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blahkugo · 5 years ago

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Biggest Fan

DABI x HAWKS x READER

Music! AU inspired by THIS photo set...or, the one in which Dabi, Hawks, & Endeavor are a famous rap group, and the reader gets VIP treatment.

NSFW begins after the ~~~ for those of you who don’t care for plot!

Warnings: 18+!, SMUT, cursing, threesome, rough sex (? not sure what your definitions of the word are but they do be slapping you around…), just pure filth basically

You’ve been squealing into the phone for the past ten minutes. Honestly, you can’t believe the words coming from your best friend’s mouth, even after asking her to repeat them a fourth time.

“Babe, even if you weren’t my agent, I would have found a way to get you in,” Rumi scoffs into the speaker, unphased by your relentless questioning. Though she’s always been a bit impatient when it comes to your antics, she knows how big of a deal this is to you. “How could I not? You talk my ear off about them.”

“I owe you for the next thirty years!” Your screech turns the heads of a few other customers, and you can feel the irritation radiating off the glare of one particularly peeved woman seated near you. But who cares? You’re too excited for a few middle-aged drags to dampen your mood.

“Remember what you just said the next time I try to skip out on an interview,” her laugh echoes loudly; she must be at the studio.

“Yes! Whatever you want, Twinkle Toes. It’s yours!” She begins to grumble at the use of the old nickname,

“How many times have I told you not to-” You catch the scowling woman turning towards you.

“Got-to-go-text-me-the-details, love you!” The parting phrase comes out a hurried ramble. Unbothered as you are by a few stares, direct confrontation definitely isn’t worth the trouble. You’re out of the bistro and in your car before anyone can open their mouth.

The cup of iced coffee you press to your flushed face does nothing to curb the elation threatening to bubble over from inside you. Rumi really has outdone herself this time. Being that she’s both a long-time best friend and client of yours, you know just how hard she’s been working to book a job of this caliber. Images of the two of you icing sore feet after hours of grueling practices spring to mind, making your bad ankle throb. If you could tell your younger selves who they are now— an internationally acclaimed dancer and a talent manager with a novel’s worth of influential clients— they wouldn’t believe it. And the work was paying off in more ways than one. Soon, Rumi will be making her music video debut...and you’ll actually be in the presence of your favorite artists, Suns of Icarus.

The rap trio’s been all you can talk about forever. No, like really, forever. Even back at arts school, Rumi had to talk you out of choreographing dances to their music practically once a week. You can still hear her promising you that your 70 year-old ballet instructor did not, in fact, want to see you pirouette to a song that's chorus consists of Hawks saying the word “pussy” over and over again. Usually the memory would drown you in embarrassment (especially considering the story is Rumi’s favorite icebreaker), but now even that can’t hamper your mood. You sigh cheerily, pulling into your reserved parking space. Tomorrow, you’ll be surrounded by your idols.

“Are you sure I look okay?” You ask for the third time in an hour, tugging at the hem of your silk tank. Though you’re wearing your favorite suit, you can’t help but feel out of place in the large dressing trailer. After all, it’s not every day that you accompany your clients on their gigs. Your job is getting them the gigs, and usually you prefer it that way.

“(Y/N), quit stressing! If you looked any hotter the guys would have a heart attack,” your best friend bellows loudly. “Doesn’t she look smokin’?” She questions the hairdresser who, apart from a nod and reassuring smile, you can’t quite understand over the sound of the blow dryer. “Who’s the bad bitch that got me this job in the first place? Oh right, that was you,” she pumps a manicured finger towards you to echo the claim, “so woman up!”

She doesn’t put her finger down until she sees your face soften. It’s not like she’s wrong. “Professional smooth-talker” is basically your job description. In Hollywood people are afraid of you, the woman who can make or break a career. Who are you to let a couple of talents get you riled up? You allow your body to relax in your seat. Even if those talents are the group of boys that you’ve been crushing on since you were 16. Recalling that fact has you scrambling out of the trailer, face beet-red yet again.

“I’m going to grab something from the coffee cart. Be right back!” The door shuts behind you with a loud thud. Rumi should be spending this time going over the routine, not talking you down from the ledge you’re attempting to throw yourself off of over a few stupid guys. Besides, you’ll probably receive a polite greeting at best. The world’s favorite musicians have more important things to do than indulge your fantasies.

Having iced coffee and a bagel in your hands is all you need to feel the tension in your shoulders dissipate and your smile return; truly a working woman’s comfort meal. The spring in your step is restored as you walk back to the trailer, too entranced by the savory goodness to properly hear the voice that hollers from your right. You do, however, hear the scolding that follows the catcall,

“How many times have I told you not to hit on people that work for us, birdbrain.” Your entire body swings towards the familiar nickname and a piece of bagel nearly falls from your mouth. Not even a few feet away, Dabi holds your favorite vocalist in a one-handed headlock, attempting to ruffle the blonde’s hair while keeping a cigarette balanced between his own fingertips.

“Not the hair, man! The stylist’s already had to touch it up twice today!” Hawks’ shrieks are muffled beneath the bicep of his counterpart.

“Go apologize,” The lanky man shoves Hawks towards the spot your feet are now cemented to. Though he’s reprimanding him, you swear you detect a hint of amusement in his tattooed face. “I’m sorry about him, sweetheart,” he calls, lips contorting into a smirk that should be illegal. You feel your thighs press together on their own; the situation isn’t made any better by the pretty boy walking towards you, hands threading through his golden locks in an effort to fix the havoc Dabi wrought.

“My bad,” he flashes you an award-winning set of teeth you’ve previously only had the pleasure of viewing through your laptop screen; somehow they’re even pearlier in person. The glimmer of a tiny gem catches your eye and you notice one is sealed to his canine, only dazzling you further. “I meant what I said though, you’re gorgeous,” his hand moves from his own hair to twist a piece of yours between his fingertips. The lack of boundaries leaves you feeling stupefied, but he doesn’t let up, going as far as wrapping the lock around his polished index finger. God, even his hands are pretty...What if they were trailing the inside of your thigh and— Your mind shouts at you to behave, a fruitless undertaking when the object of your adolescent desires is touching you ever-so softly.

“Um- I- Thank you?” The stuttered phrase comes out confused. Where the hell is the professional smooth-talker side of you when you need her? “I’m Rumi’s agent and uh- I-I’m a big fan!” Heat blazes through your face and chest; you’d slap yourself for the outburst if they weren’t here.

“Oh, really? She told us all about you!” He waves a hand towards Dabi. “Oi! Matches! She’s not an assistant, she’s Rumi’s manager!” The gloomier man extinguishes his cigarette before making his way towards the two of you, smug expression wavering only when he glances at Hawks. A short wheeze leaves the blonde when his chest is smacked lightly by his partner.

“I told you not to call me that.” Dabi turns his attention towards you. “(Y/N), right?” He sticks a hand out to shake and you quite literally drop the remains of the bagel to reciprocate the motion, a move that makes you redden and him snicker. “Rumi told us you’re our biggest fan,” his sly grin tells you your loud-mouthed best friend had probably spilled too much information their way. Oh, she’s definitely going to get an earful later.

He doesn’t drop eye contact the entire time he’s speaking to you, and you find yourself enchanted by the deep sea-blue of his irises. You would literally swim in those pools if given the chance. Only when Hawks clears his throat do you realize you’re still shaking his friend’s inked hand. After dropping it rapidly, you urge yourself into composure out of pure distress.

“Sorry, I’m honestly a bit starstruck. I’m sure Rumi told you how much I love your music,” you finally sound a bit like your usual self.

“She didn’t really mention our music, did she Matches?” Hawks chirps, dodging Dabi’s fist this time.

“No, I don’t think she did, dipshit,” he spits the insult through gritted teeth as a final warning. “But I do remember her telling us something about being your first two crushes...or was it your ‘sexual awakening’? I can’t really remember the term she used…” Your knees almost buckle at the obvious teasing, and you silently swear to murder Rumi when she’s done shooting this video. It’s evident that the mockery is highly amusing to them— the glints in their eyes border on ravenous.

Because you’re not typically someone whose presence is taken lightly, the thought of being toyed with by a few arrogant men has your blood boiling. You’ve already dealt with too many pretentious assholes who don’t believe women, especially younger ones, belong in management; you didn’t claw your way to the top of the industry for all of that hardship to go to waste. Ever the more perceptive of the duo, Dabi seems to realize the shift in your mood.

“Relax,” he reaches a hand towards you before thinking better of it, choosing instead to tug at the thin, silver piercing adorning his bottom lip. “We’re only teasing. She didn’t say anything like that, obviously.” You stare at him incredulously, arms crossing your chest. “Why don’t we give you a tour?” Though he’s the one who makes the offer, it sounds as though he’d rather be doing anything else.

“We’re not really assholes, promise,” Hawks jumps in, crossing his fingers over his heart in a show of good faith. “This one just gets too big headed around beautiful women,” he points at the heavily-inked man, who simply rolls his eyes at the accusation. You’d thought the blonde was…well, nothing more than the stereotype his hair color implied, but he’s sharper than he seems. It appears that unlike Dabi, who comes off curt and ungenuine, Hawks’ wit stems from his charm.

You can’t help but think of how the two of them compliment each other beautifully. That’s probably why their entire fanbase thinks they should be dating. With that ludicrous thought, your exuberance returns. After Hawks assures you they don’t have to be on set any time soon, you find yourself taking them up on their offer. They seem to be a handful, sure, but how long have you dreamt of spending uninterrupted time with your favorite members of the group? Besides, it’s only a tour. What could go wrong?

