#like the original story being the fight between father and son

[your-worst-knightmare]

its crazy to me that fandom, despite being so in love with parallels to myth and folktale, have still not managed to write a fic paralleling Rostam and Sohrab to Batman and Red Hood (or any of the robins tbh)

like ummm what are we doing here even

[kilowog-appreciation]

One of the most important things about the finale of season 7 is that Aaravos forgets about family. Despite spending thousands of years fighting against the Cosmic Order for Leola he doesn't recognize the very relationships that would undo him.

The only people he doesn't anticipate at the final battle are, in order of least to most anticipated,

1. Sir Sparklepuff

2. Runaan

3. Zym

He isn't surprised by Ezran bringing Zym. He, however, doesn't realize Thunder's unfinished business is his son, despite him demonstrating to Terry that it's the easiest way to tether someone to the In-Between. Thus, he doesn't expect for Thunder to break free and fight him.

It's unclear if he knows that Runaan is Rayla's dad or just her troop leader so to speak, but he likely thought either way that Runaan would go home to his husband. When Runaan steps out dramatically with his bow trained on Callum, Aaravos actually hesitates because he knows Runaan IS a killer and would follow through when Rayla can't.

Lastly, his LITERAL son, his own creation, shows up and surprises him because he didn't believe Sir Sparklepuff had a soul. Aaravos gave him one purpose: lead Viren and Claudia to his prison, aka him. It shouldn't be surprising that he is still seeking out his "dad" because he died before he met Aaravos. Yet, it's the final nail in his coffin because he forgets about family. For all he playacts with Viren about "our son", he never believed Sir Sparklepuff had a real consciousness.

In fact, Sir Sparklepuff's appearance most likely caused Aaravos to lose focus for just long enough that he lost control of Thunder. It's the last in the rule of threes, being closest to Aaravos personally. Sir Sparklepuff literally lands on Aaravos' nose to show him what he's been missing this entire time.

Aaravos' true undoing is exactly how Terry describes in season 6: what was originally a story of love has become a story of revenge. His original motivation, the love between father and child, has become so twisted that he no longer recognizes it.

[applestorms]

thinking about how near refers to light at the end of the series— not really as light yagami, not even really as kira, and not quite as L, but rather an amalgamation of titles: L-KIRA, a twisted mix of two personas, masks on top of masks. no longer a person but a series of letters, a filtered voice through a screen. a man who has built his entire life in the space between lies, who cannot let himself stop for a second without the weight of his own guilt, his sins, crushing him. regrets repressed because this is the only way it could ever be, it has to be worth it, it has to, it has to, because you can’t even bring yourself to consider what it all means otherwise.

i am a firm believer that light yagami, the son, the student, the average human person, dies at the same time that L does. at least at the beginning of the series he has some semblance of normalcy to hold himself to, the Serious Student persona that keeps him walking to and from school and talking to people and eating dinner with his family at home. how many times do we really see him going outside, post-L death? how often do we see him outside of some L-based police HQ, talking to people he isn’t trying to manipulate? really, it’s no wonder he falls so far, alienated as he is from the rest of humanity. when was the last time he breathed long enough to remember what the sky looks like? hugged his mom, laughed with his sister? did he ever visit his father’s grave? does he remember what the breeze smells like? was he ever really happy? did he deny himself his only chance?

at least in the case of L and near the isolation feels intentional, a preferable choice, carefully and logically considered for all the pros and cons. light never asked for the position he fell into, that fell upon him, that he created for himself. he denies the death note being a curse, but it’s not like he could ever admit it if it was.

light’s story arc in death note really feels like a tragedy to me, specifically in the sense that he never really gets the chance to change. on a plot level this is true, much of the second half of the story post-L death is light utilizing the exact same strategies as before (taking away his ownership of the DN to Strategize, romancing a woman he doesn’t care for to use her, fighting a snarky troll of a super genius hiding behind a letter whose real name & face he cannot find), but it’s true on an emotional level too. light never really gets to grow up, he never gets the chance to truly question his ideals or goals without the world he’s built by himself crashing down around him.

