother a little bit as Arthur is so angry and distant, and all Hosea can say is to give him space. Eventually this would lead to them finding Tilly having run from the Foreman brothers and she's in a very similar state as Meredith from Annesburg. And this awakens Arthur's paternal instincts as he's not gonna let anyone get to this poor kid again the way they got his son or Eliza.

A shame I find these characters voices so hard to write. Just wish there were more platonic / family-centred fics in this fandom as all the ones I come across are "x reader" or shippy. 😮‍💨

#rdr2 #tilly jackson #arthur morgan #john marston #red dead redemption 2

[flying-elliska]

Headcanons for ADHD characters Masterlist

I was asked for this a while ago and I feel this is a good discussion subject because the canon representation for ADHD is kind of abysmal and is often a caricature or a joke.

usual disclaimer, I'm not a therapist, this is not a diagnosis tool, just for fun, etc etc...basing this on my own experience/knowledge with ADHD and meeting a lot of ADHD people IRL. I'm going off the main symptoms first (inattention and/or hyperactivity, restlessness, impulsivity, problems with emotional/focus regulation, daydreaming, messiness, hyper-focus, fidgeting etc) and then looking at character traits that are not a necessary symptom but often associated (substance abuse and addiction, need to please, sensitivity to rejection, compassionate and creative, thrill seeking, very imaginative, charming and witty or withdrawn and shy or angry and irritable, whimsical and fun and a bit child-like, out of the box thinker, self esteem issues, unstable life, comorbidity with anxiety and depression, very intense feelings, functions better with adrenaline/in an emergency, disregard for rules and problems with authority OR extreme compliance, codependency, perceived as weird, clever in an atypical way, problems in school, extremely good at one specific thing, etc)

Also I found this list with actual canonical representation

BOOKS :

The 'fits to a T so I'm seeing it as my personal canon' list :

note : doesn't mean that the authors actually meant to create representation but it's very likely they at least got inspired by people who did have ADHD (even when the diagnosis itself did not exist) and explained it with 'it's just their personality' OR the story happens in a setting where the label doesn't exist as such. also not meant to be exhaustive.

- Helen Burns (from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë) One of Jane's school friends from the start of the novel, fits the inattentive type to a T : she can't seem to focus or learn her lessons, is constantly daydreaming, describes herself as messy and careless, forgets rules, and is easily distracted. She talks constantly about her own 'defective nature' and seems very sensitive to criticism but incapable of changing. She doesn't defend herself against the nuns' harsh punishments as she thinks she deserves them. She's presented as kind-hearted and compassionate, almost too good for this world, and hyperfocuses on her faith. Apparently sb even wrote an academic article on this. She dies so it's not super fun representation but it is interesting to see in an older book, to push back against the idea that ADHD was invented yesterday by Big Pharma lol.

- Grantaire (from Les Miserables, Victor Hugo) Part of the student revolutionary group Les Amis de l'ABC and resident skeptic, does not believe in the cause but is fixated on the group's idealistic leader (and yeah it sounds very gay, they die holding hands, there is a lot of Symbolism). He spends his time ranting about things that are only vaguely connected, is described as brilliant but incapable of sticking to any one profession or hobby, is an alcoholic, has a creative streak (was a painter at some point), likes wandering around the city, has massive self-esteem issues and is a general mess but does seem to care about his friends. This is not a very flattering portrayal as Grantaire is described as morally deficient but again, interesting in an old book. ADHD!Grantaire is a popular take in the modern fandom (i was in it before I was diagnosed it brought up a lot of Things) and it's very cathartic to see him get actual therapy in fic lmao.

- Luna Lovegood (from the Harry Potter series) JKR sucks but this is probably the most high profile case of a possible inattentive ADHD character so I didn't want to leave it out. She's a daydreamer, she is a big space cadet and seems to live in her own world, she has a very out of the ordinary sense of style, she's bullied for being weird, but she's also very kind and perceptive and cares a lot about her friends, and good at coming up with out of the box solutions. I wouldn't call it good representation, she's described as a wacko whom a lot of characters find cringeworthy but she's also pretty heroic, so. And she does seem to hyperfocus on magical creatures. Plus her father could also have it (and it runs in families).

- Jasper Fahey (from Six of Crows duology, Leigh Bardugo) Part of a young group of thieves with a heart of gold, he's a charmer and a compulsive gambler who quits college and incurs debts so massive he stops talking to his father out of shame. He's also an extremely talented sharpshooter and the scenes where he describes how the whole world slows and the rush of adrenaline when he is shooting sound like hyperfocus to a T. He's a loyal friend but also quite dependent on Kaz, the leader of the group, to keep him in line. He's witty, messy and he likes danger. His boyfriend later in the series, Wylan, is dyslexic and the way they learn to accommodate each other's issues honestly makes them one of my favorite couples ever. I need to reread these books and I am so stoked for the series I hope they do Jasper justice.

- Julian Diaz (from Cemetary Boys, Aiden Thomas) Love interest of the book, introduced as the 'high school resident bad boy', energetic motormouth who can't sit still and actually very endearing, has issues in school and gets bored easily, main problem is that he's a ghost...sort of. The whole thing was very cute and I love that Julian's personality is described as fun and attractive instead of annoying (which is, if you haven't noticed already, a pattern).

- Evie O'Neill (from the Diviners series, Libba Bray) She's a flapper in 1920s New York who ran away from her boring little town to make a life for herself ; she's a party girl and an impulsive thrill-seeker who hates standing still and is always looking for excitement to 'fill the void'. She craves fame and attention and pretty things, she can be a loyal friend but is also frequently self-centered and forgetful, she's street smart, resourceful and very charming and witty. She's also grieving, drinks too much and is definitely depressed. She's obviously meant as an archetype of the era, caught between trauma and excess, but it does come over as very hyperactive ADHD as well. Her powers to read objects also really pinged me as a good metaphor for the ADHD tendency to be overwhelmed by details.

The 'bit more of a reach but there's a vibe' list :

- Emma Woodhouse (from Emma, Jane Austen) Frequently cited as a character with ADHD, I didn't come up with this one but she fits. She's daydreaming, easily bored, has flights of fancy and hyper-focuses on matchmaking, is a bit impulsive and thrill seeking, clever in an unconventional way, described as a bit immature, mix of caring and self-centered.

- Ronan Lynch (from the Raven Cycle, Maggie Stiefvater) Ronan just has Neuroatypical Vibes, even though it's not entirely clear what, and I've seen people label him all sorts of things which is very valid. As for ADHD, he's restless, impulsive, likes to Go Fast and do street racing, he has very strong emotions he doesn't know what to do with, and big self esteem issues esp. at the start, is very all or nothing with people, snarky, drops out of school to be a magic farmer, problems with authority, looks like a scary mean goth but is actually a big softie (but like, with a few people), pulls shit out of his dreams. Is kind of dependent on his best friend at the start too.

- Sherlock Holmes (from the eponymous series by Arthur Conan Doyle) Again a character who has been diagnosed with all sorts of things. The biggest ADHD vibe for me is 'my mind rebels at stagnation' and the way he needs drugs to function outside of the thrill of a case, and the way he hyper-focuses on information he needs to be a detective while completely ignoring common knowledge. Also sort of dependent on his best friend Watson and isn't great at social interactions. Doesn't care much about upholding social conventions either. The RDJ adaptation is the one that has the most ADHD vibes to me.

- Harley Quinn (DC Comics/Movies) Big codependency issues (that's arguably the thing she's most known for) and sadly people with ADHD are often prone to getting into abusive relationships. It depends on the story too but she's very energetic, zany, impulsive, she likes shiny things and bright clothes, she's fun and chaotic and likes to break the rules, she's a criminal but she does seem to have a heart, she's also frequently immature and rash, etc.

What are your headcanons ? I would love to hear if you have some so I can add them to the list. I'll make a TV/Movies list soon.

#adhd #actually adhd #adhd representation #neurodiversity #media representation

[bellamyroselia]

Who could replace Hades as the new big bad? Overly long essay

Like pretty much everyone else in this fandom, I love Hades. Guy’s your typical pure evil villain with a personality larger than life itself and he’s having so much fun with it that it’s contagious. Every time he pops up, I’m delighted to see him. It’s so fun to see him do his shtick and have the time of his life with it, which also makes beating him feel so great. After all the crap he has put the main cast through, it’s so satisfying to blast him into the face because for a moment that confidence finally breaks and once it's all over, people cheer because they don’t have to live in horrible fear for a while at least. This characterization is mostly rooted on the sheer fear factor Hades had in the eyes of ancient people - even in civilizations which have rather chipper afterlife people tended to prefer living over dying, and this of course meant that they were absolutely terrified of the Underworld deities. Hades was mostly addressed by epithets in texts because people thought that if they called him by his name, they were drawing his attention and the last thing a sane person wants is the attention of an powerful god who has power over the dead. So if a god has this level of appeal, be it positive or negative, you may not even need excessive amount of mythological content to create a frame for a character!

This being said, I don’t believe his chances of coming back are as the big bad of a next game are high - that is unless we have to wait another 15-20 years to get a new game, but I’d like to be more hopeful than that. So if he isn’t coming back, who could possibly replace him as the new big bad of Kid Icarus? It’s not like the writers could ever run out of source material because there’s so many monsters to deal with and every god is more or less morally grey, meaning that there’s many possibilities for new bad guys regardless of the scale.

This took a lot longer than I originally expected and I’m sorry for that - there’s no worse idea than to jump into a rabbit hole and bringing a shovel with you because things will quickly spiral out of control into new interesting directions. The more info I gathered, the more interested I was on looking more into it and sometimes it even spiraled out of mythology into history and philosophy. If you’re interested on some specific reasons for why this took so long, here’s few: myths are long and there’s many different versions of them, epics are even longer, Peloponnese people couldn’t be bothered to write their own things down so I had to look what travelers wrote down, it takes Plato way too long to get into the point, Herodotus never gets into the point, someone translated the term metic as resident alien of all things which I thought was the funniest thing ever and Ludovisi Ares is really pretty.

This is the point where I give the obligatory warnings, so here - since I'm discussing mythology here, it's inevitable that there's some talk about violence and death. I'm not going to linger on the gruesome details, but know that it's there. At couple points this will spiral into a full-on history lesson because I thought that understanding the historical context was important regarding the topic I was discussing. Also this is a one long essay - and by long, I mean really, really long. If you want to read it all at one sitting, prepare some time for yourself. But with that all out of the way, let’s jump straight into the discussion on who could be the next possible big bad, shall we?

I’m limiting this mostly to the main 12 Olympians with the addition of some other big names to keep things simple - while some smaller mythological figures such as Arachne or Arke would work fantastically as villains, they don’t have that recognition or presentation the more well known characters have. We’re trying to speculate who could fill Hades’ shoes as the new main bad guy here after all, not who we could add on the list of great yet less significant antagonists like Medusa, Pandora and Thanatos. I’m excluding Zeus, Athena, Hephaestus and Demeter from this list for rather obvious reasons - Zeus because the the guy seems to be MIA for good so Palutena could rule the place, Athena and Hephaestus because Palutena and Dyntos practically are them and Demeter because Viridi pretty much is Mycenaean Demeter on steroids in a package way too small to contain all that anger within. I also don’t think her relationship with Pit and Palutena will change drastically, so she’s sitting comfortably on her friendenemy-zone.

As for already existing characters, I don’t think anyone of them could snatch the title of the big bad. Viridi is off the competition for already mentioned reasons and I don’t see anyone from Forces of Nature defecting to become the new main villain. Pyrrhon is either gone for good or went back to whatever is this world’s equivalent of Egypt to lick his wounds, so I don’t think he’s coming back anytime soon - and if he’s coming, I don’t think he’s coming back as a main bad guy since he really wasn’t one to begin with. Thanatos’ only major mythological appearance is the myth of Sisyphus capturing death which doesn’t exactly strike confidence on his abilities in general and if that version of Thanatos couldn’t do his job correctly when meeting one guy too stubborn to die, do you really think that I believe our Thanatos has any chances of becoming the new big bad? Bringing back Medusa would be beating a dead horse at this point unless they really twist the formula and I don’t think that’s going to happen, so Medusa is off the competition. Pandora wasn’t all that big of a threat to begin with, so if she comes back she most likely stays that way. So it’s definitely going to be a new character, but who could it be?

As for who for sure can’t replace Hades as the new main bad, it’s Hestia. She probably has the lowest chance of any big Greek god to even appear in a possible future Kid Icarus game simply because there’s next to no material of her and that’s for a good reason. She was the goddess of hearth, domesticity, family, home and state. Most of these were and still are considered private, so that explains why there’s very little material of Hestia actually doing anything - we don’t write epic poetry about cleaning the house, making a macaroni casserole for dinner or going to bathroom and so didn’t the ancient people. With Hestia, you’re dealing with the bare bones of a character because she’s so passive and non-confrontational figure. It would be hard to make her a central figure in any kind of plot, especially for a one centered around action, so she’s out.

Hermes is also a figure I don’t think would work as a big bad or as an antagonist in general and I don’t really have any concrete reasons for why I think so. I just feel that he would be unfit for the role. He’s a trickster who started his shenanigans on the day he was born and the rest is mythology - by cunning escapades and underdog tactics he became the messenger of gods and from that point onward he kept collecting even more jobs such as becoming the god of merchants, shepherds and thieves, being a psychopomp, guiding dreams and helping heroes whenever he felt like it. He has a lot of going on but he’s always regarded as someone who knows all the tricks and isn’t afraid to use them, not all bad for a guy whose name was derived from a word meaning a pile of rocks.

As for why I think Hermes would make an terrible antagonist is mostly because of his status as the god of thieves and how it’s pretty much the easiest way to turn him into an antagonist. The thing here is that I just can’t stand antagonists whose main thing is that they’re amazing thieves and/or tricksters in games. While I think they can be enjoyable in other forms of media if they’re written on a smart way, in games this is almost never the case because gameplay and story don’t always match perfectly and writers need to use cheap tactics to make the character work - and by cheap I mean either A.I stands for artificial incompetence and the character is simply bad at being a thief/trickster despite all the characters and lore saying otherwise or that the game just starts cheating against the player to make them feel dumb even though they did nothing wrong. Thieves and tricksters are just really hard to balance in a game when it’s not the player character doing the deceiving. That perfect sweet spot for a great character is too goddamn tiny and if the thief/trickster isn’t exactly in there, you have an annoying character either because they’re incompetent at their job or because computer is a cheating bastard. So while there’s many enjoyable antagonists who share traits with Hermes, combine them all into a one character with the problems I already mentioned and most of the time you have a figure everybody hates due to how infuriating they’re to deal with. We’re trying to make people interested of going on and seeing what happens next here, not trying to annoy them to the point where they can just drop the game and never pick it up again. As for another reason I don’t think Hermes would work all that well as an antagonist is because his whole shtick is that despite his incredible powers, he still manages to be an underdog. Needless to say, the way underdogs are represented in media is vastly different from the way major antagonists are and while it can work, it’s hard to pull off. And of course there’s the thing of Hermes being portrayed almost always as a positive figure in myths, meaning that I and many others have a hard time imagining him as a bad guy. At his most evil we imagine Hermes doing stuff such as saying to his nephew that grandpa equals target practice, not anything that could threaten the world. Though if Hermes is included into the cast of a future game, I can image him having a theme that sounds similar to the BW rival theme for some reason. It has that I’m a one chipper fella but I’m also extremely busy right now so goodbye for a moment, see you soon-energy in it that I associate with Hermes.

As for what kind of role Hermes could be playing, he could work rather well as a quick cameo like Poseidon was in KI:U, where he offers help in some form. If one wants to go deeper into it, he could possibly run some service since he was the god of merchants and trade as well - though if one want to involve the fact of him being the god of thieves in addition to previously mentioned things, make him an occasional scammer because that’s what one would expect from a trickster. Or have him as a boss in a training gauntlet. Works either way.

______

If Artemis was introduced into the series, I don’t think she would be antagonistic. I can totally see her having a cold personality and her being bit of a hard person to deal with, but I don’t see her being actively malicious character - only example of Artemis being overly cruel towards figures KI-characters seem to be based on would be her sending the Calydonian boar to cause chaos in Calydon. It’s interesting if you believe Magnus and Gaol are at least partially inspired by Meleager and Atalanta like I do, but I don’t think it’s enough to make Artemis an antagonist, much less the main villain so she’s off the competition. Not to say she isn't wrathful, I looked into it and her wrath far outnumbers her blessings, though it's rather messy at times and some of them even can't co-exist the ones about Orion and Callisto definitely can't but her wrath is divorced from the main KI-cast. You'd have to create new characters to excuse it and KI already has a rather large cast, so I don't think it would be all that wise to create new characters just for the sake of goddess cursing them for a plot line that's resolved in couple chapters. Maybe she’s just a cameo or possibly a boss in a training gauntlet.

Apollo would be an antagonist. I just don’t see any other way how he could be introduced into the series. He has potential to be a charismatic, funny and mostly harmless antagonist who isn’t there to cause any trouble, he just really hates Pit and only Pit. But why would he hate Pit? It’s not like the mythological Apollo dislikes Icarus or Perseus and that’s indeed true, but there’s one more thing. For a god who we associate with a celestial body mostly made out of hydrogen and helium, Apollo has extremely high levels of sodium chloride within him - which is to say that he has been salty starting from the moment Hermes robbed him that one time and that lake of salt inside him has only become larger ever since. That salt is directed at people he dislikes and while he doesn’t dislike Icarus or Perseus because he never met either of them, guess who he does dislike? Angel-like gods, or just Eros to be more specific.

The story goes that Apollo’s enormous ego took the better of him one day and so he started to mock his nephew for what he thought was mediocre use of the bow and arrow. Insulted Eros decided that Apollo had officially lost his uncle-license which led him to curse Apollo to have the worst love life imaginable, starting with Daphne. And as we all know Cupid is Roman version of Eros and Pit is named after Cupid, so this was hatred made in heaven and it would be disappointing to not use the opportunity when it has been given to us on a golden platter. And you don’t even have to come up with an detailed and intriguing story to explain why Apollo hates him - something could’ve very well happened during the three years Pit’s consciousness was in that ring. His body may have ruined Apollo’s chances to hit it off with people because it was destroying their cities or something similar. Or just leave it as a noodle incident that’s referenced multiple times, everyone wonders what the heck actually happened but only Apollo knows, refusing to tell the story because he just assumes that everyone already knows it and they’re just messing with him by pretending to not know. Either way, Apollo should be an antagonist if he’s featured in a sequel. Not a villain, definitely not the big bad but fun antagonist to deal with.

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This is something that most of you probably already know or at least you would know if you’ve actually read something other than Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or as I like to call it Jaded man screams at Emperor Augustus because apparently telling the Roman citizens to go all out on every monument the prude ever built clearly wasn’t enough, please tell me you have but Medusa isn’t an only child. She’s in fact one of Phorcys and Ceto’s seven children, both of them being somewhat monstrous primordial ocean deities - Phorcys has been described as a merman with red skin and crab claws, Ceto’s name in the other hand just literally means sea monster. Besides Medusa and the two other gorgons Stheno and Euryale, the list of their children includes the graeae sisters, serpentine dragon Ladon and Echidna, which is quite a lot of snake monsters for two deities who themselves don’t have any snake traits. There’s a lot of potential in this group but ideas of any of them becoming the new big bad end up falling apart because just like Medusa, they’re all rather bland characters like you’d expect from a mythological monster. They’re less like characters and more like plot devices that the hero needs to deal with. The only two members of this family besides Medusa who actually get to do something of importance are Ladon and Echidna and even those acts aren’t all that interesting. Echidna gets to have her many monstrous children with Typhon and then she’s apparently is killed by Argus, Hera’s servant-giant while sleeping on a cave just like her sister. Ladon guarded the garden of Hesperides which was well known for its golden apples and he doesn’t get to die with much dignity either, since Heracles just shoots him in the back and literally the next day other Argonauts find nymphs looking at his still twitching body. Alternatively Heracles just tricks Titan Atlas to do all the apple picking, which leaves Ladon alive.

Possibly one of the biggest problems writers have to deal with is setting. Ladon is very strictly tied into the garden setting and Echidna was cave dweller who never left her home, so writers would have to come with rather specific situations for them to appear. Of course if one wants to be lazy, Underworld could possibly serve as their home. It could very well house caves big enough to house a snake monster and Greek Underworld does have Elysium, which is basically Paradise and it could very well also function as a garden. But honestly even with the right setting, I don’t think either of them would make all that interesting big bads. They would definitely work fantastically as large-scale villains, but they don’t really have that much intimidation factor all things considered - you can blame Argus and Heracles for that.

But I’m not done with this family yet as there’s one character connected to them who’s probably the most feared monster of all Greco-Roman mythology and that’s Typhon, Echidna’s mate. He’s essentially an ancient Greek equivalent of a kaiju, more a destructive force of nature than a monster and everyone fears him - and by everyone, I mean everyone. There’s couple of versions of what happens but the most popular one goes that when the gods saw him, their first instinct was to shapeshift into animals and flee into Egypt. Those who did stay behind such as Hades were said to cover in fear in their homes while Typhon ravaged the land. Zeus tried to fight him but when he went for the kill, Typhon caught him and cut off his sinews, then threw him into a cave under the watch of another snake monster Delphyne. This didn’t stop Hermes and Pan from getting the sinews back and saving Zeus, and once his strength has been restored he and Typhon fought once again. Zeus eventually wearied Typhon down and then either casted him down into Tartarus or dropped a mountain on top of him, that being Mount Etna.

He could work very well as a big bad, problem here are just how high the stakes need to be for him to work. He’d had to be the ultimate villain if that was the case, the stakes need to be higher than they were with Hades. And considering how Hades was pretty much your typical pure evil villain causing chaos, what separates Typhon from him? Just some more chaos and no wisecracking dialogue because everyone is too scared to talk? He comes off as way too similar to Hades without all the fun personality. Maybe if KI:U became a KI:U-trilogy he could work as the ultimate big bad of the last game, but I got to say no otherwise. The bar for making him work is already sky-high due to how destructive he is and we don’t want to repeat the plot of Uprising here. So while he definitely can work, maybe save him for later.

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Hera and Poseidon both have potential to be serious antagonistic forces, but I don’t think they have it to be main villains. Hera simply fits the bill because most of the times she’s the antagonistic force actively trying to make people’s lives worse, all because she can’t direct her anger at correct people. Some times she’s just blatantly evil, like how she imprisoned her own daughter Eileithyia or you may better know her as Lucina to prevent the birth of Artemis and Apollo or how she tricked her pregnant great-granddaughter into disintegrating herself Semele is her great-granddaughter by the way. As for examples of Hera being wrathful which don’t involve Zeus being horny, she was said to be the one who sent Sphinx to Thebes, no reason given why or if there’s one, I couldn’t find it. Works either way.

Because she might as well be the personification of divine wrath, it’s pretty easy to see why one would think she would make a great villain. However that wrath also gives us a big problem, it being that her evil escapades are mostly rooted on anger and spite - while wrath is a good driving force for a villain, it needs more to work. With Hades, he does evil things for fun and is having a blast while doing it. Hera on the other hand just rages and most of the times it’s because of Zeus, who seems to be out of the picture. She’s not there to have fun and when you add her general lack of charisma on the top, you don’t end up with the most endearing character. While wrath can serve as a character motivation, it can become stale very quickly and this means that unless the story regarding villainy her is short (as in solved in 1-3 chapters) it starts to feel like dragging. I overall think that Hera does have very low chances to appear in general, but if she does appear as an antagonist she should preferably be a minor one in the same way Viridi was. You know the meme of what makes villain a supervillain and the answer is presentation? Hera doesn’t have that presentation. Writers can certainly just give her that which is what they did with Hades whose mythological counterpart was more or less a basement dweller, but why go trough all that trouble when there’s so many better candidates to work with?

On to Poseidon, who’s an important figure in the founding myth of Athens - it’s honestly quite odd how it’s never mentioned in any shape or form in KI:U despite Palutena being based on Athena. But then again, considering how much “care” this series put on the names of its cities and towns, this being ignored doesn’t really surprise me even if it does disappoint. He was a really big deal during the Mycenaean period, besides being the god of ocean he was also seen as the head god and the ruler of the Underworld. Then the Late Bronze Age collapse happened and Poseidon was nerfed in the lack of better words - during the Dark Age, Zeus became the new head god and Hades popped seemingly out of nowhere, taking over Poseidon’s role as the god ruling the Underworld. On the other news Poseidon’s antagonistic potential is somewhat dwarfed by the fact that most of his escapades involve banging and they don’t really feature any figures the main cast of KI seem to be based on. It’s annoying because he does so much but because it’s mostly banging people and either helping or bullying very specific heroes, it’s just not something that’s all that relevant in the context of KI. But there’s couple myths and stories that would make him an easy bad guy, first one is that of Atlantis - and we’re going to jump straight to the source material because on it’s core, it’s technically just another tale of Athena and Poseidon having a conflict. Fish people under the sea is fun as well, but by using the source directly it gives us the most potential.

So Plato tells in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias that when Athenian statesman Solon visited Egypt, he found some interesting records about certain events during 10th millennium BCE and translated them into Greek. Only thing here that’s true is Solon visiting Egypt, everything else was made up Plato - if you need more proof, know that 10th millennium BCE was during the stone age for context, Britain wasn’t sharing a land border with just France, but also with Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark during this time. It was that far into the past. As for the actual story, it begins by gods choosing lots of land for themselves and Poseidon chooses Atlantis. He then falls in love with a mortal woman Cleito, builds her a luxurious home, they have five sets of twin boys together and once the kids have all grown up, they divide Atlantis into ten parts and so is born ten different lineages of kings. But by each generation the kings become more and more human, meaning that it’s much more easier for their wealthy lifestyle to hit them in the head - compare that to Athenians in the story, who’re not tempted by luxuries and have quite Spartan lifestyle interestingly enough. This wealthy lifestyle of the Atlanteans quickly leads into colonialism and war mongering, leading into them trying to take over the Mediterranean but they’re are stopped by Athens because naval warfare was the only type of warfare Athenians actually excelled at. Zeus eventually looks down to see what the heck is going on and then tells Poseidon to do something because this racket is technically speaking all his fault. Poseidon agrees, causes an earthquake and then sweeps Atlantis under his rug, that being the ocean. So Atlantis is pretty much an antithesis of a perfect society, a concept that’s discussed more in Republic and the lesson here is that being consumed by hubris in the search of luxury leads to ruin - but since we’re not here for philosophy lessons, let’s forget all of that and think what kind of plot one could craft out of this mess.

