#god games | orpheus prime

[consumcd-by-timc]

 .˚˖⊹ ࣪ ˖ ೱ   ⴵ   ೱ ˖⊹ ࣪ ˖ .˚— Seeing that the jackal had already stepped in completely into his void, there was little need for his form to stay so… uncanny. The lovely night sky that envelops them both would soon start to move around and morph. It could probably give mortals something similar to sea sickness, but Prime in his infinite power found it hard to think about, as he was immune to such a thing. The pile of goop slowly retracts itself away from the mortal, however, noticing just the impact he was having on him.  .˚˖⊹ ࣪ ˖ ೱ   ⴵ   ೱ ˖⊹ ࣪ ˖ .˚— “Apologies, child. It seems you are not well suited for the void. I had forgotten how frail mortals tend to be. Even with such a powerful gem, you're still susceptible to such a change in environment.” His words did not come from a place of malice, rather a place of concern. Mortals from afar were like ants to him, but having one close brought up immense nostalgia for his own days as one. “Here, let us go to the center of my quadrant. We can continue speaking of these arrangements in there.” Having said that, time and space start to morph and bend around them. The feeling of both stillness and travelling at hundreds of miles per hour meshing together to create a truly bizarre experience. After a couple minutes, they soon arrive to the center—that same night sky, but with such beautiful colors mixed throughout as if they were inside a nebula. Every little “star” in this space radiating gentle heat, tiny and still surrounding both of them. However, the biggest change would come from the being that brought him here. There stood a hedgehog, looming over him at 8 ft tall and adorned with all kinds of gold jewelry. Those white eyes surrounded by black sclera and white, wispy eyelashes.

 .˚˖⊹ ࣪ ˖ ೱ   ⴵ   ೱ ˖⊹ ࣪ ˖ .˚— “Stand, boy. You do not need honorifics to address me, calling me Prime is fine.” He leans over just slightly, though he was quite a behemoth. “That ruby of yours is replacing your heart? How interesting, mortals are rather resourceful... Back to my initial request, how would you like to become one of my disciples?”

At first, the jackal seemed to be alarmed as the void changed, he thought he’d lost the floor under his feet for a moment until he saw how the void turned into the night sky, as if he was in this little welcoming void of space that felt.. almost comforting. It reminded him of those star displays his mother used to put on to project onto the ceiling for him to sleep under the stars.. and almost immediatly his body un-tensed and seemed to relax for a moment. However the calm didnt last long as he felt his ears ringing from the noise caused by the tear. He let out a yelp and moved to tightly yank his ears downward to try and cover them, as his ears, much too long and huge for his head, couldnt be covered by normal means. He waited until the sound drowns out as he opens his eyes again to see the being infront of him. He looked.. confused, however. As the being spoke. He’d never heard of an ‘orpheus prime’ before.. was there other eldritch gods his father failed to teach him about? However when the being explained what they did, he felt the instinct to bend to one knee and bow.

And thats what he did. His legs crumple underneath him as he drops into a bow to the being. Already understanding this thing was stronger than him.

However he found it harder to breathe suddenly, and the jackals ears pin back in a slight fear as he took sharper, heavier breaths now, one arm clutching his stomach as to not cover the ruby embedded in his chest, staring at the being with a nervous look. He spoke up, voice heavy and pausing for breaths.

“It— it was- given to me as a child— by my father— ivo robotnik.. it- its basically an.. a-artificial heart for my body.. the doc- took my real one years ago— y-your highness?- m-majesty-? Im not— sure what to address you as— I’ve never.. heard of you…” the jackal spoke through struggles of breath. Blinking slowly at the name he was given. Child of Wrath? He glared twords the ruby, silently muttering ‘so you have friends you didnt bother to tell me about?’ Followed by violent pulsating of the ruby, it was customary for the jackal to usually be the only one who could speak to the sentient ruby- but he assumed this Orpheus could hear its argumentative words aswell.

[bitegore]

for the wip titles thing 1/3 (with thanks for your indulgence)

Orpheus motormaster

OKAY so this fic is sort of an experimental thing I keep reworking because I don't know what I want to do with it when it hits fairytale territory, but also I think it would be incredibly funny to slot Motormaster into a fairytale world where he has to deal with fairytale bullshit.

Readmore because this is long and also because, like, contents: quite a bit of dark nonsense about death

Presumably we all know who Orpheus is here, so I'm not going to bother to really detail anything about the original myth. I'm also going off the books very aggressively and cribbing a bunch of stuff from, like, the trials of Herakles and shit like that. I got a friend who did their degree in ancient history and literature who I fully intend to lean on for some of the more specific stuff but i'm not actually doing Greek Mythology so it's also probably going to take on a bit of the medieval Guy Wanders About Getting Into Situations vibe to it as well, since I like that quite a bit.

Also it was inspired quite heavily by The Unrepetant (song) by Steve Earle and also by Hadestown (play). I haven't decided how unhappy an ending I want yet, but there's not exactly going to be a happy one. We all know what happened to Euridyce.

The important details for the mythological backing are as such:

There is a pantheon, the way that there's a pantheon in most of these stories.

Primus is king of the "ordered world" pantheon and Unicron is king of the "chaos world" pantheon. In order to get from the normal world to the Underworld (as opposed to, like, traveling under the normal world by digging a hole) Unicron has to let you in. (Primus's domain is Cybertron; because this is G1-ish Transformers, we're on Earth. The general vast expanse of space is sort of a no-man's-land, but Unicron's seat of power is on Earth, so the Underworld is rather close to our cast at the moment).

Beyond this duology Unicron and Primus both have "champions", sort of like saints I guess? or minor deities? in the Thirteen Primes and the Thirteen Titans, who work in semi-harmony to keep the balance of nature even but who also occasionally fight or switch allegiances. Unicron has six Primes and seven Titans and Primus has seven Primes and six Titans. This is because I think it's fun to say that Megatronus was a champion of Unicron and that Prima was also a champion of Unicron before fucking off to Primus's side or something.

(Of the Primes- Primus currently has Prima, Optimus Prme, Alchemist Prime, Vector Prime, Micronus Prme, Onyx Prime, and Quintus Prime; Unicron has Megatronus Prime, Solus Prime, Liege Maximo, Amalgamous Prime, Nexus Prime, and Alpha Trion. I don't know thirteen titans off the top of my head so that'll have to come later.) (Optimus's Primehood is kind of a secret but like an open secret; he's sort of regarded like someone running around claiming to be a god would be. As in, common knowledge holds that he's making shit up until he starts refusing to stay dead and shit. He's a late addition to the roster and there to shake things up, because the game was getting stale since Unicron is fucking his job up.)

As always, Unicron is the "chaos-bringer"- the lord of chaos, bringer of chaos, who sure, eats planets, but he's not the "planet-killer", he's the chaos guy. So his job is chaos. Throw some shit into the mix and see what comes up. (Hence why he's got the Prime of creation and the Prime of shapeshifting and both Primes whose jobs are to be weird old men telling people to do things.) Except, oopsies, whoops, Unicron has been having a long and boring few millenia and he's sleepy tired and he has forgotten his job is to cause problems on purpose.

Primus is another force of nature, too; he can't do Unicron's job because he's the god of living order, of physics and crystal lattices. There's a reason Unicron generated organic life and Primus created machinery, and only in concert could they create Transformers. Now Unicron is dropping the ball and Primus has stepped back to let the Primes handle it, but things are still sort of getting dull and stagnant, and this whole "permanent war" deal that the new Prime and the guy who borrowed Unicron's primary champion's name have cooked up is just as frustrating as anything else.

Given that we're working with G1 Stunticons (i'm always doing that, anyway) the Stunties have spent a comparatively very long time being exposed to Unicron (under the Earth) than they have Primus (in space). They're still in the regular world, but they spend basically no time on Cybertron ever and are made from Earth-based materials, so they're basically just getting washed in Unicron Juice forever. This is barely relevant, but it might wind up more relevant later, who knows.

A final note: since everything isn't set in stone, I might reverse Unicron and Primus's positions as life deity and death deity without reversing anything else, worldbuilding-wise, anyway, and have Motormaster be trying to find the Underworld on Cybertron, but that's kind of boring and I like the earth energy better. We know where Cybertron keeps its dead, that's not so cool. And the idea of a robot alien wlaking into the belly of the regular Earth- surrounded by plants and shit, in an environment he is fully unsuited for- is very fun for me in a way that the Cybertron is not.

A lot of my worldbuilding is copped from TF Prime. Can you tell.

SO okay. No plot notes whatsoever in and we're already at a block of text so long that my computer doesn't want to register keystrokes for ano a full minute after I write them, cool cool cool. I might have to break this up into a separate thing, we'll see how frustrated this makes me.

The opening is simple, and I can just plain copy paste it. (Curses be upon Tumblr for not enabling nested readmores like they do on Dreamwidth.)

It happened out of nowhere. Nothing Motormaster could’ve done about it, not that he wanted to hear that at the time. He’d gone over it back and forth for days, trying to figure out what he’d done wrong as leader to let it happen. Turns out sometimes these things are just dumb shit luck. One stray shell landing in a place it wasn’t supposed to when they weren’t actually under attack, and then, boom, and their racecar frames were all more fragile than Motormaster’s truck. They’d had to piece him back together, too, anyway. Wasn’t like he’d gotten out unscathed either. But the rest of his teammates were dead.  Motormaster didn’t really come to grips with that in the medbay. They had him there for two weeks while they slowly rebuilt his spinal circuitry and the rest of his torso and legs and cab, but he spent the whole time prodding at the empty bonds mentally and running through what he could’ve done different instead. He didn’t really figure his shit out after either, when they let him back out onto his feet and threw him back to the war. He’d refused to go, asked what they were going to do to get him back his team instead. They’d told him dead was dead, and there was nothing to do about it; now he had to get over it and get back to the fight. Time to get even, or get one up on the Autobots. Not time to freak out about what was done and gone and couldn’t be fixed.  And he didn’t really come to grips with it then, either. He listened to them for a little while, thrown himself back into the fight. Let them convince him that there was nothing for him to do. But he was a team leader first, and without his team he didn’t know what to do with himself. And then he finally got it. Put the pieces together one by one. If no one else would go get his teammates back for him, well, shit, it was his responsibility to do that, wasn’t it? After all, he was their team leader.  He got himself together after that. Put in a report stating he wasn’t going to come back until the task was done, requested time off from the Decepticons. He didn’t wait around to see if it was granted or not. They’d take him and his team back when he returned, he was pretty sure. And he packed himself a little travel bag and got his sword and went out into the world to find the opening to the Underworld. He knew it was somewhere. It turned out to be a little bit underwhelming, after everything.  He'd been expecting something dramatic- a crack in the ground, billowing fire; a massive cave ringe with thousands of glittering jewels; an enormous terminal computer terminal humming with infernal energies, or something, but it was simple. No frills. Just a narrow staircase down into the dark, a rough-hewn affair with no end in sight. It wasn't even scary. Motomaster rested his sword over his shoulders, and began his descent.

Anyway I have, like I said, not ironed out exactly where I want to go with this, but for obvious reasons the Stunticons (minus Motormaster) probably are gonna wind up staying dead, since ethat's the way the story goes. I haven't decided, though; it would be really fucking funny if we make them Primes instead. Combiner Prime 2.0, or some shit like that. It'd lose what I like about the Orpheus and Eurydice story, though; I eat tragedy up for breakfast lunch and dinner and then heap myself anoher serving for dessert.

That aside, I do know some of what I want to do with it. The journey to the Allspark is long and difficult, and the first part is (obviously) getting to the staircase down. I have to go and add more stuff there, because that's not supposed to be an easy search either, but I don't want that to stretch on too long; crucially, though, outside his own realization Motormaster catches the attention of one of Unicron's Primes. They go poke Unicron, who goes "huh. Intriguing" and lets Motormaster in to his domain.

But Earth!Reverse is still just as big as regular!Earth and there's a lot of new ground to cover between the staircase down and the seat of the Reverse!Allspark and Unicron's throne. There are like, people in the way and shit. I'm not going for a full on like, cerberus and the river styx type deal, I want to make it a little less played-out and a little more interesting, but it is crucial that there is a whole bunch of people between Motormaster and Unicron and they can all be reasoned with, tricked or otherwise worked around with a bit of thought. I've got full intentions to make these workarounds really obvious, too... at least to the reader.

Because Motormaster is an idiot. And he solves everything by punching people really fucking hard.

He mostly makes it through the Underworld by being a giant pain in the ass and all the guardians who are supposed to direct him where he's supposed to go or provide a small challenge to let him prove himself eventually just go "Fuck this. Fuck this shit. What the fuck ever. Fuck this guy. Unicron and whoever else is behind me can sort him out, I am not getting paid enough to put up with this shit" and so they send him on his way, or give him bad directions that get him turned around or whatever, but they don't really stay in his way. Everyone fucking hates him though. He's making absolutely no friends. This will be relevant later.

Eventually Motormaster makes it to Unicron's court, where Unicron is waiting to hear him out at least with some sense of interest. Primus is there too, since they're buddies and Primus is fucking PSYCHED to see Unicron up and at it and is spending time hanging out in his court watching this stupid little truck slowly make it down to Unicron's fortress. Unicron allows Motormaster to plead his case, expecting, like, some attempt (however halfhearted) of an eloquent case for the return of Motormaster's subordinates, all of whom are present and chilling.

Motormaster does not do this, becuase he is Motormaster. Instead he just goes "Those are mine. Give 'em back" and goes to walk off with his teammates. He presumes this will work because he is an idiot but also becuase so far going "give me what i want or i'll hit you really hard" has resulted in him getting what he wants, because so far what he has wanted was not to leave but just to go in. And he most certainly was not stealing from Unicron.

Needless to say, this does not work.

After Motormaster is knocked very roundly on his ass by [gestures vaguely] someone or other, and impressed upon him is the importance of actually doing shit correctly this time, Unicron- who frankly is just kinda having fun- grants Motormaster a show of unusual leniency and allows Motormaster a second chance to plead his case. Motormaster tries slightly harder and proceeds to fuck it up again, but less badly, at least. Yay improvement.

(He still promises to punch Unicron really hard if Unicron won't give him his teammates back, but fortunately for everyone Unicron finds it really funny that this insignificant little ant is trying to threaten him personally. It's cute. Reminds him of Megatronus before the whole dealie with Solus and Liege Maximo stripped him of a chunk of his hubris. So it's like a kitten pouncing on his foot to him. He keeps encouraging the behavior even though it shouldn't be encouraged because he likes to see it. Primus keeps telling him off for it but he's not making any headway.)

Anyway in order to test Motormaster's resolve and also give him some sort of a chance, Unicron sets before Motormaster like five tasks that are nominally-impossible but not really. Here's where the labors of Herakles things come in; these are all just hard things that have answers. A lot of the labors of herakles are, like, killing a tthing though; obviously Motormater is okay at that, so instead we set before him tasks that don't require him to kill anyone.

Motormaster fails them all. He has one skill and that skill isn't even a little bit "looking for loopholes and tricky problem-solving". He tries and he just plain does not suceed within the timeframe he's been set.

Finally Unicron like. Literally trying soooooo hard to find an excuse to give him back his teammates because he's enjoying watching Motormaster do stuff and he wants Mototormaster to succeed, is like hey. Final task for you. Make the trip back with them and don't turn back, and you can keep them. Cool? Cool. This should be really simple, just face forward and don't turn around. I'll literally give you a guide. Please don't fuck this up.

Technically speaking, that would make all of the Stunticons minus Motormaster sort of like another of Unicron's Primes. Which would be really funny. If he won, that is. But obviously he doesn't win.

(It's very tempting to consider having him turn to look at his teammates as he leaves Unicron's court and having literally everyone present, in unison, go "....oh, for fuck's sake" as they vanish back to the Allspark.)

The real question is more, like- obviously I'm doing black comedy, that's my niche, I don't think I'm capable of not doing black comedy. But there are a few different directions I can go with it. It can be like, yay, Motormaster has learned to deal with grief now, everything's fine and the dead want to stay dead, this is not a happy story but it's a triumphant one. Or it can be like "you would be better off having literally just committed suicide". Or somewhere in between. I can't decide what balance I want to strike, but there's something compelling to the idea that Motormaster making it out of the underworld would sort of properly trap him out of it, where he can't actually return basically ever because divinity has gotten under his skin a little too hard and now it's not working, shit's out of balance and he can't die until it goes back and he is not smart nor powerful enough to ever put it back to rights anyway. If he managed to get his teammates out with him that'd be one thing, but obviously I'm not doing that; we all know what happened to Euridyce.