i keep thinking back to the significance of matsuda asking him about his dad, how he could drag him to his death for the sake of all of this. light’s response, so truthful in its desperation, really sums it all up: he died for a reason. KIRA has to win, or his dad died for nothing. he cannot face the idea that he caused his own father’s death, so KIRA must be justice. there is no other alternative. KIRA is god, or light yagami killed his own father for a fairytale.

really, it’s so fitting that his name uses the kanji for moon. moonlight— not originating from the moon itself but a reflection, of something brighter, greater, more powerful than he could ever be. light dies the same way as every other criminal he passed his judgement upon, on his knees and desperate, pathetic, begging for life even as he knows he is doomed to the same fate of nothingness that he granted to everybody else. godhood denied. he said it himself, that he could never be anything more than a human, but somewhere in the fog he lost track of the person he once was. and it’s near’s cruelest observation that stands out the most to me in that final scene— that he never really had to be this. he could’ve stopped at any point, felt his guilt, paid his regrets, and moved on with his humanity still intact. light has spent far too long repressing and denying to ever consider that an option anymore— but there was still room for sympathy for the 17 year old kid who killed without thinking, long before he built up such a dedicated palace of lies to justify his actions and hide away his guilt.

L-KIRA dies on the floor of a dirty, abandoned building, surrounded by the people he spent years manipulating and lying to and betraying. light yagami dies in a helicopter, locked and chained to his only closest equal, holding a notebook that he would use to sound the death knell of his own fate and wearing his father’s gifted watch.

[sunflowerwizard]

I've seen enough people mischaracterizing Early Access Wyll, so here's the best breakdown of his original character I can give.

I'll start this off by plainly summarizing Wyll's EA backstory, some of his core personality traits, then do a bit of analysis.

BACKSTORY

EA Wyll mentions being "born and bred in the upper city" into nobility. It's unspecified what exact level of influence his family occupied.

In datamined voice lines from EA (take with a grain of salt) Wyll refers to being from House Eltan specifically. Eltan was the Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate in the first Baldur's Gate Game, and the founder of the Flaming Fist. Forgotten Realms lore states that the Eltans are no longer in charge of the Fist and have somewhat diminished in power, but again. We don't know to exactly what level.

This also means that this iteration of Wyll was not Ulder Ravengard's son. While he still spoke about his father in EA, the descriptions and characterizations do not line up with Ulder at all. Additionally, he comments about "knowing of" Ravengard during the burning inn sequence, but otherwise makes no connection.

The most damning evidence of all that Wyll being a Ravengard was not originally intended, is Wyll wanting to be like his father and thus "going thieving in the wrong shadows".

Wyll gets caught stealing, presumably as a teenager, and his father uses latent connections within the Flaming Fist to get Wyll sent there. Effectively the fantasy equivalent of sending your unruly kid to boot camp.

Wyll mentions that he didn't adjust well to life as part of the Flaming Fist, was not a very good fighter, and was generally not well liked. The goblin at the windmill calling Wyll "Captain Failure" implies he might have been given higher status despite not earning it.

The way Wyll feels about goblins is a big change between EA and full release, and is explained as part of his backstory.

We didn't get the finer details, but we can assume Wyll in his time with the Fist bore witness to a group of goblins razing a village. Horrified and enraged, he tried fighting a goblin, was overwhelmed, and had his eye torn out.

This is when Mizora showed up and offered him a pact. Considering he was left for dead and probably going to bleed out, it's pretty understandable why he took the deal.

Mizora is not nearly as present in Early Access as she is in the current game. Karlach was not involved in Wyll's story at all, there's no devil transformation.

It's also more heavily insinuated there's a sexually coercive element of Wyll and Mizora's relationship, with him speaking to how every time he wanted to leave her, she found some way to pull him back.

Additionally, Wyll wants out of that contract. Unlike full release where Mizora is randomly captured in Act 2, she starts off kidnapped, and insists she'll let Wyll go if he frees her

It kind of ended up being a plot cul de sac, but Torturer Spike was the goblin that took Wyll's eye--which was a quest item you could pickpocket/loot off his body. Wyll had commentary on it and everything.