It’s apparent only five minutes into your time together that Hawks (despite his insistence you call him Kiego, it’s difficult after years of referring to him by the stage name) does not know the meaning of personal space. He spends the better part of the tour hooking an arm through yours, touching your hair, or pestering Dabi. While some may take this over-familiarity as a sign of disrespect, it feels more to you as though he’s simply comfortable in his skin.

Rude or not, his bold actions do nothing but spur your heart to beat out of your chest. Every time he guides you towards an attraction with a cheerful comment, you swear his fingers purposefully dash under your layers of clothing, brushing faintly at the skin of your waist in a way that makes your heart (among other parts) flutter.

“And as I’m sure you know, we’re filming this music video mid-tour,” his hand flits away as swiftly as it skimmed you, prolonging the torture of wondering whether his movements are purposeful or a figment of your twisted imagination. After showing you most of the fabricated scenery— and even the gorgeous, cherry-red convertible that was rented— for the video, you’ve arrived at the group’s infamous tour bus. You once read that most of their concerts end with the vehicle being mobbed by ruthless fans, one of the sole reasons you’ve never attended a show. Someone as busy as you doesn’t have time for all the horrid traffic the mobs cause. “Wanna see inside? It’s actually pretty roomy.”

You nod, eyes trailing towards Dabi, who’s busy stomping out the most recent cig he’d been puffing on. Aside from the occasional chuckle at your flustered blunders or annoyed curse thrown towards Hawks, the taller man had kept mostly to himself. His indifference confuses you, makes you wish you hadn’t reacted so bitterly to the loose smile and banter he offered you upon first meeting. At the same time, part of you is irritated by his standoffish personality. From what you’ve seen so far, his remarks serve the single purpose of humiliating others for his own amusement— a stark contrast to the misjudged softy he’s portrayed as on camera.

You’re guided onto the bus and Dabi follows, cursing under his breath at something or other. Sociable as he is, Hawks begins to chatter again, seeing no issue in being the center of your attention. You realize the space is much roomier than it seems. State of the art technology allows the bunk beds to fold back with a press of the button, leaving room for a decently sized couch. It’s also much cleaner than you would expect three young men living on the road to allow.

“And the lowest one was my bunk, just in case you’d like to see it again later,” he whispers the sentence as though it’s his best kept secret, wagging his thick brows exaggeratedly to key you in on his joke. “Hey, why are you laughing? I’m totally seriou–” The doors swivel open and your giggles are cut off by heavy footsteps and a booming voice,

“Oi! Keigo! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” You have to crane your neck to see the pillar of a man’s scrunched, stoic face. Endeavor, the pyrotechnic-obsessed “hype man” and third part of Suns of Icarus’s trio, stands a few feet from you, clearly exasperated by something his bandmate has done. Hawks must know precisely the reason for the bottle-redhead’s tone, because his face pales.

“Enji, we made a new friend!” He pulls you into his chest in an obvious attempt to shield himself from the giant, but your face heats at the close contact regardless.

“You were supposed to be on set for your solo scenes ten minutes ago,” he crosses his sculpted arms, “so let’s go.” The lively man is being whisked away by the larger one before he can utter a word of rebuttal. “Nice to meet you,” he calls casually to you over his shoulder.

“Dabi, keep (Y/N) company! I’ll be back!” Hawks shrieks with a dramatic flare. The man was truly born to be an entertainer.

An unbearable awkwardness envelops the two of you once you’re alone. Without his best friend around, Dabi drops any semblance of amiability, but it’s not as if he was trying very hard before. He plops down on the couch and pulls out his phone. You sit as far away from him as possible, but realize you don’t have your own device to keep you busy. After a few nervous minutes of twiddling your thumbs, you attempt to break the silence.

“So, Haw– Keigo and Endeavor use stage names, why don’t you?” You spout the first question that comes to mind, hoping it’ll spark an interesting conversation.

“Dabi is my stage name,” he answers curtly, without looking up from his cell.

“Oh...but– even your bandmates call you by it?”

“Yep. Don’t care for my real name,” his eye roll sends ice through your veins.

“Excuse me,” you snap, “have I done something to offend you?” The frustration in your tone wins you eye contact, at least.

“Nope.”

“Unbelievable….I’m going to need your publicist’s information.”

“Huh?”

“Well, anyone who can make you seem like the world’s most ‘misunderstood heartthrob’ on camera certainly deserves a pay raise, dontcha’ think?” His eyes drop to send a steely glare your way, but you’re too fed up to feel intimidated. You smirk at him, a single eyebrow raised in twisted satisfaction. There’s the bitchy self you know and love.

“You don’t know the first fucking thing about me,” he sits up, “but I know everything I need to know about you.”