Anyway obviously I still have a lot to do on this one before I can really get back to it but it's cooking. It's being brain stew. And the flavor is good so far.

[c-is-for-circinate]

So as close as I am to fully escaping Hades for the first time, I figure I might take this opportunity to write down a couple of things I'm scared of from this ending. The story is so good so far! But I have seen good stories before! And there are patterns, right, patterns it's so easy for even good stories to fall into, so yeah, I have fears, and they mostly come down to Hades himself.

(Yep, this one got long again! People seem to be enjoying my game-reaction rambles, so, for your enjoyment under the cut: themes of separation and reunion, predictions for what Zagreus is the god of, and a whole lot of discussion of familial abuse dynamics, how they're depicted in fiction, and the work it takes to change them in real life. Stay warned! Stay safe!)

(ALSO, I still haven't made it past the first couple of chambers in the Temple of Styx, so no spoilers in the reblogs/comments please! Yes, even though the whole post is me going on about predictions and hopes and concerns about the path the story might take. I WILL GET THERE SOON.)

It has been really interesting watching some of the stuff the game is doing with themes of parting and reunion, and how that corresponds to life and death. So many of our social links are about reuniting estranged loved ones: Chaos and Nyx, Eurydice and Orpheus, Patroclus and Achilles. Hades is estranged from Olympus, Persephone left. And every time we leave, or try to leave, it is both an attempt at a parting (and Meg and Than are so hurt by that goodbye, or lack thereof) and an attempt at a reunion with our mother. Every time we die it's a reunion, every time we die it's fun, it's great, we get to go back home and check in with all of our friends and be impressed by whoever made Employee Of The [Timeperiod] and sell fish to the cook and put down yet more rugs. (My Zagreus has something of a rug addiction. What can you do.)

It's at the point where I feel pretty secure in stating that Zagreus is going to discover eventually that he is both life/death/rebirth god, and god of partings and reunions. Both halves of both of those things. People leave each other when they die and re-find their loved ones in death; you go away from one group of people to come back to another; you have to depart to return, and I really think that's where we're going to end up with Zagreus. He's going to reunite his various friends with their loved ones, he's probably going to restore communications between Hades and Olympus and even Persephone, he's going to reunite with his mom, and he's going to come back to the Underworld before he leaves to see everyone up top all over again. And of course the vehicle for all of this coming and going is death, because death is the ultimate departure and reuniter. (This is absolutely a religious concept containing a whole bunch of "oh hey our culture has a lot of Christian influence, doesn't it", Greek trappings aside, but that's fine, it's a game made in 2018 not 300 BC, these things happen. They keep calling the Underworld 'hell' and 'infernal'. It's all good.) Of course he's a cthonic god. Of course he bleeds, because you have to bleed in order to die, and Zagreus has to die again and again and again. That's his whole thing.

Thing is, though, looking at those themes, I am also continually aware of the fact that some partings are for a really good reason. Some partings should not end in reunion.

Yes, of course this is about Hades the abusive dad. I have been talking about Hades the abusive dad basically non-stop since I started playing this game, where did you think this post was going.

There are a few things I'm nervous about, separate but related, and at the core it all comes down to, I'm not okay with it if we learn why Hades got to be this way, and Zagreus forgives him as we-the-audience are meant to do, and Hades promises to do better, and nothing concrete about the situation is forced to change. Actual, meaningful, practical, logistical, non-hypothetical non-metaphorical change, not just for Zagreus but for Hades himself.

Because I know how this story tends to go, in fiction. Fictional abusive parents (especially in fantasy/sci-fi stories) tend to come in two types: 'coerced their offspring into actual murder with a side of physical abuse and optional unethical lab experimentation', or 'this was here to create character conflict, we didn't mean for it to read as actually abusive, this parent just has flaws to make them a good character, we swear!' Hades isn't the first type--we have never once seen Hades strike his son, or anybody, or even come out from behind his desk--which means that the fear is, always, always, in every piece of fiction, that he's the second. That the writers are going to decide that the right response to his abuses is remorse, forgiveness, and one really good conversation. That they don't realize it's abuse in the first place.

And, like. They have to know, right? They have to. They can't have done this by accident. (Sometimes, writers get so close by accident.) They can't have done so well at drawing out this situation simply by going, 'well, people are meant to fear this god, so they'd probably react like this, and I guess based on what I've seen in other stories or vague acquaintances they'd then do this,' and never put the name on the situation. Every single time we leave to the tune of a Hades word-flash, he's being dismissive, insulting, and sometimes downright cruel. He is cruel. They have to know!!!

But oh boy have I been consuming media for a lot of years, and oh boy have I run into a lot of writers who don't know.

Reconciliation is such a loaded word, but stories about dysfunctional families really do love it. Stories based around themes of reunion are primed for it. And of course, it's nice, it ties a happy ending off with a sweet little bow, everyone gets to be with the people they love and the family is safe and nobody gets hurt, but so rarely have I seen stories that show the actual work required to rebuild those relationships in a realistic or meaningful way. So rarely do stories trying to build that happy ending actually let the victim of abuse set and maintain boundaries. The character never gets to actually just cut the damn ties to the thing that hurt them. The character so rarely even gets to be safe.

And it's so hard in this game specifically, because "THERE IS NO ESCAPE", because every single thing about this game says that the story's not over when Zagreus gets to the surface, that no matter what he's going to have to come back. It's so hard, because this is a game about reunions. I am not going to get an ending where the abused kid trying to flee his toxic home and abusive dad actually gets to leave and stay gone, not in this one. And that hurts (I have watched and supported and done my best to help multiple real-life friends get the fuck out of homes like that, and stay gone, I have seen how hard it is, how complicated, how awful, and there are never stories for that), but I can live with it, if I get an ending where Zagreus is at least safe. Where things change. Where they really change.

Which is why I need actual, concrete, material changes in the logistics and power structure of the Underworld for this ending to be okay. Understanding why Hades is Like That doesn't cut it. Remorse doesn't cut it! Because look, even if Hades wants to do better, even if he admits he's at fault and tries to be better, he is still set up in a position as an all-powerful tyrant, and trying to become a better person is hard. There is nobody around who can keep him in check when he starts backsliding, which he will. Even if he doesn't want to, he will.

Because people are people, and it's really difficult to break patterns! Especially if everything around them stays the same. Hades is going to slip at some point, be cruel, be callous, be tyrannical, no matter how much of an effort he's making. Not to mention, it is STRESSFUL to face your own crimes and improve, it sucks, it feels bad. And what do habitual abusers do when they feel bad? What's the only coping mechanism Hades appears to have established for dealing with his own shit? That's right, it's inflicting suffering on everyone else around him. (This is why it doesn't really matter what circumstances drove Hades to act this way, why it can't matter--I believe that he is suffering, but he copes with that suffering by inflicting additional suffering on everyone around him, everyone who relies on him, and that's still true no matter what made him feel bad to begin with.) So then we just get a great old guilt-->lashing out-->more guilt-->more lashing out merry-go-round of abuse even as Hades is trying to change. That's how these things work. And yes, change is possible, improvement is absolutely possible, but the environment needs to change first. The system that enables and rewards Hades for acting this way can't stay in place. Things need to actually change, with people who are around to support Hades in his growth and also check his power, people who have power of their own to stop him. And however it happens, for this story with this protagonist with these goals to feel like a happy ending, Zagreus needs to be safe.

It would be okay, though a little disappointing, if those changes were mostly based in magic and fate and, idk, divine mind-control. (This story has been so grounded in actual human dynamics that a fantastical solution to a realistic problem would feel like a letdown, but if it actually solved the problem I'd be okay with it, more or less.) It would be okay, though a little disappointing, if the responsibility for bringing Hades to heel fell upon Zagreus and Persephone, if the two family members who he hurt badly enough that they felt the need to run away from him entirely now had to shoulder the burden of helping him fix himself. (There are definitely ways to write that dynamic better and ways to write it worse, and I think I trust these writers to land on the 'better' side of the scale, but I still don't love the implications.) I think I'd be pretty into it if Hades took a vacation off to Olympus to Work Out His Shit with his own family, while a coalition of Meg, Nyx, Thanatos, Zagreus, and Queen Persephone took over running the Underworld in his absence. I think we might end up getting some combination of those things. I'm hopeful. I think these writers might know what they've written. I think they might have a sense for what it'll take to fix.

But yeah, I'm nervous. (Nervous enough that I might switch to God Mode just to get through, combat has started getting really tedious instead of fun, I want to know what happens next, and this is a game and there is no shame in making it more fun for myself by making the boring parts a little quicker and easier.) I've seen so many stories go wrong. This one has done so much to earn my trust. We'll see if it breaks.

[technomaestro]

Top 5 Video Game Soundtracks

Ok. Let's try this *again*. I had a whole thing written up and I accidentally refreshed the page, so tumblr ate the entire thing, and I lost it.

Destiny 2 There's a reason D2 is one of my all time favorite games, and the music for it is one of those reasons. Destiny 2's sweeping orchestral soundtrack is full of songs that encapsulate that grand, epic nature of the world and conflict you find yourself in as the Guardian. From the mission tracks like 1AU/Forge Ahead , Valkyrie, and Guns Blazin which provide this cinematic backdrop as you fight for your victories, to the epic swelling of the raid bosses where the tension in their first phases is replaced with triumphant moments where the tide turns as seen in Riven of a Thousand Voices or Insurrection Prime (even the most hated boss in Destiny has a pretty baller theme with tons of brass in it as you get ready to put him in his grave one last time after fighting him multiple times throughout the raid). Locations such as the Dreaming City have tracks that manage to encapsulate the mystery and history behind each location. No matter my feelings and critiques on the gameplay or the story, the music in Destiny 2 is just an absolute gift of musical genius. Michael Salvatori (yes, that same Michael Salvatori from Halo) is one of my favorite composers for the work he's put into that series. Favorite track: Journey ft. Kronos Quartet. This is the song that plays after the deafening silence that comes from escaping the city during the initial Red War campaign, where you montage your way through an unforgiving wilderness, powerless, as the city fades into the distance behind you. You've been beaten, your home taken from you, but the music swells with hope as you follow a sign from the Traveler - and you know you'll return to reclaim your city. I highly recommend taking a peek at the mission, as you can't play it anymore, to see what I mean as to how the track absolutely enhances the experience.

Hades Supergiant games - the people behind Bastion and Transistor, two other games with amazing soundtracks - really did knock it out of the park with Hades. This game's soundtrack is a wonderful blend of classic acoustic instruments (Check it out - it's called a Bağlama) mixed with metal and electronica to create a theme that evokes not only the aesthetics of the region, but also give it a modern twist that meshes with the dark, haunting vibes of the underworld that you reside in. Each track flows so well from one into the next, mixing perfectly with each area or character you encounter. And the two musical characters you encounter - Orpheus and Eurydice - add in plenty of musical flair to the game themselves. The motifs present in the songs are called back frequently to make it a coherent, consistent soundtrack, and it remixes so incredibly well. Favorite Track: God of the Dead - the theme for the final boss of each run, this track is incredible. Not only does it reflect the theme of Zagreus in a different key, showing the link between Hades and his son, before delving into this heavy, frantic track that perfectly encapsulates having to fight

Payday 2 There are exactly two ways to play Payday 2. The first is stealth - you won't have much in the way of music as you silently slip by cops, cameras, and civilians to reach your score. The other is the way I play, where you suit up in the heaviest body armor you can get, grab two automatic shotguns, and go to town to some of the best soundtracks in the game. Payday 2 has a unique musical cue system with it's audio during loud heists, where it amps up the tracks in time with what the cops are doing. At first, before you've been detected, you have the Stealth track which is always low and very basic to not intrude. In low points, like when you first go loud and the first responders arrive on the scene, you're in a Control track. Then, as the police gear up, it switches to a higher temp Anticipation Track, and then when the police storm your position, the Assault track. So each "song" in Payday 2 is actually 4 songs in one, that the game blends seamlessly together in order to match the audio with the gameplay. It's an incredibly clever system that keeps you immersed in the tension of the heist even as Bain, your mastermind, calls out over comms with instructions. And it helps that almost all of the tracks are exceptional bangers in their own right, with amped up electronica with great percussion and bass lines alongside rebellious hard hitting metal and rock. But during those assault tracks, there's something satisfying about hearing the build, reloading your guns, then timing you leaving cover to unleash fury with the bass drop. There's a great playlist here with links to the different types of tracks if you want to take a peek yourself. Favorite Track: I Will Give You My All - one of the few tracks with built in vocals. This particular track feels like the exact kind of music I'd see in a movie, and with the build I run in game for Loud stuff at the moment which incentivizes me running face first at bulldozers and cloakers, giving it my all is *exactly* what I intend to do in that game.

Horizon Zero Dawn HZD's soundtrack is full of the same sort of sweeping orchestral stuff that made me love Destiny 2, with tracks that serve to accentuate the world around you. The only reason it's down here at 4 and not higher is because there's a somewhat lack of variety; as a singleplayer story game, most of the music you encounter tends to be in cutscenes, rather than during gameplay. That isn't a *bad* thing however, and over the hundreds, if not thousands of games I've played, reaching #4 on the list is no small feat. The actual orchestral bits pair so well with being able to cultivate this theme of a world full of grandeur, the kind of which you'd see in nature documentaries. The various tracks illicit this feeling of a long forgotten hope, which if you know anything about the plot, ties in perfectly. The music that *does* play outside of the incredible cutscenes add to the world's aesthetic so well, pairing the sort of instruments you'd find people playing in the civilizations you encounter with the environments you find them in. Even the battle music, when there is battle music, is a tense affair; the game incentivizes you to stalk your prey, as Aloy is not a frontline fighter: she's a hunter among predators, and the music matches that tone. Favorite Track: A tie between Aloy's Journey, which provides not only natural sounds mixed with the instruments of the Nora and the underpinning of techno that permeates the story (in addition to one of my favorite musical things where you have these grand sweeping vocals that aren't actually lyrics) and Your Hand of Sun And Jewels, which gives off this sort of air of walking through city streets in golden sunlight, where people dance just a block away and you can smell the fragrant spices of the local cuisine. It makes me yearn and if I listen to it on full blast I can forget that I'm stuck at home for a moment.

Pokemon Heart Gold & Soul Silver Pokemon OSTs hold a special place in my heart because as much as I loved games as a kid, getting started on things like Mappy for the NES (which, now that I write that, really shows how fuckin *old* I am), Pokemon was one of the first things that I basically turned into my personality as a child. Silver version especially was one of the ones that *truly* got me going, as in Blue version I always felt one step behind my brother but Silver was *my* game, my generation. I have extremely fond memories of that game, from the Lake of Rage to trying to beat a ghost gym with a Sentret and it taking four hours because normal types and ghost types are just... immune to each other. But when Soul Silver came out and remastered the soundtrack, it brought back this wave of nostalgia. The bit tunes I remember had been brought to life, in a way that was recognizably Pokemon. Hearing it again brought back the waves of wanting to journey and be a hero again that when the game came out, I was sorely missing. The music in the game is upbeat and chipper, befitting a near solarpunk world that I want to live in. Iconic tracks remain iconic but with a bit of cultural flair, showing that the Johto region hasn't lost touch with it's roots. While it isn't the almighty trumpeting of Gen 3, the nostalgic tracks that are already evocative of nostalgia brings a yearning back for a time when things were simpler and I could just play games. Also, the Rival theme is *rocking*. Favorite Track: Route 26 Theme. Route 26 is also known as Tohjo Falls, the place which connects Johto and Kanto together. And for me, this route represents having reached a triumph and the energy to explore what's next. It's a critique directly against the Hero's Journey's unfortunate end, that they can never go home - the hero here *can* go home, but they choose to set out again for new sights. It's full of the fact that when it plays, you're taking your steps into something new, something bold, and full of new challenges that await you. It is, by far, one of my favorite tracks and the orchestral version brings me to tears.

[a-d-nox]

1) 5h is rules over the 1st child, 7h is the 2nd, 9h is the 3rd, 11h is the 4th, and 1h is the 5th - according to r.e. bills. i have noticed, in my own family members' charts, that those that do the childbearing (the women of my family) have their venus in the house that coincides with how many children they have!

*** personally my sun falls into both my mother's and father's 5h.

*** my rising sign is a combination of their rising signs; gemini + cancer = the airy water sign, pisces (imo).

2) the mother's chart seems most accurate from my experience. ex: my mothers 5h ruler aspects both mars and pluto (i'm a scorpio).

