#or theres like 3 main ones that say pretty much the exact same thing
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industrial commercial made leather is not the same as indigenous made leather (traditional or even modern technique)
no actual vegan, when talking about the destructive nature of leather, is talking about indigenous people
we are always talking about commercial industries. And you should too! Remember this:
Scale and profit, supply and demand, necessity and moving towards more efficiency/sustainability.
Scale and profit: Who is directly making the profit, and in every step from 'seed to fruit to mouth' what is the scale of the operations (or it's impact) compared to the entire living planet. To the animals, humans, and enviroment. Think about it for a second and you will realize indigenous populations do not the same effect as industries. The scale of operations, and the impact of operations.
Supply and Demand: You pay for it which creates demand, and thus you are supplied it. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but, the biggest thing to remember is to do your best. Everyone can do that, and it looks different for every single person. Always check in with yourself and see if an alternative is better, for you and/or for others.
Necessity: Sometimes we can indulge in unnecessary things, but not at the expense of other living beings or the enviroment. Always check in and ask yourself if you NEED a product compared to WANT, and if there is a more ethical/sustainable alternative. Need is defined by you, and can change. Which is why i say to check in with yourself instead of assuming you'll never be ready for an alternative.
Moving towards more efficiency/sustainability: I dont like to say moving forward, because sometimes the best thing is to go back. The biggest thing we can strive to do and to always fight for is efficiency/sustainability. Always searching for better ways to do something, so as to cause the least harm possible to humans, animals, and the enviroment.
The argument cant be about animal based leather and vegan leather. Its not that simple, its too broad.
Are we talking brain tanned leather? which animal? which chemicals? where was this done? who made it?
Is the vegan leather plastic? is it a sustainable material? where does the money go? is it efficent/sustainable and long lasting?
Because not all vegan leather is plastic- but not all animal leather is produced by more small scale sustainable sources like by native vendors. When people talk about Leather vs Vegan leather, they are talking about commercial grade leather and pleather which is plastic.
Both are bad, but considering the enviromental impact of chemical in the water, the human rights violations and health issues, the enviromental imapact of feeding and water cows, and then ethical stance of the slaughtering of cows whether byproduct or not- Real leather would be worse than Pleather, which impact would be chemicals, plastic and microplastics, and depending on whos making it, possibly human rights violations BUT also: pleather isnt vegan leather. Not only vegans buy it, and seeing as there are not many vegans..
Its easy to get defensive over this, and on the surface it can seem like people are judging you and want to take away fashion that of which can make people happy.
But when you get that knee jerk reaction, just take a moment instead of riding off your emotions- which is something i also need to work on. Because whats better than going back and forth fighting through text on the internet knowing all we are doing is satisfying our negative emotions, is having a genuine conversation and voicing your worries and concerns and questions when it comes to veganism
You will have to read and you will have to click links. It sucks and no one, not even vegans like to have to fact check and read whole articles just to have a conversation, but imagine this: What if you have the wrong information, or even not all the details or the whole picture? What if there are options? or what if you could even find out some or even all your concerns are based off of misinformation of veganism.
I always ask myself that. Because where did my information come from? wheres the money trail? did i learn it from a parent who learned it from their parents in which now could be considered outdated information? or bias?
It doesnt stop at leather. Food and where it comes from and who profits and most importantly what is necessary- and can we make that necessity more efficient? sustainable? ethical?
The priorities are vast and complicated and that is why we need to have conversations. Ask questions! No one asks genuine questions anymore. If anything, whatever you think you know about veganism just pretend you dont. Ask every little thing so you can hear the community say it back in our own words. But please at least read and consider what we say- we dont want to keep talking AT you or you at us. we want conversation and questions PLEASE
#vegan ref#vegan#veganism#vegans#leather#i saw a post about leather#u know the one#or theres like 3 main ones that say pretty much the exact same thing#but its like its always at us never with us. always you vegans are the problem#you 1-3% of the population are the cause of microplastics in my placenta#like stop! vegans know sheep have to be sheared vegans know pleather is plastic we know u dont kill cows to get milk#where are you hearing these things!#this is why there needs to be an offical definition#a legal term or wtvr. to get rid of fuvking idiots who say they are vegan but arent#its not about gatekeeping its just about going by a definition like#AUUGJJ#vegans dont like peta vegans dont like that vegan teacher#yes theres vegans who grew up on a farm slaughtered animals were farmers in food deserts have EDs are autistic are homeless#are black are indigenous are poor have every allergy ever#because its not a diet. its#like philosphy or mindset or way of..view? ideology?#someone help me here#anywayyyy ill shut up now#also hope this doesnt come off as one of those posts that sound babying and condescending#i tried to avoid that. my voice just doesnt translate to text well#imagine me. who loves humans and humanity. and is also extremely left and anti capitalist anti colonialism etc.#when i say I care i mean it. thats why i focus a lot on those that cant eat plant based or whose culture or religion needs animal use#in order for individual to feel connected#bc i want to learn outside my experiences and that has already helped form the veganism i talk about#i mean possible and practical. but talking to ppl non vegans especially has helped me elaborate on that and to hold complex views
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hey i noticed that you're into doll collecting, do you have like a favorite toy brand or doll line?
hey there!
the short answer is that im really really bad at picking favorites. the longer answer is that there's stuff that i like and dislike about different lines!
most of the dolls i end up getting are either from MGA or mattel, mostly just because theyre the big names so theyre more easily accessible and they've kinda saturated the market, lol.
rainbow/shadow high is what got me back into collecting after the doll market hit a massive lull in 2015-ish, so i guess i'll start there! i really like how rainbow high takes a lot of inspiration from BJDs. this is the first thing i noticed about them, and i thought it was really unique for a playline doll. i've always wanted to collect BJDs, they're just so expensive. so i kind of treated rainbow high as a cheaper alternative. i think theyre so pretty, and i love how they've really started improving since series 3 was released. im not personally all that interested in their fashions for the most part, designer brands just aren't something im really into, but to me the base doll is more important because i can always make or buy new clothes for them. (...not that i've done that yet. adhd moment). i love the face sculpts (from the front) and i love the articulation and i love the shimmer and i love the inset eyes. i do think their faces look oddly squished from the sides, and i wish their torsos were longer, and i really hate how MGA has kept increasing their pricing but delivering either the same or even less amount of product/quality for the dolls. the most recent main line dolls have been $30 each and they don't even come with a second outfit. just some plastic accessories that are the exact same with each doll, just in a different color. i dont need five different doll laptops that all look the same. (also come on MGA, give us textured hair. you've done it in your other lines!!) still, i do think they're very unique and i hope it will make other companies start to branch out too
i honestly didn't really like lol omg at first, but they kind of grew on me once i heard someone say they reminded them of betty boop. i love their fashion and how ever the top it is, and i love how many different outfit pieces they give you. when you see it all laid out youd think that it was way too much and theres no way it would make a coherent outfit, but when you put it all together somehow none of it clashes. theyve got really great diversity as well (including hair texture!), and i love how each doll has it's own concept that they go hard on. overall i just think theyre really camp lol
i have a love-hate relationship with barbie. i really love a lot of their older dolls, especially the movie and princess dolls, but their newer stuff just isnt that great in my opinion. they're really done a good job with the diversity and i definitely dont want that to be taken away, but their quality has definitely declined over the years and i cant really see myself buying most modern barbies. i also kinda hate the current basic sculpt, it just seems so flat and plain to me. some of the collectors dolls are kind of cute, but they're way overpriced. even if you just look at the barbie movie dolls, the basic doll is $25 and all of the alternate outfit dolls are $40 despite not actually being any more detailed or coming with any more stuff than the basic one!
and of course, i love monster high. i do personally prefer gen 1 over gen 3, but i also think that gen 3 gets way more hate than it deserves, and a lot of them are really cute. it does suffer from a lot of the same issues as barbie as far as quality, but each doll at least comes with more pieces. but i love how creative they were able to get with some of the dolls, and i cant wait to see where gen 3 takes us!
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sometimes i think about how allister and bede are both left handed adn it always makes me smile because as far as im aware none of the other swsh characters are left handed so its just those two? i might be wrong abt that my memory is pretty bad but im pretty sure theyre the only two left handed gym leaders at the very least lol. i thnik its cute that they happen to have something like that in common even if its such a small unimportant detail like both being left handed
also if i get annoying or you need a break or anything pls tell me </3 i hve a special interest in swsh focusing on the characters and allister and bede are like the main victims of it and more than once i have overwhelmed people bc i started somewhat fixating on their blog (finding cool active swsh blogs, ESPECIALLY ones focused/themed abt my FAVE chars, is a good and rare find!!!) and then i send them lots of asks talking with/at them abt the shared thing but it gets too much for them and they get upset ^^; so like just Please say something if i start getting on your nerves with all of my asks abt them lol,
GRAAAHH SOMEONE ELSE WHOS NOTICED THAT ‼️‼️‼️ /VV POS
and youre right !! its only those two :D i like to think it symbolizes how theyre more socially outcasted/considered "different" compared to everyone else ,, w bede being a complete loner due to his past and allister's. well. everything 💀 it makes me think abt just how similar they are and how they parallel each other !!! im so soft for outcasts finding comfort in others like them <3
also theres no need to apologize !!! im the exact same way ,,, galar and these two have been a special interest for me since the games released and im SO happy to be able to share that enthusiasm w someone else !!!
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5 Anti LO Asks
1. you know what i noticed while skimming through the lo book at b&n? they didnt take the white buffer out (which is good for webtoons, its so single panels are the focus on a phone screen instead of jumbled or cramped) but when put into print it just makes it so theres an overwhelming lot of white space, which makes the panels look even tinier and cramped in. how did the designer not re-format this stuff?
2. Gotta love how Apollo and Hades are basically the same person in LO, but because RS says they aren't fans don't see it. I'd love to have that level of mind control over people.
3. I’ll say it, the beginning of LO was good enough for what it was. Art styles changes but it had a lot of personality, and that’s good for a comic. The story took a good turn from Hades kidnapping Persphone to driving her safely (i wouldn’t say it’s the best thing to do since he knew she was friends with Artemis and should have found her) but it worked out good for both characters. Like it was suppose to be just a over the top first meeting.
But then it got complicated. In the original pilot Minthe gets dumped pretty early and Hera tries to set hades and P up after a fight with Zeus and I forget what’s after that, but if she stuck with that I feel like it would have taken a lot of bs out.
Instead the story is built like a tower held on by glitter glue and rubber bands. Minthe and hades have their own problems that get worse with Persphones presence. Other female characters who don’t like the idea of Hades and P randomly try to push it but we see nothing that gives us real comfort that hades is good for Persphone or vice verse (even tho hades is with Minthe) persphone even admits to being a child about Hades and her feelings, but we don’t see her grow we just see the situation in her favor. She wants hades, hades breaks up with Minthe. The audience assumes it’s gone be the smack that does it, but they don’t even really talk about that, they talk about Persphone more and hades even sucks in that break up. Now all RS had to do was find a way to really get rid of Minthe without sacificing Hades’ “good guy” character. Which in my opinion went horribly.
There’s also just so many other elements in the story that just feels like Persphone is a passive main character, she’s thrown into her situations more often than doing something or learning a lesson. P falls for an guy in a relationship, she cries about and gets with him anyway. She gets an internship through Hera. And I know people might wanna argue Demeter made her that way, but now with flash backs P is just whatever character traits RS wants her to have for that chapter. The most I’ve seen her done for herself was telling Leto off, but honestly that scene was a little cringe. Like I get what they were trying to do, but why make a little humor pulling on the veil, when Leto could have been an actual scary villain.
With this trial arc also, persphone looks like hades spoiled rich daughter, which isn’t helping with the age gap. Like the story had an interring start, thought it was gonna be a basic drama but now it’s a hot mess
4. In terms of "style changes", the issue with that is that in most cases, it's the artist(s) getting a better grip on what works for them and evolving, with the art often improving. LO has had the exact opposite trajectory, especially with its high turnover rate within the art team who more often than not fail at emulating rachel's more boring style, much less her early more interesting one. You guys can admit the art isnt up to par with what it once was without making every excuse under the sun.
5. does rs not know or just not care that making her main character the most perfect person in the world who's better than everyone else on earth isn't good writing
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Chain of Iron:Death theory
As the awaited release date for Chain of Iron approaches and the fandom decends into pure madness, I want to put in my last two cents of overthinking before I stop having coherent thoughts
So we all know this is a second book, and second books bring the absolute pain in the shadowhunter chronicles. There is likely going to be a death from the mains considering the theme of this book, and I am here to throw my theory and reasons as to who I think it might be. Im here to sadly theorize about why I think Christopher Lightwood might not make it past the last hours
1. Tatianas revenge
Right now, Tatiana wants revenge after all our main families: the carstairs, herondales, fairchilds and both branches of the lightwoods. For the lightwood-collins theres barbaras death. For the herondales her daughter has been manipulating their son for over 6 years. Theres a theory that the fairy poison Mathew bought that caused Charlottes misscarriage could be traced back to her. And there are other theories that Elias dissaperance between chog and choi could have something to do with Belial. As of right now the only family who is yet to recieve any permanent damage or tragedy are the lightwood-herondales. Which is really ironic considering its the only family that has two bloodlines Tatiana wants to harm. Not only that, but theyre also the children of who Tatiana blames directly for her fathers death, Gabriel. It seems fishy to me there hasn't been any permanent damage in their family, and I dont think that is gonna last for long
2. The family tree
The family tree states that Grace Cartwright (Aka Grace Blackthorn) marries Christopher Lightwood and theyre the ones who continue the line that leads to Alec and Isabelle. Now Cassandra has said varius times the family tree can be misleading, and I am a firm believer this is one of the misleading ends. Why this lie was created, I'm not sure, but lets analize some things. As of right now there are 5 lightwood children. At least 3 of them can pass down the lightwood name. Of those three, if we take into account that Thomas may not have kids due to being gay, that still leaves two branches of lightwood kids that may continue on. As of present time we only have word of one line, Alec and Isabelles. And Robert isnt said to have any cousins, theres no mention in the future of another lightwood line. So the idea that both Alexander and Christopher have kids is pretty unbelivable considering theres only one lightwood line in the future. Unless Alexander goes on to have only girls and Christopher has only one boy, it seems more likely the family tree is wrong. Isabelle and Alec are confirmed as of the bane chronicles to be decendants of Gabriel lightwood (Isabelle makes a reference to looking up her great great grandfather Gabriel Lightwood and telling magnus he was hot in the last story of the book)
So its already confirmed they're a) the last decendants of the lightwood line and b) that line stems from Gabriel. If we based ourselves solely on the family tree and Christopher being the one carrying the line, that would have been believable enough not to raise any red flags. Christopher IS the son of Grabriel Lightwood, able bodied and seems to have a general attraction to women (I mean, we all know hes aro/ace but lets stick with canon). There isnt anything pointing to him not being able to marry and have kids. Where the red flags raise for me is with Alexander
Alexander wasnt in the original plans for the family tree, he was added when Cassie started writting the last hours. If you take into account his role in chog, there really was no reason to add Alexander Lightwood. He doesnt seem to do anything, hes a 3 year old kid, you can very well delete him from the narrative and nothing would change. So why did Cassandra add him?? Why did she decide to make Cecily and Gabriel have another kid ?
To me, it seems a lot like the baby carstairs situation . The family tree says Alastair carries the carstairs line, Alastair is a gay man so he cant have biological kids, theres another unplaned baby to carry the line. It seems to me Christopher carrying the lightwood line is a lie, and Alexanders role is to carry it in his place. I even found a little info from an ask wayy before chain of gold came out where it said Alexander had green eyes, but in the book she changed it to blue eyes. The exact same shade the modern day lightwoods seem to have. A trait hes more likely to pass down than his lavender eyed brother who supposedly "marries" grey eyed grace
3. Character Arc
Characters in literature need goals, things to work for or work towards through the story in order for them to develop. We call those things character arcs, and it seems we have all ignored how christophers may have indirectly ended. If you read his short story, or just overall analize his character, his main goal is simple. He wants to create something that will help the nephlim through science. His personal character arc is that he wants to prove himself and his skill to the clave using his passion to be a hero.
An arc that could have been expanded all through the series, and ended with him using his skills in the end to defeat belial in some way, proving his passions worth. Through the story we could have had a glimpse at his struggles, how he was put down, the failed attempts, fustrations etc. This all could have rounded christopher as a character, and brought more satisfaction to the end goal of his arc which is proving the value of his science. But instead, his arc in book seemingly already ended? Because he did it, he figured out a way to combine science with his duty and saved the entire enclave from the demon poison. He is now acclaimed a hero for his skills. All the other characters have things to finish going into chain of iron, Christopher doesnt. Why would she end an arc that could have taken through the entire series in just one book? Christopher is the only secondary character with a defined personality and a lack of arc to look foward too in following books. This could all point that his arc was rushed because it was being cut short
4. Lightwood blood
There has been a lot of theories going around about Thomas being the one who gets killed in this book, which is resonable considering the unerving amount of forehsadowing we've had to him getting himself caught up in something. But I raise you this, why would CC be giving us so much assurance that Thomas was going to get hurt if she was going to kill him? Not only would she be reaveling one of her most devastating murders, she would basically be spoiling a very big part of her own book. Thomas death would affect everyone, if she WERE to kill him she wouldnt be indulging us in our Thomas death theory as much as she has. Itd be too expectable, I actually believe that by giving us all the info she has she has more or less confirmed he wont die.
I believe this is all a decoy. Shes giving us foreshadowing towards something bad happening to Thomas, to cover up the very big reality shes planning to kill someone else. Theres a very big chance that for the resurection, theyre gonna need Jesses families blood. Same way Malcom needed blackthorn blood to raise Annabel. As of rightnow there arent any blackthorns (by blood) left alive, the only blood relatives Jesse still had are the lightwoods. So we already know Thomas gets captured by the murderer (referenece to the art), but it is most likely he gets rescued. People speculate he most likely got captured for the resurection Tatianas trying to do, because of his lightwood blood. But if Thomas escapes, Tatiana still needs her families blood. And I'd like to point out this is also where the fact she hasnt taken permanent revenge on the lightwood-herondales would come in. Theres a good chance that if the murders are releated to her, and she cant have Thomas, she wont stop at just Thomas.
