#it was like... a family fun center on steroids

[creaturefeaster]

You went on a road trip??! Where'd you go? Was it AWEOSME?!?!?

I went from the west coast of Washington over to eastern Washington and Idaho. Through mountains and into the desert of Washington, always my favorite!

Went to Silverwood in Idaho, the theme park. They are doing haunted houses at night for Halloween this month, so we went into all the haunts there, very fun. There was also an aurora event while we were out. The aurora events earlier this year I missed because I was out of town, so that was the first time I've ever seen them-- and by complete chance! Had no idea that was going to happen.

I also got to go to a petting zoo. Despite seeing many farm animals in my day to day life there's something very fun and cozy about going to a petting zoo where they actually want to be pet by random strangers lol.

A couple pics of me from the trip ^

It was a nice trip :3 I like to go out to Spokane a lot, so this isn't the first time I've been in the area, but I got to do a lot of new stuff.

[catboygretzky]

Do I even want to know what happened in the last 24 hours 😭 I'm almost afraid to ask but I'm also insanely curious

You probably don't want to know but I'll tell you because you have no choice. This will be long and...awful. But there are sources so that's fun! Please keep in mind that this was all released within 24 hours on Thursday, September 20th, 2024 and that, unfortunately, I haven't mentioned everything.

But! The GOP was certainly having a wild one yesterday.

To start things off:

The first 'Big News' to break was about Mark Robinson.

For those saying 'who the fuck is Mark Robinson', he's the current (R) Lt. Gov of North Carolina that is running for Gov. Before yesterday, he was best known for openly hating LGBT+ and Jewish folks, being a Holocaust denier, being (forcefully) anti abortion, saying it was better when women couldn't vote, anti immigrant, hating the civil rights movement, etc, just being a hateful Evangelical nasty fascist. MAGA to his core. Trump has endorsed him, saying he should be cherished and calling him "MLK on steroids". (Robinson is Black).

So, yeah, that's bad enough right? Yesterday it got even worse. CNN released a report about some comments he made on a porn site forum 12 years ago, the most prominent being 'i'm a black NAZI'. He also commented that he wished slavery was legal and that he'd own a few, and called himself a 'perv' that used to 'peep' on women in public locker rooms when he was a teenager.

Also the tale as old as time that I'm sure you could guess when I mentioned 'GOP' 'loudly transphobic' and 'porn site scandal' - trans porn was a favourite of his. Because of course.

Also of course - the GOP hasn't taken him off the ticket, and he will continue to be the nominee for governor in North Carolina!

Read the article, there's more about him and the situation in general. Mind the warnings.

-

Now on to our favourite worm brained bear eating anti vaxxer conspiracy theorist, Robert F. Kennedy Junior! I'm putting this under a read more now.

The first thing to drop about him yesterday was the news of an investigation after he allegedly cut off the head of a dead whale and took it home 20 years ago. Now I bet you're thinking, wow that's bad! Unfortunately for RFK Jr yesterday got worse. It was then revealed that he (70) was having an affair with right wing journalist Olivia Nuzzi (31) after New York Magazine suspended her.

Everything I learn about RFK Jr I learn against my own will.

-

Saying goodbye to RFK for now, let's move on to Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida! This Matt Gaetz, with the botox if you didn't recognise him.

Scary lookin, right?

This isn't a completely new story (here's an article about how he alledgedly paid for sex with a minor) but new court filings were released yesterday alledging that he attended a drug-fueled sex party in 2017 with the 17-year-old girl at the center of the alleged sex trafficking scandal.

Sure is great to have such trustworthy men representing this country!

OKAY, on to the next.

-

This wasn't really breaking news because this is just Trump being Trump but he gave a speech at an ANTI ANTISEMITISM EVENT where he preemptively blamed the Jews for being the reason he'll lose this election, telling them they need to get their head checked if they vote for Harris (that's pretty much part of his stump speech by now though) and saying he'll reinstate his Muslim ban. White fascist blaming Jews? Wow, I did Nazi that coming.

-

I genuinely could go on, I really truly could.

Oh! Kamala Harris went on Oprah and it was really nice and not at all insane and she talked to the family of the first known victim of Trump's abortion ban and it was very touching. Trump's official social media then posted a clip of her talking about her gun and saying 'If somebody breaks into my house, they're getting shot' like it was a snatch when in reality Republicans in the comments are saying 'actually, this would make me vote for her'. Thanks, Trump Team for the free advertising!

Misc:

Chris Rufo (known racist and anti immigration right wing activist) got revealed to have an illegal immigrant wife, and then got revealed to be a user of Ashley Madison (database where people go to cheat on their partners)(Robinson was also on Ashley Madison).

Jasmine Crockett during her thing and ripping white republicans to shreds. (idk this was just fun to me)

Actually Republicans and Project 2025 got ripped to shreds and shut down in general by multiple Congress members.

GOP is on the brink of causing a government shutdown, because of COURSE they are.

Cards Against Humanity sues SpaceX over “invasion” of land on US/Mexico border.

Anyway there's actually MORE believe it or not but I can't remember if it happened yesterday. Thank you for reading, I'm always open to discussing current events. I don't think it's a well known fact that I'm into politics because I don't talk about it on tumblr because people are kinda stupid. Anyway!

[itsmoonpeaches]

for the fanfic ask game for askers:

5. A fic I haven't read yet from you, but I want to: definitely should read the other fics in Legacy which aren't Monarch. you do an amazing exploration of all the different aspects of atla that we don't see in the canon series, Monarch being a prime example of one such fic. i really feel like i need to delve more into those relationships and characters like Kuzon and Bumi. in a similar vein, i should probably also read Fire in the Night.

11. Something I wish/hope you write: Azula court intrigue fic, coupled with her descent into insanity. i know you've been thinking of an Azula fic, but i'm not sure if it's exactly like this. either way, i'm looking forward to seeing it come to life 😌

5. Oh I'd be excited for you to read more Legacy things! I think overall, I've had the most consistent fun filling in those kinds of gaps in the ATLA storyline than any other fanfic series I've written, and as you can see I have a particular soft spot for Kuzon. I think his potential is absolutely fascinating.

11. Yes, so for various reasons I had to put the Azula fic on hold. However, I can say that this long oneshot is about 3k in. Court intrigue is involved, but a younger Azula is in the center of pulling a lot of strings on the fringe, but not necessarily because she's the mastermind, and more because she has an interest she wants to fulfill.

I don't know if this fic that you're speaking of is exactly what you're looking for, but it is an AU in which Azula becomes obsessed with Zuko in a way that creates this incredibly manipulative environment on steroids. It's a "what if" scenario, as in "What if Azula noticed that the royal family was actually insane and that the only one who really might have had her back in some small way was Zuko?" Now, this is a stretch in canon, but maybe not so much so. In very brief moments, Zuko and Azula have been shown to care for each other in canon, and actually had some sort of playful sibling relationship at some point before things went south, namely when Azula latched onto their parents' machinations far more than her brother did. This is basically taking that canon manipulative Azula, but making her latch onto something else.

I can't tell you exactly when that fic will come out, but it will come out. I'm too deep.

fanfic asks - for the askers

[dankusner]

“F*** You!” Kristen Stewart...

Romance for the Ages 

Rose Glass’ Saint Maud follow-up revels in Eighties pulp 

Sometimes, a movie needs room to breathe, slow down, and take stock. 

Love Lies Bleeding, the second film by Rose Glass, is not one of those movies.

It’s a propulsive, energetic love story by way of 1980s-tinged pulp, a wild ride that deserves to be seen on a big screen and with the biggest crowd possible. 

In her 2019 debut feature, Saint Maud, Glass showcased an aptitude for stories about obsession and magical realism. 

In Love Lies Bleeding, she cements her voice and gift for capturing these themes in the loudest way possible.

The script – credited to Glass and Weronika Tofilska – centers around Lou (Kristen Stewart), a manager at a gym in the desert. 

Lou leads a solitary life, flitting between clean- ing up messes at the gym and returning to her apartment and cat. 

She politely declines the affections of Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov),a regular who can’t take a hint, and stays as far away as possible from her menacing arms-dealing dad (Ed Harris). 

It’s a simple, lonely life that cracks open when bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian) comes into town. 

Lou and Jackie’s romance comes on fast and intense. 

Soon enough it will get bloody, too.

Love Lies Bleeding wouldn’t work without the incredible performances at the heart of the story. 

Stewart and O’Brian smolder together as two people who can’t help but be drawn into each other’s orbit, no matter the conse- quences. 

Their chemistry is powerful enough to carry the film along its wild, twisty path. 

The rest of the cast is equally compelling and fun. 

Harris, for instance, oozes menace and sleaze from every gesture and action (his cos- tuming and makeup, which includes a long mullet-like wig, doesn’t hurt either). 

Anchored by these outstanding performances, Love Lies Bleeding steps on the gas and rarely lets up for its entire 104-minute runtime.

Glass has a real flair for capturing the com- pulsive, sometimes dangerously hot intox- ication of love. 

The way the camera lingers on Lou and Jackie makes it clear their love is inescapable; whether they’re in the throes of passion or blowing up incriminating evidence in the desert, the intimacy of a close-up is crucial to communicating their desire.

It’s a desire that has a cost, as this review has hinted at. 

Yet, it seems to be the point the film is trying to get across too. 

Jackie, hopped up on steroids, has moments throughout the film where she magically bulks up, Hulk-style, and has outbursts (both justified and fueled by terrifying hallucinations). 

She confesses to Lou at one point that she’s hurt people before. 

In a movie that’s anything but grounded, there is a soft center at the heart of this obsessive, violent love story: the search for acceptance. 

It’s unexpected, and some people might not read this right away, but it’s there, even amidst all the bloodshed and pulp.

The all-out Love Lies Bleeding is a love story that won’t work for everyone. However, for those who can revel in the blood-soaked, complicated, sapphic delights that make up the backbone of the film, the saga of Lou and Jackie will be one for the ages.

(A-) LOVE LIES BLEEDING Gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) falls for bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian), who is passing through town on her way to chase her dreams in Las Vegas. But their love leads to violence and entanglement with Lou’s criminal family members in this gritty but darkly funny crime noir. Also starring Ed Harris, Dave Franco and Jena Malone. R (for violence and grisly images, sexual content, nudity, language throughout and drug use). 104 mins. In wide release.

THRILLER

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

A- 

. The first time we glimpse Jackie (Katy O’Brian) on screen in Love Lies Bleeding , it is not particularly auspicious. 

But we haven’t yet seen Jackie through the eyes of Lou (Kristen Stewart), and that’s the only gaze that matters in this film. 

When Lou — a gym manager — catches sight of Jackie prowling among the weight machines, skin gleaming, her powerfully muscular body reflected in the mirror, it’s like director Rose Glass is letting us in on a lusty little secret. 

Lou’s desire is so palpable you can smell it, and, lucky for her, the feeling is mutual.

It’s 1989 in an anonymous Southwestern town, and Jackie is only drifting through on her way to a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas. 

Even in the desolate gym parking lot, Lou and Jackie’s chemistry is explosive.

But the reality of life in this small, rough town carries an insistent, inevitable darkness. 

There are Lou’s battered sister Beth (Jena Malone) and Beth’s philandering, abusive husband JJ (Dave Franco). 

There are the FBI agents who would really like to talk to Lou about her estranged father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), who owns the gun range where Jackie has picked up a few waitressing shifts. 

There’s Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a ditzy, nagging townie, who pops up, keening for attention, at the worst times.

There are too many connections and coincidences swirling around them, and as Lou and Jackie collide sexually, a bloodier collision looms on the horizon: sheer ominousness telegraphed in Lou’s red-drenched flashbacks.

The film takes a wild swing in the third act that may puzzle viewers expecting something more grounded and gritty, but it makes perfect sense when seen as an auteurist choice from Glass, who imagines an ending that is astonishingly, even shockingly, optimistic before slamming us back into the dirt.

Love Lies Bleeding is darkly funny, with humor baked into almost every line reading and scene transition. 

Stewart takes capably to the crime and the comedy, while O’Brian brings an otherworldly, even alien, quality to her role.

[dreamerinflatable]

The Wild World of Inflatable Towable Tubes: A Bumpy Ride of Fun and Laughter!

Once upon a time, someone had the brilliant idea to combine the joy of water sports with the thrill of bouncing around like a kangaroo on steroids. And thus, the inflatable towable tube was born! These colorful contraptions quickly became a hit, attracting water enthusiasts from all walks of life. From families looking for a bonding experience to thrill-seekers craving an adrenaline rush, these tubes had something for everyone.

However, before diving into the world of inflatable towing tubes, it is important to understand their benefits, factors to consider when purchasing them, and tips for using them effectively and safely. This ultimate guide aims to provide you with everything you need to know about inflatable towing tubes.

Before realizing their advantages and why you really should not miss them, let me first introduce several wonderful towable tubes that you can begin to realize.

list:

army two 2

alien 1

guardian 5

Army two 2-person towable tubes for Boating

Arguably the best towable tube on the market, it is a good mix of value and features. The convenient connect tow point helps you attach and detach instantly, and it has a speed safety valve for fast and easy inflation and deflation. It’s made from a tough and resilient heavy-duty PVC material. With its sleek design and high-speed capabilities, the army two will have you soaring through the water like a pro.

Alien 1-Person Towable Tube for Boating

Are you fascinated by its personality and cool appearance? It's so handsome. It’s made from a tough and resilient heavy-duty PVC material. The welded seams resist tearing and leakage. The backrest and the padded walls also add comfort and support. The inflatable tube can be quickly inflated using two "Boston-style 1-way valves, which effectively retain the air. Deflating the tube is also a breeze; simply unscrew the valve, and the air is released in no time. To remove all the air, I folded both sides of the tube toward the center and rolled it up. Additionally, the tube has a drain that allows water to escape, making it easier to pack up and preventing it from slowing down when being towed. With it, you can be a cool water warrior!

Guardian 5 persons Towable Tube for Boating

Except for the above products, which are more suitable for fewer people, there is also one for a team or family! On a sunny day, have an exciting and happy water date with your friends or family. Enjoy a sunny and cool water splash! This product is built to last with its thick and durable material, making it suitable for multiple uses. The interior of the tube is lined with PVC that has a thickness of 0.75mm, providing robust load-bearing capacity. The sit-on-top tube can accommodate five riders and has multiple positions for seating to suit everyone's style. With 10 fully padded handles equipped with knuckle guards and 10 grab straps, safety is a top priority. Our unique tow system enables easy and fast connection of the tubes to the rope, allowing you to maximize your time on the water.

Well, introduce these interesting inflatable towable tubes. Are you interested in more products? Just browse our website:https://zun-ma.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-213275512/Inflatable_towable_tube.html

There are more wonderful towable tubes. The design is new, and I am sure you will like it. In addition, the advantages of towable tubes are that they are a great way to have fun on the water while staying safe. They're perfect for anyone in your family, making boating accessible for everyone. Many towable tubes on the market can accommodate up to five people, so there's no need to take turns. Everyone can enjoy the ride at the same time. Towable tubes offer great value, allowing you to turn your boat into a towable platform for water sports at an affordable price point. In fact, the cost is less than half of what you would pay for a standard wakeboard.

While towable tubes were originally designed for single riders, there are now variations that can accommodate two or even a whole family. Some of the most popular tubes on the market can seat up to five people.

Using a towable tube is a safe way to enjoy water sports with your family. They're easy to mount and dismount, and most designs feature safety straps to keep riders secure. Some of the latest towable tube designs even come with head and neck rests, knuckle guards, and deep seating for added comfort and safety.

When shopping for a towable tube, be sure to choose one that fits your family's needs. With a towable tube, you can have a blast on the water while staying safe and comfortable.

Things To Consider With Tubes

When it comes to inflatable towable tubes, there are a few important factors to consider to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience. Here are some key things to keep in mind:

Capacity and Weight Limit: Each inflatable towable tube has a specified weight limit and capacity, which indicate the maximum number of riders it can safely accommodate. It's crucial to adhere to these limits to prevent overloading and maintain stability. Always check the manufacturer's guidelines and never exceed the recommended weight or capacity.

Skill Level: Consider the skill level of the riders who will be using the tube. Some tubes are designed for beginners and offer a more stable and controlled ride, while others are more suitable for experienced riders who seek a thrilling and challenging experience. Choose a tube that matches the skill level of the riders to ensure everyone's safety and enjoyment.

Speed and Boat Size: The speed at which the boat is operated can greatly impact the ride on an inflatable towable tube. Ensure that the boat's speed is appropriate for the tube you're using, as excessive speed can make the ride too intense or unstable. Additionally, consider the size and power of the boat, as it should be capable of safely towing the tube.

Safety Precautions: Prioritize safety by always wearing properly fitting life jackets or personal flotation devices (PFDs) while using inflatable towable tubes. Additionally, ensure that the tube is securely attached to the boat using a strong tow rope and sturdy attachments. Regularly inspect the tube for any signs of wear and tear, and never use a damaged or punctured tube.

Water Conditions and Environment: Be mindful of the water conditions and environment in which you'll be using the tube. Avoid areas with strong currents, shallow water, or potential hazards such as rocks, docks, or other boats. Always operate the tube in designated areas and follow any local regulations or guidelines.

Communication and Signals: Establish clear communication signals between the riders and the boat operator before starting the ride. This will help ensure a smooth and coordinated experience, allowing riders to communicate if they need to slow down, stop, or adjust their position on the tube.

By considering these factors and taking the necessary precautions, you can enjoy a safe and thrilling experience with inflatable towable tubes. Remember, safety should always be the top priority, followed closely by fun and laughter on the water!