3) saturn can be committed so wouldn't 100% be game with that being the prime example for noncommittal thoughts and desires. based on myth, the reasonable answer is juno's husband, jupiter (he wasn't a loyal husband... nor was he committed). but my actual answer for planetary would be neptune - because it can symbolize betrayal, detachment, etc. lucifer, asmodeus, and narcissius would be my recommendation for asteroids. lucifer (1930) wasn't loyal to god. asmodeus (2174) sought to destroy any commitment betray partners. and narcissius (37117) rejected commitment towards everyone who wasn't himself.

4) i think it depends on the type of fame you are seeking - fama (pheme) was the personification of fame but she was also the gossip (its giving mean girl vibes lol). but for ex: if you want to be famous for music you should look at euterpe (muse of music), orpheus (the singer), and/or apollo (1862 - god of music).

5) i'd be biased too because my moon is also at 10° lol. BUT i do believe that it depends on aspects and house placement as well. ex: my moon is in scorpio... in the 8h. and when i look at my moon's persona chart the moon is in capricorn at 25° square merc and conjunct neptune. it's a cruel world lol.

a.d. <3

© a-d-nox 2023 all rights reserved

Questions for the Astro Community

Just some Astro questions that I wanted to ask and see everyone’s answers especially my mutuals

1. Which house dictates your FIRST child? I know 5H rules over children but I’m not completely sure if it can dictate what sign your FIRST child might be

2. Who’s chart dictates what sign your children might be, The Wife/Mother/who’s carrying the child or The Husband/Father/Who’s not carrying the child? I’m pretty sure it’s the mother but I just want to make sure and spark convo about this cuz it intrigues me.

3. If Juno can show what we commit to what planet/object might tell us what we don’t like to/don’t want to commit to? Maybe Saturn because that rules over fears and sometimes what we don’t want to commit to is what we’re afraid of.

4. Out of all the fame asteroids and fame indicators which ones do you think is the most important/ the ones that almost always guarantees fame when prominent in someones chart? For me I think an underrated one is Prominent Regulus in your chart.

5. Who do you think has more trouble with their emotions/how they express themselves: People with the Moon in Capricorn degrees or People with their Moon in Aquarius Degrees? For me I’m leaning more towards Capricorn but I’m for sure biased (Moon at 10°)

Love to see everyone’s answers

- ⚜️💫⚜️

[floxalopex]

I don't know if somebody already did this specifically. But yh the heck let's go.

WARNING 1: THIS IS NOT A POST FOR SENSITIVE PEOPLE AND/OR MINORS. (it contains gore and sexual themes and more).

And yes, SALT. Lots of salt.

WARNING 2: this has nothing to do with Christianity specifically. Atheism isn't hate towards your god(s) and/or its believers. Although there are many forms of atheism (some of which are so strong and violent they make me furious) think about mine as a general form of indifference. I hate the Church state, yes, but sorry I have that "at home" so please don't blame me. I don't like Abrahamic religions in general, but I've grown up with one.

I'm thankfully not a cult survivor, but I can understand some things.

WARNING 3: living in a very religious contest I have many beloved friends and relatives (starting with my mother) who believe in their god a lot. So if my words are too disrespectful tell me, I really don't want to hurt anybody.

Okay.

So.

I've seen many similarities between the cult Horde Prime put his clones in and your very average, very white, very western idea of Christianity.

1) Theophagy:

First of all, I really don't know much how this thing is lived in other Christian countries, but in mine they put a lot of emphasis on the Eucharist.

As far as I've seen I think it's pretty obvious how much in ancient cultures there's a very carnal and very grounded idea of the spirit. That can result in believing the soul to be the "psyche", so literally "the breath of life", the coordination of your sinapsis togheter (to me a very poetic definition of how our whole being ourselves is just us being our central nervous system) or it can lead to you eating the ashes of your granpa so you get his good qualities (something some cultures still do today). They said that the head of Orpheus was buried in the island of Lesbo and that's why its land was filled with amazing poets like Sappho. There's this very, sorry, brutal idea of the embodyment of the soul, the talents of a person, that even a piece of corpse is considered a magic thingy.

This is no different in the very old, very ancient, very rural Christian religion (at least in the most common version of it, we have many flavours of one truth apperentely).

When I was in High School we studied a lot Bacchus and the Baccanalia, because there are several commedies about it. My teacher, being very religious, was almost ashamed to admit that a lot of acts of those festivities (let's say that the most normal thing was for women to give their milk to animal cubs) were actually not very dissimilar in their rawness to certain habits of the religion.

So, what about Horde Prime? (me *yh, what about it, stupid ADHD?*). I have seen a post in the past explaining that yes, even though spacebats have the dentition of a frugivore bat and not haematophagus bat, the scene of Prime recharging in his throne with all those disgusting cables filled with green liquid referred as "the life force" of his clones...well, it's surely something.

Looks like a sort of sci-fi vampire thing. Which is very cool and I love this headcanon. So again I kept thinking...what is THAT amniotic fluid? I am a student, so correct me if I say something wrong.

Amniotic fluid is a combination of water 99%, proteins, glucids, fats and some salts (...it's even effective for electric conduction...the heck is that pool).

The most similar body fluid is plasma, so blood less cells. Even the serum, so plasma less proteins, is very similar.

Now, stated that Prime is a manipulative jerk, stated that I don't know much about aliens' physiology, stated that that fluid can come from blood potentially, in Church they say this:

*and Jesus said: "This is my body/blood which I offer in sacrifice for you"*

Apart from it being very creepy, there's this idea in the whole religion-thingy: if you are human you are a selfish monster, so monstrous you made our Lord and Savior die for your sins for how messed up you were.

So basically you don't become a sinner, you are concived as one. Humanity is sin itself, it can never lead to something good.

So are the clones. That's why Prime, in his benevolence, feeds them with himself. To make them pure, to protect them from the outside world. To make them remember who their strenght comes from.

If you don't want to read all of this just go for the Futurama soda episode, it's basically the same thing. Bleah.

2) Corpse feticism and more.

Again, don't know you guys, but here we are filled with mummies. I went in a place in Palermo and ...my gosh why did I do that.

We have everything here, hands, heads, feet, teeth so many of them, dead babies, dead virgins, dead popes, dead elders, all of them for half the prize, but only if you call today.

We are. Filled. With these atrocities. At least we don't touch them anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if, apart from the "hygene", people in Middle Ages used to die at the honorable age of 13 also because they kissed those... thingies there.

So, can we please talk about Horde Prime collection of "previous selves"?

This man has a whole room filled with corpses of himself. In the Vatican you can find corpses of dead popes as well, preserved and even dressed in a very good way. In Italy in general we have these, I remember a whole room in a town near my city filled with skeletons of "saints". Personally I find it very disturbing because you are basically not allowing that body to rest and serve its last biological purpose, especially if you consider that most of these "saints" were mentally impared young kids who were killed brutally and died as "martyrs". In ancient Greece the WORST thing you could do to a corpse was to leave it unburied, without dignity.

It's getting darker now.

I like both headcanons for Prime, that of a spoiled (maybe even sexist) royal of a lost culture who wanted to conquer the universe and that of him being a sort of ancient evil spirit, but I personally like to stick with the latter.

Imagine the old bodies of the clones Prime used for himself. Pushed to their limits. Clones dying young is horrific as well, but like these people were forced to go on. Not to die. Not to age as much as possible. And now that they are dead they can't even rest. They are a show off for anyone to see. Their brains preserved and their literal dead flesh still tormented for reading.

One may ask me, then what about corpses in formalin for medical use? Well, one thing is a donor or a dead fetus or a corpse nobody claims. That's the story of the skeleton in my university, a young male who didn't eat much. A very lonely man. Well at least now he is well loved and appreciated, ah if only he knew that.

The point is, we respect them. We are grateful for the informations they give us. Gosh, I know I'm creepy, but I even cuddled one bone once. We know they probably suffered. Like, search for HeLa cells. That lady has my highest respect.

But Prime? Those are. Vessels. Just that.

Anyways, apart for the "respect the deads thing" I found Hordak's behaviour in that room that of high distress. Like, ehm, any normal person? Search for "Convento Dei Cappuccini", that place I was talking about in Palermo. The fact that I heard kids cry and "MEMENTO MORI" everywhere.

Everyone and everything is afraid of death, I just accepted that fear because it's normal. That doesn't mean I want to be reminded of it every week, especially if I'm a 7 yo kid.

Honorable mentions: that horrible art collection.

3) Double standards

When I went to catechism my teacher used a very feather hand on males and an iron fist on us ladies. We weren't allowed to wear trousers, to play football, to raise our voice. We were forced to be very clean, to sit with our legs as closed as possible. I heard it was worse before, at least we could play volleyball and weren't forced to knit.

We were however "encouraged" to sing and bake stupid cakes for Sundays. Mind you, I'm very feminine, but one thing is liking ribbons one thing is being a slave.

The boys...well, they could literally do anything. They broke things, used petards, beat each other. They were NEVER reproached, the teachers would say "oh, they are just boys". Like once I was so engrossed. I remember I had to sit behind a guy with his butt almost uncovered (because the lower you put the helm of your trousers the cooler you were) while I had to stay still with my head high, chest out, belly in and legs closed for 2h. The problem was: I almost pitied him. I was like "poor thing he doesn't know how to behave properly". That's so crazy, I was piting a free soul while I had my hands handcuffed because I truly believed the bullshit they put into my mind.

Now, imagine how did Horde Prime's clones feel about Catra and Glimmer.

They can dress as they please. Eat non amniotic fluid. Catra can even go wherever she wants.

To me, they didn't feel envious. As they should! That's how far an indoctrination can go.

Take Yudi interaction with Catra, he believes everything he is saying.

But I think deep down he knows, they all know, the truth, juding by his bitter reaction after being possesed. He knows he is the slave here, not the free man. But he wants to believe the other way round.

I think that yes, of course Prime kept Glimmer and Catra (and Hordak) because he needed them to conquer Etheria. But that is also a good way to show to the poor clones of how lost people far away from Prime's light can be. Slaves of their bodly needs and slaves of their individuality.

4) Sexual abuse

Do I need to explain this? Plus all those sick touches Prime gives not only to Hordak, but to Glimmer, Catra and Adora as well?

I don't know much about other countries, again, but here the Church is a real cancer. If a priest gets accoused of raping children he just gets put into another Church far away, and generally he keeps being a pedo even there and the game goes on.

I wouldn't exately say that Prime is a pedophile but clones are pretty innocent and neotenic to me so...idk.

Of course, Prime is his own state and his own rules, so yh. Raping all day. That's why I don't like to ship him with anything rather than a 100 m fall. Not even with his clones, sorry I know its kinky maybe but he is a monster.

Also, the way the clones feel like...honored to be raped. That's so sad. Maybe he convinced them this is the only right way they could experience sex and intimacy. I really don't know.

One thing I'm sure of is that Christian religion likes to often put shame on some "impure" acts. That's the name. The most impure of all is masturbation. If you are a male ...mmm well it's okay dear, it's not your fault you are male and so a sex starved animal. But if you are a girl? Ihhh oh dare you bitch.

Mind you, I fall in the ace spectrum but I did too have puberty and needs, and these thoughts in my head made me only conflicted.

Last thing. More of an asking. And more irriverent, so please stay away if you don't want to read.

So basically I understood I was atheist at 5 yo, just because I read two different versions of the birth of the Universe, one in my science book and one in my Bible (MY Bible, I still have it, was a gift of my aunt) and preferred the science version. I still felt conflicted, like once during a religion lesson at School (well...I don't blame Mussolini much in this case, I mean the Vatican wasn't still recognizing country indipendence and we needed a compromise) the teacher told me to stop drawing dinosaurs with Adam and Eve because they never existed. I mean...yes that's anachronistic but still I felt very sad, dinosaurs were cooler than that story. I remember I even made an experiment "if I say I don't believe in god will I get thunderstruck?". It didn't happen so I was like "oh cool, science wins". But then CATECHISM ecc ecc. The fun fact is that they think atheists are those who don't study religion, while I was the most zelous of the class.

So.

I just wonder...my baby boy Hordak is a man of science, what were his thoughts after his separation from Prime. I mean of course he still believed, but also not as much after some time. Entrapta is a support system for him of course, but he accepts her affection quite easily on canon. Which is amazing, still... maybe he was already doubting his devotion?

[meeselikedramatoo]

all dramas masterlist

okay some of these totally have notes. 

#alive 100 days my prince 200 pounds beauty  38 task force  49 days 4th period mystery  a company man a day  a dirty carnival  a frozen flower  a hundred year’s inheritance a korean odyssey  a millionaire’s first love a moment to remember  a poem a day a special lady  a tale of two sisters  a tree with deep roots absolute boyfriend abyss aftermath alchemist  along with the gods: the last 49 days  along with the gods: the two worlds  an actor is an actor angel eyes  angel’s last mission: love  antique bakery arang and the magistrate are you human too?  arthdal chronicles ashfall  athena: goddess of war awl  bad guy bad guys  beautiology101  because it’s the first time big birth of a beauty - ???  black black knight: the man who guards me blind blood born again brain bride of the century bring it on, ghost broken  cain and abel  cello cheese in the trap cheo yong 1 & 2  cheongdamdong alice children of a lesser god - ???  children of nobody  chuno  cinderella and the four knights  cinderella man  cinderella’s sister  circle  city hunter  class of lies  coffee prince cold eyes  confession (2015)  confession (2019)  confession of murder (kr) confession of murder (jp)  crash landing on you  criminal minds  cyrano agency  dead friend  death bell death bell 2  defendant  derailed - ???  descendants from the sun  designated survivor: 60 days  detective k: secret of the living dead  diary of a prosecutor - ???  dinner mate  doctor john  doctor stranger doctors  dong yi  don’t click  emergency couple  empire of lust  empress ki  encounter  entertainer entourage - ???  fabricated city - ???  faith  fashion king (2014)  fight for my way  five fingers  flower crew: joseon marriage agency  forest forgotten  full house (2004)  gap dong  ghost goblin goddess of fire, jeongi god’s gift - 14 days  god’s quiz - ???  golden time  gonjiam: haunted asylum  good doctor  goong  graceful family  grand prince  granny’s got talent  green rose - ???  gu family book  gye baek  haechi  he is psychometric  healer  her private life  high society  hindsight  hong gil dong  horse doctor  hospital playlist  hospital ship  hotel del luna  hotelier  hotel king  hwajeong - ??? hwang jin yi  hwarang  i have a lover  i hear your voice  i remember you  i’m not a robot  iljimae  innocent man  insane  introverted boss investigation couple  iris 1 & 2  itaewon class item  it’s okay not to be okay it’s okay, that’s love  jang ok jung  jealousy incarnate  jewel in the palace  joseon gunman  jumong - ???  kill me, heal me  killer toon  king of baking, kim tak goo  king2hearts  kingdom 1 & 2  kingmaker  kkondae intern - ??  lawless attorney  legend of the blue sea  liar game  lie to me  life (2018) - ???  live up to your name, dr. heo  love alarm  love in sadness  love in the moonlight  love in harvard - ???  lovers in paris - ???  mad dog  maids  marry him if you dare  mask  meloholic  melting me softly  memoir of a murderer - ???  memories of murder  - ??? memories of alhambra  memorist  memory (2016)  metamorphosis  method  midas  miracle in cell number 7  mirror of the witch  misaeng  miss hammurabi  miss ripley  monster (2016)  moorim school  mother (2018)  my girl - ??  my girlfriend is a gumiho  my holo love  my id is gangnam beauty  my sassy girl (2001) my wife is a gangster (1, 2, & 3)  mystic pop-up bear  night watchman’s journal  nightmare teacher  oh my ghost (2015)  oh my venus  parasite partners for justice 2  perfume  personal taste  phanrom detective  phone  pink lipstick pinocchio  possessed (201()  prime minister and i  prison playbook  private lives  prosecutor princess psychokinesis  psychopath’s diary  queen for seven days  queen inhyun’s man  queen of mystery 1&2  queen of reversals  queen of the ring  queen seon deok rampant - ??  rebel (2017)  rebel: thief who stole the people  remember  reply 1997  reset - ???  resurrection rooftop prince  rookie historian goo hae ryung  ruler: master of the mask  running man (not the game show)  rv: resurrected victims  saimdang: light���s diary  save the last dance for me  scarlet heart-ryeo  scholar who walks the night  search: www  secret (2013)  shark (don’t look back: the legend of orpheus) shine or go crazy  shining inheritance  shopping king loue  sign - 2011  signal (2016)  six flying dragons  sky castle  socialphobia solomon’s perjury - ??  something about 1 percent  something in the rain  special affairs team ten 1 & 2  spellbound  splash splash love  stranger (2017) stranger 2  strangers from hell strong woman do bong soon  sungkyungkwan scandal  suspicious partner  tell me what you say temptation of an angel   temptation of wife  terius behind me  the bride of habaek the chosen: forbidden cave   the closer  the cursed - ???  the devil  the divine fury  the equator man  the face reader  the fiery priest  the flower in prison  the game: towards zero  the ghost detective  the girl who sees scents  the great seducer  the handmaiden  the heirs the host  the k2 the king and i  the king and the clown the king: eternal monarch the king’s face the last empress  the magician  the man from nowhere  - ??? the master’s sun  the mimic  the moon that embraces the sun  the nokdu flower  painter of the wind  the phone  the princess’s man  the producers  the queen’s classroom  the royal gambler  the royal tailor  the scarlet letter  the school nurse files  the secret life of my secretary  the secret message  the silenced  the village: achiara’s secret  the villainess - ???  the wailing - ??? the whispering - ???  the witness (2018)  the world of the married  touch  train to busan  tunnel (2016) tunnel (2017) vip (2019)  voice (1, 2, & 3)  w watcher  weightlifting fairy kim bok joo  what’s wrong with secretary kim when i was most beautiful  when the camellia blooms  when the devil calls your name  where stars land  while you were sleeping  whisper whispering corridors  white christmas  white: the melody  who are you (2013)  winter sonata - ?  witch you hee - ?  witch’s court  yi san  yong pal  you who came from the stars  you’re beautiful 

want to watch  late night restaurant  missing: the other side  money flower  my secret hotel  peninsula  revenger  the silenced  sound of a flower  take of nokdu  the throne  true fiction 

[westofessos]

Happy Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day!

