#but there wasn’t any ones that matched the scale for the Evil Villains figures

[fanofflames]

Aaaah, finally got the new Overhaul figure! He’s so beautiful, I can’t believe how detailed he is. The photos don’t do him justice at all.

[bellamyroselia]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

______

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

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

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

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Vice and Virtue in Tolkien’s Works

I’ve been rereading Dante’s Purgatorio (easily my favourite of the three sections, both for having a very satisfying structure and for its themes of repentance and reform), and the structure inspired this post. Each level of purgatory has images, words, or both, associated with the vice being reformed and its corresponding virtue (the examples being drawn both from the Bible and Greco-Roman history and mythology) and it gave me ideas for a discussion of similar themes in Tolkien’s works.

The structure is: 1) Pride/Humility; 2) Envy/Generosity of Spirit; 3) Wrath/Charity; 4) Sloth/Zeal); 5) Avarice/Simplicity; 6) Gluttony/Abstinence; 7) Lust/Romantic Love.

1) Pride/Humility

Saruman: Our time is at hand: the world of Men, which we must rule. But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see.

Frodo: I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.

This is easily the primary emphasis in Tolkien’s works. The fall of all his main villains (Morgoth, Sauron, Fëanor, the Númenoreans, Saruman) and as well as other non-villainous tragic characters (Túrin, Thingol, Turgon, Thorin, Denethor) is characterized by pride - the desire to be the one calling the shots, the desire for greatness and others’ recognition of that greatness, the refusal to listen to the advice or views of others.

It’s there in Melkor’s desire for his theme to be the only one heard in the Music; in Sauron’s desire to rule the world and arrange everything as he thinks best; in Fëanor’s determination to take any advice, correction, or disagreement as a personal attack, his desire for rulership in Middle-earth, and his attitude that the Silmarils are more important than anything anyone else has done or created; the late-stage Númenoreans’ campaign of imperialist conquest. It’s there in Túrin’s, Thingol’s, and Turgon’s rejection of good advice; in Thingol’s attitude towards other peoples, whether it’s Beren or the dwarves; in Denethor’s conviction that Gondor is the only place and people of any account in the war against Sauron.

Humility, in contrast, is mainly seen in the form of hobbits. None of them have any idea what they’re doing when they leave Rivendell (Sam and Pippin don’t even know where Mordor is), and they know they’ve got no idea. They’re not going because they see themselves as specially skilled or qualified, but because it needs to be done. And that’s the very reason Frodo can resist the Ring so long, and Sam can resist it, because they don’t have any grand ideas of themselves.

The ability to say I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ll try to do what’s right is pretty crucial to humility; even members of the Fellowship who are far more experienced, skilled and knowledgeable than the hobbits show it. Aragorn says it, in the search for Merry and Pippin when they’re captured by orcs. Pride could easily say I need to go with the Ring-bearer, that’s the most important task or I need to go to Gondor and lead the war against Sauron as their King. But Aragorn lets himself trust in other people doing their parts, and focuses on rescuing his companions - the thing that no one else is a available to do - even as the chase seems increasingly hopeless. It’s also seen in Gandalf, who openly admitted he was scared to go when the Valar first sent him, and wandered around as an old man in a battered cloak and hat, talking with everyone, rather than setting himself up as a Respectable Dignified Authority Figure the way Saruman did.

The Silmarillion has fewer examples of humility than LOTR (perhaps why things turn out so much worse there) but there are a few in the Leithian. Lúthien is another case of saying I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ll do it because no one else will when she sets off to rescue Beren. Finrod walks away from his crown and realm to help a friend.

2) Envy/Generosity of Spirit

Denethor: I will not step down to be the dotatd chamberlain of an upstart.

Faramir: My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?

Envy is akin to pride, but I’m characterizing it as being specifically the resentment of being surpassed (or even equalled) by another.

Fëanor is again a major example of this, specifically in his resentment of Fingolfin and of the descendents of Indis more generally. Peoples of Middle-earth notes that he resented the name Nolofinwë (Fingolfin’s Quenya name, roughly means ‘wise-Finwë or ‘learned-Finwë’) due to regarding himself as not only the most skilled of the Noldor at craftwork (which he was), but also the most skilled at lore/scholarship (which he wasn’t), and likewise resented the name Arafinwë (Finarfin’s Quenya name). He’s in a mental place of resenting anything positive that can be said about his brothers as if it inherently detracts from him. And he takes the same attitude towards Men (‘No other race shall oust us!’), treating their very existence as a threat to the Eldar. Losgar is the peak of this: he’s willing to sabotage his own war effort to prevent Fingolfin from participating. This is contasted with Maedhros’ attitude after being rescued by Fingon, when he willingly gives up the crown and, later, moves across Beleriand to the most exposed section of the northern border to avoid conflict. His own status isn’t his priority; peace with his family and the best interests of the war against Morgoth are his priorities.

Denethor is another major example, seeing both Aragorn’s return and Faramir’s respect for Gandalf as personal affronts to himself. (Gandalf points out that the literal job description of a steward is to be in charge until the king returns. When the king comes back, that means you’ve done your job, not that you’re being demoted. Denethor is not interested in hearing this.) He’s also mentioned in the Appendices to have resented the respect and admiration recieved by Thorongil [i.e. Aragorn in disguise] during the days of their youth. In very similar ways, Saruman resented the high regard that some (like Galadriel) had for Gandalf, and saw Gandalf as a rival. Thorongil and Gandalf were not interested in rivalry; they were more interested in what was achieved than in who was achieving it. Faramir is the contrast here - he is interested in the good of Gondor, not his own status, and has no jealousy of Aragorn.

3. Wrath/Charity

Fëanor: See, half-brother! This is sharper than thy tongue. Try but once more to usurp my place and the love of my father, and maybe it will rid the Noldor of one who seeks to be the master of thralls.

Gandalf: It was Pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand; Pity, and Mercy, not to strike without need.

I would say that this is the third-most-emphasized of the vices in Tolkien’s works, after pride and avarice. And, of course, another Fëanor example: both his threat on Fingolfin’s life and his actions during the Return of the Noldor, the latter being driven by wrath primarily against Morgoth and secondarily against everyone else in his vicinity (Valar! Teleri! Fingolfin and anyone who supports him!). It’s the spillover that’s the problem, and the self-centredness; hating Morgoth isn’t a problem in and of itself, but Fëanor’s taking the fight against evil and turning it into a personal vendetta, with disastrous consequences.

Túrin is another example, most particularly in three events: causing the death of Saeros, burning the hall of Brodda in Dor-lómin, and killing Brandir. The former two are provoked, the latter isn’t, but all of them are sudden deeds of anger that only serve to make matters worse.

The contrasting virtue is charity, mercy shown to people that you have good reason to be hostile towards. Fingon’s rescue of Maedhros. Lúthien’s sparing of Curufin when he and Celegorm attacked her and Beren. Frodo sparing Gollum and treating him with kindness and compassion.

4. Sloth/Zeal

Guard Hobbit: It won’t do no good talking that way. He’ll get to hear of it. And if you make so much noise, you’ll wake the Chief’s Big Man.

Merry: Shire-folk have been so comfortable so long they don’t know what to do. They just want a match, though, and they’ll go up in fire.

This is comparatively less of an emphasis in Tolkien’s works than some of the other pairings, but I can think of some examples. The best one is Saruman’s takeover of the Shire and the subsequent liberation. Sloth is the characteristic hobbit vice (not gluttony; I’ll get to that); they tend towards being comfortable and complacent and don’t like being bestirred. Even Frodo dawdled around for half a year after learning about the Ring, mostly because he was reluctant to go. And under first Lotho and then Saruman, everyone (except Tooks) more or less puts up with an abuses because they don’t want the trouble or danger of standing up against them. It’s the return of Merry, Pippin, Sam, and Frodo, who have experience fighting evil on a much larger scale (and who can organize things) that spurs them to stand up for themselves and their home.

5. Avarice/Simplicity

Celegorm: For the Silmarils we alone claim, until the world ends.

Gandalf: I wonder what has become of [the mithril-shirt]? Gathering dust still in Michel Delving Mathom-house, I suppose.

Avarice is, I would say, the second-most-emphasized vice in Tolkien’s works, after pride. The central conflicts in both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings are objects (they’re in the titles!): the Silmarils and the Ring. The Oath is almost the strongest possible expression of avarice, the most extreme statement of this is mine that a person can make; The Ring is an even more extreme expression, as Sauron makes an object that is literally part of himself. And both conflicts are resolved through the renunciation of claim on these objects, in Eärendil’s journey to Valinor (and the Silmaril becoming a star that is seen by everyone and owned by no one) and Frodo and Sam’s mission to destroy the Ring.

The Silmarils themselves are not evil; they are good and hallowed objects, and fights between elves, dwarves, and men are the result of the Oath (the kinslayings) and the connection with the dragon-contaminated and Mîm-cursed treasure of Nargothrond (Thingol and the dwarves of Nogrod). The Ring is evil, and inducing avarice is its most basic power, even among people like Sméagol and Déagol who could never actually wield it; letting it go is incredibly difficult, and Bilbo and Sam are the only people in the history of the Ring ever to do it.

Avarice is also a central theme in The Hobbit, and dragon-treasure is specifically noted as provoking avarice in people who are in any way inclined towards that vice. Smaug is practically a physical manifestation of avarice in his rage over losing one small cup that he has no use for from an immense hoard, and both Thorin and the master of Lake-town fall prey to the dragon-sickness.

I’ve given ‘simplicity’ as the antonym, and I thought of ‘generosity’ as well, but neither of those is quite right. The opposite of avarice is holding lightly to things, and it’s a particular virtue of hobbits. This is seen both in their birthday parties (the tradition of giving away possessions) and the Michel Delving Mathom-house, a museum for old heirlooms that people feel they don’t need to have around. The most beautiful example is Bilbo’s mithril-shirt (worth more than the entire Shire!) spending some time sitting around there.

It’s worth nothing that the vice of avarice in Tolkien’s works isn’t associated with having stuff, just with holding to stuff. Bag End being comfortable isn’t a problem. The Noldor having piles of jewels isn’t a problem provided that they’re sharing them and letting them go, as in the Noontide of Valinor (gemstones scattered on the seashore!) or Finrod giving them away in Middle-earth. The issue comes when the owning becomes what a person values; the signal that Fëanor is becoming too tied to the Silmarils is when he prefers to lock them away so no one else can see them.

6. Gluttony/Abstinence

Gollum: He’ll eat us all, if he gets it, eat all the world!

The lembas had a virtue without which they would long ago have laid down to die. It did not satisfy desire...and yet this waybread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and gave strength to endure...

Gluttony is distinguished from avarice as the desire to consume things, not merely accumulate them. This is an interesting one, because Tolkien has no issue with the consuption of large amounts of food for enjoyment (which hobbits do frequently and enthusiastically!). As with possessions, enjoyment of physical things isn’t seen as problematic. The enjoyment of everyday pleasures is specifically discussed as morally desirable in a way that contrasts with avaricious accumulation (“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”)

However, there is one large (very, very large) example of the concept of gluttony as unlimited consumption and appetite: Ungoliant. Ungoliant represents not the hoarding of things, but their destruction, and is continually described with very physical terms of appetite and devouring. Shelob and the spiders of Mirkwood are lesser versions of the same concept. There are other mosters in the same vein: Sauron’s werewolves and Carcharoth. On of the names for Carcharoth is Anfauglir, the Jaws of Thirst, specifically invoking the idea of insatiable consumption.

And gluttony can be described more broadly as an form of overconsumption which uses up or destroys things; pollution could be a modern-day example. Looked at in that way, gluttony can be considered the end-stage of all evil in Tolkien, in the same way that pride is its beginning-stage. The ruin of the Anfauglith, the Desolation of the Morannon, the trees of Fangorn used to feed the fires of Isengard or hacked down for no purpose (and even Losgar, if you like) are all its work. Gollum (heavily driven by mundane hunger) grasps this when he fears Sauron regaining the Ring: “He’ll eat us all, if he gets it, eat all the world!” Ungoliant is the final stage of all evil.

In the same way that hobbits enjoying ample meals isn’t treated as a moral flaw, abstinence isn’t particularly notable as a virtue. However, it does come up in forms like Sam noting that lembas provides more endurance as the hobbits rely on it solely in their final journey to Mordor. This indicates that Tolkien regards the ability to go without physical pleasures when necessary as a virtue (also symbolized by Sam’s heartrending decision to give up his cooking gear!) but doesn’t place value on ascetism for its own sake.

If we want to expand on the metaphorical idea of gluttony as overconsumption/destruction, then we can also see healing/restoration as its opposing virtue, in forms like the box of soil that Galadriel gives Sam, which he uses to restore the trees of the Shire.

7. Lust/Romantic Love

Celegorm became enamoured of [Lúthien]...they purposed to let the King perish, and to keep Lúthien, and force Thingol to give her hand to Celegorm.

Beren: Though all to ruin fell the world, and were dissolved and backward hurled, unmade into the old abyss, yet were its making good, for this - the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea - that Lúthien for a time should be.

Lust is often regarded simply as a term for physical attraction, and its condemnation as a type of prudishness, but I’m going to present a different take, one that draws on its connection with the two preceding vices (the three are consistently grouped together by Dante). Lust is when the two previous desires, of ownership and consumption/use, are applied not to objects but to a person.

It’s an extremely rare vice among elves, with only a few examples in Elvish history: Celegorm, Eöl, Maeglin. In all cases, there is sexual desire combined with the desire for control, turning to violence when that control is thwarted: Celegorm’s imprisonment of Lúthien in the attempt to force her to marry him, and the later assault on her and Beren; Eöl’s restrictions on Aredhel and murder of her when she leaves him; Maeglin’s attempt to kidnap Idril during the Fall of Gondolin.

In contrast, the examples of romantic love, which are primarily the elf-human couples and especially Beren and Lúthien, combine desire with value for the freedom and identity of the beloved, and with self-sacrifice (or willingness to take on risks) for their sake. Beren’s song before setting out for Angband is a celebration of Lúthien’s existence, irrespective of what may happen to him. Lúthien counters with the expression that she does not want to exist apart from him, and purpose of lovers is to act together and to guard and support each other. Elwing runs through the waves to Eärendil on the shores of Valinor because she would rather face the same risks he does than be safe apart from him. Eärendil accepts immortality for love of Elwing. Arwen accepts death for love of Aragorn.

[songofclarity]

For a character who was the catalyst for all the events of the novel WRH got way too little attention and show time in the novel heck we don't even get a face off between him and the protagonists. To me if JGS was a pig in a golden pigsty, JGY a sneaky fox, and XY a rabid dog, then WRH was a mighty dragon. He had all the makings of an amazing villain but that potential was wasted and imo that is one of mdzs' greatest flaws

Mighty dragon Wen RuoHan is so true, Anon!

The spoiled pig in the golden pigsty came out on top after the Sunshot Campaign. He had all the money, a beautiful family, and an intact sect, and yet he wanted all the power left in Wen RuoHan’s wake--as if the world hadn’t fought for three years to get rid of the original.

The treacherous snake who cuddled up to others to steal their warmth and yet bit to kill at the first sign of movement. He acted like that warmth was his due and he had no choice but to bite. Surely the actions of others would either do him harm or leave him cold! He tricked Wen RuoHan into believing their scales meant they were similar, but he only ever dreamed of being a pig in that golden pigsty. (There is a connotation of mischief and charm with “sneaky fox” that does not fit Jin GuangYao in my mind lol)

The rabid dog who was used to being beaten and yet would accept a warm bed and a dish of food from any kind hand. He won’t bite the hand that feeds him but he will absolutely maul anyone who threatens that warm bed and new home he found--or anyone who looks like an easy target for some fun and games.

And then there is the mighty dragon!

I've been trying to respond to this ask for a few days because I agree and yet I also kind of disagree on that last point. I find it hard to say Wen RuoHan’s potential was wasted because it’s his potential to do harm that kept the Sunshot Campaign alive but also his lesser-discussed potential to be influenced towards doing good that could have prevented a lot of grief. Although he didn’t get a lot of page time, his importance to the story is practically on par with Wei WuXian himself and he continues to exist as a specter of evil even after he is dead.

This quote comes to mind during empathy:

On Koi Tower, people came and went. Before Nie MingJue's high viewpoint, the crowd parted again and again, with both sides nodding at him in respect, calling him "ChiFeng-Zun." Wei WuXian thought, Such a show of extravagance is going to reach even the heavens. All these people both fear and respect Nie MingJue. There's quite a few people who fear me, though not a lot who respect me. (Ch. 49 ERS)

One of the major conflicts in MDZS is based on one question: who gets to be the next Wen RuoHan after the Sunshot Campaign? And the sane answer is that it should be nobody. The Sects are independent entities who should take care of themselves and work in cooperation without controlling each other. The Wen Sect was never actually in charge of the other sects so it’s quite twisted for the Chief Cultivator position to be created in the wake of Wen RuoHan’s death. Wen RuoHan is still a catalyst for events even after he is murdered!

More so, when people were saying they hoped Wen Qing would one day take over as Sect Leader Wen because she had a normal way of doing things, it’s because Wen RuoHan calling the former Sect Leader Nie over to passive-aggressively slap his saber a few times and tell him it is a good saber is just bizarre. Of course Wen Qing’s ways of doing things are normal!

Compare Wen Qing being angry:

"If you really are grateful then put in some effort! What [the] hell kind of medicine did you just make? Brew it again!" (Ch. 60 ERS)

To Wen RuoHan:

And, thus, Wen RuoHan wasn't pleased anymore...

Wen RuoHan laughed after he heard. “Are you sure about that? Well, I want to see.” (Ch. 49, ERS)

But back to the scene at Koi Tower, it’s funny that the one closest to becoming Wen RuoHan is quite possibly Nie MingJue, the one now respected and feared, the one who fought the most against Jin GuangShan creating the Chief Cultivator seat. Why did Jin GuangShan create the Chief Cultivator seat? Because no one was ever going to respect him or to listen to him, much less respect him and fear his power to let him do whatever he pleased. But even then, Nie MingJue had to travel to Koi Tower to point Baxia while he made his demands. Jin GuangShan and Jin GuangYao had to murder and lie and scheme to get what they wanted. Wei WuXian had to figuratively set himself on fire. Wen RuoHan simply had to call his target of his ire over and he came, and then he let fate run its course.

Wei WuXian, Nie MingJue, Jin GuangShan, Jin GuangYao--none of them ever held even a fraction of the power wielded by Wen RuoHan. A power shown when Lan XiChen and a bunch of other juniors looked at the waterborne abyss and didn’t even dare to speak the name of the Qishan Wen aloud. Our spoiled pig and even rabid dog look to demonic cultivation to gain that fear element since they lack the wow factors of a powerful cultivator. Wei WuXian and Nie MingJue end up dead because a spoiled pig and a treacherous snake want their golden pigsty to go uncontested.

So it’s hard to speak of Wen RuoHan not meeting his potential when all the Sects left in his wake never achieve a fraction of what Wen RuoHan had. And even then, at no point in the story does Wen RuoHan ever wake up in the morning and pick murder, although the same cannot be said for the likes of Wen Chao, Jin GuangYao, Xue Yang, and even Wei WuXian.

So what I’m getting at here is that despite Wen RuoHan’s lack of appearances, we learn a lot about him through other characters trying to either work for or against him or emulate him. And he does face off against one of our protagonists: Nie MingJue! Although that we don’t get to see their first fight in Yangquan when Nie MingJue was fresh is truly frustrating!

Because even though we do get a Wen RuoHan face-off with a protagonist, it’s his assassination that gets all the attention--and it’s because Nie MingJue avoids talking about traumatic experiences and Jin GuangYao already got what he wanted from that event. The mural at Koi Tower immortalizing the assassination of Wen RuoHan is a snapshot of the heroic Jin GuangYao taking out the Big Bad in a glorious moment. It was also, however, a huge red flag that Jin GuangYao is willing to murder someone who gave him respect, protection, and empowerment so long as he could use their blood to pave his road ahead.

I do have to wonder on the degree of Wen RuoHan’s villainy when he didn’t even bother to take the life of his son’s killer and he passed on the opportunity to torture him, too. But no one in the story talks about Wen RuoHan as a person. They talk about Sect Leader Wen as a symbol, and he becomes a symbol of evil.

Everyone becomes so focused on Wen RuoHan as the Big Bad that for all the crimes the spoiled pig and the treacherous snake perpetrate, the majority of the cultivation world responds with, “If this [evil act and/or abuse of power] was done by the Wen Sect, we would be really concerned. Since the people doing it are not-Wens, it can’t be evil and thus we can allow it to happen.”