Inflatable, towable tubes embody fun and laughter on the water. From the moment you strap yourself onto one of these bouncy beasts, you're in for a wild ride filled with unforgettable memories. So, grab your friends, pack your sense of humor, and prepare for an adventure that will leave you craving more. Just remember, no matter how many wipeouts you endure or how many laughs you share, the joy of riding an inflatable towable tube is an experience that will stay with you forever. So, what are you waiting for? Jump on that tube and let the laughter begin!

#inflatable #towabletube#dreamerinflatable

The Wild World of Inflatable Towable Tubes: A Bumpy Ride of Fun and Laughter!

[affordablelosangelesmovers]

Beautiful Attractions near Los Angeles, CA

Introduction

Los Angeles is home to some of the most beautiful attractions in California. You can enjoy nature, culture, and history all in one place! Here are some of my favorite places to visit near Los Angeles:

Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory

Griffith Park is one of the largest urban parks in the United States and it's also home to Griffith Observatory. This popular tourist attraction offers plenty of activities for families, couples looking for a date night or friends who want to get away from it all.

The observatory has an IMAX theater that shows films about space exploration and astronomy; there are also exhibits on how telescopes work. To explore this historic site you can take guided tours or visit any time during regular business hours (Monday through Saturday 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM). If you'd like more information before visiting please call 213-937-1414 ext. 3201 or email info@griffithobservatoryla.org

Venice Beach Boardwalk

If you’re looking for a place to relax and take in the sights, Venice Beach is the perfect destination. The beachfront neighborhood is home to many attractions, including:

The Venice Boardwalk: This 1.5-mile (2.4 km) long pedestrian promenade along the ocean front is part of the Venice Beach Recreation Center. It offers views of Santa Monica Bay and has been used in many movies including “Gothika” and “The Wedding Singer.”

Muscle Beach: This beachside gymnasium was built by Joe Weider at his Muscle Beach facility in Santa Monica, California during 1936-1937 as part of his vision for developing natural bodybuilding into an Olympic sport; he hoped that this would encourage healthy living among Americans by promoting exercise as well as competition between individuals who wanted to build up their bodies without steroids or other performance enhancing drugs being involved!

Phelan

Phelan is a town in San Bernardino County, California, United States. The population was 5,922 at the 2010 census. The name comes from George Wiley Phelan and his wife Mary Elvira Woodward Phelan who opened their ranch here in 1875. Phelan is a town in San Bernardino County, California, United States. The population was 5,922 at the 2010 census. Phelan is located east of downtown San Bernardino and borders I-215 to the south and I-15 to the north. It is home to Victor Valley Community College as well as Empire High School. Phelan is a town in San Bernardino County, California, United States. The population was 5,922 at the 2010 census.

Apple Valley

Apple Valley is a small town in the San Bernardino Mountains, about an hour north of Los Angeles. It's known for its apple orchards and the Apple Festival that takes place every year on October 18th.

There are many attractions in Apple Valley:

The Tree Museum is a great place to learn about trees and their importance throughout history as well as today's efforts toward conserving them through education programs such as Tree-Tops from Forest Learning Center (which you can access via this website).

The Museum of History & Science houses exhibits on local history such as early pioneers who built homes here when it was considered wilderness; displays on natural resources like plants and animals; interactive science experiences for kids including a planetarium show called “Lightning Strikes!” which explores lightning strikes around the world through animation projected onto giant screens above your head while standing inside an auditorium-style space with over 2,000 seats!

Take a day off to visit one of these amazing attractions.

There are many attractions near Los Angeles that you can visit in one day. You can find more information about these places online. You can plan your trip ahead of time, and get a good deal on flights to LA.

Conclusion

We hope that this guide has given you some ideas of what to do in Los Angeles. If you ever find yourself anywhere near this area, make sure to stop by one of these attractions and enjoy the fun!

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[dreamgothgirl]

Bastard Pt. 1

Batman AU! Toji x GN! Reader

Warnings: mild language, VERY suggestive (more like direct) language, maybe messed up grammer or sentence structures, a plot line composed by a stoner music producer with nothing better to do. Smut will be in the next one, pinky promise.

Author's Note: So sorry this is late. I have no excuse. But I love you for sticking around anyway big tiddie broke dilf make me go brrr :,) <3

This probably makes no sense but I had fun writing it and I hope you have fun reading it.

wc: 1,927

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

Toji Fushiguro, AKA: Deadshot. A widowed single father and ex-supervillain turned somewhat vigilante that just so happens to work with Batman, as a spy and front man for Satoru Enterprises when Batman himself, known to the public eye as Gojo Satoru, is too busy being the center of attention at other parties.

You can thank his son Megumi, or Nightwing, for making those two somewhat behave around each other. After Deadshot saved Robin’s life from one of Joker’s antics gone wrong by none other than you, Gojo couldn’t help but, for the first time, feel in debt to someone. But Toji? Let’s just say that if Batman ever had the pleasure of catching you, you will have wished it was Deadshot who got you first.

After putting Yuji’s, AKA: Robin’s, life in danger, Gojo has been paying extra money on the side for your assassination; should you ever cross Toji’s path. Because of his partnering with the Bat Family, Deadshot doesn’t carry out assassinations to multiple clients like he used to; mostly participating in gambling rings to get his fix of illegalities and, on special occasions, more violence. Though, no matter how good he is at bullshitting, he can’t help but admit that neither of those things put as much money in his pocket as he’d like. Money that isn’t from Batman.

The very person who put him in the shithole situation that made him lose everything back then. Sure, your attempted murder of Robin was the Bat family’s reason for hating you, but Toji’s had nothing to do with you actually almost killing a minor. No. He hated that you were the reason he had to hang around Batman, of all people. The sooner you were dead, the faster he got away from the Bat Family and could get back to his true passion and money maker. Who knows? Maybe he might actually ask Megumi to hang out with him for once.

Y/N L/N, AKA V/N. You were a master con-artist that has nothing to do with Deacon Blackfire. In fact, unlike Blackfire, you had no ability to brainwash your victims. Although brainwashing would be the best addition to your curse technique, it wasn’t a big fuss when you had a gun. Your curse was simply called, ‘Doppelgänger’. Your friends mused how cool of a name that was for you already, but V/N has such a cuter ring to it! The name of your curse is self-explanatory. You had the ability to copy another person’s look down to the birthmarks on their body with one handshake. This did mean that you could also duplicate their cursed energy, but not the curse itself.

This is because your cursed energy simply suffocates the original curse thanks to a curse steroid serum made by Scarecrow. Because of this curse, you gained one of the most notoriously ANNOYING but funny sidekicks. Clayface. Clayface was quite literally your partner in crime as he fought off the Bat Family and other villains trying to ruin your plans. Thanks to you ruining the Joker’s scheme back then, you were able to convince the public that V/N was truly dead for good. Batman nor Deadshot ever said a word about this being true, voicing their skeptics to the public and warning them to continue to keep an eye out just in case. So, the fight between Bats and Clayface just made Clayface seem like any other villain trying to mess with Gotham City per usual. Yikes.  

              Since you always hid your identity with a mask of some kind, not only did this increase paranoia and distrust amongst the Gotham citizens, but it also made it harder for Toji and the Bat family to know if you were in front of them. Normally, Gojo would have no problem finding you, but the constant change in your cursed energy managed to throw his six-eyes into a distorted funk.

The steroids your cursed energy absorbed didn’t make it any better. Because of Scarecrow, the curse steroid made any curse users brave enough to try to find you with their own curse, it would reveal their worst nightmare through their own technique. It wouldn’t deter any curse users from fighting you with their curse techniques though. Scarecrow didn’t want to get rid of all the fun. Anyway, it was safe to say that Deadshot had never seen your true face, nor have the two of you ever exchanged real words.

Tonight was the last night of your DA campaign and the race was looking tight. It was you vs Geto Suguru. He had the one up on you because of the heavy funding from Satoru Enterprises. ‘Having rich friends help you out has got to be against the rules somehow,’ you thought. You got your funding from the most respected people in Gotham. Just ask Clayface. Going against Geto was ironic considering how often you kidnapped his daughters and himself. But you were so close to winning by pointing out the chaos Gojo and Toji’s words to the public.

Your statements of Batman not even being able to protect his own understudies and successors solidified your win, you thought. Victory was so close you could taste it. And tonight, you absolutely were not going to let ANY of those Bat Rats and their stupid puppy ruin it.

You glared ahead at the center of the ballroom, licking the champagne away from your lips. Fallen glitter from the extravagant yet somewhat scandalous dresses that decorated the bodies of would-be goddesses at your charity event for your campaign. However, through all the lights, chatter, and music you become lost in thought at the one man you were PRAYING wouldn’t show up just yet. Those simple hopes were quickly dragged to hell and your anger rose when one of your henchmen whispered over your shoulder, “Mx. L/N, Mr. Fushiguro would like to have a word with you, if you would.”

Your nose twitched slightly, ‘!@#$% !@#$% !@#$% THAT PIECE OF ^%&*!! !@#$%!!!!!’

              You gave a kind smile and small bow of your head, apologizing, “Excuse me for a moment.”

              As the two of you walked across the room, the man at your side kept a whispered while you nodded and waved to your guests thanking you for the lovely event, “The donations have already been moved and the exchange has been done. We’re ready whenever you are.”

              You nodded but almost let your glass of champagne slip from you’re your fingers as you stood a few feet away from the one they called Deadshot. The tux he wore was a classic black with a sleek silk tie and matching handkerchief neatly tucked away in his breast pocket. His ensemble fit him well enough to show his rippling muscles that’ve taken the lives of so many innocent and cruel.

The lux silver cufflinks that sat just above the ball of his wrist made his strong, deadly hands look more dignified and powerful than they would have with tattoos and rings. It made you wonder if maybe he had a tattoo or two elsewhere. Nothing would make you hesitate from finding out, that’s for sure.

              Fushiguro’s hair looked soft and thick enough for you to pull. You wished you could grip it as hard as you could. Preferably out of annoyance, but…maybe something else could replace it? The warmth in your face quickly turned stone cold as his piercing green eyes met your e/c ones. Those eyes were the eyes of a tunnel visioned blood lust you’d only seen in the most skilled killers you’ve sorely crossed paths with. He knows. And you’re silently fearful that there may not be a way out for once.

‘I know I’m not God’s favorite soldier…but before you let the devil take me, just let me lick his lip scar. Just once!!’

Toji’s eyes bore into you, watching as your own, classier, outfit hugged your body just right. The subtle plumpness of your thighs could be seen through the fabric of your bottoms while they hugged your ass the way he was really wishing his hands would. Fuck, what was he thinking? You were Gotham’s soon-to-be mayor.

He could give a shit about tainting his own name, but he knew that if he did give in to his urges, the Satoru name would be in shambles which might even lead to the downfall of Batman. Hm…maybe that’s not such a bad thing actually.

 Argh, but even so he’d be putting your own reputation at risk given his background. It took Gojo quite a bit more work than the rich sorcerer initially thought to get the public opinion to be in favor of Deadshot, the deadliest assassin who has ruined countless families in the name of business as well; suddenly being in a relationship with a politician such as yourself was way too suspicious.

But goddamn, he just couldn’t take his mind off you. He’d been watching you since he walked in. Toji’s eyes never once left your general direction as he leaned against the open bar, greeting Satoru Enterprises’ partners with a not-so-subtle dismissive tone in his voice. Toji was told to keep a lookout for V/N, but he knew damn well he wasn’t even bothering with the thought of that headache.

  Tonight, it was all you. He’d been infatuated with you for a while. Something about your presence was like a whip cracking in the room, catching everyone’s attention as soon as your heel hit the floor. Your looks were the cherry on top of your manipulative promises to your supporters. After keeping an eye on you for an hour, which felt like 20 minutes, he called over one of your representatives.

Now, here you were. Glowing like some fucking deity had come to reap his soul to hell like he deserved. Toji already knew as soon as he decided to finally call you over that his chances with you were low, but he’d be damned if he didn’t at least try to get just a little taste of your lips.

          Toji’s eyes bore into you, watching as your own outfit hugged your body in all the right places. The lights that made your sexy h/c hair have a water-like sparkle to it. He was too busy appreciating your beauty; you took his concentration for suspicion. Had you been weak, you would’ve compromised your position in an instant at how cold and sharp those eyes were.

The definition of piercing, truly. Luckily, your voice sent strong enough shivers down his spine to snap him out of his trance. “Good evening. Mr. Fushiguro! I’m so glad you could make it!”

      His scar curved a bit as he smirked, “Nice to see you, Mx. L/N. You look great.”

     ‘You’d look better in my sheets.’

       You chuckled and bowed your head a bit in thanks, “You got balls showing up here, I’ll give you that! Should I expect to see Mr. Geto?”  

       Toji shrugged, leaning back coolly against the calmly busy open bar, “Nah, don't even worry about him, babe. I don’t get paid to vote for assholes I don’t like. Just work for ‘em, y’know?”

      The casual banter he’d begun made your shoulders relax and your face soften a bit, “Yeah. Tell me about it. That’s why I prefer working solo.”

     The man gave a huff of amusement through his nose, almost sarcastically replying before sipping his whiskey, “I knew you’d understand.”

     You order your own drink and decide to sit with your soon to be trophy. Dead or alive, you were going to make sure he was yours. And had he known who you were; he could say the same. But with only you knowing who he was...maybe you'd be first.

[kleptonancydrew]

Nancy Drew and Education

So apparently the Clue Crew is full of teachers? Who knew. Well, as a former homeschooled student, current teacher, and (hopefully) future homeschooling parent/teacher I have been planning on integrating the games into lessons for a long time. Below the cut I have just a few of my many ideas (some more fleshed out than others). Feel free to use, adapt, or add your own! 

SCK:

-        Braille

o   How blind/vision impaired people navigate the world

§  How we can make it more accessible for them

o   How do braille books and printers work

-        ASL

o   Memorizing the alphabet and basic signs

§  Build up fluency

o   How HOH/deaf people navigate the world

§  How we can make it more accessible for them  

o   Connections of ASL to other signed languages

§  French Sign Language versus British Sign Language

-        Dangers of gas leaks

o   What to do if you smell or hear gas

-        Inequalities between mens and womens sporting opportunities

o   See Women’s Soccer

-        What are performance enhancing drugs

o   What is the difference between #steroids and the steroids your doctor might prescribe

-        How drug running is a gateway crime

-        Why blackmailing people isn’t good

-        More reasons to never move to Florida

-        Why you shouldn’t go to an actual high school part one

 STFD:

-        Television in NYC

o   Soap Operas

o   How television sets work

o   Role of director

o   Teleprompters

o   Props

o   Agents

-        Theatre in NY

o   Broadway

§  Learn a show

o   Carnegie Hall

-        Dangers in the ways we obsess over celebrities

o   Paparazzi

o   Stalkers

o   Respecting privacy

-        NY taxi system

-        NY regional accents

-        NY as a center for immigration – salad bowl

o   Ellis Island

-        History of NYC

o   Geography of NYC

-        Typewriters

-        Towers of Hanoi

-        Encoding  

-        How to make chocolates (with or without poison)

-        Read along:

o   New York the Novel (Edward Rutherford)

o   The Power Broker

o   All of a Kind Family

 MHM:

-        San Francisco Gold Rush

-        Earthquake and Fires in San Fran

-        Golden Gate Bridge

-        Angel Island

o   Asian (Chinese) Immigration to the USA

-        Chinese Zodiac

-        Fortune telling (and why it’s not okay)

-        Bed and Breakfasts

-        San Francisco today

o   Technology boom

o   Overpriced everything

§  How this hurts established residents

§  Homelessness in San Fran

-        Bandits in the American West

-        Hauntings in American buildings

-        How to remove and install tile

-        Renovations – refurbish something

-        Antiques

o   Visit an antique shop

-        Importance of fire safety

-        How to install lighting fixtures properly

-        How to fix a dumbwaiter

o   How not to be a dumb waiter

-        Tangrams

-        What is the Victorian period

o   Significance of Queen Victoria

-        Read Along:

o   Little Brother

o   Paper Son: Lee’s Journey to America

o   Angel Island Gateway to Golden Mountain

 TRT:

-        The French Revolution

o   Marie Antoinette

o   Women and the French Revolution

o   Worldwide effects of the Revolution

o   Historians of the French Revolution

-        Writing history

o   How we can focus on different events in history, how we can be sympathetic to certain people, how we can fulfill different spaces in the historical narrative, criticism of history as a field, entering history as a field

-        Wisconsin Dairy industry

-        Alarm systems and how they work

-        Fingerprinting

-        Elevator safety

-        Ski lifts

o   Skiing

-        Vandalism

-        Taking care of libraries

-        Latitude and longitude

-        Keeping records of good events and bad events

o   Nothing you do will ever stop me from loving you

-        Some people keep different sleep schedules

-        Journalism

-        Making translations  

-        Why France has different holidays – to keep the ski lodges from getting too full

 FIN:

-        History of theatre spaces

-        Use of film at theatres

-        Magicians

o   Houdini

o   Learn a ‘magic’ trick

-        Library of Congress

-        Demolition – wrecking balls

o   What’s involved

-        Plaster casts

-        Historic register of buildings

o   Visit a local historic building

-        Price of concessions and movie tickets today

-        Nickelodeons

-        Celebrity stunts for attention from press

o   Celebrity endorsements

-        Jazz music

o   Dancing

-        Kidnapping stories

o   What to do if someone tries to grab you

-        Rubber vs. electricity

-        Art/artists of the 20s

 SSH:

-        Numbering systems (particularly ones not based on 10)

-        Cultures of South America

o   Maya

§  Cultural understandings

§  Connections to what appears at Beech Hill

o   Aztec

o   Inca

-        Myths of lesser civilizations because of European preconceptions

-        Why do countries have consulates/embassies in other countries

-        What is amnesia and other medical memory issues

-        Provenance and why its important part one

-        Roles and responsibilities within a museum

o   Visit a museum

o   How to be critical of a museum and how knowledge is presented to you

-        Modern art

o   Make your own

o   Visit a modern art museum

-        Periodic Table of Elements

-        Positive and negative molds for casting

 DOG:

