#hes feeling cute but rebellious. THIS IS HIS DOMAIN

[ccaptain]

   there's something deeply empowering in realizing that you can just eat chips and guacamole in the haunted house attraction. expecially if you're a being in the middle of a lazy summer night.

[tuwam]

in the warmth, you’re there.

@urianius //

ahyeon realizes that she has none, she has it where she thinks it matters, but probably not where it should matter most.

where’s that?

cue the scene.

hyuck tugging on her hand with the same youthful innocence that they should’ve left when stages got bigger and scripts got longer. he’d never let go of it and by default ahyeon understands that she never has either. it doesn’t show as much on her as it does on him, but he’s the one pulling and she’s the one following. right? that counts for something. counts for all the people who comment that she’s too serious, too strung up or caught up in what she could be and what she has to be. for herself, her parents and maybe a bit for her sanity.

that youthful innocence doesn’t leave, it just stores itself away, tides away for people like hyuck to pull tug and coax it out. wherever that may be. sometimes it’s in the corners of the backstage curtain, hyuck’s faces cheering her up before they’re scheduled to walk out and present an award. maybe it’s in the late hours of a script reading, the tick of a pencil against hers and a quirk of her lips that only he can catch and the camera couldn’t. maybe, it’s the fastening of a scarf around her neck and his hand pulling her off and into this world.

a world that lets stardom be bright as well as joyful, not just blinding and far away.

they’re not headed somewhere so abstract today though, it’s abstract because he hasn’t quite told her where it is. he’s just told her to be prepared, chastised her for how thin her jacket was and dutifully wrapped her up in an extra scarf. 

any complaints on how warm she already was were lost in the feeling of hyuck yet again - pulling her to a new adventure. because that’s what it would be, that’s what it always was. amongst all the frowns, all the clicks of her tongue or the raise of her brows, somewhere along the line her hand started to squeeze back and her feet started to fall into step. 

no resistance, just trust in how she feels, and how she always feels when she’s around him.

“where are we going?” ‘don’t worry about it.’

it’s warmth, despite wind cutting across her cheeks, despite snow fluttering through her nose and over her eyelids, despite how they close against icicles and the fabric of the blindfold and fits of laughter as he ignores her questions. even in the unknown of their destination, she’s almost sure it’ll include the same.

there’s steps and awkward fidgets of a lock, of doors and more steps. the air gets colder, significantly colder and she’s seeking his hand as he seeks to pull the blindfold off.

‘why are you looking at me like that?’

there’s even warmth in that - in the skeptical look he gets as she looks around and recognizes the stadium they’re standing on the edge of. a stadium she’d often come with areum, when they were younger, pliable. when areum actually had dreams for her hobbies and when they weren’t as rebellious as they became. their parents would drag them to the stadium when it snowed, because areum was more in the mood when surrounded by snow and she’d skate day in and day out. ahyeon isn’t a fan of it but she’s familiar with it, learned to laugh with it and smile at the memory. 

cue her confused as to why hyuck’s brought her here and why he looks like he has no idea why she’s giving him the look she is.

“minjae taught you how to pick locks?” ‘no - no of course not. whaaaaat.’

cue ahyeon, unimpressed. though she’s also pushing back thought of how cute hyuck looks when he’s flustered and trying to hide something.

“you know this is more my sister’s scene right?”

it is, and she says that with no disappointment, no malice, she just says it with a straightness that people often mistake for such things. she’s used to that, and she’s not accusing hyuck of doing it - it’s just a regular. after meeting both her and her sister, people usually associate the exciting things, the things that girls normally like with areum. ahyeon is dolled up and girly by default, because it fits her, areum is cut-up, rough by rebellion and rebellion only. 

and hyuck - hyuck knows her too well to make this mistake which is why instead of the offense most people take from her words, he’s just smiling even wider and lifting a pair of skates to her. 

‘you trust me right?’

it’s the smile, it has to be the smile that has her taking them with no hesitation. it’s the smile that has her setting her jacket down and seeking his hand out onto shaky steps on the ice rink. 

“why are we here?” ‘to skate silly.’

ahyeon’s not bad at it, but she’s nothing like her sister, it’s the one area that areum’s perhaps more graceful than her in. but ahyeon learns fast and they’ve both inherited that same stubbornness that even the embarrassment of shaky legs and hands gripping to hyuck’s arm cannot stop. her cheeks color with each time he catches her, with each lift that has her face far too close to his and his smile just a tad too wide. 