Island nation in search of wealth is a good set-up for some action, so I don’t think there’s much that needs changing. Have Atlanteans attack some cities which alerts Palutena and that leads Pit into a mission in which he tries to tell Poseidon what’s going on. After 2-5 chapters of war against Atlanteans, Poseidon deals with the problem either willingly or by force - whether he just destroys the place or makes Atlanteans full on aquatic folk who can’t survive on land meaning that they have to give up the conquest is up to writers. It’s honestly quite refreshing to have the original tale working so well, because usually everything related to Atlantis in media is so divorced from what Plato told. Sure, a submerged city full of fish people could still work but by using the original tale as base we get a story with clear beginning and end which makes perfect sense in context of KI. Or maybe have the a plotline inspired by the original story first and then later have something related to the submerged city with the fish people. Best of both worlds, amazing!

Also orichalcum, the metal Atlanteans were said to have aplenty, is pretty much just copper. Reddish metal and only gold is more valuable than it, it couldn't be anything else but copper. The term even translates into mountain copper! So why is it never portrayed as copper in fiction?

Besides Atlantis, Poseidon has couple other myths I’d like to talk about too. The first one has him and Apollo losing their divine authority for a while and as punishment they have to serve Trojan king Laomedon father of king Priam and grandfather of Hector among some others if you’re wondering. The king makes them to build the legendary walls of Troy and he promises them great rewards, but once he doesn’t deliver them Apollo sends the plague upon Troy and then Poseidon sends a sea monster to terrorize the place Heracles kills it if you’re wondering. There’s also certain another situation which I’ve actually already talked about on a different post and how with little shaking it could work nicely on a future game - what I said was that Pit should do something Poseidon is going to hate to the point that the god is screaming for his head and that he wants to settle things on court.

The myth I used as reference was that of the supposed first trial in history, in which Ares kills Poseidon’s son Halirrhothius for assaulting his daughter and Poseidon loses his marbles over it. The gods gathered on Areopagus which is a real place in Athens, fun fact and I’ve heard two versions of how the trial goes. In the first version everyone agrees that Ares’ actions were justified and in the second one gods side with Poseidon, but goddesses side with Ares and since there was more goddesses present than gods, their words mattered more. Either way, Poseidon loses the trial and Ares gets away scot-free.

Were a future KI-game do their own twist with this myth, Pit would obviously take the role of Ares. Besides the fact that we’re trying to make Poseidon more antagonistic, Pit just being on a situation similar as Ares makes sense thematically speaking and I’m going to talk more about this later since it’s rather interesting. As for why the trial happens in the first place, it could very well be over anything. Maybe mix it with the one where Poseidon sends a sea monster to terrorize Troy just replace Troy with some unimportant city as this series always does and he’s so attached to it that seeing it getting slayed deeply saddens and angers him. You don’t even need to get rid of the idea that it was over a girl, even if the motive for killing the monster is changed along with what kind of relationship the girl could possibly have with the main cast. This is something I’ll get back into later because there’s in fact one other character who I’d like to talk about and how their most cruel and personal form of villainy happens to bound to a certain girl.

So back to Hera and Poseidon. There’s definitely potential for them to be antagonistic, but I’d say they would work much better as arc villains rather than as the main bad guy. There’s only so many things you can do with characters whose actions are rooted on anger or wrath, especially when they don’t have all that striking personalities.

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As for someone who could well work as the big bad, Dionysus is the first serious candidate. It’s partially due to how inconsistent his characterization has been, which I guess is something one should expect from a figure who has been around since the Mycenaean times and who happens to be the god of insanity, vegetation, orchards, fruit, grape-harvest, winemaking and wine. Does this sound like someone you’d expect to be a member of Forces of Nature? Because it sure does for me and I’d honestly be surprised if he wasn’t one if he was introduced to the franchise.

Symbolism behind Dionysus’ birth is pretty neat, my favorite version of it is the one written down by Diodorus of Sicily in Bibliotheca Historica and in that one Demeter is his mother. It starts the usual way in which the poor kid is killed shortly after his birth by Titans and Demeter comes back just in time to gather his remains to allow his rebirth shortly after. It references the harvest process and wine making - the god wine is born from the union of rain and earth just any plant is, he’s torn apart and boiled alive symbolizing the harvesting and wine-making process, his remains represent the fallen bare vines which become fertilizer for the earth and lastly wine itself is supposed symbolize the now reborn Dionysus. All of the versions of his birth myth do have this symbolism to a certain degree but I’d say this version has it the strongest because unlike his other the mother candidates, Demeter is a nature goddess first and foremost and also the goddess of agriculture.

This next point is somewhat tied to the previous one which is that he actually has valid reasons for his absence, that being his meanderings. Long story short - Hera’s angry over the fact that he exists, she injects him with madness and he wanders around like a madman for a while, then Rhea cures said madness and tells him to go on a journey so he could teach people how to make wine. So he goes and wanders around the world with the exception of Britain and Ethiopia for some reason teaching people the art of winemaking and does some other things in the meanwhile, such as apparently founding a city it’s told that on his campaign Alexander the Great came across a city that was supposedly founded by Dionysus. And this is a fun fact, apparently Dionysus’ popularity exploding around late 4th century BCE can be directly linked into Alexander, which is pretty neat. Once he comes back home he firmly establishes his place as a god and then he starts doing shenanigans much more familiar to us, such as giving king Midas his golden touch and marrying Ariadne.

So why do I think Dionysus is the first real contender for a possible new big bad? Well, do you know what’s the first thing he did once he came back to Greece? According to Bacchae, he brainwashed a city to worship him, caused an earthquake, set a palace on fire, gleefully watched when his worshipers teared a man into pieces and then turned some other people into serpents. Now that’s an entrance Viridi would be proud of!

Besides this, there’s also two similar stories in which Dionysus meets some pirates and they both show him as an unhinged god. They capture him and in the first one Dionysus shapeshifts into a lion and unleashes a bear against his captors, causing the scared pirates to abandon the ship and then Dionysus turns them into dolphins. In the other one he turns the mast and oars into snakes, fills the ship with ivy and the sound of flutes to make the pirates go mad and once again when they abandon the ship, Dionysus turns them into dolphins. The tale of him giving Midas his golden touch could also count as him being antagonistic since the act gives Midas nothing but suffering. So while he is much more friendly towards humans than your average god, Dionysus definitely has an antagonistic flare deep inside him and a place in the Forces of Nature and you can’t change my mind.

If Dionysus was a major antagonist or the big bad, I could see the plot going a lot like this - he comes home, causes some racket because he feels neglected, Viridi is happy about all of this and tries to control it while keeping him on this state of mind because who wants a happy party guy when you can have a chaotic deity, for a while she can do it but not for long before things snowball out of control and he becomes an unhinged god dead set on causing chaos. As for how he’s defeated, I can’t really come up with anything concrete on a fly but I don’t think Dionysus would be defeated the same way Hades was. And while he has the personality and presentation needed for a main antagonist, I just can’t see him as a pure evil villain like Hades was. He’s very much redeemable in my eyes and as for what happens to him after his defeat, I could see it leading to him mellowing down kind of like how Greek wine was watered down before it was used for anything - he’s still part of Forces of Nature and perfectly capable of doing all the same stuff he did as a major antagonist, but he would prefer partying with humans over destroying them. Viridi probably isn’t going to be all too happy about this, but it’s not like she’s going to be all that angry about it either.

Also fun fact at the end - in Dionysiaca, Ariadne laments if Eros and Anteros hate her because she had amazing dream about a wedding, only for Theseus to piss off and abandon her on Naxos. But as we all know, she would soon meet Dionysus who she does end up marrying so hey, the dream just wasn’t about the guy she thought she would marry. So if Dionysus isn’t going to be the big bad and the arc devoted to his villainy is relatively short, this could very well be used as a blueprint for a funny side story. Ariadne lamenting about Eros and Anteros would give Pit and Dark Pit valid reasons to be there.

This is not a joke, by the way. The part of Underworld which wasn't either Elysium or Tartarus was commonly referred as "the House of Hades" in ancient texts.

As for someone else who could also work quite well as the big bad, that would be Persephone. You all know the drill with her - Hades takes her, Demeter panics and goes to search her, she causes the Mediterranean summer on the meanwhile and does a thing which looks awful without context Demeter sets a baby on fire which is supposed to make him immortal if you’re wondering, everyone else decides that enough is enough because endless Mediterranean summer is a nightmare, they beg for Hades to give her back and he does that but not before the pomegranate trick. Demeter causes Mediterranean winter to come, the trouble is solved, we have a nice functional couple in our hands and they continue to appear together when Underworld is relevant to the plot - which surprisingly isn’t all that often as only Adonis, Heracles, Theseus who loses his arse and friend in the process, Orpheus who loses his wife and will to live in the process, Odysseys, Psyche and Aeneas managed to go to Underworld and back. That’s not really all that much all things considered.

And before anyone says anything about seasons here - Mediterranean climate is a thing and it’s best known for its hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters. One of these is much more preferable for plant life and in this case, it’s not summer. The more you know.

While there’s not much material of her when compared some other people in this list, I’d say there’s enough to create a frame for a character. In both Theogony and Iliad Persephone is described as dreaded and in Odyssey Odysseus assumes Persephone is the one sending ghosts to torture him while he’s visiting the Underworld. Just like Hades she has her fair share of vague epithets like Despoina (mistress) and Kore (maiden), presumably for the same reason as to avoid getting her attention. And while the etymology behind her actual name is rather muddied, the popular theories are that it means something in the vain of to destroy, to bring/cause death and she who brings destruction. And people have the gall to say she isn’t scary!

With this info and Hades’ characterization from KI:U in mind, you could very easily create a powerful pure evil villain who’s not going to be happy to learn what happened to her husband. As for why I believe she would be pure evil instead of redeemable one like Dionysus, it’s simply so she and Hades would match on their villainy. Considering how the big thing about Hades and Persephone is that they genuinely love each other to the point of possessiveness Pirithous and Minthe learned it the hard way, it would be weird if they hadn’t rubbed on each other during the time they were together. There’s an amazing chance for drama here and it would be dumb to ignore it when it has been given to us on a golden platter. And besides, unholy matrimonies are quite fun in fiction. Villains too have something they love.

As for attempts of villainy that don’t revolve around her being antsy at Pit about Hades, we interestingly need to look at the list of those she granted favors rather than those that had to deal with her wrath - or just one of them in particular, Psyche. As I’ve already mentioned she was one of those mortals who managed to go to Underworld and back and to make things better, she went to Underworld specifically so she could speak to Persephone. Persephone greets her with a nice cushion to sit on and a banquet, which Psyche declines because it’s a trap this is practically just the pomegranate trick on a larger scale. She tells why she came into the Underworld in the first place and Persephone fulfills her request, which is to say that she gives Psyche boxed death.

Coming to Underworld to speak to Persephone in particular definitely gives Psyche an edge compared to others when it comes to exploring Persephone’s potential villainy. But just why is Psyche such a big deal when compared to someone else like Orpheus, Adonis or Aeneas? Well, Psyche just happens to be the girl who would become the goddess of soul, a job that isn’t currently filled by anyone in KI-universe which Hades has kindly illustrated to us in KI:U by eating and repurposing souls for his own purposes. She’s also Eros’ wife with the addition of being the mother of his daughter and as we all know at this point, Pit is mostly inspired by Eros. While Persephone just being angry about her husband’s treatment makes a perfectly fine motivation, why not use the chance when it has been represented to us on a golden platter? Because while KI has a large cast of characters, most them are quite divorced from one another when it comes to their mythological counterparts interacting with each other. This subverts it since Persephone actually gets to interact with someone important to the figure Pit’s inspired of, which is more than almost anyone else in this list can say. The opportunity is there and there’s an open position for a new god, so why not take it?

Also if Persephone is going to be in a future game, I say I’m going to be so disappointed if there's not at least one pun about her epithet Kore. Like imagine if she was introduced on a chapter called Lost Kore or something similar and then the characters would just continue on making bad puns, annoying her. Wouldn’t be too out of line when it comes to this series humor.

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I know what I’m going to say next is probably going to be controversial, but anyway - if Ares ever makes an appearance, I don’t think he would be a bad guy and this is mostly due to how Pit has been characterized. I know that may sound weird at first but trust me, I do actually have a point with this.

So let’s start with something that may seem completely unrelated at first, these being a history lesson and some talk about over-demonization. We honestly don’t know much about how some city states worshiped gods and what specific versions of the myths they had because some people just couldn’t be bothered to write things down. Besides it being extremely annoying for me, this is also probably where the misconception of all of ancient Greece being either like Athens or Sparta came from, which just is completely false. However what is correct is that city states didn’t really like one another all that much and often engaged on stupid wars with each other, only uniting when there was a much bigger threat looming on the horizon - and with war comes propaganda and when only some people write things down, we’re usually left with really one-sided information when it comes to both good and bad. For one example of this coming off as hilariously hypocritical to me is Athena being worshiped under the epithet Areia in Athens. Areia is very obviously derived from Ares and means warlike, but Athenians had their heads so far in their arses that they came up with a reasoning that this version of the epithet is actually derived from areô or areskô, meaning to propriate or atone for. It’s most likely just some crap Athenians came up with to excuse the worship of Athena Areia, which I just can’t help but find pathetically funny - you can only blame your own propaganda for this, guys.

Historically speaking Ares most likely originates from Thrace since besides his popularity in there Herodotus notes in Histories that only gods from Olympian Pantheon that Thracians worshiped were Ares, Artemis and Dionysus, a really odd trio if I have to say so myself, it’s also said to be his birthplace in the myths. His name can be found on Linear B scripts, a writing system that goes as far back as 1450 BCE and which disappeared during the Late Bronze Age collapse around 1100 BCE. This informs us that he was part of the Mycenaean Pantheon in some way, most likely even then as a war god - it also informs us that he predates gods such as Apollo, Hades and Aphrodite who just don’t exist in Mycenaean texts at least in any recognizable forms. As for Ares during the Archaic, Classical and Hellenic period, especially when it came to places that weren’t either Athens/Attica or Sparta, I had to mostly rely on travelers who wrote things they saw down because some people just didn’t bother to write their own stuff down. Pausanias’ Description of Greece was especially helpful with the research, but what must be remembered is that he lived during 2nd century CE and that he was an outsider to these cultural aspects so how old some of this stuff here is and what the exact context behind it was, I don’t know and neither do others at least currently, one sure can hope so we know more in the future. Then again past is another country so maybe I'm setting my hopes way too high. When given anything in Linear A, people channel their best "I never learned how to read!"-impression.

As for how Ares’ Roman counterpart Mars came to be, it’s mostly due to syncretization. He probably was originally an agricultural god who was later associated with warfare once the Roman Republic started expanding. It’s possible that he was syncretized with an Etruscan deity called Maris, who was usually portrayed as a young boy whose caregiver was Menrva, a goddess who was later identified with Athena and Minerva. While this isn’t an universally agreed take, it’s still pretty interesting in context of Kid Icarus even if it wasn’t intentional or in the case of the take, true. Once Romans started to interact with Greek settlers from Magna Graecia Mars was syncretized with Ares, giving us the Roman god that looks familiar to us. One notable thing to keep in mind is that most of those Greek settlers in Magna Graecia originated from Peloponnese and what I’ve managed to find, they held Ares on much more higher regard than those originating from Attica did.

Okay, now when that has been cleaned out of the way, let’s go to the slightly more interesting stuff which is cult titles and epithets. Just like any other god he has his fair share of both, some examples include Teichesipletes (stormer of cities/walls), Hippius (horseman, of the horses), Theritas (beastly/brutish), Enyalius (warlike), Obrimus (strong/mighty), Thurus (violent/furious), Chrysopelex (of the golden helm) and Chalcocorustes (armed with bronze). I’m using Latin spelling of these to make things easier for myself if you’re wondering. But there’s two titles I specifically want to talk about, both them originating from Arcadia around Tegea because apparently all the cool stuff happens in Arcadia.

Interestingly also in Tegea there was a temple of Athena under epithet Alea. Pausanias tells that her priest there was a boy who held the title until he reached puberty, meaning that her priest was a child. Now this has nothing to do with Ares, but it’s pretty interesting when thinking of Pit. It’s not exactly same for sure, but could this mean that he would leave Palutena if he ever grew up?

The first one is Gynaecothoenas, meaning “Feasted by women” - and no need to worry, it’s nowhere near as sexual as it sounds. The story goes that Tegeteans were at war with Sparta and what decided the victory was an ambush by Tegetean women. Because of this, they offered Ares a sacrifice and celebrated the victory alone. The king of the Spartans at the time was said to be Charilaus, meaning that this victory must have happened around early-to-mid 8th century BCE, making this rather old cult title by the time Pausanias was writing. If only the research for everything else here could’ve been as easy as this.

The other and much more interesting title was Aphneius, meaning “Abundant” and under this title he was worshiped as the giver of food or abundance. The story behind this title goes that Ares fell in love with Tegetean princess Aerope and they had a child together, but she died during childbirth. Ares, doing his damndest to keep his son alive, managed to find a way for the baby to still have milk. Once he grew up, his son Aeropus then managed to do the thing that’s near impossible for a demigod, which is to live a normal life as the lord of Tegea. Now this would make a great character backstory…

… What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, history lesson is over! Finally! Now into the fun stuff, which is Pit’s characterization. It’s pretty common knowledge at this point that that Pit’s inspirations are Icarus, Perseus and Eros but when it comes to his characterization, Eros definitely takes the cake as the main inspiration. He is a fully realized character with multiple myths under his wing, unlike Icarus or Perseus.

Starting with Icarus, he isn’t even a character but a plot device. He’s a tool for Daedalus’ character development and that’s where his importance ends. He’s a miniscule part on a much larger narrative in which the most important part is the Minotaur, as it drives the plot for everything else in it. Icarus’ death serves to drive Daedalus’ character to the point which eventually leads into him killing Minos. He exists for a metaphor that pop-culture has blown out to be way more important than it originally was and that’s it.

As for Perseus… The guy is just really bland. While all the other heroes have their flaws like hubris and wrath, Perseus doesn’t really have any flaws. He doesn’t have that many achievements in either bravery or stupidity due to his method of dealing with things being the quickest way possible. This makes all of his battles extremely boring and because he’s one of the first demigod heroes in the mythological timeline, he doesn’t even get to interact with anyone who could be interesting. How many of you even know that he’s supposed be the founding hero of Mycenae? Not many, I’m sure about that. The most interesting thing about the guy his that he’s an ancestor to people such as Tyndareus, Alcheme, Heracles, Penelope and Telemachus but this doesn’t save him from being any less boring. He's that famous ancestor nobody gives a damn, so to speak. Pit certainly doesn’t get any part of his personality from a plot device or a blank of wood, only a literary reference and an antagonist.

Also can I quickly rant about the Angels in art vs. Angels in Bible meme because I hate it? For some reason most of times when people show art of these supposed angels, they aren’t even showing biblical angels but Erotes/Amores or Nike/Victoria instead. Erotes/Amores and Nike/Victoria are winged Greco-Roman gods, not biblical angels and using art of them proves absolutely nothing. Also you may have forgotten that there’s in fact hierarchy of angels and not all of them look identical. In Christian faith angelic hierarchy is composed of three orders, there being nine different kinds of angels - Seraphim, Cherubim, Ophanim/Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels. Seraphim and Cherubim do indeed look terrifying and so do Ophanim, but Thrones are just bizarre because apparently they’re elderly carrying God’s throne, whatever that means also I’ve seen people use Ophanim and Thrones interchangeably which just makes the whole deal even bigger of a mess. And then there’s Dominions, who’re just really pretty winged people, proving that the idea of all biblical angels looking terrifying is completely false. I couldn’t find what Virtues looked like, but if they’re anything like Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels they’re most likely pretty winged humanoids. So yeah, surprising amount of biblical angels are indeed just pretty winged humanoids and only the highest order of them is clearly inhuman - so if you ever wondered why so many angels in art actually featuring Biblical angels have them looking so humanlike, now you know! It's not the highest rank's job to interact with the human world. Though in modern language, the term angel is simply used as an umbrella term which refers into a winged humanoid being regardless of which religion they originated from - so by using this as a frame, it would indeed make Erotes/Amores and Nike/Victoria angels along with some other winged gods such as Eos and Iris. This would also make Iris’ twin sister Arke a fallen angel because as punishment for siding with the Titans during Titanomachy, she was casted into Tartarus and her wings were ripped off so she could never escape from there. And then much later her wings are given as a wedding gift to Achilles’ parents, my god! You could actually a craft a plot out of this, hmmm. When it comes Pit and Dark Pit, I do think they’re angels only on this broad, modern way definition due to them being mostly inspired by the Greco-Roman Erotes/Amores and it’s possible that they’re only referred as angels because not only is the term Erotes/Amores is strictly associated with Aphrodite and only Aphrodite, it's also much more specialized term than just "angel". There has also been cases in art featuring multiple Nikes, but Nike's special role as the goddess of victory still prevents its use as a broad term. So I believe that in the case of KI, angel is just an useful umbrella term and nothing more.

So Pit’s mostly an Eros-expy when it comes to his personality and attributes, so what makes him so special when compared to many other Eros-expies in media? It’s actually a surprisingly small thing, but boy does it make a difference - on a thematic sense, Pit’s a total daddy’s boy and in this case the dad would be Ares. Most of the Eros-expies you see in media are completely divorced from anything related to Ares despite the guy being Eros’ dad but not in Kid Icarus, where we have a very blatant Eros-expy whose connections to his main mythological inspiration come almost exclusively from Ares. Just why is Pit doing Nike’s job? Because Nike happens to be Ares’ daughter according to some sources, like in the Homeric hymn dedicated to him. Why’s he a soldier in an army? Because Ares was a soldier and in some parts of Greece he was seen as a model of a perfect one who’s resilient and has physical strength that isn’t matched by anyone else. Apparently in Sparta they even had a statue of shacked Ares, supposedly as an attempt to keep the martial spirit and victory in Sparta I don’t know about you but for me this sounds like a very bad move, as if they were asking for the god’s wrath. Then again Athenians did the same thing with wingless Nike, so I guess it was fine in some twisted way. Why does Dark Pit exist? Because would you know it, there’s myth in which Ares and Aphrodite spot lonely little Eros and decide to create Anteros to be his brother, their only differences being hair, wings and weapons of choice Anteros has longer hair, plumed butterfly wings, golden club and lead arrows when compared to Eros' golden bow + both golden and lead arrows. Why does Magnus possibly being based on Meleager matter? Because would you know it, the dude’s sometimes a son of Ares. Why did he spend three years trapped inside a ring? It could parallel the tale of Ares and the giants, in which he spent a lunar year trapped inside a jar. Why does a dog help him during that section? It could still very well be reference Ares and the giants as Hermes and Artemis came to save him and one of Artemis’ sacred animals is a dog and Hermes is the god guard dogs. Also one of Ares’ sacred animals is dog as well, meaning that it could reference this as well. Honestly if Pit ends up having a divine parent and it’s not Ares, I call bullcrap.

So now when that has been made clear, what can writers do with Ares? Well if you take the myth of Poseidon wanting to settle things on court and give it to Pit, you end up losing one of his three major myths in which he’s wrathful towards someone odd I know, you’d probably expect a god of war to be much more wrathful but no, he’s not. The two ones that are left don’t really give all that great material either because in the first one, the target is Adonis and whether it even was Ares’ wrath that killed him is left open - in some versions it’s Artemis who wants him dead because she’s angry at Aphrodite for causing the situation which lead to the death of her hunter Hippolytus, sometimes it’s Apollo who still hasn’t forgiven Aphrodite for blinding his son Erymanthus, occasionally it’s Persephone of all people because she’s angry at Adonis for wanting so spend time with Aphrodite and at times it’s just an accident this all makes me think it was an elaborate coup. There’s always a reason for a divine being to be angry at Aphrodite because she just can’t help but cause trouble whenever she can. When it comes to the second one, it’s honestly pretty odd because not only does Ares forgive the man who originally was the target of his wrath, it illustrates how good of a parent he is on Olympian standards not that it’s a high bar but anyway - even better than the lady whose favorite boytoy he is, and she’s well known for being an overprotective parent.

The myth starts with this lad called Cadmus, who founds the city of Thebes, becomes its king and then kills a dragon residing on a nearby spring. Ares is furious about this since the dragon was sacred to him and apparently it’s sometimes his son, don't know how that works and as punishment, Cadmus has to serve Ares for eight years he got it easy when compared to Adonis and Halirrhothius. Once that service is over, Cadmus marries one of the two daughters of Ares and Aphrodite, this being Harmonia, the goddess of harmony. However not everything is all sunshine and rainbows because Hephaestus is still salty about how his marriage with Aphrodite went south and once he hears about a wedding, he prepares two gifts for the bride - first one was a beautiful necklace that could keep its wearer eternally youthful and the other one was a luxurious robe. But there was a catch, since both of these objects were cursed to bring bad luck to those who owned them. The bad luck eventually took its take on Cadmus’ mental state and one day he remarked that if gods fancied those serpents so much, maybe his life would be so much better as one. Gods fulfill this wish, he’s turned into a serpent and once Harmonia notices what has happened, she wishes the same. At one point Dionysus comes to the city, trashes the place and then gives them a propechy of this happening. Either way, Ares comes down to get the unlucky couple and then scoots them to safety in paradise-like Elysium, where they get to reside from now on.

You may already be familiar with this myth to a certain degree because Pokemon B/W could technically count as an adaptation of it. N is of course the most obvious parallel due to him getting his second name from Harmonia and Ghetsis takes a role comparable to Hephaestus. It all becomes even funnier because Harmonia hits some characteristics associated with yin - she’s passive, feminine figure who represents harmony which can only exist due to lack of action, an idea. It gains even more hilarity points thanks to existence of Adrestia, Harmonia’s sister and the goddess of revolt - she’s pretty much yang to Harmonia’s yin and to make things even more hilarious, she was often portrayed as a beautiful winged maiden. Now who would expect the goddess of revolt to be a lovely winged lady and the goddess of harmony to be at least momentarily a serpent?

While this is indeed an interesting myth, I don’t think it would make all great material for future KI-game, at least on its current form. The cast of KI doesn’t really get to interact with humans on a personal level, which is something this myth largely relies on. Honestly, I think the best way it could be referenced in game would be just Pit going to Elysium and meeting Harmonia still trapped on a draconic form. Considering the way Hades had been characterized in KI:U, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had just kept trapped Harmonia as a pet lizard in his garden. Maybe say something on the vain of him eating the husband’s soul or using it for something else to explain why she’s there all by herself. And if you want to make fun of the fact that the fourth wall might as well not exist, throw Adrestia in Elysium as well as a dragon as a nod to Pokemon. “The Twin Dragonesses of Elysium” sounds like it would make a very cool boss fight.