“Oh? Enlighten me then, sir.”

~~~

“You may think Keigo likes you, but he likes everyone. You’re, what, thinking you’re special because he’s throwing some attention your way?” Dabi inches closer. “Hoping he’ll get in your panties?”

“It’s not like that at all–”

“Don’t lie. The idea of being with someone you’ve idolized for years is thrilling, isn’t it?” The heat that rises on your cheeks is enough to confirm his suspicions. “He doesn’t like to see people for who they really are, but I know your type...just another tramp that’ll use him and move onto the next,” his smug expression returns after that little rant. Paired with the tattoos covering most of his face, he appears every bit as wicked as the skeleton his ink emulates— devilish, even.

“You’re wrong.” You can’t think of a proper argument when he’s so close to you, basically breathing down your neck.

“Am I?” His hand trails up your clothed thigh, and an unwelcome shiver crawls up your spine. “So you’re going to stop me when I do this, right?” Then, he kisses you.

It’s not at all soft, or compassionate, or anything resembling your naive teenage fantasies of the artist in the slightest. Rough, slender fingers wrap around your jaw and yank your lips to his. He doesn’t stop at a peck either, choosing instead to assail your mouth with all of his pent-up rage. The cool, hard metal of his lip ring strains against you, a pleasant contrast to the quick heat traveling the rest of your body. You want nothing more than to prove him wrong— to throw him off you, tell him to go straight to hell— but he takes your bottom lip between his teeth and- God, it just feels so good. Your mouth parts in a breathless moan and Dabi takes the reaction as an invitation to swipe his tongue against your teeth. With your bodies melding together violently, the make out feels simply a continuation of the intense argument you were having moments before.

Pulling you between his lap, he shifts you so that your back is flush across his chest. Nimble fingers make quick work of your clothes. You just barely raise your hips so that he’s able to take your pants off with ease, but you’re sure he notices the eager movement. When you’re left in nothing but your panties, you feel the rumbling of his solid body behind you as he laughs, the sound bitter and pleased all at once.

“Oh you really are a whore,” he chides. “Who’d you wear these for, hm?” He runs his fingers across the band of your red lace thong.

“Not you,” you bite back, feigning disinterest towards the dangerous position he has you in. The asshole’s not going to get to actually hear you admit defeat so easily. One of his hands kneads your chest and the other grabs your cheeks harshly, pushing them together so that you’re unable to speak.

“Not me? Take a good look at yourself, sweetheart.” He lifts your head upwards and your breath hitches; the entire ceiling of the bus is covered in a dark, reflective surface. “Who has you naked in their lap right now?” he whispers onto your neck, licking a long stripe upwards until his teeth graze your ear. You watch fervently as he strokes his digits across one of your perked nipples, tweaking the bud roughly. “Who are you being such a slut for?” He’s aware he won’t get a response because his left hand still grips your face, demanding you watch his every move.

Dabi then snakes his fingers down your midriff tortuously slowly, brushing lightly in a way he hasn’t touched you yet; as if the skin there is delicate, worthy of his valuable adoration. The ink traveling his arms makes him appear so ethereal, so sinister and compelling, that you can’t help but let out a muffled mewl. Once he reaches your panties, his fingers dart beneath the material and the tender moment is lost. An onslaught of pleasure wracks your body when he begins to draw quick circles on your clit. He lets go of your cheeks, now sore and reddened from both pressure and bliss.

“I’m going to ask one more fucking time,” his fingers glide against your soaked slit, “who are you being such a dirty slut for?” You contemplate not giving him the answer he’s looking for, and part of you is sinfully curious about what may happen if you enrage him further; however, that idea is put to rest immediately when he snaps his head up to look at you through the mirror, blue eyes pooling with lust and a hint of something animalistic. That stare, paired with the relentless strokes across your clit, provokes your moaned answer,

“F-for you, Dabi.” He uses his free hand to insert two, thick digits inside you.

“Say it again.”

“I’m- fuck– a s-slut for you,” you practically sob out. You press the back of your head into his shoulder harder, squeezing your eyes closed and biting your lip.

“Not going to keep your eyes open? Fine.” The fingers are removed from your clit and you’re about to let out an unsatisfied whine, only for him to grab the back of your head and mash your swollen lips to his once again. Then, after another brief caress of your abdomen, he’s back to touching your sensitive bud. All of your moans are silenced by his mouth, and you feel the vibrations of a low groan from his own throat when your ass grinds against his clothed member. When your stomach pulls taut you know you’re seconds away from feeling that all-encompassing pleasure, the tidings of an orgasm so close to washing over you.

“Oi, Matches! You didn’t throw her out did you?” Hearing Hawks’ voice call out from the front of the bus has you reeling your lips away from Dabi, and though he slows his movements, he doesn’t remove his fingers from your core. Rather than push you away, he takes the other hand off your clit to hold you tightly against him. “(Y/N)? Dab–”

For a few seconds, the only sound you can hear is your own heart beating out of your chest. Takami takes in the scene in front of him— your bare body splayed across his best friend in the lewdest of positions. You know your face is blooming in embarrassment as you wait for a reaction, for his face to drop in disappointment, anger, anything. Instead, he smirks.

“Starting without me? That’s no fair,” the golden-haired boy actually pouts, but there’s something deeper swimming in his eyes, something almost bloodthirsty. Though this is happening right in front of you, you can’t truly believe it. Dabi relieves the pressure of his arm from your chest.

“Look Kiego, the whore’s fucking drenched for us,” he lifts his fingers towards the beautiful man in front of you proudly, as if showing off a trophy or a new toy. Then he pops the damp fingers in his own mouth, humming at the taste of you. Hawks’ tongue dips out of his mouth, darting across his bottom lip.

“I want a taste,” he leers at your bright panties, now soaked through. You think you must have died and gone to heaven, what with the two Adonises staring at you as if you’re their last meal. Hawks kneels at the foot of the couch, brings his face right up to your navel, and licks a long, cold swipe. His digits toy at your waist like they were earlier, except this time the movements are decisive and fierce. Just as he’s about to tug your panties down and place his mouth where you want it most, Dabi seizes his jaw and pulls his partner into a long, sloppy kiss. You let out a sigh at the view and— teases that they are— the sound doesn’t go unnoticed by either of them.

“Is watching us turning you on?” Dabi taunts cruelly.

“Looks like she’s a bit of a pervert, hm?” Hawks retorts, sliding a finger across your clothed slit. The movement causes your entire body to quiver, your senses on high alert. Without another word, he leans down again, shifts your panties to the side, and takes your clit between his lips. The way he laps at you hungrily makes you believe your initial judgment of him was completely inaccurate, and when he inserts two lengthy digits inside you, the thought is confirmed. Hot, white pleasure consumes your body as your core clenches around his digits. He simply cocks an eyebrow at you and chuckles darkly, holding you tightly against him by your waist so that you’re unable to wriggle away. Gone is the lovable persona you were introduced to, replaced now by someone entirely foreign, deviously lewd.

“Fuck, Hawks,” you whimper, greedy for more.

“Thought I told you to call me Keigo,” he scolds beneath you, biting the inside of your thigh so that a sharp gasp leaves you.

“I-I’m sorry, K-Kei–” You’re cut off mid-moan when Dabi kisses you, wrapping one slender hand around your throat and squeezing. His other one threads through your hair and tugs harshly. A painful hiss leaves you but the sound only makes him pull harder, smirking against your lips.

It’s as though they’re competing for your attention. If one of the men evokes a sob or whimper, the other attempts to outdo him— and they have no regard for your body, becoming instead the battleground for their lascivious rivalry. You lose yourself in the intense sensations, unaware of time or its passing, instead focusing solely on the coil tightening in your abdomen. Every gasp, every moan, only pushes them further, and soon your legs are shaking as you feel yourself nearing the delicious edge.

Just as you’re about to let go, allow yourself the mind-numbing relief of an orgasm, Kiego withdraws his fingers. Rubbing your bruised thighs together is a desperate attempt at friction, but the momentum is completely lost. Your core clenches around nothing, and you cry out, hopelessly bitter at the emptiness between your legs.

“Sorry, princess,” his hair is sticking up, golden locks tousled from the harsh grip of your fingers. And yet he still looks perfect. He wipes your juices off his chin with a thumb, “but that’s for starting without me.” Despite the apology, he sounds absolutely delighted at your loss. You whine again, hoping it’ll change his mind. “What do you think, Dabi? Should we let her cum?”

Hearing his name, the tattooed man takes his attention away from your chest and the onslaught of purple marks his lips’ were just peppering on your throat.

“I don’t think so,” he tweaks at one of your nipples, eliciting a soft groan from you. “I want the bitch begging for it.” Dabi pushes you away from him and stands to unbuckle his belt. “Besides, don’t think she’s done enough to earn it.” You should be outraged at the way they decide your fate as if you’re not even present, but in reality it only thrills you, your clit throbbing at the lack of control.

“You’re right,” your idol sneers, canines bared and gleaming as he unzips his own pants, “and I wanna see those pretty lips wrapped around me.”

They switch places, shifting you so that your breasts are pinned against the couch between Kiego’s legs. Dabi grinds his hips against your clothed center, and you mewl at the long-awaited friction, hard member straining against his briefs.

“Get to work, princess,” Kiego calls to you, boxers down to his knees. You can only balk at the sight in front of you. His cock is thick and long, essentially everything you could’ve ever hoped for, but that’s not it.

Rather, it’s the shiny, silver ball pierced through the shaft and poking out from the top of his head that stops you dead in your tracks. He notices your eyes widen at it, but only snorts, wrapping your hair around his hand and yanking you roughly towards him.

“Oh, that little thing?” Now he’s shoving you against his length, using your face as nothing more than a means for friction. “Just a drunken dare from Matches.” The nickname provokes the other man into leaving a stinging slap against your behind. And just like that, the angered man drives himself into your cunt.

“I told you,” slap, “not to,” slap, “call me that.” With each thrust into you, Dabi releases an onslaught of pent-up anger onto your rear, the biting pain causing you to cry out around Kiego’s member.

“Yeah sweetheart, just like that,” he leans his head back against the couch with a deep groan. “Such a pretty little whore, choking on my cock.” One of his free fingers shoots out to wipe at your tears, hand moving ever-so-lightly to cradle your jaw. The gesture might have been sweet if his other hand wasn’t forcing you down further to swallow him whole.

“Mmmph–” you scrape carelessly at Kiego’s thighs in an attempt to secure yourself, moans coming out garbled with his cock down your throat.