-        Prohibition

o   Speakeasys

o   Amendments to constitution

o   Drinking age restrictions

§  Comparison of USA to European countries  

o   Connections to modern drug policies

-        Recognizing and photographing local birds

-        Dangers in the forest – ticks and other pests

-        Why water sources are important

o   Flint water crisis

-        Visit a state park

o   Importance of maintaining public land

-        Alcatraz

-        How to care for dogs

-        Noise pollution

o   Light pollution

 CAR:

-        History of carousels

o   Visit a carousel

-        Lathes

-        Harmonicas

-        Band organs

-        Writing messages with lemon juice and other hidden inks

-        How to iron

o   How not to iron

-        How to make a sundae

-        How amusement park rides are designed

-        Soldering

-        What is parole

o   Welcoming those who have been in prison back to society

o   Problems with the American prison system

§  How it disproportionately affects minority groups

o   What can be done in prison reform

o   Abuses in prison

o   Making mental and spiritual help and guidance more available

o   Making sanitary products available

o   Prison for profit hurts everybody except the prison owner

o   Educational opportunities for those in prison

o   More half-way help

o   Juvenile sentencing reform – more out of system help

o   Respecting humanity of prisoners

o   Ending the death penalty  

-        Depression

o   How to get help

o   How to help others

o   Dealing with loss

DDI:

-        Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest

-        Orcas and other whales

o   Whaling industry in Northwest and Northeast

o   Things whale products were used for

o   Visit natural history museum with whale exhibition

-        Visit an aquarium with a good reputation

o   Problems with places that do not take care of their sea life – particularly large sea life like whales

-        What is a chowder and how is it made

o   Try or make chowder

-        Crabs

o   Restrictions on different types of crabs – what type is local

o   Try a crab dish

-        Importance of different knots  

o   Get some rope and learn how to tie different knots

-        Know the NATO alphabet and letter flags

-        Boating knowledge

o   Go on a boating trip – know the port and starboard sides

-        Learn how to kayak

-        Try to learn how to skip rocks

-        Visit a lighthouse

o   Importance and histories of lighthouses

-        Smuggling – what is it and why does it happen

-        Shanghaiing

-        Chess

 SHA:

-        The continuous oppression and mistreatment of Native Americans

o   From Mayflower to Pocahontas to Trail of Tears to Dakota to DAPL to Reservations to food deserts to voting rights to much much more

§  How to support current Native voices and concerns

o   Why Native Americans are not a costume

o   “Possession” of Native American objects and land

§  Arrowheads and native jewelry

o   Broad overview of regional Native American groups – using their own voices

§  Special focus on local Native American groups

·       Is there a local museum/educational resource that is either Native created or known for respecting Native voices

o   Current Native Americans of note (ex: politicians, activists, artists)

o   While the previous focuses on Native Americans in the modern day USA – also discuss First Nations from Canada and Native Groups from more southern areas

-        Why temperature and pan matters when baking (show what happens in the oven when it goes wrong)

-        Magnets and how different metals react differently to magnets

-        How to take care of a horse and other farm animals

o   Visit a local farm

o   Try horse-riding

-        Dangers of rattle snakes and scorpions

-        Lassos and how to use them

-        Legends of outlaws in the American West

-        Ghost towns  

-        Flower stitches when knitting/crocheting

-        Petrified wood

-        How to make a campfire

-        Picking fruits and veggies when they are ready

-        Flower language

-        Read Along:

o   Native American folk tales  

o   Motorcycles and Sweetgrass

o   Gone Away Lake

o   Black Beauty?

 CUR:

-        Where are the moors

-        Different regional accents within the United Kingdom

-        British foods

-        Latin

o   Learn fun phrases and prayers

-        Ancestry and genealogy

o   Map your own family tree and recognize family crests

o   How adoption has historically been a binding and irrefutable concept for lineage

o   Find places your family lived

o   Leaving a history for your descendants

§  Write a story book for them

o   British Royal Family

§  Why incest is bad

-        Parrots and their intelligence

-        Secret passages in old buildings

-        Alchemy

o   Connections to modern understandings of science  

o   Historical understandings of elements

-        Astrological signs

-        Witch trials

-        Legends of lycanthropy and other monsters

-        Importance of not taking other peoples medicines

-        Runic alphabet

-        Feeding your pets a healthy diet

-        Typing practice

-        How to embrace the idea that home taught students are evil geniuses

-        Forges and melting points of different metals

-        Carnivorous plants

-        Succulents

-        Constellations in different places  

-        Read Along:

o   The Secret Garden

o   The London Eye Mystery

o   Beastly

CLK:

-        Great Depression

o   Causes and effects

o   Who was hurt

o   Who was not hurt

o   Areas of America

§  Dust bowl

o   Famous people and literature

o   Homelessness and poverty

§  Bread lines

§  Soup kitchens

§  Anti-homelessness architecture

§  Connections to mental illness and veterans

§  How we can help those who do not have homes today

-        Early Telephones

-        Shakespeare

-        History of Nancy Drew

o   Mildred Wirt Benson

o   Edward Stratemeyer  

-        Fishing – why different fish respond to different bait

-        Orphanages in the early 20th century

-        Gas prices and accessibility of cars through time

-        How to make pie

-        What is jurisdiction and what is significant about crossing state lines

-        How do banks work

o   Safety deposit boxes

-        Identify theft

-        How to use a sewing machine

o   Sew an item of clothing

-        Mini golf – why and what

-        Mirrors and their usefulness

-        Stamp collections

-         

-        Radios and call signs

o   Comparison to modern internet forms

-        Telegrams

-        Read along:

o   Shakespeare

§  Midsummer Night’s Dream

§  Others

o   Pollyanna

o   Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

o   The Grapes of Wrath

  TRN:

-        Trains

o   Steam trains

o   Visit a train museum

o   Take a train ride (if not a normal event)

o   Importance of transcontinental railway

o   Trains around the USA today

o   Trains around the world (TGV, bullet train)

-        Abraham Lincoln

-        Mark Twain

-        How to make a good burger (you leave off the PB&J)

-        Slugs

-        Periodic Table of Elements – abbreviations

-        Gemstones

-        History of Mining

o   England (Newcastle upon Tyne)

o   American West

o   Appalachia

o   Company Store

o   Health issues for miners

o   Danger of mines

o   Current issues for mining

-        Dancing the Hurley Burley

-        People who collect creepy dolls

o   History of porcelain dolls

-        Embroidery

o   How to

o   Patterns/symbols

-        General Stores in the American West

o   Sears

-        How to make taffy

-        Find a well maintained and beautiful tomb and research who is entombed

-        Focusing light through a magnifying glass can start a fire

-        Read Along:

o   Murder on the Orient Express

o   Mark Twain books

DAN:

-        All lessons in French

-        How using different ingredients and different amounts of ingredients can affect the outcome of your cookies

-        Paris métro

o   History

o   How to read/follow a métro map

o   RER

-        Montmartre and other Parisian neighbourhoods

-        History of Île de la France and Square de Vert Galant Parc and Pont Neuf

-        WWII and the French Resistance

o   Cross of Lorraine

o   Vichy France

o   Abuses of the French gov’t in this period

-        Paris and the fashion world

-        Beauty standards and the rejection of natural beauty by society

o   Dangers of weight and figure standards

o   You are beautiful as you are

-        Catacombs of Paris

-        Famous French Dishes (from this region)

o   Or Bretagne since I know and like them better

-        The French Café

-        Moulin in France

-        Tea and how hot leaf water can taste so bad but still be good for you

-        Buildings of Baron Haussmann

-        Paris History  

-        Decoders

-        Importance of vitraux historically, culturally, and religiously

-        Read Along:

o   Little Kids

§  Madeline

§  Babar

§  Petit Ours

§  Plume

o   High School

§  Hunchback of Notre Dame

§  Les Mis

§  Dale Van Kley

 CRE:

-        History of Hawai’i and her native people

o   How the USA screwed them over and continues to do so

§  Land colonizing today

o   Listen to voices from Native Peoples

-        Pearl Harbor

o   USS Arizona

-        Native myths and legends

-        Local flora and fauna

-        Surfing

-        How to make bead necklaces

-        Snorkeling

-        Entomology

o   Find some local bugs and identify and observe them

-        Horticulture

o   See if you can graft something

o   Watch a carnation placed in water with food dye

o   Regrow a fruit or veggie from the leftovers

-        Go looking for seashells – see how many complete shells you can find

-        Be aware of pesticides and the dangers they offer

o   Dangers of organic food too

-        Make something with pineapple in it

-        Fishing – different kinds of native fish

-        Volcanos

-        Hula  

  ICE:

-        Wolf sanctuaries – respecting wildlife and their place in the wild and not the domestic

o   What to do if you see a wolf in the real world

-        Fur trapping in Canada history

-        Regions and Capitols of Canada

o   Visit Canada?

-        How the Canadian government works

-        Use of French language in Canada    

o   Unique features of Canadian French  

-        Ice fishing

-        How to cook omelets, salmon, etc.

o   How to not add paprika cause like ew

-        Fossils

-        Radiation

o   Marie Curie

-        How to be a good maid

-        Snowballs/ice balls

-        Ice skating

-        Winter weather safety

-        Avalanches  

-        Saunas

-        Birthmarks

-        Fax machines

-        How to not lie about bird watching

-        Frozen water safety  

-        Modern offenses against First Nations by Canadian Government

  CRY:

-        Culture of the Arawak and Caraïbe

o   Voodoo

-        Mardi Gras in New Orleans

-        Hurricane Katrina and aftermath

-        French Influence

-        Eyes and their parts and functions

-        Teeth and their parts and functions

-        Alligators in the Southern USA and how they are dangerous pests  

-        Graveyards/cemeteries and how to be comfortable in them

o   Modern burial practices

o   Why are they above ground in Louisiana?

o   Places where they are running out of space for the dead

o   Historic violations of final resting places

-        Ventriloquism

-        Lizards and how to care for them

-        Rube Goldberg machines

-        Curio shops

-        Crystal Skulls  

 VEN:

-        International crime

-        Organized crime

-        Scopa

-        Italian basics

o   Learn an Italian aria

-        Italian food

o   Not just spaghetti

-        History of Venice

o   Current issues in Venice

-        Carrier pigeons

-        Micro-dots

-        “Observing the architecture”

-        Try to make gelato (or just get gelato, either way you get gelato)

-        Disguising yourself – put on an outfit and try to get me to not recognize you

-        Picking locks

-        Secret codes

-        Solfege

o   With hand signs

o   Learn a song in solfege

-        Carnivale

-        Learn how the sausage gets made

o   How to deal with food poisoning

-        How to secure your living space against burglars

o   Glass breaks, motion sensors, keypads, magnets, and more

-        Read Along:

o   Heist Society

o   The Prince

o   Merchant of Venice

  HAU:

-        Irish lessons (as much of this in Irish as possible)

o   Why the Irish language is important

-        Geography of Ireland

o   Provinces and counties

-        Irish names

-        Why Ireland has disliked and should dislike the UK

o   Historically

o   Famine

§  Emmigration

o   Easter Rising

o   Troubles

o   Present-Day

-        Importance of alcohol in Ireland

o   Uisce beatha

o   Guinness

§  Guinness world records

-        Irish music

o   Irish instruments

o   Learn some Rebel songs

-        Ogham runes

-        Irish foods

o   Something with lamb, who cares what

-        Don’t use friends for land development

-        Bogs

-        Chemical Reactions

-        Rockets

-        Inventions and secrecy during WWII

-        Religion in Ireland

o   Pagan traditions

o   Christianity

o   Catholic/Protestant tensions

-        Irish wedding traditions

-        How printing presses work

-        Irish castles

-        Sheep sheering/raising sheep

-        Irish legends

o   Fae

o   Leprechauns

-        Don’t drive and talk on the phone

 RAN:

-        Why blackface is problematic? (the fact that this needs to be said is problematic in and of itself)

-        Scuba diving

-        Sailing

-        Bermuda Triangle

-        Bats

-        Primates and their intelligence

o   Problems with animal research

o   Koko

o   Jane Goodall

-        Island resort culture

-        Metal detectors

-        Pirates

o   And the Caribbean

o   Their abuses

o   Different kinds

o   Modern day pirates  

-        How do walkie-talkies work

-        US mistreatment of island territories

-        Read Along:

o   Bloody Jack (Meyer)

 WAC:

-        Edgar Allan Poe

o   Stories

o   Baltimore

-        Piano

-        Victorian Dining traditions

o   How to set a place for fancy dining

o   How to fold napkins

o   Table manners

o   How to serve someone at a fancy dinner

o   How courses might work

o   How to use your silverware  

-        Why you shouldn’t go to an actual high school part two

o   Just fyi – that’s not how uniforms work

§  Have a school inspired dress code for a week

-        Bullying and why you absolutely will not be a bully

o   How to respond to bullying

o   Importance of talking to adults and counseling

-        Logic puzzles

-        Research the founding of a local school

-        Stringed Instruments

-        Plagiarism

o   Turnitin

-        Making sandwiches – like a good deli style sandwich

-        Photography scavenger hunt – make a digital (or physical) yearbook

-        Squirrels

-        Orthographic projection

-        DNA/RNA

-        Saving every major project on three different thumb drives

-        Getting along with roommates

-        States and Capitals

o   Countries and capitals of the world  

 TOT:

-        Tornados

o   Technology used to observe tornados

-        Meteorology

-        Prairie dogs

-        Life on the great plains

-        Great Plains Native Americans

-        Small towns in the Midwest honestly be like that

-        Defensive driving

-        Make a disaster kit

-        Know what to do in various natural emergency situations

o   What is the local alert protocol

o   What do local authorities recommend

-        How to maintain and fix a car

-        How to fix a broken device

-        What is tenure

-        How to budget

o   Go to the grocery store on a strict budget (however much you come in under budget is your candy budget)

-        Read Along:

o   Little House

  SAW:

-        Basic Japanese phrases

o   Learn to count

o   Writing in Japanese

-        Sudoku, nonograms, renograms

-        Japanese ghost legends

-        Japanese culture

o   Tourism

§  Ryokans

o   Space – everything small

o   Politeness/formalities

o   Hot springs/baths

o   Tatami and paper walls

-        Japanese cultural dress

o   Kimonos

o   Lolita? Fashion

-        Japanese names

o   Last name first

o   How to address others in Japan

-        Martial Arts

o   Ninjutsu

§  Traditional tools

-        Japanese tea ceremony

-        Schools in Japan

-        Teaching English as a foreign language

-        Japanese subway/train system

-        Pachinko and Japanese gaming

-        Japanese vending machines

-        Robotic animals

-        Bento

-        Japanese foods

-        Origami

-        How to fake a haunting

 CAP:

-        Basic German phrases

o   How to make a German word

o   Connections of German to English

-        German food favourites

o   Especially cakes

-        Storytelling as a cultural entity

o   How memory has worked differently in different times

-        Glass blowing

-        How castles provided for the local community

-        Bavaria in Germany

o   Cultural dress

-        Glockenspiel

-        How to make board games

-        Monster stories of central Europe

-        How to monitor security camera remotely

-        Read Along:

o   Heidi

ASH:

-        Arson

o   Watching how different accelerants burn a piece of paper

-        All politicians are at least somewhat self-serving

o   But write a letter to a local politician anyway

§  Different ways to contact elected officials, and why some don’t work

-        How to make ice cream

-        How a police investigation works

o   Problems with police departments around the world – specifically USA

o   Ways that police work unfairly targets minorities

§  If Nancy is innocent how many others are

-        How to use matches and lighters safely

-        Why you should not return to the scene of a crime – particularly a fire

-        Making sure smoke detectors work properly and the system is connected

o   We might not go to school but fire drills are still important

-        What is a mass spectrometer

-        Who to call if you’ve been arrested

-        What to do if you get pulled over

-        How the media can skew the truth and make their own narratives

-        Sound mixing

-        Be careful with what you say/post/record

o   Keep receipts and clarify when possible

 TMB:

-        What not to do at an archaeological site

-        Ancient Egyptian History

o   Pantheon, notable figures, relevant events

o   Pyramids, sphinx

o   Pharaohs

-        Modern Egypt

o   Arabic alphabet

-        History of archaeological digs in Egypt

o   Why they’ve been problematic

-        Dangers of the tombs

-        Mummys

o   How they are put together

-        Tomb raiders

-        Importance of water in the desert

-        How to piece together a broken artifact

-        How to gently brush off an artifact

-        There is no such thing as a dictionary for ancient Egyptian

-        Aliens did not build the pyramids

-        Senet

-        Desert life safety

-        How mirrors can be used to light a room

-        Read Along

o   Rick Riordan

 DED:

-        Nikola Tesla

o   All his fun stuff

o   Tesla Coils

-        3-D printing

-        Gummy fingerprints

-        Faraday Cage

-        Basic electric concepts

o   How to build a circuit board

-        Chemical safety

-        How a lab might work

-        Valuing different skills within academia

-        Ultraviolet light

-        How motorcycles work

-        Freelance photography

-        How to use academic databases

 GTH:

-        Slavery in the United States

o   Origins

o   ‘End’

o   Civil War

o   The connection to “southern culture”

o   Continued abuses of Black people in America

§  Importance of recognizing Black voices and what they are saying

§  Listening even when it’s uncomfortable

§  Checking privilege when you have it

o   Jim Crow Laws

-        Plantations

-        Gone With the Wind

o   The good and the bad

-        Civil War spies – female

-        Carbon monoxide poisoning

-        Burned out houses are not a safe space

-        Do not go digging through people’s coffins – rest in PEACE

-        Understanding that your family can be flawed

-        If you don’t want to get married, if you’re not happy in a relationship, end it