And thus the Jin get away with doing a lot of evil. Lan XiChen can look at Jin GuangYao and say, “he has his reasons,” because Lan XiChen has been victimized by the Wens and Jin GuangYao murdered Wen RuoHan so surely there is a divide there between good and evil, right and wrong. This is a very convenient way for letting the Jin get away with doing a lot of bad things! Wei WuXian rescuing the Wen Remants, meanwhile, places him conveniently within the Wen-Sect-Is-Bad camp, and we all know how that goes.

So I do agree that Wen RuoHan had all the potential to become a great villain, not just because he has all the power and followers that let him do whatever he wanted but also because the cultivation world sold us the story of him being a monstrous villain who loved blood and torture. But when the other sects create an uprising against the Wen Sect and label it the Sunshot Campaign, not once does Wen RuoHan try to subdue them. Not once does Wen RuoHan ever turn to violence and punishment or slaughter. He had the potential to be a great villain and stomp on all of them! But he doesn’t.

And I don’t think that’s because his potential went unmet. That’s just his character. He is an antagonist with the potential to become a great villain and yet he stays his hand. His power instead draws villains to him like flies to honey. There’s a reason people wear their time spent as a guest cultivator of the Wen Sect with pride! Wen RuoHan is good to his Sect. The perks and benefits cannot be matched.

But it’s not only the dregs of society that come to the Wen Sect and abuse its power. Wen RuoHan has three morally distinct people closest to him that reveal that he has the potential to be well-rounded:

Wen Qing: speaks her mind, a doctor, refuses to kill, intelligent, talented in the liberal arts, accompanies Wen RuoHan to discussion conferences, pays her debts, won’t die for the main branch which is just an alternative of her don’t-kill policy which is don’t-die-for-stupid-shit-customs policy

Wen ZhuLiu: loyal to a fault, dedicated, obedient, was told to protect Wen Chao and does his job incredibly well because this is how he pays his debt to Wen RuoHan for saving him, doesn’t do anything unnecessary, doesn’t speak unnecessary words

Meng Yao: loyal only to himself at the end of the day, prideful, hardworking, scheming, ambitious, supports petty revenge, pro-murder, stabs as a warning, will sell you to satan for one corn chip, does not acknowledge owing debts to anyone but has the receipts on what others owe him

All three characters are respected for their talents and effectively do as Wen RuoHan tells them. Wen Qing leaves for the Yiling Supervisory Office and takes her rational mind with her. Wen ZhuLiu leaves to protect Wen Chao and leaves Wen RuoHan undefended. Meng Yao makes himself useful in Nightless City and thus stays closest to Wen RuoHan’s side. So who is the one speaking in Wen RuoHan’s ear the most? The one saying murder is OK so take revenge.

And even then Wen RuoHan still doesn’t take his revenge, I’m just saying.

But what I’m trying to get at on this scenic route is that Wen RuoHan is left with all this wonderful potential for a reason. Not only do we see his potential but other characters see it, too. His potential is turned into someone else’s profit. Nie MingJue claims that Wen Qing should have spoken up more, which implies Wen RuoHan has the potential for change or even to do good. The majority, however,  persist on not just his potential but his status as a great evil. The characters in the story make Wen RuoHan into the penultimate evil by a post-war consensuses. With that, the ceiling is pushed so high that other evils are able to bloom in the glass house they’ve made.

“Whatever we do can never be as bad as what Wen RuoHan and the Wen Sect did,” the cultivation world says as they let a mass murderer run rampant, as people are used for demonic cultivation test subjects, as prisoners of war are beaten and killed, as a dozen women are raped and murdered for petty revenge, as brother betrays brother, as a father murders his innocent son for political gain, as juniors are kidnapped and used as bait...

So absolutely Wen RuoHan was a catalyst for many events because people either wanted to be him, have him in their fighting corner, or kill him. He perpetuated events by wanting to correct the cultivation world as he saw fit by indoctrinating juniors in the Wen Sect ways or by setting up supervisory offices to prevent rebellious behavior. He delegated these tasks which put people in positions of power that they only saw fit to abuse.

But Wen RuoHan’s potential to be a great villain competes with his inherent lack of interest in causing death and destruction. I think that makes him not just a compelling antagonist compared to all the others but a fascinating character in general. Considering MDZS gets praised for all its morally grey characters, I don’t think Wen RuoHan should be left out of the conversation.

[minervacasterly]

Queen Mary (I) Tudor -The Woman behind the Legend of 'Bloody Mary'

"As Mary continued to face Protestant treason she became even more ruthless, with the infamous burnings intended to eliminate what she perceived as a stubborn and destabilising minority. In our context we see Mary's actions as those of a fanatic. In her context she was eliminating fanatics, and of the most dangerous kind, incorrigible rebels against God and queen. But Mary also had to work positively, to build a future, and this unravelled in the face of her infertility and declining health. She failed in her ultimate duty to produce a child and this meant, once again, that the wider family was key to the future. Mary's preferred choice as her heir, was Margaret Douglas, could not compete with the claims of Henry VIII's second daughter and, as Elizabeth took note, it was the knowledge that she would succeed her sister that fueled the disorder and rebellion against Mary. With the loss of Calais in the last year of Mary's life it would be easy for her enemies to paint the young, Protestant Elizabeth's accession as a brilliant new dawn. It is as such that it is still projected. Mary remains associated with her late seventeenth-century sobriquet 'Bloody Mary', and an infamous recent advertisement for the London Dungeon depicted her face transforming into a demon-zombie. Elizabeth, by contrast, has been played in films by a series of beautiful actresses: Elizabeth is ever Cate Blanchett, fairy queen, to Mary's bitter, grey-faced Kathy Burke. Yet these sisters were neither simple heroines nor villains. Both were rulers of their time and we can only understand Elizabeth if we see, as she did, what the Tudor sisters had in common and how she could learn from Mary's example. Most significant for Elizabeth was the fact that Mary's Protestant enemies had sought to redefine the nature of a 'true' king. They argued that religion was more important than blood, or victory in battles -a true king was Protestant- and that all women were by nature unsuited to rule over men. Elizabeth's response was to offer her ordinary subjects a theatrical representation of herself as a 'true' ruler: the seeds of which had been sown by Mary herself in her speech during the Wyatt revolt, in which she is a mother who loves her subjects as if they were her children. Here was a female authority figure accepted as part of the divine order." ~Leanda de Lisle, TUDOR

"The blackening of Mary's name began in Elizabeth's reign and gathered force at the end of the 17th century, when James II compounded the view that Catholic monarchs were a disaster for England. But it was really the enduring popularity of John Foxe which shaped the view of her that has persisted for 450 years. Attempts to soften her image have been made, but their tendency to depict her as a sad little woman who would have been better off as the Tudor equivalent of a housewife is almost as distasteful as the legend of Bloody Mary. To dismiss her life as nothing more than a personal tragedy is both patronizing and mistaken. One of the main themes of Mary's existence is the triumph of determination over adversity. She lived in a violent, intolerant age, surrounded by the intrigues of a time when men and women gambled their lives for advancement at court. Deceit, like ambition, was endemic among the power-seekers of mid-Tudor England who passed, in procession, through her life. Pride, stubbornness and an instinct for survival saw her through tribulations that would have destroyed a lesser woman. Her bravery put her on the throne and kept her there, so that when she died she was able to bequeath to Elizabeth a precious legacy that is often overlooked: she had demonstrated that a woman could rule in her own right. The vilification of Mary has obscured the many areas of continuity between her rule and those of the other Tudors. Today, despite the fact that much more is known about her reign, she is still the most maligned and misunderstood of English monarchs. For Mary Tudor, the first queen of England, truth has not been the daughter of time." ~Linda Porter, THE MYTH OF BLOODY MARY

"Foxe's account would shape the popular narrative of Mary's reign for the next four hundred and fifty years. Generations of schoolchildren would grow up knowing the first Queen of England only as "Bloody Mary", a Catholic tyrant who sent nearly three hundred Protestants to their deaths, a point made satirically in W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman's 1930s parody 1066 and All That. Mary's presence in a recent survey of the most evil men and women in history is testament to Foxe's enduring legacy. But there is, of course, a different Mary: a woman marked by suffering, devout in her faith and exceptional in her courage. From a childhood in which she was adored and feted and then violently rejected, a fighter was born. Her resolve almost cost her her life as her father, and then her brother, sought to subjugate her to their wills. Yet Mary maintained her faith and self-belief. Despite repeated attempts to deprive her of her life and right to the throne, the warrior princess turned victor and became the warrior princess turned victor and became the warrior queen. The boldness and scale of her achievements are often overlooked. The campaign that Mary led in the summer of 1553 would prove to be the only successful revolt against central government in sixteenth-century England. She, like her grandfather Henry VII and grandmother Isabella of Castile, had to flight for her throne. In the moment of crisis she proved decisive, courageous, and "Herculean" -and won the support of the English people as the legitimate Tudor heir. Mary was a conscientious, hardworking queen who was determined to be closely involved in government business and policy making. She would rise "at daybrea when, after saying her prayers and hearing mass in private," she would "transact business incessantly until after midnight." As rebels thereatend teh capital in January 1554 and she was urged to flee, Mary stood firm and successfully rallied Londoners to her defense. She was also a woman who lived by her conscience and was prepared to die for her faith. And she expected the same of others. Her religious defiance was matched by a personal infatuation with Phililp, her Spanish husband. Her love for him and dependence on her "true father", the Emperor Charles V, was unwavering. Her determination to honor her husband's will led England into an unpopular war with France and the loss of Calais. There was no fruit of the union, and so at her premature death there was no Catholic heir. Her own phantom pregnancies, together with epidemics and harvest failures across the country, left her undermined and unpopular. Her life, always one of tragic contrast, ended in personal tragedy as Philip abandoned her, never to return, even as his queen lay dying. In many ways Mary failed as a woman but triumphed as a queen. She ruled with the full measure of royal majesty and achieved much of what she set out to do. She won her rightful throne, married her Spanish prince, and restored the country to Roman Catholicism. The Spanish marriage was a match with the most powerful ruling house in Europe, and the highly favorable marriage treaty ultimately won the support of the English government. She had defeated the rebels and preserved the Tudor monarchy. Her Catholicism was not simply conservative but influenced by her humanist education and showed many signs of broad acceptance before she died. She was an intelligent, politically adept, and resolute monarch who proved to be very much her own woman. Thanks to Mary, John Aylmer, in exile in Switzerland, could confidently assert that "it is not in England so dangerous a matter to have a woman ruler, as men take it to be." By securing the throne following Edward's attempts to bar both his sisters, she ensured that the crown continued along the legal line of Tudor succession. Mary laid down other important precedents that would benefit her sister. Upon her accession as the first queen regnant of England, she redefined royal ritual and law, thereby establishing that a female ruler, married or unmarried, would enjoy identical power and authority to male monarchs. Mary was the Tudor trailblazer, a politiccal pioneer whose reign redefined the English monarchy." ~Anna Whitelock, MARY TUDOR: PRINCESS, BASTARD, QUEEN

Furthermore, as the country shifted from Catholicism to Protestantism, people began to find it easier to vilify her. During the Victorian age, England was at its height. People would say that the sun never set on the English Empire, and as a result, there was a growing sense of nationalism. Previously beloved figures like Queen Elizabeth I, Kings Edward III, Henry V, among others, were no longer kings and queens for people to admire and look upon but national symbols of pride, who were almost god-like. Edward III's victories against the French, Henry V's conquest of France, Elizabeth's Protestantism and victory against Spain with the Spanish Armada and other Catholic rivals, were extolled, and glorified, while Mary I's foreign ancestry was looked down upon. Ironically, all of these monarchs were also foreign in one way or another. You can say that Queen Elizabeth I wasn't because her parents were English, but what about her paternal ancestry, or her maternal one? No matter which way you look at it, she had foreign ancestry as much as any monarch. In fact, the Victorian era's own monarch, was of foreign descent as well! Victoria wasn't even an English name. She was named after her mother, Victoria of the Saxe-Coburg clan who was German and she married her cousin, who was also German. It was very common for royals to marry other royals, which meant that their offspring would be of foreign descent. In Mary's time this wouldn't be a reason to look down on her, on the contrary, she could point to her royal ancestors, be they foreign or not, with pride as a sign of how much royal blood flowed through her veins, making her eligible to be her father's heir. But as it has been pointed out before, times change and with it, so does our view of every historical figure.

[c-is-for-circinate]

The Three Dragons, or, Repentence, Revelry, and the Hero Resolve (a tale of Onde)

So when I offered to go telling stories from my D&D game the other, I got several votes for the elves, and I wrote that one out, but several people were also very interested in the dragons, and, well.  The Hero Resolve is one of my very favorite not-technically-a-god-but-honestly-might-as-well-be NPCs in this game, and making up folklore for a world that doesn’t exist is pretty damn awesome, so--

Once upon a time, there were three evil dragons.

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Things tend to come in threes in stories.  On Nokomoris, where the entire eastern side of the continent has been settled for tens of thousands of years by dwarves, gnomes, and humans, tales of people-in-threes are everywhere.  This tale in particular, which has been told and retold so many times in a million forms that it’s barely recognizable, is sometimes told about a dwarf, a gnome, and a human villain, a trio of bandits or thieves or murderers or the like.  It’s also sometimes told about three trolls, or three vampires, or three unwary foxes, or anything at all that might bring harm to a small village in the middle of nowhere.

The way the story is most truthfully told, the way that matches up, more than it doesn’t, with the world that actually happened--begins with three dragons.  They were all of them adults but far from old yet, and they lived together in the mountains somewhere, in one lair shared between the three of them.

The largest and strongest and proudest of them all was the black dragon.  His very favorite thing was to come roaring in to a village or farm and strike terror into every heart, to ravage and ruin it and leave half of it to spoiling without even taking it for himself, and send the survivors terrified away to tell tales of his power and glory.  He was, he knew in his heart, the very very best; and he was full of violence and wrath, but his greatest sin was pride.

The fastest and cleverest and most joyfully cruel of them all was the green dragon.  Her very favorite thing to do was to catch just a scant clawful of little squishy two-legged people, and promise their survival if they’d play her game and could win it.  She never played fair but sometimes she let them go, if they’d entertained her just exactly the right amount to tickle her happy.  The world was, she knew in her heart, the most wonderful toy to be played; she knew vengeance and anger, but her greatest sin was cruelty.

The third dragon, the blue dragon, was the youngest and smallest of the three.  They were not as strong or as fast as their friends, though they were sturdy (and any dragon is strong and fast enough.)  They were not as clever or as vain, but they were wise (and every dragon is smart and beautiful enough.)  They were, in fact, very much the most practical dragon of the trio, and very much the most beloved.

(But C, you say, that’s not how dragon stats compare in 5e at all.  It’s blue dragons with the high str and cha, black dragons with the high dex.  The adult blue dragon CR is higher than the others!)

(But y’all, I say--this is a fairytale.  And also not all chromatic dragons exactly match their written stat blocks.)

(Yes.  I said “not all chromatic dragons”.  Back to the story.)

The third dragon was the practical one, as I said, and was very much the one who made it possible for three adult dragons to live and hunt and pillage the countryside together instead of fighting each other to miserable pieces.  The blue dragon had seen very easily how the three dragons might fight, and might destroy one another in the process, or might go their separate ways and each take his or her or their own small patch of territory, to defend from heroes and larger dragons alike--or they could band together and rule and ravage the skies. 

The blue dragon made sure that when they chose which village to attack, it would be large and mighty enough to satisfy the black dragon’s vanity, and that they didn’t accidentally step on anybody interesting enough to satisfy the green dragon’s need for a challenge.  They made sure that any survivors left to spread their tales could not raise an army against them, or find the secret trails up the mountainside to the dragons’ shared lair.  They ate nearly every two-legged victim the green dragon might have let go.  Their greatest sin was callousness, for they cared about no one at all besides their two dragon companions, and them only barely at that.

And so the three dragons fought, and flew, and thought themselves invincible for many years.

.

Now, there’s another figure that’s a cornerstone of folk tales throughout Nokomoris, and that, my friends, is the Pretty Witch.  Oh, she’s a princess sometimes, buckled under by the weight of trying to protect her kingdom, but on the whole, princess stories never really took off around here.  The great romantic heroine of the ages is the village witch.

Usually she’s a druid or a sorceress, to go by d&d terms.  Sometimes, in the stories, she summons a fae or a demon or a celestial or an elemental from another plane to help her against some great threat, and they fall in love; other times she captures an enemy and keeps them in her hut, and they fall in love as she nurses them to health and also interrogates them for their evil plan; in yet other stories, a brave hero faces all the witch’s challenges and proves they can protect her.  Some of the best stories, of course, combine all three.

Most real village witches never reach such a fairytale happily-ever-after, of course, or even get past casting second- and third-level spells.  The vast majority of village witches are either old enough to be someone’s (or everyone’s) mother or too busy to be interested in most offers of romance, and plenty of them are both.  That part’s true enough of the witch in this story, too.

Her power, on the other hand...

Well.  There are always exceptions.

.

The story says that one day as all three dragons swooped together onto a village on the edge of their territory, they watched a small woman step from a hut on the side of the village and raise a staff.  The story says that, mid-swoop, they began to feel themselves shrink--that the black dragon found his scales running together and turning soft and brown-pink-pale, and the green dragon found her claws growing short and weak and flat on her arms, and the blue dragon found their wings disappearing from their back even as they tried to pull up and fly away.

The story says that by the time the three dragons hit the ground, they were dragons no longer.  Every story argues, a bit, about what they were and which one was which, but--in every good bit of folklore about three people out in the world, there’s a dwarf, a gnome, and a human, so that must be what these three were here, right?

(It wasn’t, in reality--but it doesn’t really matter.   They were all people, soft and squishy two-leggers, and what does it change if all three were halflings or tieflings or even dragonborn, any more?)

They hit the ground on two legs each, naked and brown and pink and suddenly, for perhaps the first time in their long dragon lives, scared.  And all at once, they began to run.

(But C, you say--what about legendary resistances?  And anyway Polymorph is a concentration spell, one witch can’t cast it on three dragons at the same time anyway.  Hell, if they were swooping down on the village, fall damage alone should have knocked at least one of them out of it when they hit the--)

(Shhh, shh, I say.  It’s a story.  This isn’t how it really happened.  Of course it isn’t.  It really took days, or a team of adventurers, and probably both, and there were traps and wands and artifacts of all kinds that went into the doing.  This is only the version people tell each other--and it’s a better, shorter one, and lets us get to the rest of the story much quicker, usually.)

(But really, you say, even still, it’s just Polymorph--one good injury and they’d be right back to being themselves.  Surely three adult dragons would know enough about magic to realize that.  Surely one of them would be smart enough to try and injure themselves or one of the others to break it, right?  Maybe the blue one.)

(You have to let me get back to my story, for that.)

So--yes, yes, you’re right.  They all three of them hit the ground and fell immediately unconscious, how’s that?  Or perhaps only one of them did, but that was very much enough.  However it happened (and it must have been more than a thousand years ago, it must have been before Kera the Conqueror swept through the lands, must have been a thousand or two thousand years before your mother was born), however they fell, whatever they saw--the three ex-dragons did not become themselves again.  The spell did not break.

(Not even True Polymorph can do that, you say--

Yes, I say.  I know.)

(And why do we keep interrupting the story like this, anyway?)

(Well.  Because it’s a fairytale.  It’s the lore of legends.  This is a story to tell at bedtimes and campfires and long afternoons spent working with your hands while the children at your feet learn to spin yarn and shell beans and mend things.  This is the sort of story that’s meant to be told with interruptions.)

.

The man who had once been the black dragon woke up, and discovered that he was still a man, and he fled.

He had no direction in mind; his head was clouded, and his eyes were weak, and his feet were soft and clawless and he had no wings at all, and he had never run across ground like this before in all the many years of his life.  He had no thought save escape, and he ran without stopping except to fall to his knees and drink from a nearby stream like a dog before he forced himself up to run again.

He collapsed, eventually, outside a woodcutter’s hut.  He could not even bestir himself when the woodcutter and his wife brought him inside to nurse him back to health.

It took a full week before he could do more than stand and hobble, and in that time the woodcutter’s family nursed him with nothing but kindness, and man who had once been a black dragon found himself struck to the heart by it.  He had done so many things in his time as a dragon that he had been proud of, but now it seemed that he was a person, weak and desperate, and would be for the rest of his life.  It was unthinkable that a mere woodcutter like this should nurse a great black dragon back to health.

It was unthinkable for a person to have done the things the man had done, when he was a dragon.  How could a man live in this world of men, having done such things?  How could he be proud of who he was?  And so, faced with the kindness of the woodcutter’s family, the man who’d once been the black dragon began to feel the most tremendous guilt that has ever been felt in all the world for the things he’d done.