“Not done with you yet, slut” Dabi still pounds into you relentlessly. You’re overwhelmed with the feeling of being stuffed from both ends, knees on the verge of giving out until he fastens his hands around your thighs, pulling you into him with even harder plunges. “Fucking take it.” Something hard and cold grinds inside you, and you’re acutely aware of the ridged piercings now pressing against that perfect, spongy spot in your heat.

When he reaches an arm around to rub furiously at your clit, you’re sobbing. Kiego’s deep, golden eyes watching you, Dabi’s unrelenting fingers and thrusts, it’s all too much.

And then you’re finally letting go. Legs shaking, mind wracked with white as you clench your eyes shut. Your mouth moves away from Kiego’s shaft, only concerned with riding out your high. The tattooed man behind you doesn’t stop his movements either, still pressed deep inside you until your tongue lolls out of your mouth and you’re tapping furiously at his waist. Kiego smiles, taking himself in his hand and slapping his cock against your cheek while he strokes himself.

“That’s it, baby,” he smooths your hair back, grunting. “You look so pretty when you cum.” He pumps himself a few more times before he finishes, sticky liquid spurting across your lips and into your hair. You reach around to grab at Dabi’s waist again, willing him to stop. He removes himself from inside of you only to flip you around and your cunt clenches at the feeling of emptiness.

Pulling you into a long, winded kiss, he swipes his tongue across your bottom lip to taste Kiego’s release. Then he’s pushing you to your knees once more, hands threading through your hair roughly.

“Suck,” he scowls down at you. Though you’re breathless, still reeling from your orgasm, the simple command spewed at you has your lips wrapped around him in a second.

He isn’t as girthy as Kiego, but just as long. A trail of piercings go down his length, and your tongue brushes against the cool metal while you wrap your fingers around the area you can’t reach. You stare up at him through thick lashes, piercing blue eyes ogling you as you take him further in. His hand is still perched on your head, but he makes no movement to push you down— instead, basking in your slow seduction.

You’re sure you look a mess, dried mascara down your cheeks and still covered in Kiego’s cum, but Dabi only revels in the power he has over you, positively thrilled at the way you no longer fight for dominance. He breaks eye contact only when the blonder man tugs him into a kiss, deep and passionate, and the sight only urges you to swallow him deeper.

“I like her with her mouth so full,” Kiego whispers against Dabi’s lips.

“Just as long as the bitch isn’t speaking,” the other man groans, rutting into your mouth so that you know he’s close.

Soon he’s pulling out of you to pump his shaft, your mouth wide open so that the head of his cock brushes against your tongue. Kiego reaches down to move Dabi’s hand, grabbing at his partner’s length so he can stroke it himself. It doesn’t take long after that for the brooding man to cum, head thrown back in a loud grunt while the tantalizing male next to him coaxes him through the orgasm. Kiego angles him so that his hot, white liquid gushes onto both your face and tongue; you suck at Dabi’s head until he forcibly pushes you off him.

“Fuck,” he sighs, running a hand through his sweaty locks. “Knew you were good for something.” With that final statement, he turns away from you, pulling his pants back on and returning to his spot on the couch as though he wants nothing more to do with you.

Kiego walks away as well, and you’re sure you’re about to be kicked out now that they’ve had their way with you. A part of you is angered, but a larger part is still processing what just happened, savoring the earth-shattering orgasm the pair blessed you with.

You look for your discarded clothing, trying to compose yourself so you’re able to get out of their way as quickly as possible. Kiego walks back into the common area, wet rag in hand. He doesn’t speak until he pushes you into the couch, rubbing the clean towel over your face softly.

“So, you’re coming to our concert next week, right?”

---------------

Tags:

@mindninjax @rat-suki @bakatenshii @yukiimanic @theygottheircages @lookslikeleese

DM me if you’d like to be tagged!

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whaleofatjme1920 · 3 years ago

Note

WOO REQUEST

What would the squad be like during a road trip? Like favorite songs and where they sit and stuff, ill be adding several other researchers in a reblog too for funsies

Road Trip with the Foundation Squad

[Including, Quill, Sora, Icarus, Grace and Tjme. Respectively, Lynx is here, @hereggssuitcasefish, @celestialissues, @nursegracecreates/@thegracelessfaceless]

[AN: I cannot wait to see your takes!]

I am fully assuming everyone can drive.

With that said, Icarus is the designated driver. Both Grace and Tjme have aversions to driving and will only do so unless absolutely necessary.

When Icarus drives, Tjme tends to be shotgun.

When Quill drives, she usually prefers to have Grace because I think they talk about a lot of fun stuff.

Whenever Sora drives, they pop on music and do not perceive other people.

The first hour or so of the drive it pretty,,,,, high energy and good spirits. Music, lots of talking, all that kind of stuff.

It slowly tapers off to them doing their own things though. Checking their phones, making small little observations, generally, doing other things.

Every time someone sees any animal, it gets said in a deadpan "cows" or "fox".

Every now and then, they get out to take pictures of stuff and to stretch their legs. Looking at the cool touristy sights, refilling on snacks.

Someone commandeers the very back seat so no one has to take the middle. That seat gets shifted out from time to time.

Icarus can hide/disappear her wings for a spell or two, but eventually, they need to let them pop back out again or it's going to be immensely taxing, emotionally and physically.

Stopping at odd diners is also a must.

Lots of family vibes here tbh. Tjme makes sure everyone is well taken care of, Grace provides a lot of the snacks and fun, Sora and Quill are asking "are we there yet" just to mess with everyone else and Icarus threatens to turn the car around.

LOTS of photos are taken on this trip for a scrapbook with the whole thing is over.

Watching the sunrise and sunset is a must whenever possible.

There is one camping session that takes place and Tjme insists it's by a lake.

The license plate game is played. People get punched as a result. It's really fun.

Also because I just remembered music is mentioned, music choice gets passed around. I also think like, a playlist prior to was made from everyone in the group and just gets played in the car. It's a really big playlist.

Grace tells lots of stories. Stories are like, a must. An absolute must, but Grace is like, really good at them. Tjme will pull up nosleep stories and read those off, Icarus tells tales about weird cryptids and liminal spaces, Quill has funny anecdotes throughout her life and Sora's are myths passed down throughout the ages.

It's pretty fun, the shenanigans they get up to.

#the foundation squad headcanons #the foundation squad #dr quill #dr sora #agent icarus #nurse grace #dr tjme

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brandstifter-sys · 4 years ago

Text

Sonnets

Word Count: 2144 (Ao3)

Pairing: Dukexiety with some Creativitwins

Rating: T+

Warnings: Sexual themes, brotherly angst, talk of death

Roman finds a journal and assumes it’s Remus’ but when Remus says it’s not his Roman leaves him with it, so he has some time to read. Little does he know what will come from perusing that book.

-----

Remus was chaos, he didn't bend to anyone else's rules unless he wanted to. Almost nothing was off the table for him—gore, violence, monsters, pain—but he had limits. Don't steal Janus' hat when he isn't holding or wearing it, because an angry Janus meant silence, or worse being silenced and alone. Never ever get too gross with Patton, because he will scream and cry and flash those hideous puppy dog eyes! Stay at least 6 feet away from Logan or suffer through a lecture on how little influence the duke held. Never let Roman hurt himself so bad he can't heal. And never ever read Virgil's diaries.

Remus was happily throwing shurikens at a large canvas with paint balloons, having fun despite only hitting the ones filled with red. It was just a little annoying to only have one color on a solid white background, and even more annoying when it was Roman's colors staring at him. Roman hadn't been much of a good brother in the past few years, and it stung to think about how they drifted apart. How almost everyone ran from him to Roman. It hurt to be so lonely.

"Greetings, Your Disgrace!" Roman said as he entered the castle atrium suddenly. Remus threw another star that lodged itself in the canvas with a splash and a thump, and grinned manically at the unsettled prince.

"Well if it isn't MacBetty himself!" Remus said and cracked his neck sharply, "What hell did I probably unleash on you today?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Roman scoffed and held up a black journal with sparkling green trim, "You left this in the common area."

"Did I?" he asked and righted his head with a sickening pop. He was as bad as Roman about collecting cool journals and never filling them, so it could be his, even if he didn't recognize it. Roman handed it to him and crossed his arms.

"It would appear so. If Logan yells at me for leaving my notes lying about, he will certainly yell at me for yours."

Remus hummed softly and ran his fingers over the cover, ignoring the jab. The trim pricked his fingers as they glided over it. It was a nice journal, but definitely not something he conjured up. He supposed it might have been a gift, but that would mean someone made something for him—someone other than Janus, and maybe just one other side, but he remembered every gift Virgil ever gave him.

"He likes to yell. Are you sure this is mine?" he questioned, still learning the rise and fall of the trim.

"I assumed, considering the design. I don't like to open other people's journals," Roman answered. Remus knew he was scared of leafing through it, probably expecting some security monster popping out the second he opened it. He didn't blame him for that one, but it stung nonetheless.

"Me neither, but now I'm curious!" Remus laughed and opened to a random page. It was all hand-written poetry. Interesting!

"It's a poetry book! Wanna hear one? It could be a hint!" Remus wiggled his eyebrows. Roman let out a short sigh but went tense.

"I have other things to do. I came to drop off the book and now I must depart. Farewell." Roman bowed and sank out with flourish. He left far too quickly for comfort.

"Love you too, nice seeing you again, don't be a stranger," Remus pouted and went back to his room, too bummed to paint anymore.

He rose up and flopped on his bed with the journal open. Some angsty poetry might make him feel better. He got comfy and let his eyes traverse the page

My mouth is dry Sugary sweet and kind Choking me with my own tongue Out of everything, that saccharine isn't a lie

Remus pursed his lips. That one was really short, and with the talk of lies, he had to wonder. Was this actually Roman's? Did he want to share this with him covertly? Remus bit back a squeal at the thought and kept reading with some hope.

Lost in translation Obstinate and selfish Get over yourself Avoidance builds pressure Never any quiet when you snap

Remus giggled, knowing exactly who that one was about! Someone pissed the author off! And he knew that that person pissed Roman off a lot! He turned the page, expecting to learn more about this author, believing they could be his brother wanting to reconnect. He was a little surprised to find a skull doodled in the corner but brushed it off.