-        When a member of your family is sick you take care of them

-        Make a will, just in case your cousin kills you

-        Bachelor and bachelorette parties should feature activities that everyone is comfortable with

-        Read Along:

o   My Last Skirt: The Story of Jennie Hodgers, Union Soldier

 SPY:

-        Scotland and their identity

o   Celtic Nations

o   Independent Scotland

o   Call a Scottish person

-        Unicorns and other mythical creatures in Scotland

-        Scottish food

o   The appetizing parts

-        History of spies

-        Biowarfare

o   Code Orange

o   Other teenage stories dealing with anthrax

o   Current events and concerns

o   Historical biowarfare (smallpox blankets)

-        Ziplining

-        Archery

-        How to bug someone

-        Tartans and plaids

o   Kilts

-        Augmented Reality Glasses

-        Record players

-        How to reset a circuit breaker

-        Read Along:

o   Gallagher Girls

o   Code Orange

o   Little House (Martha)

o   Little Brother (Doctorow)

 MED:

-        Don’t meet your heroes

-        New Zealand

o   Maori culture

-        Survivor style game shows and realism

-        I’m not saying Aliens can’t exist, I’m saying they def aren’t involved here

-        Kayaking

-        Submarines and what they can do

-        Turtles

-        Earthquakes

-        Be careful with rope bridges

  LIE:

-        Provenance and why it’s important part two  

-        Greek art and how it was originally painted vibrantly

o   Abuses of Greek art through the ages

-        The British Museum and the issues with that

-        Greek pantheon

o   Legends and notable figures

o   Religious traditions  

-        Iliad and Odyssey

-        Art forgery

-        How to fire clay pots and pottery

-        Memorizing lines for a play

o   Staging for a play

o   Role of a director

-        Theatre

o   Lights

o   Curtains

o   Fly system

o   Sound

-        Greek alphabet

-        Historical importance of the Greek language and culture

o   Alexander the Great and Hellenization

-        Olympics

o   Historic and modern

-        Greece and the European Union  

-        Make something with pomegranates

-        Read Along:

o   Iliad

o   Odyssey

o   The Thief

o   Percy Jackson  

  SEA:

-        Iceland

o   Culture

§  Naming traditions

o   Language

o   Music

o   Food

-        Shipbuilding

o   Historic and modern ships

-        Ice caving

-        Northern Lights

-        Tides

-        Snowmobiling

-        Poetry

-        What is xenophobia

 MID:

-        Some games just shouldn’t be made

-        American witch trials

o   What actually went down

o   Misconceptions

-        Treating people with albinism as real people

-        Arson is bad

-        Herbal remedies and how they can interfere with modern medicine

-        Witchcraft and how not to

-        Salem MA

-        Ignorance promotes fear and hatred so we do our best to learn about others

[bellamyroselia]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

______

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

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

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

______

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

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

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

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

______

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

______

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

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

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

[gliitch-effect]

Layout of one of my main Dream houses

Yes another dream post! It’s been a while. In my dreams I have several houses that are supposed to be “my base”. It becomes hard to keep track of sometimes but in the dream I just locate a map somehow, and figure out from there where I go. It’s always somewhere in the US.

——-

I’ll call this particular one the “North house”. It’s located where my family’s actual house is, and the outside seems the same, but the surrounding area is different. The neighborhood splits from a normal area to a higher class area guarded with steel gates and security. I can bypass all of that easily if need be, but I don’t spend a lot of time there.

The house itself has a fancy driveway, instead of a normal street level house it has stone stairs leading up to it, and every other level has two stone statues on either side of what look like jackals. I haven’t investigated but it’s implied at least one of these sets has the eyes of the jackals replaced by cameras, sensors, or other security measures. So far the house seems to be a safe zone.

The inside is where it vastly differs from reality (obviously. The house itself is magic.) it’s impossibly big for what it looks like. The entryway and main room is BIG, entirely marble flooring. It’s sporadically decorated, maybe the room is so big I just haven’t mentally decorated it much but what IS there, are various magical items. Glass locked cases with various things like swords and enchanted items, there’s a wooden podium with a massive magical book on it and close by are various wands. I usually approach the book and take a wand for the journey. There are plants and other decorative items but it seems like the point of this room is to be a general plaza that leads to the more important places. I have not explored everything but I’ll list the places I have!

Lower level:

There’s a latch door leading to the lower level of the building. Once I have whatever item I need I head down there. It’s all wooden or stone, really medevial looking. Lit by magic lanterns, even though it’s below ground there are small windows that bring sunlight in, this area always feels welcoming and magical. The tunnels split off in all sorts of directions but I typically go to the library, which is just a small little area with some old ancient bookshelves. BUT WAIT, there’s a secret door that leads to another impossibly big for its size room, almost like a walk in closet, it’s a loooong room with ENDLESS books, among other things. I stock up on books and leave or I continue down into the “media” area, where it is not just books. This area is somewhat cramped but every wall including the ceiling is packed-PACKED, CRAMPED- with games, books, magazines, anything. The games such as DS games, float confusingly in front of each other almost like a glitch. But if I focus I can locate things. There’s an even further room past this one that I call the VR room that can ‘bring to life’ (in the form of hyper realistic holograms and surround sound) any movie or media you choose. This area is so big I could spend a few minutes running from one end to the other. Like an IMAX theater on steroids. I don’t often come there because it’s overwhelming. The first time I did Jurassic park was playing and I thought I was going to die before I realized the dinosaurs were holograms and I found the panel to control it.

Back in the main hallway of the lower area if you continue past the library section is a sorcery section. Various big wood and iron doors lead to areas where you can practice magic. Circular stone rooms with cauldrons, spellbooks, portals, alchemy, anything you’d want. I like that area. I never know what’ll happen there and sometimes I see other dreamwalkers who come through the portals down there. I’ve been told there’s another section of rooms that’s for sparring and melee training with swords and axes and the like, but since I really only take wands and daggers I’ve only seen in there once and it looks just how you’d imagine a knight’s quarters to look.

Left area, main level:

Back on the main level if I go left I find my irl room from my family’s house. Nice and normal, except in this room is a panel on the wall near my dresser that can be activated by a secret button near a fireplace, and another button hidden under my dresser that I need to slide under to press. Behind this panel, is a massive auditorium as if in a rec center. To the left is a stage, and the rest of the room is just a gymnasium not filled with anything. On the veeeerry far wall, is another door. Past that door are two options, a stone area that leads to elevators down to a strange pair of statues, one dragon and one wizard (still haven’t figured out that room) and the other a vast amount of hallways and rooms decorated with old ornate rugs and Victorian era furniture. It’s dusty and not entirely safe but still rather fun to explore.

That’s all I know so far. Honestly I could make several posts about the last two areas anyway, I know so much detail about them, but this is getting long. I guess it’s a good thing I never turn right and never try and see if there’s an upstairs!

[twiistedgalaxies]

Genesis: Chapter 4: Arrival

How two brothers can take two opposite paths. How a man can be made into a monster and how the other must pay the ultimate price to save everything he knows and loves. Or, alternatively: The origins of All for One and One for All.

Previous Chapter

First Chapter

        The Our Lady of Perpetual Help Orphanage was a dilapidated, angular building with sagging windows and chipping, sun bleached paint. It was two stories, the windows were small, and it had rose bushes in the parking lot that were withering and dying, despite the winter rains. This is what Tomura saw as he peeked out from the car window, worrying his bottom lip.

        “Alright brats,” Their driver barked, a man in his late thirties who smelled perpetually of nicotine and bourbon, “Get outta here, I got places to be an’ people to see.”

        He heard the car door click behind him as his brother disembarked. Tomura, however, hesitated. Was this really it? The pamphlets the social worker had pushed towards them had shown something more… not this.

        “C’mon, hurry up!”

        “Sorry,” he squeaked, pushing himself and his bag out of the car. He stood on the sidewalk, hands twitching nervously.

        “Are you alright?” His brother asked, eyebrow raised but a smile on his lips, clearly amused.

        Tomura felt his face flush and they began to walk towards the entrance, “Stellar. So what do you think the orphanage will be like? The pamphlet said there’ll be a recess area and shared meals and that we’ll have our schooling here and-”

        “Well, whatever it’ll be like, the pamphlet was clearly lying,” Hisashi’s face darkened, “Just try not to do anything I wouldn’t and you should be fine.”

        As if that statement wasn’t ridiculously vague. “Okay.”

        They pushed open the front double doors to the orphanage, revealing a shoddily lit front room. It was tiny, consisting of a single helpdesk, a folding chair by the wall, and a sad snake plant. A stern looking woman sat behind the desk, her features were angular and pinched, like a bird that had tasted something sour.

        "I presume you are the Shigaraki brothers?" the woman asked, voice high pitched and nasally.

        "Yes?" Tomura said, though it came out as more of a question than an answer.

        "You're late," the woman sneered.

        “Sorry,” he mumbled. Next to him, his brother gave a polite, albeit strained, smile.

        She stood up with a huff, “Come, I’ll have one of the children show you around.” They stepped through a door and walked down a long, carpeted hallway. The air smelled sharp, like mildew. “I’m Matron Abra, the head of this fine establishment. I will tolerate no horse-play, no dilly-dallying, and no backtalk. Tomorrow you will be given a schedule by which you eat and breathe, if you’re caught one toe out of line the punishment will be severe, understood?”

        Tomura nodded, biting his tongue to keep from protesting. This is ridiculous!

        “Say ‘Yes Matron’, I won’t put up with such disrespect,” she scowled.

        “Yes Matron,” the brothers chorused. Hisashi looked at her like she was a particularly nasty piece of gum stuck on the sole of his shoe.

        They arrived at the doorway of what appeared to be a classroom. A large chalkboard was at the front of the room, and desks were lined up in neat rows. The furniture was beaten and battered to hell, seeming to have taken many years of constant abuse. Despite being packed with children, the room was quiet. Eerily so. The stout, balding man at the front of the room paused his lecture to greet the matron.

        “Ah, Matron Abra! What a pleasure to see you,” he stammered, looking as wide-eyed and fidgety as his students.

        “Can it, Stewart, I need to borrow one of your brats.”

        “I- Why of course, who do you need?”

        Abra looked down at the class over her narrow, crooked nose, “Any of them will do, as long as they’re capable of basic tasks.”

        Stewart’s eyes swept the room, “Leo,” he barked, gesturing at a blonde teen in the back of the room, “You’re excused from class, just do as the matron says.”

        The boy nodded and hastily gathered his things before making his way towards the door. It shut behind him with a click.

        “I trust you’ll be able to show these two around competently, yes?” the matron said in a clipped manner.

        “Yes ma’am, but what about-”

        She cut him off, “Good. When you’re done bring them to the boys’ room and return to class. They’re to attend dinner after they arrange their things.” Abra strode down the hall towards the front room. Leo frowned at her retreating form, clearly frustrated.

        “Well, she’s uh..” Tomura began once she was out of earshot.

        “A witch of a woman?” Leo finished dryly, “The first rule of surviving here: avoid her as much as you can.”

        Hisashi quirked an eyebrow, “Why?”

        “Just trust me, crossing her is a bad idea,” Leo paused, “Anyways, I should probably give you two a tour, shouldn’t I?” He began to walk down the hall, gesturing for the two to follow, “The room you guys probably just came from is the reception area, it’s where we receive guests and stuff. Though, it’s not like we get any.”

        Tomura hummed, he couldn’t really blame people for avoiding this place, especially since he just saw a particularly monstrous looking cockroach skitter into a crack in one of the walls.

        “This hallway has two bathrooms and the classrooms. We’re split up by age, kindergarten through third grade share a class, fourth to sixth share one, seventh through ninth, and then tenth through twelfth.”

        “How do you learn anything like that?” Hisashi asked as he frowned, looking almost offended.

        “We don’t,” Leo coughed.

        They reached the end of the hall and stepped into a small room with ratty arm chairs and a stained rug. The walls were lined with ramshackle bookcases that were used more to store various knickknacks than hold any actual books. There was a large, imposing portrait of the matron hung over the brick fireplace.

        “This is the common area, we like to hang out here during our free time on rainy days,” Leo’s eyes lit up and he walked over to the shelves, he dug around and pulled out a monopoly box, yellowed with age, “A while ago, one of the other kids found this while they were out on an errand. We don’t get many games or toys, so… Anyways! If you want you guys can play a few rounds with us after dinner.”

        Tomura felt a smile dance on the edge of his lips, “Sure, that sounds fun, right Hisashi?”

        His brother shrugged noncommittally.

        “We’ll be happy to have you! So,” Leo gestured to a door to the right of them, “Down this hall is the eating area and kitchens. We haven’t been allowed in the kitchens since Matron Abra caught Thomas sneaking food.”

        Tomura winced at that.

        Leo pointed to a door to the left, “And this hallway leads to the two dorms, one for girls and one for boys, which is at the end of the hall. Do you guys have any questions?”

        “She said something about schedules?” Hisashi asked, arms crossed over his chest.

        Leo nodded, “Yeah, our day is split up between school and meals and such. She’s usually pretty strict about those, if she catches you somewhere you aren’t supposed to be you get in a lot of trouble,” he grimaced, “One time, I had to clean the gum off the bottoms of the dining tables for a month.”

        “How do we know which beds are ours?” Tomura inquired.

        “Oh, they should have a plastic name tag on them, just look for that. Unless you guys have more questions that’s pretty much it for what’s here. I should probably head back to class, if you need anything, let me know, okay?” Leo finished and went down the hallway they just came from. 

        “So…?” Tomura began.

        Hisashi hummed and headed towards the boys’ room, “We’ll be fine, like I said, don’t do anything stupid.”

        He followed his brother and stepped into the dorm. It was surprisingly large, but lined wall to wall with rickety twin beds. The floors were covered in dust, grime, and fading painted lines. On either side of the room were rusting basketball hoops. It took a little while of scouring the rows of bed frames before the duo finally found where they were meant to sleep. They were situated in the center of the room, bare and exposed for their peers to see. Tomura sat on his bed, ignoring the feeling of springs stabbing his butt, and pulled his stuff out of his bag.

        They were only allowed to take a precious few items with them. He himself had grabbed a few changes of clothes, toiletries, medication, joint braces, and a photo of his family tucked neatly into the pages of his favorite Captain America comic. Looking around, Tomura was at a loss as to where to put his things. There were only beds, no storage to be found anywhere. He hastily slid his comic under his mattress, and placed his hand on his chin as he worked out where to put his medical equipment. Glancing at Hisashi didn’t help, as the teen seemed to have already put everything away somehow and was lounging on the stiff bed with his phone. Eventually, Tomura decided to just shove his things back in his bag and place it on the foot of his bed until he found a better alternative. It’s not like the other kids could find much to do with joint braces anyways, so they were probably safe.

        Mimicking his brother, he pulled out his phone and checked his text messages. Since that night replies from Zach had grown less and less frequent, Tomura was worried, had he done something wrong?

                                                     4:50pm

                                                                                                                        [Hey]

                                           [You doing okay? Hisashi and I got to the orphanage.]

                                                                                                                        Seen

        Tomura heaved out a sigh. Figures. Still, ranting into the void was better than nothing at all, hopefully his friend would respond soon. Maybe he was busy?

                                                                     [The matron lady is suuuuper uptight]

                     [Man you should have seen her, she was like Mrs. Nott on steroids]

                                       [The social worker said something about our data being 

                                               cut off since our parents can’t pay our phone plan.]

                         [Talk to me when you can so we can move to Discord or smth :P]

                                                                                                                        Seen

        He flopped onto his bed with a groan.

        “You alright?” His brother asked, not looking up from his phone.

        “Yeah, I’m just really sore, and Zach’s ghosting me, and this is just all too much, ya know?” Tomura replied, throwing his hands into the air for dramatic emphasis and wincing as his elbows cracked.

        Hisashi sat up, eyebrows knitted together in a scowl, “Zach’s ghosting you?”

        He glanced over at his older brother, “Yes? But I think he’s just busy, this is our first year in middle school and finals are in a few weeks.”

        “Right.” the teen replied tersely, his focus returned to his phone. They sat there for a while like that, with Tomura reading web comics and his brother typing something into his device.

-@~*^*~@- 

        The dining hall was a large, rectangular room with high angular ceilings and stained glass windows depicting haloed figures. There were holes in the floor from where pews had been ripped out to make room for the lunch tables. It was loud with the chatter of children, both those who already had food and those standing in a line tightly wound around the room leading towards the kitchen door. The brothers sat at a table in the far corner of the room. Tomura tried desperately to eat the blandest mashed potatoes he’s ever had the misfortune of tasting to no avail. Hisashi, meanwhile, was chatting up a storm. While they were in line he had managed to somehow befriend most of the older kids. The preteen looked on at his older brother with envy. 

        “So how’d you all end up here?” Hisashi asked the others, a gleam in his eye as he leaned forward with mock-interest. 

        They were met with stories of drug deals gone wrong, of parents unable to afford to financially support their kids and dropping them off here, of parents leaving their children on the orphanage doorstep the moment they displayed the slightest hint of a mutation. His brother regaled them with the harrowing tale of the home invasion, painting a dramatic picture of their mother’s withered form in a hospital bed, surrounded by flowers.

        Tomura felt something catch in his throat. She was never given flowers. If he didn’t have an appetite before he certainly didn’t now.

        “How did you get that Monopoly board?” Hisashi asked, “I noticed it when we went in the common room, you don’t seem to have many toys, there must be a story there.”

        He frowned, hadn’t Leo told them already?

        One of the teens - a Hispanic kid, Jose - clapped another on the back, “That’s thanks to Rafi over here, he snuck out one night and found it in a back-alley dumpster, he smelled like garbage for weeks!”

        Rafi buried his head in his hands, “It wasn’t that bad!” he cried.