(Oh? Do you doubt him?  But man, or dragon, or dwarf, or tabaxi, whatever he was--he’d always been the best.  If he couldn’t be the very best killer, he could at least be the best at guilt.)

He would atone, he decided.  He would atone for the rest of his life.

When the man who’d once been a dragon could stand and walk without pain, dressed in the woodcutter’s old clothes and boots, the woodcutter finally asked what his name was.

“Repentance,” the man said, and went on his way to seek it, and that was the last anybody ever saw of the great black dragon.

.

(Oh, you think there’s more?  Of course there is.  A man appeared in the city to the south, and set himself to punishing every evil, including himself, however he could, and there are enough stories about him to last hours.  None of them are happy, of course--even when he found love, he could not allow it to bring him joy, because of course he deserved none.  And so the man Repentance found himself bringing sorrow even now to those who came to care about him most, caught in an endless loop of sin, and so he could never forgive himself or be redeemed, no matter what.  But at least he wasn’t a dragon.

Is that better?)

.

The woman who had once been the green dragon was even now a little cleverer than her first friend, and when she stood and realized that she was still a woman and not a dragon at all, she fled with a goal in mind.

It took days of careful, desperate travel, but she knew all the secret paths back to their lair in the mountains, where the three dragons had kept all the wealth and weapons they’d claimed as treasure over the years.  The woman draped herself in finery that seemed coarser and fouler-smelling now than it had when she was enormous and beautiful without it.  She put on the armor she’d plucked from the backs of knights, and then took it off again when it was too heavy, and eventually she had dressed and armed herself and filled a pack with as many riches as her new weak arms could carry, and set off again before anyone else could arrive to find her.

She found a port, and made her way onto a ship, bound over the sea to a land that had never known her as anything but this.  She sailed for days, and planned out her future.

She had lost her claws and so much of her power, but the world was still built of games, was it not?  And she could still play, with money and cleverness and secrets.  She was beautiful, apparently, by the standards of people, even if she was so much less awesome and terrible than she’d once been.  She could make claws out of daggers and a life out of this.  She could be a lady, a thief, a queen.  She could make do.

(You think she should be despairing, vengeful, angry?  Woman or dragon, gnome or goliath, no matter what--she was always ready to carve joy out of any chest she could find.  Why not find it again?)

When she disembarked in the new land, the guard at the port asked for her name.  “Revelry,” she said, and went off to seek it, and that was the last anybody ever saw of the great green dragon.

.

(Oh, it’s a parable now, is it?  Well.  What good folk story isn’t?

You want the rest?  She became a bandit queen and a baroness, and was feared and adored by many, and gathered riches and servants and lovers and secrets.  You could tell stories for days about the wicked and cruel exploits of the Baroness Revelry, and some of them would be sexy, and some of them would be fun, and some of them would leave you feeling queasy in the pit of your stomach afterwards, and in some of them, you’d be on her side.  After all, at least she wasn’t a dragon.

Is that enough?)

.

When the person who had once been the blue dragon awoke, they saw the witch of the village.  They saw the look in her eyes.  They saw the deep forest, and their own new delicate feet and hands and bones, and the torches from the other villagers approaching.

They stayed put.

The witch stayed, too, and watched them, and when the townspeople arrived she sent them away.  The witch was a very long way from young, and not as beautiful as she should have been, for this to be a really good story, but--for all that, there was something of power in her eyes.

“What will you do now?” the witch asked of the person who had once been a blue dragon, who had not taken their own eyes from the witch’s face and her gnarled broomstick.

“I don’t know,” said the person who was not a dragon any longer, who did not see any benefit to lying.  “What would you have me do?”

They were both quiet for a long moment as the witch looked the ex-dragon over, with her thoughts as impenetrable as a witch’s mind ever are.  Then she said, “Come inside.  I have floors that need sweeping and wood that will need chopping for the winter.”

.

The person who’d been a blue dragon slept on a pile of blankets on the witch’s floor.  The witch gave them chores to do in return.  They fetched water from the well, and scrubbed and cleaned, and learned to cook and tend a garden.  It was not a thing like being a dragon, except for all the wrong reasons.  The witch was small, and kind, and old, and not a bit of her was weak.  The no-longer-dragon had never known anyone as relentlessly practical as themself before.

Nearly every day people from the village would come by.  Some would come begging for help with colds and children and cows, and the witch was always kind to them, while her new lodger watched from the corner with sharp dragon-gold eyes.  Others would come with gifts, a few eggs here or a sack of flour there.  Sometimes the villagers with gifts had asked for help in the days before, and sometimes they hadn’t.

The person who was no longer a dragon asked questions, sometimes, and the witch would answer them, sometimes.

“Why do they bring you tribute?  Do you require it of them?”

“No,” said the witch, and, “they do it because it is kind, and right, and makes their world better in the long run.  Now go tend to the garden.”

Or, “Why do you not take over this village and half the countryside?  You have the power for it.”

“Because I do not wish it,” said the witch, and, “because they do not need me to, and because they and I are all happier that I do not.  Now go and tend the garden.”

Or, “Why are you kind to the ones who do not bring you gifts or tribute?  They do nothing for you, but you are generous to them.”

“Because,” said the witch, “it is kind, and I am able, and they are not, and that is what it means to be a person.  Now go and tend to the garden.”

Every time she answered a question, the witch would send them out to tend the garden.  The ex-dragon was careful with every plant, because it was only foolish to be careless with a witch’s garden, and learned to water every one exactly as much as it needed.  They learned to harvest berries and vegetables and herbs, and tend to the flowers and shrubs that produced nothing of any value, but only grew.  And they began, little by little, to understand.

.

Eventually it was winter.  The witch showed the one-time blue dragon how to drag their blankets closer to the fire, and how to chop the firewood and bank it at night to keep it going so they would both stay warm, and all the other things that needed to be done with the world frozen in white.

There was no more work to do in the garden, but by then the no-longer-dragon’s questions had changed, too.

“Why did you turn me into this?”  The witch could have picked anything, after all--a rabbit or an insect or a stone, and never thought about it ever again.  But she had chosen a person, who could walk and talk and think and work.

“Because it would save this village,” the witch said.  “I had not a care for you at all.  Now come and learn this potion.”

Or, weeks later, “Why did the villagers forgive me?”  They still came every day, and nodded to the ex-dragon when they passed, and didn’t flinch to do it.  They were not witches.  They didn’t have her power.

“Because they don’t know who you are,” the witch said.  “Or because they know and don’t care, or because you have done them no harm since coming here, or because they are too dead to hold a grudge, or perhaps they haven’t forgiven you at all and are only pretending.  Now go and bring this amulet to the miller and his wife.”

Or, after even more weeks, when it was nearly spring--”Why did you let me stay?”

“You know the answer to that already,” said the witch.  The person who had once ravaged the entire countryside as a great evil blue dragon found that they did know, after all.  It was the same reason as the bushes with no berries and the amulet for the miller, and everything else, too.

“Is there a difference between a dragon and a person?” the dragon-who-wasn’t asked.  “Between a tiefling and an aasimar and a human?  Between anything at all?”

“You know the answer to that, too,” said the witch, and of course, of course they did, by now.  “Ask what you really want to know.”

“Do you care now?” the person asked.  “Do you care about me, even though you didn’t then?”

The witch’s hard face softened, then.  “Do you?” she asked in return.  “Have you learned to care, after all that?”

The person thought about needy bushes and hungry inchworms and a thousand trips to the well on foot, about tea with the miller’s wife and little brown eggs from the seamstress’s daughter.  They thought about whether they already knew the witch’s response to this question too, in their heart, and what it would mean if they were wrong.

“You know the answer to that,” the person who was a witch’s apprentice now said, because they had learned well, and because some things hurt too much to admit if they’re not returned.

Then the witch stepped forward, finally, and pulled them into her arms like a mother.  “You’re my own child, now,” she said.  “Everything changes.  The past only matters because it gave us what we have now.”

.

(Does it seem too easy?  It’s not.  Growth never, ever is.

It took more than a summer and a winter, when it really happened.  It took more pain and more yelling and more doubt to build that trust.  But it did grow.  And the story’s tidier, like this.)

(And if the forgiveness here surprises you on either side, or the willingness to try, well--)

(Witches are practical down to their bones, and whether they use it to be cruel or kind or selfish or saviors-of-all is down to them, but they all know there’s no sense in discarding an outstretched hand when it’s offered.  It worked, this time, for the right people with just the right amount of neediness and hope.  Sometimes the world does that.)

.

By the time summer came around again, the witch’s apprentice had had plenty of time to think and ponder and consider who they were to become.

The only difference between a dragon and a person was their shape, after all, so what was evil for a person must also be evil for a dragon.  What was wrong for a person must also be wrong for a dragon, and always had been, whether the dragon they’d been had known it or not.  So: they had done great evil, long ago and far away, and could not make it undone.  What next?

The witch, who was just as practical as her apprentice, sat and talked to them as they cooked and knit and worked potions and spells together in the hut all winter long, and by the time the world was warm again, the apprentice had made a decision.

“I can’t stay,” they said.  “I’ve done too much harm in the world.  I need to go out and do it good instead.”

“Because you think it will fix things?” the witch asked, to make sure, and also because she had grown to love her apprentice as her own child and did not want to see them leave, either.

“No,” said the apprentice, who had learned well.  “Because it’s kind and right and I’m able.”

“So be it,” said the witch, and hugged them close, and said, “Be Resolve, then, and return safe when you can.”

“Resolve,” the new druid said.  They went off not to seek it, for they’d already found it in their own heart, but to see it through.

And that was the last anybody ever saw of the blue dragon.

.

And that’s the end of the story.

.

(Well.  It’s an end.)

(Oh, you want to know about the Hero Resolve?  There are months‘ worth of stories about that, and you’d probably know a few dozen of them yourself already, if you lived in Nokomoris.  They all go more or less the same way, really.)

(The Hero Resolve arrives in a town, or a valley or kingdom or mountain or an island in the middle of the sea, and someone, somewhere, is suffering.  They find somebody with the power to do something about it.  It might be the sufferer themself, sometimes, but usually it’s not.  Maybe it’s the local lord who’s too distracted to notice the problem, or the local witch who’s too overwhelmed to cope.  Maybe the local bandits are too incompetent at stealing to provide for their children.  Resolve isn’t always picky in the way you’d expect, when they choose who to give advice.)

(The advice isn’t always easy to follow, mind you.  There’s hardly a good story in that.  But if they do follow Resolve’s suggestions--they’ll live happily ever after, eventually.)

(If not, Resolve will generally have to beat them up first, with shillelagh staff or beast form or just a bit of bare-handed cleverness, probably, depending on who’s telling the story.  But everyone else will live happily ever after anyway.)

(And that’s it.  That’s the Hero Resolve.  They roamed for years, back and forth across the continent, to every place you could ever name.  They fixed a lot of problems.  They probably took a couple levels in monk or something.  Every culture on Nokomoris has some variant on the Stubborn Hero stories if you ask.)

.

...

...

(Oh, you want more?)

.

(Well then.)

.

Once upon a time, as the Hero Resolve was out wandering the land, they came upon a rumor of a great evil on the other side of the sea.

(There, that’s how these stories are supposed to start, right?)

Since they had nothing else better to do that afternoon, they packed up their staff and their lunch and all their magic items, the bow with a string spun from spider-silk that could send an arrow through solid rock, the cloak that looked like a midsummer sky dyed with berries grown in water from the Spring of Life, and so on and so forth, as y’do.  They took a boat and sailed over to the kingdom on the other side of the sea and asked the crew and the passengers what they’d heard in these rumors about a cruel baroness who tormented the land with her powers, and pondered how they’d deal with the problem when they got there.

They had just about enough information to go looking for the Baroness’s castle when they disembarked in port, and found it in short enough order.  Some versions say they asked a magpie for help.  Other versions say the Baroness sent the magpie herself, to invite the renowned hero into her parlor, looking for another game or--

Or who knows what.  The important thing is that Resolve found themself ushered into a lavish entryway draped in silver and velvet, and from there into an even more lavish parlor draped in damask and gold, and then into an even more lavish dining room draped in platinum and silk.  They were still dressed in their sea-salt-stained traveling leathers, with their spidersilk bow and their sky blue cloak.  They had their iron knife at their belt, and their staff that had been a gift from the witch when they first left home, that looked like nothing so much as the gnarled stick of a broom with the bristles pulled off.  And there in the dining room of sumptuous luxury, they sat down to wait.

When the Baroness herself came in, she was--well, nobody is quite sure what she was, gnome or tiefling or even a tall graceful elf, in a world before elves.  She could have been dragonborn or human or one of the cat-people, bird-people, turtle-people from the south, who knows?  It’s different every time somebody tells the story.  Everybody agrees, though, on this: that she was as breathtakingly beautiful as a single moon on a pitch-dark night, and that her eyes glittered the color of gold.

Their eyes met, the Hero Resolve and the Baroness Revelry, two pairs of dragon-gold eyes in faces that should not have held them.  For one long, breathless moment, it was as though no time had passed at all, and then they fell into each others’ arms and hugged with arms they’d never had to put around each other before.

.

Resolve and Revelry slept that night curled up like lovers in Revelry’s enormous fur-draped bed.  They spoke, a little, about where and how and who they’d been in all the years since they’d seen each other.  They hid more.  The Great Hero Resolve had made a whole life out of seeing the end of the sort of deeds the Evil Baroness Revelry had made a life out of seeing done.  There was only so much they could admit to each other of themselves.

And yet...they were still both of them so very much themselves.  Revelry’s grin and sparkling wicked wit still brought Resolve to helpless laughter.  Resolve’s steadiness and dry understated insight warmed and calmed a thing in Revelry’s chest that had not been calm in so many years.  They had neither of them been quite this happy in all the time they’d been apart, and now, back with each other again, it seemed like the real loss hadn’t been their claws and fangs and wings at all.

Resolve was used to sleeping lightly and waking early.  The witch always rose with the sun, and it was only sensible for a hero on the road, whether they camped by the side of the road or in haylofts or let themself be made a guest of anywhere.  They opened their eyes with the first light of dawn, and looked down at the woman sleeping next to them, and thought about the sharp edge of their iron belt knife, which had killed fiends and monsters and people.

It would be simple, to do the job they’d come here to do.  They loved their oldest, dearest friend, of course they did, but--

How does an evil thing love?  It seemed impossible that Resolve could have ever really loved their dragon-companions, back when they were still a dragon, before they understood what love or evil or being a person even meant.  It seemed impossible for Resolve to still love her now, and if Revelry was still the same as she had been, how could she ever love anything at all in return?

The Hero Resolve felt the hilt of their knife on the floor beside the bed, and watched their long-lost heart’s companion sleep until Revelry opened her eyes, glinting golden in the morning sun.  And looking at those eyes, Resolve let the knife go, and promised themself that they would try again tomorrow.

That day they breakfasted together, and Revelry showed Resolve all the halls of her manor and all the gardens of her estate, and Resolve showed off some of their many shapes and forms, and they told longer and truer stories about their lives.  Resolve tried to grasp for their namesake every time they caught a glimpse of the evil in Revelry’s stories, again and again, all afternoon and all night.  They slept tangled together in the same bed again.

And so they lived for a week, with Resolve trying to find conviction within themself and failing, with Revelry discovering more joy in her long-lost friend than she’d felt in all the years in between, with Resolve’s iron knife tucked safely beneath their pillow in Revelry’s bed every night.

.

On the seventh morning, Resolve got as far as drawing the knife in hand.  They’d thought a million times this week about attacking their old friend in the middle of the day, and every time they caught sight of those old familiar eyes, they lost the nerve.  Murdering a sleeping lover in her very bed...it was cowardly and dishonorable, of course, but it would be effective.  Effective mattered more than honorable.  Resolve had learned that from the witch all those years ago.

Results mattered more than intentions.  Fine, Resolve loved Revelry with so much of their heart that this might break them forevermore.  So what?  Revelry was a monster, a scourge on the land around her, a murderer and worse.  That mattered.  Resolve’s own heart would heal, or wouldn’t.  They’d slaughtered too many people in their own time for their feelings to be worth more than the lives of Revelry’s future victims now.

And yet, as they sat poised with knife in hand, watching Revelry sleep...once more, they hesitated.  And this time, when Revelry opened her eyes, she saw the knife before Resolve could tuck it away.

“Are you going to kill me, my love?” Revelry asked, as calmly as a still summer morning.

“Yes,” said Resolve.  “Yes I am, because whatever you are to me, you bring so much suffering to the rest of the world.  It’s kind and right to do this, and I’m able, and whatever else I am or ever have been, I choose to be a person.”

Revelry nodded a long, slow nod in the quiet of the room’s dawn light.  Resolve waited for her to grab for a weapon or a spell or Resolve’s own staff, for the Baroness had become quite a wizard in her own right in the time since they’d known each other last.  And they waited, poised and frozen, until Revelry said,

“Then I’ll let you.”

Resolve drew back in shock and confusion, and Revelry continued, “I’ve felt more joy this week with you than from any thing I’ve seen or done in all the years we’ve been apart.  I’d rather you kill me than watch you leave again.  I’d rather know I could at least make you happy.”

“This won’t make me happy,” Resolve snapped, with tears in their eyes.  “It has to be done, even if it does ruin me to do it, but that doesn’t make me happy about it.”

Revelry frowned, then, and for the first time began to reach below her own pillow.  “Really?”

“You know I love you,” said Resolve, and all in a flurry their iron knife met the rod Revelry kept tucked safely to hand in bed every night, just in case--though this hadn’t been the way she’d expected to use it.

“Then I can’t let you kill me,” Revelry said, rolling to her feet and facing off against the great hero now, both of them barely armed and dressed in bedclothes, squaring off with the enormous fur-draped bed between them.  “I love you too much to let anything make you miserable, including yourself, whatever you think about your morals now.”  And then they fell to fighting.

It was a strange, furious half-battle, both of them trying too hard not to hurt the other in spite of themselves, desperately working to keep their voices down before the servants of the house could hear and came running.  They twisted and fought, arguing the whole time--

“I can’t just let you keep doing the things you’ve always done!  You were given a chance at a whole new life, and still you’ve chosen to be a monster!”

“Why do you care about them?  What are any of them worth that you care more about them than yourself?”

“Because they’re people!  And I’m a person!  And so are you, but you don’t want to be!”

“If I stop tricking idiots to their deaths, will that make you happy?  And keep you from trying to do something ridiculous and self-destructive like murdering your own lover in the name of honor?”

“It doesn’t count if you’re only doing it to please me!  I can’t be the only thing in the whole world you care about!  Your entire morality can’t just be me!”

“Well why not?”

And they fell back, both of them panting and bloodied, in now-ragged night gowns, staring at each other from opposite sides of a destroyed room.

“I don’t care about torturing them,” said Revelry.  “It’s fun.  I don’t care if it makes me evil, I don’t care about them or their feelings or their stupid little lives, but I care about you.  I’ll stop it all, if you ask me to.”

“This is a terrible foundation for a relationship,” Resolve said.  “But fine.”

.

(Yes, I’m taking liberties with the story.  Know your audience, they say.  Most of the time that bit’s just a lot of arguing, or more violent and less dramatic or romantic depending on who’s telling it, but who doesn’t love a good half-naked sword fight?  Why ruin the tattered nightgowns thinking about the fact that the two major participants are mainly caster-classes, anyway?)

(One of them is clearly an illogical idiot, you say.  Fair enough, but let’s table the discussion there before you and your neighbors get into your own virtual brawl over which one it is.  They’re both illogical idiots.  That’s how love--and fairytales-- work.)

(Want a life lesson from this one?  Don’t turn a single person into your entire moral compass and your whole world.  Also, don’t try to force yourself to stab the person you’re in love with for the Greater Good.  None of this exactly how it actually went, and it only worked out in the end with a whole lot of luck and a lot more hard work than we have time and space for here.  This is a fairytale.  It’s not meant to be exact history.)

(But yes, from me to you--it did really end happily-ever-after, even when it actually happened.  Or at least, as-happily-as-ever, which is about as good as real life ever gets.)

.

In the end, Resolve and Revelry slipped off in the middle of the afternoon, without a single word to the servants or any sign of their going.  Revelry brought a single small bag of tools and treasure, less even than she’d taken from her old hoard when she first began this life, and they boarded a boat back across the sea under fake names, with secret grins that threatened to burst out into laughter at every moment.

Resolve brought Revelry back to the home of the witch who they still called Mother, and introduced her by name, and did not explain the details of their past, although the witch was canny and clever and figured it out right away anyway.  Eventually, when Resolve ventured forth across the land once again, Revelry came with them, and together they learned to turn saving-the-world into a game interesting enough to keep Revelry’s attention even when Resolve wasn’t watching them at every moment.  She never did quite learn to embrace guilt or regret, but she grew to find a soft spot for scrappy, clever underdogs who just needed half a chance to learn to fight.