I want to pull him from the shadows and into my heart Will he see me? Will he disappear if I reach for his hand? Am I blind and staggering in desperation? Someone like him would be better without me Someone like him deserves someone better No star deserves to succumb to a black hole

That one hurt. Remus wiped away the tears forming in his eyes. He knew that feeling all too well. The one side who made him want to obey, the side that made his heart flutter like the bats in his tummy—that side was his best friend and then he left. He missed his partner in crime and he wished that Virgil would come back, just for a visit, and spend time with him again. But that wasn't happening and he had a whole book to read about an author he could really connect with, Roman or not.

He went through several poems that were angsty and angry, full of self-loathing. With each piece he read, the more he doubted it was Roman. The language wasn't formal enough and it didn't match his style at all! It was good stuff, most of it, and Remus kind of hoped the real author would be willing to collaborate with him. He liked this guy.

Like the sun overhead, you're on fire The big man has a little golden boy Pompous and cruel with haughty desire Which one of us are you gonna destroy?

Darkness and shadow that cannot be lit Overshadowing you to make it stop Use that hubris to land another hit I'll keep fighting until the curtains drop

You think you're Hercules when you're so weak Rise like a phoenix Icarus, just try Maybe you'll learn what it means to be meek Until that day you won't see me cry

I will rain on your parade every damn time Stopping stupidity is my worst crime

Okay so that one threw him for a loop. It would take a few minutes to piece it together. Remus decided that he could assume it was about Roman this time. Princey loved the classics and he had a pet phoenix. This author had some beef with him! Remus hoped for more anger at Roman with the next poem, because he certainly had enough pent up with the snobby, best-friend stealing, always got the spotlight prince. He didn’t get that catharsis, he got more than he bargained for.

I find comfort in breathing in his scent Even if his hands are mine for tonight If he asks, I don't know where his clothes went What I'm doing is wrong but it feels right

If I close my eyes I can taste his kiss A dream in a nightmare clouding my mind Hearing my name on his lips would be bliss To pin him down, our fingers intertwined

I long to stare into piercing jade pools So he thinks of me while I stake my claim I want him to never want to let go I always thought that love was just for fools But on his green sash, love, or something, came I almost regret that he'll never know

This was definitely not a book the author wanted to share. Remus was pretty sure that his face was going to melt off. Now he really wanted to figure out who wrote these! Someone actually liked him like that at some point! It definitely wasn't Princey in that poem—Remus still had the sash mentioned! He was just the tiniest bit turned on, but most of his hype went into his famous wiggles.

"You're so dead!"

Remus jolted up and beamed. Virgil never stopped by anymore, so when he popped up threateningly, Remus was too happy to care or put the pieces together.

"And how do you wanna kill me? I have some suggestions!" he sang and shimmied. Virgil scowled and crossed his arms.

"Have Janus wipe your memory and give it back."

"What, the book?" Remus questioned and held it up. Virgil snatched it and held it to his chest protectively. Remus' eyes widened in horror.

"You wrote all that?! And I read it!? Oh no no no no no! I had no idea—I'll get Hisster Myde and scrub it away with steel wool! Dammit I am so sorry, Sca–Virgil!" Remus yelped and got up to pace. His only rule about Virgil, broken! The only rule he wanted to follow—tarnished!

"Were you about to call me 'Scabby Doo' again?" Virgil scoffed, hiding the fear and hurt he felt.

"No, 'Scare Bear,' something kinda cute but that’s not important right now!" Remus answered, "I read your stuff without asking! I might be a crazed Camus Stranger boy, but I have some standards!"

"Remus. Breathe. You're gonna wipe this trash from your memory and it'll be okay," Virgil tried to soothe him, only for the duke to go rigid.

"Trash!?" Remus snarled and spun on his heels and marched up to Virgil until the lumbering emo hit the wall, confused and scared.

"It's not trash! I know trash! I eat it for breakfast! That book holds some of the best stuff my critical creative ass has read in ages!" Remus snapped and glared up at him with a fire in his eyes.

"What?"

"Those poems are great! I was gonna find the author and beg on my knees like a needy subby bitch to collab with him because holy shit! I felt something with each one!"

"Even the one with the skull doodle on the page?" Virgil squeaked, his face a beautiful shade of red. Remus smiled sadly.

"Yeah, that one hit a little too close to home. I got all teary eyed. Thinking about it now after reading that saucy sonnet, it really hurts!"

"I uh—" Virgil stammered, "I'm, uh, 'm sorry for the sash and the whole—"

"If you apologize for anything else I am going to lip wrestle that apology away!" Remus cut him off, "Because dammit, Virgil, I love you, even if you don't feel the same way anymore. No more self-hate and no more doubting yourself."

"Puppy," Virgil said and finally took back some control, guiding Remus back and having him sit down, "I can't promise I'll be able to stop that completely, but if you can stand a little bit of it, I wouldn't mind making that collab a date."

"Really!?" Remus grinned making Virgil's eyeshadow turn purple, "Can we paint too? And watch scary movies? And make out? And then try and woo each other with some dark prose until one of us caves and asks the other to be his boyfriend? And then f—"

"Yeah," Virgil cut him off and pressed a finger to Remus' lips, "Except for the part about caving. Will you–I mean, only if you want to, would you–and it’s cool if you say ‘no’ since things might be a little weird but—”

“Band-aid, Emoraptor!” Remus cut him off, like he used to do back in the day when Virgil started down one of his nervous tangents.

“Maybe be my boyfriend now?" Virgil said quickly and winced.

"Yes!" Remus cheered and dragged Virgil into a hug, tumbling on the sheets, "Loom over me like a cypress tree and stay with me until I taste death for a night."

"Stay here and cuddle until we pass out like touch starved gremlins? Only if you visit me in the abyss until this world calls," Virge mused and wrapped his arms around the duke, curling around him protectively.

"And then the next," Remus hummed softly and kissed his hand, “But you’re always in my dreams!” Virgil buried his face in Remus’ neck and smiled against his skin. Who would have thought that they would wind up here?

Roman sat on his bed and stared at the collage of pictures he had on the wall. In the very center was an old drawing of him and Remus in front of a castle. He sighed wistfully and stared at it, admiring Remus' work. He hoped that sneaking into Virgil's room was worth it—he wanted Remus to be happy even if he couldn't provide that joy. Maybe one day he’d be able to, but until then, he hoped he got his best friend and brother together to make some amends if not more.

#remus sanders #virgil sanders #sanders sides #dukexiety #creativitwins #roman sanders #sex mention tw #angst tw #creativitwins angst #sandyscribed #ask to tag

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avalynnemarie · 4 years ago

Text

First Burn

or the main fanfic for Heartbreaker

Pairing: Bakugou x f!reader

Au: Family AU/Future AU

Genre: Angst

Warnings: Mentions of cheating and affairs

Keys:

Y/N = Your Name

S/N = Sister's Name

Note: I decided that I should make the series into a one long fanfic so people won't have to search for it in the river of fanfics

Tags:

@jazzylove

Author's note, 4/17/22:

Hello everybody! This is one of my old works that I plan to remaking soon in the future, but for now this is not remade yet. This is all for fun for now, cringe warning!

Update: Hello everyone! I have remade version of this fanfiction out now!

"I saved every letter you wrote me"

Bakugou Y/N never knew Bakugou was the type of person to send letters while he is away on a business trip, Y/N kept the letters in a small drawer near their bed, she also reads them at night before she goes to bed, it makes her feel butterflies.

"from the moment I saw you I knew you were mine"

At the 2nd year in UA, Aizawa introduced Y/N to the class. And when Bakugou and Y/N made eye contact, Both students knew that they are going to spend their life with each other.

"You said you were mine,I thought you were mine"

It wasn't a surprise when Bakugou and Y/N got together, it was obvious to the class. Some students even started bets, they were very supportive of their relationship, Deku even gave some info about Bakugou so that she will understand him more.

"Do you know what Auntie said when i told her what you done?"

When Y/N told Mitzuki, Bakugou's mother, she was furious. She didn't raise a son like that, Mitzuki told Y/N that she will tell her husband and S/N. Y/N nodded while crying on Mitzuki's shoulder.

"She said,You have married an Icarus, he has flown to close to the sun"

When Mitzuki told S/N, Y/N's sister. She was shocked, very shocked. S/N feels bad for her sister, but there is nothing that she can do, yet.

"Don't, take another step in my direction i can't be trusted around you"

Y/N knew that she couldn't trust Bakugou anymore, as much as she wanted too. Her heart said that she should forgive him but her brain said that she shouldn't.

"Don't think that you can talk your way into my arms, into my arms"

Y/N wished that this was just a nightmare, a horrible one. She just wanted this suffering to end. Y/N wanted to cuddle with Bakugou and fall asleep on his arms, but she knew that she couldn't, and she shouldn't.

"I'm burning the letters you wrote me, you can stand over there if you want"

Y/N couldn't help herself but read the letters Bakugou wrote to her, she knew she had to stop. But she doesn't know how, her furious friends suggested that she should burn them. A part of her wanted to do it, but on the other part of her didn't.

"I don't know who you are, I have so much to learn"

Y/N doesn't even know Bakugou anymore, where is the boy who used to love her hugs and kisses? The boy who will drop everything when Y/N wants to spend time with him? She has so much to learn.

"I'm re-reading your letters and watching them burn"

Before burning the letters, Y/N read them one by one and then approached the fireplace and started dropping them in the fire one by one.

"You published the letters she wrote you, you told the whole world how you brought this girl into our bed"

Before Y/N found out, Bakugou had to leave for a business trip. After Bakugou left, Y/N noticed that he left his phone on the table. Y/N picked it up and started running to the door. Only to find out that he already left, unexpectedly the phone rang. Y/N opened his phone and was greeted by a disturbing message from "Himari". Y/N didn't know who she was so she decided to open her message and she couldn't believe her eyes.

"In clearing your name, you ruined our lives"

After Y/N read the message tears were falling down her face, this wasn't real right? Bakugou was chatting a girl and they were talking about..some stuff that people in relationships don't originally do.

"Heaven forbid someone whisper "He is part of some scheme"

After telling the bakusquad they were shocked and dissapointed, Mina told her that he must be part in some scheme and the others tried to comfort the poor girl, it didn't work. Just why would he do this?

"Your enemy whispers so you have to scream"

Y/N understands that Bakugou spent lesser time with her because of the villains, the crime rate has gone up recently and the villains are getting stronger. But why would he cheat during a business trip? Wasn't she good enough for him?

"I know about whispers, I see how you look at my sister"