        Hisashi’s eyes narrowed slightly. He opened his mouth to say something, but Tomura didn’t hear. He got up to dispose of his food and wander into the dorm, fighting an onslaught of dizziness. He really didn’t feel good. Has the orphanage always been this cold?

        Tomura crawled into his bed, wrapping the cheap linen blanket around himself. He tried desperately to get comfortable but the thin mattress made such a task impossible. His face burned and itched. What the heck?! He closed his eyes and tried to sleep to no avail. At best he drifted aimlessly in inky black, at worst? The pain in his joints and muscles intensified into a shrieking crescendo.

        What had he done to bring this on? Tomura tried best he could to recall the events of the day, to a potential trigger of his flare-up, but he drew a blank. Sure, he’d been beyond stressed lately for understandable reasons, but that didn’t explain this sudden spike of agony. Had it been from wandering around the orphanage all day? Maybe, but the orphanage was really small, certainly not big enough to make his body do the electric slide of death.

        He let out a groan as the other kids entered the room, flicking on the harsh fluorescents and bringing noise with them. Tomura curled up on his side and pulled his pillow on his head in an attempt to muffle the outside world. There was a cold hand on his shoulder. He made a sound that came out like a whine.

        “Tomura,” His brother said, voice soft, “Did you remember to take your medications?”

        Oh. Whoops. In the blur of seeing the social worker and moving into the orphanage he must have forgotten. He shook his head causing the pillow upon it to shift.

        A sigh, and Hisashi rummaged through Tomura’s bag, “What am I going to do with you?” he muttered. “Hey Leo, can you come over here for a second?” the teen called. Tomura cringed at the sudden sound.

        “What’s up?” Leo asked.  A set of footsteps approached the pair.

        “I was wondering if it’d be possible to get my little brother some water, he needs it for his medication. The dumbass forgot to take it this afternoon,” Hisashi said, the last part teasing and aimed towards him. Tomura made a sound of indignation. 

        Leo hummed, “I can probably get a cup from the dining hall, hopefully the bathroom will be open.”

        “Alright,” Hisashi replied, “be quick.”

        The bed creaked as Hisashi sat by his side, “I take it you’re making a raincheck on Monopoly tonight?”

        Tomura rolled towards his brother, feeling his heart get caught in his stomach, he had forgotten about Monopoly, “No, I want to play.”

        His brother chuckled, “Not in this condition you won’t,” he pushed a long strand of white hair out of his younger brother’s face, then paused, “There’ll be other nights you can play.”

        Hisashi began to move his hand away from his brother’s face but Tomura grabbed it and moved it back. The cold skin felt nice against his burning, inflamed face. 

        “It looks like Leo’s back, sit up.”

        Tomura grumbled complaints, but sat up regardless, leaning against the metal bed frame. A plastic cup was shoved in his hands and he brought the cool liquid to his lips, “Thank you,” he said. Hisashi handed him his medications, and he downed them in one gulp. He pushed himself downwards to lie on his back. The lights of the dorms flickered out as the other kids settled down for the night. Tomura fell into a fitful sleep, to the sensation of his brother sitting by his side.

A/N: Woo! 2020 is over, thank the gods.  Updates may be a little slower because I am starting winter quarter classes this week, but I'll still try to get a chapter uploaded each Monday whenever possible. Next chapter should be Hisashi's POV, which I'm both dreading and excited to write. Please leave comments, feedback fuels my motivation!

AO3

Next Chapter

[justoneday-namjoonii]

Quarters. | 7

☼1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9

prompt: He is the definition of young blood, so sweet, so hot—it courses through his veins and fuels his vigor. When he fights, each punch cracks the earth and every drop of sweat gives birth to a flower somewhere in the universe.

pairing: Jungkook x reader

warnings/au: dysfunctional relationship, mentions of being insecure because of being adopted, family issues, humor(i try), mature subject matter, drug usage, don’t smoke children, fluff, angst, boxer!au, iceskater!au.

authors note:  It’s been a while! But it’s back and I’m happy with how this came out, i hope you are too^^ feel free to comment what you think! Also, I will edit this later and lotte jk choked me. ♡´･ᴗ･`♡ i know this is late but happy b-day jungkook

Jimin yells pointers from the sidelines and he takes heed of all of them.

People are cheering, smoke wafts through the air to create a cloudy ambiance, and he drips with sweat. He is the definition of young blood, so sweet, so hot—it courses through his veins and fuels his vigor. When he fights, each punch cracks the earth and every drop of sweat gives birth to a flower somewhere in the universe. He grits his teeth and he’s dying to spit out the mouth guard, all he has to do is hope the dude he just socked doesn’t get up. He stays heavy on his feet, keeping his guard up as the guy rolls on his side in an attempt to get up. In his mind he’s chanting, please stay down, please stay the fuck down-

“...5, 4, 3, 2, 1. We have a winner!

“Yes!”

Jimin exclaimed he was elated, to say the least. Jungkook was glad. Tae was there, Hoseok, Yoongi, and a bunch of his friends came to support. This result was far better than the last match he had. He thinks in the back of his mind, I did good, but I could have done a lot better.

Jungkook was all smiles when he ran back to the locker room with a crowd chorusing his name.

“Are you on steroids or something?” Taehyung snickered, he was back there waiting for him. Jungkook just giggled like a little kid, making his way to the showers.

“Nah, I think I’m starting my winning streak though.”

“You were a fucking beast!” Jimin hit the shower room door as Jungkook was back there stripping off the sweaty boxers and letting the hot water wash the sweat from his shrine of tattoos. “We have to celebrate.”

“I’m up for whatever.” Jungkook pushed back his once pink, but now freshly died black hair and washed his face. When he deemed his body clean enough, he tugged the towel down from the door and hastily dried off. He swings the shower door open and stumbles out and into his slides.

“Let’s go swimming! I’ll order some food and we can go to my place. Jungkook, you should bring y/n too, it’ll be fun.” Jimin grins, knowing Jungkook would be more than happy to have you join them. Jungkook has only been with you for a few months but Jimin can tell that you’re different from any other girl he’s been with, as cliche as that seems. Jungkook sounds so in love when he talks about you, if you look hard enough, you can see him blushing when you’re even mentioned. And given you’ve stuck around to get him out of jail and all the other crap Jungkook has got himself in, you must really love him.

*

*

You skate around playfully, lazily trying to wrap up your conditioning for the day. Unfortunately, Charlotte’s best bud Stephanie came to the rink about 30 minutes ago to practice her routine. Just when you thought you could get a break, she skated up to you, a snake-ish smirk on her face.

“Y/n, how are you?” She grins, a very fake grin at that.

“I’m good, you?” You return her smile with the same expression.

“I’m fine. It’s Charlotte I’m worried about.”

“Oh?” You almost choke at your attempt to compile a comment of concern for your fellow skater. “Why?”

“People are talking about the competition and your scores...”

“And what about my scores?”

“Some people are thinking that the judges were biased when tallying up your scores.” You couldn’t hide the grimace on your face when she said that.

“What?”

“One of those judges used to be your coach.”  How did she know that? “I heard she gave you a great score, the one that made you beat Charlotte.”

“And?” You didn’t have time to fool with her today. The most important thing for you to do is keep your cool and ignore her.

“And that seems suspicious, everyone thinks so.” That’s when she skated away.

You roll your eyes and skate off the ice. Instead of finishing conditioning, you decide to change and go home before you do something you regret. You grab your gym bag and take it to the locker room. The competition season has ended so everyone is focused on sharpening their skills for the next season. Why are people still talking about that one competition? You won, that’s it, it’s over. But you should have known the win couldn't come that easy, especially if you beat Charlotte, your arch-nemesis.

“Hello Y/n.” Charlotte enters the locker room, her pitiful little assistant trailing behind her with her bags. Due to repairs at her own center, she had to come here to practice. “I didn’t know you practiced on Thursday’s.”

“Yeah, I’m here every Thursday.” You grin, turning to face your locker as you take out your sweats and sneakers, eager to slip them on.

“This is kind of my home rink...” You mumble that to yourself while situating your sweats and then taking a seat to tie up your sneakers. Once you’re dressed, you threw your bag over your shoulder and you were ready to get out of there. Her assistant walked out and you were about to do the same.

“Wait,” Charlotte grabbed your arm, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I might as well.” She grins. “I brought a complaint to the judging panel.”

You pull your arm away and frown. “A complaint about what?”

“About you. One of the judges was a past coach of yours, and that judge gave you the score that put you in the first place. Isn’t that a bit of a coincidence? You’ve never won first place over me, ever. But the one time a past coach of yours judges the competition, you win.” She scoffs. “Their reviewing the scores and should be contacting you within the week.”

Of course she would do that.

“What? What is wrong with you? Why do you feel like you have to win everything?”

“Because I deserve it, Y/n. I work harder than anyone out there on the ice and for you to sneak your way into first place was cheap. My routine was flawless.”

“I still don’t understand what you have to complain about. You have world-renowned coaches, your equipment is state of the art, you’ve never had to worry about entrance fees, you get to live your passion and you have all the resources to cover it. Unlike you, my parents aren’t paying for me to do this. So I work my butt off to perfect my routines and I know for damn sure that I deserved what I got.”

“You’re an amateur!” She flails her arms dramatically, brows furrowing angrily. “I’ve been on the ice since I could walk, I was made for this. And I didn’t come all this way to let someone like you take it from me.”

“Charlotte, each and every skater in the building thinks they were made for this.” You cross your arms, throwing your bag over your shoulder. “It’s a matter of proving it.”

“Well, that’s just the difference between me and everybody else. I’ve proved it.” She walks up to you, too close for your liking so you purposely take a step back.

You realize that you don’t have to take this, so you don’t. You storm out of the locker room and pray you don’t look back, because there are a thousand things you could say to her right now. All the blood, sweat, and tears—and this is what you get in return? This is B.S.

You tried not to let it get to you, you really did. But here you are, sitting in your car and brewing with frustration over your messed up life. “I hate that girl. I hate her, I hate her stupid ponytail, I hate her attitude, I hate her...” You hook in your seatbelt and just as you’re about to pull off, you get a phone call, it’s Jungkook.

You try to sound as pleasant as possible. “Hello?”

“Hey baby, are you done with practice?”

“Y- Yeah, how’d your match go?” You’ve become progressively more supportive for his boxing hobby.

“I won.” he sounded so excited and it made you smile.

“That’s so good Jungkook, your practice paid off, I told you it would. Are your friends taking you out to celebrate?”

“Yeah, we’re having a little late-night pool party at Jimin’s. Can you come? I’ll pick you up.”

“Y-yeah, of course,” You clear your throat, “that sounds like fun.”

“Great, I’ll see you in 30 minutes. I love you,” You can literally hear him smiling, “I can’t wait to see you.”

“I can’t wait to see you too Jungkook, love you,” You grin to yourself, “bye.”

Sitting your phone down, you let out a heavy sigh. Despite your sour mood, you decide to quit sulking in the parking lot and head home so you can get changed. You’re happy for Jungkook, honestly. Ever since the beginning of your relationship, his boxing hobby was a concern of yours more than anything. Seeing him all bent up was hard to stomach at times, especially when he’d lose—that was hard to see. But luckily, he tried not to get stuck on a fight so you never had time to dwell on it.

Now, more than ever, you’ve begun to accept it as a part of him and actually like it a little. He’s an athlete, so he does have the tendency to find identity in the sport and you can definitely understand that. Without skating, you don’t know where you’d be right now. It’s your passion, there’s nothing on this planet that makes you feel as alive as dancing on the ice. Jungkook feels the same about his sport so you embrace it at full force now.

It’s not long before you make your way home and struggle into your humble abode. Your knee has been bothering you lately and last night you forgot to ice it like you were instructed to at the clinic, oh well. You lowkey aren’t too crazy about a pool party, you don’t really care for stuff like that, but it’s for Jungkook so you decide to suck it up. You go to your drawer and search for a suitable swimsuit. After narrowing down your options, you decide to go for the black spaghetti-strapped one-piece with the low back, that seems nice enough. You quickly go to freshen up a little, put your hair up, and pull a hoodie and some jeans on. Your phone begins to buzz and you see it’s a call from Rosie.

“Hey, Ro.”

“Hey, girl! I heard Jungkook won the match.”

“Yeah, he did, I wish I could’ve been there but I had conditioning and I had to be there since I skipped last week. But yeah, he’s been at that gym nonstop for the past few weeks and it paid off.” You have the phone on speaker and you lean down to tie your shoelaces.

“That’s so awesome. I was just calling to let you know that Jimin invited me to the pool party and he said Jungkook went to pick you up, so I’ll see you soon- Oh, and you said you had practice tonight, how did that go?”

You smack your teeth and she can already tell it wasn’t good.

“That bad?”

“I mean, it was fine until Charlotte showed up with her bullshit.”

“Y/n, I always tell you, don’t let her get to you-”

“You don’t understand, Ro.” You take a deep breath. “She reported me, for no reason.”

“Seriously? Reported you for what?”

“She said since one of the judges was a past coach of mine, and that coach gave me the score to put me in the first place, she doesn’t think I deserved first place. Can you believe that? I’m so pissed...”

“Man, that sucks. She shouldn’t be able to do that, how can they prove that the judge was biased? You just had a great routine. Charlotte has always been a bitch to you and now it’s really coming out.”

“The board is going to contact me soon so I don’t know what to do...”

“Well don’t worry about it, okay? Let loose and have fun tonight.”

You sigh. “I’ll try. See you later Ro.” You bid each other farewell and drop your phone on the bed. You’re so stressed right now, but you’re gonna try your best to not let your mood affect Jungkook or anyone at the matter.

Suddenly, you hear a knock on the door and a voice saying ‘it’s me, it’s me.” You sigh, he’s here. You run to the door and look at yourself in the mirror real quick before you open it.

“Hey, baby.” He coos, his sweet bunny smile making an appearance.

“Hi, Jungkook.” You shyly smile when you see him, a simple tee and sweats on. You reach up to give him a big hug and he attacks you with a kiss. You try to move back but he just laughs, pulling you closer and lifting you up to spin you around.

“Woah,” You steady yourself as he finally stops moving, “I’m happy to see you too,” He puts you down but you’re still in his arms, “why didn’t you use your key?” You mumble into his chest.

“Left it at home,” He breathes. “ahh, you smell so good, I mean you always do but today it’s more—almondy?” And he exhales. “You ready?”

“Yeah, just about.” You let him go in search of your tote bag. “I’ve had a really annoying day so it’s nice to go out. You deserve to let loose and get rewarded for all the work you’ve put in.”

“Aw, you had a bad day? What happened?” He frowns. You feel him come up behind you and before you know it he’s trying to hug you but you gently pry his hands off.

“It’s- it’s nothing really, don’t worry about it,” You press your lips, “tonights about you.”

*

*

As soon as you pull up to Jimin’s place, you can hear people jumping in the pool and your heart starts to beat faster. You’re a little jumpy, per usual. You know most of his friends and they know you but you’re still subject to a little anxiety every now and then. You get out of the car and rush over to walk beside him so you can walk in together. That’s when he rests his hand on your waist, and that’s when you know he’s paying close attention to you.

“I haven’t gone swimming in forever.” He mumbles as you two walk up to the front door and he knocks. “And I don’t think we’ve ever gone swimming together, have we?”

“Um, I think once, at Rosie’s sister’s party a few months ago, but I didn’t really get in the water.” He nods to himself and as soon as he does that, the door flings open.

“Look who decided to show up late to his own celebration!” Jimin yells into the house with a bright smile on his face. He must’ve been in the pool not too long ago because his hair is somewhat wet plus he has a towel around his neck. “I guess the champion runs on his own time now.” Jimin is clearly joking and Jungkook just laughs and defends himself as you both enter the nice home.

“Hi Y/n, how are you?” Jimin reaches in to give you a hug before playfully nudging Jungkook aside. “Glad you could make it.”

You smile, embracing Jimin for a few more seconds before you release him. “I’m good, thanks for having me.”

Jimin gives a sweet smile. “Anytime-”

“You didn’t even give me a time. And it’s only been like 30 minutes.” Jungkook is pretty familiar with Jimin’s house so he’s already walking out to the pool and you follow right behind him.

“Hey, guys.” You and Jungkook both say in sync. Everyone greets you two, paying more attention to Jungkook of course, congratulating him and making him feel loved. Most people are watching the TV that’s mounted on the wall, you can’t help but think—Jimin’s house is fancy as hell. When you look up from greeting Taehyung, Rosie is hopping out of the pool to tackle you with her dripping wet pale pink hair and neon green swimsuit.

“Hey- Ro! You’re soaking wet!” You tense up as she hugs you extra tight anyway.

“Y/n quit whining! You’re about to get in anyway.” She laughs, finally letting you go. She lowers her voice and grabs your hands to get you to look her in the eye. “Are you okay?” You know what she’s referring to and you nod.

“I’m fine, let’s not talk about it right now, okay?” Rosie gives you a look, just to ensure that you’re okay and you reassure her, she lets you go.

“Okay, but if you need to talk, we can pull away.” She gives you a look before getting back in the pool and that’s when you look up and see that Jungkook has already stripped down. You walk over to one of the pool chairs and take a seat so you can take off your clothes. Carefully, you take off the hoodie and pull off your jeans to reveal your cute little black suit.

Jungkook walks up to you, standing in all of his tattooed glory and black pool shorts, smirking down at you. The way he looks alone is enough to distract you from your sucky day. You furrow your brows and stare up at him, rubbing your exposed arms. without a word, he leans down to get close to you while still standing and you smile nervously, unsure of what he’s doing. “What?...Jungkook!”

He’s such a child.

Jungkook picked you up against your will and walked you towards the pool.

“No! Put me down!” You say that but you’re both laughing hysterically and you shriek when he jumps in the water—practically drowning you. Apparently, he finds this hilarious but you’re coughing up water and slowly dying because of him.