5. Story relevance
In all sense of story, Christopher is the perfect candidate to kill. As hard as that is to say: he's a secondary character, who has a well defined personality, loved enough by the fans that there would certainly be a shock factor following his death, important enough to the story that there would be a big impact to the narrative, and interwined enough with the main characters to cause emotional distress in the story. His arc is indirectly done, this author has a history of killing lightwoods, there isnt much to discourage the possibility he might be killed besides the faulty family tree. And as I said, that tree has been stated multiple times to be misleading
Bonus prove
6. Christophers cut-out
Same way were analizing the hell out of a broken spear, why are we not talking about the skull on christophers?
(Sorry couldnt get better quality pics)
The truth is, I hate this theory as much as everyone, Im genuinly hoping chain of iron proves me wrong. But there are 5 deaths comming, and not all of them can be side characters. Cordelia Lucie and James all have main character protection. I already explained why Thomas dying is unlikely. Anna, Ariadne and Alastair have gay protection (and I think some asks about Alastair dying were pretty much answered with a discreet no)
If there are mains dying, Christophers the most likely to go
#Trust me I hate this as much as everyone does#CHRISTOPHERS MY FAVORITE LIKE DO YOU THINK I WANT HIM TO DIE-#BUT IT MAKES SENSE#AND I HATE IT#tlh#tsc#chain of iron#chain of gold#the last hours#cassandra clare#chain of thorns#choi#christopher lightwood#lightwoods#chain of iron theories#the last hours rant#the last hours theory#tatiana blackthorn#belial#gabriel lightwood#cecily lightwood#tw: death#theories
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okok spoilers for the aurora cycle series and a causal disclaimer that i haven't finished book 3 (and its been at least a couple months since i've read the first two books so if im remembering stuff incorrectly in spots then uhhh WHOOPS)
there are about 3 romance plots in the books between the main charcacters (theres 7 mcs.. at least at the start LMAO) and of the three romance plots only ONE is decent enough where it doesnt ruin anything- probably because its not rlly put into action outside of obnoxious flirting (but everyone in the crew obnoxiously flirts with each other so its fine) until the end of the 2nd book/3rd book so its whatevs
(I'm adding a cut here bc it gets pretty long and i don't wanna overtake the dash but give this a read? maybe?)
THE OTHER TWO ROMANCE PLOTS THOUGH
they very early on introduce romantic tension between cat and tyler in the most unnecessary way possible? their reasoning for why they dont get together is. very odd to the least? (it's like 'im leader of the squad and ur under my leadership so we CANT be together' maybe its about the power imbalance? but also they're literally childhood friends) but before anything happens cat fuxking dies so its just this weird plothole that occasion gets dragged back up as a sort of angst point for tyler? but theres no POINT to their whole 'i like u but we cant be together but also i dont like cuz ur my bff' thing bc u could do the EXACT SAME THING with no romance plot whatsoever!! its so annoying like the easiest fix is to just. get rid of the romance plot! BOOM
And then. kal and aurora. kal and FUCKING AURORA
i have so much pent up rage abt their relationship bc its so FAKE and just lazy fucking writing all around. HONESTLY their relationship is the reason why i started this rant in the first place!
whats even worse is that they had potential to have an interesting dynamic that lead to them being a couple but NOOOOO kal has the 'magical soulmate bond uwu 🥺🥺' with aurora for whatever reason and pushes her away bc of it bc he doesnt wanna make he uncomfortable (which was fine and i didnt mind) and then he finally tells her and OH WOW AURORA SUDDENLY HAS FEELING FOR HIM EVEN THOUGH IT WAS NEVER BROUGHT UP OR EVEN REALLY IMPLIED B4 THE GOT TOGETHER (<- my issue with their relationship) like yes aurora had shown (non-romantic) interest in kal BECAUSE he pushed her away and she didn't know why but it was never implied that she actually like. LIKED him outside of the occasional pointing out that he was attractive (which again is a commonplace for ALL the characters to do so it didn't really hold much weight)
so, because the writers so desperately need it i have! 3 solutions to this trash of a romance plot!
also before i start just as an overall statement: I WANT THEM TO INTRODUCE THE PULL/SOULMATE BOND THING EARLIER!!!!!!
ANYWAYS
a) aka the easy way out: get rid of the damn 'pull' or soulmate bond or whatever. if ur gonna get them together at least do it naturally if ur gonna be lazy about it
b) the gay canon divergent option: keep the pull but have him become attracted to TYLER instead- i only say this because they genuinely do have the chemistry and not just bc i want it to be gay LMAO. it can be enemies to lovers where while the kiss they have (yes they kiss. it's not romantic or anything and done more-so to cover up what they're ACTUALLY doing but yeah.) is still the turning point in their friendship it also introduces the idea of kal having feelings for tyler via the pull and tyler having feelings for kal just in general.
and c) the canon compliant option: again, keep the pull and keep everything the same BUT when kal tells auri about the pull and tells her that she doesn't have to reciprocate she agrees saying that SHE DOES NOT HOLD ROMANTIC FEELINGS FOR HIM but! that she would be willing to like. help him out. it can then either become a qpr instead OR later on down the line they could get together in a /r relationship BUT it'd have to be like. at the end of book 2 or maybe even of book 3
but like yeah. romance in the aurora cycle could've deffo been written better thats for sure
#sagittarius.txt#not maintagging this bc i dont know if this is a common opinion or not and i dont wanna be eaten alive </3
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Brothers anon, im gonna start combing the two separate submissions again cause its getting too short to have them separate I think?
1: His possession messed with memories Ranbob had before, so memories of school friends or playing with Ran were distant to erased. Though after Dreams possession it was also harder to make and keep memories. But thankfully as Ranbob was recovering from Dream and got futher away making memories came eaiser to him, though he'll never get back the memories he lost.
3: Oh he would very quickly grow to regret his decision, but it would be funny. And Benjamin would later admit that while it was annoying and stressful, it was also fun and he was very happy to have his two families meet and generally get along.
8: Everyone is just in shocked silence before Cletus just goes "YEAHHHHHHHHHH!" Oddly happy that Ranboo committed so much arson. Oh definitely, after all the outcasts of society where put there. Of course people would make such negative rumors about Mizu and treat the people as the scum of the earth. Though this also means, people don't know what happened in Mizu, and anyone who knows, view it in a more happy and a "Their finally gone" type of way, then viewing it as the tragedy it was.
Spoons is a card game technically. A group of people sit in a group and everyone gets 4 cards, and you keep discarding at least 1 card of yours to the person on your left, who then does the same to their person on their left, the last person in the group puts a card into a discard pile. The goal is to get 4 of the same cards, and once someone gets 4 of the same cards, that person goes and grabs a spoon in a pile in front of them (let's say there's 5 players, theres only going to be 4 spoons cause there's always a spoon less than the people playing), once they grab one anyone can grab a spoon. And the person who doesn't get a spoon gets a S added to them, once Spoons is spelled the person gets out of the game, and a spoon gets removed to continue the game. Basically for flowers its played the exact same way but with flowers in the middle expect for spoons.
11: I just imagine Dream sulking in a corner as you yell at him and him going like "well I didn't know…" as he kicks a stone. And he wasnt sure what it was, but quickly jumped on the idea that maybe it was the fact that Ran was still alive somewhere, and that that's causing Ranbob to willingly let himself become weak and defy him. Causing Dream to become angrier at Ran and punish Ranbob harder.
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3: During the brothers fight in the storm, and after everyone runs off to find Ranbob, Ran is left alone. And he decides to just wander off into the storm, not protecting himself from the rain so he does get burnt. The whole time he's lost deep in thought and isn't really paying attention. He continues to wander for a whole day unfollowed (because after the Gladiators and Fishermen came back to the cave after finding Ranbob they are in no rush to find Ran and decide to look for him after the storm passes, which takes a full day) and at some point Raq finds him wandering. Which Raq then uses Rans distraction to his advantage and attacks him. At first only really the gladiators where concerned when they found Ran gone. But once they found him blinded and terrified everyone felt awful and a looming sense of guilt. And everyone continued to feel that way, even after they got the antidote and Ran started to see again.
4: They would just leave Ranbob alone and check in on him every now and again. But generally let him deal with it himself. They'd feel guilty leaving him alone, but they also know that they can't really do anything for him as their not prepared or briefed on how to help him in this situation.
10: Oh definitely, even with Ran blinded they would've been kicked out immediately for fighting, without even a second glance. Dont forget, Ran still cares for his brother. And maybe, losing his sight made him face the side of him that wanted to become family again with Ranbob, maybe it brought enough to light that he just can't ignore it anymore. Mostly only negative potions can be permanent, like posion, blinding, wither, and nausea (I know the last like 3/2 are effects but they've also found a way to make effects into potions.). You already know what a antidote for blindness would be. A antidote for wither would be, a ghast tear (actually a basic ingredient for almost every antidote), blaze powder, and glistening melon to make a overpowered healing potion. Antidote for posion would be ghast tear, swiftness (so it acts fast to get rid of the posion), and the 3rd ingredient depends on what kind of posion it was (posion that has a side effect of constricting or filling the lungs with water? Pufferfish and Turtle shell for last ingredients. Posion that has weakness? Blaze powder, and glistening melon) And antidote for nausea would be ghast tear, and potion of slowness to allow the person to slowly feel better, so their nausea doesn't hit them all at once before disappearing, which can cause them to throw up or have side effects.
13: Thats exactly what they did.
14: Jackie will 100% attempt to fight God and no one can stop him. :) (to be honest im not sure yet, I know I want to do more with Raq and have the idea that maybe he could be the person that finds Dream and gets him out of Mizu, but that's pretty often used in stories and I want to try to think of something more unique. Maybe I'll have it so Raq actually manages to capture the brothers or at least one of them and uses them as blackmail?)
15: When Ranbob was a child and Ran was just a baby Ranbob would often take Ran out of his crib and take him to go watch the fish swim by. When Ran was old enough he'd follow Ranbob everywhere, even a few times he managed to sneak into Ranbobs class room and almost wasn't caught. Ran got extremely clingy one day and managed to gather his haunting all up into his arms and carried them around, even though he was obviously struggling. And Ranbob used to complain about his teachers and idiotic classmates whenever he got home, which is funny when you consider Ran was very impressiable at the time and Ran started mimicking Ranbob, leading to him cursing, much to Ranbobs dismay.
And im curious, do you have any questions that I havent answered? Or do you have any ideas for anything? I'd love to hear whatever you have to say about anything honestly!
Course! I dont have much lore wise other than they go to Kelalen and when they hear Dream is still around they decide to stay back to help fight him. But the idea I have is that Karl is just kinda hanging with everyone I listed, talking about allies or treaties when his time traveling clock/watch starts to go off, and he panics, but sadly in his haste to stop it he makes it worse and it grabs everyone, where they end up in the future. After hours of confusion and explaining they calm down. When 2 days later they find the Gladiator and Fishermen group, at first Karl is strongly against going to then for help, but everyone basically ignores him and go to ask for help. Hours of explanation and proof giving later the GF (Gladiator and Fishermen, got tired of writing it out) group sadly tells them that they cant really help. Until Ran (who was previously gone searching the surrounding area and making sure it was safe) appears high up on a tree (cause I just can't get the image of Ran on a tree and looking comfortable and confident as hell out of my head), and says that maybe Kelalen can help, if not going to Foolish may be a good alternative. Isaac, and Grievous are extremely against going back (at this time a 2 months have past since they left Kelalen)n saying it could be dangerous but Ran just aboustely shoots them down, along with Watson and Jackie agreeing with Ran, and Karls group agreeing to it. They head off to Kelalen. And Jackie is extremely excited at the potential of going to see Foolish finally. And it'd probably be like a sub au where the brothers au is the main backbone for it but at a certain point it separates from the au and becomes its own.
1: Okay, ouch. Can you imagine if Ran brought one of those memories up, and just had Ranbob look confused, or horrified, depending on how quick he realizes what happened? How would Ran react to that realization, both before and after he forgives Ranbob?
3: If nothing else, everyone got some laughs from it-even Benjamin, once his friends were far, far away from his family and not able to teach them more chaos.
8: Cletus, why are you so happy? Do you just enjoy knowing chaos existed back then? Are you an arsonist? What’s up with you?
Also, wow. Not cool, other city people, that’s very mean.
Spoons sounds like it’s interesting, I might try it sometime. Did the group just have those cards on them? What other games did they have?
11: Good, put Dream back in the corner, I’m gonna be yelling more. Because, seriously dude? I know you probably exist solely out of spite, but c’mon. Admittedly, from a certain point of view, it could be considered amusing that your first thought was that Ranbob was making himself weaker out of defiance/spite but like. From a more responsible and mature viewpoint, that’s incredibly stupid, and I-just. Buddy, hate to tell you, but I’m pretty sure that’d just be a you thing. Besides you were in Ranbob’s head, didn’t he think Ran was dead? It doesn’t even make sense. Good lord, I’m half-tempted to get the broom and chase you around like you’re a particularly unruly barn cat.
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3: First of all, that sounds really scary for Ran. Second of all, are we getting an overprotective arc?
4: Kind of sad, but understandable, they’re dealing with the situation as best they can.
10: Even if the group was provoked by the townspeople? Potions sound really cool, wish I could make those in real life, tbh.
13: W-what do you mean ‘that’s exactly what they did’? Anon, is your friend, like, a legit gremlin? I’m spooked.
14: Foolish takes one look at Jackie, wearing a smile that exactly matched Tubbo’s when he was about to cause chaos, and immediately nopes out of that. He knows that face, and he will not be getting tangled into a fight with a goblin child today, no sir. I’m sure Jackie tries regardless though. (Also, that sounds like that goes horribly, do we get an overprotective ender-sibling, for whoever gets captured or used as blackmail, if that’s what you do?)
15: I love all of these so much, oh my gosh. Baby Ran seeing the fishes and following his big brother around. Poor Ranbob’s face when his baby brother cursed one day, Ran trying to carry all of his haunting. I’m in tears, honestly.
Umm...I can’t think of anything right now, to be honest. If I ever do have a question or idea though, I’ll through it on the Brothers AU tag for you to check out, I guess.
Oh, this sounds really cool. The part about them just ignoring their local time traveler when they’ve just time traveled particularly amuses me, as does Jackie wanting to see Foolish-I feel like Foolish may be a little more than terrified to see both Tubbo and Jackie back, honestly. Why was Ran willing to help them so much? What did they do to offer proof? How did Ranbob react once they proved who they were? How does all the group get along? Are they Ranboo’s haunting, and if so, if Ranboo gets close with his descendants, does he merge his hauntings with theirs? How does the time group feel about the Brothers fighting, and Ranbob’s possession?
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black irises in the sunshine | kth
anger is everything. other gods tease you for the short fuse, but it comes with the territory. people have called you stupid, have called you dumb, oafish, useless, incompetent, insolent, rude, arrogant. all of it. insults and mockery flung at you, but even your skin isn’t thick enough to deal with constant abuse. it’s the exact reason you keep going to the underground, knuckles bloody and bruised, fighting anyone that dared enter the cage. it’s the reason you go to the clubs, surround yourself with mortals and their writhing bodies. it’s there that you see him the first time, voice husky as it rolls through the room. it’s there you find someone who treats you differently than the rest. you just never expected him to be one of the muses. | monsters and gods pt 3 (masterlist)
pairing | taehyung x reader
genre/warnings | greek god au, calliope!taehyung, ares!reader, theres a lot of violence and it does get descriptive so be aware of that, none of the main characters other than ares get hurt and its not uncalled for or anything in a narrative sense, so just be aware of that; there are mentions of other idols, but if you can guess them you get a cookie because they are Vague; suuuuper bisexual Ares, Ares Can Step On Me, like I am SO gay for her it isn’t funny; explicit smut ft: cunnilingus, taeHUNG bc hes got MASSIVE SCHLONG, some body worship kind of and then just....regular worship? like? idk how to explain that? lots of praise and lots or orgasms
word count | 14k | cross posted to ao3
a/n | HOOOOOOO this has been sitting in my google docs for literal months waiting for an ending and i decided to try to get it out for tae's birthday bUT that didn't work because i have a Job and shit so YEET I GUESS HAPPY FUCKIN NEW YEAR??? LIKE??? YEEEEEEEEEEEEE this fic is very near to me because Ares is my sweet sad angry babie and i love her, and i love tae and i love suho and i love the muses and i just........lOVE this fic like i think this is currently my favorite of the mag series so!! i hope yall also enjoy it!!!! yall are welcome to send me messages about this even tho I'm terrible at replying to them in a timely manner!! thanks to everyone who helped me with this, and everyone who has expressed interest in it, and everyone who has ever read anything of mine, because you're genuinely the best people ever, and this is literally a gift to y'all because you deserve it.
Fuck, that was too hard .
The guy across from you goes flying, hitting the chain link wall of the cage harder than you intended. Every nerve ending in your body is on fire, and even holding back, you've got a better buzz than even the best nectar can give. Your blood sings as the guy gets back up, and you almost wish you could remember his name, because he's put up a hell of a fight. For a mortal, anyway.
He charges at you again, and time slows as your vision tunnels. You can see the feint as he decides on it, how he hesitates in bringing his left up. You wait, watching him get closer and closer. You start to dart to your left, letting him think he's got you, before you side-step and dart to your right instead. His punch goes wide as you steady your balance and move. The top of your foot connects with his ribcage and the resulting crack of bone is lost amid the cheers and yells of the audience.
Your opponent steps back and you're proud of the way he doesn't show the pain. He doesn't wince, doesn't move to touch the spot you hit, just tightens his stance and clenches his jaw. It's only you that notices the hitch in his breath, the way he flinches with every inhale. Your eyes narrow at that, zeroing in on the rib. You'd meant to just crack it, had been holding back most of your strength to keep from hurting him too seriously, but as he steps forward, you can see the way he grits his teeth against the pain.
The fight leaves you immediately, like a bucket of cold water straight to the chest, and you drop your hands.
"Yield." He just stares at you, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Yield to me, and then go to the doctor."
"I'm not gonna yield," He says. He spits a mouthful of blood out onto the floor. "I'm not weak."