They did eventually come to the city where the man Repentance lived and worked, and met him and embraced him again, for a while.  He still remembered his love for the blue dragon, but he could not forgive his one-time companions for their pasts any more than he could forgive himself.  Revelry, at least, was easy for him to condemn and hate, but most especially he could not understand how Resolve might have come to see the evil of their past crimes and yet still willingly laugh and live and find joy in it all anyway.  In the end they parted ways quickly, for while they all three of them now sought to bring good to the world, Resolve and Revelry chose to pursue it through happiness and hope, and Repentence could only see regret.

And so they traveled on for many years, and lived very nearly happily for very nearly forever after, and that’s all there is to the story of the Hero Resolve and the Baroness Revelry.

.

The end.

.

(No, I mean it this time.)

.

(Look, that’s the end of the story!  There’s plenty of other little side-stories and folktales in there, but whenever anybody on Onde actually tells this story, this is where it ends.  That’s how it goes!)

(Yes, I mean it.)

(Yes, I realize I've said that these are two extremely high-level spellcasters, both of whom remember spending centuries of their lives as nigh-immortal dragons and one of whom has barely found enough of a sense of right and wrong to qualify as Chaotic Neutral.  And I’m suggesting they lived out the rest of their short natural lives as a couple of flightless humanoids and never found a way to correct their lives or forms.  And they never ran into any desperate tragedy of disparate species lifespans, or had to deal with archdruid timeless body, or--)

(Yes.  Yes, I did say at the beginning of the post that this was the story of my very favorite near-godlike NPC, but--)

.

(Okay.  Okay, fine.)

(There’s one more thing to know.)

(This isn’t part of the story, though, so don’t go spreading it around.  Nobody on Onde knows this part, except for those that do.  And that’s a story for a very different day.)

.

True Polymorph is a ninth-level spell.  It can transform any willing wizard or druid who’s already at a high enough level to cast it into a fully-grown adult green or blue dragon with ease.  It’s permanent, if you concentrate on it for a full hour.  And dragons can cast spells, even the sorts of spells that would let them turn back into an old humanoid form that’s gotten comfortable and familiar, and maybe they rarely learn to do much in the first thousand years or so of life, but most dragons aren’t forced to live as humanoids for a couple of decades or centuries to figure out how, so--

Well.  True Polymorph lasts without being concentrated on, anyway, once it sticks, but--even it doesn’t tend to hold up well to dropping to zero hit points or running afoul of a Dispel Magic, after a while.

(Yes, the RAW are ambiguous, here.  And?  This is Onde.  True Polymorph can guide the world into holding a new shape indefinitely, but it can’t rewrite the truth of existence.)

A fully-grown adult dragon may not find themself reduced to zero hit points all that often, but Resolve and Revelry weren’t about to give up adventuring just to return to their old forms forever.  Dispel could get...awkward.  There had to be a safer way, didn’t there?

“How did you make it stay?” Resolve asked the witch, so many years later that even an archdruid such as the witch had become old.  She shook her head.

“There’s a spell,” she said.  “With components I never saw in all my life before or since.  They’re long gone now.”

(Was it a spell?  Was it a one-use spell scroll, enchanted in centuries gone by and long forgotten?  Was it a magic item?)

(Does the nature of the MacGuffin matter, in the end, or just its effect?)

“But the spell exists” said Resolve--and, well, what are heroes for if not tracking down mysteries and finding components?  Plane-shifting to gather sap from the forests of the gods, or the bones of every material plane, or the dust from the plains below Sigil itself, or--well.  Does that matter, either, the how?

It’s very difficult to tell a legendary hero that there’s no way.

.

(They transformed the man Repentance back, too, when they changed themselves.  It took them two days to hunt him down and slaughter him, two dragons against one, when he decided that it was his duty as a dragon again to do exactly the thing that dragons were for.)

(It goes like that, sometimes.  Not every redemption arc quite works.  You can tell yourself that he let his oldest companions rip his throat out, in the end, out of the last shards of love for them or horror at what he’d become.  It might be true.)

(Everybody learns.  What they learn, on the other hand, is entirely up to them.)

.

There are people to the west of the Western Wall mountains, in the dragonlands where all colors of dragon are common, and known, and feared, who tell a story about a high valley in the dry lands of the peaks, surrounded by dense pine forests and bare dust-blasted stone and open sky.  If you need something--if you truly need something, and you’re desperate enough to do what it takes to get it, you can climb up there looking and ask.

You’ll get advice from somebody, if you’re lucky, if you can make it past the storms and the woods and the heights up the secret paths to get there.  Follow it no matter what, however hard it is, and things will turn out happily ever after for you in the end.  If you reject the advice, things will turn out happily ever after for someone, probably, but there’s a good chance you’ll get your ass kicked on top of the problems you already had, first.

It’s not a bad place to retire, when you’re old and enormous enough to call yourself truly Ancient.  Ruling the whole world is a nice idea to toss around every couple of decades, but really, it’s such a lot of work, and--really, it’s enough of a job just being your wife’s conscience (or letting your spouse be your conscience), let alone taking on an entire planet full of other people too.  Better, really, to let things go along on their own way.

It’s not a bad place to raise children up here, either.  Oh, there’s plenty of bloodlust and rage in most wyrmlings of any color, but--what’s bloodlust and rage got to do with anything?  How is anyone supposed to learn how to be a person, without somebody there to teach them that they are?

They go their own way, when they’re old enough, and some of them for the better and some of them for the worse, but--

Well.  That really is beyond the end of this story.  There’s no telling what hasn’t happened yet.

.

As to ‘happily-ever-after’...

That’s a fairytale ending, of course.  Resolve and Revelry have been to the feywild plenty enough times to know a fair few fairy tales direct from the source themselves, but at this point, we’re not really telling a campfire bedtime story any more, is it?  Now it’s just backstory for a couple of NPCs who are still alive.  They’re as happy as any old married couple who’s had centuries to grow into each other.

They’re not quite gods, because even an ancient dragon with an archwizard’s spellbook or an archdruid’s control is still a creature of flesh and blood and bone, and mortal in their own way.  Some villain or hero or furious ex-student, some god or quest or just old age and ennui will get them eventually.  No telling how, though, or when.  No telling what might happen in the mean time.

No telling when the Hero Resolve might pull on a different shape and go on walkabout for another few years once again, with or without their love at their side, and see what they’re able to do for the world.

[pkmnsdarkqueen]

The Young group, and the main plot

(I’m doing a lore wrap up at the end, and since some people have kids I gotta bring them into the fold)

part. 1 

part. 2 

part. 3 

part. 4 you are here

It starts when Janine, a shadow monk yuan ti, is told why her dad really went missing. She figured out that he was a part of the mafia a while ago, and befriended the son of the mafia leader, Silver, a rogue thief shifter, as they grew up together. He’s the one who tells her that her father deserted the mafia, so his father sent hers off to fight int he gladiatorial pits of some kingdom. Furious she decides she’s going to find him convincing Silver to come with her knowing he doesn’t want to be in this mess either. 

As they travel they meet an experienced shadow sorcerer feral tiefling, Marnie who they ask to come with them as she is looking for her brother who apparently left the town he supposed to be running. the last lead she had was that he was at this college helping people study before suddenly leaving with some tabaxi and high elf. (Grimsley and Elsa)

They make it to the kingdom run by Triton’s (specifically Alaric’s kingdom) by way of some pirates who apparently are under new leader ship as their past captain a wood elf betrayed them, per the crew. (This will later be revealed to be Archie) The captain though currently is on another ship.

Also on board is another group. 

This group consists of a circle of the Shepard druid named N, an aasmir berserker barbarian named Gladion, and an aasmir unity cleric named Lillie. The groups talk some but each group seems to want to keep to themselves. However while in town both groups are lead to the same place seeing each other again at the gladiatorial pits hearing about a minotaur (Bruno) breaking their opponent a yuan ti (koga) out of the pit. Realizing they maybe useful N and his group explain their story. N starts by saying he used to be in an adventure group with his adopted father, ghetsis. He had been ripped from his plane to this one waking up to find Ghetsis open to take him in. However on that journey the party realized that Ghetsis served an evil god, and was in fact the one that used a machine his god instructed him to make that could shift planes which ripped N from his home. When they accused Ghetsis he attacked and killed them all, but N heard the whole thing running away. He now is back stronger than before wanting to stop his father. 

Gladion and Lillie were happy with their mother and father, till an experiment, plane shifting caused their father to disappear. Realizing their mother was loosing it Gladion ran off getting brought in by a bug bear Guzma who ran a place for races that were looked down on though secretly was working with the mother as well. He found out in her grief she made a deal with some god to merge all the plains into one through Lillie who stayed at home. However when he tried to tell Lusamine she was going too far she used him in her latest experiment which sent him spiraling into the fey wild for too long making his mind scattered enough for the the patron to give Lusamine something to control him. She and gladion later teamed up, gladion to get guzma back, and lillie her mother. They and N both suspect the same planar god is working them both against each other. 

They find out yes Janine’s father was the yuan ti but apparently this minotaur was oddly more sentient than any others, N figures it’s another planar shifter brought over by another test. 

Now since there is alot here let me just explain the other connections that will happen before the climax. 

Kanjo group will run into villain group. Koga will recognize Giovanni and a fight will break out as it is revealed his old boss was Giovanni who sent him to die. Eventually fighting will cease as Giovanni brings up that he doesn’t know where Janine is since she ran away with his son. He wants to find them, but has ceased leading Rocket. The groups go on one adventure together thinking they have a lead on the kids, but it is a bust, and Koga insists the groups split back up. The groups do discuss the children though.

Unknown to Cyrus the tech he’s investigating is old tech that was the god’s first attempt to merge the planes of existence together. Lusamine being there is able to now what is important due to her experiments with making a plane merging machine on a small scale. She was the brains and ingenuity the god needed having failed the first time around. She is able to inform her patron who informs Ghetsis to tell the person gathering up the needed tech where to look for what they need to grab. Ghetsis also tells of other locations Cyrus knows about for other agents to investigate.

That other agent is Piers who has no idea the kind of people he’s wrapped up in however he is following what his patron says occasionally telling the party he has a lead on his father when in reality it’s to go to these places the villain group hasn’t gone to grab what his patron says is important. 

The next group Kanjo runs into is this main group who they run into rather often as the journey progresses. Florie and Bruno hit it off well as Florie admits to not being from this plane either and ripped from her home. Alaric recognizes Bruno as one of the fighters from the gladiatorial pits in his home kingdom but keeps this quiet. They also inform Piers they’ve seen other people with his patrons insignia telling them where they are. 

The main group meets up with villain group. All is going fairly well until Ghetsis pull Piers aside to reveal they follow the same patron and begins discussing the items he was told to gather. He gives them over, but is suddenly feeling that something isn’t right, later rejecting the patron that night. Fiore is feeling the same suspicious of why Lusamine seems interested on when she got to this plane recognizing as her not from it. Meanwhile Maxie and Rose talk to Willie in great length as Willie’s land is interesting in nature for maxie and also lacks magic which interests Rose. The god confesses to Lusamine and Ghetsis they’re following the same patron, and that Piers is no longer trustworthy. He gives them the means to frame the other group for a serious crime as the Piers and Fiore tell the group that these people aren’t trustworthy.  The rest of the villain group being tricked to think these guys cause heinous crimes fight them only to have the group run away. Piers now bent on righting what he did takes up being a wizard to right his wrongs. 

The next group they run into is the young kids group. Piers and Marnie are delighted to reconnect, and Marnie is able to help Piers unlock his sorcerer abilities becoming a sorcerer of rock instead of shadow like his sister. Meanwhile The groups are able to talk about what they’ve learned and seen mentioning the other plane shifters they’ve seen such as Bruno and Sofia. Lillie recognizes the centaur and minotaur as people her mother brought over while experimenting bringing one person at a time over. At this point this party is has figured out the patron wants to bring all the planes together to absorb all of their magic. The first location of this happening was in Willie’s land which is why it lacks magic. However this was done by a ritual which wasn’t strong enough so they’re crafting a machine to make it strong enough to work. The timing of this happening matches up when N along with other genasi were suddenly brought into this plane, and when Gladion and Lillie’s father had that accident. Thus the ritual was only able to bring part of certain plains over, earth, water, fire, and air which is about all that the land has where Willie is from. It also explains why N seems to be made up the same rock of Willie’s home. Horrified as they realize that Piers may of just given the last pieces over to Lusamine and Ghetsis they want to hurry and find them. However Alaric at this point is fed up that things have traveled so far from finding his wife, and is worried for his kingdom deciding to go home wanting to be with family if the world truly does end. When he leaves Elsa’s god finally tells Elsa who she is, the run away wife of Alaric who was terrible and tried to imprision her. Though Elsa now wants revenge she agrees the fat of the world is more important. 

While this is happening Kanjo team has some of this plot together doing random adventures knowing some ancient god wants to absorb all of the magic. They know artifacts of tech keep being stolen from temples, they finally manage to follow a culprit who turns out to be Piers’s dad, Karen being a blood hunter can recognize the scent. Another thing they have been looking for is Will’s brother who apparently has been missing for some. They find the bard wizard with pier’s father who is operating Archie’s old crew as those transporting the tech for the machine. Archie had not told them the full story about being framed, but did recognize the symbol he had on him as the one these pirates have now thinking that Archie is in on it, Koga already not trusting them feels this is some mafia plot to gain magic power, and also what with Rose’s comments on original power they assume all of them in on this. 

They arrive to the machine first, and begin taking out people. That’s when the villain group arrives who they attack convinced their the bad guys while Lusamine and Ghetsis spur it on while finishing up the final parts to the machine. The battle is tight with kanjo loosing but the young group, and main group all arrive in time to help very quickly the physical fighting becoming tense talking as many strings are all coming together. Grimsley recognizes Ghetsis as the man to curse him, and Ghetsis admits he had used disguise self to get Piers to sign the contract which is why he didn’t recognize him when they first met. Gladion getting the thing controlling Guzma away from his mother, and breaking it, freeing the bug bear who makes the villian group realize they’ve made a terrible error. Archie explains his story about being framed for Piers and Marnie to recognize that was their father. N explains everything else recognizing Marnie and Piers’s father as one of the original party memebers. Lusamine now realizes she’s been helping the being who took away her husband, and is furious however it is too late. Cyrus is realizing how dangerous this tech was. Rose has learned magic is technically infinite but it won’t be if this guy takes it all. Maxie realizes what happened to Willie’s land and. Giovanni and Lysandre are PISSED to of accidentally helped evil again. Bruno and Sofia are angry this God dragged them from their world. Karen, Lance, Grimsley, and Elsa along with personal connections to party members are here cause well they want to live thanks.

Ghetsis has gone to do the ritual, using Will’s brother to read the first part of the ritual. Unknown to Ghetsis this kills him so that the god can over Ghetsis  claiming humans were the easiest vessels to operate. With that they start the machine as the ritual has been activated. As the planes  begin to collapse in on themselves the magic energy congregating the various parties now fully teamed up have to all fight essentially a massive god to stop it. 

[animatedminds]

What If: Every Character In Dragonball FighterZ Had a Dramatic Finish? (Pt. 4 - Final)

Well, here we are at the end. For the last four days, this blog has been going over each of the characters in Dragonball FighterZ - the tragic, bereft ones without Dramatic Finish - and imagining what moments from their history would work best in Arcsys’ glorious animation style.

So far we’ve gone through near the whole franchise, with only a few characters left - and there’s no time like the present to give those few remaining characters their chance.

As before, this isn’t so much a request for all these characters to legitimately get Dramatic Finishes - Arc System Works’ animation is too intricate and time consuming for that to be a reality - as much as speculation of what might have been. Though only a few of the characters in the roster can have a Dramatic Finish, most of them can definitely carry one in my opinion, and at the very least it makes a great excuse to go back and watch a few classic Dragonball clips. It’s worth noting again, as well, that on this list we’re looking for appearances in Dramatic moments: not necessarily wins. Across the list there have been quite a few characters whose best, most cinematic options have been losses of theirs. If you want the whole list, no lines, no waiting, no need to go back, check out the SoundCloud cast of the whole thing - or if you prefer to sit back and read here’s Part 1, Part 2 and - of course - Part 3. But let’s get on with it. Last time we finished off Dragonball Super (with one exception), and UI Goku himself hit the stores... that is, without the Dramatic Finish we were expecting (that went to Blue Goku). What’s left here are the extras: additional characters, interesting ideas that don’t fit anywhere else, that sort of thing. But first, one thing needs to be settled with the last remaining Super character...

That, right. Goku (Ultra Instict) himself!

As you might have figured from what I just said - and the previous entry - the Dramatic Finish that came with the latest DLC turned out not to be an Ultra Instinct Goku Finish with Kefla, but was actually given to Goku Blue instead. This not only knocked Goku Blue off the list (just as well since - as I went through last time - the option I thought of for Goku Blue and the option I thought of for Hit were one and the same) and, naturally means we had to put Ultra Instinct Goku on in his stead.

This is a little tricky, as some of Goku’s best moments in the Tournament of Power have already been snapped up by the game. The Surfing Kamehameha moment with Kefla is of course the stand out, but there’s also already a Goku vs Jiren Dramatic Finish (with Base Goku). They’ve repeated themselves before - giving a Vs Freeza Dramatic Finish to both Super Saiyan and Base Goku (and I’ve already suggested what is effectively a third, albeit starting with Blue Vegeta), but it still makes this an odd thing to approach.

As seems typical, I ended up with two big ideas. You guys might not like this ruling so much, since the first is an overall very solid moment, and the second - my main idea - is a little unorthodox, but bear with me.

For the first idea, a picture perfect Dramatic Finish, I’d go with the moment Jiren attacks the stands, along with Goku’s enraged payback.

For those who haven’t seen the arc, the Tournament of Power is odd among Dragonball major storylines in that there isn’t really a “bad guy.” Everyone is fighting on equal terms in a universal storyline, for fear of having their universe erased if they lose (stakes which - spoilers - turns out to be semi-fake, or at least more than they think). Everyone in the tournament, moral or amoral, is neutral to one another... but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their hang-ups.

Jiren - the final boss - is a being who suffered hardship in his youth because he felt he wasn’t strong enough, and so dedicated his life to obtaining more power. Goku - anime protagonist that he is - claims that his power comes from his friends and Jiren, who couldn’t care less about friendship, doesn’t exactly like that, especially when Goku starts winning. So he throws a fit and tries to blow up Goku’s friends to prove a point. Goes without saying that Goku didn’t exactly like that either. This moment is very self contained, cinematic and strong, with quickly established stakes and an epic conclusion, which makes it a perfect Dramatic Finish - in fact, it might not have been a bad place to end the original arc itself. You would pretty much have to do it on the Galactic Arena stage - which is a FighterZ original - as the lack of a Tournament of Power stage means there’s no other place for Goku and Jiren to have a battle of the scale we’d need while also letting his friends be there in the firing line. But, that being the case, you would simply have it start - as all Dramatic Finishes do - with Jiren getting knocked back, he rants about how friendship is easily erased and shoots a blast as the stands, Goku deflects it, and goes to town: a fight ensues a la the Super Broly Dramatic Finish, with a couple extra dramatic shots, and ending with an uppercut and massive Kamehameha that takes Jiren out. End with a shot of Goku standing over Jiren, but on a much less cheerful note than the Base Goku one.

All in all, it’s a pretty great idea. One only has to look at the clip to see that. So what’s my other option, which I would prefer? Well... we’ve seen so many good Dramatic Finishes in the game, I kind of think the Dramatic Openings could use a little love, don’t you? I’ve already suggested a few, but mostly as side ideas. However, this one could serve as the most epic opening in the game, if done well. The moment where Goku goes Ultra Instinct for the very first time:

Against Jiren again, of course.

The hypest moment of any transformation is always the moment the hero unlocks it. The point where they’re pushed to their limit and tap into that power they didn’t know they had. The God and Blue transformations were elaborate and offscreen, respectively, so this was really Super’s big transformation moment, and it was definitely hype.

Much earlier on, Goku tries to finish Jiren off with what he hopes is his ace in the hole - the Spirit Bomb. Jiren, having none of that, just flings it back... the resulting war ends with Goku losing: the blast slowly overtakes Goku before detonating in a truly spectacular way, and for a moment it looks like Goku is done.

That is, until he steps out of the transformation... changed.