“Are you trying to kill me?!” You scream, swimming away from him and splashing him in the face. “And why are you laughing?!”

He snorts, trying to block his face from your constant splashing. “Ah!- I’m sorry Y/n!” You’re relentless and you know for a fact that he’s regretting every decision that led to throwing you in the pool.

“Ok!- Ok, fuck-“ He grabs you to hinder your movements. You fall out laughing, finding his need to restrain you laughable, it only excited you.

”Geez, I forgot you were crazy.” He shakes the water out of his hair.

Rosie was out of the pool and in the little outside kitchen whipping up a few drinks for everyone. “Hey! Who wants drinks? I make a mean margarita, virgin or experienced.”

“Me! I want one!” You swim over to the ledge, resting your chin on your folded arms. “One for him too...” You look back and Jungkook’s already swimming under the water and you move over to sit on one of the steps to wait for him to emerge.

“Here you go, Y/n.” She hands you two drinks.

“Thank you.” You set his drink down and you smile when he slowly swims up to rest his folded arms on your knees, doe eyes sparkling like stars.

“You wanna tell me what happened today?” He whispered, careful not to make his voice heard by anyone other than you. “I know something happened, you sounded frustrated when you answered the phone.”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now, let’s just focus on the good vibes in this nice heated pool, okay?...” You force a convincing grin, taking a sip of your drink, and directing your attention to the movie that’s playing.

He shrugs, moving to sit on the step beside you only to move you as if you’re weightless to sit between his legs. He grabs his drink and relaxes, freehand holding you against him. It’s not long before Jimin brings over some snacks and you know Jungkook is in his little heaven right now. His baby in his lap, a drink in his hand, and snacks at arms reach; he’s all set.

Though you’re trying to keep your attention on the movie, you can’t ignore the nagging thoughts about today. It’s hard not to let the thought of being stripped of your title all because of a sore loser get to you.

The night goes on, people are heading inside where Jimin had another movie set up in the living room inside. That meant the only people lingering in the pool are Jungkook and you. Eventually, you turn to straddle his lap and he pulls you in for a kiss, which just heightened your stress for some reason. His hands find their place on your hips and he leans up for more of you.

“Hey, will you do something for me?...” Jungkook pulls away, grinning at your pinkish lips and the thought of his own, you nod. “I want to take pictures of you out here in the water...”

You blink, fingers fiddling behind his neck. “Um, how would you like me?” You hoped that didn’t sound too awkward.

“I could answer that a thousand different ways but in terms of the picture, however you’d like, pretty girl,” He smirks as he fights not to take your seemingly innocent question for an entertaining turn.

He got out of the pool and made his way to your tote bag. You weren’t surprised to discover that he had snuck his snacks and camera into it.  You knew it felt heavier than normal. You folded your arms and rested your chin on them as you waited patiently for him to press the little buttons.

He crisscrossed his legs and held the camera to test out the angles. It always amazed you to see him take pictures or draw, he seemed so calm and focused, completely in his element.

“Charlotte told me she reported me today.” You confess suddenly, causing him to lower the camera. He glances up at you briefly, brows furrowing.

“For what?”

“When I won first place, the judge that gave me the winning score was a past coach of mine. She argued that the coach was biased and gave me an unfair score.” You sigh, wanting to get out of the water now that he wasn’t beside you. “Can you believe that?”

“That’s what you were upset about. Baby, don’t let that get to you. You won because you’re fucking talented and no self-righteous bitch has the right to take that from you.” He reasons, but you still have a pout on your face.

“Yeah, but there’s nothing I can do. It just sucks, a lot...” You lift yourself out of the water and sit on the edge, legs dangling in the warm blue oasis. You can hear the shutter of the camera and you look back at him, trying your hand at a little pose of some sort. He smiles when he pulls away to see how it came out.

“That looks good. I’m blowing that one up and putting it in my room.”

“Oh my God, Jungkook. Do not do that...I’ll cringe every time I see it.” You frown, now fully getting out of the water with the empty pina colada in hand. The little alcohol that was in it did little to nothing to soothe your nerves, but you’ll get your buzz soon enough.

“I’m getting kind of cold out here,” You head over to the chairs and grab a towel. “can we go inside and change?”

“Yeah,” He does a few things to the camera and shoves it back into your tote, “we can change in one of the back rooms.” Jungkook is shirtless still, and you can’t help but stare at the art adorning his skin, and how good it looks in the pale moonlight. He’s also sporting a killer pair of earrings today and you’re wondering if he’s trying to seduce you or something. If so, it’s working. For some reason, when he bends down to grab his top off of the floor, you don’t even notice yourself reaching to tangle your fingers into his long damp hair. He grins to himself but continues to walk inside, a towel now loosely around his shoulders.

When you walk beside him, you see the house is only lit by the lamps on the end tables and everyone's laughing at the movie that Jimin put on. Jungkook easily grabs your hand and quickly leads you to the guest room where Jimin said you could change.

“J- Jungkook, why are you in such a hurry?” You giggle when he skips into the darkroom and shuts the door behind you two—something told you he had other plans in mind. Before you know it, he’s grabbing the backs of your thighs and picking you up, towel falling from both of your shoulders as he sits on the edge of the bed with you straddling his lap. His hands graze your sides before they fall behind him to keep himself up and let you sit however you wanted. You furrow your brows, blushing at the suddenness of it all.  “What are you doing?”

“You’re so beautiful, just wanted to tell you that.” He simpers, his eyes sweeping over you in your little black swimsuit.

“Thank you, you’re beautiful too,” You lean into him to tickle under his chin like he does to make you feel little. His hands go to your waist and he holds you tight, face nuzzling into your chest like a sleepy child.  “Can I ask you something? And can you answer honestly?...”

“Sure,” He peers up at you, “shoot.”

“Um, you never talk about your family...We’ve been together for a while now and you’ve only told me that your real dad died when you were little and that you really don’t like your stepdad...And that your brother recently got married and lives in a different city...But what was growing up like for you?”

He furrows his brows as if he didn’t quite understand your question. “Uh, you don’t want to hear about that baby,” His mood turns a bit cold suddenly and he lifts you off of him. You’re sitting on the bed and he stands up to slip on his t-shirt, “it’s nothing special.”

“If it’s about you, it is special to me.” You argue, turning from him to slip your suit off and putting your undergarments on then your sweats.

“I know you’d like to think that, but that’s really not the case.” He scoffed, this little attitude of his taking you by surprise.

You frown, opening your mouth to come back at him, “But-”

“I swear Y/n,” He grabs your shoulders and kisses you hard. Aggression. When he doesn’t want to face something, that’s one if his first responses. That or an attitude.

You don’t dare move because he tilts his head and boldly tongues at your lips. Regrettably, you find yourself submitting to the overwhelming feeling. When his hands slide down to grasp your small wrists, he pulls away, leaving you breathless, “even thinking about it makes me want to smoke, and I know you don’t want that so let’s drop the subject, okay?”

“B- But why don’t you want to tell me, Jungkook?” You step away from him as you rub his saliva from your bottom lip. “I’m not trying to mess up your night or anything, I’m just curious. I’m your girlfriend, but Jimin knows more about your past than I do and I just feel like-”

”Y/n,” He stops your rambling, “you can stay in here if you want but I’m going to watch the movie.” He walks out of the room and it takes everything in you not to yank him back.

You shove your swimsuit in a plastic bag and into your tote before walking out of the room behind him.

“They’re back...” Jimin mumbles more to himself with grin and you roll your eyes, throwing your bag to the corner. Jungkook sinks into the couch but his eyes don’t follow you into the kitchen like you thought they would. He’s sitting like he always does, legs spread wide and head resting on his hand as he mindlessly watches the TV screen.

He’s so moody.

He must have somewhat of an idea of how you might be feeling. If he’ll be closed-lipped to his own girlfriend about his past—what else would he be willing to keep from you?

As the night went on, you sat beside him and ate the rest of your snack. It was weird, you didn't talk to each other, and even when he put his hand on your thigh every now and then, he wouldn’t say a word. Even when he’d curl his fingers into your fleshy thigh, earning an expected squirm from you, he wouldn’t even look at you.

Around 1 a.m, everyone started to trickle out. Jimin went to shower and he convinced his friend to go sleep in the backroom because he had a little much to drink to drive anywhere. Eventually, it was just you two and Back to The Future in the living room.

You glanced at him, his hair covered his eyes a bit, it made you want to push it back and see that cute furrow in his eyebrows. But he’s not fluffy and cute right now, he’s burning hot and dripping with propane, one spark from you and he’s up in flames. The tension is pretty ridiculous, neither of you want to give in. If there’s one thing you have in common, it’s that the silent treatment is both of your go-tos.

“So, we’re just not gonna talk now.”

Is that supposed to be a question or a statement?

“That’s entirely up to you...” You cross your arms, eyes glued to the TV now that he’s looking at you. “Since you obviously don’t talk unless it's on your terms...”

“That’s not fucking fair and you know it. You’re being really selfish right now, you know that?” He shakes his head like you’ve gone completely delusional. “I never made you talk about your personal life. Like the fact that your birth mother gave you up.”

You visibly stiffened at that.

He certainly knows how to strike a nerve.

“Or the fact that you grew up with your foster parents and even though they “loved you like their own” and adopted you, sometimes you feel out of place with your adoptive brothers and older sister. You told me all of that but I never forced it out of you, I let you tell me when you were ready.” He stares at you, awaiting a response.

He really went there.

“Jungkook,” You glare at him, “Why would you use my past as leverage in an argument?” You turn completely away from him and bite your lip, “that’s low.”

Already having anticipated your reaction, he lets out a heavy sigh,. “I’m not using it as leverage, I’m using it as an example to show you that you’re being hypocritical. I love you but you can’t force me to talk about some things, I need time to-”

“I am not a hypocrite!” You raise your voice at him abruptly, making him pause mid-sentence.

Wow, you really sounded childish. Tears are forming at your eyes and your face feels like it was set on fire—this is not how tonight was supposed to go.

“I don’t understand why you would keep this type of stuff away from me.” You whine, brows furrowed and tight with a puffy pout. “How can you expect me to trust you when you can’t even talk to me about your own family?”

“Fine.” He snaps at you, tone sharper than you’ve ever heard it. But you can’t bring yourself to be phased by it. He pushes his damp locks from his forehead, exposing his dark brows in his wake.

“My mom was a nurse, my dad was a cop. Everything was fine when I was younger but behind closed doors, they were ripping each other's heads off.” His firey presence is decreasing in size the more he talks, now he’s just getting cold. “Only when I got older did I find out that my dad had a drinking problem and my mom was always on the verge of filing for divorce.” He sighs.

“He drank like he didn’t give a shit about his life and ended up dying in a DUI when I was 8. After that, my mom went through guys like fucking clockwork, there was a new one every few months. I gave her a lot of problems because- I don’t know, I was just reacting to a fucked-up situation. Her boyfriends would try to parent me, tell me to stop getting tattoos and smoking because it quote, ‘upset my mother.’  That was bullshit. I didn’t listen to any of the crap they had to say to me.” His voice was vehement and it was almost as if talking about it made him re-live parts of it.

“Why would I listen to someone who doesn’t know shit about me? I had to remind them that just because they fuck my mother doesn't mean they suddenly had a free pass to play daddy to me.” The blatant vulgarity of his words makes you shudder.

“A few years back, she started talking to this new guy. He was a successful businessman, lived in a nice area, he was everything she wanted. I knew she really liked him too, so I laid off a bit on getting into it with him so much. We didn’t talk much but he respected my space so I was fine with him. She stayed with him longer than she had with any of them. They’ve been married for 4 years, maybe 5 now? Besides his 25-year-old son from a previous marriage, he has a daughter with my mom, she’s I think 6 now...Yeah, her name is Jooe, she’s my half-sister.”

That’s the first time he’s ever mentioned a little sister. You grinned at the thought of Jungkook interacting with a cute little girl who favored his soft appearance.

“I had a falling out with their dad a few months back over some life choices I’ve decided to make. We can barely be in the same room for more than a few minutes without arguing now. My stepbrother was gonna have me come to his wedding but he knew his dad wouldn’t have liked that. I guess to avoid the commotion, he kept me out of the picture entirely, it was better for everyone in the end...I’m sorry I called you that night, I was so drunk.” He scoffed, sliding both hands down his face with a heavy sigh. “I wish I was drunk right now.”

That was it.

He said what you wanted to hear.

Silence engulfs the room and only now do you realize that the movie is indeed still on and Jimin is still in the bathroom. After a painful dead silence, he gets up and you watch him trail off into the kitchen. Of course, he went straight to the fridge, eyes in search of one of a bottle of relief. You don’t say a thing to him when he walks back to you with a bottle of his choice of alcohol and sits it on the table in front of you two.

He peers at you, hand reaching for the bottle but you stop him by grabbing his wrist. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” You blurt out, and you only ramble from then on, “I’ve never been in a serious relationship like this before and- And I don’t want to get hurt again. I was with this guy a long time ago, we met at school and while we were dating, he had been seeing this other girl. He didn’t answer my calls and when I went to his house to see if he was ok, this other girl was there, and she was pregnant.” You grimace at the thought.

“I got so mad, I wanted to hurt him the same way he was hurting me...I started screaming at him and hitting him, the girl eventually called the cops and they had to pull me off but he didn’t press charges against me.” You scoff. “I think they just felt sorry for me.”

He tightens his brows. “Why did you never tell me this?” When you first met, he would have never imagined that you did something like that. “That’s pretty rough stuff to carry, I didn’t know you had any past relationships.”

“Yeah, but it’s embarrassing...I thought you might think I’m crazy or something and decide to leave me.” You twiddle your fingers, looking up to gauge his reaction.

“Y/n, I’ve done some crazy shit, I’d be stupid to leave you just because that idiot pissed you off for knocking up some girl while dating you. I don’t blame you.” He takes a sip of beer and lets his hand rest on your upper thigh, almost touching the crease separating your hips and thigh. “I swear, I would never do something like that to you.”

You slide your hand over his, eyes wavering when he continues to stare you down with that look of want that never fails to chill you to the bone. He presses his face up into the crook your neck, his breath hot against your ear, “Do you hear me?” He almost purs. “Baby?” He trails his hand up to rest at the base of your neck, index finger tracing your skin. He’s too much.

“Mhm,” You nod, smiling, “we should head home, it’s getting late.” You clear your throat, and Jungkook moves away to look you over.

“Your place or mine,” He smirks,

You bite your lip. “Yours...”

“Hey, guys-” Jimin emerged from the bathroom and your eyes widened. “Sorry,” He snickers when he sees Jungkook’s hand leave you to settle on your lower back, “I didn’t mean to interrupt,”

“You’re not! Nope, you’re not interrupting anything,” You quickly stand to your feet, scrambling for your tote, “We’re actually about to head out.”

“Yeah, I gotta get her home, she’s got stuff to do in the morning.” Jungkook glances at you and you have to stop yourself from saying that you really don’t. But you know Jungkook is just saying that to get you two out of here without Jimin insisting that you stay.

“Okay,” Jimin just shrugs and grabs the bowl of pretzels off of the coffee table, “drive safe.”

“Thanks, Jimin, we’ll see you later,” You rush over to give him a goodbye hug, “thank you for tonight.” He easily wraps an arm around you with a smirk directed towards Jungkook.

“Okay,” Jungkook grabs your hand eagerly, “see you Hyung,”

Jungkook wisps you away and soon you two are in his car, anxious to fall into his floral-scented bed sheets.

You look through heavy eyelids to see a sheen of sweat covering his bare chest and some of his long hair was sticking to his forehead. He looks so, so good. Your eyes find the plumb blossom tattoo that you love so much and you follow it as it continues down his chest. On his left bicep, he’s got this intricate collage of little pictures he’s drawn, he’s even got a tattoo of a butterfly that you tried to draw one day. You told him not to use it because you didn’t think it was good enough, but a few days later, you showed up to his gym and there it was. He wears it proudly now and it makes you feel fuzzy inside.

Earlier, he reached into his nightstand for something, hand plundering around until he finds it. He sits up and he’s holding a lighter and a blunt in each hand. You're watching him through squinted eyes because you're sure he thinks you’re asleep. The blunt is pinched between his long fingers and he lights it, desperate to breathe the vapors for a fleeting euphoria. You make note that he keeps blunts in his nightstand for times like this.

His head lols back after the second drag and he sits it in the ashtray. He looks like art, smoking hot art. His earrings dangle when he moves, his hair beautifully unkempt—courtesy of you. His arms are lined with veins and that reminds you just how strong he is, and how easily he throws you around. The thought alone makes you remember how lucky you are.

“Mm...” He groans, mouth agape and eyes heavy with the after-effects. He smoothes his fingers over your cheek, smirking at how flushed the skin was. “You awake?”

“Yes.” You grumble.

“Let’s dance.” He grins.

“What? It’s 2 o’clock in the morning.” You sit up, “How do you have energy? I’m tired...” He had already hopped out of bed, black boxers being the only thing covering him. You watched as he typed a few things on his phone and the Bluetooth on his nightstand starts blaring out one of your favorite songs.

“Get up and dance with your boyfriend,” He grabbed your arm and started tugging you up, there was no point in resisting.

You let him place your arms around his neck and lead you to the rhythm that he followed naturally. You’ve only had the pleasure of going to the club with Jungkook twice and each time he gave you the dance sessions of your life. You had never been shot dirtier looks by more girls in your life, you just laughed it off as jealousy. Who could blame them? His hands find their place on your hips and he presses his face up against yours—these are the moments you get to experience Jungkook at his most transparent.

“Hey,” He wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you closer, “are we good?”

“Yeah, we’re good.” You nod, “I’m sorry for even bringing your personal-life up in the first place, tonight wasn’t the night to talk about stuff like that.”