So a wrath or blessing, Ares gives us not much to work with either of those at least when it comes to him actually doing stuff - but that doesn’t mean we’re left with nothing because there’s three myths that I’ve glossed over quickly that could give us something, one just for comedy and two others actual plot. As for the one that’s just for comedy, it’s the one in which Sisyphus captures Thanatos. Ares is actually the one to save Thanatos from the tough situation since after it has continued for a month, he bursts into Sisyphus’ house, frees Thanatos and drags Sisyphus’ spirit to the Underworld… Only for him to come up with a sad story, which leads into Persephone letting him go only for it to backfire. Ares then disappears from the story, but it ends up with Sisyphus doing P.E for eternity in Tartarus once he dies for real as you all already know. This is pretty funny if a bit morbid myth, so it could be really easy to use it as a comedy goldmine if Ares ever interacted with Thanatos. Maybe have Thanatos trying to act like they’re friends, only for Ares to become more and more frustrated the longer Thanatos continues. Maybe once he mentions some of his escapades involving Pit, Ares finally decides that enough is enough and shows to Thanatos that mortals don’t call him by the name Thurus for nothing.

To the myths you could get some serious plot out of, the first one is very predictably the one in which he earns the title Aphneius. It just has everything a great character backstory needs on its original form, meaning that it could easily be inserted on the game with minimal changes and it could still work fantastically. It has a romance between a god and a mortal which ends up on a tragedy during a moment that was supposed to be joyous not because of any divine whim or I guess it could’ve been Aphrodite being salty because she has a habit of releasing her wrath upon Ares’ loved ones or relatives, usually grandchildren such as Hippolytus, but I think it would’ve been written down had the story actually said it was Aphrodite behind Aerope’s death, but because of something beyond their control. And instead of taking his frustrations on the baby like so many fathers in these stories do, he instead does everything to keep him alive and so Aeropus grows up to be fine ruler, if an unremarkable demigod. A writer could easily use Aeropus as a base for an interesting heroic character… And I guess you can already see where this is going. I already said that Ares would make the most sense as Pit’s divine parent if he indeed has one, so this would make an excellent backstory if that was the case.

I could see the timeline going something like this if this was true - Ares meets KI-universe’s equivalent of Aerope, the two have an adorable romance and are expecting a kid but something goes horribly wrong and Aerope dies, instead of letting Aerope’s family to take care of the kid Ares takes the baby with him because who knows what they would do to a winged baby so many myths have families abandoning their kids for dumber reasons than this so why wouldn’t he take the kid with him + this dude had 3-6 winged kids, one all by himself, so he definitely is the one hogging all the wing genes instead of Aphrodite, he tries single parenting but it’s hard when certain goddess is constantly shooting stinkeyes and paralyzing glares at his direction and it leads into him asking help from Palutena because a winged kid wouldn’t look too out of place among her angel minions. Considering how Palutena and Poseidon were capable of having a conversation in KI:U without any horrible atrocities being committed, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to imagine her relationship with Ares being along your typical sibling-relationship rather than what Atheanians wrote down Ares and Athena were actually worshiped together in the town of Olympia under titles Hippius and Hippias, fun fact. You could also see it as a favor inspired by how Menrva took care of Maris. Anyway, this deal goes swimmingly for a while until the events of a certain other myth take place, which makes Palutena the sole caregiver of Pit - some unspecified amount of time later que the events of the original Kid Icarus and onward.

Fanfic time over, now to the other myth which could explain Ares’ absence - it’s the one about him and the giants. Long story short, there’s these two giants called Ephialtes (derived from the word meaning nightmare) and Otus (either derived from the word meaning insatiate, doom or horned owl) who’re sons of Poseidon because of course they are, goddammit Poseidon and a mortal woman Iphimedeia, they’re also called by the name Aloadae. They were planning to storm into Olympus to kidnap some wives for themselves, Otus wanting Artemis and Ephialtes wanting Hera what great choices, you complete imbeciles, absolutely amazing. So one day Olympians are surprised to find these two giants piling up mountains on top one another and as expected, there’s a big fight between them because no one comes to the Olympian home turf without facing the consequences. Once the two giants finally leave, the Olympians notice that someone is missing, that being Ares. Ephialtes and Otus probably realized way too late that kidnapping the god of war wasn’t the brightest idea and because letting him go wasn’t an option, they locked him inside bronze jar of which he tried to break out without success. It took around a lunar year for the giants stepmother to rat this out to Hermes, who went to save Ares with Artemis. While she distracted the giants and made them throw their spears at each other, Hermes lockpicked Ares out of the jar and so the three returned to Olympus.

So how could this myth be used while crafting a plot for a future game? I’d say it depends on whether writers want to use Ares as a full-blown good guy from the start or as an antagonist at first - and while I do still believe that Ares wouldn’t be a bad guy on his own free will, who said he’s going to burst out of that jar with that free will still intact? It’s not like we haven’t seen brainwashed antagonists in the series before, Gaol was a one.

So if we have Ares as an antagonist who’s brainwashed and crazy, how could the possible plot be handled? I could see it starting with the two giants resurfacing for something trivial but because they’re being destructive, it catches the attention of Palutena who sends Pit down to deal with them. The giants are dealt with in 1-3 chapters and one way or another Pit finds a large jar and breaks it, releasing the crazed Ares. Neither side recognizes each other and there’s possibly a boss fight which ends with Ares leaving and him becoming a wandering antagonist who causes racket when someone angers him. He most likely isn’t connected to any other antagonist or the main villain, but I could see them trying to recruit him without any success. As for how he was brainwashed in the first place, it could be the Aloadae wanting to get some use out of their prisoner and they decided to make him into an indestructible living weapon either to themselves or someone else - maybe it even was commissioned by the big bad because who wouldn’t want an powerful living weapon who’s loyal to you and only you. Either way it proves fruitless as Pit frees Ares from the mind control and slowly but surely he starts to establish himself as a good guy and an ally to Pit and Palutena.

This would actually go pretty well along with a certain another thing about Ares, that being helmet and symbolism connected to it - you see, mythological Ares was often portrayed to have something I like to call Meta Knight-syndrome. He was said to be a beautiful man with a lovely face, apparently much more prettier than any other male Olympian which could possibly explain why he’s Aphrodite’s favorite boytoy and he wasn’t particularly proud of it - just what kind of self-respecting enemy would take you seriously if you have a face of an angel? But that didn’t stop people from drawing or sculpting him without a helmet, and the result were indeed pretty my goodness is Ludovisi Ares a one beautiful sculpture. Just considering how the art we see of Ares can be categorized into him either with or without a helmet, writers could easily craft a narrative out of this - while wearing a helmet he’s under mind control and once freed he fights helmetless, allowing player to see him as who he really is. Helmet obscuring the face equals bad guy and once it cracks, we can have a very confused ally who cries over the fact that his baby is a big boy now, cries some more because there’s two of them now, may or may not join us to missions if there’s a two-player mode for story or just help with training and also maybe cracks dad jokes few times because humor is a valid coping mechanism. This all kind of reminds me how one other popular trend relating to Ares in art was to have him disarmed with young Eros playing with his armor. Cute!

Somewhat relating to the idea of Ares starting as a brainwashed antagonist turned ally once the helmet is smashed, I could see him having two different themes which illustrate the different natures of him. First one should be something brooding and terrifying, maybe something similar to Gustav Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War which a really great piece of classical music that has inspired composers all around the world, even at Nintendo. If you haven’t heard it, you certainly have heard at least one song inspired by it metal genre can thank its existence on Mars, no kidding. As for the other theme, I think it should be a warm, calm and welcoming one with a hint of sadness, a complete opposite of the battle theme when it comes to the first expression. I’ve been recently listening a lot of TSFH and Hans Zimmer so if I had to say what kind of energy I’d want this possible theme to have, I’d probably say something between TSFH’s Friendship To Last from the demonstration album Nemesis, Final Days of Rome from album Unleashed and Now we are free from Gladiator. They all have this bittersweet yet beautiful feeling in them I love. Maybe there’s a shared leitmotif or something between the two themes connecting them into each other. Thurus and Aphneius were both titles for the same god after all, even if they were about wildly different aspects of him.

So just like with Apollo, I think there’s only one way to bring Ares into the franchise and in this case it would be making him Pit’s dad. It just makes way too much sense to me considering how Pit has been characterized that it would be odd if there wasn’t any connection between the two. And there’s even couple out-of-universe reasons why I don’t believe he would be the bad guy, the first and most notable being that the names Ares and Mars are already associated with morally righteous characters or at least characters we’re supposed to root for in Nintendo games. Sakurai certainly knows this, Marth has been in Super Smash Bros since Melee as a playable character and his name just blatantly is Mars in Japanese and his English name is just the Japanese way of saying Mars. You don’t bastardize the face of another franchise in your own one, especially if you’re both exclusives to the same company and the other franchise is much more bigger and important than yours is.

Since it would be hard to introduce Ares into the franchise, I would be completely fine with him not being featured in next game at all even though I would find it extremely disappointing. But if you’re not going to have him, at least have a reference to him in form of a weapon like Blade of Ares or Blade of Mars because would you know it, the legendary sword of Attila was also known as the sword of Mars. We’re probably never going to get actual swords in KI but blade has been used as a synonym for them, so there being a blade with said name could work just fine. That or finally add spear and shield combo into the game. But if you want to use the character who would work as the big bad the best into their fullest, maybe it would be a good idea to have Ares as well... All roads may lead to Rome, but not to the arms of Genetrix in this case.

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Call me crazy, but I think that Aphrodite would make the perfect big bad. Does she have that charisma and personality comparable to Hades? Yes she does, and unlike him she had all that in real life - one of her titles was Pandemos, quite literally meaning “of the people”. This made her extremely popular among people regardless who they were or where they lived, and how can you blame them since there’s not many people whom things such as beauty, love and sex don’t matter in some shape or form. Only Olympian who really matched her when it came to popularity was Zeus, but considering how he was the king of all gods it was to be expected that he’d outrank her on the popularity board. She was the most popular goddess in Greece by a longshot and that was also true for Venus in Rome, even if Mars took the place as the second most popular god after Jupiter. Due to her being the mother of Roman founding hero Aeneas, she was viewed as the mother of all Rome and it was used by people as a way to climb up the political ladder. The Julio-Claudian dynasty claimed to descend from her through Aeneas and it didn’t stop there - you can actually trace the ancestry of multiple mythological European figures all the way back to her! Some notable examples of this include Bladud/Blaiddyd, Leir of Britain, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia of Britain and supposedly even king Arthur himself last one is a bit iffy, but all the others are concrete, Aphrodite just flat out is their ancestor through Aeneas. She definitely has the charisma and presentation needed for a big bad because you simply couldn’t be able to pull of any of the previously mentioned things without them and if she could do it in real life, who says she couldn’t do it in a fictional world?

Pretty much only thing about Aphrodite that stays constant is her popularity because in the myths, her characterization is wildly inconsistent - I guess that something one should expect from a goddess who rules over matters such as beauty and love, two things one can never truly understand. However with that being said, there’s trends that stay with her regardless her ever-changing personality. She’s technically speaking an outsider to the Olympian family tree as her most popular and possibly the oldest one as well birth story has her as the motherless child of Ouranos, emerging fully formed from seafoam. Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon, Hera and Zeus form the first generation of Olympians and Ares, Athena, Hephaestus, Artemis, Apollo, Hermes and Dionysus are principal members of the second generation. By adding Eileithyia, Persephone and Hebe into the mix you get the main Olympian family, making Aphrodite feel like even more of an outsider. She only starts to fit among the family when the third generation is added and speaking of said generation, part of it forms her attendants. The two most important ones are her sons Eros and Anteros, love and love requited, whom she let’s to do pretty much all they want as long as they stay loyal to her. However once that loyalty shifts, she can be quite cruel towards them which is illustrated in the myth of Eros and Psyche quite well - and I’m going to let Aphrodite herself to do all the talking, so here’s a quote from from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass:

‘This is a fine state of affairs, just what one would expect from a child of mine, from a decent man like you! First of all you trampled underfoot the instructions of your mother--or I should say your employer--and you refused to humble my personal enemy with a vile love-liaison; and then, mark you, a mere boy of tender years, you hugged her close in your wanton, stunted embraces! You wanted me to have to cope with my enemy as a daughter-in-law! You take too much for granted, you good-for-nothing, loathsome seducer! You think of yourself as my only noble heir, and you imagine that I'm now too old to bear another. Just realize that I'll get another son, one far better than you. In fact I'll rub your nose in it further. I'll adopt one of my young slaves, and make him a present of these wings and torches of yours, the bow and arrows, and all the rest of my paraphernalia which I did not entrust to you to be misused like this. None of the cost of kitting you out came from your father's estate.’

Let’s file that under yikes. She’s saying this to her injured child and it’s about a girl he loves more than anything but she can’t stand her. And it’s not like Aphrodite dislikes her for any valid reasons, it’s all because Psyche is pretty and Aphrodite took it as a personal attack. This temperament is a stable with her, be the fuss she causes either positive or negative. It goes well in the line of the idea that she was never a child and was born fully formed, as it’s pretty hard to learn those important childhood life lessons as an adult. And do you want to know the best part about this mess? After this massive rant she’s confronted by Hera and Demeter, two goddesses who in all intents and purposes should understand what she’s feeling right now and guess what they do? They call Aphrodite a hypocrite in her face because that’s exactly what she is. Why is she so angry at her child for growing up and experiencing romantic love for the first time when she spends most of her time either being in love or making others fall in love?

Let’s leave the sad lovers behind for a while and talk about Aphrodite in some other myths. There’s not many myths about her that don’t feature romance or sex in some form, but those few are usually about her competitive nature. There’s a myth about Hermes and Aphrodite participating on funeral games yes, this was a real tradition organized by Apollo and she won, her prize being a zither which she later gave to Paris. There’s also a myth about her and Athena having a weaving competition which ended on her losing miserably because as one might expect, challenging the goddess of weaving into a weaving competition couldn’t possibly end well. But since these kind of myths are about things out of her assignments, there isn’t many of them. Most of them are about her helping people with their relationship problems, some examples could be her giving Galatea life on Pygmalion’s wishes and gifting Hippomenes the three golden apples so he could win the race for Atalanta’s heart. But it’s also really easy to earn her anger, some notable immortals who were victims of her wrath are the titan goddess of dawn Eos (she didn’t want to share Ares so she cursed Eos to feel uncontrollable desire towards a new man every day), the titan god of sun Helios (he ratted out her relationship with Ares so she cursed him to forget everyone he ever loved romantically and then made him fall in love with princess Leucothoe - it ends badly and that’s how we got heliotropes), the muse Calliope (Aphrodite saw Zeus asking her help for covering the whole deal about who gets to keep Adonis as a personal attack and so she cursed her son Orpheus to have a horrible death in the hands of Dionysus’ worshipers - interestingly enough this has nothing to do with the fact that Calliope did also sleep with Ares or that she married Oeagrus who’s sometimes said to be Ares’ son, which would make Orpheus his grandson), a minor ocean deity Nerites (he refused to follow her into the land so she turned him into a shrimp) and Pan (Aphrodite and this handsome lad Acheilus had a beauty competition and Pan was the judge - he said Acheilus was prettier so Aphrodite turned the poor lad into into a hideous shark-creature and then cursed Pan to be hopelessly in love with the nymph Echo, the very same Echo who had her eyes on Narcissus). It could even be said that her blessings aren’t going to last for long and by using Hippomenes as an example once again, we learn that in one version of the story she turned him into a lion all because he didn’t pay his respects back to her soon enough. Guileful Aphrodite indeed.

Due to her temperament and general lack of caring about the consequences of her actions, Aphrodite has earned the ire of many gods - just look no further than Adonis, there’s four possible culprits who could’ve caused his death. Because of their contradictory natures, she’s often portrayed as not getting along with Hestia, Athena and Artemis and while there’s not much material for Hestia there’s multiple myths of Aphrodite causing unpleasant situations for Artemis and her hunters, Hippolytus being the shining example of this. The judgement of Paris establishes her relationship with Hera and Athena as a rocky one and the Trojan war has them full-on enemies on opposite sides, Athena even telling the Greek Diomedes during the war that he should avoid fighting literally any god with the exception of Aphrodite - it leads into him throwing a spear at Aphrodite, piercing her wrist and this leads into Aphrodite cursing Diomedes in return. Also in some records such as Cypria Helen’s mother is stated to be the goddess Nemesis, so add her into the list of gods Aphrodite has angered so it turns out the goddess who truly was Nemesis’ enemy was never the one from Blue Sea Star but rather the one who represented Morning Star, how ironic. Her relationship with the male Olympians are a bit better but not always, in fact she has no meaningful one with Apollo at all. Her marriage with Hephaestus was an unhappy one and only after they divorced were they both allowed to be happy, Hephaestus by marrying Aglaea and having a family with her and Aphrodite by continuing her many affairs without any worries. She did scorn Zeus when he tried to get it on with her, but otherwise there’s not much either good or bad blood between them. Besides Ares, Aphrodite did find both Poseidon and Dionysus handsome and had affairs with them, but it’s unclear if they resulted any children - Rhodos has Telchine Halia and Amphitrite as her other mother candidates, Peitho is almost always said to be a child of Tethys and Oceanus instead, the Charites were more often said to be children of Zeus and Oceanid Eurynome rather than Aphrodite’s and Priapus just has no parents set in stone because no telling was seemingly more popular than others. The birth myth of Hermaphroditus starts with Aphrodite telling Hermes to piss off because he doesn’t come even close to her standards, so he asks little help from Zeus to get what he wants and therefore I can’t imagine them having a positive relationship because of this. And after reading so many myths in which Aphrodite targets Ares’ grandkids for whatever reasons, I’m starting to think that he should start running away and quickly. Maybe she really did kill Aerope.

Now returning to the love story with a happy ending which has the most famous victim of Aphrodite’s wrath, Eros and Psyche. It begins in a town with no name given oh, so this isn’t completely baseless in KI where princess Psyche (meaning either soul or breath of life) is having trouble socializing - the people have declared that she’s as if not more beautiful than Aphrodite and they have started worshiping her, denying normal human interaction from her. This obviously pisses off Aphrodite because it has been established that she has the self-control skills comparable to a toddler and so she orders her son Eros to make Psyche to fall in love with something hideous. While he agrees to do the deed, once he sees the beautiful Psyche he can’t help but to fall in love with her and then he chooses to defy his mother, crafting a plan on what to do next. In the meanwhile the loneliness is making Psyche miserable and that doesn’t go unnoticed by her parents, so they go to visit the oracle of Apollo for help. Considering how Apollo is still very much salty at Eros for cursing him to have the worst love life imaginable, his words aren’t all that comforting (another quote from The Golden Ass):

‘Adorn this girl, O king, for wedlock dread, and set her on a lofty mountain-rock. Renounce all hope that one of mortal stock can be your son-in-law, for she shall wed a fierce, barbaric, snake-like monster. He, flitting on wings aloft, makes all things smart, plaguing each moving thing with torch and dart. Why, Jupiter himself must fearful be. The other gods for him their terror show, and rivers shudder, and the dark realms below.’

She and her parents are obviously horrified by this, but they do as they were told to and Psyche is left alone on a cliffside where the god of west wind Zephyrus picks her up. He brings her into a lovely meadow where she takes a refreshing nap and after she wakes up, she sees a beautiful palace and goes in. She’s charmed by the looks of the place and then a disembodied voice tells her that she will be provided by many invisible servants while living in there. Once night falls she’s nervous to meet her husband, but after the first meeting she starts looking forward on their nights together. This continues for quite some time, but in the meanwhile Psyche’s family is starting to get worried about her and she’s in return worrying about them. Eros promises that her sisters can come to visit, but also tells her that she shouldn’t listen them if they sound jealous. Psyche agrees and Eros gets Zephyrus to scoot the sisters down to visit, but as expected the sisters get jealous really quickly and start to make her worry if what the oracle told about her husband was indeed true - what finally broke the camels back was the sisters suggesting that he’s planning to kill her and their unborn child. So when the next night falls, she has prepared herself a lamp and dagger to see if her husband really is a monster - once she draws the lamp near and sees that he’s in fact Eros himself, she’s awestruck and accidentally stabs herself with one of his arrows, making her fall for him even harder. But while admiring him some oil spills from the lamp on Eros, causing him to wake up and leave. Earlier in the story Psyche had said that she’d much rather die than throw this marriage away and she’s willing to live by that statement, so she goes to search Eros and atonement - meanwhile Aphrodite is beating her son in the head by talking how horrible child he is for daring to fall in love and then she imprisons him Genetrix knows nothing in this case. Hera and Demeter call her a hypocrite, which doesn’t ease her anger in the slightest.

Psyche eventually finds her way into a temple of Aphrodite and she calls her two servants to beat the poor girl to make herself feel better. After having a good laugh over Psyche’s suffering, she gives her another beating herself and then dumbs different kinds of grains on the ground, saying that she should sort them by night if she ever wants to see Eros again. Sometimes prompted by him, ants nearby take pity on Psyche and help her - predictably Aphrodite isn’t all too happy about this and she comes up with a much more deadlier task. By morning she tells her that she should get some golden fleece from the sheep living on a grove across nearby river. This disheartens Psyche because she knows gathering the fleas directly is a suicide mission, but she’s consulted by local river deity who tells her how the sheep behave and that instead of approaching the sheep at all she should just collect fleas caught on foliage. She does as was told and Aphrodite becomes even more enraged, telling her to go gather water from river Styx. While she finds her way to Styx without much hassle, she’s overwhelmed by the hopelessness of the situation - luckily for her everyone has come to the conclusion that Aphrodite is being horrible and Zeus sends one of his eagles to help Psyche to get the water.

At this point Aphrodite’s patience is running thin and she gives Psyche a box, tells her to go into Underworld to get a part of Persephone’s beauty and come back with it because this whole deal of torturing her little daughter-in-law has been so hard for her and she needs to look good while going to the divine theatre. After being consulted by a tower on how to actually get into the Underworld without dying, she does as was told and and it doesn’t take long for her to be greeted by Persephone. After refusing to fall into an obvious trap, Psyche told her why she was visiting her and Persephone agreed to help her without hassle - but after returning into the mortal world, Psyche’s curiosity took the better of her and she wanted to see that beauty herself. Turns out it was Stygian sleep fancy words for boxed death and Psyche drops on the ground like a rock, but at this point Eros has escaped his imprisonment goes straight to her. He draws the sleep back into the box, gently pricks her with an arrow to wake her up, the two have a heartfelt reunion and Eros brings Psyche to Olympus, asking Zeus if the two can now get properly married. Everyone agrees, Zeus tells Aphrodite to stfu and they give Psyche ambrosia, making her the goddess of soul. The two have a glorious wedding and some time after it Psyche gives birth to their daughter, either named Hedone or Volupta(s) depends if it’s a Greek or Roman telling the story, the personification of pleasure, joy and delight. I personally prefer the name Volupta, it rhymes much more nicer with rest of the family.

And since we’re at here, that gorgeous painting by John William Waterhouse that everyone thinks has Pandora wearing a pink dress? It’s actually Psyche opening the deathly beauty box. Don’t believe me? Just check Psyche opening the golden box and you see who’s right. He however did create an equally pretty painting about Pandora though.

So now when the story time finally over, what can we do with all of this info? Well, it does tell how perfect of an antagonist Aphrodite makes for an Eros-expy. She has power over him and isn’t afraid of abusing it when she feels betrayed. Compare this to the tales of Icarus and Perseus which really don’t have a main antagonists - Icarus has no personal stakes in the story because he’s a plot device rather than a character and from Daedalus’ point of view, the main antagonist is Minos but mythology doesn’t really treat him as all that horrible person. After he died he became one of the judges of the Underworld and probably sent Daedalus to Tartarus once he died, which illustrates a one seriously big missed opportunity which should’ve been used if Icarus truly was that important inspiration for Pit. Instead it just makes it even more clear how irrelevant Icarus and the narrative about the Minotaur are to KI. As for Perseus, I already talked about how Medusa is a mcguffin while alive and the other ones aren’t much better. Polydectes, Phineus and Acrisius are all dealt with so quickly that they don’t really matter - his only fight that isn’t solved by a handwave is against Cetus and it’s just a sea monster sent to kill Andromeda by Poseidon. Poseidon’s antagonistic potential is a topic I’ve already discussed and the already mentioned possible fusion of the myths of Poseidon sending a sea monster to harass Troy and Ares’ trial covers the idea of Pit saving a girl from a sea monster which is bit funny because in the former one, oracle tells that king Laomedon should let it eat his daughter Hesione to get rid of the monster, so that doesn’t really add anything new here. But with Aphrodite as the big bad it could be rather easy to craft two different but overlapping plotlines, one with a main goal and the other with a personal one. Aphrodite always was Eros’ biggest personal antagonist who treated him as a trophy child and didn’t take it well when he stepped out of the line - how dare her little doll grow up, behave like a man and then decide that he wants to move on to build a family of his own, which now takes the priority over her? Him choosing Psyche over his mother is his defining myth, with the addition of it being the myth in which he finally gains the respect of the other gods. Besides having its message about heart and soul being capable feeling and creating joy while together, it also functions as a coming of age story for its main couple - and when those stories have an antagonist, things tend get really personal.

So going back to those possible two plotlines and goals, what could they possibly be about? I’d say that the main plot line shouldn’t really be based on any myth but instead it should take advantage of her popularity among ancient people, more so when it comes to Venus and Rome. Even as a city, Rome was massive - by the time of 1st century CE it had reached the population of million people, being the first city in history to do that. And this was only the capital of the empire! Rome wasn’t build in a day indeed. Venus wasn’t worshiped by the thousands, her popularity was in the millions during this time period. That’s a lot of power for one goddess and as we all know, too much power can easily hit one in the head - especially when remembering that we’re dealing with a Pantheon composed entirely of manchildren. Give Aphrodite an empire that looks up to her, doesn’t do anything without a last world from her and you’re set with a supervillain who has it all from power to personality. In this case, the reason why Aphrodite should be stopped is that she’s a conqueror who rules by fear, saying that if she was ever abandoned she would curse them and take away all the blessings she has ever granted, leading her empire to ruin. If you want to make her feel even more villainous, don’t even give her an army of her own like Hades and Viridi had but make her use the people of the empire she rules over. There’s nothing more evil than using people who look up to you for protection for your own selfish goals. What those selfish goals may be, writers can be creative with them - maybe she wants to be viewed as the supreme goddess above everyone else, maybe she wants everyone to worship her and isn’t afraid to use extreme measures to get what she wants, maybe she wants to wipe out everyone who could be a threat to her, everything goes. Considering her role on the judgement of Paris, her causing a war or chaos for selfish reasons isn’t out of character. But whatever her reasons may be, there’s going to sparks in the air and fights of massive proportions. Ares may be Pit’s father but Aphrodite definitely isn’t his mother, so she’s not going to show him any sympathy or kindness if he gets in the way of her plans.