It would definitely be the most elaborate Dramatic Opening - with the same amount of scene-work and modeling you would expect from a Dramatic Finish, but it would be worth it. The Dramatic scenes have in general become more and more spectacular over the years, but most of the Openings were early and so missed out on it. Still, the best thing about the Dramatic Openings is that they really get you energized for the fight to come - make you feel like it’s about to go down, and this scene would absolutely accomplish that. Not to mention, it would go perfectly alongside the Super Saiyan Goku and Super Saiyan 2 Gohan transformation openings as well.

But both options work pretty well, and either way it would be a great way to let the newest content in the franchise continue to shine. If Moro shows up later in this season, I’ll be surprised, but you can bet they’re will be some options off of that. But with Super now officially done, we move on to the truly extra candidates. Starting with...

Android #21

The villain of FighterZ’s story mode herself: a terrifying android who, thanks to a few infused traits from the Buu line, seeks to consume all life on Earth - while at odds with her own good side.

Since literally her only content ever is FighterZ’s story mode there’s not much to pull from, but luckily the choice for her is an absolute no-brainer. I’ve mentioned before that you could give her a decent Dramatic Finish with Android 16 - using any of his death scenes - but the best option is simply to take the end of the story mode, modify it and give it to us as a Finish of its own.

That’s right, we’re talking about the moment where Good #21 sacrifices herself to take Evil #21 out for good.

And, on the unique side, it would make this the only Dramatic Finish to trigger off of a mirror match - which is something rather impossible for anyone else.

You would need Goku on your team, of course - in a climax reminiscent of Kid Buu’s death, the moment involves Goku charging a Spirit Bomb while #21 holds her evil self off. Once the bomb is ready, Goku lets it fly - but Evil #21 is just powerful enough that she can resist the explosion. All seems lost, until the good half, knowing that she still holds the malice within that could lead to her becoming like her other self one day, tackles her evil embodiment - resulting in both being eradicated in a blazing explosion.

It’s a simple moment, sans all the dialogue, and the would be very simple to adapt to a Dramatic Finish: arguably, you would barely have to alter anything that isn’t already there (well, besides making the models fully animate in the “in between” moments, which would probably take some doing). Granted, one would have to have played the story mode to know what’s going on, but it’s not as if Dramatic Finishes aren’t fairly lore heavy in the first place.

And with her settled, we move on to the next questionably canon character without a Dramatic Finish, and one that was pretty hard to think of one for...

Goku (Dragon Ball GT)

... I don’t want to say “why couldn’t this have just been Kid Goku?” I really don’t.

However, for the purposes of this list, him being GT Goku makes it almost impossible to think of a Dramatic Finish. There’s the rumors Omega Shenron is going to be appearing later on in the season, but so far those are only that: rumors.

Otherwise, Goku doesn’t really get much in the way of awesome fighting moments against the rest of the game roster. He fights against Gohan (and adult Goten, which for obvious reasons isn’t happening) when the latter was under Baby’s control, but that doesn’t really have a conclusive end - let alone a dramatic one. He fights Vegeta in the same way, but Baby Vegeta is very much a different character from any other Vegeta we’ve got, far past the point of finagling, so the reference wouldn’t work.

Thus, I’ve mostly been going with “why not just pretend GT Goku is Kid Goku” for this list and any future Dramatic Finish. It came up in the Tien section, if and when Roshi appears it’s my suggestion for him as well, and it works far easier than trying to shoehorn a GT scene into the game.

With that in mind, I’ve already noted a great option in the first part of this: the end of Tien and Goku’s first fight, on the Tenkaichi Budokai stage. It’s epic, it’s a classic moment, and it’s lots of fun. Honestly, it’s GT Goku’s best option for a Finish.

But to give a new idea, I’d love for them to do something small but sweet for GT / Kid Goku. Something that would be both a cool call back, and a neat fighting game classic moment as well.

I’m talking about Goku and Krillin’s fistbump:

This still takes some finagling - that’s Kid Krillin you see above you, who is a lot smaller than his adult version (though not by much, you’d think). And there’s also a moment like this in Super between adult Krillin and and what would be in Base Goku in FighterZ terms, which would probably work even better (if anything, they could make this opening between Krillin and Base Goku and have GT Goku stand in during the flashback) -

- but if we’re talking about GT- sorry, “Kid Goku,” giving him this moment would work fairly well too. It’s another moment geared towards presenting a classic reference from the series’ oldest days, and gives us a sweet Dramatic Opening vs a tense and spectacular one.

It also doubles as a decent fighting game ref. Having characters who in lore are friends enter a fight with a simple fistbump or some other sign of respect is an enduring opening idea that’s most often seen in Street Fighter - which has often had Ryu and Ken begin fights this way.

This kind of small but sweet reference has somewhat gone out of style these days, along with a lot of the nuances you got with sprite-based fighters, but if it could be done more, I’d actually love to see it.

Here, for this case, you would simply have it happen on the Tenkaichi Budokai stage, and either have them walk onto the stage together and fistbump or - to save on animation costs - just begin with them doing it and jumping back to fight. For the full Base Goku version, doing that with a flashback of Kid Goku (a la GT Goku standing-in) doing the same, and then back to them as adults.

That and the Tien Finish are really the best GT Goku’s going to get unless something changes in the future, and both are pretty neat ideas, so that’s as far as we’re going to get with him.

And that’s the whole roster: with this list, now everyone has a Dramatic Finish. So I’ll end it instead with a truly extra suggestion: a Finish for a character who already has one, but which would be a very different kind of Finish that would still be pretty neat.

Kid Buu Destroys The World

I’ve already suggested something like this for Blue Vegeta’s Dramatic Finish - a finish in which the bad guy wins, and blows up the planet. It’s something that’s oddly cool to think about. Dragonball has many fantastic moments, including ones where the bad guys get ahead - King Piccolo blowing up Shenron, Nappa wiping out Goku’s friends, Cell crippling Vegeta and humiliating Trunks - but in the end, we mostly talk about the heroic ones.

So why not flip the script and just do one where everything goes to hell? Literally, for the evil people who happen to be on Earth.

Buu doing this is even more iconic than Freeza, imo, because while Freeza has been destroying planets for longer, it was always planets that weren’t our heroes’ own. He killed off Namek, but when he tried to come back to Earth and do it on the good guys’ home turf he got eviscerated - it wasn’t until a long time after that he was finally able to pull it off, and by then the heroes had a means of instantly undoing it. I still think Freeza vs Vegeta is a good choice for a potential Blue Vegeta Dramatic Finish, but if you’re approaching it from a “let’s make a Finish were it all goes horribly” standpoint, Buu is the standout moment.

For this, Kid Buu wins against Super Saiyan Vegeta or Goku. After the customary knockback, Buu grins, and laughs, and creates a planet destroying ball of energy. Goku and Vegeta run, but can’t get away - for bonus points, you could have Gohan, Goten + Trunks, and Piccolo on the ground, just out of saving range as the two are forced to instant transmission away. Cut to a shot of the planet as a whole, just before it all goes up.

Then, in the empty nothing of space, Buu reconstitutes, and flies off for more destruction. The end.

It’s a very different feel from the rest of the Dramatic Finishes, I think, which is why I felt it deserved to be on here even though Buu already has one. It’s just a fun, extra idea of the kinds of interesting things they might decide to do with Dramatic Finishes in the future.

And that’s everyone!

Hope you all enjoyed sitting through my nerdy listing habit. This was a lot of fun, going through all these Dragonball moments, remembering this and that and finding the most epic things each of our favorite characters have done. This isn’t even touching the iceberg for most of the cast, but if they do someday decide to give more of the rosters Dramatic Openings, none of these would at all be a bad place to start.

But if you think I’ve got the wrong idea, let me know. If there’s some moments you think would be better, give ‘em a try! Keep playing FighterZ if you have it, and simply stay Sparking if you don’t. The sky’s the limit for Dragonball, maybe even farther, and sometimes I think we haven’t seen anything yet!

[idont-know-what-im-doing]

The Protector

Warnings

Sympathetic Deceit, swords, threats of violence, panic attacks (it's probably really inaccurate), some cursing

______________________________________________________________

👑

Creativity was just minding his own business, lying on his bed and creating epic fantasies about the party  Thomas had just been invited to. 

Thomas was going to be the bell of the ball, and he'll meet a dashing prince who will sweep him off his feet, no, Thomas would sweep the prince off his feet. He would impress him so much that they would slow dance together, and sing a beautiful duet that they made up on the spot, and the party in the background would fade away and they would be in a beautiful forest and animals would sing the background vocals and- 

Suddenly he felt the attention being torn away from him. His beautiful fantasies were being twisted and corrupted, turned into the worst possible outcomes. 

Anxiety. This must be his doing. Ruining his perfect creations with his edgy, and honestly unrealistic, scenarios. 

He absolutely would not stand for this. He was Creativity, after all, he was the prince of the imagination, nay, the entire mindscape. He's non-stop And it's his sacred responsibly to stop this vile villain from hurting his friends and his host.

He jumped up and grabbed his sword, (he would never dream of hurting another side, he wasn't a dark side, after all, but it might be useful if Anxiety needs any convincing.), and sank straight into Anxiety's room. 

(Well, not straight.)

When he got there he couldn't help but be taken aback at the state the room was in; for one thing, it was freezing cold, and nearly pitch black. And once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the clothes, books, and other items carelessly tossed everywhere, and the spider webs in every corner! How could Anxiety live like this?  There is no way any of this stuff sparks any joy. Did he really care so little? 

Creativity felt a shiver down his spine as the fear began to set in. Right, he had forgotten this room had that effect. No matter, he thought, a dark and scary room was no match for a prince. he just had to talk to Anxiety and then he could leave. He could do this, he had to.

He looked around and saw a dark figure sitting on the bed.

"ANXIETY!" 

He had to stifle a laugh as the figure jumped and let out a yelp, clearly not expecting the sudden noise. He walked over to Anxiety and noticed that he was shaking. Good. He should be scared. 

"Wh- what do you want Princey?" 

He said in Tempest Tongue™, Ha! As if that pathetic parlor trick could intimidate a brave prince such as himself. And the darkling was stuttering, Creativity smiled to himself, this is going to be easy.

"I want you to stop ruining all my hard work!

" what do you-"

"DON'T PLAY DUMB WITH ME!"

He yelled, pulling out his sword and pointing it at the villainous side.

"This party is going to be perfect. And you are going to stay out of it. Understand?"

"I- uh- y-" 

He was trembling like a leaf, pathetic. Just quit stuttering and answer! Then this would be over. It's so easy. But noooo, he had to draw this out as long as possible and make Creativity stay in this disgusting place even longer.

"UNDERSTAND?!" 

He yelled, gesturing with his sword for emphasis.

"Creativity."

Said a voice, from behind him. he turned to face this stranger and saw nothing but a long black cloak. (God, dramatic much? That's supposed to be his thing!) Nonetheless, he knew exactly which snake-faced side was lurking in the darkness beneath the hood.

Deceit.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't-"

He began before he was so rudely interrupted by the dark side before him

"I'm not in the mood for your games Princey, get out."

"How dare you?!" 

He gasped, he was preparing to go on a totally reasonably sized rant about respecting royalty and how he could have his head for this when he was rudely cut off again! With a wave of Deceits' hand, Creativity's own hand slapped over his gorgeous lips, silencing him and causing him to drop his sword. Deceit picked it up and pointed it at the regal side.

"I said Get. Out. UNDERSTAND!?" 

He yelled, gesturing with the sword for emphasis, it nearly cut him

Creativity nodded and Deceit lowered the sword and Creativity's hand.

"And take your stupid sword!" He said tossing it at Creativity. It could have cut him! Again!

 What a freak.

                                                         ***

Logic was furiously attempting to fit in as much studying as possible before the frivolous social gathering that Creativity suggested they attend. And naturally, Morality was all for it. After that, it would be futile to try to convince their host to stay home and study. Even if he was not out-numbered 2-1 no one would have listened to him anyway, they never do.

His thoughts were interrupted when he noticed that he was not alone in his room. Deceit was standing near the doorway. 

He did the logical thing and tried to call for help. But before he could even get a word out Deceit flicked his wrist and silenced him.

"I don't have a lot of time, so listen to me very carefully. You are going to give me the information I need as quickly as you possibly can and you are not going to ask any questions. Are we understood?" 

Logic nodded and Deceit lowered his hand.

"Good, I need all the information you have on panic attacks."

He requested.

What could he possibly want to do with that information? Deceit probably wants to find a way to give Thomas a panic attack, so Logic should make sure not to give him any information that he could use for that. But what if that is not his plan? What if Logic ends up giving him the exact information he needs to hurt Thomas?  There is only one way to be sure. Ask him.

"Why do you need-"

Deceit silenced him again. 

Oh, never mind that was not a smart plan.

"Ya know…" 

Deceit said coyly 

"This trick is really handy. You can't say a thing, can you?"

Logic shook his head, but Deceit didn't seem to notice and just kept monologuing.

"No need to try to answer, I know you can't. It even silenced Creativity, so of course, it’ll work with you."

Logic believes that would qualify as a "burn"

"in fact… I bet no one could even hear you if you tried to scream."

Logic's eyes widened with fear.

"But I don't think you want to test that theory right now, do you?" He grinned, his fangs and scales glinting despite no light being shined on them. Illogical, but dramatic and threatening nonetheless.

Logic shook his head desperately. Whatever Deceit had planned for him, it would probably be a better idea to just give him the information he needs.

Deceit dropped Logics hand and for a split second it looked like his smug look morphed into something else, Logic wasn't good with feelings, but he could have sworn it looked like… guilt?

But naturally, that's impossible. Dark sides don't feel remorse. They're evil. Or at least that's what Creativity said, and, as Creativity, he would know the most about this illogical, make-believe world they live in.

                                                            ***

Deceit lightly knocked on Anxiety's door before entering. 

"Who's there?!" 

Anxiety asked in Tempest Tongue™. God, Creativity must have really scared him.

"It's Deceit, can I come in?"

He didn't hear a response, technically Anxiety didn't say no…?

He really should have asked Logic more questions.

He decided to just walk in anyway.

Anxiety was curled up in a ball on his bed, shaking, with tears falling down his face. He looked so weak.

Deceit was going to f*cking kill Creativity! Did he have no compassion? No sympathy for others? Of course, he didn't; he was the "prince" and therefore he mattered more than the rest of them. And naturally the "dark sides" didn't matter at all. 

This hellish society is ruled by a tyrant child who thinks his actions don't have consequences. And yet he dares call them the vill-

That's not what this is about. He had to comfort Anxiety. He could focus on dismantling an unjust society later.

"Anx?" 

He asked softly, sitting down next to him.

"Can you hear me?" 

Anxiety nodded

"Good. Everything will be okay. I just need you to breathe with me, okay? Breathe in for four seconds; 1, 2, 3, 4. Good. Now hold for seven seconds. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. You're doing great. Now breathe out for eight seconds; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. You got it! In. Hold. Out. In. Hold. Out." 

It took awhile for Anxiety to match his breathing, and once he did they kept breathing together for a few minutes.

"Do you feel better?" 

Deceit asked, making sure to keep his voice soft.

Anxiety nodded

"Can I hug you?"

"Y- yes" 

His voice was already starting to return to normal.

Deceit wrapped the smaller side up in his arms.

Anxiety clung to Deceit, gripping the back of his cloak, and burying his face in his shoulder.

"Tell anyone about this and I will murder you"

He whispered in his ear

"Of course, "

Deceit replied sarcastically

"Wouldn't want to ruin your reputation of being a fearless badass, now would we?"

"Shut up"

He complained, his voice muffled by Deceit's cloak.

They sat there in silence, wishing they could stay like this forever.

Deceit soon felt his shoulder grow damp. Anxiety was crying.

Deceit pulled leaned away and looked in his eyes.

"Hey, look at me. I know things suck right now, they really suck. But I will fix this." 

He said with finality

"One of these days, everything will be different."

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Their Hero Academia – Chapter 45: What Does Toshi Want?

Presenting the next raw and unedited chapter of my on-going, next-gen, My Hero Academia fic, Their Hero Academia!

Earlier chapters can be found here

“POWERRRRRR!”

Toshi had only a split second to react, lowering his gravity down to almost nil with a thought and jumping up and over his attacker.  He’d gotten good at judging exactly how much power to put into his jumps.  And in this case, he really had to be.  His opponent was tall, with incredible reach, and more than enough muscle even without super-strength to really ruin his day. He’d been dodging blow for several minutes now, unable to land any of his own in return.  Between his opponent’s speed and his Quirk, it was all but impossible.

When he reached the ceiling, he pushed off, hard, increasing his gravity and turning himself into a missile. But his foe had gotten turned around in time and he passed harmlessly through him, smacking into the wall on the other side.

Dazed, he bounced off, his feet touching the ground, and clutching his head.  He was harder to hurt when he amped up his gravity, but it didn’t mean he didn’t feel the sheer bone-rattling impact.  It took him a moment to remember what direction up was and that moment cost him.

Something though, told him to dodge, and he jumped, blindly, this time slamming into a muscular one, sending the both of them down in a heap.

Toshi scrambled to his feet and offered Uncle Mirio a hand up.  “So I win, right?”

“What?” Uncle Mirio asked, taking his hand and getting to his feet.  “How do you figure that?”

“You said if I could tag you, it counted as a win.”

“I meant on purpose, Toshi.  That was a total accident and you know it.”  Uncle Mirio crossed his arms, trying to look stern.  That lasted for about all of five seconds.  “But what the heck.  I am a man of my word, after all!”

Uncle Mirio let out a hearty laugh.  “So now the score is infinity to one!”

It was hardly the first time Toshi had sparred with Uncle Mirio, but the first time in a professional setting.  Toshi’s Quirk required a lot of split-second timing in order to get the best use out of it, shifting up and down the gravity spectrum rapidly.  Uncle Mirio’s Permeation Quirk required similar timing and thus made him an excellent teacher. His parents had brought him in early, once he’d decided he was going to be a Hero.

It, along with their own teachers, had given him a considerable leg up by the time he’d been ready to enroll in U.A.  But he still had a long way to go.

Uncle Mirio dropped back into another fighting stance.  “C’mon. Let’s go again.  This time I won’t go as easy on you!”

That was taking it easy?!

***

Toshi was, by nature, an early riser.  Usually the only person in the dorm who had him beat in that regard was Katsumi, and he honestly wasn’t sure how much that of that was her also being an early riser and how much of that was some competitiveness driven desire to be an earlier riser than him.  He’d get up, stretch, and then go for a job around the campus, before heading back to breakfast.   These days, Katsumi and Kana usually joined him.  He’d tried to talk Haimawari and Shoto into it, but both had declined.

Fortunately, for him, Uncle Mirio was as big a fitness nut as he was.  After their sparring match, they’d decided to take on a jog in the city. And it was early enough that they could go out in their civilian clothes and not be recognized by anyone, even if Uncle Mirio was fairly distinctive.  Granted, so was he, both as the son of the Number One Hero and taking Third Place in the Sports Festival.  He’d been lucky, really, growing up.  His parents had done an amazing job keeping him and his younger sisters out of the limelight and away from the paparazzi.  

“So, question for you, Toshi,” Uncle Mirio said.

“Shoot,” he replied, wondering what it might be.  Given this morning, it probably wasn’t Hero advice.  The rest of today was going to be focused on patrols and investigative techniques.

“What do you want?”

“Huh?” Toshi asked, confused.  But he kept jogging.  He always thought better when he was in motion anyway.

“Watched you at the Sports Festival,” Uncle Mirio said.  “Getting your whole class to pass the Obstacle Course was pretty awesome.  Must have taken a lot of planning.  And looks like you gave out a lot of good advice during Quirkball too.”

“Sure,” Toshi replied, not seeing where Uncle Mirio was going with this.  “I wanted to make sure everybody got the chance to show off and impress people.  Not everybody’s got the same advantages I do.”

“Because of your parents,” Uncle Mirio said, and Toshi nodded in response.  “And I know you told your dad about Haimawari.”

“He was the only one without a Hero or two in his corner,” Toshi said, quickly.  He still didn’t get what his uncle was getting at.  Why was his helping people being called into question? “And besides, Izumi did that too with her dad.  And so did the Twins’ uncle for some reason.”  That one he didn’t get.

“Thing is,” Uncle Mirio said, “pretty much everything you do, you’re always doing it for someone else. Always have.  Looking out for your class, your friends, everything.  It’s pretty commendable… but what do you want? Or should I ask, what do you want for you?”

“Huh?” Toshi stopped dead where he was, not understanding the question at all.  Uncle Mirio overtook him easily because of it, but he stopped and turned around.  

Uncle Mirio looked around, then nodded.  “C’mon. Let’s get some breakfast.”  He inclined his head to the side, in the direction of a stand selling breakfast sandwiches and opening early.  “Then we can talk.”