“Babe,” He doesn’t stop dancing with you as he reaches for the joint in the ashtray, “you were gonna find out sooner or later, it’s fine.” Mindful not to blow it in your face, he knows you hate that—maybe even more so than him actually smoking. He takes a hit and blows the cloud of smoke over your shoulder, eyes shutting in bliss when your fingers tangle into his luscious raven locks. “You feel sooo amazing...”

“Are you high?” You trace your hands down to his warm chest, he shivers at your touch.

He laughs, long hair covering his eyes when he looks at you. “No. Well, maybe a little-”

Suddenly, the music goes off and his phone buzzes rapidly. He reluctantly pulls away from you to grab it off of the nightstand, he stares at his phone.

“Who is it?” You inquire, taking a seat on the bed with him when he continues to stare at it.

“It’s Jooe.” He frowns, questioning why the little girl is even up at this hour. “Why is she even up this late? And when did she get a phone...”

“Answer it Jungkook,” You nudge him, “it could be an emergency.”

He picks it up and holds it to his ear. “Jooe? What are you doing up-” You hear a little voice over the phone and rambling on, your heart plummeting into your stomach at the thought of what she was telling him.

“Hey, slow down, tell me what happened,” His eyes are laser-focused and he grimaces at what she’s saying, “she’s okay now? It’s just you and your dad there? Why the fu-” He bites his tongue when he realizes who he’s talking to, “Why didn’t he call me?” He glances at you, a hand on your thigh to reassure you. “Okay, I’ll come first thing in the morning, tell her and your dad that.” She says a little something and he sighs. “Love you too.”

He puts the phone down and takes the longest drag of his blunt you’ve ever seen anyone take. There had to be not an ounce of oxygen in his lungs.

“What happened?”

“My mom is in the hospital.”

“Oh my gosh,” You gasp, “Is she okay?

“Her appendix ruptured about two hours ago and I got the call from a 6-year-old, not her husband. A 6-year-old, Y/n.” He abruptly stands up, hands pushing his hair back angrily, “I have some fucking words for him when I see him.” His ears are tomato red, he’s getting angry. You get up to drag him to the bathroom. “I have half a mind to go up there now-“

“Shh, you need to stay calm,” You flick on the light and put his toothbrush in his hand, “brush your teeth and get in bed. Don’t stress yourself, okay? I’ll go with you in the morning.” You wait for him to respond and he gives you a weak nod.

You tell him not to stress himself out but you’re freaking out on the inside. If you go with him in the morning, that’ll be the first time you meet his family and he’s not on good terms with his mother's husband. Now you have to get added to the mix. Jungkook walks out of the bathroom and basically dives face first into bed before crawling up to lay his head on your soft chest, arms wrapping around your middle. Sometimes he forgets how heavy he is and just crushes you, but you let it slide because he’s just so cute like that. He’s quiet, mind probably facing with worry. The steady beat of his heart, the rise, and fall of his chest as he let his eyes slip shut. You let him drift asleep with the comfort of knowing loving hands were holding him. When he gets like this, and life is literally kicking his butt, you feel like your problems pale in comparison. And it makes you hold him tighter.

They do you so so dirty, baby.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 5, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

It appears that the closing argument from the Trump campaign for his reelection was supposed to be that the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, was overreacting to coronavirus, making fun, for example, of his insistence on wearing a mask and staying distant from others.

Trump was supposed to project strength in the face of the pandemic, suggesting that it has been way overblown by Democrats who oppose his administration and who are thus responsible for the faltering economy.

Then, of course, coronavirus began to spread like wildfire through Trump’s own inner circle after last Sunday’s Rose Garden celebration of Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court seat formerly held by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As Trump and increasing numbers of people in his inner circle began to test positive for the infection, the campaign first floundered, and now appears to be trying to brazen out the idea that the disease is not a big deal, and that Trump has conquered it.

This is insane. Covid-19 has currently infected more than 7 million Americans, and killed more than 210,000 of us, close to the number of Union soldiers—224,097-- who died in our bloody four-year Civil War.

Apparently, it is frustrating Trump that he cannot campaign. Last night, he traveled in a motorcade around Walter Reed Hospital, waving to supporters. The trip horrified medical personnel, who noted that the presidential vehicle is sealed against chemical attack, meaning that the secret service professionals traveling with the president were exposed to a deadly disease for no apparent reason. One of the agents assigned to the First Family told CNN “That never should have happened… The frustration with how we’re treated when it comes to decisions on this illness goes back before this though. We’re not disposable.”

Dr. James P. Phillips, from the Walter Reed Hospital, took to Twitter: “Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential “drive-by” just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”

Even staffers were complaining about the disorganization in the West Wing after Trump’s drive. But things did not get more anchored this morning.

Early on, the president began to tweet at a great pace, in all caps, campaign slogans followed by the word “VOTE!” His promises were random and unanchored in reality, with words like “BIGGEST TAX CUT EVER, AND ANOTHER ONE COMING. VOTE!” According to Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair, the Trump family is divided over Trump’s performance. According to two Republicans close to the family, Don Jr. was worried by the drive around the hospital. “Don Jr. thinks Trump is acting crazy,” said one of the sources. But Ivanka, Eric, and Jared Kushner “keep telling Trump how great he’s doing.” All of them, though, worried about the morning’s tweet storm.

The infection continues to spread through the White House. This morning, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced that she, too, has tested positive for coronavirus, a day after she briefed reporters without a mask. Two sources told CNN that two of McEnany’s deputies, Chad Gilmartin and Karoline Leavitt, have also tested positive, along with two members of the White House staff. McEnany said at first the White House was planning to put out the number of staffers infected, but then said it could not, out of “privacy concerns.” But of course there’s no privacy at stake in the raw numbers.

Today we learned that another person who attended the Rose Garden event, Pastor Greg Laurie of the Harvest Christian Fellowship megachurches in California and Hawaii, has tested positive for coronavirus. In addition, thirteen workers who helped to cater a private Trump fundraiser last Thursday in Minnesota are all quarantining.

Although doctors expressed surprise and concern at the idea Trump might leave Walter Reed Hospital today, the president tweeted: “I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

Doctors noted that he is in a dangerous period for the progression of Covid-19, and that anyone who had required the sorts of treatments Trump has had is too sick to leave the hospital. “I will bet dollars to doughnuts it’s the president and his political aides who are talking about discharge, not his doctors,” William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University’s medical school, told the Washington Post.

A briefing by Trump’s doctors obscured more than it revealed. The White House physician, Sean Conley, has refused to tell reporters when Trump last tested negative for coronavirus, a piece of information that would tell us when he knew he was infected. He also refused to explain why the president is being treated with a steroid usually reserved for seriously ill patients, or to discuss the state of Trump’s lungs. He did say that the president is “not out of the woods yet.”

Nonetheless, Trump left Walter Reed Hospital tonight, after lights had been installed to enable him to make a triumphant exit. Still infectious, he went back to the White House and climbed a flight of stairs to a balcony, where he dramatically removed his face mask and saluted well-wishers from a balcony. Although the moment was clearly designed to make Trump look strong, it was obvious he was struggling to breathe.

Vox’s Aaron Rupar noted that “Trump has no choice but to continue to downplay coronavirus (despite 210,000 dead and record new case numbers) because if he changed course, it would be an admission that he was wrong about the defining issue of his presidency -- at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.”

This evening, Trump released a video telling people not to let the coronavirus “dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re going to beat it…. Don’t let it take over your lives.” CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta dubbed him “Coronavirus in Chief.”

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden held a town hall tonight in Miami, Florida, where he gave detailed answers to questions about police reform (more money, ban chokeholds and no knock warrants); socialism (“I’ve taken on the Castros of the world. I didn’t cozy up to them”); a mask mandate (the president can only mandate masks on federal property, but he would call on governors and mayors to do the same); and reopening schools (PPE, small classes, ventilation). Watchers noted that it was a treat both to see a normal conversation and to hear detailed, informed answers.

To stay in touch with voters, Biden today began “Notes from Joe,” a daily newsletter.

Bloomberg is reporting that the contrast between the recent craziness of the White House and Biden’s calm detail has led the stock market to stabilize. Strategists are coming to think there will not be a contested election after all. Biden’s lead over Trump increased again after Trump’s debate performance, which apparently was designed to try to bully Biden by hitting triggers until he began to stutter, thus enabling the Trump campaign to portray him as mentally incapacitated. That strategy failed as Biden parried the triggers, and Americans were repelled by Trump’s behavior. Peter Rosenstreich, head of market strategy at Swissquote Bank SA, told Bloomberg, “Polls are shifting from a close election and prolonged uncertainty to more a dominant Biden and clean succession…. That is reducing uncertainty and increasing risk appetite.”

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

[carrollstreetstation]

SPEAR OF DESTINY: A LEVEL-BY-LEVEL BREAKDOWN

(note: due to the extreme simplicity of wolfenstein’s design ethos, i will be forgoing screenshots, with one exception. you’ve seen one wolf3d screenshot, you’ve seen them all. if you would like to see the game in action, i recommend this LP.)

spear of destiny

with the smash success of the original wolfenstein 3D, it was perhaps inevitable that there would be a followup -- and this time, it was to be a retail release, meant to be put in a box and sold in stores by formgen. developed over the course of two months as john carmack worked on what would form the basis of the doom engine, "spear of destiny" is an "expandalone" of sorts in that it's shorter than the main game by far (only 21 levels) but did not require the main game to play. it stands as a prequel to the "nocturnal missions" (which were themselves prequels to the original episode trilogy. unlike the main game, where the hint manual gave indirect attribution to most of the maps, it's unclear who at id was responsible for which map. the only thing we can say for certain is that the level design is a massive improvement on the original game, generally eschewing the more abstract design ethos as embodied by the likes of episode six for a more realistic setting.

tunnels 1: entrance to the tunnels short and sweet intro to the mapset. opens up similar to the first level of wolf3d ep 2, with BJ infiltrating the castle through a tunnel entrance in the castle's lower levels. no mutants to be found here, though, just regular goons. it's more or less a straight shot to the exit, but there's no harm in poking around.

tunnels 2: corridors of confusion awesome music in this level. in the tunnels deep beneath the castle, this is a confusing maze that loops in on itself repeatedly. mostly staffed by low-level guards and SS goons, this level won't make you sweat much.

tunnels 3: cave-in! another quickie, this one's defined by a long hallway with multiple rooms along it, some of them seeming to be torture chambers. the hallway has been bisected by a cave-in (very cutely done by simply placing a couple of stony-looking wall blocks in the middle of the passage) so you'll need to navigate some tunnels to get around the blockage. very low-key action.

tunnels 4: fortune and glory the castle's treasure vault is a sprawling underground complex. the western half of the map is quasi-realistic castle-style architecture, but get into the secret areas and watch the path turn into spaghetti. it's worth it though -- 1-ups at the end of one secret area, the secret level at the end of the other.

tunnels secret going a bit old-school here, this is a sprawling map made up of different sections, each annoying in their own way. despite being a prequel, mutants make their first chronological appearance in this level, and several sections are designed to take advantage of their utter silence and breathtaking firing speed.

tunnels 5: guardian of the dungeon door unlike the original wolfenstein which was split into six episodes of 10 levels with a boss at the end of each, the 21 levels of spear of destiny are split into much smaller contiguous episodes. the "tunnels" chapter thus comes to an end with this level, an absolute shitshow of guards and SS coming after you from all sides. clear out the bullshit and you'll have to deal with trans grosse ("beyond big" in german) -- a relative of the grosse family by the looks of it. he's enormous, he's got two chainguns, and he goes down like a sack of dead chimps with enough concentrated fire. but with all the goons he's got in his boss arena, your first priority should be clearing out a safe area in which to deal with him.

dungeons 1: dungeon depths pretty standard level. the first area is a blue-stoned dungeon; beyond the dungeon exit is a labyrinthine network of tunnels and hallways in red brick. it's a maze down there and all too easy for enemies to get behind you. otherwise, nothing of note.

dungeons 2: winding dungeons like the last level, this is a bog-standard wolfenstein map split between a blue dungeon area and a separate area, in this case mossy stone. though the dungeon area is large, resistance isn't too fierce. that changes when you get into the lower half of the map, when nazi goons start coming at you from all directions.

dungeons 3: guard post i get the feeling john romero did this one. it's an enormous maze of mostly blue dungeon walls, filled to the brim with enemies. one shot and they all congregate on you, leading to a frantic firefight that requires constantly moving forward to not get overwhelmed. find the key to the locked door and you'll find yourself in a long corridor that surrounds the entire maze, equally heavily guarded as you work your way around to the other side of the map to reach the elevator. great map.

dungeons 4: main dungeon this level can actually be mostly bypassed if you know the secret paths. so you can effectively dodge a room full of SS and officers guarding the key by simply sneaking in past them, and then taking another secret passage that leads directly to the exit. it's a neat little trick that suggests tom hall's involvement. if you choose to do this the hard way, it's a bog-standard map split into three areas with little in the way of resistance, so a bit of a breather after the massacre that was the previous level.

dungeons 5: barnacle wil the jailer similar to the tunnels boss level, this is a map featuring an arena with some heavily guarded antechambers. find your way into the boss room and you'll face barnacle wilhelm, who carries a chaingun and a missile launcher, but he's hardly a threat. the bigger issue are the officers and other losers who attend him, who lie in wait until they see you, meaning it's unwise to move about too much in the boss arena until wilhelm is down.

castle 1: castle entrance the back half of spear of destiny shows some more of the quasi-realistic philosophy behind the level design. the bulk of the level is a confusing maze of rooms that serve no real purpose, but they're surrounded not only by a wall hollowed out by a secret passageway, but an outer wall that serves as the main defense of the castle, complete with two trucks parked in the gateway, the outside world visible beyond. it's a neat touch that adds a bit of a realistic vibe to an otherwise abstract level.

castle 2: barreling through the castle fuck you for this pun, id. (and fuck you for doing it again with doom 2's "barrels o' fun.") the early part of the map is full of ambushes in which barrels are used as barricades, with nazis firing at you from cover and no way for you to recover their ammo. past that bullshit is another standard maze of rooms and halls, with mutants occupying a wing in the southeast.

castle secret: pushwall panic! if there's proof that sometimes secret levels just aren't worth it, it's this one. as the name suggests, the core conceit of this level is pushwalls, pushwalls everywhere. it's a massive, confusing nightmare maze made up of different sections, all of them hidden behind pushwalls. if you're not attempting this with a map like the one in the hint guide, you'll probably go mad.

castle 3: castle hassle resuming the castle shape of "castle entrance," this opens in a broad, cavernous loop around a lower level of the castle. entrance into the castle proper is through the four corners. the level is mostly populated by mutants and a few handlers, so quick reaction times are a must. the interior of the castle is another abstract maze sectioned off into four different areas you must access from one of the corners.

castle 4: militant mutants oh god. mutants are everywhere on this level, especially in the cave section to the northwest. it's honestly a real shitshow. the tension is palpable, but id do reward you with a great fakeout -- throw the switch of the first elevator you see and the wall moves back, revealing health and ammo and a 1-up.

castle 5: gauntlet guards the mutant mayhem continues with this abstract spaghetti of a map partially bisected by two parallel hallways. the opening of the map is very cruel, a gauntlet of thin hallways you must wind your way through while being fired upon by mutants. get past that and the rest isn't too bad provided you know where to go.

castle 6: king of the mutants chriiiist. this boss level is even worse than the tunnel boss level. jammed absolutely full of nazis, ammo is scarce and often behind the very enemies you need the ammo for. the main room has a central area from which dozens of guards can fire at you with relative impunity from behind columns. if you can work your way through the swarm of assholes that dominate the side hallways you'll get the key that lets you into the inner chamber. the big metal box that dominates the room contains the ubermutant, a giant, four-armed mutant on steroids. fortunately, unlike his regular-sized brethren, he isn't nearly as quick on the draw, meaning you have a little time to dive for cover before he opens fire.

ramparts 1: the ramparts top floor. this is most emphatically not a large level -- in fact, it's literally just the castle walls, with a small chapel to hitler of sorts at the center. id software have cleverly managed to make it look like an outdoor section, with the outer walls resembling rampart walls with a sky the color of the dark cyan ceiling this game commonly uses. however, despite the small size, it's wall to wall nazis, without a lot of health or ammo.

ramparts 2: guardian of the spear as boss levels go, compared to the ubermutant level this one is much more forgiving... provided you can get past the death knight, a massive fascist in power armor who takes a hell of a beating and can dish it out just as good. and he's not alone, with an army of officers and their mutant pets. luckily, there is an *assload* of health and ammo on either side of the level, so keeping yourself well stocked should be easy. when the dust settles, you can unlock the chamber holding the spear of destiny, and take it for yourself...

the death dimension WELCOME TO HELL. in what had to have been foreshadowing for what would eventually become doom, grabbing the spear sends you to a nightmarish dimension that very much looks like hell as envisioned in doom's third episode, a cavernous maze filled with skulls on poles, blood and skeletons everywhere, the souls of the damned zooming in on you, and the so-called angel of death, a massive demon who throws green fireballs at you. it's a frightening, unexpected climax to the game, and by far one of the best curveballs a game has ever thrown. even if the boss himself isn't a great challenge -- though watch out for the ghosts flying around, as they can only be put down for a few seconds.

final thoughts: in an era of shareware and games being spread across an episodic structure, a game that just gives you a single adventure across a series of levels was a bit unusual, particularly from id software. 21 levels of nazi murder without a break, split across five different themes, with five bosses to keep you amused. it's a bit of a mixed bag, however. the early tunnel levels are light and easy, letting you dip your toes in. the dungeon levels are more standard wolfenstein, akin to something we'd see out of, say, wolfenstein 3D's second episode. the castle chapter mostly just kind of... sucks. the final two levels are brutal, though not as bad as the ubermutant level immediately preceding. if you can survive the ramparts, the game drops a great surprise finale. overall i'd say that the level design is *generally* better than wolf 3D, but there are some missteps, namely that second secret level. i do like the attempt at creating some semblance of a real-world castle, but in general it seems to be the case that they simply use the basic outline of a castle to construct a more abstract maze within, and even then they don’t do that consistently. still, it’s a nice early attempt at realism in an FPS.