TL;DR: -Born to a noble family with Flaming Fist connections -Caught Stealing and sent to work for the Fist as punishment -Tried to fight back during a goblin attack and was gravely injured -Mizora offers a pact -Uses his pact to become a traveling monster hunter, presumably to make up for his past failure to protect people. Antagonistic towards goblins in particular -Ultimately wants out of the pact, but Mizora won't let him go -Wyll and Mizora get abducted by Mind Flayers -Mizora agrees to let Wyll go if he frees her from the cultists

PERSONALITY

This is a bit less concrete than changed story beats, but I can say this: a lot of Wyll's core traits stayed intact between EA and full release. He's still willing to put his life on the line for the Tiefling refugees, with a whole cut line about how the kids he's training deserve to have a carefree childhood. He wants to do good in the world, probably because he spent so much time in his youth feeling like a fuck up.

There's also a much clearer divide between "Wyll" and "The Blade of Frontiers". Notably, in EA he didn't introduce himself by name. Not even a "my friends call me Wyll" quip at Shadowheart like he has currently. During his old romance scene, he has a line about being used to being the hero, and not used to needing one. He's a symbol. An emblem of something bigger than himself. The fact he's so self-aggrandizing as The Blade makes it apparent he's not confident in himself as "just Wyll"

He's also decidedly more forward and flirty in EA, with no reservations about courtship. In fact, the main obstacle to your budding relationship is Mizora herself. Wyll's trauma from her treatment interrupts your first night together. Whether you have sex or just snuggle, Wyll has a line about how he doesn't want to start a relationship until he can "give himself completely" after being freed from his pact.

THOUGHTS & COMPARISONS

I'm also not entirely sure if I'd say EA Wyll is substantially angrier than current Wyll, so much as he had more opportunities to be angry during Early Access. I can understand why the goblin stuff was cut, because it did dip into "Let's make the one black guy fantasy racist" trope. However, it did very much feel like the narrative was pointing in bright, flashing colors that this is a trait Wyll would have to grapple with, learn, and grow from. The fact EA Wyll's most glaring character flaw was scrapped and didn't get much of a replacement in full release makes his story feel less realized.

While I appreciate the overtly sexual element of Wyll and Mizora's relationship was removed, I feel like the final version is somehow even more creepy. During Early Access she existed in the background as a vague villain you only experience via Wyll. And if you do his romance scene and see the way he panics at the mere memory of her, you get the impression of oh shit. This broad is bad news and I've gotta get my boy out of there. The same principle behind not showing the big scary monster too early in the horror movie. Once you've seen it, you can't let your mind fill in the blanks. Mizora went from this intimidating figure whose motives you couldn't fully ascertain, to a mean girl that thinks she's smarter than everyone else but is really just the bumbling lackey of a bigger fish. Who pulls Wyll around with an actual metaphysical leash like a dog. And you're meant to find this sexy.

My final point, and I've said this before: current Wyll's personality seemed more suited to being a scion of house Eltan, while EA Wyll seemed more suited to being Ulder Ravengard's dissapointment son. Current Wyll speaks and carries him like someone raised in nobility despite only being elevated to such status as a teenager. Perhaps this is cynical and maybe even a bit of a conspiracy theory, but I genuinely think he's only Ravengard's son to save on time and assets. Why give Wyll a whole unique family with its own story when we can just tie him in to the "rescue the grand duke" plot, regardless of how much sense it makes!

[colormepurplex2]

Now I'm Yours | Feel It In Your Soul

↳ Alpha!Jungkook x Omega!f.Reader ⤜ A/B/O, Established Relationship/Mates ⤜ Rating: MA 🔞 ⤜ WC: 6,697 ⚠️ Vulgar language, fingering, knotting, creampie, discussion of violent acts, fighting/physical altercation, alpha challenge, knife violence/attack, blood, injury, bond sex, dick licking/oral, slick eating, biting/marking, blood/wound licking, surprise pregnancy

A/N: Read Make You Mine, the first installment of this series, here!