A year later after getting together with Bakugou, Y/N heard rumors about him that he doesn't really love her and just used her for fame. She didn't believe those because those weren't true, but one of those rumours said that Bakugou gives unusual looks to S/N. She didn't believe them at first, but when she caught Bakugou looking at her sister reading a book. She knew that some parts of the rumours she heard were true.."some parts"

"Don't, I'm not naive, I have seen women around you"

Y/N noticed that Bakugou had a lot of fangirls, but he only glared at them when she was there. Y/N wondered what if she wasn't there, so she hid behind a corner and saw that Bakugou was actually talking to one of his fangirls, he was not glaring nor scowling. He was smirking

"Don't think I don't see how they fall for your charms, all of your charms"

Now that Y/N thinks about it, the fangirl that Bakugou was talking to earlier looked like "Himari". Or maybe she is Himari.

"I'm erasing myself from the narrative, let the future historians wonder how Y/N reacted when you broke her heart"

Y/N couldn't believe that Bakugou had an affair, she was starting to be furious at Bakugou. He knew that they were married, so why did he do this? Bakugou woudn't do this without a reason.

"You have thrown it all away stand back watch it burn, just watch it all burn"

After Y/N burned all of the letters, she was furious, so furious that she decided to burn all of the pictures that Bakugou and her were in. Those memories were plastic, fake perhaps.

"And when the time comes explain to the children, the pain and embarrassment you put their mother through"

Shortly after the couple got married, they had their first child. Then two years later they had their second child, they were a happy family. Y/N didn't know how to explain this to her children. This was a lot to take in for her, and it will be worse for the little kids.

"When will you learn that they are your legacy, we are your legacy"

Before they got married, Bakugou wanted a child or two so that they can inherit their Dad's quirk and strength, when Natsuki, or their oldest daughter, got her quirk which was Bakugou's. He was happy, very happy.

"If you thought you were mine"

Bakugou promised Y/N that he will always be by her side, no matter what. Now that promise is broken.

"Don't!"

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thedistrictsleepsalonetonight · 4 years ago

Text

Folk Songs (Weiss Schnee builds a home in the aftermath)

She asks Winter if she ever wonders why Atlas is named the way it is. Surely, naming a floating city after someone who was almost always pinned to the ground by the weight of the world would have been a mistake. Icarus, she muses, if it were up to her, she would have named it Icarus.

(Icarus flew and Icarus fell. Icarus, a slave to his own ambitions)

“Is that who you feel like?” Winter asks. “Atlas?”

It’s an honest question put to someone who has spent significant time carrying the family name around, by someone who handed it over when she grew too tall for it. Weiss shrugs.

“It’s not that deep,” she says.

Winter responds to that by patting her back. “Isn’t it, though?” she says, pushing a hand so Weiss straightens her posture. Weiss is sure the movement is unconscious, instinctual. Then Winter moves her hand to adjust the collar of the shirt she’s wearing, and lets her hand rest on Weiss’ shoulder for the rest of the conversation. Neither of them mentions it.

*****

She’s sitting at the piano when Ruby plops down next to her. “Teach me,” Ruby says, hitting a couple of disjointed notes.

Weiss, who is prone to losing her bearings when Ruby is near, plays a couple of notes in response. It’s supposed to be a tiny jingle, but she messes it up.

“I can’t play very well,” she, who has been trained to play the piano, the cello, and the violin since the age of five, says without a pause. Then she balls up her fists, because what she meant to say instead is — I can’t play very well when you’re around. Actually, I can’t do a lot of things very well when you’re around, Ruby.

(Blake and Yang need to come up with their combined manual on love soon. And when they do, she hopes there will be a section titled How to talk to girls you’ve kissed and sworn eternal devotion to but because there was a war going on neither of you ever sat down to define your relationship and now you don’t know what to do with your hands when she’s near. It can be a long section; she doesn’t mind as long as it gives her clear instructions.)

Ruby presses at a note. “What’s this?”

“An F.”

Another one. “This?”

“Either a C sharp or a D flat.”

Ruby stares hard at the piano, and Weiss entertains the crazy thought of kissing her frown away. She’s done it before — on sleepless nights, on ravaged battlefields, as a mark of comfort and of quiet, painful adoration. It’s damning how easy it is to bend to Ruby; every cell in her body calls out a primordial cry for her. How could she, mountain of carefully sculpted indifference, bow this effortlessly to fire?

(Her father, if she deigned to give him the time of day, would probably mutter something about how she’s a disgrace to the Schnee name, and she would disagree. What she feels in her heart for Ruby is nothing short of a miracle.)

“Here,” she says, pressing the notes in order, slowly so she’s sure Ruby can follow. “If you want to play a basic chord, you could just hold down C, E, and G notes together. That’s C major.”

“Like this?”

“No, that’s….to the right. No, not that,” she pauses, brings up her own hand to press over Ruby’s and guide her. It isn’t until Weiss glances up once and sees the mischievous smile on her face that she realizes.

“Oh!” she says, her hands retreating to her lap.

“I’m sorry if I—“, Ruby starts, sounding guilty, and Weiss turns to her, quick as a whip.

“No!” she says, then realizes they’re both almost nose to nose. “Don’t — don’t be sorry, please.”

“Did you not like that?” Ruby asks, her voice soft.

Weiss laughs, and the sound seems nervous to her own ears. “No, I,” she says, “I liked it.”

Ruby’s answering smile is sunlight through her windows in the morning, gradual in its brightness until it’s too much to bear. Weiss shifts, rests her forehead on Ruby’s shirt clad shoulder. The fabric smells a little like detergent and a lot like Ruby’s fruity perfume.

“You know,” she says, her voice half muffled by the shirt. She knows Ruby can hear her though. “I can never look you right in the eye when I talk to you. It feels — feels too much like burning up.”

Ruby shakes: Weiss can almost see her laughing. “Do you know how you can never look me right in the eye when you talk to me? That’s when I get to stare at you. You talk and talk and I just keep looking at your pretty face.”

The sound that comes out of her throat at Ruby’s halting admission is a mixture of acute embarrassment, disbelief, and delight.

“I used to wait two hours for you to come back from your missions with Blake and Nora so we could eat together.”

She feels Ruby press a kiss to her temple. “I used to stay up until 2 am because that was the only time I could be alone with you.”

“I can’t sit next to you,” Weiss tells her, “it’s like there’s this thing between our arms — this—”

“—electricity,” Ruby completes, and slides her fingers through Weiss. Weiss closes her eyes from her very comfortable position and feels Ruby’s lips on her knuckles, soft, careful. When Ruby removes her hand, she feels the loss as acutely as something has been ripped out of her soul. Another random note rings out in the silence.

“Go out on a date with me.” Nowhere in the statement is a demand, or a presumption, just quiet assurance. “Weiss,” Ruby says, when she still doesn’t answer. “Go out on a date with me, please.”

Weiss nudges aside the collar of her shirt and kisses her neck. Then she leans back to look at Ruby.

“What if you don’t like me after we go on the date?”

The question is delivered with just enough amusement, but behind it lies real distress. What if this only works because we’ve been thrown together all these years fighting a weary battle? What if you only think you like me because you haven’t seen the rest of me yet? What if, when you see the rest of the world and start spending time with other people, you realize I’m not up to all that you’ve built up in your head?

“If I don’t like you after we go on that date, then you have my blessing to blast me into space with your Arma Gigas.”

“Ruby—”

“In what world,” Ruby cuts in smoothly, “do you imagine I wouldn’t like you back? In what world does my stomach not twist when you walk into the room, or my breathing not falter when you talk? I have heard a million voices in my lifetime, Weiss, but in what world is yours not the only one I want my heart to cut itself on?”

“Stop,” she says, face burning, eyes closed, “Ruby, you — just, stop talking, I’m going to—”

“Weiss,” Ruby says. “Go out on a date with me.”

Not that the answer is needed, but Weiss nods anyways.

*****

Whitley is equal parts familiar and foreign. There’s the same bristling stance, the Schnee stamp prominent upon his features, his hair, still parted the same side as she would see back when they were children running around in their estate. What’s different is the thinly veiled animosity in his eyes, the angry twist to his mouth.

“You can’t just come in here,” he starts, waving a hand to wipe away the holographic design for SDC office headquarters Weiss has just pulled up, “and start ordering me around.”

“Whit,” she says, watching as he flinches at the old nickname. “I’m not ordering you around. I couldn’t. You’re the expert here—”

“—yeah, I am. The heir who stayed, remember?”

She is reminded, of a game of hide and seek on a Sunday a long time ago. Whitley had hidden himself so well that Weiss couldn’t find him even after wandering all around the estate. And then when Winter had come back from training, she’d abandoned the pursuit, running off to interrogate her sister instead.

You didn’t find me, Whitley had come running, crying after ten minutes, distraught. You and Winter, and — he’d paused to take in a wet shuddering breath too big for his ten-year-old body — you and Winter forgot about me. And she’d known, even then, that what he was protesting was being left alone when they were together.

“I do know a little bit of this, Whit,” she says, mildly. “I can help.”

“I don’t need your help!” he tells her, sharply.

“I’m sure you don’t,” Weiss says, “but we’re the last of Schnees, if you don’t count mom, and we should stick together. I’m not saying I know everything, but I have been training half my life for this, so I could contribute.”

“I’d rather,” he starts, then cuts off abruptly. I’d rather die, she completes in her head, and waits patiently for him to continue. He looks away. “So much for sticking together.”

She reaches out and pats the top of his head. He swivels away violently.

“You — stop, you, you don’t get to do that.”

“Actually, I do,” she replies smoothly, “I happen to be one of your sisters. Not historically a very good one, but I’m what you’ve got, so you’re going to have to make do.”

When Whitley speaks, every time Whitley speaks, all she hears is his ten-year-old version screaming You left me at her, upset and sulking. While Winter made sure Weiss was able to defend herself if she wasn’t around to do that for her, when opportunity to leave Atlas had arisen, Weiss herself had run off, too relieved about the freedom to worry too much about her brother.

He glares at her. “I’m guessing you’ll want something?” he says, flippantly. “The position of the CFO? A seat in the Board of Directors, maybe?”

“Not exactly,” she says, smiling as she messes up his hair one last time before she exits the room. “Dinner every Tuesday and Saturday evening. 7 pm. I’ll see you in two days.”

“Wha — what?” she hears him ask from behind. “What are you — no! I’m not doing…. Weiss!”

*****

When Weiss goes to pick Ruby up for their date, she’s greeted by the entirety of Mantle and Atlas instead.

“We’re not that many people, please,” Blake says, before she joins Yang at the door. “Oh. Oh wow.”

“Do I — does this look, okay?” Weiss asks, smoothing the front of her dress nervously. She didn’t quite trust Jaune’s choice in dresses, but this was what Oscar, Robyn and Winter had collectively agreed on: a midnight blue slinky…. thing that didn’t quite reach her knees and was making her feel very awkward.