"Seriously, dude," You insist. "You're not gonna win this, and I don't want to hurt you more."
His scoff has you seeing red. "As if a princess like you could hurt me."
Your fist connects with his face before either of you registers that you've moved. There's a voice in the back of your head reminding you that he's just mortal, he can't take the same kind of beating you can, but it's lost in the haze of fury. The next thing you know, the ref is dragging you away and slamming you into the cage wall. Your opponent is being dragged out - you still don't know his name - and he looks beaten senseless. Victory rolls through you accompanied by a sick satisfaction at the way his blood looks decorating the canvas beneath your feet.
It lasts for less than an hour. It's always like this; the thrill of the fight, the burn of success, it's gone faster than you can blink. It's what drives you to keep fighting, to keep going to match after match, just to seek out the under-the-table stuff afterwards. It's never enough, not anymore. Back in the old days, they'd let you fight anything. Bears, bulls, lions, giants, anything they could get a noose around long enough to point it at a colosseum. That was a long time ago, though, before all the rights movements happened. You won't lie: you miss fighting beasts like that. The sheer power and strength they have, the survival instinct that makes them such fierce competitors, it's so much better than the rules and regulations of the mortal world now. Fights have gotten dull, rehearsed, more like a performance or a show than an actual fight. People make more money losing than they do winning and it's made the world boring.
You flex your hand as you open the door to your favorite bar. Something caught it at some point in the last fight, a cheekbone or a tooth, and it stings a little. Doesn't hurt, not exactly, not for a goddess, but it did enough that you feel it at all, which means it couldn't have been anything but torture for the guy on the other end. The bartender waves at you and gets your usual ready as you sit, and you idly wonder if Busted Rib Guy will be okay. It looked painful, for a human, and you'd tried to hold back, but…
Well, you weren't really responsible for what happened to condescending little fucks, were you?
You sip the bourbon, enjoying the burn as it goes down. The lights are dim, tonight. You're glad. You don't want to deal with people looking at you, men coming over to talk to you, trying to advise you on how to properly bandage your knuckles or how to avoid the bruise on your cheek next time. If you had wanted to avoid it, you would have. You'd intended it to hurt worse, honestly, but that first guy'd had a weaker right hook than you expected.
You look around, wondering if anyone here would provide a decent distraction for the night. There's a pretty brunette in the corner with carefully crafted braids, and as your eyes travel, you imagine what's hiding beneath the silk and leather. You're pulled from the thought by the sound of music, and you curse under your breath. You forgot that it's an open mic night and you'd meant to go to the bar across town instead. Irritation colors your vision; every open mic night is awful, full of lofty poets talking about their trauma and wannabe Taylor Swifts thinking they're on the same level as Sappho. Ah, now that was a girl with a set of pipes. You miss her, wonder what she would say to the butchering of whatever song you're about to hear.
The voice that comes isn't what you expect. It's smooth and deep. The world turns to velvet around you as the voice wanders from one speaker to another, creating a mesmerizing multi-dimensional effect despite the way the singer doesn't ever leave the stage. You turn, knuckles white around your bourbon glass; he's utterly magnetic, every eye in the room trained on him as he purrs into the vintage mic. Long fingers are wrapped around the scuffed metal, decorated with jewels that glitter in the dim light of the bar. You can smell the lingering cigarette smoke from the guy beside you and the Jäger from the girl two stools down and for once, you don't even care. He's captivating, voice travelling between speakers in the bar and coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Your eyes don't leave him, and you wonder if you can memorize the way the blond waves fall against his forehead if you stare long enough.
The red seeps away from you, slinking back into the corners of your mind, settling once more into a low thrum under your skin. It fades into the background of this man's voice, the charisma that rolls off him in waves as he pulls the mic in close just to push it to the side with a teasing smirk. It settles something in your chest that hasn't been calm since the fight in Athens so long ago.
The music fades out sooner than you'd like, and he gives a slight bow before wandering into the crowd. You do your best to follow him, but the gold of his hair disappears almost immediately, lost in the throng of people around the stage waiting to speak to him. You turn back around, downing the next bit of bourbon that Suho pours you.
"I know," He says with a grin. You cock a brow at him, not having said anything he could agree with. "He's good. That's what you were thinking, right? He's why we're so packed on open mics. Got the audio and lighting guy whipped, so he's got all these special effects, too. Drives people crazy.”
"He's alright," You mutter. You toss a few bills down on the bartop and step back. Suho gives you a courteous nod as you leave. The bouncer gives you a dirty look when he spots the lit cigarette between your lips, but he knows better than to try to tell you otherwise. You've taught him better.
You lean back against the brick wall of the alley and take a drag. The warm smoke fills your lungs and you close your eyes. It's a different kind of burn than you're used to, a distraction from the crawling sensation that drives you to fight. It's calmer, more controlled. Feels like the smoke from Hestia's fires. Feels like home.
"Never expected to see you here," A voice calls out. It's deep and startling in the darkness, but you don't jump. You just open your eyes, exhale, and look to where it came from.
The singer stands before you in the same undone white button up and black tee he performed in. He doesn't have a cig, doesn't seem to have much of any reason to be outside. He moves almost lazily, as if he doesn't even need to, just wants to, and when his gaze flicks up to meet yours, your vision fills just for a breath with every opponent you've ever faced lying at your feet.
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" The words slip from your tongue before you can stop them. It's not his fault, the voice in your head says, he didn't mean it that way, but still, your blood is thrumming now that he's here and you want to know what he's talking about. Want to know why he thinks you wouldn't be here when there's attractive people and good bourbon and you've never seen this man before in your life. Want to know why he already seems to think you aren't civilized enough to be at a bar, why he spoke but all you heard was Zeus' voice in your memories.
"Exactly what I said. Should I be clearer?"
"Yeah, probably," you spit. Yet another person that assumes you're stupid, that you don't understand basic languages, as if you haven't been speaking them since the ancient times. As if you couldn't speak circles around him if you wanted. "Unless you want your teeth on the fucking ground."
"Good to know the stories are true." He tsks and you're filled with a strange sense of disappointment and fury, both at him and yourself. Your vision turns red at the edges and the cigarette between your fingers is crushed in your grip. He pays no mind to it, just saunters past with a lazy, swaying gait that draws your eyes to his hips and then down the long leather-clad legs. "See you around, Ares."
"That's not my fucking name," You yell after him. He doesn't respond when you shout your actual name, the one you chose, on your own, as a middle finger to the Olympians. "Get it right next time, dickwad."
He turns the corner of the alley and the streetlight catches his face just enough for you to see the smirk he wears. For once in your life, you're torn; you want to smash his face in, yes, because how dare this random guy speak to you like that when you could kill him with one finger to the right pressure point. You also find your skin's hotter than usual, stretched too thin over your bones, and you want him to run his hands over you until it feels right again.
Until it feels like it did when he was singing.
How did he know my title?
The thought comes unbidden, days later, with the desperate hit of a palm against your shoulder. You've got the woman in a headlock, patiently waiting for her to pass out completely so the fight can be called, and your mind is wandering.
How did the singer know who you are? You hadn't thought anything of it at the time, distracted by fury and frustration, but with time comes a special kind of clarity. You've never seen him before, not that you know anyway, yet he didn't hesitate to call you Ares. The only ones who know of your kind are your kind, but you haven't seen any of your siblings among mortals in a long time. You thought you knew the other gods and goddesses, but maybe not. It has been a while since you stepped foot in the golden city.
The woman in your grip goes slack and you release her. You're still lost in thought as the ref calls the match and leads you out of the makeshift ring. The cheers of the audience are background noise at this point, akin to static or the buzz of electricity, and you pay them no mind as you head to collect your winnings. You didn't even get any kind of buzz from success this time, too immersed in the way the singer walked and talked and looked. The image of his smirk is burned into your retinas.
"Yeah, you didn't hear? He just got out of the hospital. They had to keep him overnight because they thought he might puncture a lung. I heard that if it had been a little worse, they would've had to wire his jaw shut." You stop, fingers brushing over the stack of bills you don't even remember being handed. You look up, making eye contact with the guy whispering nearby. Your suspicions are confirmed when his friend smacks his arm and juts his chin in your direction before they both disappear into the crowd.
You shove your way outside, frustration creeping through you and coloring your vision. You manage to keep it contained long enough for you to make it to the alley behind the warehouse, but it explodes from you in a rush of thrown dumpsters and sheet metal.
Fuck , you never meant to hurt him like that. You told him, you fucking told him to yield, it isn't your fault he didn't listen. It's not your fault that he went and insulted you, acted like he was better than you just by virtue of being a dude, as if you weren't worshipped in the old days for the power you had and the blessings you could give. You'd held back, through all of it, you'd told him to yield, and he insulted you. It wasn't your fault.
You slide to the ground, running a shaking hand through your hair. It isn't your fault , you repeat. You close your eyes and take deep breaths, the way Hestia taught you, willing the fury to dissipate. It's like a fire in your veins, burning and bubbling your skin until you can't resist anymore. You take another breath. It isn't your fault. You tried. You offered an out. It isn't your fault. Fuck, what was his name?
With a growl that quickly morphs into a scream, you kick the dumpster once more before stalking off into the darkness. You need a fucking drink and you're gonna find a distraction in someone else if it's the last thing you do.
The club is packed when you get there; you're not usually a fan of clubs like this, too full of people who are too friendly, but they're perfect for nights like tonight. You don't even need to wait in line, just slip the bouncer a 50 as you pass, and the bartenders are quick to spot you. You're pretty notorious in the city for over-paying, which means you're knocking back bourbon before you have a chance to ask for it. There are people everywhere, pressed up against both sides of you while the bass thrums in your throat, and it takes you longer than you're proud of to realize why.
There's a band playing, apparently. They're not bad; the vocalist isn't anything like the singer from Suho's, but it doesn't make you want to tear your ears off, so you consider it a success.
You're dancing before you remember deciding to. Everything's a blur when you get the itch in your bones, the need to make someone bleed. To feel something that isn't rage or condescension. People are even closer here on the dance floor, suffocating in their proximity, but there's a woman grinding her ass into you, and it sparks the dying fire in your gut. The beat of the music drowns your own heart, and it's all flashing lights and heat and a body pressed against yours that is all too willing.
She follows when you go back to the bar for another drink, and giggles when you lick salt from her wrist before downing tequila. Her hands are wrapped in the leather of your jacket as she kisses you, your own resting lightly on her hips. She laughs against your lips and says something you don't hear before ordering another drink. Something makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
You take the brief reprieve to look around the club, searching for whatever it is that has you on alert. You find him on the upper level of the club, leaned over the balcony with a drink in hand. You can't make out his expression, exactly; it's too far away and too guarded. But you'd know him anywhere now. The singer knocks back whatever's in his glass, eyes never leaving yours. You don't know why he's here, if he comes here often or if the Fates are having a laugh at your expense, but you do know you want to make the most of it.
The girl is back, pressing a heated kiss to your lips and drawing your attention from him. You return it, nipping at her lips and getting a small gasp in return. You smirk and bite your way down her neck. She's breathy in your ear, hitched moans lost in the beat of the music, but you barely hear her as you suck bruises into the skin of her neck. He's still watching you. His drink is gone and he's gripping the bannister of the balcony, rings glinting in the light. You wonder if the cool metal could soothe the burn in your bones. You want to know if he can bring that calmness from before back, if he can soothe the frenzy in your mind with his hands the way he can with his voice. Just imagining it has you soaking through to your jeans.
The girl makes a particularly loud noise in your ear and you're brought out of your thoughts. As if he can sense it, the singer straightens. He gives you one last look before disappearing back into the crowd, and you wonder if you're imagining the disdain in it. You draw back from the girl's neck, about to tell her to find her friends when she slides her hands in your hair and tugs.
The burn in your blood is back, now, and you hope this girl is prepared for what awaits her.
"You're here early," Suho says when he spots you in the nearly empty bar the next night. He's not wrong, either; you skipped the fights tonight completely. There was no buzz last time, no relief, and you have no reason to believe there would be tonight. Not with the way the singer captivates your thoughts.
Besides, you have enough money leftover from the previous few to last a couple days.
"What, did you decide not to kick someone's ass before getting wasted?" Suho doesn't wither at the look you give him, just pours you a couple fingers of bourbon and slides the glass over. "Or did they just stop letting you in completely?"
"I might change my mind if you don't shut up," You tell him. There's no real heat behind it. You've known Suho for years now, been coming to his bar for so long it almost feels like home. You're almost friends at this point.
It helps that he knows when to bite his tongue so he doesn't get his teeth knocked out.
"Seriously though, I don't think I've ever seen you here this early. Especially not on mic nights." You're very careful in your lack of a reaction to his words. You'd seen the workers setting up for it when you came in, and even if you hadn't, you know when mic night is. You've spent enough time avoiding it.
"Does he sing every time?" You ask in lieu of an explanation. You don't look away from the amber liquid in your glass, letting the silence hang as the bartender does his best to follow your thought process.
"Taehyung? Most weeks, yeah. It's been a nice change from the usual drunken karaoke. He goes around to some of the other places in town, too. Apparently he just likes to sing."
"Taehyung," You repeat. The name rolls from your tongue a bit awkwardly. It's more than you expected, somehow, but you can't place exactly how . Just...more. "Is he always that good?"
"Oh, yeah. We have regulars now for mic night because of him. He's got a whole fan club and everything."
"Hm." You drain the rest of your bourbon and Suho refills it. He leaves you in peace then, serving some others that appear at the bar.
The place fills faster than you can blink. That's what it feels like, anyway. It's like one moment there's you and a handful of other people scattered around, and now you're being jostled between some dude a million feet tall that definitely doesn't look old enough to be here and a girl with her tits up to her throat and surrounded by a cloud of perfume so thick that it starts a migraine behind your eyes almost instantly. She flirts with Suho a little, likely trying to score free drinks, and you roll your eyes. She pouts at him when he gives her the total, batting eyelashes that go on for miles, and for once, you wish Suho would just give in and comp the drinks.
"I'll pay for them," You say. She was definitely saying something, maybe you should have been paying attention to it, but fuck , this migraine is only getting worse the longer she stands there. "I'll pay for your drinks."
"Oh, thanks," She says. Her smile is hesitant, and quickly turns apologetic as she takes in the boots and the ripped jeans and the leather jacket. "Um, I'm not...I don't, uh…"
"Do I look like I want to fuck you, sweetie?" She looks a little affronted and a laugh escapes you. You lean closer, letting your breath ghost over her cheek as you speak in her ear to be heard better. "If I wanted to fuck you senseless, you'd know it. And I can guarantee you it would be a hell of a lot better than the watered down rat piss this guy's giving you."
When you lean back, her face is flushed and she's stammering. You smirk and hand her the drinks she'd ordered.
"Too bad you’re not, you don’t, huh?" You tell her. The patronizing tone isn't lost on her, nor is your mockery of her earlier words, and she shuts her mouth with an audible click before strutting off. Suho glares at you as he pours more bourbon.
"Can you please try not to run off my patrons?" He mutters. "Some of us actually need money to live."
"Some of us would like decently timed refills and to not choke on perfume," You quip. "And better bourbon, for that matter." He hisses something about what he's giving you being top quality but you tune him out, throwing one leg over the stool Perfume Girl vacated. You'd like to keep just a little bit of personal space.
Across the bar, you catch a brief glimpse of the girl from the night before and you wince. Her neck is thoroughly bruised, and you catch a peek of bruises and scratches on her back as she shrugs her jacket on. You didn’t mean to be so rough with her, even if she had been into it; you’re usually pretty good about remembering that the mortals are just that - mortal - and as such have to be handled delicately. They’re so fragile, it feels like they could break with a strong wind. Guilt settles in your gut and turns the bourbon in your glass to cough syrup. You’ve half a mind to just leave before she sees you, are about to turn and do exactly that, but the speakers screech to life and the deafening feedback from the mic keeps you glued to your seat.
The crowd quiets even as the excitement ramps up, all talk silencing but for the occasional hushed whispers here and there. The first few notes of the song echo through the speakers, and a spotlight appears on him.
He looks different this time, his hair dyed a vibrant blue that matches the glinting jewels in his ears and on his hands. He's an absolute vision and you wonder how Aphrodite has allowed him to live so long when he's so beautiful. His voice hangs in the air and calms you, the same settling in your chest as last time, the same freedom from the burn in your veins. It's addictive.
The song doesn't last nearly as long as you want it to but the stillness inside you lingers long after he's done caressing the microphone. You place a few bills down for Suho and light up a cigarette as you head outside, ignoring the dirty looks from other patrons as you do. You're on a mission, the thrum of bloodlust returning with every second that passes, and you can't even be sure if he's still around or if he's wandered off already.
You stand in the alley for what feels like hours, turning at every sound and smoking cig after cig just so you have something to do. You've almost decided to say fuck it when footsteps sound from the back of the bar, coming closer to you.
His blue hair is visible even from the other end of the small alley, a giveaway similar to the light at the end of your cigarette and the smoke you blow into the air. There's no way he hasn't seen you, you think, you're making no effort to hide or be sneaky, and yet he's continuing forward as if he doesn't see you at all, eyes focused on a phone in his hand. You wait until he's just a few steps away before speaking.
"How do you know my title?" You ask him. He stops as if he'd always meant to and doesn't even bother to glance up at you or respond. The edges of your vision turn scarlet at the blatant disregard and you're speaking before you can even process the words. "I asked you a fucking question, pretty boy, you're gonna answer me. Unless you want that precious mouth bloodied up."
"And you wonder how I know who you are," He drawls, still not bothering to spare a glance at you. A scowl grows over your face at his sarcastic tone. "If you're going to hit me just get it over with. Otherwise, I have places to be."
He stands, waiting and expectant, but you don't move. He's humming, quiet and to himself like he doesn't even realize he's doing it, and the red seeps away from your mind until you're left clear-headed once more. You sigh, long and heavy, and crush your cigarette into your denim-covered thigh to put it out. It tickles.
"I'm not going to hit you," You tell him eventually. "I just wanna know how you know me. And how you do it."
He cocks a brow at that, finally looking up from the phone in his hand to level dark eyes on yours. "Do what? Sing?"