⇽Previous Chapter ◅ Back to story masterlist

When you meet Jungkook’s family in the garage the next morning, the sun isn't even up yet. His parents are waiting next to the large SUV that’s idling by the open door when you enter through the side entrance from the laundry room.

After a hasty shower, you threw on jeans and a t-shirt and are now helping Junghyun load the back of the vehicle with a few boxes from the storage room. The tops of the boxes are labeled with various things, mostly boasting medical supplies or nonperishable foodstuffs.

“Did Jungkook say why he wanted us to bring all of this stuff?"

Junghyun looks up at you from under his brow as he bends over to retrieve the next box, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. “Donations. We’re going to be close to The Sanctuary, and we try to donate once a quarter if we’re able.”

This is the first you’ve heard of the Jeons donating to The Sanctuary. You’re intimately familiar with the place. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a sanctuary for abused or neglected omegas and their children. Mari was one such omega, cast aside by her original pack when she didn’t match with any of the alphas within it. It wasn’t until Roland, having just taken over as pack Alpha of your old pack, started up his own annual donations to The Sanctuary that he met Mari. Your old pack made at least a donation every six months after that, helping as many omegas and children as possible.

It’s not that you wouldn’t think the Jeons are a pack that would help those less fortunate; you’d just not given it much thought, considering you grew up thinking they were run by power-hunger alphaholes. Not that Jungkook isn’t an alphahole, he’s just…maybe not as bad as you once thought—even without the rose-tinged view you have of him now from being your mate.

The duel is taking place on neutral territory, which happens to be an old warehouse that’s been converted into a performance theatre in the entertainment district of the central city. The warehouse was renovated a few decades ago by the council when enough of the surrounding packs hounded them for a space to meet en masse.

It’s about three hour's drive, the view filled with the sun peeking over the mountains and trees with their leaves changing in preparation for winter. You sit in the passenger seat, head resting against the window while you try not to stress too much over the events of the next twenty-four hours.

“Come on, dear,” the soft voice of Jungkook’s mother drags you from your rumination. She’s leaning through the gap between the front seats, her hand lightly squeezing your shoulder. “We’re here.”

You hadn’t even realized the vehicle had stopped and that Junghyun and Jungkook’s father had gotten out already. 

“Sorry,” you mutter, popping open the door and sliding out.

She meets you along the side of the SUV, a concerned look pinching her brow. “Are you feeling okay?”

Now that she mentions it, you are feeling a bit off-kilter. Though, it’s probably just the nerves. “Just worried, that’s all,” you explain, pressing a hand against your stomach.

“Did you skip breakfast?” she asks, hooking her arm around your other one and slowly leading you to where Junghyun and his father stand near the elevator of the parking garage.

Breakfast was the last thing on your mind this morning. “Yeah. I’ll be okay, though.”

“Nonsense,” she tuts, producing a whole-grain protein bar from the bag slung over her other shoulder. “You’ll feel better with something in your stomach. Now, let’s go find my son. Being near your alpha will do you a dose of good, as well.”

You nibble on the protein bar, looking to simply placate her, but find yourself suddenly ravenous and consume the whole thing in three bites. It sits like lead in your belly, and you immediately regret wolfing it down so quickly.

“This foolish display will start at precisely noon, not long now,” Jungkook’s father states, the clip of his cane hitting the linoleum flooring of the elevator echoing the disapproval that’s evident in his voice.

Junghyun presses the button that’s labeled ‘theatre hall’ on the control panel and the cabled car begins a swift ascent up to the fifth floor. You caught sight of Jungkook's motorcycle in the parking garage, sitting next to Jimin’s red sports car. A few other familiar vehicles lined the rows, but there were dozens more you didn’t recognize.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket, and you feel a familiar humming warmth bloom in the center of your chest. It’s the same feeling you’ve learned to associate with being nearer to Jungkook. Peeking at your phone, you see it’s a message from the alpha, letting you know he’s waiting for you just on the other side of the elevator doors.