“you’re enjoying this.” ‘why would i come here if not - to enjoy this.’ “you’re the worst.”

but she keeps it up, because hyuck’s suddenly become more encouraging, and more of an anchor. like in the ways he’s been during their journey as actors and actresses. he’s always been somewhere, even if it wasn’t right beside her it was somewhere, movement in the corner of her eye that brings relief, or a quirk of a smile.

like when she hears they’ll be at the same music station for a special, or the guest hosts for an award, or even if schedules align for him to wave at her from across the sidewalk. she’ll balk, maintain her composure but let a smile pass and maybe a text later when he admonishes her for it.

‘you’re not so bad.’ “shut up.” ‘almost better than areum.’ “shut up.”

because that’s not true and it’s never something she ever needs to hear. areum’s got this thing, about loving it when people say she’s different from ahyeon, but still as gorgeous or as demure. she’s heard that soonyoung will make such comments about how he prefers areum - and ahyeon wouldn’t have it any other way. if soonyoung ever said the opposite it’d be her fist in his face. the thing is - she’s never wanted to nor does she enjoy comparing herself to her sister since she’s long realized their differences and accepted it.

much in the way areum would never accept that there are things about her that ahyeon would long for, especially in her youth, in the freedom areum would tackle everything and the structure with which ahyeon did her own. 

she couldn’t possibly be better than areum at this, skating is her sister’s domain. on the ice or on the dirt. but when hyuck says it, cheekily and knowing it’s a lie but he can say it like it’s the truth. it colors her cheeks and the warmth against the cold of the stadium makes it so obvious she wants to bury herself. except the only thing to bury herself in is hyuck’s shirt and she shouldn’t - she couldn’t but she leans forward and does it anyway.

and hyuck? he just accepts it, with a hand against her back, another atop her head and carrying the weight of her as he skates backwards and she glides forward. 

“when’d you get so good at ice skating?” ‘a magician doesn’t reveal his tricks.’

and really what kind of tricks does he have? ones that can drag her out the cold into an ice skating rink in the middle of the afternoon. one that have her laughing so loud that it bounces off the arena, an arena that they’ve obviously snuck into. that has her clinging to him with no hesitation with no concept of how the proximity between them is lost and just the space between a few breaths and few more laughs.

are they tricks? they’re nothing so trivial, they’re genuine and real.

“are you going to tell me?” after a break and thirty more minutes of ahyeon skating, getting a feel for what she can do and what her sister so easily craves to do. of ahyeon realizing all the time spent with her sister in here did build some things and she’s not as clumsy on the ice as she thought. of hyuck cheering and clapping like a fool and her smiling and eating it up just the same. 

‘tell you what?’ he’s packing up and making sure to fasten the scarf around her neck, something she swears she could do herself.

“why you brought me skating.” ‘can’t i take you on a date if i want to?’

that effectively - very effectively shuts up any questions for the rest of the evening. for the walk home, with his hand in hers, for all of areum’s questions and texts blowing up her phone. ahyeon’s cheeks are still warm when she gets a text from her manager.

[XX-XXX-XX ] you’ve got an audition for an upcoming drama. here are the details for the role. it’s a stretch but we’ll still go for it. don’t stress it too much!

she’s confused at first about why it’s a stretch but looks over the script anyway. she glosses over minor things, the age, the names, the plot...and she lands on a rather important feature.

.... ice skater ....

the little devil.

her heart warms even more. 

[unknown-de-mordor-blog]

The Dark-Lord Family, A.K.A. My Top 5 Favourite Villains

Melkor/Morgoth + Mairon/Sauron -- The Lord of the Rings+The Silmarillion

I know that’s two, but don’t make me separate them. I will not separate them.

They’re actually going to be the odd one out in this list because the rest are from anime/manga, but that’s because back when I was in middle school, I found villains from fantasy stories boring af and the notion that something external is the source of evil is just lazy. (Also because my obnoxious middle-school brain just went ‘Argh, blaming other people for your problems is soooo immature’ and shut down.) Arguably, I wasn’t well-versed in those kinds of literature, and stuff I did choose to read from that side of the globe don’t have villains in them.