"No." You swallow around the sudden lump in your throat. The words are harder to find than you thought they'd be, lost in the depths of his gaze, in the clarity you're so unaccustomed to, in the way you feel like you can breathe for the first time in days. "I don't care how you sing, that's not important, it's the...fuck, you know what, never mind, it doesn't fucking matter." You push off the wall and step past him to head towards where the streetlight gleams off the bar windows.
"Tell me." The command has you stopping in your tracks, and you're again flooded with just wanting to know how. How he clears the haze, how he stops you, how he makes you feel real. You turn, hands stuffed into the back pockets of your jeans. "How I do what?"
It takes you several long breaths before you can answer, and you aren't even sure he can hear you over the sounds of people leaving the bar, and you find yourself disappearing into the crowd without waiting for a response. Your own words are reverberating in your skull, getting louder with each step you take, and you wish you could just turn it off .
"How you make me feel like a person again."
You avoid the bar for a few weeks, going hours away from your usual area to an unfamiliar hole in the wall just to make sure you don’t see him. You’re more deadly than usual in your fights, victories coming quicker, injuries piling up along with the guilt, but you can’t bring yourself to return. It’s unnerving, the way everything goes quiet around him, the way you can think, but the worst is the way you can feel. Everything’s calm and steady and blue, and it only makes it easier for the regret and the guilt and the anxiety to curl around your throat and squeeze until you can’t breathe, to clog in your throat while the laughter of your siblings echoes in your ears, and you...can’t. You can’t do that, you can’t let it win, you can’t let them win, they can’t know that you’re everything they think you are and worse.
You can’t let yourself drown in that, and yet you find yourself back at Suho’s, lost among the crowd while Taehyung’s voice surrounds you. The ache in your bones fades away, chased by the thrum of the fight that still lingers despite the hours that have passed since you felt your opponent’s femur break under your palm and their screams echoed in your ears. Everything is calm again, and the guilt nearly drowns you.
He hasn’t even finished singing before you’re outside, chest heaving as you gasp against the weight on your chest. You broke someone’s femur , and did you even really need to? The fight itself is a blur even now, snapshots playing through your mind like a montage. The way they’d darted at you first, how their foot felt connecting with the backs of your knees, the determination in their eyes when you went down, the jolt of shock as your hands wrapped around their leg, the dull throb of a barrage of hits against your waist as you pulled them down as well and bloodied their face, the blood-curdling scream as you snapped the bone like a pretzel stick.
Your breath comes faster in your lungs, forced out by the growing guilt that lodges there in its place. Images swirl in your mind, chased by a never-ending stream of thought and regret that you should be used to by now. Fuck, you didn’t need to, and you still did it; you lost control, you fucking hurt them, and for what? A couple hundred? Was it even worth it? Who knew when they’d be back into shape to fight, what if they needed the money? They weren’t even half-bad. They got you down, at least, shouldn’t you have gone easy on them? You don’t even remember their face, can’t remember what the announcer said their name was, words drowned out by the buzz under your skin.
Metal crumples under your grip and you spare a half-second to mourn Suho’s dumpster before you slam your knuckles against it. It tingles, not even real pain, and you don’t hesitate to repeat it. By the time the metal is disfigured completely, a distorted mess of paint and steel and garbage, you still aren’t in pain, but there’s a sheen of gold across your knuckles and you feel less like you’re drowning and more like you’re suffocating. The usual. You can handle that. You think.
You don’t even realize that you’ve slid down to the ground beside the dumpster until the back door of the bar opens and footsteps echo through the alley. You wish you knew how long you’ve been here, how long you’ve sat among empty bottles and stale beer and broken glass, but you can’t be sure. The brief reprieve brought by Taehyung’s voice is long gone, chased away by the guilt and rage that still sits heavy in your chest. You hope you’re not noticeable here, that whoever’s left will just pass by and leave you to piece yourself back together on your own.
Voices tell you that it isn’t likely, the deep baritone of one too familiar to ignore. The other is new, but you’re familiar with the tone, the inflection, the intent behind it. You've heard it before, in crowded clubs as a guy pushes too close to some girl who can barely stand, in a coffeeshop when a random customer can't take a fucking hint, at the local campus when some professor insists that there could be maybe one thing her student could do to pass. It makes everything in you curdle, the bourbon from earlier threatening to work its way back up; it screams predator , and you absolutely refuse to let anyone fucking talk to someone like that, like they have some right to whatever it is they want.
You refuse to let someone talk to him that way.
"Seriously, Kratos, didn't I tell you to leave me alone? Did Aphrodite not teach you your lesson last time you harassed someone?" Taehyung's voice brings a calm that's an unsettling match to the anger washing over you. You're used to the red at the corners of your vision, the tint to everything you see, but you aren ' t used to the way it all turns purple and focused and clear .
There's no haze this time, there's no abrupt shift of you moving before you know you've done it. You can feel the glass crunching under your boots with every step you take, can feel the way the air has a chill that creeps down into your lungs with every breath, can almost taste the apprehension that's rolling off of Taehyung despite his relaxed stance. The only thing that gives him away is the tense set of his jaw and the mix of relief and fear when his eyes land on you.
"I'm pretty sure he said no, Kratos." The god turns at your voice and you watch the realization wash over him as he realizes what - who - you are.
"Been a while since anyone's seen you, Ares." He scoffs a little, not moving from where he has Taehyung caged against the wall of the bar, one hand pressed firmly into the brick. He's entirely too close, and you have no doubt that the stench of him permeates the very oxygen around them.
"Been busy. Doesn't change the fact that the man said no. Take the loss, walk away." Kratos' eyes narrow at your words and he steps away, but only to move closer to you.
"Why do you care so much? You've never been one to care about any of us before." Kratos inches closer and the hyper-focus that Taehyung's voice causes starts to melt away with every twitch of your fingers. You've never liked Kratos, all brute strength with no respect for the challenge, no appreciation of the fight, too focused on sheer power and exhilaration. He is the worst of the worst of the worst of your kind, of all the war-focused gods. Every bit of yourself you hate is every piece that Kratos loves about himself.
"I care that you don't seem to be able to understand when someone doesn't want to be around you, you absolute piece of filth. Taehyung had a point though, I really thought the whole thing with Aphrodite would've taught you how to back off. Or should I pull the video out, I think I still have it saved for when I need a good laugh." Malice and fury twitch across the other god's face and you absolute revel in it. You can feel his anger prickling across you, like needles in your very pores, and you ache for it. It's been so long since you last had a good fight, a real challenge where you didn't need to hold back at all.
Too long since you fought a god like yourself.
"You're testing my patience, cousin," Kratos spits. It's a little generous to call the two of you cousins - you're several times removed, at best, and potentially closer than that with your family's warped history - but you let him have it. It might make him feel better. "I'm having a conversation, that's all. And if said conversation means that we end up back at my place, then, well, can anyone really blame me for what might happen to this pretty little m-"
Your fist connects with his jaw immediately and the red floods you for the few seconds it takes to register Taehyung calling your name. The calm struggles for a second, warring with the rage, but it wins out eventually. The singer's talking, but you can't make out any actual words. You're too focused on Kratos, the way he's righting and readying himself for a brawl. There's a fire in his eyes that matches the one in yours and everything in you feels alive for the first time in too long.
This fight is different than your usual ones. There's no blur, no warped sense of time that usually comes with the adrenaline. You're focused and controlled in a way you haven't had to be for centuries, careful and precise and deliberate with every swing and every kick. The red seeps back in slowly and every time you think you're about to lose it, you hear Taehyung, still pressed against the wall of the bar.
Kratos lunges at you for what has to be the tenth time, clearly trying his best to knock you to the ground - he succeeded, once; you let yourself get distracted, too caught up in thoughts, but it didn't last long - and you sidestep him just in time for him to ram into the ruined dumpster instead. He looks pissed when he turns back around and something in you sings at the sight. He makes for you again and you dodge again, only to be dragged back towards him by the grip he has on your jacket. Fuck, should've taken that off , whatever, he's too close.
Pain explodes in your side and you're fairly sure he's busted part of your rib, but you just slide your arms out of the sleeves and twist to plant your knee straight into his gut and then slam your heel down onto his much-less-safe toes, and then back up to knee him in the groin. It's nowhere near enough to take him out, but his nose is oozing golden ichor and he groans with every shift of his weight, and you've got him pinned against the wall with your forearm pressing hard into his windpipe.
"Now, you're gonna listen to me you steaming pile of dog shit," You hiss. "When someone tells you no, it's not a fucking negotiation. It means you fucking leave and find someone with loose enough morals or enough internalized self-hatred that they're willing to subject themselves to your absolutely pitiful fucking excuse of an existence for the thirty-two seconds it'll take for you to get off."
Kratos doesn't respond, just sneers and spits blood at you. It's a miracle you don't actually try to rip his head from his body, because the thought crosses your mind for a second too long. Instead, you just press harder against his windpipe and enjoy the choked gasp that it draws.
"You don't stalk people either, the way you did with 'Dite. Don't you know it's better to let them come to you sometimes?" You tsk, ignoring the way he claws uselessly at your arm. Gods may not need to breathe, that's a fact, but they feel pain, and there is no way this isn't absolutely excruciating for him when even you can feel the small bones in his neck cracking and breaking. "And if I hear even a whisper of you pulling shit like this again, then I'm gonna find you, you pigshit. And when I do, I won't hold back even the slightest, and do you know what comes after that?"
His eyes are full of fear now, and only grow wide with terror as you lean in close enough that he can feel your lips against his ear as you whisper.
"You are going to wish that you could die."
When you do release him, he disappears instantly, with a cloud of acrid grey-green smoke curling around your ichor-spattered boots. He's only been gone a second when you slump, the adrenaline fading as quick as Kratos had left. Your side is throbbing now, your knuckles are bruised and broken and gold, there's a pain in your leg that you aren't sure what's causing, your head is screaming even through the high of the fight, your face stings in the crisp-cool air. Every breath makes the pain worse so you stop breathing. The brick wall of the bar is rough against your palms, but it's the only thing around that can keep you upright, so you'll take it.
"Well," a voice drawls from your left. You'd jump if you had anything left in you, but every ounce of energy is gone, spent teaching Kratos what Aretha Franklin meant when she sang about respect - and really, there was another fantastic singer, you really should visit her sometime soon - so instead your head lolls to the side. You aren't sure what it is that jolts through you when your eyes land on Taehyung, fingers curled carefully around the collar of-
Your jacket. That's your leather jacket. You barely remembers shrugging out of it, but you're glad it's not on the ground, trampled and covered in the gold spatters that decorate the rest of your body.
"Well?" You echo, wincing at the pain it causes. You've definitely got a busted lip, that's for sure from the way it feels different and swollen, and you're pretty sure there's a head wound, too, because you don't remember there being a golden halo around Taehyung before the fight.
"Well," He repeats, slinging the jacket - your jacket - over a shoulder. "You should get that looked at." He starts walking, making his way to the entrance of the alleyway. He gets halfway there before he stops and turns and cocks a brow. "Are you coming, or do I get to keep this?" Your jacket waves a little, as if he's wiggling it, and it makes you feel like a stray dog being lured off with treats.
You're never going to tell anyone that it works.
Taehyung's place is as nondescript as the car he parks outside. It's a plain apartment building on the outside - looks like maybe it was a hotel back in the 1930s, based on the outdated carpeting in the lobby and the grate on the elevator he steps into. Even the hallway is plain and unassuming as he leads you to the end and uses an old, tarnished brass key on an older, more tarnished brass knob. You aren't sure what you expected, you can't even begin to guess what Taehyung is like outside of the dirty alley or the stage where he sings, can't fathom what kind of decor he could possibly have.
What you step into isn't anything you could have guessed. It looks like he has the entire rest of the floor to himself based on what you can see, but there's also a spiral staircase tucked into a corner, bookshelves built in under each step that are filled to the brim, and a fireman's pole in another corner, so there's at least one more level above this, but something tells you both the staircase and the pole continue past that. There's artwork everywhere, pieces you recognize and pieces you don't, several van Goghs and a couple from Matisse and you think in the corner you spot an actual fucking da Vinci sketch that's supposed to be somewhere in Europe. There's a gramophone beside a top-of-the-line sound system, an entire wall that's just a record collection, books upon books, framed bits of poetry - including an actual hand-written rupi kaur, a signed Maya Angelou print, and a signed cover of ain't i a woman by bell hooks that you would die to know how Taehyung got his hands on. It's a museum's wet dream and yet it retains a lived in atmosphere. There are mugs left on tables, blankets strewn about as if someone just got up from a nap, an easel propped up by a far window with what looks like an impressionist painting of the cityscape, books tossed down half-read with receipts and coupons and candy wrappers and everything but a bookmark tucked between the pages.
It feels like a home and it makes your heart flutter in your chest at the same time that something in your stomach shrivels up into itself.
Taehyung walks like he’s meant to be followed, so follow you do. You spy another man - older, you think, but it’s hard to tell, really - sprawled across a couch, blanket splayed across his lap as he watches some kind of dance show on a flatscreen hung above a warm and roaring fireplace, a couple of girls in what looks to be the kitchen, one sitting on the counter while the other stands between her legs and pretends not to notice the former stealing strawberries from her bowl as she taps at her tablet, and there are footsteps creaking above you, hidden behind walls even as Taehyung leads you up the staircase. They all look up when you pass, but only the man gives you a second glance; his eyes are a weight on your back that doesn’t leave until you’re upstairs and following Taehyung into a large, rather nice bathroom.
It’s vintage as well, but it’s spacious and well-kept, like the rest of the place. Taehyung pats the marble counter by the sink and you bite your tongue against the urge to tell him you aren’t a dog. You don’t move though, instead watching him as he lays your jacket across a brass bar on the wall and then digs around in a cabinet for a minute or two. When he straightens up, he’s got a somewhat dusty off-white box in his hands, and he frowns.
“Up,” He says. “I need to look at your ankle.”
You don’t move, but you can tell he doesn’t miss the twitch of your nose at the thought of being commanded like an animal. Like someone who can’t understand. Like-
He sighs.
“Please, will you sit on the counter, so I can look at your ankle?” You huff, but you do as he says.
He doesn’t speak as he works, completely silent except for the odd command - “Roll it for me...alright, now flex that...deep breath...stop fidgeting or I’ll only make it worse…” - and the occasional hum under his breath. It seems to be second nature, like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, and it endears you more than you’d like. His touch is gentle but firm as he lightly squeezes your ankle and wraps it, lifts your pant leg to rub some kind of cream into a somewhat worrisome golden bruise forming on your calf, darts under your shirt to quickly and painlessly set your ribs before wrapping those as well. He doesn’t say anything at all until he’s almost finished with the cuts on your hands, golden ichor long gone and wounds already on their way to healing thanks to some sort of mist he spritzes on them.
It only stings once, as he’s spraying something over some kind of cut on your thigh where Kratos ripped through the denim there without you noticing. You can’t stop the hiss as the pain hits, though you regret it when he glances up at you.
“Sorry,” He mumbles under his breath as he dabs lightly at it with his long fingers.
“It’s fine,” You tell him. “I’m used to it.” Your voice is rough, always, but softer than usual. You don’t know why. You can’t decide if you like it.
The entire time he works, you wait. For him to tell you it wasn’t necessary, that he can fight his own battles, that he’s not surprised a brute like yourself got into a fight, that you’re no more than what the rumours say you are. You’ve got a million different curses and insults ready to spit back at him when he finally speaks.
“Thank you,” is what comes. It shocks the words out of your mouth, and you actually look up from where you’ve been watching him methodically wipe gold away from a scrape on your forearm. His gaze is concentrated on the injury and his lips are pursed and you wish you could figure him out.
He must take your silence for the confusion it is, because he continues.
“I mean it,” He says. “I’m usually not someone that lets other people fight for me, but we both know that I couldn’t have taken Kratos. He’s too strong, and he was counting on that. Until you showed up.” You don’t respond. “Is there a reason you left before my set was done? Or why you were sitting in an alley beside what is possibly the most gnarled dumpster I’ve ever seen?”
You don’t answer him, instead focusing on the way his hands feel as they tilt your chin so he can look at the cuts and bruises and scrapes that decorate your face. You focus your gaze just past his shoulder, content to memorize the pattern of his gaudy vintage bathroom wallpaper, and he doesn't press for more. The distracted humming picks up again every time he stops talking, and eases the storm of guilt shame rage pain hurt grief loneliness in your chest.
"I fight," you eventually say. Your voice is too loud in the quiet of the bathroom, shatters the silence like a sledgehammer, and you hate the way it trembles. Still, Taehyung doesn't look away from where he's carefully wiping gold from your skin, just cocks a brow, and it's as if a dam breaks in your throat. "Like, real fights. Actual competition, with rules and shit, and...sometimes the bad ones, because they tend to fight differently, it's a different kind of fight, y'know, and it's never really fair, because I'm...I'm me, but I hold back, just for fun, y'know, and it's, uh. It's alright usually, I go in, do my thing, I win, I go drink, and it all gets, I dunno, easier, maybe, for a while, like I can think right, but, um.”
You hesitate for a split second and force yourself to focus on the way the alcohol-soaked cotton tickles the cut on your head.��
“Sometimes it's not...sometimes I can't control it as well, the anger, and I kind of just lose it on people, and a while ago this guy, he almost needed his jaw wired shut, but he was kind of a prick anyway, I guess, so whatever, but, uh, today, I...there was this girl and she was doing really well, actually, y'know, managed to get me down to the mat, which is rare and pretty impressive, and I'm pretty proud of her for it now, but then, I just. I just kinda lost it, like, I just kept swinging, I couldn't stop, and then I just...I broke her leg, for no real reason, just because I wanted her to hurt, and I don't...I'm not sure why I even did it, because I'd already won, right, like what was the point of doing any more, it wasn't even helping at that point, y'know, it's not like the buzz kept up any longer because I broke this kid's leg, and I love the fights, they help clear my head for a second, but I never wanted to actually-"
You words stop short, like there are too many of them to say in too short a time, and it's then you realize Taehyung's hands are in his lap and he's looking at you fully. His expression isn't neutral anymore, it's not the carefully crafted mask of a performer, it's real and open and genuine and all you see there is pain . For you. Pain and understanding and compassion you never expected to find anywhere but the deepest corners of your soul. Looking at him looking at you like that makes you feel like you can breathe again.