[technicolordeams]

June 7, 2020

“I'm the girl nobody knows until she commits suicide. Then suddenly everyone had a class with her.” -  Tom Leveen, Party

This has been my status on discord for about a month now. It just feels too relevant to me at these times.

I know I said I was going to update my blog back in May, but it’s taken me until now to get to doing it. Things have been hectic both with me and in the world. I am dealing with emotional trauma still (But I’m not going to talk about it on here. I do not feel safe enough to do so and I’m going to keep it to myself, my therapists, parents, and pastors at my church. Maybe two other people that I know too. Some people know that something went down with me recently but I won’t spread it around anymore. I’d rather not deal with anything... But it has caused me to have renewed trauma from when I was growing up. Surprisingly I don’t have an association with a girl I considered my best friend for seven years who turned out to be a pathological liar and manipulator. I guess I was able to get closure with that one and just be done with it. But the ones from before that... It just brings those back up. Anyways, I won’t go into any further detail about that in this blog.)

So I’ll try to summarize things a bit... But I’ve never been good at keeping things short. xD 

First off, in November of 2019 I started having really bad pains in my stomach. Just... horrific pain. (Before this started, I was working getting a job with the aid of a job coach.) I landed in the ER a total of 4 times, could have been 5 but that fit wasn’t as bad and went away after a couple hours. But in December after my 3rd ER visit to get pain relief and more testing... and some morphine (sorry but this stuff was good. But I know limitations and wasn’t going to the ER for it. It was strictly to ease the pain so I could rest) I had a couple tests done... I FINALLY got an x-ray of my stomach and it showed I had a slightly inflamed gallbladder. Before this, the nurse that was working with me and my parents just believed I was having constipation and I was being too sedentary. That miffed me big time. I remember coming home one day from shopping for groceries and such that my mom was just telling me off about how I need to exercise more... (I have a fear that is ingrained in my head over exercising. Thanks Children’s ED center.) I just went to my room, no lights, didn’t take my jacket off at all, just curled up on my bed and cried as quietly as I could even though I wanted to wail. I was sick of people not believing me when things aren’t going right with my body and I have been mistreated for many things. I didn’t want to hear this from my parents. There was something wrong and I needed help. I did end up getting a HIDA scan after meeting with a surgeon who said the x-ray wasn’t enough proof that there was something wrong and didn’t want to do anything drastic that possibly won’t help me. But I got the HIDA scan which confirmed that there was something wrong with my gallbladder and on my birthday (Horray horray. Legit though I was so happy) I was approved for surgery to get it removed. The surgeon cut my gallbladder open and found A LOT of small gallstones. He was kind of shocked. Over all of this... I lost probably 10lbs? max? Either way, enough to be concerning to me. Now I’m using this experience to get my parents to actually freaking listen to me when I say I’m having problems and that it needs addressed as quickly as possible and quit dragging your damn feet and believe ME.

Also from the surgery, they had to put a breathing tube down my throat. But something happened and has caused me to have chronic coughing fits where I couldn’t even breathe without coughing. And because of my phobia of throwing up, I didn’t want to eat so I started to restrict for a while. Lots of testing was done to figure out what was wrong there... I got an asthma test and it showed that I had a breathing abnormality but the ENT doctor the day before gave me steroids to help. Said it wouldn’t affect my asthma test the next day. It did. :) Had to wait until May to get retested and another test done. The steroids did help for a while... But getting to that point I had been seeing my regular doctor and he gave me a stronger cough medicine that gave me auditory hallucinations... That was terrifying. So I quit that. Was put on another cough medicine that had a controlled substance in it to suppress my cough. It helped... but not enough. In the end since I didn’t want to wait until May to get tested, my doctor got me an inhaler. It actually has helped a lot. I still cough, but it’s not to the gagging/can’t breathe point anymore. I was very scared and stressed and made my dad take me to get lots of tests. Even speech therapist. Due to the covid-19 threat though, I have been heavily isolating myself at home and my asthma test that I was supposed to get last month got canceled/put off to a later date. So I’m stuck paying for an inhaler at full price because insurance is a dick. Anyways that’s that...

In April, I got a puppy. I finally got a dog that I had been thinking about for months and praying for... His name is Echo and he is a yellow lab. The first couple weeks were absolute hell. He would get up at random hours of the night and needs constant supervision. He’s almost 4 months now, but he’s still very much a puppy. He knows sit, stand, down, looks at me if I call his name with a treat in my hand so he’s recognizing his name... And sometimes off when he will listen. I have plenty of bite marks on my hands and stuff xD I had to have an extreme learning curve on how to take care of him. He doesn’t have accidents in the house as much as before, he will usually indicate he needs to go potty by sniffing around and pacing or going to the door and looking at me like, ‘human. I must defecate.’ xD And he’s got quite the attitude. Which I don’t mind as long as he’s not ripping my clothes or biting me or jumping at me. Dad has stepped in to help me during the mornings take care of him since I’m not sleeping well. Which has helped me out a lot. He’s doubled in size already and I’m so happy with how he’s acting for the most part. The past couple days this past week we’ve learned how the hose works and how to have fun in it since it’s so hot outside. (Also learned I’m allergic to grass. Yay.) But there were several days where I was so stressed and scared that I couldn’t keep up with him and take care of him and I’d have to give him away... But I already invested so much money in him and time and have already fallen in love with him, I won’t give him up. Right now he’s sleeping under my desk as I write this post. Lots of the time though I have to force myself to pretend to be happy and praise him and play with him and teach him what to do and what not to... And it’s emotionally exhausting. Especially this past week.

I had a couple triggers the past two weeks. One was a possible fractured toe from jamming it super hard into the corner of my desk... Another I was woken to Echo making a horrific gagging noise that scared the shit out of me. Then I’ve been working with a grief counselor this past month in addition to regular therapy (obviously over video chat because of infection chances...) for extra support. Thankfully it’s pro bono so I don’t have to pay anything and neither does any of my insurances. But while working on a section in my WRAP plan (Wellness Recovery Action Plan) there was a part where I just started shutting down and falling apart. The Crisis Plan. “This is what I look like when I’m well:” That is where everything started falling apart. It has been like 7 months since I have felt well at all. I can identify what it looks like when things get too bad to handle on my own for the most part... but when I was asked about if my behavior endangers or has negative effects on me or others I want my supporters to... I locked up. I realized I do not really have anyone who I can go to for any sort of help. My therapist is the only one I can go to really about anything, but I can’t get the amount of help that I need from just her. She has told me that if there was no virus threat and that I was in a different city, she would recommend me to go to a mental health program there... That’s how bad I’ve gotten. 

In December my suicidal thoughts have sprung back up and I have withdrawn slowly and then faster from everyone. My parents don’t know how to handle me when I’m dealing with emotional distress... They are not very knowledgeable about mental illnesses and are pretty cold to emotional reactions. Sometimes mean. I love them very much yes and I know they would do whatever they could to help me... but when I need support from them specifically, things just go downhill. And I no longer have people I consider friends online anymore. I don’t feel safe to call anyone that right now. A girl from my church who was also in the Bible study I was attending before covid hit has been trying to reach out to me. Her and another lady at church are the only ones really actually reaching out to me. My pastor only stepped back into the picture after I posted asking for prayer for me since I called the suicide hotline the night before. And the things he has said to me already have been rather infuriating. Which makes me feel resentful towards the church I’m attending. That and the fact that nobody else actually reaches out to me at all. I know life has been thrown upside down and many have their own families with small children and such... It just feels very two-faced sometimes. I know that’s my distorted thinking kicking in as well... But it’s there and nobody’s around to disprove it. I am very grateful for the one girl who has been trying hard to reach out to me and encourage and just be there, but I know she knows little about the world and the crap in it and has experienced much if it first hand so far. But God bless her she really does try and care. My therapist has talked with my pastor after I signed a release form for her to do so and my parents have also talked to him about me last week. I have yet to hear from him since then though. They are busy though I know trying to figure out how to deal with this covid crap and how to manage the church so people who can’t go physically can still be sort of included...But I just don’t know if I want to go for a while. 

But yeah. While I have been dealing with the loss of my entire online friend group and then being harassed on facebook and only seeing horrible news about covid and people insulting different people and politicians and crap on there... I disabled it for a while. I posted that I was going to do that several hours before I did and told people to message me if they wanted to keep contact with me somehow... Maybe two people did. Granted I had only 69 people on my friends list and a good chunk were family members from the Philippines and don’t usually speak english... I do feel better about not being on it though. The first couple days when I woke up I’d automatically go to fb to look at my notifications and silly stories that I’d get recommended, but after that I felt complete relief. I did get into a bit of an argument about two weeks or so before I decided to do this with a childhood friend I had... She just irritated me... Making it sound like she shouldn’t be forced to stay in like people higher in risk of infection/death because she was healthy and yada yada... Not going to argue on here. I just realized fb is just a toxic social media outlet and I didn’t want to be a part of it. I’m especially glad I got off of it while I did before the rioting happened. I would rather not have my timeline flooded with it. 

Oh yeah, we did get rioting here where I live. Actually 10min away from where I live. That was scary the first couple nights. First night I was home alone with Echo when it started going down while my parents were at work. Thankfully though, our mayor put in a curfew and my parents’ work was closed down at exactly 5pm for EVERYONE. Including employees. Dad had to work on barricading one entrance way in case of looting. Sent me pictures of what he had to do... it was surreal. Not only do we need to be afraid of covid but now hostile people. (Note: I do NOT condone what those police officers did. They are getting punished heavily I assume. If anything, we shouldn’t have been rioting but instead having a vigil in honor for the man killed. Protesting is fine too. But when it becomes violent... I don’t agree with it. That’s just me though. Anyways enough political crap. I don’t want to discuss it on here.) The past two nights the mayor put up a curfew again for two days but two hours later than before (8pm) just to be on the safe side. My parents’ work has gone back to normal hours today. I did go out yesterday to get some groceries and medicine I needed. My car’s A/C has died. That was two hours of hell. 

But yeah...uhm... The depression has increased this past week. Actually... a couple weeks before that. I had a meltdown over Echo chewing through the wire of my drawing tablet... I had it still hooked up even though I can’t draw anymore (Long story... recent bunch of trauma related reasons) because of trauma and also lazy to get in the back of my computer to unplug it. And sort of hope that I might pick it back up again... But that destroyed me that night. I wasn’t mad at him for doing it. He’s a baby he doesn’t know anything. It was my fault for not paying attention and taking a bit more care with those wires. Dad was able to fix it though. But I can’t look at it. That same night I received a text from a friend I made in treatment that I love to death... Telling me that she had just got home from being hospitalized and then placed in a psych ward after trying to commit suicide. I think I broke then. Ever since then, I haven’t been able to process very much emotion... Sleep has become very bad... I fell asleep in my chair a few nights ago. Last week was the first time I’ve been able to have any sort of reaction to emotion aside from a heavy depression... I need a big trigger to happen so that I can finally release these emotions inside because it just won’t come, but I feel it waiting behind a thick glass wall in my head. I’ve even started watching movies and shows that would scare me normally and would avoid just from reading the premise or a trailer. I don’t really get much feeling from it (aside from the one night I watched the new Carrie movie and I had to take Echo out at night and it was foggy and very spooky). 

I think I’ll leave this here now and be done for a bit... I’ve written quite a lot and I’m sure very few people know of it’s existence and will look. But at least I’ve finally gotten some of it out... somewhere... Hopefully Echo will let me take a nap in a little bit. I would like to talk about my eating disorder at some point and how I’ve been since I got out of the treatment facilities in 2018 and maybe some other things. Been watching a bunch of videos of different mental illnesses because I’ve been running into a lot of people with them and I want to be able to at least know what’s it about and how to be a better person towards them and also not offend anyone so nobody goes off on me again.

[guideofmensstyle]

Interview with Diego Arizala from Canada. Winner: “Best Fitness Blogger of the year 2018”

Photo by: Marcel Cristocea

How do you  feel as a winner of a prestigious worldwide competition with 54% of 82,381 votes  coming from everywhere? A/: I’m very happy. I was informed on December 31st when I was in Cali-Colombia with my family.  We all celebrated it together.  

I’m grateful with all the people who voted for me.   It was great to see so many people supporting me.  I won, they won,  at the end we all won because we believe that fitness is more than muscles and exercises. It’s also about Mental health, social  inclusion, diversity, emotions etc. Priceless! Thank you very much.

Photo by: Marcel Cristocea

What your blog has that made  you be the winner? A/:  My blog is different. It shows very well  myself, my values in a “fresh” way. It’s not individualistic.  I go beyond muscles and exercises. I respect the work my colleagues do with blogs focused on exercises or on selfies showing their muscles. We need that approach too. But, I think people are saturated  and lost with a huge amount of images and videos every time they look at their phones. I wanted to do a blog that can promote and inspire people to have a balance in all aspects of their lives. I invite people to think of others, their communities, animals and everything is on this planet. Fitness is holistic. It’s not  only about the shape.

Photo by: Marcel Cristocea

You have a great, great body and you are a very good looking person. Did it help you to win? A/: Thank you very much for your generous words. I won because people identified themselves with my values and they wanted to support the message.  I definitely believe  that beauty is subjective.  All human beings have beauty  and it starts from the deepest part of each of us. I’d prefer to invite  people to look for every person’s beauty especially  what they have inside. I’m sure you will always find something beautiful.

I’ve been training myself for a long time. Fitness is part of my lifestyle. I do what I preach. It’s important for me to be coherent, consistent and honest with myself and others. Aesthetics  results and the shape come  after you have healthy habits with your body and mind.

Are you always a winner? A/: No.  Nobody wants to experience failures. However, I’m glad I had some in my life. You always learn from each experience.

Each failure helped me to be stronger, more human, destroy prejudices,   better understand others and to get to know myself better. Believe me there is always something good in the failures even if it’s important challenge yourself and do your best to be a winner. In the failure you can be a winner and as a winner you can be a real failure.

All the other bloggers who were nominated in this category are amazing and I admire them too.

I’m always humble when I win and proud  of myself keeping my head up when I am a failure and loose a competition.

Photo by: Marcel Cristocea

What is your favorite quote as a winner? A/: Be humble when you win and be proud when you lose.

What is your most important achievement in the fitness field? A/:  To motivate and inspire a huge variety of people: with disabilities,  children, older adults,  people with mental health challenges and cultures.  Everyone should have access to Fitness.

Photo by: Marcel Cristocea

What are the parts of your body that you hate and love the most? A/: I don’t really feel “hate “ or “love” for any part of my body.  I “accept” in a certain way the body that life has given to me.  At the same time I’m very aware that It’s essential to challenge myself, get out of my confort zone and improve my body everyday with healthy nutrition, exercises and mind work.  It has to be a life project towards feeling confortable with yourself (Body and mind).

Photo by: Marcel Cristocea

Do you think that being a color person is an advantage or disadvantage in the fitness and fashion world? A/: It depends on the context and on the attitude of the color person. I know  society needs to evolve about this aspect and in general about diversity.   It hasn’t been a disadvantage for me. I always work hard and give  absolutely all at 100% to achieve my goals and give a good quality of work.  

What part of your fitness life marked  the most? A/:  Definitely the beginning when I was a teenager.  I was a sport teenager. But with small muscles. I’ve never used  steroids or medication to achieve my fitness goals.  So, it took me years of hard work to be in a good shape according to the standards  of the fitness Industry.

You  have an admirable intellectual background: you went to Yale University, Concordia University and Javeriana University. You’re a  Psychiatry Clinical  Research Coordinator for a research center of Montreal University in Canada during the day. In the evenings you’re working on fitness teaching courses, training people and mentoring other coaches. How do you keep a balance in your life? A/:  Thank you very much.  I love and enjoy working on both fields. They complement each other. The intellectual growth is key in my life. I think it should be for every human being.

I plan my agenda in a way I make sure I book some time for my work, my friends, my family, my community, my intellectual growth and for myself(meditation, training etc.). I try to cover everything that is essential.

What’s the most common  training question people ask you? A/:   How to get a six-pack?

What is next  after  being the winner? A/:  I’ll continue working hard for and with people to encourage them to have  a healthy lifestyle.  I hope many others will join me.  I also hope new opportunities will come to continue doing what I like and have a bigger impact on a long term bases.

Would you like to be the Ambassador, work for a mark and cause? A/:  Yes. I’d be very happy to  work for a cause, do collaborations with a mark, photographers, other bloggers, influencers, artists, websites etc.  

What’s the question we should have asked you  and we haven’t? A/: Who inspires you the most?.

...Who inspires the best Fitness blogger of 2018? A/: Someone who created a fitness program with deep values such as social inclusion, empowering, Mental Health, considering the emotions of each person etc. He also  integrated “entertainment” and “fun” aspects every time you sweat and burn calories. Exercises should not be something boring. His program has thousands and thousands of participants in more than 120 countries creating a worldwide community throughout many years. His name is Beto Perez-Founder of Zumba Fitness.

Photo by: Marcel Cristocea

You can also know more about the Fitness blogger of the year reading his interview in  2018 for Marshion Magazine  https://guideofmensstyle.tumblr.com/post/616080931348004864/interview-with-diego-arizala

Follow  him and contact him at @diegoarizalacoach

“My Sport, My passion” at: https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-07gFTBidi/?igshid=1x3hu7r29j8hm