And that’s kind of why these two makes the list -- they are more properly constructed than other dark lords that I know of. Yes, they serve as the personification of evil, but Tolkien also treated them as characters. They have reasons for becoming what they’ve become. And even though they are depicted as the epicentre of evil and destruction, evil isn’t actually their domain. Tolkien was pretty clear about that in his writing because he also examined and, to some degree, deconstructed evil in his universe. The Feanorians are chief examples of that. Turin is not really off the hook with some of his bad life choices (and I don’t mean marrying his sister; when intent in factored in, that’s actually not the worst Turin had done). And don’t get me started on how much I loathe Denethor.

In a way, I found Tolkien depiction of dark lords rather subversive. Having a dark lord really plays into a primal psychology that wants to blame the ill of the world to someone: capitalism, communism, Hitler, Stalin, Baby boomers, Millenials, the Jews, the Muslims, the conservative Christians, the patriarchy, cis white (American) males. But in the deconstruction of the dark lords, he was also saying, really, that evil without comes from the evil within and it’s complicated because evil is a part of nature. It doesn’t come from a box, an apple, a fallen angel, or a rebellious servant of God. And to win against the evil without, you have to fight the evil within. And that’s why Frodo is still one of my greatest heroes. He really did take the hardest job in the book, and I’m not talking about walking into Mordor.

Hao Asakura-- Shaman King (manga, not the anime)

Also known to me and my best friend as “Melkor and Sauron’s lovechild” because his character has things that reminded us of Melkor and Sauron. Hao is a personification of evil and destruction. His main power is Fire, and I’m capitalizing here because the spirit that is his main source of power is called the Spirit of Fire and it’s huge, like balrog huge.

But unlike with Melkor and Sauron, we got to hear directly from Hao why he thinks the destruction of humanity is a good idea. As it turns out, Hao actually has a shit-list on humanity collected over the last thousand years, and we look horrendous on it. It’s hard to argue that we are not cancerous, narrow-minded, selfish bunch of crap who frequently gives into the tendency to destroy each other and is going to destroy this one planet we have and take every other species who had not done any shit to deserve this with it. So, yes, Hao was saying, ‘I’m the necessary evil because you all are shitheads’. And he’s right. In some ways, he’s even more right now than he was back in the 90s.

But you might say that’s one particular lens of interpreting our complex and problematic (as in difficult) legacy. We’re not all bad! Well, true, but us doing good does not in anyway erase the fact that we’ve done some really shitty things as well. That’s why as extreme as Hao’s position might be, he’s about as logically wrong as saying we should keep humanity because we have done some nice things.

And the greatest thing in Shaman King to me is that Hiroyuki never went down that route of that oversimplified counter-argument. He actually had Yoh -- our hero, the personification of good, and Hao’s twin brother -- admitted to not liking human either. In fact, Yoh was the one most sympathetic to Hao’s position even though he disagreed that destroying humanity would solve any of Hao’s problems.

And Hao’s biggest problem was that he was isolated, dehumanized, and betrayed over such a long time that he lost the ability to trust and to love. And as time progressed and Hao becomes more powerful, you can even argue that he lost the ability to love himself. When Hao became God, he isolated himself from other souls, pushing even his most loyal followers away by displays worthy of an evil dark lord when they in fact contradicts how he had always treated them-- with kindness and understanding that they never received from others.

But that tactic wasn’t going to work on Yoh’s watch. The guy basically threw the biggest spirit party ever, invited everyone who ever crossed path with Hao, and gave the man the biggest metaphorical group hug. There were some stern talks about his past behaviour and ambitions, but all in all, everyone acknowledged that he was a person -- complicated and damaged but still a person worthy of friendship and love and loyalty. And after all the embarrassing reunion, including being enthusiastically called ‘nii-chan’ (that’s a cute way of calling someone ‘big-bro’) by his supposed mortal enemy and twin brother, Hao just kind of went ‘Fine! I warned you Earth sucks with humans on it, but if you want to make it better so much then go do it. I’ll watch you try!’

So, yep, that’s how you literally prevent apocalypse with the power of love. I wish more heroes adopt this strategy.

^Hao as God Almighty from the sequel to Shaman King. Art by Takei Hiroyuki. This is to say that Hao is also a crazy cat-person.

Gabriel -- Daemon Hunters

Speaking of gods, here’s another god you should not mess with. I have to admit that this guy scares the living daylight out of me. And it’s not because he’s evil or cruel or twisted. Gabriel is... nothing. Really nothing. He was born out of an experiment to create a living god. And when knowledge and power are chosen over compassion, this is the destructive result.