This would be the plotline that’s more on the background and focused on Aphrodite’s relationships with Palutena, possibly Ares and the other gods, the main goal is their goal. It’s why they want her defeated. If Palutena is anything like Athena, she can’t get along with her and she understands that allowing Aphrodite to do whatever she wants will have catastrophic consequences even if she herself couldn’t care less about those. If Ares was featured on a future game along with Aphrodite, their relationship would probably be focused on how they feel betrayed by each other. The myth of her cursing Eos illustrates how she sees their relationship open only from her end so she’s very likely still angry at him for leaving her, be it for Aerope or something else entirely. If you want to go with the depressing idea of her being the one who ordered Aloadae to kidnap him, she probably feels even more betrayed because even under mind control he didn’t come back to her like she had anticipated. And if it’s indeed her favorite ex-boytoy’s son with some other lady who has been foiling her plans, her blood quite possibly starts to boil. Ares’ feelings of betrayal would likely stem from Aphrodite trying to kill his child for no other reason than sheer pettiness, along with orchestrating his kidnapping and torture just so she could get her boytoy back. Other gods probably want her stopped for similar reasons as Palutena, maybe with some selfishness rippled in - the consequences of her actions are hurting them and because she doesn’t care, something must be done to stop her. For example, Viridi could possibly oppose Aphrodite because she doesn’t care about how she’s hurting nature on her attempts to viewed as the supreme goddess. Not to say that Pit doesn’t also care about this goal since he’s an empathetic youngster, but I think that the more personal plotline should be his and it’s goal his main motivator during the story.

As for the plotline with the more personal goal, the myth of Eros and Psyche makes the perfect outline for it. Aphrodite is already the main antagonist of the tale, so there’s no need for any massive changes when it comes to her jealousy and want to dispose Psyche. The tasks she gives to her could also be mostly unchanged, if adjusted with something that makes gameplay more immersive assuming we would get to play as her like we got to play as Dark Pit in chapter 22 in KI:U. However what needs to changed is Aphrodite’s relationship with Pit, how he and Psyche first meet and how their relationship is evolves from that point onward since following the myth to a T isn’t an option in this case. I could see Pit and Psyche’s first meeting being a result of Aphrodite’s wrath manifesting on a relatively harmless way, meaning that she already knows about this new, pretty princess that challenges her status as the supreme goddess and she’s not having any of it. As for how her wrath could manifest, it could be a your garden-variety monster attack in the first chapter disguised as someone else’s troops so no one would suspect it was her behind it. The sheer weirdness of it could catch Palutena’s attention so she sends Pit down to investigate it and to get rid of the monsters. While getting rid of them, he meets Psyche in one way or another - maybe she’s trying to escape from them or she’s trying to fight against them, either way Pit comes to her aid and they befriend each other. Maybe she’s featured on a few following chapters as minor character doing something on the background, giving them more possibilities to interact and become better friends - in these chapters Apollo could possibly be introduced along with reintroducing Poseidon, to foreshadow the roles they would play later on. What side plots would these chapters have, it could anything - maybe Pit meets Ares for the first time at this point of the story, but he’s not freed from mind control just yet.

At this point Aphrodite could be getting more angrier but she doesn’t want to out herself as the main villain yet, so she crafts a plan that would eventually lead into Poseidon hating Pit into the point of him wanting to take things into the court. Maybe she tricks Poseidon and Apollo into becoming mad at Psyche’s home city for whatever reason, like how they got angry at Troy in mythology proper. If this was the case, I think that she would keep Poseidon in the dark while letting Apollo fully know what’s going on - if Poseidon doesn’t know the true reason why Aphrodite wanted his sea monster to terrorize the city and why it was killed, he would be much more enraged when it happens. I’ve already established reasons as for why Apollo would dislike Pit, so he probably wouldn’t really need any prompting to cause Pit suffering since he’d still want some payback from that embarrassing noodle incident. So Poseidon sends his sea monster to terrorize the coastline and once citizens start asking help from the gods, Apollo lets the hate flow through him and offers nothing useful - instead he tells them to take the Hesione/Andromeda-approach and let it eat someone to calm it down oh look, it’s a reference to Perseus that’s not about Medusa for once, nice. In this case, it would be Psyche and Pit’s of course not going to let his friend die so he goes to save her, be it with or without Palutena’s approval. In my head I did imagine this as a chapter that would work amazingly with multiplayer, starting with Pit and Dark Pit distracting the monster, then Pit freeing Psyche and them setting out to kill the monster before it causes more harm. Player 2 would have to deal with changing characters on the fly but if Pittoo and Psyche had similar weapons, I don’t think it would be too distracting since they’d be playable on different parts of the chapter. But once the monster has finally been defeated, the joy is cut short by Poseidon interrupting and wanting vengeance for what happened to his monster, ending the chapter. The plot would immediately catch on the next one and what I could see happening on this chapter is that Pit’s taken into the court by Poseidon and he’s not allowed to have anyone defending him, but Dark Pit and Psyche go into his defense anyway Pittoo being the playable character. After a long and treacherous journey they find they way to the divine courthouse and tell their point of view on the events, which gives Pit the sympathy of the court and he gets away scot-free. Poseidon and Apollo may face on consequences at this point and they may even rat Aphrodite out on a subtle way, but the main group doesn’t catch it.

The following few chapters would be breathers before the plot kicks in again, Aphrodite ousting herself as the big bad in one way or another. Maybe she has sent her troops to attack some place, possibly in search for Ares since he would make a great ally on this brainwashed state. Much to her dismay he declines her offers, he and Pit fight and the helmet is smashed, but Palutena recalls Pit before anything can come out of it. The fight continues for couple following chapters, Palutena and Aphrodite are gradually getting more and more mad at each other and maybe she comes down to face Pit herself because the little brat getting on her way is starting to be really annoying now this would make a pretty cool unwinnable boss fight, but Ares comes just in time save him - que silent, cold anger between them, confusion from Pit and Palutena’s end with some extremely awkward reunions and explanations.

What could follow from here is another set more lighter chapters focused less on Aphrodite’s plans to become the supreme goddess and more of the cast getting to know each other better - Palutena and Ares reconnecting, Ares trying to form a meaningful relationship with Pit and Dark Pit, Pit and Psyche becoming better friends, etc etc. Not to say Aphrodite has given up on her plans - she’s still doing things on the background, but it’s implied that what little chaos she currently causes is serving as distraction to hide her bigger plans. Persephone could possibly be introduced at this point of the story, making it clear that she knows about the events of KI:U and that she’s going to get her payback on what happened to Hades in one way or another, possibly drop an implication that she’s working together with Aphrodite. But since everything good comes to an end and so do the breather episodes, plot would go on with Aphrodite kidnapping Pit and getting Persephone to throw him into some dark part of the Underworld, maybe even to Tartarus. And now we get into the fun part of the myth, Psyche’s four tasks!

I could see the plot separating into two directions from here on, first one being Pit’s great prison escape from wherever Persephone threw him into and the second one being the titular four tasks. The prison escape is more focused on traversing the Underworld and Pit trying get out of there while Persephone throws all kinds of obstacles at him - maybe it ends with a ghost gauntlet, since Odyssey illustrated that she can summon ghosts. Arke would make a pretty great boss fight here as well, since she could be classified as a fallen angel. Maybe her motive for going after Pit is to get his wings for herself as a mean to escape, since her own ones were ripped off as punishment for siding with the Titans. But since Pit’s a brave boy, this isn’t enough to stop him and he eventually finds his way out so there could be reunion and a final battle against Persephone.

While Pit’s great prison break is going on, Aphrodite makes an empty promise to rest of the cast that she can give Pit back, with some conditions - but just like in the myth, all she actually wants is Psyche’s death so the danger factor is amped up to eleven. I honestly don’t know how the one about sorting grains could be handled I guess it could work as a puzzle chapter, but the rest work rather well without massive changes. The one about gathering te golden fleas could now take a more direct approach, the one about getting Styx’s water is now missing the helpful eagle and the Underworld trip is largely same with the exception of Persephone not being cooperative. This would be the point where the two plotlines merge together and they take Persephone down together before leaving from the Underworld. Psyche falling for Stygian sleep in this version is up to debate, I say it could work either way. It mostly depends on when she’s going to wake up - if it’s too early it might as well not matter, if it’s after the final battle I’d say that’s too late.

As one might expect Pit’s escape makes Aphrodite furious and she challenges him into a one final battle - that brat has stolen her favorite boytoy from her, satisfaction of getting rid of the annoying princess and also her chances to become the supreme goddess way too many times, she has reached her third-act breakdown and at this point she has nothing left to lose anymore. Ares isn’t going to come back to her, Psyche is not going to die and the people under her empire have started to become less dependent of her, the last thing she can do is get rid the troublesome kid that brought her into this situation. Of course Pit ends up winning, sending the goddess to Aether to hang with Hades where they can now together sulk over the fact that they got defeated by an angel. Pit triumphantly returns to Skyworld where Palutena and others have been waiting, there’s a joyful reunion between all of them and if one wants to follow the original myth at this point, Psyche could gain divinity or immortality for her bravery for standing against Aphrodite as a mere mortal. People have become immortals for dumber reasons in Greco-Roman mythology, so at least Psyche doesn’t become immortal merely because one god thought she was pretty. Have some little banter at the end between the cast and then credits can finally roll in.

When thinking of some nice bonus content, maybe there could be a secret ending player can unlock after beating all the chapters on a certain difficulty, which confirms that everyone is doing well. If we have to deal with another long hiatus that could last for decade or two or eternity, best the game can offer is closure. Pit doesn’t have to a married man with a daughter, but at least show that he’s doing well and ready for a new adventure or that he has had many of those under his belt at this point. All one can do is hope at this point that there will be a new adventure or a happy ending that ties all the loose ends together. Praise Volupta, maybe one day dreams can come true.

______

Welp, this turned out to be much more longer and heavier than I originally expected! If nothing else, that would make an interesting fanfic. Anyway, I think I made my point clear - Aphrodite has everything a big bad needs from power to personality and motives to harass the already existing KI-cast. Even if you don’t want to go with the ideas I came up with, there’s so many myths to use and modify in which she could fill the role of the main villain. And just because there’s heavy themes it doesn’t mean it has to be without humor - I mean, there’s a lot of heavy implications in KI:U yet the game still manages to be a comedy gold mine despite those heavy implications. Writers just need to know when to be serious and when levity is needed, good pacing is something that every great story needs. For some reason I could definitely see there being a gag in which Pandora has regained her true form, only for Aphrodite to snatch it away because Pandora was living on borrowed beauty anyway and she’d like to have it back.

Though I must say that I’m proud of all of these plot bunnies I came up with. It was a fun journey to me to research, overthink, adapt and mix myths while trying to imagine who could be the next possible big bad and what the plotline relating to their villainy could be. And I came out wiser from it, so I really can’t be angry over it even if it took so me so much longer than I originally planned. I never thought that me wanting to write about a Nintendo game would make me read this much about history and philosophy yet here I am. Also now when I’m thinking of it, that last one would tie a lot of threads nicely together if they had a plotline like it on a future game - Poseidon gets to be an antagonist, Apollo gets to be an antagonist, Persephone gets to be an antagonist and Aphrodite gets to be the villain. It’s so nice when things work out this well together! Dionysus is left out though, but I guess it’s not all that bad because having too many antagonists would make the plot feel overly complicated.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my thoughts of who could replace Hades as the big bad. You can’t change my mind on Aphrodite being the best possible candidate but if you disagree with me, who do you think it could be? I’m always open for discussion so feel free to talk with me. Now there’s only one question remaining on my head - if a future Kid Icarus game had Arachne, would she be a jorōgumo?

#kid icarus #kid icarus uprising #ki #kiu #pit #dark pit #palutena #viridi #tagging them all since they're relevant at certain points #and all of them expect pittoo are featured in my doodles in some way so there's that as well #does this count as a doodle dump? #bella draws #bella writes #overly long essay #mythology typical violence tw

[kingreywrites]

Even If It Hurts - Chapter 2 - The one they found

Fandom: Tangled

Word Count: 2366

Summary: There are days when the tears can't help but fall, no matter how much Rapunzel and Eugene don't want them to.

There are days when these tears are shed for family; for the one they lost, the one they found, and the one they created.

Chapter Summary: Despite trying, the words will not come. His breath is cut off by the tears he won't shed, taking too much place in his chest until he feels nothing but them. He doesn't want to cry, but he's not sure if it's stopping talking or keeping at it that will tip him over the edge. Maybe there's no escaping this.

Note: Eugene’s turn >:)

Read on ao3

1. The one they lost ; 2. The one they found

Eugene... Eugene doesn't cry often. It doesn't suit him. People think it's another example of him being conceited when he says he has an ugly crying face, because after all, everyone is ugly when they cry, but it's- it's more complicated than that.

Eugene is an ugly crier. He's a loud crier too, because he can't stand sitting around in deafening silence while his world feels like it's crumbling around him. He needs to move, to talk, to do anything so he can ignore his tears as much as possible and that made him an absolute nightmare to deal with as a child, or so he was told.

He doesn't remember crying often enough to be an annoyance. He does remember, somewhat, the feeling of being scolded by people who were as tall as giants, yelling for him to shut up. He's an adult now, and he's not sure if this is a memory or a dream, but he feels like there's definitely a part of truth in this. He probably deserved the yelling, to be honest, because he must have been impossible to deal with back then. Crying kids were annoying, and the matrons would often let them cry all night instead of doing anything (Eugene knew, because he was the one who got up and read them stories so they could calm down); he had always been extra annoying, making potential families flee with his general attitude. A mix of the two was definitely headache worthy, so they did their best for him to stop crying.

They mostly succeeded.

Eugene can count the number of times he cried in the last five years on the fingers of his hand - and it's exactly once, when he was about to die and leave Rapunzel behind. He had been terrified, for her and for himself, and the tears had come naturally. He had been too tired to fight them. After that, though, he had begun his no crying streak anew, and it was only a deaged Lance that nearly broke it.

Eugene has a soft spot for crying kids, it's not his fault.

But Lance didn't make him cry. Getting hurt during their adventures didn't make him cry, practically betraying the woman he loved most didn't make him cry, meeting his long lost father didn't make him cry-

Except.

Except they go back to Corona, Eugene with one father more and one friend less. They go back, and Rapunzel is a mess, so he tries to be there for her when she needs it, tries to be the support she has trouble asking for. And then, his father- Edmund comes back, with dreams of reconnecting with his long lost son, and Rapunzel is excited at the prospect, and Eugene wants Rapunzel to be happy and... He gets roped into a weird adventure, and despite the still present hurt, Edmund and him make amends.

He still doesn't cry. He has no reason to anymore, after all.

So when the tears come anyway, the overwhelming mix of anger and shame nearly chokes him with how suddenly it takes over him. He flees his conversation with Edmund with the flimsiest excuse, and practically runs to his bedroom in a desperate dash for privacy.

He won't cry. "I won't cry," he repeats out loud, unsure of who he's trying to convince - but his voice wobbles on the last word.

He closes his fists, takes a deep breath, and holds it in for as long as he can in fear of a sob breaking out of his chest. His eyes are burning and nothing is working and he's going to cry but- but-- He grabs the first object he can get his hands on and throws it down harshly, cringing at the sound of broken glass that follows. Through the blurring of his eyes, he understands that it was a glass of water, and that makes him feel like even more of an idiot because- because-

He can't breathe. He stumbles and sits down heavily on his bed, putting his palms over his eyes in the vain hope of stopping the process - but he can already feel the ugly twisting of his face as he tries to keep it all in, and soon-

"Eugene?"

He startles badly, and turns towards the voice, blinking his eyes rapidly. Of course she's here now. "Sunshine," he laughs, or coughs, he isn't sure, and he can see more clearly for now - clear enough to notice the frown clearly forming on her face, or the concern in her eyes. "What- uh, what are you doing here?"

His voice is still wobbling. Kindly, Rapunzel doesn't comment on it.

"A handmaiden heard a crash in your room," she smiles gently, looking at the broken glass on the ground. "She was worried, so she told me."

"Ah. Yeah, that, be- be careful about the glass, I don't want you to cut your feet because of me. Because, you know," he babbles as she quietly makes her way over him, "going barefoot everywhere can be dangerous. Well, you obviously know that, and I'm not trying to tell you what to do but- uh... that's... something to consider?" he finishes lamely.

Rapunzel doesn't answer him, simply sitting down next to him. Her shoulder is warm against his. She smells like strawberry, today, and he wonders if she was in the middle of one of her baking endeavours. He hopes he hasn't interrupted her, all because he grew too angry and threw a freaking glass to the ground like an idiot, probably scaring some poor handmaiden in the process.

"Eugene," Rapunzel repeats, in that way she has of saying his name full of love and affection, and free of any judgement. "Are you okay?"

Once again, Eugene tears up like a baby. He starts looking stubbornly at the wall, in the vain hope that she doesn't see it.

"Oh you know," he laughs, the sound bitter and angry, "just trying to strike a discussion with my dear old father- that wasn't even a father to me until like two months ago!" His voice gets loud again, but the remarks about being an annoying crier are forgotten for a second, as he tries to explain. "And here I come, simply trying to understand hi- to understand my life better, and he- he- he refuses!" Eugene stutters painfully, feeling his breaths getting caught in his chest.

His cheeks are hurting from the way they're scrunching up unnaturally. His hands are balled around the sheets of his bed, and he feels like he's falling apart at the seams, trying to hold himself together through sheer willpower. It's not working. And so he keeps talking, hoping that his mouth will move faster than his mind, and that it'll be enough.

"He's really- He really thinks because he's my father he has a right to decide what's good for me but he- he lost that right," he exclaims, voice breaking on the "lost", heart breaking at the memories. "Each time I think I'm forgiving him, each time... Each time I think we can be family, I remember just how much he fucked up, and how that fucked me up, and I- I-"

He can't take a breath after that, but Rapunzel softly takes his hand, and his lungs somewhat remember what they're supposed to do.

"It's okay to be angry, Eugene," she whispers, her voice so quiet next to his and yet echoing louder in his mind. "No one expects you to be okay immediately."

"Really?" he laughs, a short burst that doesn't convince anyone, "because Edmund expects me to be fine with him. A lot of people think it's so great that I'm actually a Prince, and can't even imagine- can't- he abandoned me!" Eugene explodes. "He abandoned me, as a child, and he knew how much I was suffering, he had all the wanted posters! He knew I was thieving to survive and... And that means he knew about the nights sleeping outside, being so hungry I felt like my stomach was eating itself. He knew about the living out there in the cold, he knew about me nearly getting killed on a daily basis, he maybe even knew about that time I thought Lance was going to die and I was going to be all alone and-"

He can't finish that sentence. He still hasn't looked at Rapunzel, but he feels her thumb slowly stroking his hand, gently trying to calm him down.

"He knew," he breathes out quietly, heart thumping in his chest. "And I know he had his reasons but- but I didn't deserve that. I know I didn't." Rapunzel hums quietly. His head hurts. His throat feels raw, and he remembers that he's an ugly, loud crier, will you shut up Eugene-

But he won't shut up. He wants to, really - he wishes he was strong enough to compose himself but... He hasn't had a proper breakdown in a decade, and it's all crashing down on him, bringing everything he built down with it.

"I asked him about my mom," Eugene admits quietly, "and he didn't want to talk about it. Said it was- a touchy subject for him. As if- as if it isn't for me," he chuckles, feeling really cold. "Two months ago, I didn't know I had a mother, and now I'm grieving a nameless woman I only saw in a painting, all because he- he- because he-"

Despite trying, the words will not come. His breath is cut off by the tears he won't shed, taking too much place in his chest until he feels nothing but them. He doesn't want to cry, but he's not sure if it's stopping talking or keeping at it that will tip him over the edge. Maybe there's no escaping this.

"It's so stupid," Eugene rages, against Edmund and against himself, his voice way weaker than he wants it to be. "I- I should be happy right? But- He's so- he- this is stupid! And- And who even names their kids Horace?!"

Of course that's the exact moment Eugene can't hold back his tears anymore. For fucking Horace, when it was supposed to be a joke so he could get a grip on himself. But maybe it's not just the name. Maybe it's about meeting someone who did so much harm to you, and having to fight them over the simple thing of being called your chosen name, like you had to fight so many people before him; maybe it's about spending years hating everything that made you who you are, before finally coming to terms with your identity, finally seeing something worth loving in yourself, only to discover that it was all a lie anyway.

In the end, it doesn't matter. Eugene starts crying, and tries to hide his face in his hands, but Rapunzel doesn't let go of the one she's holding. His head is swimming. She tugs him towards her, and suddenly he's sobbing on her shoulder, feeling like a pathetic idiot for it. And of course he doesn't stop babbling, about how stupid this all is, and how he shouldn't even be crying anyway, because there was way worse in life and he was fine.

Rapunzel doesn't say much. She tells him to breathe, mostly, and gently congratulates him when he does. She tells him that he's okay. She tells him that she loves him.

She doesn't say much, but she says exactly what he needs.

"I'm sorry," he chuckles wetly, shivering a little when he feels her fingers on the nap of his neck. "This isn’t… You already have a lot on your shoulders, and I'm putting more weight on them. Quite literally."

He hopes for a laugh at the joke, hopes he can pretend again that everything's fine and that he has absolutely no issues with discovering where he's from more than twenty years late.

"Eugene," Rapunzel says instead, her voice tainted by an unmistakable seriousness, "I don't care about what's going on for me, I- I always want you to be able to confide in me." She sounds sad. He remembers these times, when he was worried it was his fault that she preferred to cry alone; if he had done anything that made her feel like she couldn't trust him with her sorrows.

He wonders if he made her feel the same. He wonders if she also feels the same as he does on the subject - not that there's a lack of trust, but a deep desire to protect the other from everything that could needlessly hurt them, even if it's their own emotions. Eugene doesn't rely on others easily; neither does Rapunzel.

After all this time, he's still sometimes surprised to see how similar they can be.

"I'm sorry," Rapunzel breathes out this time, and she keeps him from straightening up as she continues. "I'm sorry I've been so busy and preoccupied, I… I hate that you've been hurting, and that I wasn't here for you."

Eugene's automatic answer is to deny this, but he still has his head on her shoulder, after basically breaking down for who knows how many minutes, so he doesn't think she'll believe him. He is hurting, even if it's hard to admit. He hasn't been quite the same since the Dark Kingdom - since meeting his father, since losing Cassandra, since seeing the love of his life so broken over the betrayal. He hasn't been the same, but he also hasn't allowed himself to be different, because it was never the time for him to simply… allow himself to be sad.

"We're both hurting," he finally answers, tightening his grip around her slightly. "I- I think we're just trying our best, you and me. I think… I think that's okay, for now."

He's still sniffling. His face is uncomfortably hot from the crying, and he really doesn't want anyone to see the mess he is right now. But in her arms, Eugene forgets to care. He forgets about the scoldings he once received, forgets about his fears of being judged, and just hugs Rapunzel for as long as he can.

They stay like this for a long time.

#tangled #Eugene Fitzherbert #Rapunzel #Tangled the Series

[melyaliz]

Past loves and future babies pt. 2

Masterlist 

Fandom: Marvel / MCU 

Summary: Steve and Dixie meet and talk their future children and marriage and other awkward things you talk about when you meet your future baby mama/daddy

Pairing: Steve Rogers x OC 

Notes: This was originally going to be all when they trying to have sex but I thought it was cuter if it was more domestic. The next chapter SHOULD be them trying to have sex for the first time. But we will see how that goes. I can already tell these two are going to be awkward AF   

All Masterlists @melyalizarchive​

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“So this is it, Tony decided to move us to the two-bedroom apartment,” Steve said leading Dixie into the small apartment that was part of the compound. It had a very open floor plan with a wide bay window overlooking a lake that was behind the compound opposite the landing bay. 

Letting out a soft sigh Dixie looked around taking in the beautiful view. At least she could pretend she was on some sort of retreat.

A baby-making retreat. 

“I am loving all the light” she said smiling up at Steve. She had NO idea how to act around this man. When she had first got the information she needed to get impregnated by one of the hottest men who ever lived she was… causally optimistic but now that this was a very real possibility it was MUCH more awkward and stiff. 

Or that could have just been Steve Rogers. He was being just so formal, making sure to hold every door open for her. She felt like she was being led around by a butler. 

A very muscular hot butler, but a butler none the less. 

“This is our bedroom” 

Dixie peaked in looking around. A large king-size bed was in the middle of it with two dressers and what looked like a walk-in closet. Almost nothing else for decorations. Even the bed frame and dressers were a super plane. Much like the personality of the man showing it to her. 

“I didn’t want to decorate until you got here” Steve mumbled looking down at her trying to gauge her reaction as she walked in. For the first time showing SOME sort of reaction. It was like opening a window in a dusty room. For for the first time Dixie felt like she could breathe. 

Maybe he was just as nervous as she was. 

“You didn’t have to wait for me.” she said spinning around for a moment, “I’m pretty shit at decorating… Last place I was in I covered in pictures of cats dressed up in costumes just to annoy Mac” 

“Mac?” 

“My brother,” jumping onto the edge of the bed Dixie swung her legs back and forth for a moment. She hoped it made her look relaxed and perky and not a bundle of nerves. “Don’t worry I wasn’t seeing anyone before this.” 

“Oh,” 

“Were you?” 

Steve looked up, his deep blue eyes were a little sad. Reminding Dixie of a puppy had just been kicked. There was an unspoken store there. One Dixie wasn’t sure she wanted to poke. It looked like it was maybe filled with heartache. 

“No”

She laid her back on the fluffy white blanket looking up at the ceiling, “kind of hard to have a social life while saving the world from purple aliens?” 

“Something like that” the sound of his heavy boots walking across the room made her smile slightly. Her heart beating so fast in her chest she felt like it would rip right out of her chest. Her whole body thudding along with it as if the blood was rushing so fast through her vanes she made her whole body shake. 

Trying to shake off the anxiety that kept swelling up inside her, Dixie sat up studied him for a moment. Trying to make this beautiful man in front of her seem more… human. “Thanks for that by the way. You gave a million people back their whole lives.” 

He flashed her a weak smile. And in that moment Dixie realized something. Whatever it was that he was hurting from it was obviously not cured by bringing everyone back. That maybe he had lost something more from the battles. Something he couldn’t bring back. 

The thought made her heart hurt. 

“What about you? During the years…”

“It was just my brother and I. Before, during and after.” Dixie shrugged looking down at her chipped red nail polish. “It’s always just been Mac and me” For a moment she felt sick at the memory of packing up and saying goodbye to him. She had never felt that way before. Homesick. There had never been a home to miss, never had been a family she had to leave. 

Until now anyway. 

But she wasn’t about to dwell on it. He was only a phone call away. He wasn’t gone, just a bit further away. 

Jumping off the bed she walked toward the door ready to leave this sterile room and the weight it held. Steve beat her there opening it for her. Once again going back to his overly proper attitude. She paused in the doorway turning to him. Her dark brown eyes locking on his beautiful blue ones.

“You don’t have to do that you know.” 

“What?” 

“Be so formal, we’re going to have to see a lot of each other so you can… you know… let your hair down.” 

Turning she dashed toward the next bedroom quickly opening the door by herself before turning around to look at him. He looked back totally perplexed but when their eyes met he broke into a genuine smile. 

Finally. 

“So we have a big old baby-making bed and another bed in here… for what? Fights?” 