“I’m running for President, because that’s what girls do.” - Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Here are the women I’ve included, though god knows there’s so many more:

Politicians:

Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern, Rep. Val Demings, Senator Kamala Harris, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, First Lady and Secretary of State AND Democratic Nominee for President Hillary Clinton, Rep. Jackie Speier, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Mazie Hirono, First Lady Michelle Obama, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Sylvia Garcia, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Madeleine Dean, Rep. Katie Porter, Senator Tammy Duckworth, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Chrystia Freeland, Senator Amy Klobuchar

Fictional Characters:

Rosa Diaz (Brooklyn Nine Nine), Connie (The Walking Dead), Michonne (The Walking Dead), Darlene Conner (Roseanne), Donna Troy (Titans), Tahani al-Jamil (The Good Place), Leia Organa (Star Wars), Padmé Amidala (Star Wars), Rey (Star Wars), Eleanor Shellstrop (The Good Place), Peggy Carter (MCU), Juliet Burke (Lost), Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones), Lagertha (Vikings), Allison Hargreeves (The Umbrella Academy), Eurydice (Hadestown, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice), Jessica Jones (Netflix MCU), Natasha Romanoff (MCU), Carol Danvers (MCU), Diana Prince (DC), Monica Geller (Friends), Rachel Green (Friends), Phoebe Buffay (Friends), Valkyrie (MCU), Gemma Teller-Morrow (Sons of Anarchy)

In the News:

Gloria Borger, Christine Romans, Brianna Keilar, Brooke Baldwin, Sara Murray, Christiane Amanpour, Abby Phillip, Pamela Brown, Maggie Haberman, Poppy Harlow, Angela Rye, Alisyn Camerota, Laura Coates, Dana Bash, Sara Sidner, Ana Navarro, Kirsten Powers, Clarissa Ward, Catherine Rampell, Tara Setmayer, Laura Jarrett, Asha Rangappa, Kaitlan Collins, Bianna Golodryga, Symone Sanders

Musicians:

The Supremes, Pat Benatar, Alicia Keys, Cher, Linda Ronstadt, Janis Joplin, Alanis Morrissette, Heart, Stevie Nicks, Mama Cass Elliot, The Bangles, The Dixie Chicks, Joan Jett, Salt n Pepa, Aretha Franklin, Bonnie Tyler, Dusty Springfield, Patsy Cline, Halsey, Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Debby Harry, Etta James, Carole King

Activists/Historical Figures:

Malala, Joan of Arc, Amelia Earhart, Diana Spencer, Queen Mary Stuart of Scots, Greta Thunberg, Queen Elizabeth i, Sally Ride, Maya Angelou, Emma Gonzalez, Shirley Chisholm, Queen Elizabeth ii, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman-Hughes, Anne Frank, Rosa Parks, Queen Victoria, Jane Austen, Serena Williams, Hedy Lamarr, Audrey Hepburn, Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, Harriet Tubman, Sonia Sotomayor

Actresses:

Julia Roberts, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Saorise Ronan, Lupita N’yongo, Helena Bonham Carter, Meg Ryan, Bryce Dallas Howard, Katherine Hepburn, Emma Thompson, Emma Watson, Jennifer Grey, Whoopi Goldberg, Molly Ringwald, Regina King, Meryl Streep, Carrie Fisher, Julie Andrews, Natasha Lyonne, Marilyn Monroe, Scarlett Johansson, Mary Tyler Moore, Keira Knightley, Ingrid Bergman, Danai Gurira

“Nevertheless, she persisted.”

[scripted-dalliances]

Rest In Peace: Chapter Nine

Title: Rest In Peace

Chapter: 9

Summary: A part of Faithless Fairy Tale, a more in depth look at how they brought Laura back to life. Appearance of old faces, creation of new ones and if you’re looking for canon, it left a long, long time ago. If you squint you might be able to see some pieces from the book.

A/N: This chapter introduces more Egyptian gods, which now really divides it from Season Two. So I guess now they are just my interpretations, and they will be tweaked with accordingly. 

“It always ends, that's what gives it value.” Neil Gaiman

+

As it happens, they seek death but it's death that finds them, sitting in the shade of a roadside attraction as Sweeney attempts to get Horus to eat something other than peanuts and chips. So far, the young man has only eaten his fries and nibbled incrementally on the edges of a burger.

“Maybe he's a vegetarian?” Laura questions.

“He was a hawk, Not a fucking rabbit, he is just being picky because its cooked. Which he'll have to learn to love. Seeing how he is a real boy again.”Mad Sweeney says pointedly at the young god beside him.

Horus pouts, he is dressed in what they could find on the way here, mostly from gas stations. Cheap black flats, ugly bright orange beach shorts. A too-large t-shirt that was a horrible masterpiece of three photo shopped wolves all howling at a neon colored moon.

Laura elbows Sweeney in the gut and gestures with her face to change the young god's expression. The leprechaun huffs angrily, but in the end trades the last of his fries for the hardly touched burger.

“He will have to learn some day, dead girl. Someone catches him snatching mice with his bare hands and trying to gobble them up and that will be the end of that.”

“He has never been much of a fan of eating cow, ” Says a new voice, filled with undue mirth. “You should have started with cooked fish.”

It turns out to be a woman, tall as nearly Sweeney himself with flawless dark skin. She looks beautiful, in that kind of way that holds your gaze, with her cat like gold eyes and sensual full lips. She looks like she should be a model, spread across glossy magazines and plastered on bill boards for all to see, just that unreal and perfect. 

At once, Horus is leaping up and hooting with joy to greet her. The new woman smiles gently and opens her arms to capture him up in a hug. Pulling him close to her chest and raining down kisses on his cheeks with tenderness only allowed for a lost love one. Its a warm reunion.

Finally, after a few more softy whispered exchanges the woman looks up to the pair watching them.

“Horus has been lost to us for many years, and it has always been difficult to keep him human for long. So, thank you.”

“We just gave him a lift.” Laura explains. It wasn’t even a long one considering. Maybe a state line.

“You provide a safe journey, and returned him home. Kept him human longer than he has been in decades, that’s no easy task.” The beautiful woman explains gently. There is a musical quality to her voice, that makes it impossible for Laura to fight. Its so soothing she can do nothing but accept the thanks

“Nephthys.” Mad Sweeney says. “I didn’t think you lived near these parts.” Last time he had checked on the gods here, she had been rumored to have left for New York, she dealt with grief and mourning. Perhaps a different her was more involved in the death part of things, but like most she had to cut and learn to live off the lean meats of faith she could obtain.

Nephthys, winds her fingers with Horus long claw like digits and joins to sit with them. With her designer dress and heels, she looks out of place at the dirty burger joint but none of that matters. She radiates such a calm energy that Laura likes instinctively. A rare thing that she questions just a little, deep down.

“I was called home, and was on my way when I felt Horus. There is concern about the coming war…among other things. Perhaps you felt the pull of home too, nephew?” She directs this to Horus who nods.

“Even the winds are changing.”

She nods like this makes sense and continues, “There are only a few of us left, and many have all but lost our powers, but when war comes we have always stood together. This is no different.”

Laura frowns, “I thought you guys were staying out of it.”

“We do not fear the end, nor do we have any urge renew ourselves to previous grandeur. Not at the expense of justice and order. It makes it hard to manipulate us.”

“You think that’s what this was, a manipulation?” Sweeney interjects, tone just shy of angry. He had joined the war efforts after all, had for a brief -insane- moment believed in it. Things had changed, grew more complicated but he hates to be played the fool. “Grimnir was a right cunt, but there is no denying the other side ain't much better. War between our sides was going to come sooner or later.”

“I think it's awfully convenient for a disused war god to lead a war of gods. Old against new, for ownership of a future that isn’t ours to choose. Time changes all things. Even belief, and once upon a time even the oldest of us was considered new. Odin was only selling what those who fear death feel the need to buy. A place in the world, that lasts forever, high above the end of all things.” She smiled sadly. “And you don't have to be a god to know that sounds too good to be true. All things must eventually end. To challenge that, ruins the whole point. Of life, death and after.” Nephthys looks Mad Sweeney in the eyes, “Mess with the natural order too much and it tends to mess with you back.”

He nods and accepts her words, she isn't wrong and deep down Sweeney admits he really only joined Grimnir and his stupid war for the chance of a end. A good one, that he could sneak into without losing too much.

He was done running and playing a coward from his own death, so what leg did he have to stand on? Fucking none. The only reason he wasn't trying his all to get back into the game was because he owed Laura too much and that would have to come first.

“Since we did you a favor, mind giving us one in return?” He questions bluntly. Nephthys nods, and he continues. “We need to find the brothers. Anubis and Ibris. Dead girl here has some questions about the after life, or lack of it.”

For a second, her gold eyes light up with amusement, but then Horus whispers into her ear and the look fades into carefully poised seriousness. “I can give their address, it's not far from here, but...if I may be so bold, Laura Moon. I don't think they can help you.”

“What? Why?”

“My kin knows a great deal about death, of bone and tissue, of preserving it past it's prime. Of dealing with the spirit that is cage within it, but neither of them will know what to do with you. You are much more than just dead. If you want answers, you'll have to look else where.”

Sweeney doesn't need eyes in his head to feel the anger flow off Laura's tiny form next to him. It echoes like a siren, warning him that if he doesn't intervene things are going to get nasty very quickly. Instead of trying to pacify Laura -only a mad man would try that route, and he's not as mad as he used to be- he puts himself forward to the goddess.

“Are you going to tell us where to look, or to just fuck off? -because I don't suggest the latter. She might look like a tiny thing, but she's got my coin in her belly and recently beheaded a god with nothing but her own anger and a stolen sword. That's luck and balls, and it's a winning combination if there ever was one.”

Nepnthys throws back her head and laughs, it's a nice one.

“Oh. I know.” She tells them with evident joy, “She won't stop talking about it. There have been those who seek life after death before, Laura Moon. Many have tried, few succeed.” She tilts her head, reading something written invisible on the face of the dead girl and amends her words. “Laura McCabe. Christians have their Lazarus, the Greeks have Orpheus, all of them share a certain seed of an old story. And that's what you are seeking, yes? A mortal death, a return to mortal life.”

“I'm not asking for much. Just what is owed.”

The goddess bestows her a smile, kind in gesture but never the less just a little sad.

“You are owed more than that, and my sister has every intention of helping you get it.”

Laura doesn't understand the context of Nepnthys's words but Sweeney fucking does. Ice sinks into his veins, nearly stopping his heart. There are rumors, there always have been, about the really old ones. What they've done to survive this new world, where they hide and who keeps their faith for them in secret. Most are lies, tales spun for the sake of giving the rest of them some hope.

Then there are the ones, like Isis who make the rest of them look like fucking children.

“Fuck me.” Mad Sweeney says under his breath. Fuck.

+

“Want to explain what's got you so spooked?” Laura questions as soon as she can. Nephthys and Horus are getting comfortable in the back of the car. Who had been invited by the latter to join them. Laura herself didn’t mind and Sweeney had been mutely polite since it turned out that the ancient Egyptian goddess accepted the claim of shot gun seriously. 

Now she has the chance to question that silent while the two of them pump gas and grab snacks for the rest of the trip.

“This is good right? Far as I can tell, she's not a dick and bird boy ain't exactly all there enough to lie so whats got your panties in a bunch? This could get me my life back and your coin in your hands within a weeks time. Why are you acting like you're scared of her.”

Mad Sweeney tucks his hands into the soft joints of her elbows with forced tenderness, and yet she still feels a burst of hungry heat. Clawing up her veins and nerves, consuming her in a flash of burning that makes her shiver with the desire of more.

“That's why.” He says, pulling off his touch quickly and making her want to wage violence to get it back. It's only the insanity of that thought that keeps her from doing so. “Neph ain't a bad lass, always had a weak spot for the dying and dead. As far as guides go, you could have worse, lemme tell ya, but it ain't her I'm shaking in my boots about.”

“Her sister. Isis.”

He nods, “Heavy hitter if there ever was one, and she knows about you and what you did to Odin.”

Laura picks up on what he's trying not to say out loud. He thinks this could be a trap.

“And the touch thing?” She he questions and then nearly falls back. She has shit vision these days, what with her eyes on the verge of popping out of their sockets and maggots threatening to make homes in the cavities, but she would bet with the golden coin that she just saw him blush. “Oh, okay, you are going to explain what that reaction was. Right now. Spill it.”

“Fuck you.” He retorts, a knee gut reaction to anything she says these days, “Fuck you, this is all your fault. This is what you wanted, alright?” Sweeney hisses, offended as he is embarrassed by his own racing heart. “An equal little give and take, remember? I believe, you believe and we both get what we want.”

She blinks at him, “Yeah, and?”

“Put it together dead girl.” When she doesn't, he hangs his head and curses. Then stomps. Then sighs and eventually says, “Remember...remember the  story of your mum and the local minister?”

“Uh, yeah. The story about my mother having an affair,” She crosses her arms, anger rising. “Didn't really ever forget. What the fuck does that have to do with anything.”

“Recall that crack I made, that it was her, offering herself up to her god of choice?”

“Yeah-” She starts, but then stops because oh holy fucking hell. “You are fucking kidding me.”

“Wish I was. Except, you ain't just been believing in me, have you Laura.” He says, voice wavering like the wind across the plains, “You saved my life, you hold all my luck. Everything that I am, you've got, and that ain't just some bullshit thing a casual follower or a believer does. That...that's some other level shit. The likes of my kind don't come down for the mountains to dance with your lot, one on one for a fuckin’ reason. It's dangerous. Addicting. Every touch is playing with fire, with magic. Growing and twisting us together. Could wreck us both if we aren't careful...once or twice, we might be able to get away with. Might be tricky, but it's been done before. Keep fuckin’ about with it and who knows.”

“Why the fuck didn't you say anything!”

In an instant, he's there. Towering above her, with a heaving chest and furious gaze, ready to spit in her face. “Because what the fuck was I going to say? By the way, cunt who likes to punch me thrice a day and twice as much on Sunday, guess what? You're tied to me forever, because you don't know how to just believe in something. You had to know it, didn't you? All my secrets and then some, had to dig between my ribs and take my heart too.” In any other context, between two different people this would be a romantic speech. But he doesn't say it with passionate affection, he says it between gritted teeth and resentment. “And you opened yourself up to hide it. So now your blood heats and rushes for me because it sings for my touch and mine does the same, dead girl because we are two sides of the same spinning coin now. Of believer and belief.”

The confession drains her, she feels the earth spin under her feet.

“I believe in you, you believe in me.” She whispers.

“Aye, and now because neither of us do things by halves, we've fucked ourselves good and proper. Binding the likes of these rarely end pretty, something always gives. Nothing ever ends without a lesson. Like I'll get me coin back but lose my hands. You’ll get your shit life back complete with Mr.Moon and the next day you'll choke on your poptart.” He chances a glance over her shoulder to the back of the car. He can't see them, but he knows the gods are watching. “If things go sour, they will so faster if they know. So keep your hands to yourself and I'll do the same.” Sweeney tells her, putting his best authoritative voice on.