Gabriel was born more powerful than anything under the sky. And he knew everything -- past, present, and future. He looked into a person’s eyes and he knew the life that was and the life that still to come. Except for one thing, one moment at the end of the world when he would meet a creature more powerful than himself, a creature that knew the answer to one last question Gabriel did  not: why was he alive?

And for that answer, Gabriel would do anything -- kill people, play with their minds, break their souls, wipe out an entire city or country. Literally, nothing was off-limits. And he was like a force of nature. You couldn’t negotiate or bargain with this guy because he didn’t care about puny little humans with puny little minds. He’s looking for an answer, and nothing was going to stop him.

So yeah, evil is not scary at all in my book. The insatiable thirst that knows no love? Yeah, totally.

^The entire internet seriously just have this one picture of Gabriel. The sorrow of being in a non-existing fandom, I supposed.

Sebastian Michaelis -- Black Butler/Kuroshitsuji

Technically speaking, Sebastian is not a villain. He’s one of the two protagonists of Kuroshitsuji -- the other being my beloved anti-hero Ciel Phantomhive -- but considering that Sebastian (i) is a demon (ii) is after Ciel’s soul (iii) loves leading my dear boy astray, I count him as one.

Being treated in the narrative as one of the main characters is probably why he’s the most relatable on the list. Even though he’s a demon, he’s not treated as a personification of evil, just a corrupted creature serving as a vehicle for his master��s ambitions who likes to have fun along the way. That is not to say he’s not bad. He totally is. He would tear people to pieces as he kills them. He likes mind games and has no qualm manipulating people to get what he wants.

But the thing is, humans do that, too. Sebastian’s corruptness is not exceptional in anyway. We like to think we know what is right and wrong, but do we? We think we have made the best choices out of the goodness of our hearts, but were they, really? The matter of fact is a lot of our decisions are lazy, selfish, or just meanness dressed up as something else. There are moments when Sebastian demon’s ‘aesthetics’ seems more morally sound than the morality of a human being. And that’s kind of the theme of the series -- that the evil within clad in self-righteousness, desperation, and elitism can be more reprehensible than the evil without.

^Art by Yana Toboso. I feel compelled to mention that Sebastian is also a crazy cat-person.

Johan Liebert -- Monster

To me, there is rarely a personification of evil more terrifying and a deconstruction more nuanced and heartbreaking than that in Naoki Urasawa’s Monster.

And it’s not even his best work! It was his first work in psychological thriller, so you can kind of see him working out how to do thriller and play with with characters’ psychology on the go. And the psyche that governs the entire story is that of Johan Liebert -- arch-villain, evil-incarnate, the new Napoleon of Crime. He rarely made any appearance in the story, but every time he did, I literally wanted to hyperventilate.

But really, setting Johan up that way was kind of a red-herring on Urasawa’s part, a good red-herring, too, because he was giving what Tolkien gave us in Middle-earth -- a personification of evil, someone we can point the finger to and blame for all the wrong in the world. And Johan played the dark lord to the tee.

Except then Urasawa slowly pulled the rug from under us. Little by little, as Dr. Kenzou Tenma, our personification of good, uncovered Johan’s past, we come to realize that there were other evil that made Johan. But then when Dr. Tenma approached those people, the big-bads dwindled into an old deluded man, a woman hunted, a mad scientist trying to repent his sin -- people after people who had made a decision based on their beliefs and made the wrong one.

I think what made Monster so powerful is how it uses Johan as the focal point to deconstruct evil down to its origin, to the fact that there is no other evil in the world than us. The evil without really is just a manifest of the evil within, and that little moments where we might have let it win could snowball into something monumentally terrifying.

But Urasawa’s view of human nature is not all doom and gloom. Yes, we’re at times wretched and wicked, but we can be better when we choose to be. And that idea is actually what Dr. Tenma represents. Tenma didn’t start out being good. He lied about his history. He was motivated by reputation and ego rather than the well-being of his patients. He had to be confronted by the consequence of his decisions and have his entire world crashing down to the ground to find the path to being good. And after that, it still wasn’t easy, as trying to be good in a world full of shitty people often is.

But things had changed for him, and I think that’s why he thought Johan could, too. That’s why he could never shoot even though Johan let him.

So, is Johan evil? My answer is yes. After all, he had done grave wrongs to people knowingly. But could he turn from the path of evil? Well, I think the more appropriate question is, have you?

^Original design by Naoki Urasawa. I was once terrified of blue eyes because of this man.