“I figured if you felt uncomfortable you had a place to sleep.”

“Yeah..” turning Dixie sighed biting her lip trying not to laugh, her heart still pounding nerves on edge, “I’m not going to lie, this is awkward AF.” 

“AF?” 

“Sorry As Fuck.” 

He chuckled nodding scratching the back of his head, “There is a lot we need to talk about like marriage and…”

“Woah! Woah, slow down” Dixie held up her hands her voice hitting an octave higher than intended. “I was thinking more knock me up we co-parent and then when it’s 18 we tell the kid they are basically the plot for every Anime ever and then go separate ways as good friends” 

Taking a slow step she took a deep breath trying to calm herself. Try to pull her composure. “Did you think this was going to be like a forever thing?” 

“Well we’re going to be making a life.” he said looking down at her, “That is a forever thing.” 

“Steve,” her voice trailed off for a moment, “we don’t owe each other anything really. Just need to need to make a baby and that’s it.” 

He studied her face, looking down at her with those deep blue eyes. Processing what she was trying to explain. His face was unreadable but so calm. There was something about it, about that moment. About that reality that suddenly made Dixie feel so cold. 

They really didn’t need to have any feelings for each other. 

He could go off after this and live his beautiful Steve Rogers life, find true love. Find that woman (or man) who could make him truly happy. Find true love. 

And she would go back to her life of being alone. 

The prospect of never finding love wasn’t any different than it had been the day before and the day before that but… for some reason. At that moment she felt like she might cry.  

But Dixie doesn’t cry. She doesn’t feel sorry for herself. She knew a long time ago that she was unlovable so it wasn’t new information. No reason to get choked up about it now. 

“You’ve... Had sex before right?” she asked, better get it out now. Know what she was getting in the bedroom. 

“Yes.” 

“Recently?”

“I don’t know…” he obviously didn’t want to admit to his future hook up about his past hookups.  

“Ohhh Cap getting down, man or woman?” 

“What!!? No, It’s been a while.” 

“Like a few months, a while or like since the 50’s a while?” There was that possibility, one she wasn’t about to disregard. No matter how hard it was to believe. 

“Does it matter?” 

Dixie shrugged, “Not really I guess as long as your clean. I got tested a few weeks back but then again the only guy I was sleeping with was married before the snap.” Slowly she walked back into the living room him following her. 

“Oh?” 

“Yeah,” she paused a mysterious smile spreading across her face, “in fact, you basically are the reason we had to break up. When she came back I became the other woman. And have you seen me? I’m no one’s dirty secret.” motioning to her curvy body she shook her hips to emphasize the point. 

Steve chuckled sitting down next to her on the couch she followed him. The tension slowly melting around them. Both feeling much more relaxed, “I’m sorry?” 

“You’re forgiven.” 

It wasn’t supposed to work out anyway. 

“Are you, really ok with this?” Steve asked, mood shifting looking her over, “This is really a lot to ask someone.” Dixie shrugged thinking back to her life before this. Stealing tech with her brother from big companies. Robbing the rich to feed the poor. Thieves for hire looking our for themselves and only those they deemed worthy.

“I mean it’s weird but…” she paused looking away for a moment before flashing him a smile, “It’s not like I was doing anything before.” 

He gave her a soft smile studying her, “I just want you to know. There isn’t anyone else…” 

“There could be you know” Dixie mumbled there it was again. That cold hand over her heart, clenching tightly making it hurt in a way she didn’t want to dwell on, “You are totally free to date, see other people. I mean maybe after this” she motioned to her stomach, “But when they are born and stuff you are free to chase after love.”

At the word love Steve winced. Memories of Peggy kissing that dark-haired man. Standing in their beautiful white picket fence home. A picture-perfect life. The one he had wanted. The one he had been running toward without even realizing it until he was standing there realizing it could never be. 

“Hey” her voice was soft pulling him away from his musings. Her hand gently brushing over his before pulling away, hesitant unsure of her boundaries yet. “I’m serious. I’m under no assumptions that we will be anything… well maybe friends?” at her last words she held up her hand flashing him a smile. He looked down at her hand and took it. 

It was large and warm over hers. “I would love to be your friend” 

It was a start. It was a promise. It was a rule. 

Pulling him forward Dixie wrapped her arms his neck giving him a large warm hug. As she felt his own arms wrap themselves around her Dixie chanted it in her head as a mantra.

“Friends” 

Building a wall around her heart. Using the word like barbed wire to keep all those little butterflies that were trying to squeeze their way through away. Ripping at their delicate wings until she was numb to it. Protected from any sign of hurt. 

Pulling away they both looked at each other. Studying the other’s reaction. Then slowly, hesitantly Steve placed those warm large hands on the back of her head slowly pulling her slightly toward him, “Can I kiss you?” 

“Yes,” she muttered her eyes fluttering slightly as he closed the gap between them. Pushing at those walls she was trying to build to thickly around herself. He didn’t mean it. He wasn’t trying to, it was her own girlish tendencies. Her flaws she needed to work on. 

She was trying too hard and it showed. Their kiss stiff, awkward, and uncomfortable. Steve pulled away looking just how she felt and she knew she had messed up. They still needed to have sex at some point and what were they supposed to do if they couldn’t even kiss. 

This was her fault and she needed to fix it. 

“That was awful” she giggled her nerves bubbling up and spilling. “Kiss me again” 

“Ok” his smile lopsided as he leaned forward again. 

This time she was ready, wrapping her arms around his neck deepening it. Enjoying him, focusing on how he tasted and felt. Focusing on the carnal feelings around the intimate gesture and not her own emotions. 

He tasted clean, warm. In a way, he remained her of milky tea. Comforting and soothing. Something she would cuddle up with on a cold day. Wrap herself in like her favorite blanket. 

His arms around her waist gripped her slightly tighter, hesitantly as she pressed a little further. Her tounge flicking over his lip wanting to taste more. Wanting to know just how Captain America tasted.  

And then his phone dinged. It was like an arrow through them both. Pulling them back to reality. Swallowing thickly he turned slightly as she pulled away. 

“Anything important?” 

“No” he mumbled, “Just Bucky wanting to see if we wanted to join the rest of them for dinner. I guess Tony was going to order Chinese.” 

“UHG” Dixie’s eyes rolled back in her head as if she was having an orgasm, “Food sounds so amazing.” 

Steve chuckled, he was starting to really like this woman. She was so open and silly. Confident in who she was and what was going on. Her attitude was infectious and put him at ease. “I’ll let them know to add two more.” 

Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad he had thought. 

-GET TAGGED!- 

Masterlist 

Forever tag:  @the-shadow-of-atlantis​​ @coffee-randomness​​ @0hmydeku @xx3fsxx @daisyboobear​​  @jason-redhood​ @hello-i-lovespiderman-blr  @pinkwitch21 @tomhncharliep  @cdwmtjb8

@itsmeeluciie

#Steve Rogers x oc #Steve Rogers oc #Steve Rogers smut #Steve rogers long fic #Steve Rogers slow burn #Steve Rogers fluff #Steve Rogers friends to lovers #Steve Rogers fanfic #MCU fanfic #MCU oc #my writing #Dixie

[annelixa]

Trust Chapter 8

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Can also be read on AO3

Summary: Cassandra seeks Varian shortly after she stole the Moonstone so that she can use his intellectual gifts. Lucky for her, no one seems to be telling him what happened at the Dark Kingdom and he still sees her as the wise and trusted person he always knew. Utilizing that image of herself, she takes him for herself while under the guise of protection.

Fandom: Tangled the Series

Before the Sun had risen that morning, Cass had slipped out of the cottage. She wasn’t worried about Varian wondering where she gone at this point. With all she had to do, she didn’t spend too much time in the small cottage with him so he was used to it. Instead of looking for her, he’d go to the kitchen to find a note explaining when she should expect to return. They had started the system weeks ago and it was working well for them.

Not wasting any time, she jumped into the balloon that she had prepared the previous night and slowly rose into the sky with her mentor at her side. Currently the girl was leaning against the side, examining her gloves.

“What is your plan exactly?” she asked.

“It’ll be simple,” the warrior replied, sure of herself. “I know what the Keeper looks like so I’ll disguise myself as him using that cloak you told me about then question her about the location of the Mind Trap. Calliope is easy to fool and if I lure her into a false sense of security, she’ll simply lead us to what we want.” Cass quickly checked the hot air balloon’s controls to make sure they were functioning properly. “We should be in and out in less than half an hour.” She paused for a moment then rolled her eyes. “An hour at the longest. It depends on how much she talks.”

The girl had approved and the rest of the trip was spent in silence.

Sneaking into the Keeper’s home had been simple and the cloak had been spotted only seconds after entering; it was the only cloak in sight. It was slipped on and she felt an odd tingling as her form change to appear as the aged Keeper of the Spire. Her bones lengthened to reach his taller height but also weakened, especially in her back as she hunched over slightly. The form was not comfortable, she felt strange aches and pains all over her body and it kept trying to fold in on itself seemingly only from her meager weight. This Keeper really needed to get some exercise before he dropped, she thought. Trying to hurry things up, she hobbled over to the door and slammed it closed. If Calliope was home, she would surely hear that and come to investigate.

On cue, the short woman suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs, running down them.

“Keeper!” she called, excited to see her mentor.

Cass forced a smile onto the Keeper’s face, trying to make it look as sincere as possible as the other woman’s voice already threatened to annoy her.

“Good morning, Calliope,” she called kindly. “I came to check in on you. I’ve heard rumors of thieves in the area and wanted to make sure and our artifacts were safe.”

“Thieves?” the student cried indignantly. “Well I can promise you they haven’t gotten in here. I’ve been keeping everything safe.”

She started to walk around the room, indicating and explaining several items. Starting to lose her patience, Cass cut her off.

“It does seem that all seems to be in place here but what about in the Spire? You are aware we keep the most important and dangerous artifacts in there. If any were to go missing, it would be disastrous.”

She tried to mimic the way the other believed the word was meant to be pronounced. It seemed to work because Calliope didn’t comment on it or find anything off. Instead, she hurried to lead them to the top. Lucky for Cass, she seemed to have learned a faster way up from the real Keeper and the climb did not take nearly as long as the previous trip.

“Here we are!” she announced, stopping in front of the large doors. A key was pulled off her belt and used to unlock the doors. They stepped inside and the pair started to check that nothing was missing. Cass picked up a small box and behind her, her mentor confirmed this was the box they were searching for. She called the woman over.

“Calliope. We must make sure that the Mind Trap is still here. We cannot allow it to fall into the wrong hands.”

Nodding, another key was fished out and the box popped open only moments later. A fake sigh of relief escaped her mouth as she stared at the object she had come to steal. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her mentor reach forward and knock one of the artifacts to the ground. Surprised, Calliope spun on her heel to see what had happened. Using her momentary distraction, the warrior slipped the blue stone from the box and hid it under the cloak. Closing the box, she set it back on its shelf and approached the student.

Calliope was picking up a small orb and setting it carefully back on the correct shelf.

“Thank goodness that didn’t shatter,” Cass called.

“Seriously,” Calliope agreed, going on to explain what the artifact did but Cass didn’t pay attention. She had what she came for and was ready to get back before she was discovered.

“Everything appears to still be here. Good work, Calliope. I feel the Spire is safe in your hands.” Brightening at the compliment, Calliope didn’t even think to double check the box she had opened. “I must leave you here though. I still have much to do and you have to return to your studies.”

The pair left the large vault, the student securely locking the door once more, before separating.

A grin crossed Cass’ face as she returned to where she had stored the balloon. All went according to plan.

* * *

The Sun was high in the sky as she stepped back into the cottage. Once again, Varian was waiting for her, Ruddiger wrapped around his neck.

“Good afternoon,” she greeted which he returned.

“I’ve been working hard,” Varian started. “I designed some new halberds that shouldn’t break so easily.”

Smiling at him, she ruffled his hair.

“I look forward to seeing it.” From a pocket of the cloak she still had draped around her shoulders, she retrieved the large stone. “We need to keep this safe. My father snuck it to me this morning. He said that it’s an old royal family heirloom that they were worried could be stolen. It’s a very powerful magical artifact that could be devastating if used against them.” She held it out to him and he was able to study the stone closer. It was light blue with a symbol of some kind etched into it. It seemed familiar but he couldn’t place it. “Since we are in an impenetrable building they thought it would be safe with us. Can you put this in my room while I see what you made today?” she asked sincerely.

Excited to be trusted with something so significant, Varian grabbed the stone and hurried to her room. It was carefully placed on what he assumed to be her desk. He started to turn to leave the room when something caught his eye.

Something was laying on the floor, somewhat concealed by the bed. Normally he wasn’t one to dig through other people’s belongings but an odd thought was nagging at him.

Crossing the room quickly, he grabbed a crumpled piece of paper and straightened it out.

His own face stared up at him under the word ‘Missing’.

Shocked, he nearly dropped the paper.

“Varian?” he heard Cass call from behind him and he turned to face her in a daze. “You did a good job today. Can you help me move it to the door so I can take it to Raps?”

The young alchemist’s mind didn’t even register what she had said, too focused on the paper.

“Cass, what’s this?” he asked slowly, afraid of the answer.

“What?” She looked at the paper in his hands. “Oh that?” She laughed. “It’s nothing! You left suddenly and since you’ve been here for the last few weeks, people haven’t seen you in a while and some got nervous that the Saporians had gotten to you. Rapunzel smoothed the whole thing out. Don’t worry!”

Still confused, he asked, “Then why do you have it?”

“I thought it was something you might want for later. Something you could laugh at once the Saporians are caught. The rest were all torn down already and I was lucky to find this one.”

“Okay…”

Sensing his unease, she continued, “Come on. Let’s get everything moved then we can have some dinner. That’ll make you feel better.”

Nodding, he watched Cass leave the room. He took one last glance at the paper and shoved it into his pocket before hurrying after her.

All that he had created that morning was dragged to the door while Cass moved it outside to where he assumed she would store it until she could get it to Rapunzel. After everything was moved, Cass thanked him and closed the entrance. With a smirk, she walked to a large shed also constructed from the rocks that was out of Varian’s sight.

She parted the rocks and smiled.

In front of her, stretching for hundreds of yards, was everything that Varian had built so far. Things were going smoothly.

#tangled #rapunzels tangled adventure #varian #cassandra #tts #tts varian #tts cassandra #fanfic #fanfiction

[blake-belladonna-defence-force]

Weiss Schnee

I’m beginning to understand why a lot of this fandom does analytical posts. It’s pretty fun to look back on my previous misgivings of these characters and how I feel about them now. Now for of the characters I really did not like at first; Weiss Schnee. She

Now, as fond as I am of Ruby and Weiss, they are not favourite characters (that belongs to Blake and Yang) but I will talk about them a bit.

Weiss Schnee. Ice Queen. Weissicle. Any other bummer of cold based puns this accursed fandom has come up with. Here’s the thing about Weiss; I hated her character at first. She was stuck up, a bitch and didn’t know how to accept an apology. She treated Ruby poorly despite the girl trying her hardest to apologise and I was rather fond of Ruby so you can see why I was annoyed. And my dislike only grew throughout The Badge and the Burden. However, that also when I be grudgingly saw things from her side.

It was frustrating to hear her talk about “let’s do this together, as a team” to “sike, not if you’re leader!” Of course, we would later learn why she behaves like this. It was nice to see Port put her in her place because, honestly? We are all idiots that say or do the wrong thing and a swift kick up the arse to sort ourselves out. We then make amends and do our best to change our behaviour. This is something that Weiss does multiple times; first with Ruby, then Blake (I still have issues about how she never apologised to Blake) and Velvet. Although Blake and Velvet both fall into the same category of “I now realise that my comments were racist and not okay.” The girl went from calling all of faunus “thieves, scoundrels and murderers” to saving a faunus girl by putting her own life on the line. You’re doing great, sweetheart 💙💙💙💙

I felt kind of bad for her with the whole Jaune thing. She said no multiple times and honestly? Once or twice should be all it takes for you leave somebody alone, especially if it’s done in a similar way that Weiss did; AKA a hard no. I didn’t like how people shamed her for it. I understand the frustration of her not giving Jaune a chance but she isn’t obligated to give him once just because he admires her. I do like where their friendship is now though, so props to Jaune for appreciating her friendship in the end.

And then there’s Neptune. I honestly got an aura of wannabe womaniser from this guy from the start. I enjoy spending with people who aren’t afraid to be dorky and stupid so the fact he was such a Tri-Hard? Just did not sit well with me. Maybe he’s a character I could grow fond of if there was room for development but who knows.

Weiss cares about her team. We see it so often and that’s what made me start to soften up to her. She obviously cared and didn’t know how to express it. I could relate; I’ve struggled with friendship a lot. Still do. It takes me so long to understand that I’m even friends with somebody and if they introduce me as a friend? It confuses the hell out of me before I settle on being a happy lil bean that will gladly listen to them talk all day.

We soon learn why; we see both Jacque and Winter hit her. Winter’s strike was shot as a comedic thing. But we know where she learned it from. See Jacque hit her made want to leap through the screen, attach him to the roof and let Nora and Yang use him as a piñata. We learn about her mother s little and see that her brother has been basically brainwashed by Jacque-ass, isolating him from his sisters in a manner of speaking. I was so proud of Weiss for sticking for Vale and herself and even more so when she tried escaping from Raven.

Speaking of which, can we talk about Weiss just burning the woman who stomped on her head and kidnapped her? Like girl’s got some spunk. I kinda wanna see her tag team with Blake to destroy Raven, not gonna lie. And seeing her reunite with Ruby and the rest was sweet.

I adored seeing emotionally intelligent she is with Yang; understanding immediately just how hurt she was and how nigh she still loves Blake. She handled it pretty well, considering her rather emotionally stunted upbringing

.

Seeing her allow others to reassure her in vol 6 was nice and it was great to see protective Weiss again. Although her lighting the Apathy in fire is a mood and a half. Let her burn down Schnee mansion, please RT!

Weiss has grown so much and I am sorry I ever doubted her. She deserves to be with her found family who love her and support her. And we know she loves them. Even if she does hold the single brain cell for favourite dumbasses

#rwby spoilers #rwby #weiss schnee #precious smol bean

[lets-break-free-from-our-chains]

Evangeline Herondale Bio

A/N: I will being adding more information, wherever needed, to Evangeline’s Biography as the series progresses on through each chapter. I know that sometimes I prefer to imagine an OC in a story I'm reading in my own way based off the description of the OC’s characteristics given in the story. With that said, I will not cast a specific girl to be the face of Evangeline. That way all my lovely readers can imagine Evangeline’s Physical features exactly the way they want to; aside from the eyes, hair, and skin tone, of course. Whether she be made up completely from your imagination or cast as your favorite actress who holds the same features. Feel free to send messages on who you feel is perfect to play Evangeline. I got quite the adventure planned for this series, so buckle up, my brave Shadowhunters! I feel the actors I did cast, for all the other roles, are notoriously well known enough. However if you don’t know the actor and would like to know or have a question about the people I chose feel free to message me anytime and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible. -xoxoxo

Warning(s): Possible Spoilers for people who haven’t read the dark artifices yet. Evangeline Herondale and Alec Lightwood are their own warnings. Information overload. Non-certified Crash Course for New Series ahead.

Disclaimers: I claim nothing as my own except for my OC that I created to co-exist with the Shadowhunter Universe that belongs to Cassandra. Any and all rights and claims to every Shadowhunter Universe characters, places or objects in this series that also rightfully belong to her. All text from the movies and books belong to Cassandra. This is purely a fanfiction story created for enjoyment, with the help of said previously existing fandom. My only claim is to my OC, my plot changes, and my series title. 

Word Count: 1845

Masterlist

Sneak Peak in The series: “Your Mother Loved You, Evangeline.”

A Tale of Frayed Gold Series

Full Birth Name: Evangeline Josephine Herondale

Full Marriage Name: Evangeline Josephine Herondale-Lightwood

Born: January 8, 1989, Herondale Manor, Idris Age: 23(as of 2012) Kind: Shadowhunter

Alias: Eve Josie Fray Evangeline Josie Fray Evangeline Josephine Herondale-Fray Evangeline Josephine Lightwood

Nickname(s): Little Angel(by Imogen) Josie-Bear(by Marcus) My Evangeline(by Celine) Evie(by Alec, Clary, Max, and Izzy) Big Sis and Josie(by Jace) Residence: New York Institute in Manhattan, New York London Institute in London, England(Former) Brownstone in Park slope, New York City(Former) East Village, Manhattan, New York City(Former) Herondale Manor, Alicante, Idris(Former; Unless on business in Idris; in which case both her and Alec prefer to reside in the manor until they return to the New York Institute)

Spouse/Shadow-Mate: Alexander Gideon Lightwood

Child(ren): TBA

****************************************************** Mother(s): Celine Montclaire-Herondale*(Biological)

Jocelyn Fairchild(Adoptive)

Father(s): Stephen Herondale*(Biological)

Luke Graymark(father-figure) 

Sibling(s): Jonathan Herondale(Younger Biological Brother)

Clary Fray/Fairchild(Adoptive Younger Sister)

***************************************************** Parabatai: Clary Fairchild

***************************************************** Family:  Herondale Family Lightwood Family Fairchild Family Montclaire Family(Disowned/unacknowledged by Eve)

Relatives: 

*= Deceased

Lightwoods

Maryse Trueblood-Lightwood(mother-in-law)  

Robert Lightwood*(Father-in-Law) 

Isabelle Lightwood(Sister-in-law)      

Max Lightwood*(Brother-in-law)

Fairchild

Jocelyn Fairchild(Adoptive Mother) Clary Fairchild(Adoptive Sister)

Herondales

 Imogen Whitelaw-Herondale*(Paternal Grandmother)

 Marcus Herondale*(Paternal Grandfather)

 Owen Herondale*(Paternal Great Grandfather)  Lydia Kingsmill-Herondale*(Paternal Great Grandmother)  Cordelia Carstairs-Herondale*(Paternal Great-Great Grandmother)  James Herondale*(Paternal Great-Great Grandfather)  Lucie Herondale-Blackthorn*(Paternal Great-Great Aunt)  Will Herondale*(Paternal Great-Great-Great Grandfather)  Tessa Gray-Herondale(Paternal Great-Great-Great Grandmother)  Cecily Herondale-Lightwood*(Paternal Great-Great-Great Aunt)  Ella Herondale*(Paternal Great-Great-Great Aunt)  Edmund Herondale*(Distant Direct Ancestor)  Linette Owens-Herondale*(Distant Direct Ancestor)  William Herondale*(Distant Direct Ancestor)  Tobias Herondale*(Distant Ancestor)

Montclaire

Lisette Montclaire*(Maternal Grandmother)                                                    Jules Montclaire*(Maternal Grandfather)

******************************************************* Personality Traits: Evangeline is wise beyond her years, but still managed to keep a young and fun personality similar but not exactly like her younger brother's personality. She is naturally funny and sarcastic. She is kind to people she deems deserving of it, which happens to be quite a lot of people; Downworlders among said group. She carries a very warm and calming atmosphere around her. One of the many things that her family enjoys about her. She is highly intelligent and you can nearly always find her with her nose in a book, or writing more pages in the book she's working on. Now that she has her shadow mate she can't see life without Alec and vice-versa. While she can sit in the quiet with a good book for hours on end. she also has quite a competitive streak in her. She knows that many people can find that annoying in a person and tends to fight with herself on keeping her competitive side at bay. However, oh boy. When she found out Jace had a competitive streak to rival herself, and that he actually considered it fun and endearing in a person who could enjoyed good, fair, and friendly competition. She almost couldn't contain herself. Jokingly calling Jace her long lost twin and asked him where he wandered off too; both still unaware of Jace's true heritage. Eve also has an amazing amount of patience and therefore is very hard to truly upset her, but the angel help anyone and everyone who crosses Eve, directly, or crosses her by crosses someone she loves.

Evangeline is extremely loyal to her own. There is no such thing as anything other than 100% loyalty, to the ones she cares about, in her mind. Because of that fact about her, she is ruthlessly unforgiving to those she sees as traitors, Liars, thieves, and most of all cheaters of any kind. Eve loves the ones she cares for so fiercely, strongly, and whole-heartedly that she finds herself unsettled and perturbed; almost disgusted, by those who don't seem to cherish and define themselves by loyalty and honesty on some level, no matter how small or big. One example being when Robert cheated on Maryse. Eve showed him no mercy, and viciously came to her defense, followed closely by her mate Alec and brother Jace, whenever the two older Shadowhunters disagreed on any level. Eve would do nothing to hide her disdain for Robert even to his face. In Eve's mind, an attack to a family member might as well be a direct attack on her. 

*************************************************

Important Trivia: Evangeline was extremely close to her grandmother, Imogen, during her two years as a resident at the Herondale Manor. As soon as Evangeline was born Imogen loved her granddaughter as much as she loved her beloved Stephen; quite a few would say even more than Stephen. Imogen took care of Evangeline while Celine rested from the extremely hard labor she went through. Imogen was she first and only person to call her, little angel, derived from her first name. Imogen would also occasionally call her Josie-Bear when playfully teasing her. However, that was a rare occurrence as Imogen preferred little angel as she saw the name fit to describe the light that her little angel brought into her grandmother's world. After Imogen lost her shadow-mate and son she was devastated, but she managed to keep it together with the hopes that she would be with her granddaughter again. However, as soon as she received word that Evangeline was kidnapped, and likely dead after a raid in Herondale manor that left Celine and her unborn grandson dead. All the light left her and with the grief of losing her Evangeline turned her harshly bitter and hostile to the world around her. Imogen's once very warm aura died and was replaced with a shell of a woman who showed no mercy and kindness what so ever. In late 2007 she received word that a family of Shadowhunters that didn't belong to any institute showed up at the new York institute. One of which was the shadow mate of Alec Lightwood. However that's not what caught Imogen's interest. It was the fact that her last name was Fray but she was adopted and bared a striking resemblance to the Herondales and her first and middle name was Evangeline Josie. Imogen trying not to get her hopes up, after thinking her granddaughter dead for so long, decided to go to the new York institute and see for herself. There she identified Eve as her granddaughter based off the birthmark over her heart and blonde hair and gold eyes. Rare physical features supposedly only her granddaughter possessed; even though Jace held the same features, the only different being that the Herondale birthmark was on his shoulder and not over his heart. Imogen appeared to return to her old self instantly as her eyes welded up with tears and she gave Eve a watery smile while introducing herself as Evangeline's grandmother.

Evangeline was spoiled rotten by her grandfather, Marcus Herondale, who had always wanted a little girl. He was also the only one to ever call her Josie-bear and in response, after she was big enough to talk more, Eve would call her grandfather, papa bear.