"You never wanted to hurt anyone." His voice is rough, like maybe there's emotion clogging his throat as well, and you aren't sure what that does to you, but something in you jumps at the thought.
Tears mar your vision as you nod and you curse under your breath before wiping them away. He catches your quivering hand in his and just holds it for a second. His eyes don't leave yours and there are a thousand things you expect him to say but what he says is:
"I believe you."
And that...it's more than you can take, and you break, right there on his bathroom counter, sobbing into his chest while he just rubs your back and hums and you remember the face of every person you've ever hurt and the look in their eyes as you left some of them for dead.
You wake up the next morning curled up on the most comfortable chaise lounge in human history, sitting up and shoving the blanket off of you in a rush before you remember where you are, why you're there. A glance around tells you that you aren't alone; there's two guys bent over a table that you think might also be a tablet, conversing quietly and pointing every so often at whatever they're looking at, a girl balanced along the edge of the staircase holding a lyre - which, wow, you haven't seen a lyre in that good condition in a while - and strumming lightly along it before she frowns and shakes her head and restarts whatever melody she's playing, and the same guy sprawled over the couch with a blanket strewn haphazardly over him while he watches a different dance video on the flatscreen. He's the closest and you don't really want to talk to any of these people but you think you might have to because you aren't really sure how Taehyung got you here last night but you know it was quite a drive. You'd just mist over to the bar if you really wanted to, but your ribs hurt like a bitch still thanks to that fucker Kratos. Anything as intense as misting is out of the question for the time being.
The man on the chaise spares you a glance that feels longer than it should, full of a judgement you have no doubt you deserve and yet somehow fires your anger anyway.
He rolls his eyes before you even say anything and waves a hand towards the kitchen. You snap your mouth closed and shoot him an irritated look, but you storm in that direction anyway. Healing is exhausting, and you want nothing more than some meat to tear into and a cold beer.
When you get into the kitchen, however, Taehyung is standing there already, as if he’s been expecting you any minute. There’s a plate in front of him, full of food you barely recognize, and he slides it towards you.
“Eat,” He says. You grit your teeth, unmoving, and he sighs again. “Please sit, and eat. You need the strength to heal properly.”
You resist for a split second, but there’s a softness to him now. Something you can’t exactly put your finger on, but that you know is different , somehow, and it changes things. It makes you want to listen, to do as he asks, because he is asking . He’s not telling, he’s treating you like an animal.
It’s a request, not a demand, and that makes all the difference.
Taehyung is quiet while you eat. He doesn’t look at you, doesn’t watch to make sure you’re doing it, but you have no doubt he’s keeping an eye on you. It’s quiet, but not unbearably so; the air is broken by the sounds of the lyre and the television, as well as the soft chattering of the men at the table. It makes it comfortable, makes it soft in a way you’re unaccustomed to being, like the way people talk about lazy Sunday mornings or that voice they get when they see a cute animal.
It feels like home should be, instead of what yours is.
“So why’s Pretty Boy giving me the death glare?” You eventually ask past a mouthful of food. Taehyung barely looks up, just glancing past you to the guy laying on the couch. You can feel his eyes boring into your spine, but it’s nothing new.
“Taemin’s just protective,” Taehyung says softly. “Especially considering the stories.”
“The ones about me, you mean.”
A myriad of emotions passes through his eyes when he nods, and you wish you could more easily decipher them. Maybe in time, you will.
Maybe.
“Those, yes,” He says softly. “But he’ll learn.” He doesn’t say it, but nonetheless, you hear the words as clear as day. Just like I did.
Someone hums behind you and you glance over to see a woman - the strawberry thief - making her way into the kitchen. She gives Taehyung a look you don’t care enough to figure out, and they have an entire conversation in the span of five minutes. Something about it irks you, and it only gets worse when they start moving around each other, Taehyung handing her things without her asking.
It’s ridiculous, and you know it, but the air gets heavy in your lungs and your head starts to swim and suddenly you’re suffocating. It’s too much, there’s too much here, and you can’t take it anymore.
The force with which you shove away the counter would have slammed it into the wall were it not already attached. There are slight cracks in the granite tops, though, and there’s just enough clarity as Taehyung calls your name for you to feel guilty about it. It’s not enough to stop you though; you have to get out, you need to get out, before you do something worse, and the cracks in the granite are proof of that.
You’re out the door in an instant, your form coalescing painfully back into solid matter as you reach the hallway. Your ribs ache, screaming with the effort of trying to mist away from this place, this home , and you lean against the wall in the hope that it will help steady you.
The door opens behind you, the creak of the old hinges deafening in the silence of the hall. There’s a commotion behind it, voices overlapping each other and reverberating in your skull until they’re a twisted mockery of your siblings.
You stumble down the hall, one hand clutching your ribs to keep them as still as possible despite your movement. It’s not lost on you that there are footsteps following you, but you can’t focus on them now. You’re not moving fast, and you need to be, you should be running , but you can’t. Your vision is already clouding slightly at the edges, the sudden spike of adrenaline waning now that you’re out of the apartment.
Someone says your name and you swing.
It’s instinct, the way your fist flies through the air; you can’t control it, not this, not when the red is all you can see even as it seeps away and turns lilac. It doesn’t matter anyway. You don’t make contact with anything but the wall, plaster crumbling around your fist and onto the carpeted floor.
“That was rude,” Taehyung says softly. He doesn’t sound mad, though he should, considering you almost decked him straight in the nose. “I’ll take you back.”
He drapes your jacket over your arm and walks away, toward emergency stairs tucked into the corner instead of the elevator, and you follow. He hums as he goes, and he lets you lead the way down the stairs, keeping pace with your quick steps until both of you step out a side door into an alleyway.
Out of habit, more than anything, you light a cigarette and put it between your lips. You don’t miss the disgusted scrunch of Taehyung’s nose, but you do ignore it. The smoke is familiar in lungs, comforting, and he doesn’t understand it, won’t ever understand it, but he doesn’t have to.
“Sorry, Tae,” You say after a few minutes of silence. Taehyung shrugs one shoulder and moves to lean beside you against the stone of the building.
“Are you okay now?” You nod, taking a deep breath, remembering how Hestia had taught you, so long ago, how her hand felt against your chest, the warmth and love it held. “Then you’re forgiven. And you can call me Calliope, if you want.”
You’re both quiet after that. He doesn’t make fun of you, he doesn’t judge you, he just silently drives you back to Suho’s bar, which is when you remember that he doesn’t know where you live. You’re fine with it; you don’t want to see him in your run down hovel. It’s not much, especially compared to his own apartment, but that makes sense, too.
What could ever live up to the home of a Muse? Not even a muse, really. The Muse. The Head of the Nine Muses, the one called on most often by those in need, the one that everyone knew, the one that Hephaestus just put statues of in the gardens of Olympus, according to the rumors that Apollo sent you.
The calm that he brings lasts until you get back to your apartment, nearly ten full minutes after you disappear into the alley beside Suho’s bar. It’s the longest the calm has ever lasted, and the view of the city tinted lavender is one you think you love.
If you can love.
Things get clearer, somehow. The weight on your shoulders lessens, makes you feel less like Atlas and more like you, how you were all those years ago in the now-ancient days when things made sense. When people fought for honor and glory and justice more than they fought for oil and death and greed.
It could be because open mic nights are frequent around the city, and you’re able to figure out his schedule pretty well. You don’t go every night that he sings, just when it gets to be too much, when the scarlet haze starts to bleed into your irises like a flag in front of a bull. It helps, for a while, lets you settle long enough to pull the pieces of you back into a shape that vaguely resembles yourself.
It could be because the fights happen every night, and Taehyung is no stranger to where to look to find them. He watches every one that he can, when he isn’t singing, and his presence anchors you. Focuses you, so that you can pull your punches just enough, so that there’s less hurting and more fighting. It doesn’t work every time, you still lose yourself in the rage and do more damage than you ever mean to, but it helps enough. And when it doesn’t, he’s there, to slide a hand across your shoulders in that exact same way that Hestia used to, that Apollo might if you let him close enough to know you’re alive, that Artemis would , were she anywhere but where she is.
It’s a strange feeling. You’re not used to companionship, you don’t know how to have friends. You still say the wrong things and do the wrong things and he still speaks to you like he expects to be listened to, but you both are learning. You apologize more often, and he corrects himself quicker. It’s a slow, fragile thing, this friendship, but it’s there.
Until the night when it’s not.
You aren’t sure how it happens. It’s been weeks since you last saw Taehyung; he mentioned some project he was working on, something or another that would have most of his attention along with that of several of the other Muses. You had brushed it off when he said it, some snide remark about how you don’t need him there to win.
You would take it back if you could.
Because you were right, of course, you don’t need him there to win; you can do that on your own. And your control has gotten better, stronger, over the last few months, but complacency is what always leads to disaster.
The guy deserved it, is what you tell yourself as you’re pulled out of the ring. He was a piece of shit anyway, you remind yourself as you call Apollo with shaking hands. He didn’t deserve your mercy, you tell the golden gold after you’ve begged him to help save the man’s life. Artemis would have done the same, you insist to him, long after he’s hung up the phone and left to follow the ambulance to the hospital.
You don’t go to Suho’s. You can’t bear it, not when he might be there, not when he would read it on your face in a heartbeat. You don’t want to watch the disappointment crumble into something more familiar, something worse, you can’t watch him look at you with the knowledge that your siblings are right, that they’ve always been right, that you’re nothing better than a crazed animal.
The club is packed full when you get there. The bartender starts to pour you a drink and you just take the bottle, leaving a too-thick wad of bills in return. The bourbon tickles as it goes down but it warms your stomach and distracts you from the haze in your mind, the repetitive beat of they were right they were right they were right they were-
“Whoops, sorry,” someone says, a second before they knock into your shoulder. You’ve been around long enough to know a fake fall, and you scowl as you glance towards them.
He’s cute. Taller than you, with skin that would hide the marks you so love to create, and hair that looks like it would be soft in your hands. His clothes fit well, and they look like they were chosen for comfort over style despite the way he walks like a model in them, which you always find attractive.
The smile that slips onto your face is familiar, as is the way you bring your hand up to rest on his hip in an effort to steady him.
“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” You tell him, not being subtle in the way you eye him. He looks soft; you love them soft. “You headed to get a drink?”
“I might be,” He says teasingly, a coy grin forming on his lips.
“I’ve got something better, if you’re interested.”
His eyes roam along your body, his breath drawing somewhat quicker when he notices the scrapes on your knuckles. “I might be.”
It takes five minutes to get him to a corner quiet enough to talk. Less than three to get your lips on his. One and a half to start sucking a mark into his neck that makes him moan so pretty you can’t help but want to hear it again.
One of your hands is up his shirt, playing with the pebbled buds and the metal pierced through them, while the other teasingly massages the skin of his hip when he’s torn away from you roughly.
“What the fuck?” Your voice growls as you look up. The guy is standing there, looking for all the world like he’s ready to run, but he isn’t watching you.
No, his eyes are on a familiar sight; Taehyung, his hair now a pretty lavender that makes you think of a home you don’t have, even as he doesn’t look at you.
“Taken,” He growls, releasing the collar of the guy you had every intent to make cry with pleasure. The guy scurries off before you can stop him, though, and you don’t bother to hide your disdain.
“What the fuck is your problem?” You demand, already lighting a cigarette as you head outside. Taehyung follows, pulling it from between your lips and crushing it in his hands before you have the chance to get your lighter out.
“Me? You looked like you were about to eat him .” He follows you all the way to the street outside and down the sidewalk, pulling each cigarette out of your hands before you can light it. He waits until you’re a decent distance from the crowd outside the club before he stops you, one hand lightly encircling your wrist.
Your boots scuff against the ground as you stop, not turning to look at him. You’re too afraid to, too worried he’ll see it all on your face and just know that you’ve fucked up, maybe beyond repair.
“Apollo called me,” is what he says instead. “Said I might want to find you tonight.”
You should’ve known. That little fuck, of course he would rat you out.
“I didn’t-”
The words choke in your throat. You want to say you don’t need him. You don’t need him to come running like you’re some scared little girl who can’t control her strength, you don’t need him to piece you back together because you aren’t broken, you don’t need him because you don’t need anyone, you never have.
“I know you didn’t,” Taehyung says quietly. “I know he deserved it, I know what he did, and I know you didn’t mean to.”
Something inside of you breaks and you find yourself shaking.
“He hurt her , Tae, I heard it, I heard her telling her friend about it on the phone, I saw her crying, I saw her clothes, okay, he-”
“I know,” Taehyung says, pulling you into a loose hug. “I know you did, it’s okay. He’s going to be okay. He’s not gonna escape his punishment from that, you didn’t send anyone to Hades today. It’s okay.”
The cloud struggles, for what feels like hours. Guilt settles like lead in your stomach, and you wish you weren’t so used to the feeling. The rage returns every time you remember what that girl looked like, what she sounded like on the phone, how you felt when you realized it was your competitor who had done that to her.
There’s no honor in that. There’s no justice, no glory, in beating an opponent who was never aware they were in the ring, and it makes your blood boil all over again. Taehyung’s voice soothes you, slightly, makes the edges of your vision turn indigo, but it isn’t enough.
It’s never enough.
“I have to go,” You say, pulling yourself away from him. “I need- I have to find-”
“A distraction,” He finishes for you, too aware that you can’t find the words you need. “Some mortal that you can bruise and break and bang until you feel less like a monster?”
That’s exactly what you want to do, what you had been about to do with that guy at the club, and it’s only Taehyung’s voice calling your name in that soft, sweet way of his that makes you wonder if that’s not a good plan.
“I’ll be a distraction, if you need one.” You whip your head around, staring at him, but he doesn’t flinch. “I’m sturdier than the mortals, I can take more. Let me be your distraction.”
“I…” You hesitate. You don’t know why. You shouldn’t even be entertaining this idea, it’s not a good one, but then...when have any of your ideas been good? “I can’t fuck in a house with eight other people.”
“You have an apartment,” He says easily. “Let’s go there.”
It’s a bad idea. You don’t do that, you don’t fuck people at your apartment, you don’t have people in your apartment, it’s your space. It’s a bad idea, it can only end in disaster.
“Okay.”
Taehyung’s lips are soft against yours, yielding and pliant just the way you’re used to. His hands are big and warm against your ass, even through your jeans, and the feeling gives you the courage to slide your own under the ridiculously patterned button-down he’s wearing.
He lets you lead the way through the door, kicking it closed behind you with slightly too much force. Your apartment is small, a studio with a bed tucked in the corner for the rare times that you need it.
You push Taehyung onto it and slide yourself onto his lap, already grinding down onto the hard length you can feel there. He's not quite as enthusiastic, but his fingers are like steel against you, pulling you down with every rut of your hips.
This, you can do. This, you're familiar with.
You push on his shoulders, doing your best to get him on his back so you can have better access to the clasp of his jeans, but he resists. You try again, firmer, using a harsh suck against his skin as a distraction, but he still doesn't go.
Frustrated, you pull back.
"Not like this," He says. His voice clears some of the fog, and you frown.
"Do you want to be on top, then? Because I don't mind, I just need it," You tell him. He sighs a little, but he flips the two of you over so he's kneeling between your open legs and your back is cushioned against the mattress.
"How long has it been since you spent the night with someone who knows who you are?" He asks, pressing a kiss to your cheek as he sits back on his knees.
You shift, uncomfortable. "A while. Why does that matter? Just fuck me."
"No," Taehyung says, voice gentle but firm. You cock a brow at him and move to get out from under him, but he stills you with a hand on your thigh.��
"You are a goddess," He tells you, trailing his hands down so he can undo the laces on your steel-toe boots and slide them off. "You have held Victory in your palms and set her free."
His palms burn through the denim on your thighs, but you welcome it as he slides your jacket over your shoulders to the bed beneath.
"You are the winner of wars. You are the one who grants battlefield wishes. You are the dead's escort to Hades." He leans down, pressing a soft kiss against your cheek and then down your throat.
He pulls back as he gets to your collarbone, eyes blown wide with unfamiliar desire, and it makes your breath catch in your throat.
"You," Taehyung tells you, with desire in his eyes and belief in his voice, "Deserve to be treated like the goddess that you are, with the respect you have earned, and the care you deserve."
As often as you fuck people, it's been a very long time since anyone wanted to fuck you for any reason beyond your appearance and the personality you show them. But this? This look in the muse's eyes as his hands settle on your knees as he waits?
Taehyung wants to fuck you because you're you. Not despite it, not because he doesn't know . He has seen you at your worst and yet he keeps coming back, keeps showing up as you fall apart. Each time he stays, hands you a basket so you can pick the pieces of yourself up off the ground, holds the tape so you can mash it back together, and is ready to help steady you when you start to crumble again.
He's here for you , to treat you in a way no one has ever treated you before. He's your friend.
He cares.
You nod, however tentatively, and his lips are on yours in an instant. They're firmer now, less pliable and more controlling, but you don't mind. Not this time.
Not with Taehyung.
His hands don't hesitate as he strips you both of your clothes, but you can feel it each time he checks to make sure you're okay. The way that he watches your expression, the tense of your muscles under him, the cadence of your gasps for air between kisses, he reads all of it as clear as if it's a book in front of him. He slows down before you can stop him, his lips drawing back from the kisses he draws across your thighs, and he speeds up as your thoughts start to drift, swiping his tongue and two fingers through your folds to tease and bring your attention back to him.
His fingers bury themselves in your heat, crooking slightly to brush against that soft part of you that makes the world spin, and it's all too intense. His lips are hardly even touching your skin, just pressing gentle kisses against the skin of your thigh, a gentle complement to the way he glides his fingers in and out of you, slow and steady and delicious, but it's absolutely intoxicating.
He's talkative, too; he gives you constant praise. He tells you how well you take his fingers, how good you look with his fingers inside you, how absolutely fantastic you taste on his tongue, how he'd live between your thighs if he could.
It's too much, and you can't be sure why, not when your orgasm is approaching quicker than it ever has, not when your walls clench around him and you soak your sheets, not when he's cleaning your cum off his fingers with his tongue.