She only just keeps herself from breaking his hand out of resentment.

“Some how, I think I'll be able to control myself.” Laura replies with venom, turning from him and heading back to the car. Wrenching the driver's side open with such force that the metal whines like a broken beast before she slams it shut loud and hard enough to make him wince in sympathy.

Fuck.

This was going to be a fun car ride.

>

[gertlushgaming]

Game Of The Year Awards 2022

It's a new year and with that, we celebrate all the games we liked and disliked the past 12 months with our Game Of The Year Awards 2022. It's been a busy year and with so many games and so little time, it is inevitable that we may not have seen or played every game. With all that in mind let's get on with the awards... We start the awards with a category that lets us celebrate games released from other years, we called it an old new game but it could easily be the best-returning game or game we came back to.

Old new game of the year. 

- Death Stranding.  - Zelda Breath of the wild.  - Assassin's Creed 2.  - Zelda Cadence Of Hyrule. Not that many on the list but with so many new releases, it's always difficult to find time for game past. Retro In Genre, Not name: 7. Joe And Mac Caveman Ninja. 6. Missile Command Recharged. 5.    Yars Recharged. 4. Breakout Recharged. 3. Shatter Remastered Deluxe. 2. Retro Goal. 1. House of the dead remake. This could have been the best new remaster or something but I thought why not be different? It was a good year for us oldies to relive our childhood!

Subscription service of the year. 

1. Xbox Game Pass. 2.PlayStation 3. Nintendo Switch Online. Always a contentious category, subscriptions this year were up and down for Sony and Nintendo as both struggled to catch up with Xbox. This is technically Playstation's first year having the tiered subscription system but they haven't mastered it yet with many games absent, inconsistent backward-compatible game support, and the pricing. Nintendo is still Nintendo and I don't think they really have a clear picture of what they want but this year it was just a splattering of retro games and the odd bit of DLC. Microsoft continues to lead the pack with competitive pricing and a consistent release schedule of indie and AAA games.

Next up is the indie game of the year it was a strong year and all I regret is that I didn't have time to play more games! Indie games of the year: 10. tinyKin.  9. Little Orpheus.  8. The last hero of nostalgia.  7. Teardown.  6. Chained echoes.  5. Stray.  4. Thymesia.  3. Citizen Sleeper.  2. Cult Of The Lamb.  1. Vampire Saviours.  If you only played these ten games then you had one hell of a year, as I said this is just a speck on the release calendar of indie games.

Now the category no one wants to do but it is a necessary evil... Disappointing game of the year:  8. Atari Mania. 7. Deathverse. 6. Save Room. 5. Somerville. 4. 41 Hours. 3. Puzzle Bobble 3D Vacation Odyssey. 2. Gotham Knights. 1. Pokemon Violet. Like I say, it's a necessary evil but these games are all here because it wasn't a smooth or enjoyable ride. But the top of the pile is the prime example. Pokemon Violet was and still is the most broken Pokemon game released whilst Gotham Knights felt empty, recycled, and not very fun. Related Post: Game of the year: Our Top 10 games of 2019 Now for a small recognition list of games I never got to and remembered that fact. Games I needed more time to play: Norco. Dwarf Fortress. Grounded 1.0. Callisto Protocol. Monkey Island. Tunic. Mario And Rabbids. God of War Ragnarock. Need For Speed Unbound. More time would have had these games on the other lists but alas it wasn't to be and now you K ow these games never made it off this list.

The next list is basically the second half of a much-needed top 20 games of 2022 but instead, I call it a close but not close enough because why not. The Close but not close enough Award: 10. Moonscars.  9.Terror Of Hemasaurus.  8. Doraemon Story Of Seasons Friends.  7. Super Woden GP.  6. Bayonetta 3.  5. Lil Gator.  4. Sonic Frontiers.  3. Xenoblade Chronicles 3.  2. Monster hunter Rise Sunbreak.  1. Rainbow Six Extraction.  Right enough foreplay, let's get onto the reason you are here, this is the Gertlushgaming Game of The year 2022 list and you are welcome to disagree, just don't tell me!

Game of the year 2022: 10. Sword Of The Vagrant. 9. Modern Warfare 2. 8. Way Of The Hunter. 7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Cowabunga Collection. 6. Madden 23. 5. Overwatch 2. 4. NFL Pro Era. 3. Evil West. 2. Elden Ring. 1. Atari 50 The Anniversary Celebration. There you have it, as I went through reviews, replayed games, and generally put the work in, I went through the game by game until just one remained. A crazy year full of blockbusters and it was truly great fun going through as I honestly didn't know who would win until the end. Atari 50 The Anniversary Celebration is the Gertlushgaming game of the year for 2022 as it broke down barriers and set a new benchmark for how games like this are done. It gave an old gamer like me the chance to relive my childhood, rekindle memories and learn about how it all came to be, I cannot thank the devs enough for doing the Atari catalog justice and making this old gamer very happy in 2022 and beyond! Happy New Year to all of you! Well except for those that hate my list and for you, well have a slightly less happy new year, not a bad one just a mediocre one.   Read the full article

[anxiousdepressedintrovert]

Otome Monday

Also known as ANGST

Atlas Route

-This one is gonna break my heart so I’m gonna play it first

-So I forgot I restarted the season over the weekend

-Soo...yeah

-Okay. Back to almost getting arrested.

-Atlas stalls long enough for Nova to do one of the things she does best. 

-Then Orion decides to pull a Scooby Doo and have them split up

-Instead of searching for clues they’re making their way downtown to the ship

-Oh good. The CG wasn’t as heartbreaking as it looked. Zella is just being stupid

-Again

-Yay we made it back safe

-Rule One: No one gets left behind

-Rule Two: Never lend Jaxon money

-Lol

-Oh shit Atlas is mad

-Within reason

-Zella. You can’t be this horny all the time!!!

-This has to be a record

-Within the heart scene Zella is giving aggressive compliments

-Atlas’s full smile! UGH MY HEART!!! 

-Such a blessed image

-Zella knows Jaxon ships them

-Zella/MC is the plucky do-gooder

-Pillow talk is so sweet!!!

-The crew motivating Zella is everything

-Fuck. War class battleship is hailing The Promise

-Hey it’s Tyrian! 

-In a giant ass ship

-Oh good. He didn’t want anything

-Other than getting under Atlas’s skil

-Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

-Jealous Atlas

-Constelations and Crusaders

-Jesus. 

-Orion is the Galaxy Master

-Jaxon trying to seduce his way out of everything

-Plus him teasing Atlas

-This is prime crew bonding

-Atlas sewing up Zella’s jacket. UGH

-So cute!!! Not just the action but the conversation after

Reiner Route

-Final 3!!

-Assult on the castle

-I’m gonna cry is any of that stained glass is broken

-Soliare and Caligo going in through the tunnels

-That fight was quick 

-Booo

-Reiner’s speech. UGH I’m in love

*read: more in love

-Ryland’s gonna be pissed the villagers found out before him

-Lord and Lady Wolfson. I love it!

-RYLAND!!! I LOVE YOU!!!

-I’m so glad you’re ok!!!

-Oh shit. 

-Ryland is the nanny you never want to piss off. 

-Even as an adult

-Ryland’s just upset he wasn’t involved.

-He’s shipped it from the beginning

-Oh Ryland

-Reiner and Sigyn being cute. 

-Checking on their people

-Ryland. You’re still pissed

-August is mad too. 

-He just hides it better

-Soliare and the rest of the staff were daydreaming about the wedding.

-Ryland I’ve missed you so much

-Oh, my god. 

-Sex scene wasn’t a heart scene and stole my lungs.

-”Following my own advice? Ridiculous. No one does that” 

-Lol writer. Exactly

-Yes I spent the hearts. 

-Sigyn is worthy and y’all can fite me

-So we fight

-The King dies. 

-And WQ Reaches her final form

-Just like how Altea’s season ended

-wonderful

Hades Route

-Hades...

-I don’t like Estelle’s blouse.

-Orpheus! 

-Oh no. 

-My theory might be proven correct 

-I don’t want that

-Oh no

-Orpheus is mad at Hades for something

-Fuck. He’s confronting us

-I really want Orpheus to be good. 

-I really do.

-He’s such a decent guy

-Cerberus and the boys

-Hades using his Aura to have sex

-Furies attacking Hades too

-Power couple

-We caught one!

-Estelle stop crying. You’re tougher than this. 

The Junior

-Final Chapter.

-Here we go

-Oh joy. the title is “Look what you made me do”

-Tyler shut up.

-Sebastian isn’t used to group hugs. Or hugs in general I’m guessing

-Ugh. Broke Neville is here

-Impersonating Kassidy. 

-Neville is stupid. 

-OMG. I said the gang was there to keep her look on point and the roles that they took were hilarious

-Zack “Shoe security. Never lost a pair in 3 years of service”

-Zig is so sweet

-Ugh Nathan

-Nathan, you almost killed people!! Not to mention yourself!!

-Oh such a rough upbringing for Nathan. 

-Boo hoo

-Haha. Ginger got you monologuing!

-YAS Thank you Dean Strafford

-SUCK IT NATHAN!!!!

-I hope Tyler went dumpster diving so Ginger doesn’t have to

-So he got the evidence board back and now all forgiven

-At least in game

-He’s still cancelled in my book

-We said we feel peaceful and now shit is gonna hit the fan. 

-Again

-Zig in that suit is gonna kill me

-OOOOhhh they gave us options

-Beau’s in jail! 

-Dude Kassidy had priors!

-Becca got another chance! And she made it in!! I’m so happy

-And Nathan’s going on trial! 

-MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

-Alpha;s got their charter revoked

-Sebastian and Becca high fiving over their shitty dads. WOW

-Zack gets to design his grant project now! UGH I LOVE HIM!!!

-Grant and Zack! SHIP

-Sneak away with Zig? Yes please!

-That was hot

-Oh look. The cell phone rang

-Prelude to the next book

-The Junior: Summer Internship

-Oh. They’re skipping right to The Senior. 

-I guess they’ve been listening. 

[consumcd-by-timc]

.˚˖⊹ ࣪ ˖ ೱ   ⴵ   ೱ ˖⊹ ࣪ ˖ .˚— i got my eye... on you.

[jflashandclash]

The Attrition of Peace

Forty-Three: The Pax Brothers

We Crash the Wrong Person’s Vacation

 Note: I do something a little different with the point of view in this chapter. I hope it isn’t too distracting! Let me know if it is!

             In the ensuing chaos—of Alabaster snarling a quick, “Dawn will make your ghosts worthless,”

           And the boar with a bowtie withdrawing a pocketwatch from a pocket that involved cartoon logic to say, “Oh, my good boy, we have plenty of time,”

           And Reyna’s and Melinoe’s troops engaging—Pax frantically searched for his friends who were less trained in the art of not dying during war.[1]

           He didn’t catch sight of Kally or the others as Reyna and Alabaster shoved him and Axel backwards across Camp Half-Blood’s boundary lines. But, he did see another figure.

           Off to the side of the Roman wedge formation and the line of ghosts, there was a girl with a leather jacket, multi-colored hair, and a crowbar and sledge hammer in either hand. Atë didn’t have her usual bounce to her, nor her serial-killer-doll stare. Her shoulders slumped. She looked sad while waving her crowbar at Pax in some form of parting. Either that or a threat. With his family, you could never be sure.

           Despite being out of breath, Pax puffed up his cheeks and popped them. He turned from Atë, the ghost army, and the Roman defenses and ran alongside Axel towards the creepy pit of nothingness and frowny faces that had destroyed half of Hera’s cabin.

           He and Axel donned their helms for ease while running, the Silver Tongued Snake’s head narrowing his peripheral with more darkness. He stayed close to Axel, knowing his brother had better spooky time vision.

           As they stumbled back through what was left of the strawberry fields, towards the central hearth of camp, Pax wondered if this was the best choice. He hadn’t thought the ultimatum would be—A: let Euna vacation in Tartarus or B: abandon his friends to a ghost army and the Roman army, both of which probably wanted to kill them.

           Pax snapped back to the present when Axel hissed, “You didn’t tell me campers were up.”

           Ahead of them, Pax could see one of the many lumps had risen from the ground, hopefully a camper.

           Without breaking stride, Axel sprang over the camper, using the camper’s shoulder for balance. Meanwhile, Pax skid between the campers legs and rolled back into a run. In their split second of passing the camper, Pax recognized the trembling child of Hermes as Chris Rodriguez. And he was pretty sure the Leonis Caput and Silver Tongued Snake had just made Chris pee his PJ pants. Memo to self: mock Chris forever.

           “In the words of Alabaster,” Pax responded as they saw the gaping hole in front of Cabin Two. Several sleepy campers gathered around it, gawking down and saying they needed to find Chiron. “’Jack’s voice wasn’t exactly soothing.’”

           In retrospect, Pax wished he’d have said something cooler when they bolted past the gawking teenagers. Like, “Zeus’s farts smell like Aphrodite’s perfume,” since neither god would know which one he’d insulted, or “Weasels forever!” to commemorate the Triple W team that he, Axel, and Alabaster had left in the Paxmobile.  

           He didn’t have time to add on before Axel stepped into the narrow corridor with Pax following after. With each step down, the walls narrowed. By the time Pax counted step fifteen, he could feel cool stone press against the arms of his weasel sweater. The light from the campfire above them had dwindled to a mocking hint of glow off Axel’s golden helm.

           With that and the dim light of Pax’s celestial bronze daggers, all he could see was the looming Nemean Lion pelt descending ahead and the red plumes of the helm undulating in the tunnel’s slight breeze. Pax remembered stories of the Leonis Caput “stalking the labyrinth,” as the monsters liked to call it—the monsters that placed bets on how Pax’s brother would kill Roman captives.

           After Pax saw Axel win his first coliseum fight to secure their entry into Camp Othrys, Axel forbid Pax from attending the whole “stalking the labyrinth” shindig. Something about how Pax wasn’t old enough to watch R rated films? Pax had never thought about it much, since it was prime prank time, but now, he wondered if this was how the Roman victims saw his brother.

           The updraft blasted Pax’s face with the smell of… seawater? Why seawater? It would be awesome if Euna took a detour to some beachfront real-estate, but that didn’t seem to fit the whole bent on godly destruction thing.

           Axel stopped moving.

           Pax could taste salt when he swallowed. He got the uncomfortable urge to scramble back up the stairs, until the plumes on the Leonis Caput helm faded into the darkness.

           “I can’t see where we’re going,” Axel said. Pax could hear his brother puff his cheeks.

           Pax swallowed again, trying to rid himself of the ocean taste. Something felt wrong about the smell of openness in this black confinement. “Aren’t you supposed to have like, bat sense or whatever?” he squeaked.

           “I’m not sure this is part of the labyrinth,” Axel said, “If it is, either something is blocking my view, or it hasn’t linked fully into the network yet. I’m not sure how this works if Jack bent the labyrinth to his will. The labyrinth is a living thing. It doesn’t like to be controlled.”

           Axel’s voice trembled and Pax slowly put the pieces together. Cages. Confinement. Control. Santiago.

           Pax wanted to tease Axel for getting claustrophobic, but that would be like punching a honey badger in the nose: both upsetting because honey badgers are cute and because they are incredibly dangerous.

           “There’s a door here,” Axel finally said, “Be on your guard.”

           “Oh, I wanted to relax with Reese’s Sticks and Kool-Aid the whole trip to Tartarus,” Pax whispered.

           The door didn’t open the way he was expecting. Instead of hearing the click of a knob or the ominous swing of a dungeon gate like Pax had heard in video games, the barrier gave way noiselessly.

           The brightness blinded the Pax brothers when they stepped out of the darkness. Instead of some dank cavern, they exited into overcast sunlight. The brothers paused to allow their eyes to adjust to the brilliance, their bodies to the warm breeze, and their noses to the intensity of salt and smoke.

           When they’d adjusted, neither moved. Both were too stunned.

           They were on a huge ship.

           A grey ocean bled into a colorless sky every direction they looked. Parts of the deck were smoldering, the smoke curling to disappear into the bleached landscape. Various charred boards looked like they were patched together with broken dreams and wishful thinking.  

           There was a hollow carnival atmosphere to the ship, like an abandoned theme park. A pool was in the center, filled with crystal clear water and formerly white patio chairs with blue towels scattered around. A bar extended from the deck into the pool for easy access.