Evangeline has a deep hatred for her mother's parents and the way they treated Celine. When Eve realized children would be the real outcome of her life now that she found her shadow- mate. She become nervous about motherhood. Concerned that she didn't know if she would be any good at it. Imogen and Jocelyn told Eve about how Celine's parents were towards her, and how different Celine was from them because of her childhood. Imogen spoke of how gentle Celine was with Eve. Always handling her like the most fragile precious treasure in the world. She always spoke so soft and gently to Eve, that in Imogen's mind, it seemed like Celine thought if she spoke to loud or to harsh that her beloved Evangeline might break and shatter. Imogen and Jocelyn told Eve not to worry so much, and pointed out the fact that because she was worrying so much proved that she wanted and would strive to be best mother for her children. 

Eve has always had a general love and great respect for her Biological mother, Celine, just because she was her mother by birth and title. However that love soon became very deep after hearing many stories from both Imogen and Jocelyn about how much Celine loved and cared for Evangeline before her abrupt and untimely death. However before Imogen or Jocelyn spoke in detail about Celine's relationship with her daughter; Eve deeply struggled with the small nagging doubts her mother ever truly wanted her or cared for her.

********************************************** Quotes spoken by Eve about the Montclaires: 

"Okay. Don't be like Mother's parents[Montclaires] under any circumstance goes without saying, but I'm gonna say it anyways. I'll just be like you two and Maryse. Did you guys happen to write personal survival guides during your time with raising kids. Cause I've always been on the opposite end up until this point." -Eve to Jocelyn and Imogen, on the do's and do not's of motherhood.

"They're NOT my family! Family doesn't do that to each other. Parents who claim to love their children do NOT do that to said children!" -Evangeline to The Clave, when questioned on her heritage and allegiance.

"I refuse to acknowledge they[Montclaires] were ever family at one point in time. Or at all for that matter." -Evangeline to The Clave, when questioned on her heritage and allegiance.

Quotes Spoken by Eve about her Enemies:

"Anyone who hurts my family, is no friend or ally of mine. They're my enemy." -Evangeline to Sebastian, delivering him a promising threaten when the two talked about Max's death and the Lightwoods grief over the youngest member's horrific death.

"I will hurt you for this. I'll kill you, one day, for what you have done! Not even the angel can save you. Your fate has been fixed." -Evangeline declares to Sebastian, infuriated over Max's death and the devastation it left her shadow-mate in.

"This is the beginning of the end. THEIR END, not ours." -Evie to Clary, in regard to their enemies and the end of The Dark War.

"I never lose, Jonathan. I hate losing. Failure is not a option for me. You should have learned that about me by now, Morgenstern." -Evangeline to Jonathan Morgenstern, on her Hatred for losing as she's seen, First hand, how costly it can be to lose. Especially if it's losing to Valentine and his followers.

Quotes Spoken by Eve about her mother, Celine:

"My mother LOVED me! I was WANTED and LOVED by my mother...and you[Valentine] took her away from me, along with my baby brother! Why did you do that?!" -Evangeline to Valentine, while desperately trying to understand why he would hurt her so deeply in such a way for no reason.

"You ripped my mother, my brother, and my world away from me...and because you took those things away; you also took my happiness away from me...and this is what you've done with it!" -Evangeline to Valentine, Outraged with Valentine, himself, and with his plans.

"I wonder anywhere from once everyday to infinity on what those two words would sound like falling from her[Celine] lips...My Evangeline." -Evie to Alec, about her mother's personal term of indearment for Eve.

Sneak Peak in The series: “Your Mother Loved You, Evangeline.”

#Alec lightwood x reader #alec lightwood x you #alec lightwood #alec lightwood imagine #alec lightwood x oc #jace herondale #jace lightwood #jace wayland #clary x jace #shadowhunters #Shadowhunterstvseries #izzy lightwood #isabelle lightwood #max lightwood #fanfiction #alec lightwood imagines #imagine alec lightwood #TMI City of Bones #tv show #original character #Herondale siblings #Shadowhunterfamilyhistory #cast #TMI movie #kevin zegers #Jamie bower campbell #lily collins #original female character #shadow-mates #familytrees

[tren-fraszka]

Hate Exchange Letter

Dear creator,

Thank you for taking your time to check my requests. I know my requests can sound a bit tricky, but please don’t be discouraged. I wish you will have good time writing first and foremost!

My AO3 is Tren, if you wish to check it out.

Likes: comedy, casefics, canon compliants, AUs, time loops, bodyswaps, roleswaps, “being hoisted by your own petard” plotlines, snark, pettiness, rivals, enemies to friends to lovers, violence, friendships and character bonding,

DNW: explicit sex, A/B/O, mpreg, rape depicted as positive (so no “it’s okay, because the other person enjoyed it/it was what they truly wanted”), trans headcanons, soulmates, stories ending with surrender to fate/destiny, fourth wall breaking in canons where that doesn’t occur.

Also, I included what ships I’m okay with in each fandom. Please do not include any ships that aren’t canon and I have not allowed in those sections (if you feel really strongly about a ship, you can ask through mods just in case, if I didn’t include my opinion on it).

Additionally, while I almost never request fanart as possible medium, because I prefer my main gift to be fic, I would be very okay with receiving fanart treats.

                                                REQUESTS

PERSONA 5

Hate that ends

Hate that exists and continues

Hate that starts

Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira

I’m a big sucker for party traitors, so it isn’t really a surprise that I walked out of my Persona 5 playthrough with a new shiny ship. I love how messed up it is with both of them planning to outplay each other in a deadly game and yet still forming an emotional attachment. I also really love how they are mirror images of each other. They are extremely similar, and yet they are also each others opposites. There’s just something fascinating in watching them interact.

I’m okay with all takes on hate for this ship. Akechi has canonically very love-hate relationship with the protagonist, so you can spin this however you want. You are also free to make Akira as bitter about the whole thing as you want. I’m always a game for Akira having all the regrets about Akechi’s death and hating Akechi for leaving him with all the emotional turmoil.

For the story, I’m very okay with some in-between the canon flirting with the obligatory dash of scheming and mind games. I’m also all about different ways their confrontation could go down. Maybe it’s Akira who dies and Akechi lives through with his hateful feelings not coming any closer to being resolved? Or Akechi can’t keep his feelings in and slips at some point?

AUs 

I don’t mind AUs, just be aware that the messed up relationship between the two of them is a huge draw for me, so I would definitely opt to preserve that part in some form. You don’t have to do the exact same scenario, but at least make them childhood friends, who ended up on the opposite sides of some conflict. Or undercover spies who got in relationship without knowing each other true identities and they really should kill each other since they work for different clients. The exact setting is of secondary importance to me, so choose whatever you feel would work best. AU Divergences are also welcome. I’m always a game for Akechi surviving. Especially, if he gets to shoot the final boss in the face.

Akechi Goro & Self

He has so many issues you are practically spoiled for choice. Bastard by birth, believes himself to be a reason why his mother died, spent years in foster home system which just enforced his belief that he isn’t worth of love, became a supernatural assassin despite having strong sence of justice. And did I mention having to kill the only person he had formed a legitimate connection with? Yeah, just one of those things would be a great self-hatred fodder, but all those things together mix to create a true picture of self-hatred. You can’t go wrong with it. 

There are so many prompts you could potentially use for this in Akechi/Kurusu segment above (just take out the potential shippiness if the pairing is not your thing), I don’t think there’s much point in repeating myself. You are free to AU as much as you want and have fun.

Hate that ends

Sakura Futaba & Self

I loved the chilling exploration of Futaba’s problems in her palace and further revelations we get through Sojiro’s social link. I would love insight into her deteriorating self-worth post her mother’s death and then followed by slow improvements once Sojiro takes her in.

I would love insight into Futaba trying to figure out the truth about her mother’s death, her initial refusal to believe that it is her fault, followed by slow acceptance over the time, as she fails to find any evidence to the contrary.

I asked for Hate that ends, because I would prefer a take that is compliant with the canon story. I know this is pretty constraining, but at the same time it means that you don’t need to concentrate on the improvement factor. As long as the story ends heavily implaying that Phantom Thieves are about to help her with her issues I will be satisfied.

However, if you do dig the hope aspect I will love some quality Sojiro & Futaba family interactions and her slowly acknowledging that maybe she deserves more than a slow death in seclusion and decides to seek help form Phantom Thieves.

Ships

I ship Akira and Goro, and don’t want them shipped with anyone else. I’m okay with including pretty much any other ships, except for the ones between the characters who are still students and adults.

GOLDEN KAMUY

I’m reading manga chapters as they come out, so you are free to incorporate any new developments into the story. I will definitely be caught up.

Hate that exists and continues

Ogata Hyakunosuke/Sugimoto Saichi

If you know this canon I probably don’t even need to explain to you what I want. They hated each other from the very beginning of the story and the world may end, but their hatred would still live on. You don’t have to be too shippy with this, if you don’t want to, I mostly want to just get more off their passionate hatred we get in the canon.

For the prompts, I would love if they had to work together (just the two of them, or maybe with Shiraishi as a suffering third wheel), because someone kidnapped Asiripa and they had to get her back. Or chasing someone who stole the skins from them.

Alternatively, I would love petty matches over Asiripa’s attention when they act perfectly nice to each other, because she is there, but keep competing for her attention to annoy each other.

Also, this canon is ripe for tropes like huddling for warmth, or sharing one blanket, and would definitely encourage the hate-filled take on those. Also time loops with those two nd how much of a disaster it would be.

AUs and ships

I’m all for canon divergences or changed settings. You want Sugimoto and Ogata as coworkers in modern setting? Go for it. I would love any messing up with the story, because there are so many things that could have gone differently here. 

I have no strong ship preferences here as long as Asiripa is not shipped with anybody. Also I prefer Sugimoto to have no romantic experience, aside from his canonical one-sided crush, before he started to have feelings about Ogata.

THE RISING OF SHIELD HERO (ANIME & MANGA)

I watched anime and read manga, but have not checked light novels. So please, no spoilers for anything beyond manga.

Hate that starts

L’Arc Berg/Iwatani Naofumi

Naofumi spends a lion share of the plot having terrible trust issues after Myne’s betrayal and you can’t convince me that he isn’t extra salty about L’Arc.

L’Arc is literally the first person Naofumi willinglu opens up to after spending majority of the plot avoiding trusting anyone, so the fact that this person turns out to be his enemy must sting. While L’Arc isn’t a type to keep grudge, Naofumi certainly is. Which is why I just want Naofumi being all bitter about his feelings for L’Arc after the betrayal.

I would love some more adventures of those two before the Wave happens and everything goes to shit. Or maybe they meet after the Wave with Naofumi having been separated from the party and struggling with something, and L’Arc runs into him and helps him out (because he’s not the type of guy to stab someone in the back). Which just prompts Naofumi to be even more bitter, because he wants to really hate L’Arc, but unlike Myne he can’t just label him as completely evil.

Or Naofumi going through all the memories he has of L’arc wanting to find good reasons to hate him more, but just coming with more reasons why he loved him in the first place.

AUs and ships

Setting changes and canon divergences are all fine, as long as you keep the element of betrayal.

I’m okay with Naofumi also having some feelings for Raphtalia for an awkward romantic triangle, as long as his complicated feelings for L’Arc are the focus of the story. Other than that I don’t want either of them shipped with anyone else.

GINTAMA

I have watched anime up to Gintama': Enchousen, so please no spoilers beyond that season.

Hate that starts

Hate that exists and continues

Hijikata Toshirou/Okita Sougo

I loved their vitrolic relationship from the very start and the more we got of their backstory, the more I loved it. I would be okay with the story not being very shippy, as long as I get plenty of their amusing interactions.

I love how well they understand each other, including the reasons why they don’t get along, but somehow it is easier for them to maintain that animosity than to try and repair their twisted relationship. 

I always enjoy small tidbits of how terrible they are at working together when it comes to solving anything that isn’t Shinsengumi-threatening emergency. I loved that episode which was just showing Hijikata and Okita attempting to do normal police stuff and utterly failing to have any sort of law-abiding integrity while they were at it.

If you want to go to the backstory and how they already didn’t get along in the dojo I’m also all for it. Any involvement of Mitsuba to add oil to the already bright flames of mutual dislike is welcome. I love how her presence mellows both of them when she’s there, but in the long run it just made their relationship even more of a mess, because they both wanted the best for her in their own way.

For shippier request I would love a date attempt by those two homicidal idiots. There are just so many ways this could go wrong. Or Gintama staple of handcuffed together with Hijikata constantly having to stop the dismemberment attempts.

AUs and ships

I’m open to any sort of setting or canon divergence. Then again, I dare you find a cooler setting than samurai police in alien infested Edo.

I don’t want the two of them shipped for anyone else, except for maybe acknowledging  Hijikata’s canonical feelings for Mitsuba (because that just makes Hijikata and Okita’s relationship even more of a trainwreck). For other ships I enjoy Gintoki shipped with either Otae or Tsukuyo, and Kagura and Shinpachi as two characters who are not yet ready for relationship, but would make a nice match once they grow up more.

BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA

I read the manga chapters as they come out, you can assume I’m caught up on all new developments.

Hate that ends

Bakugou Katsuki/Uraraka Ochako

I love how different the two of them are, but at the same time how well they compliment and understand each other. Also, while I love them as a pairing I won’t mind if you write them as friends, as long as you don’t pair them with other characters.

For this exchange I would love a more conflict driven beginning of their friendship. Bakugo says a few words too much about Midoriya? Uraraka tries to talk to Bakugo about how he treats Deku or just about how he acts in general and accidentally pokes his terrible inferiority complex? Or they run into each other before the UA entrance exam and somehow end up having a more bitter relation? All of that is good.

I would love if then they were forced to then acknowledge each others strengths as heroes, but possibly still feeling somehow bitter. Maybe they end up working together when UA is attacked? Or incorporating their duel during the sports festival (which I love, it’s what started this ship for me). Or maybe Uraraka gets kidnapped together with Bakugo during the camp and she ends up revising her opinion of him while they are in captivity together. 

For more prompts I would love having them complete some sort of exercise or exam together. I would love to see them pretend to be villains for the sake of exercise and butting heads, because they dislike each other. Or they work together on something for school festival. Like making a perferomance together. Alternatively you can go for a future fic where the two of them take part in an action to stop villains as full-fledged heroes, but they can’t let go of all the hang-ups they have about each other from when they went to school together.

AUs and ships

I would very much encourage any future fics for this pairing. I love seeing characters as fully-fledged heroes. I’m okay with other setting changes, though I would prefer for the competence aspect to still come in play somehow in them (with Bakugo being stupidly talented and hard working, while acknowledging Ochako’s potential). I’m also very okay with canon divergences.

I don’t mind past Midoriya/Ochako if you want to incorporate it into the story, but I’d rather not get any love triangles for this pairing. Either have Ochako’s feelings sizzle out or have them date and break up at some point in the past. When it comes to other pairings I like Midoriya/Todoroki and Eraserhead/Mic, but have no strong feelings on other characters pairings, so you are free to do whatever I guess.

FATE/ZERO

I’m well versed in Fate franchise so if you wish to expand beyond Fate/Zero to include either some parts of Fate/Stay Night or El-Melloi II Case Files I will be very fine with that.

Hate that exists and continues

Kotomine Kirei & Self

Kotomine Kirei and his self-loathing is unironically one of my favourite ships in Fate. I loved Kirei’s internal monologues in the novel, as he slowly inched toward the self-discovery that he is in fact the very thing that he was taught to hate the most.

Give me all the religious guilt. All the nagging thoughts that follow Kirei’s enjoyment of ruining other people’s lives. Kirei already thought of himself as lacking before the events of Fate/Zero and watching his doomed pursuit of finding something meaningful in his life was great.

Kirei was basically doomed to suffering, either by continuing his empty life or by embracing his true self and plunging himself into depth of self-hatred. And I’m all about that freefall, sponsored by the ancient king Babylon. So give me Kirei struggling within the confines of Holy Grail War, trying to find himself, yet suspecting that nothing good will ever come out of it.

AUs and ships

I’m okay with canon divergences, less about setting changes due to how deeply Kirei’s issues steam from his specific situation, but if you can make it work I will be for it. I would be very excited for canon divergences. Maybe Kirei making slightly different choices during the Holy Grail War? Maybe alternate timeline when he decides not to betray Tokiomi, but somehow still ends up on path of evil despite his efforts. Maybe he summoned a different servant, who influences Kirei differently? I’m always surprised by how interesting alternate scenarios people come with for Holy Grail Wars, just give me your take.

For alternate timeline takes, you can make my day by including wreacking Matou’s mansion and/or killing Zouken. Even if it’s just a footnote.

I very much ship Kirei both with his dead wife and Gilgamesh. You are free to incorporate both of those ships. 

Hate that exists and continues

Waver Velvet & Self

Another contender for the biggest self-loathing in the franchise. El-Melloi II anime reminded me just how much I enjoyed that aspect of Waver.

I would love an alternate take when Waver and Keyneth actually had a more proper face-off other than their first meeting on the battlefield. I would love if Waver saw Kayneth wheelchair-bound and blamed himself for that.

Or something more canon-compliant exploring Waver’s feeling of uselessness and guilt he has. Either is good. For extra self-loathing you could get the family Waver is staying at caught in the crossfire of one of the fights. Or Waver gets used by some other master to attack another and only belatedly realizes that he was nothing more than a tool used for murder. 

Just give me some quality Waver suffering and self-blame whether dislpaced or not.

AUs and ships

Similarly as above, I’m stocked for any canon divergences. Maybe Waver summoning a different servant? Waver making different choices as to how proceed with the war. Maybe making an allience that doesn’t work out for him in a longer run? 

For alternate timeline takes, you can make my day by including wreacking Matou’s mansion and/or killing Zouken. Even if it’s just a footnote.

I don’t ship Waver with anyone, so I would prefer no romantic plotlines for him. I find his relationship with Rider interesting and definitely important, but can’t see it as romantic.

#exchange letters

[starspatter]

Heroes and Thieves, Ch. 7

Title: Heroes and Thieves Fandom/Universe: BTAS, pre/post-RotJ flashback

Summary: A story about second chances, healing, and having hope.

Rating: PG-13, for references to character death, child psychological torture and trauma.

Genre: Romance/Family/Friendship/Hurt/Comfort

Word Count: 2,067 Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Also on ff.net and AO3.

Well time has a way of throwing it all in your face The past, she is haunted, the future is laced Heartbreak, you know, drives a big black car Swear I was in the back seat, just minding my own

-Gregory Alan Isakov, "Big Black Car"

Now.

“The Bat Signal is not a toy, Ms. Brown.”

Startled, Stephanie swerved around at the sudden emergence of a man swathed in black from the shadows, cloak whipping wordlessly in the wind.  She hadn’t even heard him arrive on the rooftop.

How does he do that?

“You know my name?”

She asked, flustered.

“I make it my business to know.  You’re Stephanie Brown, daughter of Crystal and Arthur Brown, a.k.a. Cluemaster. …Tim Drake’s girlfriend.”

Stephanie blinked, sighing before lowering her mantle and removing the guise’s (apparently ineffectual) inner layer, letting luminescent locks fall free around her shoulders.  (Reasoning that if the cops hadn’t come up to bust her by now, then it seemed rather unlikely they’d show up anytime soon.)  …Wish I knew what the heck to do with my hair under this thing, she thought idly as she combed her hand through the tangles.  Maybe I should try putting it in a ponytail or something.

“Then you probably know why I called you here then.  Sorry about the theatrics,” she gestured towards the spotlight, “But I figured this was the fastest way to get your attention.”

“Tim told you about our history together.”

“Some of it.  He wouldn’t tell me why you two split up.”

There was a palpable beat.

“If he didn’t see fit to explain, then it’s not my place to intervene.”

“Please, Mr. Wayne.”  Those crescent slits narrowed at equally intimate address.  “I think I deserve to know at this point.”

“This isn’t any of your business, Ms. Brown.  I suggest you go home, and get rid of that silly costume.”

Like yours is any less ridiculous.

“This isn’t a game.  Quit before you get yourself into trouble.”

Holy déjà vu.

She crossed her arms frankly, standing firm.

“Tim said the same thing.  I’m getting real sick and tired of hearing it.”

“He’s right.  The streets are far too risky, especially for someone like you.”  There was a rough rigor to his tenor; like a razor blade scraping severely against the grain, incisive and insistent.  Deliberately rubbing salt and steel into the wound until it irritated. “I’ve seen how you operate: rash, reckless, impulsive, impetuous – not thinking before you act.  You might believe you’re being brave – that you’re endeavoring to prove something by jumping directly into danger, putting yourself in the constant thick of threats – but you’re just behaving brashly like a child. A person of your kind doesn’t belong in this field.”

Stephanie bristled at the blunt onslaught, blue irises burning boldly defiant.

“You don’t understand: My dad was supposed to be dead, and now he shows back up again in Gotham like nothing happened – except now he’s committing crimes without even leaving clues.  I couldn’t just stand aside and let him get away with it.  I had to do something.  After all, I’ve got a stake in this.”

Batman made a smothered sound, like a pained grunt – as if someone had just punched him in the gut.

“You sound just like he did.  All you stupid kids, don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“I know that without me you wouldn’t have been able to figure out the next place my father was planning to hit.”

Admit it, that “chopping mall” clue was a stroke of genius.

“And your assistance in bringing him down during the heist is appreciated. But this ends tonight.  You should leave the crimefighting to trained professionals.”

“I just wanted to help…”

Batman took a step forward, looming ominously over her.  His voice was dangerous.

“You don’t know what you want.  None of you ever did.”

Despite the fierce menace in his tone, she staunchly stood her ground, eyes stubborn and challenging as she declined to back down.  Her opponent carried on lecturing:

“You’ve accomplished your mission; succeeded in putting your father in jail.  Now that you’ve gotten your revenge, there’s no more reason for you to continue this fight anymore.  I suppose you’re just doing this now for fun, for the thrill.  Because you think it’s ‘cool’.”

Stephanie clenched her fists.  He had struck a chord, but she didn’t take kindly to being patronized either, her entire motivations being put down, brushed aside just like that.

“That’s not the only reason.  I mean, yeah this just kinda started out as a goof to get back at my dad of course, and sure I’ll confess I do get a kick out of the rush – but there’s more to it than that. I may not be all that smart or skilled at… anything really.  But this – this is something I can do to help others.  People in need.  For the first time in my life, it feels like I’m really doing something worthwhile, that I’m doing some good.  Like I’m making a real difference.  I’m doing this… I don’t know.  Not even for me.”  She turned towards the skyline, surveying over the (for the moment at least) peacefully sleeping city, lights reflecting above and below.  “I’m doing this for all of them.”

Batman stared at her.

“Regardless, this isn’t your responsibility.”

“And it’s supposed to be solely yours?  You’re just one man in a batsuit, you’re not in charge of this town.  You may be able to handle all the crimes within the city limits, but the suburbs don’t have anyone.  Not even you can be everywhere at once. Hell, no one can carry the weight of the world by himself.”

“This is a vow I took on my own shoulder’s, no one else’s.  I work alone.”

“If you really thought that, why’d you agree to take an apprentice on in the first place?”

While visibly there was no noticeable wince, another wounded growl escaped from the cowl.

“That was a mistake.”

“Oh really?  I’ve seen how you operate: Ever since you’ve gone partnerless, you’ve been colder, harsher, overly aggressive, and more unforgiving than ever before.  Everyone’s noticed; it’s been all over news reports everywhere, criminals claiming to be the ‘victims’ of vigilante violence. All the tabloids assume you’ve gone off the deep end, that you’ve finally cracked – or that you were off your rocker all along.  That’s why they say even the police won’t cooperate with you anymore.”  She looked towards the tarp lying on the ground, which had been covering the searchlight up to now.  Lucky for her they hadn’t removed the apparatus entirely.  “You accuse me of being hotheaded, but I could say the exact same of you.  Heck, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you seem to have some sort of death wish.”

“How I conduct myself is none of your concern.”

“It is when there are people suffering for it.  Tim included.  The truth is Batman needs a Robin, doesn’t he?  Since your parents died, you need – want company.  Otherwise you’ll go crazy, doing what you do all the time.  Anyone would.”

Way to play psychoanalyst with the most famous and powerful – not to mention richest – man in Gotham, girl.

Batman held her undeterred gaze.

“…You really do sound just like him.”

Grudgingly, he gruffly acknowledged the comparison – though it wasn’t quite a concession.

Still, Stephanie seized on the opening.

“Seriously, just what the hell happened?  You two used to be such a great team.  You guys were a legend, the ‘Dynamic Duo’ and all that.  Nightwing and Batgirl too, whatever happened to them?”

His answer was aggravatingly simple.

“Things change.”

Why do I get the feeling I’ve heard that somewhere before?

She exhaled in exasperation, sensing the discussion was going in circles. She wasn’t about to allow such curt tautology cut her off though.

“You used to mean something to people.  This,” she pointed purposefully at the symbol in the sky, before jabbing at the mirrored center of his chest, “…used to mean something.  Sure, you could be scary sometimes, but it was clear that you cared.  Now, it’s like all the lives you save don’t even matter anymore.  All that exists in your mind – or your heart, whatever’s left of it – that is, assuming you even still have one – is darkness and dread.  Am I wrong?”

Her assertive allegation was met with stony silence.  Tentatively, she tried to uplift the weight on the conversation somewhat.

“Not everything has to be about fear.  There’s room in our line of work for hope too, you know.”

Again, he merely remained mute, scrutiny slanting into the distance.

All right, fine.  Don’t answer me.

Growing annoyed by such obstinate reticence (which she recognized all too well at this point; it was no wonder where her boyfriend got it from) and desperate for some sort of reaction, she attempted to return again to the original topic – her whole goal for summoning this guy’s big broody butt in the first place.

“Look, I’m sure you’re as aware as I am this isn’t just about me trying to barge in on your territory – your private little crusade – is it?  I don’t mean to pry open old wounds just for the sake of sating my curiosity either.  Something obviously happened between you two – something that changed him – that changed the both of you – and I need to know what in order to get through to him.”  She placed a palm on her breast, clutching and curling fretful fingers against cloth as she bit her lip, baring honest emotion.  “I want to be able to understand what he’s going through, but every time I try to get him to talk about it, he won’t let me near.  Refuses to open up, shuts me out just like you’ve been doing all night.”

His vision panned back slowly, restoring rapt concentration.  Again, those slim slivers of snow were silent, searching – scant headlights scanning in the dark.  Stark and cold against coal, yet somewhere within seemed to spark a vestige of warmth; like stoking, coaxing the burnt out ashes of an old flame to stir and rise again.  To remember.

“Tim means a lot to you.”

“The whole world.  He’s a great guy.”

“Greater than he knows.”

“Please,” she begged, “Let me help him at least.  I’m worried about him.”

He regarded her unwavering expression, gauging sincerity.

“…You really care for him, don’t you?”

She nodded, thinking to herself that- despite his still-outwardly icy demeanor, there was indeed a thaw in his throat, a slight swell of sympathy slipping through the grave gravel.

He rotated with a sharp whisk of cape, heading for the edge of the roof.

“Come with me.”