Yang’s jaw is still open, her head moving back and forth between Blake and her. Blake closes it for her.

“Okay?” Nora calls out, as Weiss enters the house further. “Girl, if Ruby doesn’t get down on her knees at the end of the night, I’ll give away all of my wealth to the good children of Mantle.”

“Nora!” you say, scandalized, the same time that Yang screams Ew.

“What? I didn’t mean it that way,” she says. “But don’t you think it’s interesting how both of you jumped to….”

Ren covers her mouth with his hand, smiles wryly at the rest of them.

“Also,” Emerald points out, poking her head out from behind the fridge. “Doesn’t Nora have like, five lien to her name?”

And that will not go to the good children of Mantle tonight, comes through in the muffled voice of a still incapacitated Nora. Weiss walks around the room, trying to calm her nerves. She doesn’t want to walk too fast and sweat through, or rip something, but there’s this electric charge festering under her skin everywhere, and no amount of balling up and releasing her own fists seems to help. She tries to take a deep breath, discovers her lungs aren’t ready for it yet.

“Hey,” Blake’s already at her side, one hand gently resting on her abdomen, the other on her back. “Breathe. Breathe with me, Weiss.”

She focuses on Blake’s steady voice, on the numbers she counts out, and slowly her breathing evens out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m such a mess.”

“Please,” Yang says easily, “you should’ve seen Blake after I kissed her the first time. She nearly passed out.”

“That’s because you weren’t wearing clothes!” Blake shoots back, defensively.

“Oh yeah,” Yang says, staring off into space. “Wait, why wasn’t I wearing clothes?”

“Can I just say,” Ren said, looking pained, “how much I do not want to hear this story.”

“I’m okay now,” Weiss says. “Also, why aren’t you guys helping Ruby get ready?”

“You think I need help getting ready?” Ruby’s voice rings out from behind her, and Weiss turns, and

(Had she just thought that she was okay? Because she’d never been more wrong in her life.)

The sight of Ruby, standing near the door rips the breath from her lungs so fast she’s left reeling. It imprints itself upon her memory, a postcard polaroid for the end of all her days, and Weiss wonders where to look. Surely she’s not allowed to look at Ruby directly — isn’t it illegal to look upon angels? She wants to shield her eye, hide her face, wants to turn and run away because she’s sure there’s a world out there where she’s worthy of holding Ruby’s hand and walk beside her, but this can’t be it.

“What?” she says, stupidly, when she realizes Ruby had asked her something but for the life of her can’t remember what it was.

“I — nothing,” Ruby says, walking forward. “Weiss. You look….”

She trails off into silence, until Emerald says — Yo, can I get in on that bet you were talking about earlier — and gets shushed loudly.

(Weiss wants to warn her against it. She’s convinced she’s going to be the one getting down on her knees and proposing marriage at the end of the evening)

*****

Life moves on. Weiss holds Ruby’s hands in hers, and watches autumn turn to winter. Whitley smiles at her on their fifth dinner date, and then, to make up for it, turns down all her proposals for the next two. Sun and Neptune come to visit, and Yang spends the entire time doing pushups ominously in full view of both Blake and Sun, to the former’s amusement and the latter’s bemusement. Oscar goes on his first date with a girl from Mantle, and discovers at the end of the night that Jaune, Ren, Nora and Emerald had been following them the entire time. Qrow makes a half-hearted attempt at warning her of the consequences of breaking Ruby’s heart, and when Whitley and Winter discover that, they kidnap Ruby for half a day. Ruby refuses to tell her what happened, but she also refuses to kiss her in public the whole next week.

Weiss decides to move out of the Schnee estate when she finds a tiny apartment in Mantle, a building over from where Blake, Yang and Ruby have theirs. There’s a lot of light and her favorite spot in the entire place is a corner where the previous family had marked the heights of their three children, apparently named Lee, August and Celia. Ruby draws a line next to it, names it Weiss’ patience level for the day and marks it at random points, depending on her mood. Her mother gifts her flower plants, and subsequently, vases, when Jaune breaks the few that Weiss already had.

The first night, when they’re all exhausted from the multiple trips up and down the stairs and are all crashed in the living room, Ruby finds her outside on the balcony. Weiss knows as soon as she enters through the door — Ruby’s presence carries trough the air — but she only looks back when there’s a red cloak wrapped around her from behind. She feels familiar arms wrap across her stomach and leans back.

“Miss home?”

“This is home now,” Weiss replies, and is surprised to find that the thought does make her a little sad, regardless. “But yes, I do.”

She’s going to miss living with Whitley and her mother, will miss sleepovers when Winter comes down to visit. All the loneliness in the world wrapped up in one large house, and it still stings to leave it behind.

“You know, I heard Robyn’s place isn’t too far from here,” Ruby says. “And if Robyn isn’t far, then—”

“—Winter isn’t too far.”

“—and Whitley and Oscar are already planning a video game session here next Friday.”

Weiss arches back, and kisses Ruby on the cheek. “Thank you.”

“Whatever for, my darling?”

“For,” she flounders for an explanation that sounds normal. Thank you for loving me, while accurate, isn’t a very healthy sentiment to express, “for keeping me warm, always.”

Ruby chuckles against her cheek. “Okay.”

“And Ruby?” she asks. “I know this is the first time I’ve moved out on my own, and I need to build my own life here, and I will. But. In a while — maybe….”

Ruby hums to let her know she’s waiting.

“I’m just saying, that there’s. I mean — I’ve left half my closet empty. So, if, in a while, you ever want to. I just want you to know that I want to build a life with you.”

“Weiss Schnee,” Ruby says, and even with her eyes closed Weiss can hear the smile in her words. “If in a while, you want to share your closet space with me, then it would be my greatest honor.”

*****

She knows Ruby’s up even before she’s completely conscious.

It’s the little things — the fact that Ruby’s arm isn’t weighing on her shoulder, that her leg isn’t slung over her thighs. Weiss blinks, and turns over in bed, concerned.

Ruby stares back at her, wide-eyed.

“Can’t sleep?” Weiss whispers.

Ruby shakes her head slowly. There’s something in her expression that has Weiss worried. It’s not that she thinks they’re in any danger at the moment, but there’s some unsettling thought going on behind those beautiful eyes.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you watch that movie,” she says, but Ruby shakes her head once again. “What? No ghosts scaring you?”

Ruby opens her mouth, clears her throat once. “Only the human kind,” she says.

“Hey,” Weiss asks, bringing up a hand to brush the hair off her forehead, “sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

“Does this still bother you?” Ruby asks her in return, her hand sliding under Weiss’ shirt to expose the scar Cinder had left behind when she had impaled her. Weiss looks down, struggles to make out the tiny line in the dark. She wants to ask another question, but at this rate they’ll be stuck in an eternal loop and she does want Ruby to get some sleep, because she tends to lose her appetite if she doesn’t.

“Sometimes,” she says. Then she smoothens out a tiny crease that’s formed between Ruby’s eyebrows. “You want to tell me what you’re thinking?

“I didn’t see her do it,” Ruby starts, after a while. “Cinder, I mean. I only turned when you fell and I. Weiss.”

“Ruby,” she says, pressing her forehead against Ruby, kissing her once. “Stop.”

“—no, I. And then I left to fight. I left you with Jaune and Ren and Nora, but I still left, and every day I think about it, every single day, I think about you lying on the ground, the blood spreading on your dress, and if Jaune hadn’t been there—”

“—but Jaune was there!” Weiss tells her, not knowing what to say to make it better. Ruby is in so much distress; her voice is in shreds, and there’s a tear making its way across her face. “I’m fine. I’m safe.”

“I’d have killed her,” Ruby says, simply, her voice raw. “I would have killed her. I should have.”

“Ruby, no.”

“If you’d — if something had happened to you,” Ruby says, pausing, frustrated. Her eyes are closed tight, more tears squeezing out of them by the second, and Weiss tips forward to kiss one away. I’m safe, she says. You’re safe. We’re all safe. Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. We’re safe, she says, as she kisses her temple, her rumpled up hair, the bridge of her nose, and she has no idea how or when her words turn into I love yous in her mouth. I love you, Ruby, she repeats over and over, wanting to imprint the words on Ruby’s skin, wanting to tattoo her kisses on her cheek so the mark never fades, so she’ll never forget, I love you so much. And it’s easy in the thin light of the moon, to pull out the words from where she’s been hiding them, keeping them safe her entire life. There’s a moon in the sky and Weiss loves Ruby. There’s a garden blooming in the balcony and Weiss loves Ruby. For as much as love threatens to bring about her end, Weiss loves Ruby, and that love is both the beginning and the never-ending middle to her story.

*****

Tell me about what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, Ruby asks her, laughing, one morning over breakfast, and Weiss tells her there is destruction, but also that love is born in the carnage.

“Our hearts are but collateral damage, my love,” Weiss says. “But my heart, regardless of the damage it bears, is yours to do with as you please.”

*****

Robyn builds a school in Mantle.

No, that comes later. This comes first: Weiss grows tired of sitting in an office. She loves Whitley, but if she has to design one more plan, or take one more call talking to people about dust, she will kill herself.

Actually, wait. That comes second. This is what comes first.

Weiss grows tired of fighting.

*****

“My name,” she says, knowing from the whispering going on in the rows, that the information she is about to share is redundant anyway, but formalities are important, “is Weiss Schnee, and in this class we will be learning Grimm Studies.”

She’s pretty sure she hears someone whisper Hero of Mantle somewhere in the back rows, but ignores it, in favor of writing a couple things on the board. She jots down the curriculum and a brief lesson plan, acutely conscious of whether the clothes she’d had Ruby pick out for her this morning were appropriate class attire. The tie with dogs on it wasn’t something she could have helped, anyway, since she’d lost a bet with Emerald a while back. After she’s done, she turns around and asks the class if they have any questions.

“I have one,” comes a voice from the door, and Weiss closes her eyes. Of course. Of course they would come. “Miss. Schnee,” Yang continues, jumping on top of a desk in front of what seems to be a very impressed student, “when will the kids be divided into teams?”

There’s a lot more pointing, whispering and an abundance of awed looks going on in the class now.

“That is not something the students need to be worried about right now,” she answers, evenly.

“Actually, jumping off of Yang’s very astute question,” Jaune chimes in, “will each team also have a leader?”

She’s going to kill them she’s going to kill them she’s going to kill them

“Yes,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Awesome!” Blake adds, brightly. “But, in the event that they do not like their leader, and think their leader is an incompetent idiot, what can they do?”

Nora and Ren titter from their place at the very back. And from where she’s sitting between them, feet kicked up onto her desk, as casual as she had been all those years ago at Beacon, Ruby smiles, and raises her hand.