***

Toshi sat down on the bench and took a bite of his sandwich and a drink from the juice he’d purchased, before Uncle Mirio spoke again.

“So, mentor hat off,” Uncle Mirio said, miming taking a hat off.  “And godfather hat on.”  He mimed putting a different hat on.  “You’re always taking care of somebody else.  Just like your dad, really.  But what do you want?  Or, I guess, a better question is… what do you want for you?”

That was… an interesting question, now that someone said it out loud.  Toshi had even pondered it a bit during the Sports Festival.  He’d been so focused on getting his friends and classmates as far as he could, that he’d gone into the final round with less of a clear idea of what he was going to do that he’d really have liked.  Sure, he’d managed to think his way through all his matches, but he honestly hadn’t prepared for that eventuality like he should have if he was thinking about his own success.

Toshi did not want for much. As the son of the Number One Hero and another highly successful Hero besides, to say nothing of being the grandson of All Might, he wanted for very little.  They may not have been as rich as Izumi’s family or the Iidas, but the Hero business had done very well for them indeed.  

When All for One and the original League of Villains had been defeated finally and decisively, it had created a major sociological shift: Villains still existed, but it had leveled off.  There was still and would still be a need for Heroes, but their parents’ generation was the first generation of Heroes to have families and children on so broad a scale. The demands on any one individual Hero, even the Number One Hero, were not so great that they could not have lives of their own.  His dad may have had to devote more time to Hero work sometimes than others, but he also had plenty of time for them.

That he would be a Hero was never in Question.  He’d grown up with too many examples of heroism right in front of him, from his parents, to his grandfather, to an extended clan of honorary aunts and uncles, to one Great Granpa Torino.  He’d been practicing his Quirk for years.  He didn’t expect anything to be handed to him, and he knew he’d have to work hard to get there, but he knew being a Hero was his path in life.

And yet…

What did he actually want?  To be a Hero, sure.  To be like his dad, live up to the example he set.  To help as many people as he could.  Were those too abstract?

“I… don’t know,” he said, finally.  Admitting it felt like defeat.

“Oh,” Uncle Mirio said, then he smiled.  “That’s all right!  You’ve got time to figure it out.”

Toshi’s eyes widened. “What?” he asked, arms flailing. “You made it sound so serious! You made it sound like I had to have an answer right now!”

Uncle Mirio smiled apologetically.  “Sorry,” he said.  “But I do want you to think about it.  I don’t think you realized you didn’t know.”

He went on.  “It’s okay to have different goals.  I used to say what I wanted to do was to save a million people.  Pretty sure I’ve done that by now.  But that changed when I lost my Quirk.  I had to find a new goal.  And then I wanted to show people that having a Quirk or not didn’t matter.  Not sure how much that worked, since it didn’t last. These days, I want to make sure everyone feels safe.  It’s my specific goal.  Making sure that when I’m around, people know there’s nothing to fear.

“Your dad’s the Symbol of Hope.  He wants shows people that they can do anything if they believe they can, and that Hope will always win out against evil.  Everybody’s got their reasons and they’ve all got their goals.

“Sir, bless him, wanted to make a world with smiles and humor.

“Wanting your friends to succeed is a great thing, Toshi.  But if you’re busy looking after everyone else, who’s looking after you? Just think about it, okay?  You’ve got to know yourself in this business.”

Toshi nodded, slowly. He had always tried to look out for his friends, ever since he was little, whether that was keeping Katsumi from killing somebody or reminding Shota that he needed to sleep.    

Had he ever really tried to help himself?

“He’s right, you know, Young Grans…  Er, young man.”

Toshi nearly jumped into orbit.  He looked behind them and found Grandpa Might leaning against a street light.  He was wearing a trench coat and a hat that hid his bangs, but he was unmistakable.  Being a tall, incredibly fit, man in his early seventies (…truth be told, Grandpa Might’s age was kind of weird, since Aunt Eri had rewound him by eleven years), made him rather distinctive.

“Mister Yagi, were you following us?” Uncle Mirio asked.  

Grandpa Might yelped and shrunk back.  “Why, I, ah, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Young Togata.  I mean, young man!  I was simply in the neighborhood and…”

Toshi buried his head in his hands.  He’d thought he’d finally gotten Grandpa Might to stop following him…

***

Fortunately, the day got much less philosophical from that point on.  They’d returned to Might Tower and quickly gotten to work, following a brief break to shower and change into their costumes.  They met up in the Investigation Room of Uncle Mirio’s floor.

While most of the investigative work was done by Uncle Hitoshi and Aunt Camie and the other Underground Heroes and Sidekicks, Uncle Mirio was also a deft hand at it from his days working with Sir Nighteye and his own course of study.  Many people, Villain, Hero, or otherwise, had been taken in by his cheerful demeanor and ready smile, and been utterly surprised by the razor sharp mind behind it.

Carefully, Uncle Mirio planted a pin in the map of the city on the wall, joining several others already placed.  “What do you think, Toshi?” he asked.  “See any patterns?”

Toshi stared at the map, outlining several portions of Tokyo.  There were about a dozen pins in it all together, spaced at various points around the city.  “It depends,” he said.  “What are the pins for?”

Uncle Mirio shook his head, leaning back lazily against the wall.  “Not saying.  See if you can figure it out.”

Okay, he thought to himself. One hand rubbed his chin, while the other tapped anxiously on his leg.  Toshi considered himself to be pretty insightful, but he wasn’t half the analyst his dad was.  Or anywhere near as smart as his girlfriend (that reminded him, he should call her and see how her Internship was going).  But he could give this his best shot.

So the pins were definitely scattered but, as he looked from each one to the next, he realized that the center point of the map was definitely Might Tower itself.  Most of the pins were fairly close, with just a few outliers, and several of them came from different business districts or downtown, all in what should be heavily populated areas, only a few of them next to anything industrial or manufacturing, and one of them…

Toshi tilted his head. Was that where they’d just been earlier this morning?  

“Waitaminute!” he said, giving Uncle Mirio an accusing glare.  “This is just a bunch of food places!

Uncle Mirio laughed at that. “Okay, you got me,” he said, apologetically.  “I was just giving you a little test.”

He looked over to one of the other maps on the wall.   “This one though, if you can figure it out, that’d be great.  Bunch of tech and chemical thefts, but no one’s putting anything together.”

Toshi studied it for a moment, finding one well outside city limits.  “Isn’t that pin the truck that got attacked last month?”

Uncle Mirio nodded. He seemed to hesitate just a second before answering.  “That one’s… a little bit top secret,” he admitted.  “Sorry, Toshi, but you’re not cleared to know.”

He shook his head. “Anyway, I’ve got some smaller cases we can review.  Call it Investigation 101.”

***

While Uncle Mirio was busy with investigative leads and talking to Uncle Hitoshi, Toshi found himself with a bit of a free time.  There was plenty he could have done, more productive things, but instead, he found himself drawn to one of his favorite places in Might Tower: the Museum. Largely dedicated to Grandpa Might and his long and illustrious career, there was also a plenty of room dedicated to his dad, and many of the Heroes he had worked with and fought beside.  Though Uncle Kacchan had never been entirely happy with his statue, claiming it looked nothing like him and that Dad had deliberately placed it in an out of the way corner.  Considering how much space the section devoted to Ground Zero actually occupied and how much his dad admired Uncle Kacchan, Toshi knew that was all just bluster.

There was even a small section devoted to Gran Torino, which the man would have positively hated, having shrunk from the spotlight his entire life and career.  Two statues, one at the prime of his life, tall, muscular, and scowling.  The other, closer to the time of his death, shrunken with age, but no less of a scowl. It was how the world remembered him.

A far cry from the Great Granpa Torino that Toshi remembered, the kindly old man who had sometimes watched him and his sister Hana.  He’d fed them taiyaki and told them stories that, in retrospect, probably hadn’t been appropriate for children and still delighted in his ability to put Grandpa Might in a state of pants wetting terror.  He’d been gone about four years now, having stayed active just long enough to briefly take Tamaki Togata on as an intern, before passing away peacefully in his sleep.  Of course, he’d also claimed he was staying alive just so he could dance on Recovery Girl’s grave, but that hadn’t happened.

Toshi wished the old man was still with them to see the Hero he was becoming.  He’d based some of his own fighting style on the way Great Granpa Torino had bounced around.

He’d kept a baseball cap on, hiding his green curls under it as much as he could, and the lower part of his face, including the circular pink patches on his cheeks, under a sickness mask.  It gave him a little more privacy.

Uncle Mirio’s words were still ringing in his head and he really needed to get them sorted out. He’d thought coming down here, seeing his grandpa, his dad, and all his extended family would help him get his head around them, but he wasn’t sure it was helping any.   So many Heroes.  People carrying on legacies like Uncle Tenya, proving they were more than their past like Uncle Shoto, proving that no Quirk was villainous like Uncle Hitoshi, proving that brains mattered more than beauty like Aunt Momo, even people like Minoru Mineta showing that anyone had heroic potential.  

Had all of them known why they were following the path of the Hero so early?  Were they certain of it?  Uncle Mirio had said he didn’t have to have a definitive answer.  But surrounded by all this, Toshi couldn’t help but feel that he wasn’t measuring up.

“You know,” a voice from behind him said, “I like it down here too.”

Toshi turned around and saw his dad, similarly disguised.  “Hey,” he said.  “Didn’t expect to see you down here.”

“Got Hitoshi working with Haimawari and Kocho,” Dad said.  Toshi could tell he was smiling by the light in his eyes and the sound of his voice.  “But Mirio said you were a little rattled this morning.  You want to talk about it?”

Toshi drew in a breath, closed his eyes, then nodded.  No harm in asking for help.  “Yeah. I think I would.”

***

For some, the roof of Might Tower might have been scary, being one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo. But Toshi wasn’t afraid.  He’d been up here many times, starting when he was just a small child.  With Dad able to fly from the portion of One for All inherited from Nana Shimura and Mom’s Zero-gravity Quirk, he’d never been afraid of falling, especially when his own Quirk had kicked in.  The view of the city was truly impressive, reminding him of just how many people lived here and how many people relied on Heroes for their safety.

“So what’s on your mind, champ?” Dad asked.  His tone was pretty light, but Toshi could hear the concern behind it.  “Mirio said he got you thinking this morning.  Is that still bothering you?”

“Maybe,” Toshi said.  “I thought I knew what I was doing, Dad. And then Uncle Mirio started asking me what I wanted.  And then I didn’t know.”

“You sure about that?” Dad asked, encouragingly, patiently, like he was trying to draw something out of him.

“It’s just…” Toshi began, trailing off.  He waved a hand in the general direction of the city.  “I remember something you told me a long time ago.  About when you met Grandpa Might and saved helped save Uncle Kacchan from the Sludge Monster. You said there were Heroes there who didn’t help, because they didn’t think they could.  But you could, so you rushed in even though you didn’t have a Quirk back then. You always told me that if you could help, you should help, for no other reason than because you could.

“I’ve always tried to do that.  I know I’ve got it way easier compared to a lot of people.  A good Quirk, money, opportunities, and a family with some of the most famous Heroes in the history of, like, ever.

“All I’ve ever wanted to do with that is help people.  And that means helping my friends too.  Katsumi, Izumi, Haimawari, whoever.”

Toshi clenched a hand into a fist.  “That’s what I want to be.  It’s who I am.  That’s what I’m going to do! I’m going to be the guy that helps people!”

His dramatic moment was broken by the sound of Dad clapping.  “Just what I thought you’d say!”

The moment passed, Toshi felt puzzlement creep in.  “But Uncle Mirio said…”

“He said you needed to know yourself, right?  And that you’re always taking care of other people.”

Toshi nodded and Dad went on.  “He might not have put it just right, but what he was really getting at was that you should be sure you’re doing it because that’s what you want to do, not just because you think it’s what you want to do, or even because you feel you have to do.  There’s a difference between doing the right thing because you have to and because you want to.  And I think your friends are lucky to have you looking out for them.  I’m so proud of you.”

He could see tears in Dad’s eyes.  “Daaaad,” he said, waving his hands in front of him rapidly.  “Don’t cry!   If you cry, I’m gonna…”

Too late.

They cried.

Some things never changed. But fortunately, the tears didn’t last long.

“So,” Dad said after a moment, “have you called your girlfriend yet?  Not a good idea to leave a girl hanging for too long, you know.  I remember, before your mother, when I was dating Melissa and didn’t call her for three days and…”

Toshi’s heart seized up. “…Sora!”   He headed for the door to the stairwell, fumbling for his phone. “Sorry, Dad, gotta go!”

[echoeternally]

Which Mario characters would be, as Watership Down Characters, and vice versa?

You know, I took some time to think about this one today, and I’ve got to admit, for my tastes, I can’t think of a feasible way that this works out. And it’s for a few reasons that kind of get me hung up.

Honestly, I think it comes down to at least four pretty divisive factors that keep them from being compared on an equal scale, and adds a terribly heightened challenge to it all. These would be: gender ratios (A), inconsistent characterizations (B), mismatching personalities ©, and cast prominence (D).

Obviously, it’s a lot to get into, so, I’ll include that in a portion below the cut. If you keep going, I’ll try to properly explain why it’s not just a clear-cut question to answer for this one.

A) First, gender ratios, which can be worked around based solely on personality, but still glares out big time. Watership Down has some female characters on the roster, but they tend to matter little comparatively. Hell, there are multiple characters that started as male that were later swapped to female roles in later adaptations. It’s good, and shows that the role can be played by a character, not a gender. But it’s also a reminder that the original work is dated in its viable female cast. By contrast, Mario has a nice number, and they stand out a lot better, each with unique and distinct roles, personalities, and general flavors that they add. They’re fun and dynamic, a highlight to see.

B) This actually leads into the next point, though, which would be the inconsistent characterizations. Both franchises kind of mess around with how their characters are portrayed and what they do. Sure, you get the basics well enough with the major characters: Hazel’s the brave hero leader, Mario tends to be that too. Fiver’s the timid younger brother, so is Luigi.

But it gets weirder the further down the cast list you go. Bowser’s the big bad guy, but depending on his role as the main villain or not, he can either be sympathized with, or totally evil; he’s maybe just looking for love, or has insatiable desires for conquest. Bigwig is a strong authority figure, but can either be super loyal or a part-time jerk that questions his own leader’s authority. Peach is helpless, or more powerful than she lets on. Hell, Clover took over half of Hyzenthlay’s role in the latest adaptation, and they’re far from the only instance of variable depictions in the series, further depending on the characters that are used. Overall, these changes can make them flexible to develop over time, but it makes them harder to pin down on which role defines them best.

C) And that flexibility also leads to mismatching personalities between the casts of both stories. Because Rosalina first appeared as this quiet, graceful, and yet all powerful entity, we’d picture that side to her, kind of elevating her above the usual human counterparts she’d stand beside, calling into question if she’s even human herself. But she’s later show to have simple joys and pleasures, so she’s not totally detached and above it all. This doesn’t quite equate to any particular character in Watership Down; you could try to make her on par with the Black Rabbit of Inlé, based on powers and ethereal-vibes, but Inlé is too tied with death to be a fair comparison for Rosalina.

Likewise, we have characters from Watership Down known for their stock personality types: Blackberry is the smart one, Strawberry is the big eater, and Hawkbit is the deadpan snarker. None of these particularly hit Mario characters due to their shifts in depictions. Sometimes the big eater is Bowser, sometimes it’s Luigi (yeah). Rosalina seems smart, but Yoshi and Toad have been depicted this way as well. Virtually any one of the Mario cast can fall into sarcasm and dry humor. It’s touch-and-go, but doesn’t give a solid match-up for anyone.

D) Finally, if the mentions above didn’t already make it obvious, then the issue falls to how the casts line up with first themselves, and then one another. The core cast for Mario’s main game franchise tends to fall upon Mario, Peach, Bowser, and typically Luigi to round up the rest, though sometimes he can be left out. Watership Down’s main group would likely be Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and General Woundwart. These are more or less the essential characters to have for there to be a story to tell for the franchises.

From there, have fun figuring out who matters and to what level. You can probably safely include higher profile picks for the major characters of each. Mario tends to favor Yoshi, some form of Toad, and generally a rotating female cast member, plus a sidekick villain or a few. Watership Down gets a way better story including the heroism from Hyzenthlay (or a female character that takes on her role for the story), and the undermining plots of whoever gets to be Woundwart’s second-in-command. That could form your secondary main characters.

But it just keeps going from there, and each character is weighted differently. Toad can be an individual and important, but also can get shafted for another more important Toad (Toadette, Toadsworth), or simply suffice as a species, not an individual. Should he be considered main or minor? Dandelion is usually lorekeeper alongside being the fastest, but both of these roles have been divided and distributed to other rabbits (Bluebell and Blackavar respectively), calling into question his prominence. Kehaar tends to always appear, but he can be written around pretty easily. Similarly, Bowser sometimes relies on the Koopalings, but they can also be missing for something close to a decade without the blink of an eye. Who matters, who doesn’t? It depends on the audience, and their interests.

…

Honestly, I even tried breaking it down for the characters on each level, and I had a list spanning past 20 characters on each side. And I wasn’t even including everyone, but just the characters that I felt were important. Trying to mix and match them was even worse, to the point where it really couldn’t be done on a really fitting level.

Going by canon interpretations for both, I think you’ve got, at best:

Mario = Hazel

Luigi = Fiver

Bowser = General Woundwart 

Peach = Hyzenthlay

Yoshi = Bigwig

That’s going by a core cast, with some additions to make sure the major-most of each group gets included. It’s not great either, for several reasons, since Bigwig and Yoshi do not have comparable personalities, but are both strong. Bowser’s also got redeeming qualities to him that actually earn him some sympathy points, whereas Woundwart…well, I think writers have tried, but he’s best as irredeemable and blatantly evil.

Personally, if I were to go maybe one extra level and include Daisy for main cast on the Mario side, I’d fit her to Bigwig, and instead equate Yoshi to Dandelion, as both of the latter two are known for speed, while the former two can be tough, but also caring as well. But I don’t feel that Dandelion and Daisy are as important to their franchises, whereas one could argue a little harder for Yoshi, and Bigwig is easily important to the story.

I even tried going on my fanfic interpretations (of at least the Mario characters) to see if that would line up better, but then that just screws up where the main villain connects. Because, that would instead look like:

Mario/Luigi = Hazel/Fiver

Bowser = Bigwig

Peach? = Hyzenthlay?

??? = General Woundwart

Because, based on how I’ve written them so far, Bowser’s even less of an evil force, and more motivated based on his heart and his people. This makes no one particularly equal to Woundwart. Conversely, Peach is a lot, well…she’s hardened. If one were to go by Hyzenthlay’s depiction in the Netflix miniseries, I’d wager that’s good enough. But this splits who Hyzenthlay is, so the character doesn’t quite feel whole. Oh, and Mario tends to be leader-like, but also has weird powers and visions going on, which helps Luigi step up into his role in his absence, so…they both have shades of Hazel and Fiver’s roles.

Furthermore, I get lost in my own biased interpretations of the fanfic I’m never writing for Watership Down, so that would make going down the rabbit hole a lot more terrifying. Well, for you reading this, anyway; I’d be thrilled to keep it going and gush about personalities in my head for the WD cast, lol.

So, that’s kind of how it goes in my mind. Yes, I’m positive there’s enough flexibility to go down each list and match up characters based on as much as possible for each side of them, or by ignoring some things. Mixing some canons together, you could get:

Mario = Hazel

Luigi = Fiver

Peach = Hyzenthlay

Daisy = Bigwig 

Bowser = General Woundwart

Kamek = Vervain/Orchis/Whoever the schemer to Woundwart is

Yoshi = Kehaar 

Toad = Pipkin/Bluebell

Toadette = Clover

Wario = Strawberry

Waluigi = Cowslip

Bowser Jr = Campion

Rosalina = Dandelion

Here, not only do these feel weirdly off when you look further into those characters, but it doesn’t really cover them properly, nor does it pick the best from the rosters of each. Yoshi’s kind of the foreign type to the core cast, so he connects well enough with Kehaar. This, however, chooses to ignore his famous speed that aligns him best with Dandelion, which instead relates his storytelling to Rosalina, because both tell stories, but that’s where their similarities end. We also choose to ignore Yoshi’s big appetite, which would connect best to Strawberry, putting the much less important Wario up to that role.

Similarly, this also confuses the interpretations on certain Watership Down characters based on how they’re depicted, and then sort of picks a Mario character that might connect. The easier one is Woundwart’s right hand scheming little twerp, which has been both Vervain and Orchis in the tv series and miniseries respectively. They work in a role similar to Kamek, a dutiful but terrified henchman.