           Before the Pax brothers recognized any of the people drearily shambling past the broken spots in the floor, they saw the posters on the bar shack’s outer wall: one was for an Orpheus Metal concert. The depiction of Jack’s maniac grin above his emaciated body felt uncomfortable. Axel and Pax looked so much younger with their drums and guitar. That was back when Axel had long hair in a ponytail and Pax had pink highlights.[2]

           A few feet away, another poster depicted Percy Jackson with a drawn on mustache. Several knives and tail spikes protruded the wall, illustrating someone’s target practice.

           Axel didn’t need to see the mast’s statue of a princess in chains to state, “This is the Princess Andromeda cruise ship.”

           They both puffed up their cheeks and popped them.

           Axel and Pax removed their helmets and attached them to their belts so it was easier to look around.

           Pax felt himself tremble. He glanced at the door they’d come through, only to find a Johnny Rocket’s entrance. The circular window in the center of the door showed the remains of a food fight in the restaurant. But there were no grinning Camp Othrys members. Just a few people scrubbing the floor with their heads down. Something about them looked familiar.

           “But… but why is it here? And… and how? Did the whole ship decide to take a joy ride out of Tartarus? Are we in Tartarus already?” Pax whispered.

           Axel shook his head. He clenched his jaw, trying to pretend the sight of their dilapidated ship didn’t bother him. “What did Jack say when he sang?”

           “What? The song about geography?”

           “No,” Axel shook his head, “It’s about being there for a lover and conquering geography to get to them, right?”

           “I don’t listen to old people music and I was a little preoccupied with the earth splitting to listen to lyrics. But, if it was something about that, then why are we on a ship looking for Jack’s lov—”

           Then Pax saw her.

           He felt like he’d eaten a full backpack’s supply of walnuts. The world tunneled until everything was fuzzy but her black, jagged hair and her mutilated, scarred face. Pax didn’t know he’d stopped breathing until he gasped out, “Flynn.”

           She was mopping the deck, staring at the boards with that icy, absent glare she often got when Jack wasn’t around. Like when he’d last seen her at the Massacre of Mount Othrys, her legs and lower waist looked crippled and crushed from where Jason Grace had blasted a pillar onto her and Krios, and from when Pax couldn’t protect her like he’d promised Jack he would.

           The random shades doing chores on the boat weren’t strangers. They were their friends that died during the war.

           Pax could feel his cold sweat when Flynn looked up at the sound of her name. Her eyes softened for an indiscernible moment, then they narrowed. Get the fuck out of here, she mouthed.

           Yep. That was Flynn.

           But Pax couldn’t move. He felt too nauseous. He wanted to curl up and sob on Axel’s arm, but he also wanted to never touch another human again.

           Axel would have normally noticed his brother’s increase into hyperventilation, but movement from one of the only non-ghosts aboard distracted him.

           A beautiful woman stretched out on one of the white beach chairs. There was another non-ghost beside her, lounging on a chair facing away from them. All Axel could see was the man’s muddy sandals.

           She folded up her tanning reflector, set it on the stool beside her, picked up a bottle of suntan lotion and a fruity drink, and stood.

           For an instant, Axel thought it was Reyna. The woman’s hair billowed in loose, black waves down her back. A complicated, revealing purple swimsuit clung tightly to her caramel skin, one with way too many unnecessary straps. Something Reyna would never wear.

           “Fei Lin, my wonderful daughter, you missed a few spots on the deck. And you forgot it’s rude not to properly welcome guests,” the woman said with a warmth of a pillow used to smoother puppies.

           She’d walked up to Axel before he smelled the aroma of roses intermixed with the smoke and seawater.

           Faster than he could block, Aphrodite slapped him across the face with the bottle of suntan lotion. “You,” she said with the same tight sweetness, “scorned me for a demigod. And not just any demigod, one that gets all sweaty and gross from fighting too much, and reads really boring books!”

           Axel thought about breaking Aphrodite’s neck. The more childish side of him wanted to uncork that suntan lotion bottle and pour it on her hair, since he knew it would make her squeal and amuse Pax.

           But Pax was trembling so violently, Axel feared the shakes might dislodge a floorboard and drop them into the mess hall. Pax probably wouldn’t notice Aphrodite’s cringe.

           They didn’t have time for the Goddess of Love. He hadn’t registered that she’d stopped her night visits when they got to New Rome. Too much had happened.

           And this wasn’t the place for a confrontation. He needed to get Pax away fast.

           Axel focused on Aphrodite’s ear, to prevent himself from identifying any of the ghosts around them, and to decrease the effectiveness of her love magic. Despite his attempts, he was furious to find himself thinking about nipping her lobe.

           “Why did you bring us here?” he demanded, trying to find something wrong on Aphrodite to ward off any attraction.

           “Eris brat, take this,” Aphrodite instructed, handing the bottle to his little brother.

           Pax squeaked as the charmspeak took over. He reflexively extended a trembling, sweaty hand. Tears streaked down his cheeks when he glanced from the goddess to Flynn, who had gone back to swabbing the deck.

           Aphrodite began to rub herself down with the lotion, moving her straps in a way that made Axel avert his gaze. Each motion was so deliberate and tender. He tried to picture Reyna’s face when they were cleaning up the war tent, the way her cloak had loosened on one side to look goofy and lopsided, the strands that had come out of her braid—

           “Stop that,” Aphrodite snarled, the sweetness temporarily dissipating. When Axel glanced back at her, she went back to smiling and applying lotion.

           “I didn’t bring you here. I was just having a pleasant, quiet vacation with one of my lovers and your friends interrupted it. The Plague Bringer and the clueless daughter of Demeter, right?” She sighed and went to flip her hair, though the locks had shortened to a dark, pixie cut and her eyes shifted from dark to brilliant blue. “It seems like Jack was looking for his love as a way to lead him and his friend to Tartarus. Oh, Jack and Flynn’s love story!” She grabbed the suntan lotion from a flinching Pax and hugged the bottle to her chest. “Such a delightfully tragic one. Just a pity the heroine forsook her beauty and cut up her face.”

           Flynn had stopped mopping. She glared at her mother in a way that told Axel—if Flynn’s charmspeak worked on Aphrodite, Flynn would force her mother do worse than cut up her face.

           “Flynn’s still beautiful,” Pax whispered.

           Aphrodite dabbed the lotion along the ridge of her brow and gave the bottle back to Pax. He jumped. “That’s cute and sweet of you to say that, Ajax. Peitho[3] and I were wondering if saying that makes you feel better about what happened.”

           “Which way did they go?” Axel interrupted. Out of all their fallen comrades, Pax had the hardest time with Flynn. Pax could make jokes about everyone else, and reminisce on stories, or cry about how much he missed Alabaster, but never anything about Flynn. Axel didn’t need Aphrodite teasing his little brother when the dead girl was in front of them.

           A glance down at Pax confirmed Axel’s suspicion. Pax was biting his lip to keep himself as together as the softhearted kid could.      

           “Hm?” Aphrodite asked, “Did you say you wanted my help?” In a gesture that looked absentminded, she took the suntan lotion from Pax and motioned it towards Axel. Meanwhile, she licked the rim of her fruity drink.

           Axel had nothing to bargain. He could try to kill her again, but that had left him on his knees, pining over her for weeks. He knew what she wanted, but he could never humiliate himself like that. As much as the smell of her perfume made him want to droop his eyes, they were surrounded by the destruction caused by negligent, vengeful, and sadistic parenting by her and gods like her.

           A thunk came from the chairs by the pool. Aphrodite’s boyfriend stood up, stretched, and slung an AK-47 across his back. He wasn’t wearing a shirt over his muscles, but did have a scarf tied around his head to hide his face, like a Somalian pirate. His sunglasses blazed with a backlit fire. Just the sight of him made Axel furious.

           Aphrodite sighed and tossed her suntan lotion onto the ground.

           “Oh, you’re not going to be able to follow your friends off this ship. If you want to tail them, you’ll have to go a different route, assuming I let you,” Ares said, smirking.

           Axel scowled. Any worry he had about Aphrodite’s wiles evaporated in the presence of the war god. He reflexively went to grab his sword hilt, only to remember that all his weapons other than his obsidian blades were in pieces in the Paxmobile. He didn’t even have his frying pan.

           “What in Xibalba are you doing in Tartarus?” Axel snarled.

           “What in Tartarus are you doing in Tartarus,” Pax corrected quietly.

           The war god gave a billowing laugh. “We’re not in Tartarus! What? Did you forget I control the souls and vessels of all the fallen losers in battle? Hades and I had a field day—”

           “—Fields of punishment day—” Pax said.

           “—drawing lots on who got your crew.” Ares reached over and ruffled Flynn’s hair. Axel could feel her hatred. He remembered how she’d publically humiliate people if they dared to initiate contact with her at Camp Othrys. Well, everyone other than Jack or Pax.

           Although Axel hadn’t always agreed with Flynn’s brutal methods, he found himself wondering how he could free her and the rest of his crew from servitude to this godly child. But where else would their souls go? Could they have a worse fate?

           Ares released Flynn. He cracked his neck. “I couldn’t justify getting Jack though. He had to get his own specialized eternal torment. Though, it looks like he’s got the Orpheus curse now.”    

           As much as Axel wanted to obliterate his least favorite couple off this ship, Euna and Jack were getting further away every second, and Pax looked closer and closer to a mental breakdown.

           Axel set a hand on his brother’s arm.

           Pax flinched.

           Axel withdrew and frowned. “Ajax, let’s get out of here. I’m sure we can find another labyrinth entrance somewhere on the ship. I think we had one in the boiler room.”

           If there was one thing Axel knew gods hated, it was being ignored. He went to gently corral Pax towards the Johnny Rocket’s entrance.

           “Oh, you think I’m going to let you go after you helped Hephaestus gather the parts for his giant rat trap?” Ares asked.

           Rat trap? Axel paused. He remembered Hephaestus hiring him for a retrieval quest in exchange for the location of Leo Valdez.

           “Ugh, Stygian ice is SO bad for your skin!” Aphrodite complained. When Axel glanced back, he could see both she and Ares rub their arms at the distasteful memory.

           Despite everything, Axel crackled a smile. He hoped Hephaestus enjoyed hatching whatever trap he’d concocted.

           Pax released a nervous laugh. Since Axel had directed him away from Flynn, color started to return to his face.

           Ares seemed too relaxed with their reactions. The war god lowered his hands, resting one on the pistol grip of his rifle. “I gotta hand it to you, kid. Normally, I like punks like you with all of your spirit and anger—”

           “—oh, it’s monologuing time—” Pax said.

           “—but, at least pricks like Percy are useful. You… I haven’t hated anyone as much as you since Ghandi.”

           “Give me a medal of honor,” Axel grunted.

           “After upsetting this fine lady—” Ares gestured beside him to where Aphrodite was examining her perfect nails like she wasn’t part of the conversation. “—I’ve been thinking a lot—”

           “That must have been very difficult for you,” Pax said sympathetically. Axel probably should have stopped Pax’s side commentary, but he was a bit too proud of his little brother to do so.

           The war god seemed unfazed as he finished, “—thinking about what to do with you.”

           “I’ve beaten you before, Ares,” Axel reminded him, struggling to ward off a smirk.

           Though… Axel wasn’t sure he could defeat Ares now. He had no weapons but his claws and teeth. He was exhausted from fighting Percy and Reyna. And he needed to keep Pax safe and hunt down Euna and Jack. Plus, there was the ghost army at Camp Half-Blood with Reyna…

           Axel thought about continuing to ignore Ares to find the closest labyrinth entrance. Then every ghost on this ship—all their dead friends—would be sent after him and Pax to drag them back to the deck.

           He was not in the strategic position to smirk. Axel sighed.

           “No… no…” Ares chuckled and unslung his rifle. As though to emphasis how unnecessary the weapon would be, he leaned it against the closest patio chair. “You’re not going to fight me. See, I’ve been Googling the best godly punishments. Normally, I just kill people.” Ares shrugged. “But I found out Hera had a way more brutal suggestion.”

           Axel wanted to make some snarky comment about a 4,000 year old man going to his mother for advice, but the words died on his lips.

           “Some little myth about a guy named Hercules? Something about his first family…?” Ares said.

           Aphrodite giggled.

           Axel couldn’t puff up his cheeks and pop them. His insides felt frozen.

           Ares couldn’t do that, could he? That wasn’t normally in Hera’s department of power either but, she was the queen of the gods—

           But Axel could already feel his claws lengthening without his consent.

           From the energized grin on Ares’ face, the god knew what Axel was thinking. He slung an arm over Aphrodite’s shoulder and pulled her close as they watched Axel struggle with himself. “I know you love to hunt and battle, kid. Now you’ll hunt and battle the things that you love. I think that’s well within Aphrodite’s and my domain.”

           Throughout their trip down Jack’s corridor and onto the ghost ship, and—really—throughout most of his interactions with the Greek gods, Axel hadn’t been scared. Annoyed and enraged? Definitely. Now, for what Axel thought was the first time ever, he found himself trembling in fear before a god.

           When Pax saw Axel’s shaking hands reach up and clutch his head, Pax asked, “Um, Lord of Primordial Awesome?”

           “Ajax…” Axel whispered, “Run.”

 We’re almost at the end! Only one chapter and an epilogue to go!!!! :D Thanks for reading! *ehem* please don’t kill the author.... >>’‘

Footnote:

[1] As Mel pointed out: books Pax should write.

[2] This is actually a continuity error from Ch 21, Blood of a Mayan. Making a note here for me to fix it (since I care deeply about my character’s hair… apparently?) XD

[3] Goddess/personified spirit of persuasion, seduction, and charming speech.

[amillionsmiles]

your hair was long when we first met (Pidge/Lance)

Summary: Pidge’s hair grows with the seasons. So do Lance’s feelings. A/N: feelings are hard, kids. written while listening to “No Promises” on repeat so that kind of explains the last scene, I guess. Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

[Read and review over on Ao3] or continue under the cut.

FALL

*

Lance takes a sip of his coffee and immediately regrets it, the liquid scalding his tongue.  His fault—his mug is programmed to alert him of the temperature of its contents, but sometimes he gets too lazy to look at the status bar and decides to risk it the good old fashioned way instead.

The door of the break room opens and Amara enters, blouse perfectly pressed as always.

“Hey,” she greets.

“Hi, Amara.” Lance lifts his mug in acknowledgement.

Amara moves toward the coffee machine, starting it up with a steady whir.  Over the noise, she congratulates: “Good job on bringing in the top numbers again this month.”

Lance smiles, one shoulder pulling higher than the other as he shrugs.  “What can I say? I’m competitive.” He remembers the Garrison, waiting for sim score postings with bated breath.  The very first time he and Keith raced in their Lions, neck and neck.

“You’re going out with us tonight, right? We’re having a mixer with the tech team.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Lance winks, and it feels good, to be on top of his game again, to receive Amara’s answering smile and see her tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

Somebody else enters the break room.

“Oh, good, Lance, you’re here.”

Pidge.

He stands a little straighter.  Over Pidge’s shoulder, Amara wiggles her fingers in goodbye, slipping out through the door.  

“What’s up?”

Pidge walks toward him, a data pad clutched in her hands.  “I need a second opinion.  We just had one of our technical writers redo the user manual, but I still want to make sure that it’s not too, you know, science jargon-y.  And you’ve always been good at picking out that stuff…”  She sets the tablet on the counter, swiping to bring up the file; Lance twists to his side, leaning over her shoulder to get a look.  It’s muscle memory, this position—they might as well be poring over battle plans or a holographic projection of a planet.

His eyes swim at some of the paragraphs.  Oh, god, what am I getting myself into— “I could take a look at it over the weekend,” he offers.

Pidge blinks up at him.  “You’re sure?”

“Yeah, no big deal.  Just send me a copy.”    

“Already done.” Pidge brightens, typing in his work email, the data transmitted with a satisfying swish, and it’s comfortable, like this.  Friends who trust each other’s opinions, coworkers who pick each other’s brains.  Teammates.

Lance glances down at the lid of his mug, tries for nonchalant.  “Hey, are you going to the mixer thingy tonight?”

“At Jolie’s?” Jolie’s, the bar just a few blocks away from their work, with the atmospheric blue glass lights and the karaoke stage for when you’re too many drinks in and feel like serenading the whole world with your feelings.  Sales team already has bets going on who will be the first to drunkenly volunteer; currently, the majority favors Jeremy.

“Yeah.”

Pidge considers.  “Probably.  Are you?”

“You know me. Like I could turn down a party,” says Lance, nudging her.

She cracks a smile.  “I’ll see you tonight, then.  And thanks for looking over the manual, seriously.  I owe you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I need somebody’s account hacked.”