“I’d like to know the answer to that myself,” Ruby says.

She takes in a deep breath, summons the Arma Gigas. Has him sit just behind her.

“Now,” she says in what’s her best attempt at authority, “not only will I not be answering any of those questions, but also, unfortunately, question time is over for the entire class. If that thing I have summoned behind me is scaring you, please do not worry, I will make sure it only stands up when one of the six idiots sitting amongst you say something stupid.”

“Okay so,” she says, then takes it all in. Thinks back to years and years ago, when she’d been one of the students sitting in a similar classroom in an academy, miles away, next to people who’d end up meaning more to her than she ever imagined. After all the years of fighting and bleeding, here they were, trying to do something to make the world a better place.

This is not a tale that ends in tragedy, she thinks, and starts talking.

#rwby #weiss x ruby #whiterose #fanfiction #rwby fanfiction #another weiss schnee character study because guess what - she's actually my most favorite character ever #Also there's the usual found family feels #ah idk i finished this in the afternoon because i couldn't sleep but since it was prime naptime - there may be mistakes #you have now been warned #anyways - i hope you guys like it :)

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neighbourskid · 3 years ago

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consider, it‘s all just hubris

when we hear the word 'hubris' we like to think of icarus, flying too close to the sun. daring. underestimating the sun‘s power. overestimating his own skills, prowess, intelligence, what have you. we like to think of the people at babel, building a tower to reach god. to become bigger than god. become like god. icarus falling from the sky, plummeting to his demise. the people at babel angering god in their efforts, suddenly unable to communicate, the building of the tower abandoned. it‘s hubris, we chide, to think oneself so great, so capable, so deserving of recognition, knowledge, possession, or whatever it is they have tried to do. i am The Greatest and therefore i Take and Claim and Know and Deserve and Possess and and and and and.

but is that really what this is?

i am taking a seminar where we talk about language as a literary theme and in connection with umberto eco‘s the name of the rose, we read jorge luis borges' the unicorn and a text by physiologus about unicorns. and in discussing those texts, the unicorn and the notions of real/fake, true/false, i began to think about what the unicorn stands for. what it means.

borges and eco mention the connection to the rhinoceros, that tales, stories, recountings of rhinos is what eventually lead us to the white horse with the long narwhal-like horn on its forehead. i recall a drawing in a medieval english text of a mythical dragon-like creature. long neck, spotted body, short ears and horns, legs half the length of the body. the depiction in the text was of a creature crawling on the ground looking vicious. but it‘s a giraffe. that dragon creature is what you get when someone who had never seen a giraffe before is told of its features or reads of them and tried to depict them. think about it. animals like penguins or the platypus are ridiculous to explain. and if someone has never heard of or seen either, it becomes near impossible to explain. so you approximate, adapt to what your interlocutor could possibly understand. you find common ground. and immediately a penguin is only barely a penguin anymore. and by the time the description ends up on an artist‘s desk, it‘s a whole other thing already. i can‘t even begin to imagine what a platypus would look like filtered through the same process that made a giraffe look like a mythical dragon creature.

but the point here is, humans have a tendency to look for the mythical, the fantastical, the beyond belief. (and if you think about it, honestly, the platypus should be a mythical creature. that thing can‘t be a normal animal. it has bioluminescence for christ‘s sake.) humans look for the fantastic in the mundane, the mythical in the every day.

that is why the loch ness monster works. that is why we have stories of gigantic sea serpents, that is why vampires, werewolves, ghouls and zombies crop up in our tales. it‘s why we talk about the gods of the ancient civilisations even today. why comic books about superpowered humans or beings from outerspace still sell and have done so since the 40s.

much of our oceans are still unexplored. outerspace is an infinity of possibilities and unchartered 'waters'. we send probes down below, satellites up and away. space shuttles and deep sea submarines.

if i was an alien observing earth, i‘d think we‘re looking for something. searching, almost desperately. and, in a way, i think alien-me would be right. but it‘s not something. it‘s not a graspable object. when we dig up fossils it‘s not the fossil we were looking for, truly. when we send a probe down into the marianna‘s trench to gather data and take samples, the samples and the data prints isn‘t what we‘re looking for. the photographs our satellites take, the information our mars rovers collect, they’re good and fine but it‘s not what we‘ve sent them out there for. i mean it is, but it also isn‘t.

we‘re searching. desperately. we send out things and people to look, to gather, to collect, to bring back, to study. and that‘s the point. we want to learn. we want to understand. we are looking, yes. but not for fossils or the ruins of former glorious empires. we‘re looking for understanding. for knowledge. for meaning.

which brings me back to hubris. because that‘s what it is. but it‘s not what we think it is. i don‘t think there‘s any grandstanding behind it. there‘s no I Deserve To Know. there is no I Am The Best And Therefore. no I Claim. I Take. I Possess. I. I. I. Me. Me. Me.

no. that‘s not it, not really.

there‘s a desperation there. a need, yes, but not a deserve. it‘s a plea. a begging. hubris isn‘t I Deserve, it‘s God I Wish. it‘s please please let me understand, give it meaning, give it sense.

we want to learn. to understand, to make sense of things. we are desperately, desperately looking for meaning.

so when our village sits near a deep dark forest we fear to explore and our parents tell us strange stories about, when people who wander off never come back, when sheep vanish and we hear howls in the dark, echoing from afar, we imagine men who turn to beasts when the moon shines at its brightest in the pitch black sky.

when we look up at the night sky, freckled with billions upon billions of stars, we‘re in awe. when we learn what they are, we begin to hope. that, somewhere out there, there are more of us. others of us. life. somewhere among the stars. and as soon as we were able to, we started sending things out there. to look where we can‘t go. we create robots, rovers, flying machines, equipped with data gathering equipment, little cameras and mechanical limbs to gather samples. we create them, build them, name them curiosity, perseverance, opportunity, spirit, and we send them out in our stead, to go and look and learn and help us understand, to make sense of things, to find meaning in a vast and infinite universe.

it drives me crazy. makes me turn into the jenny slate meme where she‘s talking about unfollowing nasa because she‘d just scream. i am torn in a constant ping-pong of seeing the news and thinking, god, humanity is truly beyond saving, we‘re the actual worst, there is no hope. and thinking about things like this right here and feeling this hope for humanity. i watch the martian and i think god, we could be so good. we have so much potential. look what we could achieve, what good we could do for each other, for the world. and it‘s just back and forth like this. constantly.

but i think, even at its most destructive, maybe especially then, humanity is still just looking for meaning, essentially. it‘s the basis of all our stories, of all that perpetually pops up in the things we create and consume.

godzilla exists because of a human attempt to understand something, and failing.

king kong exists because in our travels across the world‘s oceans, we kept coming across uncharted waters, possibly desolate islands, places no one had ever been before. who‘s to say there doesn‘t exist a ginormous monkey on one of them.

why couldn‘t there be a planet krypton on the brink of destruction and a loving family sends their child away to safety, crashlanding on earth, taken in by another loving family. why shouldn‘t that child become earth‘s protector.

there is electricity coming from the sky, lighting trees on fire, a loud rumbling following. rain. why shouldn‘t there be a god controlling that electricity.

why shouldn‘t our known existence have been created by an omniscient, omnipresent being. why shouldn‘t there be life after death. why whouldn‘t there be a cyclical structure to life, or reincarnation. why shouldn‘t a ferryman take your soul across the river in exchange for a coin.

when icarus flew too close to the sun, he didn‘t think he was The Best at flying or that he alone Deserved To Do This, to try and go as far as possible, to reach the sun. icarus escaped just as his father, and they flew. they flew. icarus flew and he wanted to know, wanted to see, desperately, wanted to understand what it meant to fly, to go up and see, because now, for once, he could. the sky, always reserved to birds of flight alone, unreachable for any human to explore, impossible to explore really. and suddenly, the possibility for understanding, for learning, for making sense of the sky and what it means to fly, free as a bird.

when the people at babel built that tower, i don‘t believe they were intending to do so to become bigger than god. no. they built that tower because they wanted to understand, wanted to learn, wanted to make sense of god. see god. learn god. find meaning in god. and i wonder, now, if by giving them language in it‘s myriad ways, that this isn‘t what god gave them. god is all and god is everything. incapable of being expressed, gathered into words, unrepresentable and unknowable, in a way. and yet as we are, as humans, we put everything into words. we explain giraffes to people who had never seen or heard of them, and yes maybe they‘ll end up drawing a dragon instead, but we made note of them, tried our best to explain a giraffe in words another might understand. we use language to make meaning, put things into words to create mental images. we use a string of words that, literally, mean one thing to express quite another. so who‘s to say that by giving the people at babel all languages, god did not, in some way, grant them their wish. one language is never capable of putting god into words. but maybe, possibly, all of them together, in their differences and varieties, may come closer to help humanity make sense of god. god is all and god is everything. so wouldn‘t you need all and everything that language can express to make sense of god?

we search for meaning. we always have. it‘s the most inherently human thing there is. and out of that search, out of that desperate need to understand, to make sense of things, to find—or if we can‘t, to create—meaning, out of that, come stories.

and that is hubris. and it‘s the most human thing of all.

#blog post #hubris #writing #prose writing #(i guess?)#don‘t mind me just thinking about human existence and losing my entire mind about it #very much in the spirit of james acaster doing tgbb. starting making it. had a breakdown. bon appetit.

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bellamyroselia · 4 years ago

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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.

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

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

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

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

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