“There you are,” Jungkook exhales, not even waiting for you to get off the elevator before he’s gathering you into his arms. His scent engulfs you, immediately putting you at ease. Jungkook is all alpha, and as much as you hate to admit it, he’s exactly what you need; your stomach and nerves are instantly soothed.

Jungkook’s father clears his throat, drawing Jungkook’s attention. “What news do you have?”

Jungkook sighs, releasing most of his hold on you, but keeps an arm over your shoulders and ushers you out of the elevator and into the hall. “Most all the other families have arrived. Jimin is with Daehyun now. I haven’t managed to lay my eyes on either Raiden or Demetrius. According to the council, they’re supposed to be in the eastern dressing rooms. I have seen Kiel skulking around the halls, though, creepy bastard.”

“Have you seen Hyunsoo?” Jungkook nods in answer to his father’s question. “I’d like to have a word with him.”

“Last I saw him, he was inside speaking with the council.”

“Perfect, I could do with a word for them, too,” Jungkook’s father grumbles before starting toward the entrance to the performance hall proper. Junghyun follows closely behind, after dipping his chin at Jungkook. You’ve never seen Jungkook get bent out of shape over designation deference, as some alphas do. He doesn’t force those below him to bow and scrape; he just asks for as much respect as he affords them in exchange. It’s just another tick you’ve had to add to your ‘Jungkook isn’t as bad as I once thought’ list.

“Are you feeling okay?” Jungkook asks softly, his eyes flicking between yours.

You do feel much better now that you’re with him, which would normally grate on you, but you can’t seem to muster up the typical ire for some reason. “I’ll be fine,” you assure him. “Just nerves.” That seems to satisfy him.

“Come on, let’s go before Dad causes too much of a scene.”

“Umm, I’ll be right there. I’m just going to go to the restroom real quick.”

He continues to stare at you for a moment longer before slowly nodding. “Okay. Mom, we’ll be right back—”

“No, no. It’s okay, you don’t have to come with—”

“Jungkook,” his mom interrupts you both, giving her son an amused smile. “She might be your omega, but I promise she doesn’t need you to hold her hand while she uses the restroom. I’ll wait here for her. You go on ahead with your father and Junghyun.”

Pink creeps up Jungkook’s neck and kisses his ears. “Right. Okay. I’ll see you inside,” he mumbles, pressing a quick kiss to your temple before reluctantly taking his arm from across your shoulders and heading toward the door his father and brother disappeared through.

“Thank you,” you say to his mom. “I’ll be right back.”

You’ve only been here a handful of times over the years for various events, but you’re able to follow the signs well enough to the restrooms located on this side of the venue. However, when you get there, the door is locked, and there is a janitorial wet-floor sign posted right outside.

It’s just your luck, right as you’re starting to feel a light wave of nausea wash over you. Taking a few deep breaths to try and calm your inner omega, who isn’t helping the situation at all, you turn to retreat back to where Jungkook’s mom is waiting for you a few halls over. Maybe she’ll have something that can calm your warring stomach and nerves.

“I can break the lock if you need to get in there,” a voice calls out from further down the hall just as you take a step to go back. “You look like you need it.”

You swivel toward the voice but can only make out the silhouette of someone standing in a darkened doorway a few doors down. They pull out a phone, and the blue light illuminates the ceiling for a moment before it’s plunged back into darkness. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“You don’t look fine to me.” The words come with a chuckle that slithers over your senses and sets you on high alert. You’ve heard that voice before. “If fact, you look like a helpless little omega that’s about to sick up all over the floor.”

That’s a thought. You might just do that, considering who steps out from that doorway, the face fitting with the name screaming inside your head. Kiel Barton. He’s every inch the viperous bastard he’s known to be. Despite being not much taller than you, he’s thicker through each arm and leg than both of yours combined. His bald head glints in the overhead light, and the jagged scar on his right cheek is bright white against his red-flushed face. He swaggers into the hallway, just a few feet away, twirling a switchblade through his thick fingers.