It gets worse, though, when we hit something like Pipkin or Bluebell, as the latter was absent from the tv series, the former from the miniseries, and though both have some childish innocence to them, neither personality ends here for either. Toad, when he’s fleshed out as a standalone character, probably could be seen as innocent and childish, but I doubt he’s alone, and also has roles that elevate his mindset, which doesn’t quite make him on that same level.

Not to mention that some just don’t outright fit (Junior to Campion), but going that far along, that’s about all that works out well enough for characters that can be argued for their prominence.

…

Bottom line would be that, while I totally love both franchises and would like to put them on a equal level for comparisons, it doesn’t do either one justice.

All the same, thank you for the interest and the ask! It was fun thinking it over.

[timeagainreviews]

Doctor Who and Video Games

We live in the era of the franchise. Everything it seems is getting the franchise treatment. After the success of the MCU, everyone wants that sweet sweet money. We’ve got the failed Universal Monsters reboot, the Harry Potter extended universe, and endless Star Wars movies. However, some franchises, it would seem, struggle to grow further than their core narrative. Star Wars never strays very far from the battle with the Empire. Which is one thing you can’t really say about Doctor Who. Doctor Who has done fantasy, sci-fi, period drama, schlocky horror, whimsy, and utter rubbish. I’ve always admired Doctor Who’s flexibility as a property. It lends itself beautifully to a wide range of mediums, such as audios and comic books. But what about video games? Are there any good Doctor Who video games? Could there be?

Over the past week, in preparation for this article, I've completely immersed myself in the world of Doctor Who video games. I feel uniquely qualified to have an opinion on the subject. But before we continue, I give a word of caution. I'm talking directly to you, now. Never in your life, should you ever play "Doctor Who: Return to Earth," for the Nintendo Wii. It's not worth the £1.80 that I spent on eBay. You don't ever deserve to do that to yourself. I don't care what you've done, nobody deserves that. If like myself, you have played this game, you have my deepest sympathies, especially if you paid for it new.

It doesn't interest me to make a list of the worst Doctor Who video games, as many people have done this already. It's nothing new to say that Doctor Who has a video game problem. When I wrote that Doctor Who should be run by Disney, I don't actually mean it should happen. I was merely illustrating that Disney knows how to take care of its properties. I would venture that Doctor Who has always had a bit of a management problem. Merchandise from Doctor Who has always reminded me of Krusty the Clown merchandise. So much of it is some bullshit they slapped a Dalek on said: "10 quid please!" Barring the occasional home run or third-party licensing, a lot of the merchandise is pretty uninspired. Which is bananas, because the world of Doctor Who has so much colour and potential.

Video games based off of movies and television are almost always as bad as movies and television based off of video games. They're rarely breaking the mould in their new medium. Most of the time, tie-ins such as these are quick soulless cash grabs. You can see this a lot in the Matt Smith era. There are at least seven games featuring his Doctor, and then a sudden decline. Matt Smith was the Doctor during one of the show's biggest points in popularity. Never before had the show been embraced on such an international level. Of course, the Beeb wanted to push as many video games out as possible.

The problem is, they didn't throw a lot of money at it, and not one project seemed to get the focus it deserved. I won't pretend to know the motivation behind the BBC's forays into video games, but it seems to be a trend with them to overdo something, and then be scared of it in the future. They changed the 5.5" figurine set to a 3.75" scale and nobody wanted them. Because of this, we haven't seen nearly as many 5.5" figures since. They once put out a figure of Lady Casandra's frame after she exploded into gore. We used to get figures like Pig Lazlo and the Gran from "The Idiot's Lantern." Now we'll be lucky if we get everyone's favourite- Graham O'Brien. They also did it with the Doctor Who Experience. They make this brilliant Doctor Who museum with the OK'est walkthrough story, and then put it right in the middle of Cardiff. They wondered why it never made any money. I've been twice, and I gotta say- they should have put it in London. It would still be open.

This isn't to say all of Matt Smith's video games are bad. In fact, the Eleventh Doctor adventure games referred to simply as "The Doctor Who Adventure Games," are some of my favourite in the entire lot. And as much as I would like to blame the BBC for their lack of caring, the fact is Doctor Who is not easy to translate into video games. Even if they do care, they still need the right team on the job. Oddly, it's one of the Doctor's greatest charms that makes Doctor Who hard to translate into a video game, and that's the Doctor's stance on violence. If the Doctor could pick up a laser pistol and just frag some Daleks, we'd probably have an entire series on our hands. Unfortunately, most developers go one of two ways. They either ignore the pacifism or we get countless mind-numbing puzzles.

Puzzles are by far the worst element of any Doctor Who game. In the browser-based "Worlds in Time," there were a plethora of Bejewelled type mini-games and pipe matching puzzles. The puzzles got increasingly harder even if the player wasn't also getting increasingly better. Even the platformer "The Eternity Clock," was mired in constantly stopping to do puzzles. They pop up in the Adventure Games, but other than the infuriating "don't touch the sides," puzzles, they don't detract much from the gameplay. There were moments where I felt a bit like a companion because I was decoding a Dalek computer for the Doctor, which is really the money spot for a Doctor Who video game. Any time a Doctor Who game can make you feel like you're in Doctor Who is time well spent.

When asking my friends what kind of Doctor Who video game they would like to see, many of them mentioned they would like a survival horror type game. We sort of get this in many of the Smith era games. In "Return to Earth," the mechanic is sloppy and infuriating at best. In "The Eternity Clock," and the Adventure Games, it's a little more manageable. It's a nice way to add a challenge to a non-violent gameplay style. It would be interesting to see what a game team from something like "Thief," or "Resident Evil," might do with the sneaking aspect.

Another way the games have completely side-stepped the non-violence and puzzles is by having the Doctor act as a secondary character. The player is put in the position of the companion or perhaps a UNIT soldier as in the case of "Destiny of the Doctors." If you've not played DotD, I wouldn't blame you. I was hitting my head against the wall just trying to figure out what to do. The only real reason to play that game is for one last chance to see the fabulous Anthony Ainley reprise the role of the Master. He's in totally smarmy ham mode, even if it's a bunch of gibberish they shot in a day. You can find the entirety of the footage on YouTube and it's surreal.

The problem with having the Doctor be violent is that it doesn't feel true to the character. Sure, Three did some Venusian aikido, Four broke that dude's neck in "Seeds of Doom," and even Twelve socked a racist in the face, but these are isolated incidents. The spirit of the Doctor is lost in 1992's "Dalek Attack," when the Doctor is forced to go full on bullet hell on a Dalek hover cart. It's funny then that one of my favourite Doctor Who games incorporates a violent Doctor. In the Doctor Who level of "Lego Dimensions," the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to make villains fall apart in a very safe Lego style violence. I can excuse this mostly because the game is not primarily a Doctor Who game at heart.

Funnily enough, the Lego game does something I've always wanted in a Doctor Who video game. I've always wanted to have a Doctor Who game where you could regenerate into different Doctors, and also go into their respective TARDISes. Sure, some of the games on the Commodore 64 allowed you to regenerate, but it was pretty naff in its execution. I tell no lies when I say I spent a lot of time regenerating and reentering the TARDIS to explore the Lego versions of their respective console rooms. Really, the biggest problem with the Lego Doctor Who game is that it wasn't it's own game. Lego Dimensions was its own failure. If TT Games would come out with an entire Doctor Who game, I would buy it yesterday.

The overarching problem with every Doctor Who game is the same problem Torchwood had- if it wasn't attached to Doctor Who, we wouldn't be interested. While I did have a lot of fun with the Adventure Games and Lego Dimensions, not one Doctor Who game has every element right. One has a good story, but poor mechanics, another has great mechanics but doesn't feel right. It's a bit of a tight rope to find the perfect balance, but I don't feel it's impossible

One of the reasons I would love to see a proper Lego Doctor Who game is that they have a history of good adaptations. They're not exactly beloved games, but I myself play a lot of them. One of the most impressive things I've seen them do was in Lego Batman 3, where they made each of the planets in the Green Lantern mythos a visitable world. Could you imagine the same treatment for Doctor Who? Visiting Telos and Skaro, and then popping off to medieval earth or Gallifrey? You could get different missions depending on which Doctor you were, or what time you arrive in. And the collectable characters! So many companions, and Doctors, and baddies, and costume variations to unlock! Doesn't that sound nice? You can buddy Jamie and Amy with Seven and Twelve and have an all Scottish TARDIS! A Zygon could ride K9!

The fact is, we probably won't see a very expansive Doctor Who game. I would be very enthusiastic for an open world Doctor Who game, but even as I type it, it sounds difficult to pull off. I may be able to say what doesn't work about the games, but saying what would work is admittedly, not as simple, but this doesn't mean I can't think of at least one good game. Piecing together some of the things I mentioned earlier, I think the best genre for Doctor Who is point-and-click adventures. I know I keep singing the praises of the Doctor Who Adventure Games, but it's because I think they were actually onto something. It's sad then that they scrapped any further developments to work on the inferior "Eternity Clock."

Could you imagine a point and click Doctor Who in the same vein as "Day of the Tentacle," or "Thimbleweed Park"? You walk around as the Doctor, pick up bits, talk to funny characters and solve complex problems. If you throw in a bit of horror survival, you've basically got the Adventure Games, which is my point- Do more with what they've already done. Grow the concepts. Improve the mechanics. A Doctor Who game should be jammed packed with Easter eggs, unlockables, and mystery. The point is, do more. Even their phone apps are abysmal. You know how much I would play a “Pokémon Go,” style Doctor Who game? You go around trapping baddies in cages you set off with your sonic screwdriver or something. I. Would. Catch. Them. All.

We still have “The Edge of Time,” coming to PC and consoles in October, and I'm pensively excited. While the graphics seem really top notch, in no way does it feel like anything more than a fun little VR experience. The game is going to remain exclusive to that small subsection of gamers that own a VR headset. Before it has even been released, it's closed itself off to yet another section of its very wide audience. Let's just hope that it doesn't scare the BBC away from making a proper Doctor Who game in the near future. And in the meantime, I'm going to have to borrow my friends' VR set, because of course, I'm going to play it. It's Doctor Who.

Well friends, thanks for reading! I had a lot of fun “researching,” this article. Playing Doctor Who games all week? Oh no, twist my arm! Sadly, a lot of these games are no longer available from their original sources. I was able to find a lot of them on the Internet Archive. If you want to give them a go, I would definitely suggest it. A couple of them are even capable of being emulated on your browser from the Internet Archive. The game I had the hardest time locating was “The Gunpowder Plot,” but I was eventually able to find it after some digging. I didn’t play any of the text-based games because I’m not very good with spatial awareness, and so text-based games are usually a nightmare for me. Sadly, Worlds in Time is lost forever, but I remember my character fondly. I also discovered I’m pretty good at Top Trumps: Doctor Who. Go figure.

[imaginemycroftholmes]

@grand-admiral-luna

“No one can know about her,” Moriarty fussed to his loyal sidekick Sebby, the Terror Tiger, looked unfazed by the declaration from his boss.

This wasn’t something new to him considering their gigs as superheroes for the greater part of London.

As Pyro Professor and Terror Tiger they constantly battled with the evil masterminds such as Ice Man, Purple Pirate or even worse, tango with their favorite henchman, Captain Action.

It was always a game of cat and mouse as the lone duo tried to rid the city of their influence and control while managing to evade arrest. A deed, most annoying slow considering Mycroft Holmes aka Ice Man had his hand in the pockets of every major business and authority.

To have their own sibling Eurus as their mole was a blessing the city couldn’t afford to lose as she had a watchful eye on both her brothers evil schemes. 

“Boss, if the Ice Man and Purple Pirate haven’t caught onto our real identities by now then I don’t think we have to worry about it,” Sebby rationalizes to Jim, “I mean they still won’t come to terms that the Holmes brothers are villains so why worry about us?”

“Because if they figure out who we are our families will be in danger,” Jim stresses, “They  could be used as bait or worse!”

 This isn’t the first time that Jim had gone off like this about his sister _____ after a difficult foiling of the dastardly duo but this is one of the few times it was too close for comfort.

However, being an orphan of war Sebastian can’t imagine what it feels like to lose someone but if its anything by the way Jim acts he know it can’t be good.

Not one of them could figure out why or how ______ kept ending up near their battles but it was starting  to put Jim on edge and when Jim is on edge then he’s crawling up his back with complaints that makes him want to claw off the backs of the infamous Holmes brothers just to make Jim stop crying.

And he just got his titanium claws resharpened just for the occasion. 

Watching and (tuning out) his boss’s ramblings about keeping his sister safe Sebastian turns his attention to the big screen showing off the city’s zones praying for a distraction when a cellphone rings.

“I’m holding out for a hero! I’m holding out for a hero until the morning's light..”

If it wasn’t for the fact that Jim was surrounded by some of his most dangerously sensitive bombs-the ones that only required just a light pressure to set off- Sebastian might have found it funny how he fumbled for his phone to answer it. 

With his cat-like reflexes he swooped in to drag the the nervous man from dropping his device on what would be an instant death for them both and answered the phone for him.

“Hello?”

“Sebby,” comes an excited voice from the other line, “It’s great to hear you! How has the canning business going with you two lately?”

Sebastian winces both at the moniker that ____ picked up from her brother and the fact that she still believes that lie.

How anyone believes that lie is beyond him but then again, people still can’t believe that Sherlock Holmes is the Purple Pirate DESPITE WEARING THE SAME OUTFIT EACH TIME BUT ONLY PURPLE. THERE’S NO MASK TO OBSCURE HIS FACE OR HAIR BUT WHEN HE TRIES TO SHOW PEOPLE THAT THEY THINK HE’S “CRAZY”.

But thanks to his ever witty and not good with lies on the spot partner the first thing that came out of his mouth for their nightly activities is starting a canning business and they’re in a relationship.

Needless to say, this puts a damper on his dating life but for the life of him Sebastian doesn’t have the heart to cheat on Jim for fear of _____’s private version of “You hurt him and I’ll make sure you have a 4 year slow death in the backyard tool shed back in Sussex where no one can hear you scream.”

If ______ is anywhere near as bad as Moriarty Sebastian doesn’t want to be on her bad side. 

“Yeah, its going great _____,” Sebastian says convincingly while shooting a glare at Jim who is piteously trying to reach for his phone, “So what are you up to sunshine?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” she continues with enthusiasm, “You see, I met this guy...”

“You met a guy you say,” Sebastian parrots loudly knowing good and well that it would send her brother into a rage.

“A GUY?? WHO IS HE?? SEB! GIVE ME BACK MY PHONE!”

It really shouldn’t bring Sebastian as much joy as it does but Jim jumping desperately to retrieve his phone but it does and he continues to torment him.

“So what? you want me and Jim to meet him,” Sebastian carries on causally like Jim isn’t trying to scale him.

And failing.

“Yeah, actually. I’ve kinda been seeing him for over 2 months now and want him to get acquainted with you guys because I might be bringing him home for Christmas this year,” she states with more confidence than her brother wearing spandex tights.

“Ya know that’s a pretty big step in a relationship right?”

“I know,” _____ agrees, “But this guy is just so right for me that I don’t feel like its too big of  deal.”

  ‘Yeah I know,” Sebastian concedes, “But you know that your brother is going to have kittens right?”

“Well, that’s why I want you to come with. Nothing can settle someone down like their spouse am I right?”

“Spouse...right...”

“Speaking of which is my brother around?”

Looking around and finding that Jim had skunked off somewhere was alarming.The guy never gave up that easily which was why he was the Purple Pirate’s favorite target. 

“I think he may have ran to the loo-” Sebastian tries to say before an image of terror, Moriarty running full speed with one of his guns toward him with a battle cry of “GIVE ME MY PHONE” being heard throughout the hide out. 

“No, wait! ____, here he is,” Sebastian cries as he throws the device at Jim and runs for cover.

The phone is quickly caught by Jim who purrs his hellos to her and then promptly hangs up.

Sebastian doesn’t have to turn around from his hiding spot to know that its Moriarty standing behind him. His voice is dark and deadly as he leans closer.

“You tease me like that again when ______ is calling and I’ll clip those claws permanently.” 

“Yes boss,” Sebastian responds carefully knowing that when Jim is in one these moods that his life can very well be in forfeit because for all of Jim’s silliness he was a damn genius with an affinity for violence and murder. 

He could only shudder of what horrors Moriarty would unleash if he had not been on the side of angels.

“So, when are we meeting him?”

“Next Tuesday at 6″, Jim spats coldly, ‘And you had better not make us late.”

“You know that’s not my faul-” Sebastian says defensively until he sees the look of murder in his boss’s eyes. “I mean, sure boss,” he corrects himself, “are you going to use Eurus to spy on the bloke?”

“Of course I am! Why wouldn’t I want to know the scum who’s shacking up with my sister? I want to know who he is, what he does and what he shits to see if he’s good enough for her! I wanna maul the guy with all the dirt I have on him so he’ll fuck off and leave us alone.”

Poor guy Sebastian thinks as his boss stalks off to Skype Eurus he can’t be all bad if ____ likes him.

                                XxXxXxX

“YOU.”

“Believe me the feeling is mutual.”

“Guys, can we settle down please! We’re in a public place!!”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

Here, sitting before him in the flesh in one of his bespoken suits, is the Ice Man at one of the nicer restaurants in London acting like he’s an honest to God good man beside Jim’s sister. 

Like the guy hadn’t tried to murder them last week for foiling their slave labor camps in India or tortured them on occasion.

And to make matters worse his hand is on _____’s thigh, oh my God Jim is going to murder him before the waiter even arrives.

________ has her hands up as is to stop her brother from launching himself over the table to fight and pronounces quickly, “I can explain!”

Well this would explain why Eurus couldn’t find information on him Sebby muses as the air becomes frigid. 

Crap, its one of Ice Man’s classic moves Sebastian thinks as other civilains begin to feel the icy sting.

“Explain what,” Jim spits out venomously, “that this monster brainwashed you into thinking that it loves you? That not even you can recognizes that he’s the Ice Man, the man responsible for the poverty and waste in our country? That he’s so evil that members of his own family are trying to end his tyranny?”

“Jimmy!”

“Now you see here, you two-bit genius,” Mycroft interjects, “I may make up causes and strife for my own gain but my love for ______ is one of the few things from me that are true.”

“Bullshit! You’re just using her to get to me!”

“Why would he want you when you already have Sebby,” _____ cries.

“I’m not gay!”

Sebastian can already see their waiter in the distance looking far too nervous to approach the shouting match that was their table so he shooed him off with a “come back later.”

Realizing that this would not only lead to a needless blood bath but to unmasking their identities to the public Sebastian tries his attempt to at least save this meal.

Tapping his glass to get their collective attention Sebastian starts,” Shut the hell up, you guys are causing a scene.”

Pointing at Mycroft accusing Jim begins to mouth out, “But he started-”

“I don’t care who started this I told you to shut up!”

He looks around the table at the lot of them.

______ looking confused and hurt that anyone would accuse Mycroft of anything less than sainthood, Mycroft torn between tearing ____ away with him like the villain he is or staying to suss out any evil intent toward her and Jim seemingly five seconds from ignoring the command to maul the Ice Man outright.

Praying to whatever deity that cursed him into a situation like this Sebastian began. “Look, we can’t outright believe that Ice Ma-I mean, Mycroft has the best intentions toward you _______-”Only to be interrupted by Jim’s HA!

Giving Jim a glare Sebastian continues, “However, JIM, we also can’t lawfully say that Mycroft’s feelings aren’t true because we aren’t mind readers.”

“I bet I can find us one on Craigslist!”

“Jimmy shut the hell up,” ______ hisses before gesturing for Sebastian to carry on. “So, my proposal is that we, Jim and I, monitor you two just to make sure that you’re safe.”

“But I’m 32,” ______ complains, “I’m too old for a chaperone!”

“Listen, I’m doing what I can _____. It’s either this or Jim’s going to try and murder Mycroft when you’re not around. It’s a compromise.”

“As if he could after all this time,” Mycroft snidely remarks.

“Maybe I just didn’t have the right motivation,” Jim counters getting squared up.

“Promises, promises,” Mycroft teases as he gestures for a waiter,” Besides we both know who the better genius is.”

“Yeah, your little sister.”

The air was becoming increasingly frigid to the point where Sebby was sure that he would have to evacuate people from the premises until _____ leaned onto Mycroft’s shoulder, melting away the frost.

“Guys, guys! Let’s stop the banter and eat! I’ve been dying to try this menu for ages,” _______ says cuddling Mycroft’s chill into submission.

“Anything you wish ______,” Mycroft says fondly in a way that makes Jim’s skin crawl.

Later after the bill was (fought over) and paid for  _____ hung back with him while Mycroft and Jimmy went to “talk” about some ground rules in private.