"Good," He purrs. "Now you're all warmed up."
His mouth hits your heat without hesitation or warning, before the aftershocks are even finished, and your hips buck upwards. His arms slide underneath your thighs only to grip them and bring them back down. You can't move much in his grip except to grind your pussy against his mouth, which he seems to enjoy, if the muffled grunts that escape him are any indication.
He doesn't stop until his tongue is buried inside you with one finger drawing lazy circles on your clit and you're cumming again, hands gripping the soft strands of his hair so tight that you would be afraid of pulling it out if you could focus on anything besides the feel of him against you.
He lets you ride the aftershock, this time. Waits until your pants die down slightly, until you're back in your mind.
"Good?" He asks you. His voice is deeper, rumbles instead of slides, but it breaks through the post-orgasm haze long enough for you to nod. “More?”
“More,” you agree, wrapping your arms around his broad shoulders and pulling him into a heated kiss. You haven’t been this clear-headed in a while. Every sensation is clear and crisp, every sound heightened, everything is simultaneously more while also being exactly what it’s always supposed to have been.
Taehyung’s cock is everything you could have expected from a muse; thick, long, beautiful, and it fills you in a way that’s indescribable as he slides inside. He groans at the feeling, deep and throaty and beautiful, and begins his thrusts nearly immediately.
It’s as slow as he was with his fingers; steady and forceful, but unhurried. As if he wants to take his time. As if he wants to savor it. Savor you .
“Do you have any idea how amazing you are?” He mutters, almost as an afterthought. “What you look like right now, what you look like when you’re fighting, when you’ve won and you’re triumphant? It’s fucking addictive, seeing that confidence in you.”
“Shit, Tae, don’t stop-”
“It’s so fucking intoxicating,” He groans, pace quickening. Your arms wrap around him more fully, nails like claws down his back as you arch your back to get him deeper. “You get this look in your eyes, like you can do anything you fucking want to, and it’s so fucking brilliant, because you can , you can do anything and everything you ever fucking want to do, and no one can stop you.”
A whine you’ll never admit to escapes your throat, and Taehyung drives his cock further into you.
“Let go, my sweet,” Taehyung purrs in your ear. “Let yourself relax, just this once. For me.”
His hand touches your clit and it’s so much, too much , you’re feeling everything so intensely that it takes a solid minute to realize you’re coming down from an orgasm. Taehyung has stilled inside you, unmoving but groaning as you flutter around him, and you push weakly at his shoulder.
He slides himself out of you, looking entirely too proud of wet spot underneath you and glistening against his lower stomach. You wobble your way up to rest your elbows underneath you, and it’s like he can sense your words before they come.
“No,” He says simply. “I don’t you to get me off with your mouth.”
“A hand then? I don’t want you to leave unsatisfied.”
A frown pulls at the corner of his mouth, and he leans down just enough that your lips are almost touching, a not-there kiss that you can only wish for.
“In what world is fucking you to the point of Elysium unsatisfying?”
The crowd around you is deafening; some of them are cheering for you, but the majority are rooting for your downfall. Such is the life of a challenging the champion, you suppose.
You don’t know how Taehyung found this place; maybe Artemis had heard rumors, or maybe he searched for it himself. You can’t bring yourself to care, not when you’ve got someone worth fighting on the other side of the arena.
The sand crunches beneath your feet. It’s hot, hotter than it should be since you’re still wearing your signature jeans and boots - without the jacket this time. You learned from that mistake.
Your vision tints pink as you size up your opponent; he’s massive, not one to be easily defeated, and you relish the challenge. It’s been so long since you’ve fought a giant. Excitement thrums under your veins as he turns to you. He scoffs.
If you had a little less control, you might be flying across the arena already. He clearly has no idea who’s standing across from him. Probably thinks you’re some demigod, come to challenge him for the fleece he isn’t supposed to have.
He’ll learn.
Something moves in the distance. It should blend in, considering how dark it is, but instead it draws your eye, and you don’t even question why. You would recognize him anywhere, have recognized him everywhere, and his presence calms you. Makes you remember a few nights ago, falling into bed in a hotel in Rome because the burn was to much and you needed him to help you release it.
“Try not to be too quick, princess,” The giant across from you huffs. You cock a brow and send a look to your muse, who just rolls his eyes, despite the smile playing across his face.
Violet rings your vision as you ready your stance. The announcer yells something that’s lost over the noise of the crowd. Taehyung leans forward, elbows on his knees, excitement and pride in his eyes.
The giant swings.
#ficswithluv#smutcentralnet#btswriterscollective#ksmutclub#95linenet#taehyung fanfic#taehyung smut#taehyung fluff#taehyung angst#v fanfic#v smut#v fluff#v angst#bts fanfic#bts smut#bts fluff#bts angst#greek god au#ddaengtan#s: mag
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🤫Everyone can see it!🤭
Seriously I noticed some parts of the mamga where everyone seems to know or aware that theres something romantic going on between our main ship on deck! hananene!
Top 1-5
1.Akane kun! - I promoted him to number one, (not because he's number one mystery,but because he really is amazingly smart when it comes to figuring out someone!)
Akane to yashiro
Akane somewhat know that yashiro had something in store for hanako kun, maybe because on the elevator arc, yashiro seems to speak a lot about hanako kun, especially when akane seems to know that yashiro did trust hanako kun a lot.
Akane to Hanako kun
When akane kun nearly speaks out about minamito kun likes yashiro which is obviously true! And hanako kun acts out to it instantly! This was the first time hanako kun acts somewhat violent when he was jealous!
And this is also the exact moment that akane kun knew that hanako kun has a thing for yashiro🤭😏
And as a smart clever bad ass guy as akane was... He used hanako's blossoming feelings towards nene as his advantage to make hanako help him rescue aoi chan!
Well, this is definitely gonna be hanako kun's greatest problem, because maybe next time someone might use his jealousy as an advantage towards him!! Like akane kun did to him!
2. Tsuchigomori sensei- he was the 5th mystery, the curator of the 4 pm books stacks arc. Since he was the one who takes care of the books of life and death. And each book records what will going to happen in the near future of that book's owner. He definitely knew what is going to happen to nene and hanako kun on the near future! And guess what. He already said a lot of times that it is impossible to change the future.
And obviously he already read whats inside of yashiro nene' book so he knew something romantic might happen to our main ship! Maybe he already knew that yashiro is undergoing character development, can be her development when it comes to her feelings towards hanako kun! 😁😆
Eventhough, our expectations about them kissing on lips didn't happen, there's nothing to be dissapointed for. Because tsuchigomori sensei already said that it is impossible to change or alter the future, so maybe this certain event of them sharing first kiss with each other may moved to another day!
3. Mitsuba- Mitsuba is the main hananene stan on the first place! Because he already knew and pointed out exactly that these two have already fallen inlove😍 and plus he did pictured out perfectly what all we want for our main ship hananene to end up! Saying I DO and GET'S MARRIED!!😍 we are all mitsuba in this!!!
Such a lovely perfect picture of them!😍
4. Ao Chan!- eventhough she turned into an antagonist, and everything turned wrong for her, well she did done something right! And that is she always knew that yashiro's crush was hanako kun all along.
And maybe these following evidences from manga and anime adaptation helps aoi clearly figured out that hanako kun is yashiro's crush all along!
As follows:
Whenever yashiro was confused about hanako, she's the first person she talks about it, was ao chan her bff! (And nene was not aware that ao chan can actually see hanako, so whenever hanako kun visit her at their classroom especially sometimes hanako kun acts romantic towards her mentioning that time where hanako kun hugs her and fix her hair and turned her hair into a daikon hair artistry! Ao chan obviously saw all of it!!)
Anime adaptation. Manga.
Anime
Aoi- " what have you fallen inlove with this time?
Yashiro- apparition.
(Omg that so pretty straightforward yashiro lol😂 and we all know that thered only one ghost boy she talks about hmmmmm)
Manga:
Aoi- what have you fallen inlove with this time?
Yashiro- donut
(Lol we all know that theres a certain ghost boy who loves donut so much? Right and damn another straightforward confession we had there from yashiro😍)
😏 Nene has been caught red handed by her bff. An act of lying and denying it that it was not really a certain ghost boy whom she crushes on.😏 but the truth was she does like like him😁
5.Tsukasa- tsukasa can be somewhat childish and innocent when it comes to romance and stuff. But there were some parts that he nailed it right!
Yes tsukasa, they already kissed each other back, yes tsukasa amane asks her out on a date in perfect picture arc!
6. Sumire- is a human girl somewhat whose identical to nene's bff ao chan. With same appearance and personality like ao chan. She did pointed it out that gon(given name by her) which is hanako kun knew that he is her lover in some way. Also sumire also fell inlove with a supernatural which is mystery number 6. They also represents and resembles hananenes current relationship, eventhough they are still in denial but maybe someday they can finally tell that they had already fallen inlove to anyone. Eventhough as we can see here, sumire tell nene that fallin inlove with a supernatural is a taboo we kinda see a glimpse of what will become on our hananene's future. A forbidden love. Between human and supernaturals.
Conclusion:
I think These people are those ones who will help to push them to become a couple. These people will push hanako and nene off to the cliff of love.
As we can see on the following evidences on this post, that everyone seems aware that hananene ship is a real thing! We all do!
#hananene#this entry was so long it made my head doki doki like a heart#quarantine life is pretty boring#jshk hanako#jshk yashiro#jibaku shounen hanako kun#im going to commit suicide if my fav. otp's didn't end up together!#hanako x nene#hanako x yashiro#aida iro#aidairo
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what about lgbt realization hcs for main 4??? i love ur take on cartmans and i wanna hear abt the others too
ooooh for sure!!! ill admit its a bit less thought out but yknow... stan takes a fairly long time to realize how he feels around certain people, like how he felt a bit uncomfortable with gary harrison cause his dumb little monkey brain didnt exactly know how to perceive those kinda feelings and although his and wendys relationship at the time wasnt really going anywhere (they werent even hanging out together at recess!!) hed convinced himself he cant feel for anybody else... that didnt stop him from daydreaming abt spending more time with gary in class. that would be his first big boy crush... :) but he never acts upon it, just turns goth the second wendy breaks up with him and he cant use her as an excuse not to talk to gary. then the events of the cissie happen and he starts questioning his cisness cuz he identifies more with his masculine side but doesnt fit with the binary term...so he decides hes more comfortable identifying as enby but not really putting any labels on his gender. hes just a little boy... a non binary boy.....while mr stan "being gay is okay" marsh is totally accepting of lgbtq he does have a hard time figuring stuff out for himself not necessarily because of internalized hatred but more of just sheer lack of information. he didnt quite know bi was a thing till then, he likes wendy a whole but his love for her wears off gradually everytime they get back together... and sometimes he do be feeling that exact same way around boys.. one of those boy fellas being his best buddy friend forever which he develops feelings for every so often... until pining so hard it hurts :( now kyle at that time is completely oblivious, not just to stanley but to whatevers going on inside his brain. he doesnt feel much attachment to anyone but him and maaaybe just maybe the other two main four members... sure he likes girls. but most of the time he just convinces himself he does..? now i know theres people agaisnt hcing minors as ace cause it quote implies the others are sexually active (no??) but im basing it more off my personal experience and how it affected my romantic attachments if that makes sense ... kyle met a lot of other kids he thought cute, he loved to play nurse with rebecca and joke with david... he loves girls giving him attention! makes him feel loved! now back to stann um he breaks his silence in middle skewl after a while and finally tells kyle how hes been feeling and kyles just kind of o_o cause the dumbass didnt??? see it coming? but kyle says he doesnt return his feelings... right away! things become a bit awkward around them, stan tries to bury his feelings yet kyle actually starts to consider it. it takes him a whole month (which is like a decade in teenage years) to realize that... being in a relationship with stanely marsh would be kinda nice.... he finally goes up to stan and suggests they SHOULD date after all but stan doesnt take this asshole playing with his emotions lightly and they have their first fight aw <3 they Do get together in the end... they hold hands and hug every time they get to see each other so uhh nothing much is changed???? then they decide to try n Gay Kiss and the rest is history.... no it isnt they break up frequently and the relationship doesnt work out that great but they had a nice time :) now kenny has always been open about what theyre comfortable with! they insist on being referred to as she/her when playing princess kenny and he/him when playing as mysterion, so just whenever they feel like identifying with one or the other or anything inbetween theyll let their friends know about it and dont give it that much thought. they start noticing theyre not only okay with identifying as pretty much anything, but there also fond of pretty much anyone! le gender blind.... so yeah kenny is loud and clear about it since day one :o) their coming out timeline is like ... first kenny comes out as genderfluid at 11, stan comes out as enby few days after, then kenny declares their pansexuality at 13, both stan and kyle come out as bi at 14 then ky finds out what asexual means and comes out as that 2 years later and biggity bitch eric comes out at 17 after Much struggling.........
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I brought up hanyang type 88 here and i said i’d explain, so here I am!!
okay so first off here’s a bunch of likely useful context about girls frontline. There is this feature in the game called digimind upgrade, or mod 3, where certain t-dolls can be upgraded past the normal maximum levels and stats, and at the same time gaining whole new abilities and also a new design. Basically a reinvention. There are like hundreds of playable characters in the game, and only a fraction will get mod 3s, typically the ‘main characters’ who are relevant to the major ongoing plot.
two things about getting a doll who has the ability to do digimind upgrade, to actually do that. One, is that it can be very costly in terms of in-game materials. like, maybe i just played the game wrong but I would have to grind for weeks in order to amass the materials to upgrade just one doll to mod 3. So even though by now there are dozens upon dozens of dolls who are capable of this feature, i’ve only actually done so with like, less than one dozen. A normal player probably has to be picky.
secondly, and this is the big one, every t-doll’s mod 3 comes with story cutscenes that become available for you to view upon upgrading them. Personally, i think most of the only worthwhile mod 3 stories are the ones that are associated with the actual major characters of the main story, especially since their upgrades actually happen in-canon and their mod 3 stories fill in blanks or otherwise expand upon the regular story chapters.
for the t-dolls who aren’t major characters that get digimind upgrades, their associated stories tend to follow a very basic pattern. They’re feeling like they are falling behind other T-Dolls in abilities or are otherwise experiencing a drop in confidence in their abilities, but then find the resolve in them to either change themselves or stand by an aspect of themselves, and this leads them to heading to the lab to get upgraded. obviously theres some nuances here and there depending on the character, but a lot of them, from what i saw, follow this basic pattern.
hanyang type 88 has a mod 3 but i certainly never wanted to see it. Firstly, using the feature at all takes up resources are kinda precious so i wasn’t just gonna use it on anyone. Secondly, she is just one of many one-off t-dolls that basically dont ever show up in any actual main story cutscenes or even funny events. Thirdly... you saw what she looked like in the linked post, i was in no rush to make use of her.
That being said, even if you don’t ever upgrade a t-doll, simply having them in your possession allows you to at least view the first of four parts of their mod 3 story, which nets you a small amount of those materials needed to see the rest (its a pretty fiendish system, huh o_O). I was lacking in some materials to upgrade a doll i cared about, so i just mucked around, eventually happened upon type88 again and decided that instead of just immediately feeding her to the furnace, I’d watch the first chapter of her mod 3 story. I watched it, it made me just curious enough to look further, and well. ...I got into it. Exactly what I got into, i shall now just elaborate and summarise the whole thing in my own way! Warning, it’s long!
(disclosure: my summary will bias towards my own preferred interpretation whenever any aspect is somewhat vague.)
The story starts with type 88, or as she is called by others in griffin base, Ai, working her shift in the base’s cafe, because what else would she be doing.
i hate looking at her! Anyway, its just a pleasant peaceful day and Ai is taking the logistic person, kalina’s order when suddenly in the middle of a conversation, Ai freezes in place and starts making worrying sounds.
kalina here and the t-dolls present in the cafe are concerned, and talk about how Type88 has actually been crashing like this more and more frequently lately, yet has not reported any of this to the maintenance crew despite the advice of her friends. They try rebooting her on the spot, but it has an even more concerning effect, because she starts erratically acting like she doesn’t recognise the others, and talks about how she is a maid in “Jiangcheng Cafe”. Afraid that her neural cloud (her mind) has been scrambled, they put her to sleep and bring her to the repair bay.
Its in the repair bay where they explain exactly what is wrong with type88. She is a fairly old doll, and her processing capacity has been severally clogged up for a long time. Her internal memory is overflowing because many large sections of her mind is filled with very large encrypted files (memories that she stored away). she is likely to keep crashing and possibly even cease functioning entirely one day if those encrypted files are not deleted, but nobody is really keen on just deleting parts of her mind without her consent. For now, kalina just opts to try and decrypt the files and see what they are.
And from here, we watch type88 memories from her perspective. Sort of. Kind of. It gets complicated later but for now, we view the first memory of her life, not as a combat t-doll type88, but...
...as 59898, a doll designed to be what is basically a ‘crash test dummy’ for testing artillery technology in a research station. With a purpose like this, 59898 has an (ostensibly) rudimentary AI. Her learning ability is intended to be used to better aid the results of their testing, but she also knows how to understand and even imitate specific human gestures in order to better respond to instructions or conversation, even though she herself has no voice module to speak with. She is assigned to assist one specific person.
first off, i was pretty shocked right off the bat that this story above so many others actually has unique assets to it. The above two sprites don’t show up anywhere else in the game, i don’t think. Secondly, this woman’s name is only ever spelled with those white squares, so I’m stuck with having to just calling her ‘the pilot’, as dry as that sounds... I just don’t want to type out weird characters every time, or call her ‘triple cube’...
Anyway, so 59898 is assigned to help this woman in testing artillery tech (stuff like mechs and tanks). I should mention really quick that in the game’s story, during this point of time is when world war iii is happening, but that’s just a backdrop for robots to eventually gain more prominence. Anyway, we move on to the second memory, where some time has already passed. At the beginning of this memory, the pilot is visibly depressed, which 59898 takes note of.
Her ‘comfort mode’ consists of patting the pilot on the head, who while surprised, actually is grateful. She feels comfortable enough to talk about her worries aloud to the doll, mentioning how she is a war refugee and has to make a living in the research base because she can’t go back to her home in china, at least not before making enough money for a very expensive and exclusive train ticket. She continues to talk at length to the doll...