She followed, taking cue to simultaneously fumble for her cheap grapple as he reached for his own (no doubt state-of-the-art) device.  Whilst descending down the decel line, Batman pressed a button on his utility belt, and a rumble hummed from down the road as a long, sleek, jet-black vehicle charged along the street, skidding to a stop right in front of them as they alighted on the sidewalk.  The hood automatically slid back upon recognizing its owner, inviting within the depths of its leather wings.

HolycraptheBatmobile.

She hesitated as he walked round to the driver’s side and climbed in, casting an expectant – impatient – glance at his guest.

“Well.  Hurry up and get in.”

“O- okay.”

Dear Diary, whatever you do, don’t tell my mom I agreed to get into a strange car in the middle of the night with a shady man wearing a mask.  Pretty sure she’d flip her shit.

She hopped in after, settling against the cozy cushions.  Leave it to a billionaire to be able to afford the best quality sitting material.  Admiring the impressive array of controls on the dashboard, she figured the machine in itself probably cost more than her whole house combined.

“Hang on,” he warned as they lurched forward, “And don’t touch anything.”

Stephanie hastily withdrew her itchy fingers from the nearest knob, sweating nervously.

“Can I ask what this does at least?”

“Passenger seat ejector.”

She shrank back sullenly, leaning slumped into the lavish upholstery.

Mock me at your peril, masked man.

As they sped past buildings and streetlamps, Steph inquired with a hunch as to their destination:

“So are we going to your hideout?”

“I prefer to think of it as a lair.”

She couldn’t tell whether that was supposed to be a joke or not.  Either way, she couldn’t help but feel a hint of giddy excitement at her current situation.  Not many people could proudly proclaim they got to ride in the freakin’ Batmobile once during their lives.

Cool.

Hope was a letter I never could send Love was a country we couldn't defend

And through the carnival we watch them go round and round All we knew of home was just a sunset and some clowns

#TimSteph #Tim Drake #Timmy Todd #Stephanie Brown #Batman the Animated Series #Batman Beyond #DCAU #Return of the Joker #fanfiction #starstories #I'm kinda knee deep in Kagepro hell right now but #I still love my Bat babies too #so here's a quick lil update #<3 #in which I combine all the quotes #*shot*

[thebookkeeperslibrary]

The Time Page’s Wish: Ch. 5 - Magic is a Girl’s Best Friend

Fandom: Time Warp Trio

Author: The_Bookkeeper_96

Rating: G

Summary: It’s been four months and Uncle Joe is still missing. On his twelfth birthday, Joe decides it’s time to track him down. One wish lands them in the middle of a revolution. And it seems the only way to get them home is with the help of some untrustworthy thieves. As long as they don’t take The Book for themselves.

A/N: So this is my first dive into fanfiction. Putting this out there as a feeler to see what you guys think! Please feel free to leave a review and some constructive criticism!

Read on AO3

The tall, stone buildings loomed over Joe, Sam, and Fred. The streets were empty and except for a stray gunshot in the distance, Paris was completely silent. The citizens had mostly vanished into their homes. Only a few brave souls remained out on the streets, eager to volunteer in the revolution.

The boys were trying to avoid the battle. Using their knowledge from past experiences, they assumed The Book would be with some famous historical figure. The problem was, every person they could think of was currently being shot at.

"Look, I get that we can't exactly be out in the middle of the battle right now, but why are we wondering around alleys like some creepy homeless guy?" Fred kicks a stray pebble down the passageway. It bounces off a wall, creating an echoing tick. "At least out there we have a chance of finding The Book."

"Because we need a place to hide out until they run out of bullets." Joe continues to lead the trio down the tunnel-like path. His eyes keep darting to the sky. The buildings are practically collapsing, and he doesn't want to end up like a crepe on the sidewalk.

"You're lost, aren't you?" Sam crosses his arms and shakes his head.

"No." Joe immediately answers, refusing to admit the obvious. His stubbornness only makes him walk faster.

"We've been stuck in these back streets forever. It's like we're trapped in a maze."

"And that's my fault?" Joe rolls his eyes. "You two followed me in here."

They turn a corner and see another endless stretch of alley. The buildings prevent most of the sunlight from lighting the way. They push forward on their trek through the shadows.

"Well, it is your fault that we're in Paris to begin with," Fred says pointedly.

Joe stops and turns on Fred. "My fault? You were the one egging me on. You wanted to warp somewhere fun, remember?"

"Why would you listen to me? It's your book. Besides, I wouldn't call the French Revolution fun. I wanted to go to Hawaii or Tahiti. That would be fun. We never do anything wild for your birthday, except time travel to the past and nearly get shot. That is not fun."

"Admit it, Joe. You wanted to warp to find your uncle Joe," Sam accuses. "Don't blame Fred for this."

Joe clenches his fists, marching down the narrowing alley. "Sorry for caring about my family. My uncle has been missing for three months, and no one is doing anything about it. And yeah, maybe I thought that since I'm a Time Page now, that this would be easy. But it isn't. Once again, I have colossally messed up using the most powerful object in the universe. Thanks for the reminder of how much I suck."

"Just read it!" Sam yells, throwing his hands in the air. "The Book practically came with an easy-to-read instruction manual. Learn how to use it. Why haven't you done that already?"

"Seriously, dude," Fred joins in. "You've had this thing for two years. You should be a master time traveler by now. What was it Freddi called it? A Warp Wizard?"

Joe's jaw is so tense, it hurts. He keeps his mouth shut and focuses on getting out of the alleys. Picking up his pace, he turns another corner. Once again, a seemingly endless alleyway is before them. He grumbles under his breath.

How are we still trapped here? He thinks to himself. Who designed this city? We should have found a way out by now. Some birthday this turned out to be.

"Great. I always dreamed I'd die of starvation before I was even born," Sam says sarcastically. "At least I got to visit Paris."

"You have weird dreams." Fred tilts his head.

Joe sighs, not even bothering to join in, but still annoyed with Sam and Fred. He doesn't have time to deal with their bickering. As much as the two argued with each other, they would never actually start fighting. The three of them were best friends after all. Having a secret time-traveling book did that to people.

Fred walks up next to Joe. "Can we take a break or something. My feet are killing me."

"I thought you wanted to get out of here." Joe glances at Fred out of the corner of his eye.

"Well, yeah, but I also want to rest for a bit."

"Which is it then?" Joe snaps. "Do you want to go home or take a break? You can't have it both ways, Fred."

"Jeez, Joe. Calm down." Fred holds his hand up defensively. "What is with you?"

"What is with me? Do you have any idea what I've been through these past few months?" Joe raises his voice. A familiar tingling sensation begins to build up in his hands. "My uncle has gone missing, the one person in my life who could help me understand The Book and these insane magic abilities I apparently have! On top of that, my own great-granddaughter tells me I'm destined for some sort of apocalyptic showdown with my other uncle that's going to determine the fate of the universe!"

Fred and Sam exchange glances. Sam wrings his hands. "Showdown? Joe, are you okay?"

"No!" The buzzing in Joe's hands intensifies, spreading up his arms and into his head. "I'm stressed, and maybe I am a little scared. I should know how to use The Book by now, but I don't. I can barely pull off a basic card trick, let alone control the most powerful magic object in the universe. We should just let those girls steal it. They'd probably handle it better than me!"

"You really need to calm down, man." Fred and Sam stare at Joe's hands, backing away slowly. Joe won't back down. "It's not your fault."

"It isn't? Because one minute ago, it was. I'm sorry I got I us into this mess. I'm sorry I'm a terrible excuse for a magician. And I'm sorry that I can't get us out of this stupid alley!" Joe yells in frustration, slamming his glowing fist into the wall. A bright flash of green bursts out and blinds the boys.

It takes several seconds for the black spots to fade from their visions. When the trio can finally see again, they find themselves standing in front Tessa, Juniper, and Arwen. The girls stare at them through a gaping hole in the wall. The edges are still glowing a soft green.

Joe takes in a shaky breath and cradles his hand. His knuckles are bleeding, but the tingling feeling has faded.

Tessa lifts the corner of her mouth. "You're definitely the one."

"The one?" Joe raises his eyebrow at her, panting, his face still flushed. "What are you talking about?"

"Is this your book?" Tessa again ignores Joe's question and holds up a large blue book with silver markings on the cover. "We found it in our friend Lafayette's library. Which you just broke into…" She trails off, assessing the damage around her. The interior of the room appears fine, but the wall is completely destroyed.

"Yes!" Sam snatches The Book out of her hands. "Let's get out of here."

"What happened?" Juniper carefully traces the rough edges of the newly formed hole. The green light has faded but the stone is still warm to the touch. She turns to Joe. "Did you do this?"

Joe looks down at his hands, flipping them over and studying them. "It was an accident. Like I said, stuff like that just happens sometimes."

A dark shadow passes over Tessa's face. "You need to learn to control yourself. You'll hurt someone, or worse. You can't be the only one of your kind. Find a teacher."

"I can't." Joe bites his lip. An awkward silence follows.

Fred looks at The Book in Sam's hands. "I think it's time we head home. This has been fun and all, but I miss the safety of my bedroom. There are a lot less gunshots there."

"Right." Joe walks over to grab The Book from Sam, opening it to the Transporter Page.

The girls look between Joe, Sam, and Fred, noticing the large gaps between them. "Is something wrong? You three were way friendlier with each other before."

"We're fine." The three answer simultaneously, not bothering to look at each other.

Joe clears his throat, forces a smile, and types in the information into The Book. Green mist slowly swirls around the trio. "Um, thanks for your help. It was nice meeting you. Sorry we couldn't hang out longer. Good luck with your revolution."

Tessa chuckles and pulls out a green glowing pocket watch. "Don't worry. We'll be seeing each other again real soon. I promise."

"What-" The green mist envelops the boys, cutting Joe off abruptly. There's a flash of green light, and the trio is whisked away to a different time.

#time warp trio #twt #fanfiction #fanfic #timewarptrio #joe #sam #fred #oc #magic #time travel #science fiction #sci fi #kellie writes #kellie fanfic #action #adventure

[nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui]

Meme Time!

Rules: List ten of your favorite female characters in different fandoms (I’m a rebel) and then tag ten people.  

I got tagged by @cycas and @grundyscribbling! Thanks for another chance to ramble >:D

Problem is, I don’t actually have ten fandoms! But I suppose books/series that I have enjoyed count, even if I’m not active in the respective fandoms *innocent whistle*

Also, I don’t know when to shut up, so I guess a cut is in order.

1. Lyra Belacqua (His Dark Materials). Quick, everybody act surprised! I love her quick thinking and her negotiable attitude towards the truth and her ability to intuit the alethiometer and the way she picks her way through all the absurdities and horrors and revelations thrown at her. I even managed to enjoy the lukewarm movie adaptation from ten years back, although I hope the new BBC adaptation is going to do the series more justice.

2. Elwing (The Silmarillion). Since the lovely people who tagged me already chose Nerdanel, let’s have someone else. Elwing gets a lot of dirt thrown her way by parts of the fandom for abandoning her children, wah wah (like Eärendil didn’t? but for him it’s ~okay~ because he’s a ~guy~ and he’s gotta ~save the world~? and Elwing didn’t even know the twins were still alive! Let’s be real here, if I thought my kids had been killed, I might be tempted to jump off a cliff too! I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS), so I feel it’s my duty to show her some love.

3. Éowyn (The Lord of the Rings). Yes these are two separate fandoms shut up. Another total surprise. When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I was an oddball who loved martial arts and was annoyed by girl stuff and had fallen tragically in love with a guy who was already in a relationship. So I identified really hard with Éowyn. I had also recently been disappointed by the way Shakespeare resolved the “no man of woman born” prophecy, so “no living man am I” had me literally punch the air and yell YES! YES! YES! and run around in circles before I could continue reading. -- I felt personally attacked by that stupid scene in TTT SEE where she cooks that disgusting slop because much though I disliked (still dislike) housewifing, I did (and do) love cooking! You can know how to hold a sword AND how to cook, damnit! It’s not mutually exclusive!

4. Æthelflæd of Mercia (The Saxon Stories/ Actual History). Marginally related to the former. In Bernard Cornwell’s books, we see Æthelflæd grow up from spunky girl to unhappy wife to confident and competent military leader. The “unhappy wife” bit isn’t attested by the actual Anglo-Saxon Chronicle but the “military leader” bit is. She did a lot of the actual ruling of Mercia even while her husband was still alive, and after his death she was officially declared its ruler. Incidentally, I suspect that the White Lady of Mercia may have been at least part of Tolkien’s inspiration for Éowyn.

5. Ronja (Ronja the Robber’s Daughter). Another tough and adventure-loving woman - well, girl - but not the kind that’s made to look strong by disdaining traditionally “female virtues”, but who is allowed to feel strongly and be kind and sensitive, to abhor the thieving and people-hurting business of her father, and to make friends with the son of her family’s arch-enemy. (A boy who is likewise allowed to be adventurous and boisterous, and at the same time caring and sensitive and intent on peace and healing.)

6. Meg Murray (The Times Quartett). A fave from my teenage years. These days, the somewhat hamfisted evangelising of Madeleine L’Engle makes me uncomfortable (and I say that as a reasonably faithful Christian), but back when I first stumbled across A Wrinkle In Time, I was so relieved to meet Meg! While I loved reading and had identified with plenty of fictional characters already, this one seemed to have been written specifically for me: A teenager from a stable, loving family background who was nonetheless at odds with the world, who got bullied in school, who couldn’t always keep her temper, who was smarter than most of her peers and probably some of her teachers who simply didn‘t know how to use her smarts. Her complaints about how she got graded down in maths for using shortcuts and not documenting her approach in the way her teacher wanted, even though she arrived at the correct solution, struck a chord in particular! As if that wasn’t enough, even her physical description matched my image of myself: Mouse-brown hair, glasses, braces; not feminine, not tall, not pretty. She was literally just like me. Well, aside from the tesseracting and saving the universe and stuff. But it was a girl just like me who did the tesseracting and saving the universe and stuff! That was the important thing! -- I’ve seen that there’s a new adaptation in the making where the Murray family is black, and it makes me so happy to think that maybe a smart, nerdy, late blooming black teenage girl is going to find herself reflected by the new Meg the way I did back then by book!Meg.

Ahem. Moving on.

7. Hermione Granger (Harry Potter). Do I even have to explain. She saves her friends’ butts so often, both on a small scale by making sure they don’t forget their school work over all the Really Important Stuff they continually have to worry about, and on a larger scale because guess what, learning actually helps to know things. She’s a bookworm and a know-it-all, but she also knows how to put her knowledge to good use. She’s fierce and loyal and could easily have been the hero of the story even though she isn’t The Chosen One(TM).

8. Magrat Garlick (Discworld). Actually, I love all the Lancre witches, but I guess Magrat is just the most endearing to me. Often considered a “wet hen”, she has to juggle the duties of Queening and Witching and isn’t really prepared for either. She wants to be a nice person and is constantly confronted with a world that doesn’t play nice. She nonetheless manages to stay kind and hold her own and mold expectations to her self rather than the other way round. If Meg Murray is my teenage self, Magrat is my aspiration for the future, I guess!

9. Rey Skywalker (Star Wars). Gosh, I love her so much. She’s resourceful and clever and strong and adorable and my total teenage wish-fulfilment fantasy and I am so here for that. She also makes me painfully realise that I am no longer a teenager! But that’s okay.

10. Tuuri Hotakainen (Stand Still, Stay Silent). I’ve kept the most painful one for last. Like Magrat, at first glance it’s easy to dismiss her as a naïve, happy-go-lucky fluff bunny, but underneath the soft and friendly shell, there’s a competent mechanic and tank operator, a great friend, a not-always-perfect sister and a resourceful young woman who shows that being cheerful and idealistic doesn’t mean that you can’t handle reality and make tough choices when you have to.

There may be a theme going on here...

Right! Tagging - on a completely voluntary basis, obviously - @vefanyar, @heartofoshun, @the-wavesinger, @ineptshieldmaid, @independence1776, @fanfuchs,  @catilinas, @garland-on-thy-brow , @as-kingfishers-catch-fire and whoever else feels like playing.

#memery #thanks for the tag! #lyra rambles #his dark materials #gratuitious tolkien reference #the last kingdom #astrid lindgren #there is such a thing as a tesseract #all aboard the hogwarts express #gratuitious discworld reference #gratuitious star wars reference #gratuitious ssss reference

[mild-lunacy]

The Problem with Toxic Masculinity and Ronan Lynch

One of the things that can cause the most tension in fandom is how every close friendship between men *has* to be romantic. I'm not always immune to the frustration, though I'm generally more annoyed at people who refuse to consider queer romance than those who insist it can well happen (unless people are saying it *has* happened when it hasn't). Of course, a lot of slash fans are not just into it if there's intense character chemistry and it feels inevitable, but anytime there's more than a friendly nod and a break for beer every now and then. It's definitely not surprising, and usually not a big deal, of course-- that's just slash. However, the Raven Cycle fandom is different, 'cause you're talking about a canon where there's both close male friendship *and* a queer couple in a romantic relationship. And it's still not enough: the friendship is still read romantically. Literally the only difference a canon queer relationship has made is that people are more confident and self-righteous about the reading, although it must be said that slash (and/or the fannish queer reading) has become increasingly more about simply erasing canon and Authorial Intent.

I'm not here to bemoan that yet again. What I'm thinking about is how all those infamous anti-slashers are definitely onto something in regards to the negativity and disdain-- if not total contempt--so many slash fans seem to have towards the breadth and depth of male friendship, and the way it can include strong feelings. This, no matter how many times female fans beat our chests in frustration about 'toxic masculinity' and all the ways men are hobbled by society from showing any vulnerability or honest emotions, from sharing emotional intimacy with one another. That's all well and good, but not as sexy or cool or *relatable* (the ultimate comeback) as the male characters being secretly in love. Toxic masculinity may be a bad thing, but it's sure convenient when you need a good excuse for two men boinking. And the unlikelihood and rarity of truly deep platonic love between two men-- particularly if it's actually expressed in any genuine fashion-- is so very convenient, isn't it?

So no matter what, it's secretly queer, although especially and particularly if it involves a canonically queer character such as Ronan Lynch. Ronan is pretty much implicitly considered incapable of feeling strongly for Gansey as a good friend, let alone being able to appreciate him physically without wanting in his pants. Of course, the fact that he even mildly flirted with Kavinsky means he was lying about not wanting an actual relationship with him, either. In both cases, Ronan has explicitly stated his lack of romantic/sexual interest in The Dream Thieves, but of course that's not nearly enough. Categorically, the sexualization of queer characters (canonical or projected as queer by fandom) is treated as an inevitability. Just like how men and women aren't supposed to be able to be just friends. Ronan's clearly only allowed platonic relationships with Blue and his family, unless the other man is purely a casual acquaintance as yet. No one thinks he really wants Henry, for example. Yet.

Like I said, I'm certainly very sympathetic in general, being a longtime slasher for almost twenty years now. But all arguments about the higher good or the need for relatability and representation disappear with The Raven Cycle. There's no 'higher ground' when it comes to sexualizing Ronan's platonic relationships in direct opposition to canon and Authorial Intent, or in regards to not taking him at his word with Kavinsky. There's simply no excuse except fannish greed, contempt for canon and an implicit acceptance of toxic masculinity. Essentially, the idea that men have no feelings unless they want to fuck.

Fannish greed and the open preference for fanon over canon is more or less just part of the nature of the beast, of course. The implications about progressive or feminist-friendly fans supporting toxic masculinity in such a brazen manner are more troubling to me. It's really ridiculous to me that the same old explanations about needing to feel included and represented are nevertheless trotted out, as if gay men don't get to *have* close friends or a wide range of relationships and connections with other people. That's really what upsets me. It's one thing to deny a supposedly straight man friendship and closeness outside of romantic interest. You definitely can say that real-life Gansey types have all that and more, all across literature as well as in reality. (Of course, most Gansey types in real life aren't lucky enough to have real love with a great woman as well as friends as close as Ronan and Adam.) Ronan and Adam don't deserve this, however. They deserve to have true friends, to be portrayed with a range of close platonic as well as romantic relationships. A good representation of a real life, with all different types of bonds and necessary relationships. That's how actual people are. That's *who* we are.

It's upsetting 'cause it's not like I think it's just straight people's misunderstanding at work. The fact is, though, Maggie Stiefvater seems to understand all this better than all her admittedly queer fans. And well, that's a shame, really. We deserve better, and we *got* better, so it's rather upsetting so many fellow queer people seem to think otherwise. So many queer people seem to want to imagine a universe and a life where everyone around us is literally just like us, and we're all romantically involved or want to be. And maybe that's how many people live-- surrounded by the community, with lots of complicated relationships and exes everywhere you look. Maybe that's 'relatable' 'cause it's common. But honestly, I don't see any reason to admire that sort of existence. The Raven Cycle may be idealized and romanticized, but it's still real. It's good and true. Because that's also who we are as people: a beautiful mess of gay, bi and straight and even undead.

#fandom meta #slash meta #reader response #trc #ronan lynch #queer issues #masculinities #feminism #Ronan ❤️ #pynch

[vaguely-concerned]

RANDOM OVERWATCH/MCHANZO HEADCANONS

My headcanons are usually global, so to say, so once established they mainly hold true for anything I write in that fandom until canon actively overwrites it (and sometimes even after that if I think the real answer is dumb ha ha). Most of what I’ve already done is the ���Scoundrels and Thieves’ AU series. 

- Shimadamom died during the omnic crisis, since I feel like she would come up a lot more if she was actually around when her sons literally tried to murder each other. (It would also explain why Hanzo shoots the omnic in ‘Dragons’ even as he goes to some lengths to only incapacitate the other guards and why he thinks Numbani sucks, as well as adding a layer of ouch to Genji’s... robo-dysphoria.) Hanzo remembers her better than Genji does, since Genji would have been pretty young at that point.

- Hanzo is a dog person (oh hello there entire alternate wardrobe made up of wolf imagery) and Jesse is a cat person. (Both because of That Scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly with the kitten and the hat (!!!!!) and because really he himself is kind of a very affable yet still half-feral tomcat kind of a man)

- In ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’, at least, Jesse started out smoking cigarettes and graduated to cigars as he got older/had more cash, for that Authentic Man With No Name Look. He still goes for cigarettes sometimes when he’s on edge because he finds the little rituals of rolling them comforting. (Hanzo also has a very private Pavlovian reaction to the smell of a certain brand Jesse smoked around the time they started sleeping together. I’ll let you fill in the embarrassing details in your own time.)

- Hanzo usually cuts his own hair - just chops a bit off with a knife or something when it gets too annoying. The first time it was the dramatic symbolic gesture of dishonor ™, but these days it’s just because he can’t be bothered with anything fancier, in the same vein as ‘why even put my shirt on all the way btw did I mention I KILLED MY BROTHER’. (Yes, I know it’s a real traditional archery technique thing, just… let me have this.) Probably also why he wears it up most of the time so you can’t really tell it’s a bit of a catastrophe.

- Jesse taught himself how to play the guitar as a kid and has a wonderful voice for everyday life - it doesn’t belong on a stage but it is perfect for crooning in the background while making dinner or doing chores, stuff like that.  

- Jesse is quite ticklish, a fact Hanzo ‘Innate Talent for Strategy and Tactics’ Shimada uses without compunctions when it suits his goals. (His goals usually being a Jesse pink-faced and loose-limbed with laughter)

- Hanzo looks A LOT like his dad but takes after his mum personality-wise - more cynical and closed off except for with their loved ones - while Genji looks more like their mum.

- Jesse’s parents died during the war, quite early on. (tbh this is mostly b/c it breaks my heart to imagine his family would be okay with him having become a notorious killer by the age of seventeen. Like. Bro. I’d rather have someone love and protect him unflinchingly and then having no choice in leaving him. Though if the Deadlock gang had some element of a family business that would mean ANOTHER parallel between them, so if that’s how canon eventually lands I can work with that too ha ha)

- Do you ever think about Jesse at fourteen, coming back from a fight victorious but with new constellations of scars and bruises, curling up somewhere no one’ll find him to watch that scene in For A Fistful of Dollars where the man with no name gets beat up to hell and back and still gets out of it through sheer tenacity and being a tricksy fuck

Because I think about that every day and that’s why I’m constantly on the verge of tears

Anyway not so much a headcanon there as a window into the dark aching corners of my soul let’s carry on

- Jesse is demisexual, Hanzo is gay.

- At first I had settled for Hanzo being bi (what better orientation for a ninja than one that makes you invisible, after all? Who’s bitter you’re bitter) but then there were the White Day lines between Hanzo and Genji and now I’m 100% convinced that he’s gay, if only because it’s so much funnier to me. Let me show my work a bit here:

So as far as I understand, on Valentine’s day in Japan it’s women who give the ~*special men*~ in their life chocolates/gifts. (There’s also an uh ‘tier’ of chocolate that’s completely platonic and is given to friends and coworkers, but from the tone of Genji’s voice I doubt that’s what he’s talking about lol) White day is a month later, and it’s when the men reciprocate the gifts they were given. So essentially what Genji is doing with that line is going “SO… any special GIRLS in your life bro?? *I know you can’t see my face through the visor but you can feel the wink wink nudge nudge through the air*” and Hanzo’s answer is a sort of long-suffering reference to young Genji’s playboy lifestyle as well as a callback to a previous voice line between them, not a slight aimed at any cocoa beans.

Now I like to imagine bb!Genji as a bit of a hilarious dick - like basically sweet and well-meaning, but also hugely spoiled, self-absorbed and easily distracted. It would lend Hanzo’s annoyance so many levels of hilarity if his little brother just… hadn’t realized that the reason he wasn’t dating girls wasn’t just a) he’s been riding a wave of shame, guilt, grief, depression & light alcoholism these last ten years and it’s hard to date with a tight schedule like that, b) he is kind of weird and socially awkward at the best of times, c) his eventual anachronistic weirdo soulmate was running around on the other side of the world doing crazy shit for Overwatch

The reason he’s never dated any girls is that he’s FUCKING GAY

Like it was not as though it was secret, Genji, all you’d have to do was fucking pay attention or hey, ask at any point in the last closing-in-on-forty-years and it would have been EASILY AVAILABLE INFORMATION

FATHER KNEW AND HE NEVER NEEDED TO ASK,GENJI

Anyway I thrive on Hanzo Shimada’s annoyance and consternation because he takes everything so damn seriously and I love him very much

(Obviously in the ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’ ‘verse Genji does know. He’s not THAT massively oblivious.)

- Jesse is mostly ambidextrous but prefers to shoot with his right hand. I think there was some kerfuffle about his holster being put on both sides in official art that prompted this one? I’m not above going ‘*shrug* why have continuity errors when you can have headcanon’

- Shimadadad, intent on his sons not turning into Useless Rich Ninja Kids, made sure they were taught some essential life skills, like cooking and laundry and shit - meaning Hanzo knows how to make a handful of dishes to, like, double Michelin Star levels. He doesn’t actually enjoy it very much, though, so mostly he won’t. Meanwhile Jesse has no outside training whatsoever beyond at one point being shown how to turn on a microwave but figured things out on his own and has pretty good instincts. Hanzo prefers Jesse’s cooking and will happily just do chopping duty (which he’s still proficient at to the point that Jesse’s not sure whether to be unsettled or turned on).