 “Sebby, why do Mycroft and Jimmy hate each other,” she asked innocently, “I know they never went to school together and Mycroft rarely leaves his office so how would they know each other enough to despise one another?”

Cursing his boss and this ridiculousness of their town Sebastian states, “We’re rival canning companies.”

“Oh, well that makes sense.” 

Listen, I’m not the best at superhero/villain names so cut me some slack. 

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

avengers: infinity war

um. SPOILERS.

so i finally watched spiderman: infinity war avengers: infinity war yesterday with the inimitably awesome aakanksha ( @franklyineedcoffee). it was great! very cgi and very Epic.

like. mcu movies were never terribly remarkable to me, but then they got Spiderman involved (and made him great!) and the ensuing trifecta of extremely enjoyable films (homecoming, ragnarok and black panther) finally made a fangirl out of me. which basically primed me perfectly to enjoy the shit out of infinity war. 

a few thoughts! a second reminder for SPOILERS because i discuss about basically everything.

1. the film did a great job juggling so many characters and so many plot threads? of course some parts were under-served (the whole wakanda stretch was a bit meh to me), but at no point was i just waiting for the film to get back to the Interesting Bit. almost all of it was equally engaging.

2. i’d heard a lot about thanos going into this film but what i wasn’t expecting was to be reminded of two villains that the mcu had done really, really well recently: adrian toomes/the vulture from homecoming, and erik killmonger from black panther. thanos isn’t nearly as compelling as either of them and certainly doesn’t deserve a fraction of the sympathy we can reasonably afford to either toomes/killmonger, but the kind of sad, single-minded conviction that he used to justify murdering trillions of people? yeah, that was all-too-familiar. far from the cackling, evil villain trope, both toomes and killmonger were shaped and scarred by unforgiving circumstances; you didn’t approve of the stuff they did but their pathos was palpable. thanos plays this part of the villain arc very well--he doesn’t visibly delight in death and destruction, but does it because he is burdened with it. and isn’t that how it usually goes in the real world? the worst people in the world never believe in their own evil--just their own status as a Special Person Who Knows Something Better Than Everyone Else. a special destiny, a special responsibility with all that power. sometimes the line between superhero and villain is so, so thin.

2.5. because looking at it objectively, his motivation was some malthusian bullshit, yeah? and in a way recalls some of the most harrowing repercussions of bullshit science from the early twentieth century. so if i read one more thinkpiece about ‘errrrr guys maybe thanos had a point’ i’m going to lose it. both the writing and performance for thanos was fantastic--he practically dripped with gravitas, even under all the layers of cgi and chaotic fight scenes--but let’s not confuse that with actual sense/decency, yeah?

3. the groupings were great--so great that i could’ve readily watched an entire film based on any one of them. my favourite had to be thor with rocket/groot. i would’ve never guessed it, but it turned out to be the most poignant dynamic of them all. that little conversation that rocket had with thor was a little oasis in the middle of a terribly chaotic movie and neatly tied in and mirrored the incredible character development both the characters had undergone in their last movies--GotG vol 2 and ragnarok. this scene for me was an example of the ultimate reward of getting a film like infinity war--a moment of truly resonant emotional connection between two wildly differing characters and genres.

3.5. and, btw, the genres! can we talk about that a bit? it was a really cool mix of generic superhero stuff with sci-fi, a touch of horror, magic, swords-and-sorcery, opposites-meet comedy, a bit of romance, and just good old-fashioned family drama. 

3.75. and speaking of drama, the whole arc with gamora was gutting and inspired more tears from me than the much-talked-about snap. the sheer range of emotions she went through right before and after she realised that thanos was going to kill her and why! zoe saldana is fucking amazing.

4. aagh i just wished we had more time but all of the groups played really well off each other: i enjoyed iron man and company in particular because duh, spiderman, and watching three gigantic egos clash in the form of tony stark, dr strange, and peter quill was entertaining as all hell. and i know tumblr fandom in particular likes to give tony a hard time but i was impressed not just by his quick thinking, his surely-impossible technology, and his raw physical strength, but also his ability to lead, well, any team. he had spiderman covered (summoning the iron spider suit! appointing him an avenger! collaborative flying of an alien spaceship!), had dr strange figured out pretty quickly, and tried his best to steady peter quill. 

4.5. the group on wakanda wasn’t nearly as compelling, but much of their screen time was filled with fighting cannon fodder and that’s literally the least interesting part of any mcu movie, so. i guess i was also annoyed by rhodey basically throwing away the principled position he took in civil war--the narrative had to essentially make the regulatory body a one-dimensional super-villain. and, like. whatever. the avengers have to reform, etc. but it still stinks. i kind of dozed through the parts of civil war that didn’t involve spiderman but some of the issues that it raised were compelling. but then those issues were just used as an excuse to get a slugfest between iron man and captain america and now somehow an agreement signed by 150+ countries is all about oh no! will steve and tony ever make up?? like, fuck that shit. 

4.85. i didn’t expect to be as moved as i was by vision and wanda, though. unlike the nat/bruce thing that also kind of came out of the blue in ultron, these two were weirdly compelling. (although wanda’s missing accent is bothering me.)

5. there was so much cgi in this movie! some of it was truly breathtaking but more often than not it felt suffocating. i feel like tony stark and co. were especially ill-served: the deep blues of the doughnut spaceship and the flashy, dusty oranges on titan just made it more difficult to see the characters and, idk. i’m not a fan of the effect. 

5.5. everything involving thor was great, tho. couldn’t possibly match the climactic bridge scene in ragnarok in terms of pure Epicness but came close several times. 

6. mmm, what else? i really liked that this film undercut a lot of the truly dramatic scenes with humour--it just lent a dreadful sense of finality to the scenes that left us with death rather than a punchline.

6.5. another note: i realise that thor continually calling rocket and groot ‘rabbit and tree’ was supposed to be funny, but why would he do that? the ‘captain’ has a name. and he speaks groot’s language! why would he call him something as reductive as ‘tree’? (unless groot’s actual name is tree) it’s just a little niggling thing but it’s starting to bother me a lot now.

6.55. but i do find it a little endearing that prideful, extremely sensitive rocket never once bothered to correct thor.

7. ultimately the Epicness that made this movie possible is also one of the things that repeatedly threatens to bring it down. i just don’t want this film to fall down the rabbit hole that SPN finds itself in--expand its scope exponentially and find itself unable to remotely do it the justice that it deserves. what do you do with a character who could kill half the universe with a snap of his fingers? what do you do with characters who, in their individual movies, have expressed powers and resources that are seriously large-scale?

we see the film sputter in this respect a couple of times: i never understood why thanos didn’t just use the reality stone to, say, turn tony’s tech into cheesecake or something. out of respect at the man’s sheer tenacity? idk. and loki going out by trying to stab thanos was weird to me. was he deliberately sacrificing himself? is there something else going on? doesn’t he have much better weapons in his arsenal? at least he was aiming for the head

and the consequences of the final snap where more than half of the heroes disintegrated in front of their friends’ eyes should’ve felt more devastating, but the neatness of the old avengers being spared so that they could save (avenge if you will) their next generation in a final hurrah in the next movie seemed way too obvious. that’s not to say it wasn’t impactful. watching peter parker disintegrate in tony’s arms, fighting till the very last minute to stay he was so scared oh god he just wanted to stay and for mr stark to make it all right was gutting, no matter how much i’d prepared myself for it. i may have whimpered. 

8. i’m sure i have a lot more to say but it’s getting late and i’m tired, so. another post in the near future maybe.

but before i go, how could i not talk about spiderman?? i screamed my throat raw at the first sight of peter parker, and although he doesn’t actually get all that much screen time he made every second count. the awe-inspiring appearance of the iron spider. “have you ever seen that old movie, aliens?” the sheer range of emotions that passed his face when tony stark officially made him an avenger. flying spaceships along with tony. fun with magic portals! almost getting the gauntlet off because he is Just That Strong. saving mantis and drax. and clinging to life till the very last second even as the edges of his body were starting to wisp away. this boy. god. how mcu hit the perfect formula to represent my all-time favourite superhero on screen is a mystery, but i’m so so glad it happened. 

[rumasaca]

Question: Some headcanons on the difference in behavior from Amuro/Rei/Bourbon? Like, for example: Who is more Arrogant? Silly? Flirty? Loud? Sarcastic? Idk, what ever you can think off xD Because I have the feeling all his personas are so different from each other. And I love HC ❤ [I'm sorry, I will send this ask to 2 more people, I need more hc in my live and couldn't decide to who of you three I should send it too ;^; and I call him Amuro even when Rei is his true name, I'm so used to Amuro]

Ahahahaha awwww thank you for the ask anon <3  I call him Rei and not Amuro mostly because I’m a fan of UC Gundam and it’s weird for me to call two characters Amuro, pretty much.

Also SORRY anon because I’m fairly certain you wanted headcanons of Rei in different specific situations that were probably meant to be mostly silly.  I am not terribly good at being silly sometimes so instead I wrote a 800 word summary of my disorganized thoughts on how I interpret Rei and his different personas.  I apologize for being a Mood Killer in this case and I hope you will accept this offering as an apology.

Hmmm… To be honest, I think Amuro and Rei as personas are fairly similar to one another in terms of their speech patterns and everyday demeanor; it’s really difficult to maintain a persona completely different than your normal demeanor for long periods of time.  With Amuro, he has to go to work most days with Azusa, and he’s keeping a constant eye on Conan and company, so he’d pick something that’s more on the affable side to seem less suspicious, but also something that’s difficult for him to slip up on.

Date calls him a gentleman, and I don’t think he’s acting in that case, so I’d probably conclude that Rei is like Amuro, but with a much harder slant to his character.  One of the ways you can catch when Rei is acting is when he does something more characteristic of his true self as Amuro before realizing it and pulling back.  The two examples I’m thinking of are his intro case and the rock star case: in the former, the part where he dodges the husband’s fist before stepping back and pretending he’s afraid of violence, and in the latter, the one part where he makes excellent deductions before just stepping back like “Well I’m still learning to be a detective!!”

Rei is determined, calculating, and probably fairly arrogant–I say “probably” because I peg the whole case with him and the FBI agents as exaggerated acting, not false in how he feels but definitely scaled up to prepare for Vermouth’s gig.  He’s definitely confident in himself and his own abilities, and he’s willing to take great risks based on them.  He does what he thinks is right, and sometimes that means taking judgments on whether the ends justify the means (see: again, the case right before he confronts Subaru).

Amuro, naturally then, is him more laidback and polite–he pretends to be opposed to violence, and he keeps his personality nontheatening and easy to overlook.  He defers a lot to his supposed superiors (like Kogoro), too, and he generally follows the path of least resistance.  I also doubt he’d ever talk badly about anyone who wasn’t Shuichi, haha.  So, if you ask me, he’s most likely to be intentionally silly as Amuro.  (See: calling Kogoro Mouri-sensei.  I’m pretty sure Rei likes messing with Kogoro a little bit.)

Bourbon strikes me as an aspect of Rei’s personality that’s been magnified and intensified–Rei acts a lot like Bourbon when he thinks he’s around Shuichi, like the rock star case, in which he has no incentive to be acting like Bourbon specifically.  Which leads me to think that the murderousness at Shuichi there is all Rei.

In general, Bourbon’s speech patterns also match Rei’s in my mind, but he adds in a lot of venom behind his delivery (affably evil, if you would).  He’s trying to embody a manipulative, cunning villain who just happens to talk politely–and his personality as Rei is far from that, but not too far.  Generally speaking, undercover agents need to understand the people they’re pretending to be, and Rei has to be the same way–so rather than shying away from Bad People And Things, I see him as more of a person who understands them and how they work, and Bourbon is mostly pretending to embrace that understanding.  (Possibly because he’s had a past with them?  Who knows what his relationship with Elena was all about?)  And actually embracing it, in many ways.  See: his original decision to hand Shuichi over to the BO to get into their inner circle.

That being said, most undercover agents also need something concrete to ground them, usually some sort of morality-related thing, and it’s usually religion, or their family, or something like that.  He’s got none of that in any persona, the closest thing being his own sense of justice and determination to see the BO obliterated off the face of Japan.  So perhaps that’s why he’s so prone to slippage and forgetting his real targets, as Shuichi puts it.

Honestly, I think Rei has a lot of honor too–he’s mad in movie 20 when Shuichi seems to be implying that he doesn’t trust Japan’s police, and he’s mad at the FBI for figuratively stepping on the PSB’s toes.  A lot of his strongest motivations are extremely personal in nature.  (Cough, cough, Akaaaaaaaaaaaai!!!)

ANYWAYS, I probably have more to say on this subject, but I can’t really think of anything right now, haha :’D  That’s most of my thoughts about Rei!  If we’re not talking about Gundam crossovers and parallels anyways because I could write entire essays on that.  But this is kind of way too long as is.  It’s basically my personal interpretation of Rei!

[minervacasterly]

Queen Mary (I) Tudor -The Woman behind the Legend of 'Bloody Mary' "As Mary continued to face Protestant treason she became even more ruthless, with the infamous burnings intended to eliminate what she perceived as a stubborn and destabilising minority. In our context we see Mary's actions as those of a fanatic. In her context she was eliminating fanatics, and of the most dangerous kind, incorrigible rebels against God and queen. But Mary also had to work positively, to build a future, and this unravelled in the face of her infertility and declining health. She failed in her ultimate duty to produce a child and this meant, once again, that the wider family was key to the future. Mary's preferred choice as her heir, was Margaret Douglas, could not compete with the claims of Henry VIII's second daughter and, as Elizabeth took note, it was the knowledge that she would succeed her sister that fueled the disorder and rebellion against Mary. With the loss of Calais in the last year of Mary's life it would be easy for her enemies to paint the young, Protestant Elizabeth's accession as a brilliant new dawn. It is as such that it is still projected. Mary remains associated with her late seventeenth-century sobriquet 'Bloody Mary', and an infamous recent advertisement for the London Dungeon depicted her face transforming into a demon-zombie. Elizabeth, by contrast, has been played in films by a series of beautiful actresses: Elizabeth is ever Cate Blanchett, fairy queen, to Mary's bitter, grey-faced Kathy Burke. Yet these sisters were neither simple heroines nor villains. Both were rulers of their time and we can only understand Elizabeth if we see, as she did, what the Tudor sisters had in common and how she could learn from Mary's example. Most significant for Elizabeth was the fact that Mary's Protestant enemies had sought to redefine the nature of a 'true' king. They argued that religion was more important than blood, or victory in battles -a true king was Protestant- and that all women were by nature unsuited to rule over men. Elizabeth's response was to offer her ordinary subjects a theatrical representation of herself as a 'true' ruler: the seeds of which had been sown by Mary herself in her speech during the Wyatt revolt, in which she is a mother who loves her subjects as if they were her children. Here was a female authority figure accepted as part of the divine order." ~Tudor by Leanda de Lisle "The blackening of Mary's name began in Elizabeth's reign and gathered force at the end of the 17th century, when James II compounded the view that Catholic monarchs were a disaster for England. But it was really the enduring popularity of John Foxe which shaped the view of her that has persisted for 450 years. Attempts to soften her image have been made, but their tendency to depict her as a sad little woman who would have been better off as the Tudor equivalent of a housewife is almost as distasteful as the legend of Bloody Mary. To dismiss her life as nothing more than a personal tragedy is both patronizing and mistaken. One of the main themes of Mary's existence is the triumph of determination over adversity. She lived in a violent, intolerant age, surrounded by the intrigues of a time when men and women gambled their lives for advancement at court. Deceit, like ambition, was endemic among the power-seekers of mid-Tudor England who passed, in procession, through her life. Pride, stubbornness and an instinct for survival saw her through tribulations that would have destroyed a lesser woman. Her bravery put her on the throne and kept her there, so that when she died she was able to bequeath to Elizabeth a precious legacy that is often overlooked: she had demonstrated that a woman could rule in her own right. The vilification of Mary has obscured the many areas of continuity between her rule and those of the other Tudors. Today, despite the fact that much more is known about her reign, she is still the most maligned and misunderstood of English monarchs. For Mary Tudor, the first queen of England, truth has not been the daughter of time." ~The Myth of Bloody Mary by Linda Porter "Foxe's account would shape the popular narrative of Mary's reign for the next four hundred and fifty years. Generations of schoolchildren would grow up knowing the first Queen of England only as "Bloody Mary", a Catholic tyrant who sent nearly three hundred Protestants to their deaths, a point made satirically in W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman's 1930s parody 1066 and All That. Mary's presence in a recent survey of the most evil men and women in history is testament to Foxe's enduring legacy. But there is, of course, a different Mary: a woman marked by suffering, devout in her faith and exceptional in her courage. From a childhood in which she was adored and feted and then violently rejected, a fighter was born. Her resolve almost cost her her life as her father, and then her brother, sought to subjugate her to their wills. Yet Mary maintained her faith and self-belief. Despite repeated attempts to deprive her of her life and right to the throne, the warrior princess turned victor and became the warrior princess turned victor and became the warrior queen. The boldness and scale of her achievements are often overlooked/ The campaign that Mary led in the summer of 1553 would prove to be the only successful revolt against central government in sixteenth-century England. She, like her grandfather Henry VII and grandmother Isabella of Castile, had to flight for her throne. In the moment of crisis she proved decisive, courageous, and "Herculean" -and won the support of the English people as the legitimate Tudor heir. Mary was a conscientious, hardworking queen who was determined to be closely involved in government business and policy making. She would rise "at daybrea when, after saying her prayers and hearing mass in private," she would "transact business incessantly until after midnight." As rebels thereatend teh capital in January 1554 and she was urged to flee, Mary stood firm and successfully rallied Londoners to her defense. She was also a woman who lived by her conscience and was prepared to die for her faith. And she expected the same of others. Her religious defiance was matched by a personal infatuation with Phililp, her Spanish husband. Her love for him and dependence on her "true father", the Emperor Charles V, was unwavering. Her determination to honor her husband's will led England into an unpopular war with France and the loss of Calais. There was no fruit of the union, and so at her premature death there was no Catholic heir. Her own phantom pregnancies, together with epidemics and harvest failures across the country, left her undermined and unpopular. Her life, always one of tragic contrast, ended in personal tragedy as Philip abandoned her, never to return, even as his queen lay dying. In many ways Mary failed as a woman but triumphed as a queen. She ruled with the full measure of royal majesty and achieved much of what she set out to do. She won her rightful throne, married her Spanish prince, and restored the country to Roman Catholicism. The Spanish marriage was a match with the most powerful ruling house in Europe, and the highly favorable marriage treaty ultimately won the support of the English government. She had defeated the rebels and preserved the Tudor monarchy. Her Catholicism was not simply conservative but influenced by her humanist education and showed many signs of broad acceptance before she died. She was an intelligent, politically adept, and resolute monarch who proved to be very much her own woman. Thanks to Mary, John Aylmer, in exile in Switzerland, could confidently assert that "it is not in England so dangerous a matter to have a woman ruler, as men take it to be." By securing the throne following Edward's attempts to bar both his sisters, she ensured that the crown continued along the legal line of Tudor succession. Mary laid down other important precedents that would benefit her sister. Upon her accession as the first queen regnant of England, she redefined royal ritual and law, thereby establishing that a female ruler, married or unmarried, would enjoy identical power and authority to male monarchs. Mary was the Tudor trailblazer, a politiccal pioneer whose reign redefined the English monarchy." ~Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen by Anna Whitelock Furthermore, as the country shifted from Catholicism to Protestantism, people began to find it easier to vilify her. During the Victorian age, England was at its height. People would say that the sun never set on the English Empire, and as a result, there was a growing sense of nationalism. Previously beloved figures like Queen Elizabeth I, Kings Edward III, Henry V, among others, were no longer kings and queens for people to admire and look upon but national symbols of pride, who were almost god-like. Edward III's victories against the French, Henry V's conquest of France, Elizabeth's Protestantism and victory against Spain with the Spanish Armada and other Catholic rivals, were extolled, and glorified, while Mary I's foreign ancestry was looked down upon. Ironically, all of these monarchs were also foreign in one way or another. You can say that Queen Elizabeth I wasn't because her parents were English, but what about her paternal ancestry, or her maternal one? No matter which way you look at it, she had foreign ancestry as much as any monarch. In fact, the Victorian era's own monarch, was of foreign descent as well! Victoria wasn't even an English name. She was named after her mother, Victoria of the Saxe-Coburg clan who was German and she married her cousin, who was also German. It was very common for royals to marry other royals, which meant that their offspring would be of foreign descent. In Mary's time this wouldn't be a reason to look down on her, on the contrary, she could point to her royal ancestors, be they foreign or not, with pride as a sign of how much royal blood flowed through her veins, making her eligible to be her father's heir. But as it has been pointed out before, times change and with it, so does our view of every historical figure.