“I don’t do that anymore, Lance!” Pidge protests, punching his arm.  Before he can react, she’s by the exit.  He has half a mind to feign injury, if only to prolong their interaction for a few more seconds.

Instead, Lance raises his mug to his lips, taking a long sip.    

His arm throbs.  The coffee slides down his throat: still warm.

*

“Lance! You’re late!”

“Fashionably, I hope,” says Lance, shrugging out of his jacket as he follows Amara toward the bar.  The lights cast everyone in a dark red glow, and for a second he’s back in Red’s cockpit, weaving through space.  His coworkers spin toward him and away like dizzy stars.

Amara leaves his side, drawn by the noise coming from the pool table in the back corner.  Lance orders a glass of scotch, then looks down the bar to see Pidge perched on a stool, dragging her index finger absentmindedly around the sugar-encrusted rim of her drink.  Lemon Drop. Sweet with a dose of sour—classic Pidge.

“So, you come here often?”

She looks up, features relaxing when she recognizes him.  “I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to show.”

“That boring without me, huh.”

“Actually, no, it’s been pretty entertaining.  You missed Eric getting frisky on the dance floor.”

“Aw, man, seriously?” Lance mourns.  “Please tell me you got a recording.”

“Obviously.” Pidge shoots him one of her secretive little smirks.  “I can’t pass up prime blackmail material.”

“So you haven’t left behind your old ways after all.”

“I like having a lot of information at my fingertips,” Pidge justifies, and Lance thinks of the files she’d kept on their team, categorizing strengths and weaknesses.  When he’d first found out, he’d felt a little betrayed; it hurt to think that someone close to him could pick him apart like that, lay him bare on a page.  But he’d come to learn that it was Pidge’s way of caring: a constellation of data points that she drew close to herself, as comfort.  They existed in the flesh, but also as facts and figures—indisputable, something nobody could take away.

Over on the karaoke stage, Jeremy has finally taken the microphone, launching into some ballad from ages ago: I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you—

Lance bumps Pidge’s shoulder.  “I challenge you to a duet.”

She scoffs.  “Please, I’m way too sober.”

“We can fix that.”

Pidge finishes her drink, turning toward him. When she meets his gaze, her eyes are bright with challenge, and Lance lets himself tip a little closer to her gravity.  The pieces will fall where they may.

*

Three hours later finds him standing on the curb, waving his goodbyes.  A warm pleasantness sits in his chest, muscles relaxed.

“I had fun today.”

Lance turns, startled to find Pidge taller than usual.  A glance downwards reveals that she’s wearing a pair of black pumps; it’s the first time he’s noticed them this whole night, and the thought does something funny to his stomach.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Pidge shifts from foot to foot.  Lance resists the urge to smile, already anticipating the next nervous stream of words: “I mean, I like everyone, obviously, I wouldn’t be here otherwise, but you know me, it takes a lot of time for me to really get comfortable and open up and… it was just easier, with you around.”

Don’t read into it, Lance.

“How’d you get here?” he deflects.

“Took the rail link.”

“Yeah, you should probably call a ride to get back instead.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Pidge grumbles, reaching for the clasp of her purse, and Lance remembers the first time they got drunk together.  It’d been after a diplomatic banquet on some planet with two moons. Gathered in the Castle’s lounge, passing around a bottle that was leagues better than nunvill, Hunk had teased Pidge about being the only one of them that had yet to reach drinking age, which set off another argument about laws in space until Pidge said, “Who’s gonna arrest me, the space police?” and grabbed the flask from Lance’s hand.  Which was how Lance learned that, while he and Shiro got affectionate and Keith got contemplative (Hunk, too, but in a more incessantly questioning kind of way), drunk Pidge became grumpy and then sleepy.

The car pulls up.  Lance opens the door for Pidge, watching her slide into the backseat.  “Text me when you’re home safe, I’ll see you on Monday—”

“Lance.” Pidge’s voice is quiet, the barest trace of vulnerability underneath; and that’s bad, because the last time Pidge was vulnerable around him, Lance fucked everything up.  “I want… I want you to see my place.”

He shouldn’t. Bad idea. But Lance has another weakness to add to Pidge’s ongoing list, after all these years: pent-up regret and zero resistance to a certain pair of beseeching brown eyes.

“Okay,” he says, and gets in the car.

*

Pidge is half-asleep when they finally arrive at her apartment building.  Lance leaves the car door open behind him for her to squeeze out of, turning his attention toward trying to guess which of the windows above them is hers.

“Fuck.”

He whirls around.  “Pi—Katie,” he catches himself at the last second, “are you okay?”  

Pidge balances on her left foot, heels clutched in one hand, the other one rubbing her right ankle.  “I’m fine, I just—what are you doing?”

“Come on, I’ll carry you the rest of the way.”

“Lance, the door isn’t that far, and there’s an elevator once we get inside—”

“Are you really going to turn down a free piggyback ride?”

“All right, fine,” Pidge sighs, sliding her arms around his neck.  Lance hooks his arms under her legs, rising slowly to adjust to the weight. ��Nobody bats an eye at them when they enter the lobby.  In the elevator, Pidge reaches over his shoulder to press the button for her floor, and her hair brushes against the side of his face, giving him a whiff of her shampoo.  Coconut.

Several minutes later, he stands in the middle of her living room.  Pidge is dozing off again, breath puffing warmly against his neck, and Lance keeps the moment to himself, soaking in his surroundings.  Half-assembled 3D puzzle on the coffee table, a fuzzy blanket thrown over the arm of the couch.  Over in the kitchenette, magnets from the local planetarium adorn the fridge.

Gingerly, Lance navigates through the darkness.  With his foot, he nudges the bedroom door open, the mattress squeaking gently when he sits down on its edge.  He deposits Pidge as slowly as he can, careful not to crush her when he leans back—she makes a soft noise as she untangles from him, stretching out on the bed.  And it’s like one of those tragic Greek myths; he’s Orpheus, unable to stop himself from looking over his shoulder.

Pidge is curled away from him, toward the wall.  Her hair has grown well past her shoulders, now; Lance wonders if she plans on letting it reach mid-back.

His job is done here.  He’s seen whatever it is Pidge wanted him to see.  Turning around, Lance starts to leave.

A tug on the back of his shirt stops him.        

“Wait.”

Pidge might as well have turned an ice cannon on him, for what it does to his body.  Lance swallows.  “I have to go.”

“I know,” Pidge says, and he can hear her body dragging across the sheets, curving toward him.  “Thanks for bringing me home,” she mumbles, words laced with sleep.  “I had fun today.”

“You said that earlier already.”

“That’s not… I meant…” She makes an impatient noise, expelling air through her nose.  Lance can’t help snorting in return; even when drunk, Pidge’s mind moves too fast to pin down.

“I was nervous about tonight,” Pidge finally confesses.  “I was worried things might be weird.”

“Oh.”

“But hanging out with you was… normal.  So I guess that means I must be over it.”

“Over it,” Lance echoes.

“Yeah.”  She sounds relaxed.  Happy, even—like a weight has been lifted.

Lance should be happy, too.

“Whatever it was between us, I don’t care anymore, I just—I just want us to be friends.”

There’s a spot of chipped paint on the wall across from them, right below the light switch.  Indistinguishable to most other people, especially with the room as dark as it is right now, but Lance has always had a marksman’s eye.  He should have seen this coming, probably.  And he can do this: bite the bullet, keep the truth lodged in his chest, no exit wound.

“Yeah,” he says softly, proud of the steadiness of his voice.  “Me, too.” 

*     

“Oh, hey, Allura—ha!” In the split second that Lance spared to glance over his shoulder, Pidge swept his legs out from under him, knocking him flat on his rear.

“Hey!” Lance protested.  “Misdirection! Dirty move!”

“Oldest trick in the book,” said Pidge, beaming smugly.  She pointed her staff at his chest.  “You lose.”

“All right, fine.” Lance dropped his own staff in a gesture of surrender, showing his palms.  He held a hand out.  “Help me up?”

She rolled her eyes but reached down to wrap her fingers around his, grip firm.

Too easy.

Lance tugged.

Down went Pidge, a crash of limbs.  Her elbow caught his side and Lance cursed, wheezing: “Ow, fuck, my ribs—”

“Language,” mocked Pidge.

“Who are you to talk about language, you’ve got the dirtiest mouth out of all of us—”  But that thought cut short, because said mouth was now hovering only a few inches away from his.

In hindsight, perhaps this hadn’t been the greatest idea.

“Lance?” Some of Pidge’s hair had come free of her ponytail, curling in wispy clouds around her face.  She’d decided not to cut it and it hung midway down her back, now.  Lance was prone to tugging it on occasion, just to bother her.  (“Why don’t you ever do that to Allura?” “Because Allura would kill me.” “What, and you think I wouldn’t?” “‘Course not, you’d miss me too much.”)

He swallowed.  What were those lines from Legally Blonde?  “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy.”  That was what this was, probably.  Despite his better judgment, he reached up, tucking one of the loose strands behind Pidge’s ear.  Something had been knocked out of him, in his fall—he took a breath but it didn’t quite fill his lungs.

“Right here.”

Here, in the slowly shrinking space between them—and then their mouths were touching, Pidge’s lips soft and slightly chapped against his, and this wasn’t a moment he’d dreamt of but his hands moved of their own accord, found the tie in her hair and pulled it free, gently, tresses spilling through the gaps between his fingers, Pidge pushing down on him until it felt like he’d sink straight through the floor—

Oh, god.  They were on the floor. Of the training room. Where anyone could walk in—

“Pidge, wait.” Lance broke away, even more winded than before.  “What are we doing?”

She blinked at him.  Color was rising to her cheeks, but her voice remained remarkably level as she said: “I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“No, I meant,” he propped himself up on an elbow, gesturing between them with a finger, “this.”

Pidge sat back on her heels. Wary.  “I like you, Lance.”

It should have been a no-brainer, after what had just occurred between them, but Lance still felt as if he’d been clobbered over the head.  It must have seeped into his expression, because Pidge scowled.

“You don’t have to look so surprised.  Objectively, you’re not… you’re not bad-looking, and you get me differently from the others, and you make me laugh, so really, out of everyone on the ship—”

And there were the words he’d been dreading.

“Don’t say that.”

“Say what?” Pidge frowned.

“You said: ‘Out of everyone on the ship.’  That’s settling. That’s talking like we’re never going to get back to Earth.”

Pidge’s eyes widened.  “Lance, that’s not what I mean.”

“Think about it.  We’ve been up here for what, four years?  Spending time with the same company day in and day out, it might just be—” He made a halfhearted motion with his hand.  “Cabin pressure?  Stir craziness?  Things get a little weird but that doesn’t—that doesn’t make me the one.”

“What makes you so sure you aren’t?” Pidge’s voice had gone dangerously quiet.

“I just—” He didn’t know why he was sabotaging himself like this.  He’d been chasing a relationship for so long, it felt, and now here it was, literally in his lap.  But the words came anyway: “What about all the places you haven’t been yet, and all the people you haven’t met?  I don’t want that to get forfeited for… me.”

“Lance.” Pidge’s fingers dug into the cloth of his shirt, just above his heart. “It doesn’t have to be this whole future planned out.  What about right now?”  Her eyes bore into his.  “Right here?”

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe people could have more than one love, over a lifetime.  If anything, Lance believed in an abundance of affection.  But something had shifted, and he didn’t know how to tell Pidge that he couldn’t talk about a here and now without wanting the promise of a future, and the yearning split him in two, because if— when —they got back to Earth, they’d probably be going after different things.  A sadness overtook him, for something he hadn’t even lost yet.

Pidge mistook his silence for disagreement.

“You could just tell me, you know,” she said lowly.  “If you don’t feel the same.”

And with that, she stood up.  Her weight lifted from his chest.

He didn’t breathe any easier.

Long-range fighting had always been Lance’s strength, and he understood it better, now.  It messed you up so much more when you could see the hurt you inflicted up close.  He could fix this—a few words and they’d be back on track, the misunderstanding smoothed over—but maybe it was for the best, to quit while they were ahead.  To manage the hurt while they were still Lance and Pidge and not Lance-and-Pidge.  They were going to get back to Earth, eventually, and she would go to her mom and he would find his way back to Varadero so didn’t it make sense, to not make any promises?

He didn’t want to be responsible for holding anyone back.

The training room doors slid shut.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Which arcana do you think fits FeMC besides fool?

Ok so I’ve been meaning to write an analysis for like……4 ormore years on this. But to summarize my basic idea, besides Fool (and Death obvs), Ithink FeMC ties pretty well with the Sun arcana…which in turn means MaleMC tieswith the Moon arcana (tbh it’s kind of ironic considering I may or may not have writtenlengthy analysis about Hamuko from The Fools’ Tournament as the Moon cause theauthor said so and it fits her more for that fanfic 8U). Ngl I think they canboth switch if they want (from what I can tell those two arcanas work prettyfluidly with each other, esp when discussion positive readings vs negativereadings), but I think the FeMC would best be described as a Sun arcana person ina Moon arcana world.

(under the cut cause kinda lengthy, but it’s also kinda thecliffnotes version of a more in depth essay I wanna write later)

Considering how day and night play a big role in this game Idon’t think it’s too far fetched. Especially with how both Sun and Moon arcanasplay in both routes and feel important in different ways (Sun being a dying manwhom both MCs will essentially join later in the afterlife as well as both his design resembling Messiah later; and then with theMoon on the male side whom is basically foreshadowing the end month of P3 alongwith the fact he looks like a chubbier maleMC and the MC is apparently the doppelganger of Nozumi’s fraternal twin bro; and then with Shinjiro on theFeMC where she can actually change history by saving him).

I personally like to joke to myself that both P3MCs arekinda weird love children of Tatsuya and Maya (just switch the genders andpersonality traits a bit). No really there’s a lot of similarities betweenthese 4 (and it might be because of how one came after the other and the FeMCwas originally part of P3 before they ran outta money and time andaofdns;aflka; my poor baby ;w;). Like, ok let’s play a game, tell me who this is: A brown haired,red-eyed (which are sometimes portrayed as brown for some reason in someofficial works I dunno Atlus can’t seem to decide), possibly (by which I meantotally) bisexual MC whom apparently has a lot of admirers at school, kind ofhas a crap love life, esp with one of their love interests being associatedwith the Moon arcana dying, luckily they have a blonde hair girl who is totallyin love with them, they have a motorcycle key in their possession, have aninitial persona who’s primary magic is fire, has signature personas who’srelated to music, has a prime/modified version of their initial persona, whoare kind of maybe the reason the world might be ending, and they sacrificesomething important so that their friends can have normal lives. So who came tomind? Tatsuya or FeMC? The answer should be both. 8U 

(also side note, I figuredP5MC wouldn’t be able to date guys cause I cracked the code long ago guys, onlyway you can date both genders in Persona is if you have an MC with at leastbrown hair and red eyes, so like atlus should’ve just scrapped P5MC and justmade Goro or Makoto the main character if you wanted to date both genders 8U)

Ok ok, enough goofing around, let’s talk about the actual arcana. I do feel like the FeMC experiences both the positive andreversed arcana (actually depending on your choices it feels like itfluctuates).

Positives meaning:(Youthful) Optimism, energy, clarity of thought, creativity/new ideas,enlightenment, and reality

Positives in game:All of these are shown throughout the game. FeMC has been said to be “optimistic”on countless occasions (to the point she feels similar to Maya even having ashout-out to Maya’s signature catchphrase). In P3P the unstable Tartarus dayswere introduced, bringing certain floors and a new line “you’ve come up withnew combat ideas you should be able to gain more exp on this floor.” She isshown to have a lot of energy (even commented on it by people, exampledepending on your choice when you first meet Ms. Toriumi). LastlyEnlightenment, tbh this fits the MaleMC as this is what they basically achievewhile fighting Nyx. Also same with MaleMC, “reality” can be read choosing to letRyoji live and facing the reality of death or whatever. 8U

Negatives meaning:Vanity, Fantasy, everything is clouded, cynicism (also one or two placesmentioned the feeling of being “left out”)

Negatives in game:Choosing to kill Ryoji could mean the MCs indulding in the fantasy of notknowing Nyx is coming. The one I really want to focus on is the cynicism….Now you can play her as kind/optimistic pretty much to the end, or you can playher as harsh/cynical….but there’s something interesting looking at the male vsthe female routes, in the male route he starts kind of cold/neutral and as thegame goes on he gets more…”positive” dialogue options. FeMC, however, has alarge range of emotions from the start, but as the game goes on she gets morenegative options (tbh I’m not surprised, her love life is a mess, one boyeither dies or is in a coma, one leaves her to go home to France after sayinghe loves her, one states he can’t be with her until he becomes a “better man,” oneis a guy who has sister issues and is a pain to romance, one is a kid and evenif she claims she’ll wait for him she’ll just end up hurting him even more, oneof your friends turns you down cause he already had/has girl issues, one isdeath itself and leaves you after saying he’s basically gonna kill you, yourrobot almost died on you and is now coming out of the closet just in time forthe FeMC to die on her….god I’m not surprised she’d want to personally shootall of Strega in the head herself. Like “the world’s ending, no one loves me,come at me bro”). In terms of feeling left out, I feel like this applies alot  more to the FeMC than the MaleMC,while other characters will do stuff off screen to forward the plot, theimplications of their actions to the P3MCs are different. MaleMC probably hasn’tor can’t SL with them, so while he may feel out of the loop it’s not like it’sreally negative. FeMC, however, has the ability to SL her team as soon as theyjoin or come back from injury *cough Akihiko* (barring Mitsuru and Aigis causereasons), so when a teammate does something off screen, I dunno like confidingin another character instead of their supposed “best friend” the FeMC, it mayimpact the FeMC more. It makes her feel even more left out considering she ismuch closer.