...not that the test doll is capable of responding to anything she says. The pilot insists that she’s happy just to have someone listen to her though, since she feels like she can’t really express her feelings to any other person on the base. Despite that-
That aside, the pilot says that referring to 59898 by her serial number all the time feels a bit weird, so she decides to give the doll a name. (I sure wish the story would give this woman a name too, other than ‘three white squares’ but oh well...)
She talks more with Jiangcheng Ai, or just Ai, after that, asking her if she’d like a change of clothes sometime, like some casual clothes, or an old maid outfit from an old cafe job she used to have (I guess they had to throw in any explanation for that outfit somehow) Point is, more and more time passes.
As time passes though, and we go into the third memory, the pilot brings up complaints to her superiors about how the more recent testings, becoming more increasingly intense and frequent, are putting a great strain on Ai, and even repairs can only help maintain her chassis so much. She insists on wanting to take Ai’s place in the testing, but they refuse because, well, Ai’s entire purpose is to take the strain of these tests so that the human pilot doesn’t have to, and the doll is just a tool there to pave the way for the pilot to eventually take over the mech in action
The next time Ai wakes up from her most recent repairs, the pilot is there to greet her, and Ai can tell straight away that she’s unhappy and tries to comfort her again. The pilot is not surprised at this and talks about how this is how Ai has been since they first met. She goes on to say how all the other people on the base don’t know her half as well as Ai does. Ai tries to understand and determine what the pilot’s intentions with saying all this is, but she cannot do so and can only listen while offering ‘executing - affirmative nod’.
The pilot talks about how once the war is over, she’d like to take Ai back home with her, where they could go to all sorts of gatherings, and the pilot would introduce Ai to her friends.
Ai reviews her personal data, confirming that she has no owners or obligations other than the pilot, so she executes another affirmative nod, and the pilot says this:
As Ai tries and fails to further determine this, something bad happens! if you’ve read this far, i’m sure you’ve already guess what happens next...
At that exact moment, a warning goes out and the research base is being attacked by nebulous enemy forces. With no time to talk anymore, both the pilot and Ai head out into their first real fight.
They spend a good long while repelling enemy forces, working well together and apparently using all sorts of wacky anime weaponry like beam blades and whatever ‘retrograde evasion’ is!
obviously though, you already know this isn’t going to end well for them... When the pilot takes a breather, Ai moves to protect her, but at a critical moment, a sudden high-speed projectile comes her way. In the next instance there’s a crash, and we move onto another memory. Where its all fire and debris, and Ai can’t move.
^ this text box actually repeats several times, indicating that she is repeating her scan for life signs over and over. She gets an internal warning from her systems (differentiated with red text) that she has insufficient power and it warns her to immediately cease ineffective operations. [Unable to detect owner life signs] repeats again.
At this point, uuuuh, its a little stupid actually? because two humans show up, reusing generic ‘bad guy’ sprites from other events that don’t match the current environment and situation at all (one is in a suit and the other is in casual clothes). but the reason they’re here is to provide exposition out loud about what happened. It looked like the human’s mech took a hit for the doll and was blown to bits, though they talk about how that doesn’t make any sense.
Ai at this point tries to execute a bunch of different actions like hugging [target not found] and screaming [no relevant module] but they all fail, and her internal systems tell her that her power is running out and she will cease to function in 30 seconds.
So in those last 30 seconds, Ai decides to quickly review her internal files. the damage she took has corrupted her memories and she doesn’t have the time to properly go through them, so she executes a ‘simulated processed records’, which basically mean she’s just filling the blanks of those memories herself with simulations.
And I have to say. I was decently into and enjoying this little story so far, but its this part that’s the reason i became forced to make this stupid giant post. the first ‘memory’ loads up, and we see the pilot.
Different ‘memories’ of the days spent with the pilot are loaded back to back, each are very short and only last a few lines. Across these files, the two of them talk comfortably with each other, Ai is invited to go get coffee with her, the pilot talks about how going alone is boring and would rather spend time with Ai, Ai saying back with her own words that she always likes spending time with her, etc etc etc.
And then finally, she loads one last ‘memory’, from earlier that same day, before the explosion and the fighting.
and she shuts down.
i passed by this scene the first time all calm, but an hour or so later when I was in the bathroom replacing shampoo bottles, i started thinking about it and I literally started sobbing. And then again later that night when i was in bed. I hate this game!!
so that’s the ‘end’ of that, and the next scene opens, once again in griffin base’s cafe, except...
Ai is sporting a brand new (ugly) look. She says she’d like to take kalina’s order but she was just leaving on other business, as she likes keeping herself busy with all sorts of work around the base ever since she got upgraded into a gundam gajinka. and after she leaves, kalina talks with the other dolls about how Ai used to have some cache issues because her neutral cloud was too full, but upgrading into this new chassis easily fixed that and even allowed her to make use of her old locked away abilities.
Because of the way this scene in the cafe opens up exactly like the very first one at the beginning, it makes me believe that this final scene is also a simulated ‘memory’, that is, Ai filling in the blanks of her corrupted memories with what she wishes to be reality. And i feel confident in believing that because after the scene fades to black, we see more of her internal system monologue.
She (the system) says that the priority execution is to preserve those encrypted memory logs. She does so, and the neural cloud upgrade is complete with confirmation of no loss files. With no risk of deletion in this new form, she executes the command to unlock the encrypted memories. And finally...
[spiderbread dies]
i still wouldn’t use her in gameplay because i can’t stand looking at her design but i told you all i eat up robot with feelings stuff and this is like prime example of exactly that... and if i didn’t make this post, i think my own neutral cloud’s cache would be at risk of overflowing x_X!
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I’m fairly certain I have said this before, but Imma say it once again.
One of the things that sets Flower of Evil apart from other dramas (in addition to exploring a romantic relationship thru the lense of serial killers and shadows of the past) is the way the drama is a culmination of many different stories and characters.
In most kdramas, other than the leads (and sometimes not even the female lead) the remaining cast of characters do not get to be fully fleshed out people. They are often the salad dressing. If you took them out, the story wouldn’t suffer for the lack of them. I mean, even second leads so often are characterized as one-note characters!
Flower of Evil subverts that by having everyone play an important role and fleshing them out as much as possible with the 16-episode format. Nobody here is salad dressing, tho I could do without Baek Hee Seong, but I suppose every garden of paradise has its serpent and in FOE it’s him and Yeom Sang Chul.
The plot is centered around Ji Won and Hyun Soo but so many other characters play a role in helping the story move forward. In short, I really love the focus this drama has on the little things. Stories are often made richer by focusing on the little things and allowing characters, be they lead or supporting, to be whole. My understanding of most of the main players in the plot and their fleshed out character profiles are under the cut. Please note, there will be spoilers!
I’m gonna list them out for clarity:
1. Jeong Mi Sook trying to prevent Hyun Soo from making an irreversible decision and trying to explain his side to Ji Won or even deciding, she’s the one who will break out of her cage. Hee Seong has been terrifying her from the start but she asked him to run, because he wasn’t worth being killed by Hyun Soo. He deserved to pay for his crimes instead.
2. Woo Chul deciding that his superiors need to only know this much and feeling terrified at what the new revelations imply for them, but even after he finds out, his priority is making sure his team members are safe. He may not always purchase coffee for everyone. But when push comes to shove, he’s shows what his priorities actually are. His team 😭
3. Eun Ha recognising the danger she is in and locking the door and only opening when her mom came. Eun Ha being a transparently affectionate child and when Hae Soo sees her photos and meets her, it’s like finding some lost vulnerable part of her self. Nothing like the unconditional acceptance of children that can undo you real quick.
4. The Baeks realising that in their quest to protect their son, they became people they never wanted to be. And that they were blinding themselves from the start. Mi Ja wondering if she’s doing the right thing all throughout, Man Woo losing more and more of his patience as he tries to clean up behind Hee Seong and both of them realizing, once you go down a dark path, it’s very hard to return. And also, that the outcome they were hoping to prevent was inevitable any way.
5. Jae Seob knowing something is off and following it up, and wanting to protect Ji Won at all costs. Also him and Woo Chul having an antagonistic but trustworthy relationship and him also mentoring Ho Joon and stating how people find him difficult to like, but that does not stop him from being himself. Jae Seob is a man committed to uncovering things, no matter how uncomfortable they feel or what secrets they reveal. That jokey personality is a layered over a determined and strongly principled character.
6. Ho Joon handling the more difficult aspects of being a cop by learning to take lives if need be, dealing with the aftermath of a crime scene and keeping his cool in the midst of chaos. I mean, at first he seems like such an innocent and well-meaning character who adores both of his Sunbaes and then as the story moves on, you see theres so much more to him than just being the maknae of the team. Whether it is calming down Ji Won after their fast and furious ride or having the foresight to turns on the camera monitor or even deciding to put out the news that Ji Won is dead, Joo Hwan shows himself as such a capable and conscientious person.
7. Hae Soo trying to amend wrongs and dealing with the guilt of her father’s crimes and realizing that it’s very hard to do things by yourself but also bravery is something that does not always happen in front of everyone, rather it’s that moment of iron clad surety you have when you know exact what you want to do, and to go ahead and do it.
8. Moo Jin making the choice to take off the rose tinted glasses and realizes he needs to see things for what they are. And realizing that you can’t just pick up things from where you left there. You have to realise how you behaved and own up to who you really are. Also, you really got to understand how to communicate with the girl you love, instead of just harping on asking her to ditch her brother, once more! 🙄
9. Hee Seong being a stuttering, scared mess once he realizes that he’s at the mercy of Hyun Soo and showing that under all his swagger and bravado, he’s just a cowardly man who enjoys exercising power over others and uses fear to control them, but cannot handle the heat when it is turned on them. He thinks he’s amazing because he’s so powerful and in charge, but all it is takes is one person to stand up to him and he loses composure so quick.
10. Yeom Sang Chul doing his best to save his own ass, and he’s so over taken by greed that it becomes his very undoing. He really has no redeeming qualities and without henchmen or money, he’s pretty much useless. Fitting that he dies without all the trappings of grandeur around him.
11. Even Park Kyung Choon, he’s so far gone with the desperation of looking for his wife but once he’s subdued, and in the hospital, he’s able to have a proper conversation with Hyun Soo. A remorseful, regretful one.
12. The housekeeper, Park Soon Young, she’s seen so much and she’s been thru so much and the Baeks have helped her, but at the same time, she realises she does not want to be a part of this household where so much evil is being perpetuated. She makes the decision to leave and she draws her own conclusions. Nothing is fed to her.
I mean, I could go on a bit longer but yeah, I hope I made my point. In conclusion, FOE, you done did good.
#kdrama#tvn flower of evil#flower of evil#lee joon gi#moon chae won#aspects like these are just so satisfying#my commentary#I have a lot of feelings#!!!
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7 Anti LO Asks
1. tbh the fact rachel purposely didnt let persephone have any romantic relationships before hades gives the impression that had persephone had any other experience, she'd see right through him and not want him because she had better. not having any other point of reference isnt good. its setting up that hades can get away with whatever he wants because she doesnt know anything else. thats really not a healthy dynamic to have even while dating, much less eternal marriage.
2. You know what’s weird? How Hades is a 2000+ year old being and still has not gone through his trauma. We know that he was eaten by Kronos when he was around 8 and stayed there for like 13 years if i’m correct (in the LO version), so we can assume that when he got out he was in his early to mid twenties. And then he fought in the war which we don’t know how long it was in LO bc there’s no info on that at all but let’s assume that that lasted 100 years.. he’s still pretty young there. So how is it that he’s only now getting help for his traumas? Which we don’t even see actually, it’s just a sentence said by him when he adopts the little dog. We don’t even know how old he actually is bc it’s always assumed it’s 2000+ but 2000+ years old could mean 2030 years old or 2999 years old or even 3000 and more and he has just lost track of time. All of these years and he still has not processed or made any progress?? At all?! Unless therapists are a new thing in the Underworld but we have Chiron who says that she was a physician in the old world but got tired of it so she decided to study the human mind. And that must have been quite some time ago. So why exactly is Hades a 2000+ broken man who needs to be fixed by a 19 year old going through her own trauma?
3. The underworld being an infertile world doesn’t make sense at all. If we compare the underworld with the underground it’s a fact that where there’s decay if is more fertile. Not to mention that in the myths the underworld is in fact considered a fertile land. We know that the underworld is full of souls, and souls are considered what give life to a body or place, so the underworld being a desert still doesn’t make sense at all.
4.If I may also add, just because LO is a “retelling” doesn’t mean it doesn’t harm Greece or Greek people. They still exist, funnily enough, they didn’t all die once Alexander the Great stop conquering. They’re a country full of strong, passionate people who have gone and are still going through massive problems and hardships. They are also a country who are still, at best, ignored, or at worst, mocked for the suffering they must endure by nations that are far from economic instability and from actual war zones like Greece is. Despite all that, their mythos are seen with great reverence to this day, and they don’t “gatekeep” it, you can ask any Greek in here and they’ll tell you they enjoy stuff like the Disney version or PJO just fine, but you have to stop and wonder why LO is a Greek myth product that is almost universally despised to Greeks who know it exists.
It’s pretty obvious why, RS not only butchers the myths completely to where they don’t even resemble what they once were, but her constantly silencing and badmouthing actual Greeks who want to help her make it more accurate is not a great look. She’s acting as if she, a white woman from an island made of literal England reject descendants, somehow not only knows more about Greek myth than actual Greeks, but that she OWNS the mythology and she can do whatever she wants with it, and only those who agree to her biases know what they’re talking about while everyone else is wrong, so obviously Greeks don’t know Greek mythology! Even media products in the same, non-Greek realm as her get her ire. Case in point, we know she’s hostile to PJO, she badmouths the Disney movie all the time, she complained about Blood of Zeus (emphasize on ZEUS) didn’t revolve around HxP, and despite them being heavily promoted by her own employers, she never speaks of Punderworld or HxP ficlets, even when her fans harass them and in Ficlets case purposely got them kicked off Canvas for “copying” LO, meanwhile she will happily promote OSP because they confirm her biases and kissed her butt in their HxP video. What does this tell us? Because it doesn’t seem very nice.
Of course she’s allowed as a creator to play with the mythology as she wants, but even then there are still limits to adhere to, and she never does it because obviously her half-baked concept of the “mythology” is way better than the 3000+ years of texts and interpretations out there. Sure she has people flinging themselves at her to offer her help for free, especially Greeks and academics, but what would they know over her, the self proclaimed master of mythology itself? Obviously she created it all in 2016 when she decided to draw a sexy pink girl and that’s it. Greece and everyone else was just using a fake version this whole time!
It seems from her POV, Greece ands its citizens are, in her own words “haters” who apparently know less about Greece and its own mythology than her, a white woman who uses a fanfic-writing white supremacist as a main source. The ego on this woman is astonishing.
5. May I also add to the age discourse, something like Edward and Bella can get away with it because Edward stopped aging physically, mentally, and emotionally at 17, and even in story there is a logic to them still going to HighSchool after all this time. He may be 117 age wise, but he’s at the same exact level as Bella in every other regard. That doesn’t excuse his creepy actions, of course, but there is in canon logic to it to justify it and make sense.
I’d say LO could use this too, but tbh it wouldn’t work. Either it’d involve making a CEO king as immature and childish as a 19 year old (not great) or it’d have a 19 year old suddenly be way wiser beyond her years which wouldn’t make much narrative sense, but also has some really creepy implications to it. Anyway RS dug herself into a stupid hole and doesn’t know how to get out of it.
6. im in the same boat 😭 i was watching one of those LO critique videos you posted and they were showing panels from early on and i just thought "they photoshopped this, right? theres no way it looked this bad. they're just goofing around with this" and nope, that's exactly how they looked the video didnt change a thing. the bright colors really were distracting your eyes from seeing how bad it looked.
7. Correct me if i’m wrong but in one of the first few episodes wasn’t Hades annoyed with Persephone? Especially at the panel where she wanted to drive his car? Like nothing has really changed in her behaviour with him apart from her being more flirty, but the only change is that Hades started viewing her more sexually. Always thinking about her breasts and butt, and nothing else. Half the time he was thinking about her, he wouldn’t even think of her face. So how exactly is their relationship a romantic and lovely one?