- Jesse learned about horses from an older lady who semi-adopted him after finding him feverish and bleeding in her back garden when he was in his early teens. He stayed on her ranch for a couple of years and then left because he was worried some of the people he’d pissed off would be able to track him down there and burn it all down.

- Hanzo doesn’t like - or really get - giving and receiving gifts as a way to express affection. I’m pretty sure his line of association would go something like gifts ----> money ------> business -----> bribe -----> obligation -------> duty -------> faMILY OH GOD EVERYTHING JUST GOT REAL MESSED UP AND COMPLICATED IN MY HEAD I NEED A DRINK

- Another one where I’ll accept either outcome: I can’t decide from the in-game dialogue if Genji and McCree’s relationship is more bro-like ribbing or if they’re actually a little uh. Adversarial. (“You’re not quicker than a bullet”: a Schröedinger’s playful banter/death threat lol) If they’re mostly friendly that’s great! They can form a harmonious ‘Save Hanzo From Himself’ support group. If they’re more antagonistic? Pure. Fucking. Hilarity. Can you imagine Genji being SO FUCKING MAD because as it turns out the one thing in this world that has ever made his sadsack brother happy is that cocky jingle-jangle bizarro Western cosplay jackass. Like naturally I would prefer it if they were bros but I never turn down comedic potential like that.

- Jesse’s greatest fear has to do with being seen and with leaving. He’s very clearly set up a theatrical, elaborate part of his identity between himself and the world - I don’t think any psychologically unscarred person goes ‘well I’ll just wrap myself in this loner/vigilante archetype until it works for me’ lol. It’s a very smart ‘people are going to look at me so let’s make sure they can’t actually see me’ move. Also it makes me sad that me must have, like, reverse abandonment issues: every time he belongs to something - to the Deadlock gang, to Overwatch, to Hanzo in ‘Scoundrels and Thieves’ - he’s inevitably forced to leave it behind. (I guess this is part of why I love the pairing so much; they’re both wanderers now, they can go together ;____;)

Hanzo’s greatest fear is to really hurt someone he loves again. (Remember that time in Junkenstein’s Revenge where Jack looks at Reaper and goes ‘what could turn a man into this’ and Hanzo immediately answers “To be tested, and to fail”? Because I remember that all the time.)

#overwatch #mchanzo #hanzo #mccree #Perhaps there is still a future for anachronisms #meta #idk it was the only way I managed to do some writing so here we go I guess ha ha #I'm just like... filled to the brim with feels that have nowhere to go #My writing

[dragonydreams]

Playing With Fire - Mick/Sin

Title: Playing With Fire Fandom: DC's Legends of Tomorrow Rating: Teen Pairings/Characters: Mick Rory/Sin, Mick Rory & Sara Lance, mentions Sara Lance/Leonard Snart Summary: After Rip drops everyone back in Star City May 2016, Mick stays with Sara. After Sara can't find Laurel right away, but before she goes to the Bunker, she tells Mick she needs to check on one other person: Sin. Timeline: during 01x16 (Legendary) Word Count: 4,737 Disclaimer: I claim no ownership over these characters. I am merely borrowing them from Berlanti Productions, DC Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Television. Some dialog borrowed from episode. Betas: Thank you to angelskuuipo and shanachie for looking this over for me. Author's Note: Written for @mick-rory-appreciation-week Day 2: Favorite Relationship. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to indulge in my very rare pair, of which I am practically the only person to ship.

  "You sure you don't have somewhere else you'd rather be?" Sara asked Mick as they approached Laurel's apartment building. "Isn't Central City your home?"

Mick hesitated before speaking, "Central is… That's Snart's city."

"I get it," Sara said.

"'Sides, if I went to Central, I'd have to find Lisa, and I'm not ready for that conversation. Yet," Mick admitted.

"Okay. Just don't be surprised if my sister goes for her baseball bat when she sees you. As a D.A. turned vigilante, she'll probably hit first and ask questions later if I show up with a known criminal."

"She knows you used to associate with assassins, doesn't she?" Mick asked.

"Yeah, but I'm her baby sister," Sara said, cheekily.

"Family's weird," Mick grumbled. "Think I'll just wait out here."

"You really don't have to wait for me," Sara insisted. "I don't know how long I'll be here. I mean, I'm planning on staying with Laurel, so if she's here, it's not like I'll be coming back out."

"Fine, then I'll come up," Mick said.

"Why'd you even want to come with me?" Sara asked as they made their way into the building. "It's not like I have a couch you can crash on since I'll be doing the sofa surfing thing myself. I'm sure if you call Ray he'd be more than happy to put you up."

"Put up with me's more like it," Mick countered.

"Hey, I'm not trying to get rid of you," Sara said, sincerely. "I just don't have my own place in Star City and I can't make offers on other people's behalf."

"Could say I'm your boyfriend," Mick suggested. "Then they'd have to take me."

Sara raised an eyebrow at that suggestion, until her face crumpled. "We both know why I can't do that." She paused, and then met his eyes. "You do know, don't you?"

"I do," Mick acknowledged, somberly. "I shouldn't have suggested it."

"Under different circumstances, I would have enjoyed seeing my family's reaction to that situation."

"Me, too, Blondie," Mick said. "Look, I'll call Haircut once I know you've found your couch to sleep on. Deal?"

"Deal," Sara said as they arrived at Laurel's door. She knocked, but there was silence on the other side of the door.

Sara pulled out her phone and tried calling Laurel's cell, but it went straight to voicemail. She shrugged and put her phone in the back pocket of her pants. "She's probably working late."

"You didn't call her before we came here?" Mick asked.

"I did, but it went to voicemail then, too," Sara said. "Figured I'd take a chance."

"So, what now? Off to Arrow Central?" he asked as they headed back to the elevator.

"Got one other stop to make first," Sara said. "Since I can't find my big sister, I want to check on my little one."

Mick frowned. "Thought you only had the one sister."

"One by blood," Sara confirmed. "Sin's my little sister by choice."

Mick smirked. "Sin, huh?"

"Don't you go getting any ideas," Sara said, poking him in the chest as they rode down in the elevator. "She's ten years younger than me."

"Snart was fifteen years older than you," Mick pointed out. "And I haven't even met her yet. What makes you think I'll even be interested?"

"Good point. You know, I don't think I've ever seen you show interest in anyone. Are you even interested in women? Or was Snart a partner in more than one sense of the word?" Sara asked as she led them out of the elevator and building and began to head towards the Glades.

"That's because it's been none of your business," Mick said. "But to set the record straight, when I fuck someone, it's a woman."

"Then my warning stands," Sara said.

"You planning on walking all over Star City?" Mick asked after a few minutes of scanning the parked cars they walked past.

"You afraid of a little exercise?" Sara teased.

"Yes," Mick answered, eyes landing on an old Ford pickup truck. "Come on, that one will be easy to steal."

Sara sighed, but all she said was, "Make it quick."

It only took Mick a couple of minutes to break into and hot wire the truck. Sara directed him to Sin's apartment and he found a parking spot near the entrance.

"You sure you're not bored following me around?" Sara asked before getting out of the truck.

"I haven't had this much fun following someone in a long time." Mick smirked.

Sara groaned. "Now you're starting to sound like him."

"Someone's gotta," Mick said with a shrug and opened the truck door. Sara did the same a moment later.

This time, when Sara knocked on the door it was opened by a young woman with short spikey dark hair. Mick had never seen an expression go from annoyed to delighted so quickly as the girl squealed, "You're alive," and pulled Sara into a fierce hug.

Mick stood back as the two women hugged, giving them a moment.

When they separated, Sin looked up and spotted Mick. "Who's he?"

Sara turned and gestured him forward. "This is my friend, Mick. He was on the mission with me. Mick, this is Sin."

Sin ran her eyes over him and said, "No offense, man, but you don't look like a hero."

"None taken," Mick rasped. "I'm no hero."

"Can we come in?" Sara asked, not wanting to have this conversation in the hallway.

"Yeah, of course," Sin said, holding the door open wide. "Do you want something to drink?"

"Beer," Mick immediately answered as he stepped inside and the door was closed behind them. "Are you even old enough to buy beer?"

"My ID says that I am," Sin answered with a wink as she went to grab three beers from the fridge. She called back, "Make yourselves comfortable."

"I like her," Mick said as he settled into a ratty arm chair while Sara took a seat on the old couch.

"Mick." Her voice held an edge of warning to it, which he ignored.

Sin returned with their beers and after handing them around, curled up close to Sara on the couch.

"So, where have you been?" Sin asked. "Five months ago you said you'd see me in a few days and then nothing. I thought you might have died again. Especially when you didn't show up for the funeral."

Sara pulled Sin closer, keeping an arm wrapped around her. "I know; I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be gone for so long." After a beat, Sara asked, "What funeral? Who died?"

Sin realized that Sara must not know about Laurel dying yet, and she didn't want to have to be the one to tell her. It was cowardly, but she didn't want to be the one to cause Sara that kind of pain.

"Oh, you know Star City, there's always funerals going on. Um, you said you were on a mission. Was it for the Green Arrow?" Sin asked.

Mick snorted, but otherwise remained silent and drank his beer.

Sara took a moment to glare at him, then returned her focus to Sin, wondering who had died but deciding not to press if Sin didn't want to talk about it right now.

"No, this was a different kind of mission. We were on a time traveling spaceship on a mission to stop an immortal wizard from destroying the future," Sara said.

Sin sat back so that she could properly look at Sara, her eyes wide. "You're shitting me."

"We shit you not," Mick said. "Time travel is real."

"Then why have you been gone for so long? Wouldn't you just come back to when you left?" Sin asked.

"An excellent question," Sara said. "One our captain did not care to share the answer to before he just left us here."

"I guess that explains it, though," Sin said.

"Explains what?" Sara asked.

"Why you're different. You seem older. Sadder," Sin commented.

"It's only been five months," Sara bristled, deciding not to mention the two years she spent in the 1950s. "Not that much older."

Sin shook her head. "Something happened to you on that mission. You can't fool your sister."

"We all changed," Mick agreed. "Some of us more than others."

"You, too?" Sin asked, looking at him. "How were you before? Talkative?"

Mick grunted. "Not quite talkative. Not entirely sane either."

"You saying you're sane now?" Sara asked.

"More than I was," Mick admitted. "Time Bastards did one thing right."

Sara choked back a sob at that.

"Sara?" Sin asked, her voice filled with concern.

Sara shook her head. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not," Sin stated.

"I had a partner," Mick explained when saw that Sara couldn't. "Snart and I were thieves together in Central City before we were recruited for this mission."

"Leonard Snart?" Sin interrupted. "You're Mick Rory!? Heatwave and Captain Cold?"

"Heard of us here, did you?" Mick sounded pleased.

"You're famous," Sin said. "Some of the guys I know would kill to meet you. Possibly literally. Wait a minute, where's Snart now?"

"Jumping ahead in the story, kid," Mick admonished her, impressed by her connecting the dots so quickly.

Sin glanced back at Sara and saw her friend trying to blink back tears.

"You were with him and he's not here. He died?" Sin asked.

"He died to save the world just a few days ago," Mick said, his voice thick. He finished off his beer in one go.

"We weren't together," Sara said, quietly. "We were heading that way, but we weren't when he died. I got to kiss him once. A kiss good-bye."

Mick nodded, having guessed something like that had happened; he'd known how Snart had felt about the assassin. Apparently, the feelings were mutual.

Sin wrapped her arms around Sara, pulling her into another hug.

"Need more beer," Mick grumbled as he stood, needing space from all these feelings being exposed. He made his way into the kitchen and helped himself to another beer, drinking down half the bottle in one long pull.

Sin entered the room a few minutes later, carrying hers and Sara's empties. "Sara's washing her face," she offered. "Were they in love?"

"Boss and I didn't talk about feelings," Mick started, "but if they weren't yet, they were getting there. Anyone who looked at them could tell."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Sin said, quietly.

Mick looked up at her, surprised.

"You lost him, too, right?" she asked. "After knowing him for how long?"

"Thirty years," Mick acknowledged.

"That's longer than I've been alive," Sin murmured in wonder. She took a step closer to Mick, causing him to straighten up from his slouch against a counter. "I'm going to hug you now," she warned him.

"You don't have to," Mick said, suddenly craving the human contact, but not wanting to hurt her.

"I know," Sin said as she finished closing the distance between them and wrapping her arms around Mick's torso. Mick lowered his arms so that they hung loosely around Sin, not really hugging her back, but not pushing her away, either.

That's how Sara found them.

"Am I interrupting anything?" she asked, amusement in her voice.

"No," Mick said, quickly, taking a step back.

"Not yet, anyway," Sin said. "Feel better?"

"A little, yeah," Sara said. "I think it's time for me to find Laurel. You coming, Mick?"

Mick looked down at Sin and raised an eyebrow, who shrugged in response. "You go on ahead, I think I'll stick around here for a bit."

Sara cocked her head to look at them. "Are you sure?"

"Like you said before, no reason for me to trail you around the city looking for your family," Mick said. "Besides, Sin has beer."

"You're okay with him sticking around?" Sara asked, surprised.

Sin ran her eyes over Mick in a way that had Mick's blood suddenly heat up. "Yeah, I'm sure," she answered.

"Mick, call to let me know where you land tonight."

"Sure thing, Bo--, um, Blondie," Mick stumbled, surprise on both their faces at what he'd almost called her.

"Walk me out," Sara said to Sin, her saccharine smile fooling no one.

Sin followed Sara to the door. "This the part where you tell me to watch myself around him?"

"He's way too old for you," Sara said. "And dangerous."

"I thought he was your friend," Sin said, frowning. "And he seems like he could really use someone right now."

Sara's expression softened. "When'd you get to be so smart?"

"Probably while you were dead," Sin half-joked. "We can joke about that now, right?"

"Yeah, we can. And I won't lecture you about Mick. Just, be careful. I don't know if this mission is going to pick back up again and if it does, I don't know how long we'll be gone for. I don't want you hurt if you get attached and he suddenly disappears."

"At least I'll know why ahead of time," Sin said. "And who said I'll get attached? Maybe I just want to take advantage of him." She winced and blushed faintly when she heard Mick snort in the kitchen, but what the hell, he was hot; she was going to own it.

"Stop, I beg you. I don't ever want that image in my head," Sara whined.

Sin laughed and pulled Sara into a quick hug. "Try to say good-bye next time, just in case."

"I promise," Sara said.

Sara stepped out into the hallway and Sin called after her, "If you're looking for Laurel, go talk to your dad."

"Okay, thanks," Sara said, looking at Sin curiously as she closed the door.

Mick was staring at the food delivery menus on the fridge when Sin returned to the kitchen.

"You know what I missed the most on that ship?" Mick asked, turning to face Sin.

"Sex?" Sin guessed.

"That, too," Mick agreed. "But I was thinking of Big Belly Burger."

Sin grinned at that. "C'mon, there's one just a couple blocks from here. We'll get some burgers, then see about the other thing."

Mick nearly choked on his last sip of beer. "Yeah?"

"If you play your cards right."

"Cards were really more Snart's thing," Mick said with a frown.

"And what do you play with?" Sin asked.

"Fire," Mick automatically responded.

"I have been told that I'm a little spitfire," Sin smoothly said.

Mick laughed, the sound foreign to his ears. "I just bet you have. Let's hurry up and get our food."

The walk was made mostly in silence. They found a booth and once they'd ordered, Mick asked, "So, Sara tell you not to get involved with me?"

"Pretty much," Sin confirmed. "Pretty sure you heard that, too. You?"

"Before I even met you," Mick agreed.

"She doesn't want us to get hurt," Sin tried to defend her friend.

"Not really up to her," Mick said. "Not that I'm out to hurt anyone."

"Me either," Sin agreed. "Just looking for a little fun. It's not like I expect you to stick around here."

"Just so we're clear," Mick agreed, wondering why that thought made his chest hurt just a little bit.

Their food arrived a few minutes later and Mick couldn't wait to pick his burger up and sink his teeth into it.

"You're not going to take those off to eat?" Sin asked, gesturing to his gloves.

"Don't take them off in public," Mick said around a mouthful of food.

"Why not, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Got caught in a fire a number of years back," Mick said, unashamed. "Got some pretty serious burns on my arms and back, including my hands."

"Do they hurt?" she asked, nibbling at a fry.

"Not anymore," Mick answered. "Hurry up before your burger gets cold."

Sin knew better than to press the topic any further and picked up her burger and began eating.

Mick polished off his burger in half a dozen bites, or less, licking his gloves clean. Settling back in the booth, he said, "If you were serious about your other offer, I should probably warn you that it's been awhile since I've been with anyone."

"Yeah, Sara said you were gone for five months," Sin said.

"Been a bit longer than that for me," Mick admitted. "See, while we were gone, the Time Masters got their hands on me. Brainwashed me into being their bounty hunter and assassin for a couple hundred of years."

Sin looked at him skeptically. "Now you're just pulling my leg. You are not a couple hundred of years old. You look like you're in your forties."

"Time Masters operated outside of time. Could live for hundreds of years in the span of one earth year," Mick said.

"And you were never with anyone during that time?" Sin asked.

Mick shook his head. "Didn't even occur to me. I was their loyal puppet, only did what I was told."

"That sounds terrible," Sin said, aghast.

"It was," Mick agreed. "Team got me back to myself. Mostly myself. One good thing they did was take away the need to burn everything. Don't get me wrong, I still like to burn shit up, but the need to burn isn't there anymore."

"Glad something good came out of it at least," Sin said. "And that you were reunited with your partner in the end."

"Yeah," Mick somberly agreed.

Sin wiped her mouth with a napkin and threw it down on her empty food basket. "Let's get out of here. I think we've been serious enough for one night."

"You still want me to come back to your place?" Mick asked, surprised. "Even knowing I was a bounty hunter, a killer?"

"Sara used to be an assassin, too," Sin reminded him. "You're not still a bounty hunter, right?" Mick shook his head. "Not a killer?"

"Not if I can help it."

"Then we're good."

"You're something else," Mick said in wonder.

"I've seen a lot of crazy shit in this city," Sin said. "Good people forced to do bad things and bad people suddenly doing the right thing in times of crisis. I've learned not to take everything at face value."

They kept the conversation light on the walk back to Sin's apartment and Sin led Mick straight to her bedroom when they arrived.

"You're not even trying to be coy," Mick said approvingly.

"What's the point in being coy?" Sin asked, pushing him lightly until he sat on the bed. She bent to kiss him, a light press of lips with a promise of more. "Scoot back against the wall," she murmured against his mouth.

Mick yanked off his boots and jacket before doing as requested. "Bossy little thing, aren't you?"

"Only if you want me to be," Sin said, slipping out of her own jacket and boots. She crawled up the bed and straddled Mick's lap. Mick's hands gripped her hips as she settled against him. "Hi," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck.

As Sin leaned in to kiss him again, Mick pulled back and swore. "Shit, sorry, before we do anything else, I gotta make a phone call."

"Seriously?" Sin pouted, rolling her hips. "You have to make a call right now?"

Mick groaned as he felt his body react to the movement. "I can either do it now or after we're done. Figured now would be better. I'll be quick," he said, pulling phone out of his pocket. Sin started to move to get off of him, but Mick reached out to hold her in place.

He quickly pulled up Sara's number, glad that she picked up after only one ring. "Hey, Sara, just wanted to let you know that I'm set for the night."

"Are you still with Sin?" Sara asked, her voice sounded strained.

"So what if I am?" he returned, his defenses rising.

"No, that's good. You should be around good people tonight," Sara said.

Mick held the phone away from his ear to see if he'd heard that right. "You okay there? You sound off."

"I'll talk to you tomorrow, Mick," Sara said, evading his question and ending the call.

Mick frowned as he set his phone on Sin's bedside table.

"Everything okay?" Sin asked, her fingers scratching lightly at his neck.

"I don't think so, but she didn't say what was up. I'll find out tomorrow," Mick said. He shook his head then leered at Sin, who was still on his lap. "Now, where were we?"

Sin grinned and met Mick in a heated kiss.

They didn't talk again for a very long time.

~~*~~

After a couple of very enthusiastic rounds of getting to know each other better, Mick fell asleep curled around Sin.

They woke the next morning in the same position.

Sin declared that breakfast at her favorite diner was in order. They were seated at a table for four and soon after they ordered, another person sat down at their table.

"Hey, Mick."

"Haircut," Mick said in greeting.

"Hi, I'm Ray," he said, holding a hand out to Sin.

"Sin." She looked at Mick as she perfunctorily shook Ray's hand. "Friend of yours?"

"He was on our mission," Mick reluctantly admitted.

"I-I thought we should talk," Ray said to Mick.

"How'd you find me?" Mick asked.

"I triangulated the signal on your phone," Ray said.

"I'm gonna go use the little girl's room," Sin said, excusing herself. Mick's eyes begged her not to go, but she rolled her eyes and left the two teammates alone.

"What do you want, Haircut?" Mick asked, sipping his coffee.

"To apologize, sort of. For Snart. I was the one who was supposed to die, and I can't help feeling that…"

Mick interrupted him. He didn't want to deal with all this feelings shit before breakfast, if ever. "It wasn't your fault. It was his. Son of a bitch never did anything without a plan."

"Maybe you're right," Ray said, a little too brightly. "Maybe he wanted this." He gestured between the two of them.

"What are you doing with your hand?" Mick asked, warily.

"Maybe he wanted us to, you know, be partners."

"Think I'm going to be sick," Mick said. He couldn't imagine being partners with anyone other than Snart.

Ray didn't seem to notice his reaction and continued. "I think Snart knew. He knew that I'd keep an eye out for you, and you'd keep an eye out for me."

"While doing what?" Mick found himself asking.

"What we haven't finished doing," Ray said, earnestly.

"The mission?" Sin asked, sliding back into her seat.

"You told her about it?" Ray asked in surprise.

"No, Sara did. She's Sara's friend." Then Mick quickly added, "Mine, too, now."

"So you're going back already?" Sin asked with a pout.

The server arrived with three plates of food. Sin and Mick looked surprised as an egg white omelet was set in front of Ray.

"I ordered at the counter and told them I was joining you," Ray explained.

"Is he for real?" Sin asked Mick.

"Unfortunately," Mick said.

"Hey!" Ray objected.

"You're the one to interrupt our morning after breakfast, buddy," Sin said. "If you wanted a welcome reception, you should have called first."

Ray had the decency to blush. "I guess you're right, I'm sorry. I didn't really think that Mick would have met someone so quickly."

"Apology not accepted," Mick said, biting into his bacon. "Besides, how're we supposed to finish the mission if Rip just left us here?"

"I think we can call him back," Ray said, then lifted something out of a bag on the floor. "With this."

Sin and Mick looked at the device, then at each other, then at Ray. "What's that?" they asked in unison.

"Quantum entangler." At the blank looks on his companions' faces, Ray continued, "The Waverider would have left a Quantum signature. We can use this to send a signal to the Waverider so Rip knows we want him to come back."

"Let me think about it," Mick said, looking over at Sin.

"We should really do this sooner rather than later, before the signature dissipates," Ray said.

"Let me eat my breakfast and then I'll give you my answer," Mick snapped.

"Yeah, sure, okay," Ray sputtered.

"And I think you should take your food to the counter," Mick added.

Glancing between Mick and Sin, Ray nodded his agreement. "Okay, sure. I'll just…" He put the Quantum entangler back in its bag and then took his food to an empty seat at the counter.

"You're going to go," Sin said as soon Ray was out of earshot.

"I know," Mick said. "Hasn't felt right leaving the mission incomplete. Doesn't mean that I want him to know I'm just as determined to see it out."

Sin giggled at the small smile tugging Mick's lips. "You're terrible."

"He makes it so easy," Mick said. "I'll call Sara on the way back to your place so she can come say good-bye."

"Thanks," Sin said, sincerely.

"Not letting her break her promise to you," Mick said.

"You sure you're not one of the heroes?" Sin teased him.

"Eat your pancakes," Mick huffed.

Ray was practically beaming when Mick told him that he'd be going with him and insisted on paying for their breakfast. They let him.

Ray drove them back to Sin's apartment, and Mick called Sara to let her know they were getting the Waverider to come back. She said she'd be at Sin's apartment in ten minutes.

Mick told Ray to wait with the car while he and Sin went upstairs, supposedly to get something Mick had left behind.

Really they just wanted to make out until Sara arrived.

Sara pounded on the door to announce her presence, startling them apart. Sin opened the door to admit a very pissed off Sara.

"What's wrong?" Sin asked her.

"You really think you can get Rip to come back?" Sara asked Mick.

"Haircut made some device last night that can get him back, yeah," Mick said. "You don't look okay."

"I'm not," Sara agreed. "But Rip can fix it."

Sin wondered if they would be able to go back in time and save Laurel.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you yesterday," Sin rushed to say. "I wanted to, but I thought it would be better coming from your dad. You know I'm no good with stuff like that."

Sara's eyes welled up with tears. "I figured that out. I'm not upset with you, but I can't talk about this right now."

Sin pulled Sara into a hug that the other woman gratefully accepted. "You just go do what you have to do." She met Mick's eyes as she said this. "Then you come back to me."

Mick smirked, but nodded.

Sara pulled back and wiped her eyes. "I'll miss you."

"Me, too," Sin said. "Now go save the future."

Sara went to the door and turned to wait for Mick.

"Go ahead, I'll be down in a minute," Mick said. Sara's eyes narrowed at him, but she went down to Ray's car.

"What was all that about? What's Rip gonna fix?" Mick asked.

"Her sister was killed about a month ago," Sin told him.

"Bastard knew it and brought us back late on purpose," Mick realized. "Looking forward to Sara ripping him a new one."

Stepping in close to Sin, Mick asked, "You mean what you said? You want me to come back to you? Or was that all just for Sara?"

"That was for both of you," Sin said. "I had a good time last night."

"So did I," Mick said. "Looking forward to next time."

"You just make sure there will be a next time," Sin said, pulling on Mick's jacket until he bent over to kiss her.

Mick's phone began to ring and without even looking at the caller ID he answered, "I'm coming."

"I'll see you soon," he growled, kissing Sin quickly one last time.

"You better," she licked her lips, "better hurry up before Sara comes back up here."

"Wouldn't want that," Mick agreed and took his leave.

A smile was teasing his lips as he slid into the passenger seat of Ray's car. Sara was already in back, playing with one of her knives.

"Let's go find Rip and end that crazy sonofabitch once and for all," Mick said.

 The End

#mickroryaw2017 #mick rory/sin #mick rory #sin #sara lance #Fic: Playing With Fire #legends of tomorrow fic