Other Associations:Fire and Masculinity

Other Associations ingame: Fire obvs points to Orpheus. But Masculinity, oh I bet you thoughtyou got me here, but nope. If  the FeMCequips Mara Theo comments how “unlady-like” it is, Liz says the same thing asshe says to  the MaleMC “Tee-hee howmanly” (at least if you romance her that is she’ll say that 8U). On top of thefact….she has a choice to have Liz as her VR attendant…. Cause VR Attendantsare supposed to represent the anima/animus of their guest: Theo is the FeMC’sanimus (aka  in the unconscious of a woman it is expressed as a masculine innerpersonality) while Liz, Margaret, and Twins are the P3MaleMC, P4MC, andP5MC’s anima (aka in the unconscious of a man thisarchetype finds expression as a feminine inner personality). So if FeMC is female, she should just have anAnimus right? Yet she can have Liz….which means she represents the Anima….whichmeans….she’s there to basically balance out the FeMC’s (hidden) masculinity? 8UMight be why she gets along with the guys so well (even actually having friend…orshould I say “bro” routes in her SLs 8U), and maybe why she kinda has similar “flirty dialogue” that the MaleMC has with the girls (cause it’s pretty much copy and pasted over 8U). (as for if MaleMC matches with theMoon’s more “feminine” reading, I dunno he seems more interested in the ladiesthan the men in his SLs so he’s pretty women focused…in a way).

I would be inclined to think that Star arcana would fit her too (cause optimism theme as well, and cause a star persona is used to create her ultimate weapon….and cause cause the star arcana seems to be a theme with Hashino’s Persona era tho it mostly applies to P4/5), but that fits more with naive optimism while Sun kinda has to face the harshness of the world yet still find a positive outlook. Considering the running “gag” (not really a gag in most cases) since P2, Sun arcana characters tend to find themselves in bad situations and have to struggle to find a positive outlook. I feel the FeMC’s situation becomes very…dire like the other Sun arcana characters (like I said above “the world’s ending, no one loves me, everyone leaves me out, come at me bro”). You could interpret that she could start off as Star and then switch to Sun (naive then maturing basically) as the game goes on, I mean Star does come before Sun (with Moon in the middle) so….yeah….FeMC’s side could just be 3 arc Star->Moon->Sun story (but, again, I think Sun fits her the best 8U)

[pof203]

Persona 5 Arena character profiles

I know I just said this may not happen, but after writing that last post, I just couldn’t help it.

This post talks about the characters, their Personas, weapons, and (if I’m able to put it) moves. Enough talk, let’s get into it.

WARNING: This could get a bit long and may contain spoilers.  

Persona 3

Makoto Yuki

Title: The Messiah of Strings

Weapon: One handed sword

Arcana: Judgement

Persona: Messiah

Instant Kill: Hientou

Theme: Mass Destruction

Voice: Yuri Lowenthal

Mitsuru Kirijo

Title: The Imperious Queen of Extinctions 

Weapon: Rapiers

Arcana: The Empress

Persona: Artemisia

Instant Kill: Niflheim

Theme: Missions for the Brilliant Executioner

Voice: Tara Platt

Akihiko Sanada

Title: The Two-Fisted Protein Junkie

Weapon: Boxing Gloves (Boxing)

Arcana: The Emperor

Persona: Caesar

Instant Kill: Earth Braker

Theme: The Wondering Wolf

Voice: Liam O’Brian

Aigis

Title: The Heartless Armed Angel

Weapon: Firearms

Arcana: The Chariot

Persona: Athena, Palladion (Instant Kill only)

Instant Kill: Heritage Liberator Palladion

Theme: A Heartful Cry

Voice: Karen Strassman

Yukari Takeba

Title: The Unslightly Pink Sniper

Weapon: Bow & Arrow

Arcana: The Lovers

Persona: Isis

Instant Kill: Final Feather⭐Arrow

Theme: Pink Sniper

Voice: Michelle Ruff

Junpei Iori

Title: The Mighty Strike-Out Slugger

Weapon: Baseball Bat and Baseball

Arcana: The Magician

Persona: Trismegistus

Instant Kill: Explosive Level-Up Grand Slam

Theme: Mr. Easy-Going

Voice: Vic Mignogna

Ken Amada & Koromaru

Title: The Pretentious Tenderfoot Dou

Weapon: Long Spear (Ken), Knife (Koromaru)

Arcana: Justice (Ken), Strength (Koromaru)

Persona: Kala-Nemi (Ken), Cerberus (Koromaru)

Instant Kill: Baptism of Light and Darkness

Theme: Youthful Spirit

Voice: Cindy Robinson

DLC:

Shinjiro Aragaki

Title: The Hellish Chef Under the Moonlight

Weapon: Battle Ax

Arcana: The Hierophant

Persona: Castor

Instant Kill: Stardrop

Theme: Mass Destruction (Persona 3 FES)

Voice: Grant George

Minako Yuki

Title: The Princess of Strings

Weapon: Naginata

Arcana: The Fool

Persona: Orpheus Telos

Instant Kill: Victory Cry

Theme: A Way of Life

Voice: Laura Bailey

Metis

Title: The Underworld Metal Butterfly

Weapon: Battle Ax

Arcana: The Hierophant

Persona: Psyche

Instant Kill: Danse Des Papillons

Theme: P3 FES

Voice: Stephanie Sheh

Ryoji Mochizuki

Title: The Beautiful Death for Love

Weapon: Scythe

Arcana: The Wheel of Fortune

Persona: Orpheus

Instant Kill: Song of Rebirth 

Theme: Burn My Dread

Voice: Yuri Lowenthal

Elizabeth

Title: The Lethal Elevator Attendant

Weapon: Tome and Tarot Cards

Arcana: Death, The Fool

Persona: Thanatos

Instant Kill: Megidolaon

Theme: The Battle for Everyone’s Souls

Voice: Tara Platt

Theodore

Title: The All Simple Butler In Blue

Weapon: Tome and Tarot Cards

Arcana: The Devil

Persona: Lilith, Abaddon, Beelzebub (Instant Kill only)

Instant Kill: Spin Slash

Theme: Electronica in Velvet Room

Voice: Travis Willingham

Persona 4

Yu Narukami

Title: The Sister Complex Kingpin of Steel

Weapon: Two-Handed Sword

Arcana: The World

Persona: Izanagi-no-Okami

Instant Kill: Myriad Truths

Theme: Reach Out To The Truth

Voice: Johnny Yong Bosch

Yosuke Hanamura

Title: Captain Ressentiment

Weapon: Kunai

Arcana: The Magician

Persona: Takehaya Susano-o (replacing Jiraiya)

Instant Kill: Brave Blade

Theme: The Hero from Junes

Voice: Yuri Lowenthal

Chie Satonaka

Title: The Spunky Dragon with Deadly Legs

Weapon: Greaves (self taught Kung Fu)

Arcana: The Chariot

Persona: Haraedo-no-Okami (replacing Tomoe)

Instant Kill: Galactic Punt

Theme: Like a Dragon

Voice: Erin Fitzgerald

Yukiko Amagi

Title: The Unconquerable Snow Black

Weapon: Fan

Arcana: The High Priestess

Persona: Sumeo-Okami (replacing Konohana Sakuya)

Instant Kill: Full Bloom

Theme: Princess Amagi

Voice: Amanda Winn-Lee

Kanji Tatsumi

Title: The Bloodcurdling Beefcake Emperor

Weapon: Blunt Object

Arcana: The Emperor

Persona: Takeji Zaiten (replacing Take-Mikazuchi)

Instant Kill: The Man Series: Brofist

Theme: A Pure-Hearted Beast

Voice: Matthew Mercer

Rise Kujikawa

Title: The Scandalous Superstar Idol

Weapon: Microphone

Arcana: The Lovers

Persona: Kouzeon (replacing Himiko)

Instant Kill: True ♥ Story 

Theme: Twinkle★Star

Voice: Ashly Burch

Naoto Shirogane

Title: The 2000 IQ Killjoy Detective

Weapon: Pistol

Arcana: The Wheel of Fortune

Persona: Yamato Sumeragi (replacing Sukuna-Hikona)

Instant Kill: Judge of Hell

Theme: Seeker of Truth

Voice: Valerie Arem

Teddie

Title: The Beast in Heat

Weapon: Claws

Arcana: The Star

Persona: Kamui-Moshiri (replacing Kintoki-Douji) 

Instant Kill: Kamui Kablooey

Theme: Teddie Circus 

Voice: Sam Riegel

Ryotaro & Nanako Dojima

Title: Mister E and his Magical Detective

Weapon: Gun (Dojima), Magnifying Glass (Nanako)

Arcana: The Hierophant (Dojima), Justice (Nanako)

Persona: Each other

Instant Kill: Family Solution

Theme: Koisuru Meitantei

Voice: J. B. Blanc (Dojima), Karen Strassman (Nanako)

DLC

Margret

Title: The Sadistic Stud-Keeping Secretary

Weapon: Tome and Tarot Cards

Arcana: The Empress

Persona: Cu Chulainn, Yoshitsune, Ardha, Helel (Instant Kill only) 

Instant Kill: Morning Star

Theme: A Poem for Everyone’s Souls

Voice: Marisha Ray

Marie

Title: The Antisocial Poet of the Hollow Forest 

Weapon: Bag

Arcana: Aeon

Persona: Kaguya

Instant Kill: Musubi no Ikazuchi

Theme: XOXO For You

Voice: Eden Riegel

Tohru Adachi

Title: The Egocentric Police Dick

Weapon: Pistol

Arcana: Jester

Persona: Magatsu-Izanagi

Instant Kill: Yomi Drop

Theme: Fool or Clown? 

Voice: Johnny Yong Bosch 

Persona 4 Arena

Labrys

Title: Yasogami’s Steel Council President

Weapon: Double Ended Axe

Arcana: The Wheel of Fortune

Persona: Ariadne

Instant Kill: Weaver’s Art: Inquisition 

Theme: Spirited Girl

Voice: Cindy Robinson

Sho Minazuki

Title: The Rule-Smashing Pun Machine

Weapon: Twin Blades

Arcana: The Moon

Persona: Tsukiyomi

Instant Kill: God and Demon Annihilation  

Theme: The Joker

Voice: Todd Haberkorn

Persona 5

Akira Kurusu/Joker

Title: The Trickster Who Flies For Justice

Weapon: Knives, Handguns

Arcana: The Fool

Persona: Arsene, Satanael (Instant Kill only)

Instant Kill: Sinful Shell

Theme: Last Surpise 

Voice: Xander Mobus (Ben Disken if Mobus is unavailable)

Ryuji Sakamoto/Skull

Title: The Pirate of the Track

Weapon: Bludgeons, Shotguns

Arcana: The Chariot 

Persona: Captain Kidd

Instant Kill: Skull of Rebellion

Theme: Full Sail Athlete

Voice: Max Mittelman

Ann Takamaki/Panther

Title: The Sassy Kitty Actress

Weapon: Whip, Submachine Guns 

Arcana: The Lovers

Persona: Carmen

Instant Kill: Blazing Hell

Theme: Red Hot Panther

Voice: Erika Harlacher

Yusuke Kitagawa/Fox

Title: The Brush Wielding Samurai

Weapon: Katanas, Assault Rifles 

Arcana: The Emperor

Persona: Goemon

Instant Kill: Kōri no Hyōgen

Theme: 9 Tails

Voice: Matthew Mercer

Makoto Niijima/Queen

Title: The Biker President of Pain

Weapon: Tekko, Revolvers

Arcana: The High Priestess

Persona: Johanna 

Instant Kill: Atomic Flare

Theme: Queen of Spikes

Voice: Charami Leigh

Futaba Sakura

Title: Princess Lovecraft

Weapon: Curry Ladle, Taser Gun

Arcana: The Hermit

Persona: Necronomicon

Instant Kill: Cry of the Old Ones

Theme: All Seeing Saucer

Voice: Erica Lindbeck

Haru Okumura/Noir

Title: The Countess Who Dishonors

Weapon: Axes, Grenade Launchers

Arcana: The Empress

Persona: Milady

Instant Kill: One-shot Kill

Theme: Beauty Theif

Voice: Xanthe Huynh

Morgana/Mona

Title: The Four Wheel Pussy Treasure Hunter

Weapon: Curved Swords, Slingshots

Arcana: The Magician

Persona: Zorro

Instant Kill: Fight for Liberty

Theme: Cat Bus Speeding

Voice: Cassandra Morris

Yuuki Mishima/Anon

Title: The Self-appointed Public Relations Officer

Weapon: Baton, Volleyballs

Arcana: The Moon

Persona: Tsukiyomi Picaro 

Instant Kill: Purgatorial Wing 

Theme: Beneath the Mask (Remix) 

Voice: Sean Chiplock 

DLC

Goro Akechi/Cow/Black Mask (BM in Desperation Mode only)

Title: The Fallen Trickster Detective

Weapon: Laser Saber, Serrated Sword (Desperation Mode only), Ray Gun, Silenced Pistol (Desperation Mode only)

Arcana: Justice

Persona: Robin Hood, Loki (Desperation Mode and Instant Kill only)

Instant Kill: Laevatein

Theme: Ark

Voice: Robbie Daymond

Lavenza

Title: The Elegant Warden Princess 

Weapon: Tome and Tarot Cards

Arcana: Strength

Persona: Kelpie, Oni, Rakshasa, Valkyrie, Siegfried, Zaou-Gogen (Instant Kill only)

Instant Kill: Vorpal Blade

Theme: Freedom for Everyone’s Souls 

Voice: Carrie Keranen

Masayoshi Shido

Title: The Demonic Seafaring Prime Minister 

Weapon: Cutlass, Bazooka

Arcana: Hunger

Persona: Samael, Yaldabaoth (Instant Kill only)

Instant Kill: Rays of Control 

Theme: Rivers in the Desert 

Voice: Keith Silverstein

Other DLCs

Zen & Rei

Game origin: Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth 

Title: The Afterlife Sweethearts

Weapon: Double Crossbows

Arcana: The Tower

Persona: Each other

Instant Kill: Soul Slice

Theme: Maze of Life

Voice: Keith Silverstein (Zen), Ashly Burch (Rei)

Vincent Brooks

Game origin: Catherine

Title: The Two-Timing King of Bachelors 

Weapon: Pillow, Cellphone, Sword

Arcana: The Fool

Persona: Jonny Ariga, Orlando Haddick, Toby Nebbins, Catherine (Succubus), Shadow of Vincent (Instant Kill only)

Instant Kill: LOVE IS OVER

Theme: YO

Voice: Troy Baker (Vincent), Travis Willingham (Jonny), Liam O’Brian (Orlando), Yuri Lowenthal (Toby), Laura Bailey (Catherine)

Katherine McBride

Game origin: Catherine

Title: The Blue Nail Empress

Weapon: Fork

Arcana: The Lovers

Persona: Ishtar

Instant Kill: Fist of Grudge

Theme: Hen to Hen 

Voice: Michelle Ruff

Thomas Mutton/Boss

Game origin: Catherine

Title: The Shepard of the Tower

Weapon: Gavel, Revolver

Arcana: The Tower

Persona: Dumuzid, Asteroth (Instant Kill only)

Instant Kill: Wrath of Judgment

Theme: It’s a Golden Show

Voice: Kirk Thornton

That’s the characters. I hope you like it. Thank you.