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hxh....MUSICAL
as soon as i saw that a hunter x hunter musical from the year 2002 starring the OG 99 VAs existed, i knew i has to see this...so i set out and watched the nightmare of zoldyck (i would later find out that theres ANOTHER musical, which i plan to watch too)
luckily its all on youtube subbed! in 360 quality...oh hell yes lmao
ok i logically knew this was gonna be a musical but seeing the characters singing is like. a lot. THIS IS SO STRANGE
musical illumi is played by a woman which is interesting. shes got a good voice
i think they just panned to killua but it was so pixelated that i legitimately could not tell hvbadjkfbjkdsf
i have no idea whats going on vhbajdfhhajsdf theres a bunch of people falling over on stage...i think theyre dying? who are yall
oh shit backup dancers?
lmao illumi killed the backup dancers rip.
oh that IS killua lol. s/o to the 3 pixels that are visible
is this gonna be the zoldyck arc but a musical? lmao
OH WAIT IS THAT KURAPIKA AND LEORIO? i cant even tell lmaoooo
i can 100% tell these are fan subs lmaooo i love bad fan subs SO MUCH it makes a viewing experience even better
this is p much just a musical version of the manga/anime so far lmao i love it
the way theyre spelling zoldyck is. a lot
is every character gonna get an intro song. how much of this musical is singing and how much of it is dialogue cause theres defs a range w/musicals
lmao i love gon leorio and kurapikas interactions even here, they rlly feel like two parents being dragged around by their energetic kid
i cant even see the set at all so im just gonna assume theres like, the gate and all that behind them, but it all just looks like a dark wall to me lmao
i love singing exposition
HISOKAS IN THIS???????????????????? oh my lorddddd
OH i see now in the description that hes played by the 99 VA too lmao i love it
wow musical hisoka rlly b like [writes himself into the zoldyck family arc]
oh here we go w/the song introducing the zoldycks
damn grandpa got mad flips
this is. wild
its especially wild that alluka isnt here bc she like...didnt even exist yet at this point in the story
zoldyck family sitcom wow
i see the gon/killua romance is still going strong in the musical
oh so they did all the training and goin thru the door stuff offscreen lol
this is actually doing a pretty good job expanding on the canon stuff from this arc lol so props. espec w/showing more of killua being scared of illumi
oooh this is interesting actually, this is like....an AU where illumi is present during this arc, and how that would change things. And Also They Sing
the zoldycks are so fucked up lmao
also i feel like theres some ‘early adaptation’ character weirdness going on, like w/the grandpa, who seems much less intense here than in the anime (at least after seeing him in the yorknew arc), and milluki, who seems like a gag character here lmao
oh my god lmao is hisoka here to visit illumi?
the hilarious irony of illumi telling killua that assassins cant have friends, then going to hang out with his good buddy hisoka
kurapika is the only one here with a brain cell (for now)
ah yes hisoka and illumi doing their nasty murder flirting thing
HISOKA IS SO NASTYYYY I HATE HIM tho his actor is very good and smarmy
OH its canary!! is there uh. blackface goin on there. i cant actually tell, what with there being only 3 pixels present at any given time
really love how half of this is just the regular arc but with the characters singing abt stuff during it
the lady playing killuas mom has a rlly good screeching voice jesus lmao
ohh i love musical fighting so much
the sound fx on kurapikas sticks are cracking me up
butlers got mad cartwheels
oh theyre doing the coin thing! this is so out of order lmao
oh my god i love that theyre doing like, sick dance moves while coin flipping
ah the zoldyck messenger hawk makes an appearance. i love that thats canon and real
the 12 yr old gay romance is REAL even here
the subs seems to be translated very literally, especially in the songs, so its honestly not clear what theyre even singing about vbsjkdjhfskjfd
gon and killua singing about each other is adorable tbh. also i love how silva asks killua abt his friends and killua is like yeah i made some friends. and then only talks abt gon ahjsduhfabhskdf gayboy
ok so the zoldyck arc is like, ending, but theres still an hr of musical left so whats even gonna happen lmao. also where did hisoka go
oh no the audio and video arent synced anymore huvbhjadfbhjsakdf
oooh they asked canary to come w/them, thats cool
theyre having a party??? hvbajdsfbhasjkdf
oh shit??? what did zeburo just do to killua??? WHATS GOING ONNN lol this is UNCHARTED TERRITORY
OH GOD IT WAS ILLUMI. SHOULDVE KNOWNNN
omggg all their formal outfits....everyone cheering wildly at kurapika is cute
LEORIO AND KURAPIKA DANCING.....
the fact that both killua and gon are taller than kurapika in this is rlly funny
the idea that the zoldycks are also highly trained ballroom dancers is super hilarious to think about, even moreso when you consider how isolationist they are
seriously grandpas got mad flips
also i love leorios outfit
this feels like a filler arc tbh. and i dont mean that in a bad way!
leorio trying to get kurapika to go to the hot springs with him lmaoooo
HVDSJBJFSBFJHS HISOKAS BACK. IN DISGUISE. OH MY GOD
hisokas stage presence is fantastic gotta say
damnnnn dad zoldycks got mad flips too. guess it runs in the family
props to the actors for managing to keep their wigs on while flipping around like that
its so fuckgin funny thats hisoka just introduces himself as illumis friend, when this whole arc is all about how assassins Cannot Have Friends
so hisoka is just here trying to get family approval too huh
gon miming a fishing trip was adorable and realistic...sometimes u get skunked and It Just Be Like That
leorio is rlly tryin to shoot his shot w/kurapika and kp is just Not Realizing huh vbjsdufjbsaukjf
wow leorio breakin the fourth wall like that lmao
wow so illumi hacked killua. rude
hisoka and illumi are lowkey hilarious in this
leorio is rlly sending every signal possible to kurapika and kp is like. No
leorio: killua is a scary murder baby, but also im adopting him
kurapika singing abt how weird it is having friends after dedicating their life to Revenge(tm) is v on brand
HISOKA OH BOY
LMAOOOO HISOKA IS SUCH A FUCKING SNITCH I CANT
no wonder illumi didnt wanna tell him abt his evil plan lmaoooo he fucked up even telling hisoka that much clearly
the zoldyck siblings just staring at hisoka in confusion bc How The Fuck Did This Clown Get In Our House hvbhjdksfnjksdf
you can tell the subs are off when the audience is cracking up but you dont even see a joke there lmao
oh my goddd hisoka using bungee gum to make everyone dance is. hilarious
oh my god synchronized dancing
HVBSHDJFBJDSKFHBSJ illumi doing a dance routine independent of hisoka and hisoka being like ????? vhbjsdkhfjkjsdnfkj THIS IS HILARIOUS
supremely funny to me how illumi makes such a big point abt assassins not having friends, yet hisoka is announcing himself as illumis friend w/every given opportunity hvbhajdkdfhjskf
this feels so filler arc i love it. thats so charming to me since the 2011 anime doesnt have any filler (from what i can tell?)
kurapika and leorio rlly feel like killuas parents here lmaooo
this is all dramatic but kurapika keeps repeating what leorio says and its cracking me up hvbajhkdhfbjsk
i lov this fambly
ah, even in the musical illumi is still such a manipulative bastard
i feel like the quality just went down EVEN MORE, which i didnt think was even possible hvbhjkdsfskf. at least the audio is synced w/the video again
illumis got a good evil laugh
this is the exact brand of dramatic angsty filler content that i was hoping for in this lmao i love it
oooh more zoldycks
honestly this is more how i expected the zoldyck arc to go in canon hbshjdkujfkjsfdas
dramatic gay filler angst + somewhat incorrect fansubs = perfection
OH SHIT CANARY
BRO DID SHE JUST DIE???? OMFG
the subs keep calling illumis power ‘spells’ which seems to imply that illumi is some sort of assassin wizard rather than a nen user hvbsudhfkjsdjgf
come to think of it, what point was the manga at when this musical was written? it has to be pretty early on, maybe just as nen was being introduced
gon boutta go ham on illumi...Get His Ass
OHHHH GON DOING THE ICONIC ARM GRAB....ARM GRAB REPRISE
gon doin the good ole reliable shounen ‘punch your friend and yell at them so they snap out of a funk’ lol
i do love how typically shounen this is. friendship speeches! but delivered by SONG!
illumis main hobby is butting in at the worst possible moments
HISOKAS BACK OH BOY
hisokas playing card blocked killuas hit hvbhjakdhsfjnakdsf thats like in jojo when those manga blocked dios knives
wow the whole zoldyck squad is here
ooh forbidden zoldyck lore lmao
killua: mom u guys are lame im joining this much cooler family now. bye
i love how hisoka is just weirdly lurking around for all this zoldyck drama lmao
silva seems like such a bro in this but i feel like hes rlly not like that in canon vhauidfhbsjhdkjfk
oh nope there he goes w/the evil laugh lmaooooo
sorry dude but leorio is his dad now
gon sniffing zeburo hgbajkdfshbjkdfjnsjdk oh my god
oh hell yeah some synchronized main character finale dancing
actor showcase! everyone loves kurapika which, same
ah so the director of this musical also directed the sailor moon musicals, which i didnt know existed but of course that exists...thats funny considering the hxh mangaka is married to the sailor moon mangaka
anyways that was fun honestly!!!! i fuckgin love musicals, and musical adaptations of non-musical source materials can be like, SO different tonally, but this honestly felt like a fun filler
it was really interesting seeing something based on the canon from this early on - as i said above, some of the characterizations (like the zoldycks) seems a bit different than we’re used to, but others were spot on - like hisoka only showing up intermittently to sow chaos and do nothing else vhjkadhbfhkjdsfnj im assuming the yorknew arc hadnt happened at this point, but hisokas actions in this musical were hilariously similar to how he acted in the yorknew arc, so, props.
plus it was cool to see the ‘what if’ factor w/hisoka and illumi also being there, espec illumi interacting w/killua bc its so wildly different from how killua reacts to any of his other family members - hes clearly scared of illumi, in a way he isnt w/anyone else, and that was done well here w/the scene where illumi threatens killua’s friends to get killua to listen to him
also the angst was honestly great, and there was some REALLY sweet wholesome parts that i loved. and the music wasnt half bad either!!
i think the VAs did a great job playing the characters - hisokas VA was especially great (and i really loved kurapika too). gons hair was not very similar to how it looks in the show so it was a little more obvious that he was being played by a grown woman, but still a great performance.
anyways fun times, i love musicals and this was a fun ole 2000s filler shounen musical adaptation
#lj watches hxh#well. hxh ancillary material#also we're almost done w/the chimera ant arc but i still gotta edit up my heavens arena stuff hvbhjsdfbjdskgs epic fails#i have all my chimera ant liveblogs ready to go but i dont wanna post things outta order Ls#hxh
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I haven't seen All These Aus so I cant really talk about how respectful they may or may not be but - fandoms using the same ideas/tropes isn't an uncommon thing. Like yes credit if you're pulling the majority of the story/set up (like in this instance where its not something v basic like 'hlvrai but college') but I don't think its necessarily a bad thing. Like will some stuff be unoriginal, yeah, but thats.. kind of the thing that there's always going to be unoriginal fancontent (1/2)
“Like a fandoms content is really self interactive and derivative off of each other. Like I get what you're saying w 'make your own ideas' but this is something that is also happening with other universes/ideas I've seen in the hlvrai fandom. And w every big fandom, especially ones with a young fanbase. Like ik you're saying 'you don't have to stop' but this is also a result of fan community working off of fellow fan ideas. Not everyone is gonna be skilled enough to build much onto the idea (2/2)
Which isn't saying that people shouldn't try or whatever. Point is really just this echoe chamber deal happens w every fandom really and especially with hlvrai's young fans its gonna be more often and with less instances that add much. Its hard to avoid that sort of thing though without discouraging a fandom's collaboration and spreading/sharing of ideas which is what results in some amazing building contributions, but also the echo chambers. (3/2) [sorry theres gonna be 1 more, I know]
I actually 100% get the frustration and I've tuned out of the tags bc it has turned into that echoe chamber of like ask blogs and some other stuff. But I don't think this is something malicious, its really just... people doing usual fandom stuff of seeing an idea they like and making their own thing with it, and in this instance has led to this, but I don't think it's really deserving of a finger wagging or shaming just bc its not producing great content. (4/2)”
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yup, dont disagree with you there; ive seen this kind of thing plenty in other fandom spaces and my intention in sharing my thoughts on the matter was not to shame young artists from deriving inspiration from the work of others, but in this specific instance there's almost an over-saturation of this one idea of which is very articulately crafted by the original writer, quote “protag gets trapped in an old fashioned computer program and interacts with the cast in a 90s webcore environment, cast tries to help protag escape the computer with the eventual help of an outside source partially at fault for the main antagonist - and by extension the protagonist’s plight, in initially helping work on the program, among other things”. this is a very hand wave-y synopsis but u get the idea
almost every re-imagining of this au follows that exact formula, tells almost the exact same story with little deviation, and that under normal circumstances would not be a bad thing for most of these swap aus if there werent, like, literally a dozen of them now. i know for absolute certain no one copy of this idea has ever had malicious intention, and it’s definitely not any one particular person’s fault for contributing to any degree, but it does tend to encourage a bit of piggybacking off of the ideas of other people by copying, rather than taking inspiration from a given piece of media and applying it to their own work, which isn’t necessarily a problem with an immediate (or necessary) solution, if there even is a solution to begin with
as i’ve said i’m not asking people here to drop everything they’re doing and start working on something different, at this rate the hlvrai fandom is so saturated with hundreds of au ideas that if i were to ask you to name one completely random idea offhand i could probably find at least one art piece or a blog for it by now - and that on it’s own is entirely fine! multiple renditions of a similar concept is fine, so long as it isn’t a premise as hyperspecific as y2k’s, imo
i think a good example of “same concept, personal rendition” that’s been relatively harmonious (from what i’ve seen at least) has been the merfolk aus. ive seen at least 3 different fics for that on ao3 all of which i follow and they take the same general ideas (and mer species, oftentimes) and run with it in completely different directions. there are probably tons of other writers and artists for that medium too and i think its fucking great! its really awesome to see peoples individual takes on a concept like that, au wise, and while the core concept is the exact same there’s not too much overlap in environmental premises
the issue i take with people doing similar for the likes of y2kvr is that y2kvr in and of itself is a very unique take on the general, webcore “trapped in a computer/game/etc” theme, it has it’s own unqiue premise, nd i feel like people have overall honed in more on said premise and setting rather than the core concept itself, which has churned out a lot of spinoffs of something much more hyperspecific per result. in general i think people have taken sub-aus a bit too far for this specific concept and i wanted to try and maybe discourage anyone else from jumping on the train at this rate without permission, since mothra has pretty clearly expressed a sense of discomfort towards it now
regardless of my thoughts and opinions on the matter comparative to others, at the end of the day it’s more important to listen to and respect the wishes of the creator, whether it be asking permission first or holding off entirely from here on out . thank you for the ask(s)!
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owo I'm curious. But like could order like all the pmd and why you like/dislike each one?
AHHHHHH !!!!! okay hope ur ready for a lot of rambling this might be one of my favorite asks ever fjlsjfJTKFJ
1.) pmd2 !! this is my favorite by far and my first pmd game , specifically explorers of sky !!!!
the story is SO good , the characters are really good and interesting and memorable , theres a lot to do main game AND post game , not to mention special episodes [ theyre ALL so good but i give my life to special episode 5 . ive replayed it so many times ] !!! i could go on forever ahfjsjkfkg . the only negative things i can rlly think about rn are fixed in the later games [ moving in dungeons can be slow and depending on ur type a lot of dungeons can be hell + teammates can be a nuisance rather than helpful ] but !! a rlly big plus is you can make your own missions thru a generator online and get literally any item you want , its super helpful [ reviver seeds are super important to have ] !! i havent replayed it in a while so i might have more to say later but i really could write papers about this game i love it so much alfjskfk
2.) psmd !! the most recent pmd game , and my second favorite !!!
this game has every pokemon gen 1-7 and every single one has a different mission AND theyre all connected to each other . you can get missions from characters from previous games [ grovyle + celebi mission ; __ ; ] . i recommend playing this game last tho if you plan on playing them all !! the story is pretty good and has some rlly good twists , theres post game but not a ton [ unless u want to do every mission ] , you can befriend and play as any pkmn you want which is rlly cool !!! also theres a pushing mechanic which is not only super helpful but rlly funny to me [ shoves an entire line of teammates out of harms way ] . for the negatives ... the characters are interesting but i dont remember them as well , i wish there was more character development . i dont hate the final boss but ... its kinda a reused concept from pmd3 which i wasnt fully a fan of in the first place [ spoilers ? the final boss isnt a pkmn , its just negativity ] . they bring back apples which isnt rlly bad but i sure didnt miss them . leveling up is HELL . i rlly dislike the fact that you have to buy saves for dungeons though , no quicksaves if you have to do something all of a sudden , no saves at rest stops mid dungeon . you gotta buy em and bring em along , im pretty sure its only this game that does it but i hope they dont keep it . nevertheless its a solid pmd game !!!
3.) pmd3 !! gates to infinity !!! i gotta be honest im barely putting this above red/blue rescue team but i WILL bc despite its very big flaws it also has a lot of ups !!
okay this game along with everything gen 5 gets a lot of hate and i can sure see why with this one but i still think its rlly good !!! im actually gonna start with the negatives on this one to get em out of the way but . paradise building does not interest me . no stacking missions [ you cant do more than one at a time ] , the rewards are just supplies that go towards building paradise , the final boss doesnt rlly interest me [ again spoilers same as psmd: its not a pkmn ] , and it just has so many differences from the usual pmd formula and i cant promise that theyre all ..... positive . plus the VERY limited choices for hero and partner [ i wont complain much bc i wouldve chosen the given pkmn over other starters anyways but . no quiz , only 5 pkmn compared to other games 15+ ? oof ] A..... ANYWAYS now that thats over . POSITIVES ..... i rlly like the characters ! the main ones and even the villains have a little development !! [ dunsparse emolga hydreigon ILY ] the story itself is good ; im not a fan of concepts that appear for one game and are never even mentioned later but the entercards [ ? ] are interesting and the frozen chasm recorder thing may have made me want to cry . i dont want to specifically spoil anything but this game can be a little brutal at times too ? leaving friends behind , being chased down by the villains , being split up from your friends , not gonna say the exact scenes bc of spoils but when things get rlly bad and how desperate the hero and partner can get when theyre trying to protect each other ..... [ cries ] . while some mechanics of the game arent my favorite , the story is good and can make u damn emotional .......
4.) pmd !! red/blue rescue team !!! i cant even call this my least favorite bc i have no real least favorites when it comes to this series but i just like the others a little better ahkfjsjfkc
im a little more biased bc this is the last game of the series i played even tho its the original . BUT i still have so many good things to say about it and i would probably recommend this first ? i dont remember there being a lot of characters compared to the other games but they sure leave an impression on you . i also like how the partner is kinda sassy and like , they just met you but would literally do anything for you and believe in you even when you dont believe in yourself . every pmd game has good twists but i RLLY like the one they pulled here . also you spend a good amount of the game being on the run from people you trusted literally trying to kill you which is fucked up but i really like how they played the story . i didnt even play it that long ago but writing this makes me want to play it again smfjkskfj ... the main negatives i can think about are all stuff fixed in future games again [ and you can also do the same make your own mission generator and get items to make the game easier ] . a lot of the bosses are the same type / resistant to the same type so depending on your hero / partner it could go rlly smoothly or rlly badly [ to anyone choosing grass type pkmn . godspeed ] . i think this might be the shortest pmd game and it might be hard bc its the first , but if youre looking to rlly get into the series id go with this one first . if you just want to test the waters id go with pmd2 !!
T.... TYSM FOR THE ASK and these are all opinions of course and its just my thoughts but if you got all the way down here . ily
#I AM ... SO SORRY FOR THE WALL OF TEXT AHFKSJFJ#ill try to put it in a readmore whenever i get to my computer agsin .#i really do have a lot to say about this series .... i just love it sm ; ___ ;#rosepowdr#long post#ado.txt
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