“I’m not helpless,” you seethe through your teeth. You don’t necessarily mean for the words to come out so aggressively, but they do. Years of not taking shit from anyone don’t seem to have worn off too much from your time of being mated with Jungkook. And if it’s one thing you’ve always hated, it’s how everyone thinks omegas are weak and soft—helpless without an alpha.

Kiel grins, and it reminds you of something you might see in a horror film right before the psycho killer attacks. “Oh, sweet, sweet omega,” he crows before sucking in a deep lungful of air, “I don’t think you realize just how helpless you are right now.”

You’re about to turn on your heel and run when he leaps. It’s like a strike of lightning; he moves so fast—faster than your reflexes can keep up with. Pain thunders through you as his burly form knocks into you and sends you hurtling a few feet down the hall to land in a heap on the floor.

He’s back on you in an instant, cold steel pressed against your neck. “Get off me!” you scream, trying your best to buck him off despite the disorienting feeling still reeling inside your head.

“I promised my brother as long as he did his part, I would do mine,” Kiel sing-songs in a demented tone, his words trailing off into another one of those spine-chilling chuckles. 

“Fuck you!” You struggle under his weight, your knees and elbows trying to get any purchase along his thick-muscled body that they can. You manage to catch him along the neck with your hand, nails scoring bloody lines through the devil tattoo he has there.

An ear-splitting roar, the sound of loud banging, and running feet sound from somewhere down the hall, making Kiel’s laughter trail off. “Looks like my time to play is—” A small, sneakered foot meets the side of his ribs, turning his words into a grunt. The hit barely rocks him, but you can’t be sure of who it is, though, around his bulk.

“Get off of her, you snake!” snarls a familiar feminine voice, only it’s dripping with far more acid than you’ve ever heard before.

“FUCK! I don’t have time for this!” Kiel thunders, rearing back and bringing a fist around right into your temple, sending you careening into hazy darkness.

There is so much noise and movement that when you first come to, you think you’re dreaming. But then the very real pain lights up along your side, and you’re reminded that this is very much not a dream. You’re laying on the floor in the hallway outside the bathroom, side smarting hard from the impact of hitting the floor and the memory of a meaty fist stark in your mind.

You go to sit up, only to have your hand slip through a puddle of warm, sticky liquid. The scent hits you a second later, thick and metallic. “Oh gods,” you whimper softly. Your hand is bright red when you bring it up in front of your face.

“Please,” comes an even more pitiful whimper from beside you. Adrenaline kicks in, and you flip onto your hands and knees, letting your eyes swing over the scene around you.

A dozen bodies are packed in the hall, fists flying and mouths opened in concussive bellows. It’s pandemonium. Everyone is fighting, familiar faces and those of strangers alike. All the sounds combined make you want to crawl into a corner and cover your ears, but the form lying beside you keeps you right where you are.

Jungkook’s mom lies on the floor. Her body turned at an odd angle, with her hips going one way and her torso the other as if she was flung around like a ragdoll. You realize the whimpering is coming from her. She lifts a trembling hand toward you, and you grab onto it, crawling closer to kneel beside her.

The blood covering your hand, now seeping through the knees of your jeans, is coming from her. A familiar-looking switchblade is protruding from the upper right area of her chest, between her clavicle and shoulder, and there is a cut over her left eyebrow that blood is steadily oozing from.

“No, no, no!” You quickly rip off a strip from the bottom of your t-shirt and press it around the blade, trying to staunch the wound. The cut above her brow doesn’t look deep; all the blood is a bit alarming, but you know headwounds are the worst in being deceptive; they bleed so much. You’re also scared to take your hands away from her chest. “What did you do?”

Her eyes flicker open, rolling wide until they land on you. “Had to”—she pauses, whimpering in pain as someone stumbles backward and knocks into her splayed legs—”pr-protect the baby.”

“Protect the–protect the wh—”

“NO!” The alpha roar echoes through the hall, as loud as a thunderclap.

In the same instant that your hands are moved aside and replaced by the older, more gnarled ones of her mate, arms come around you from behind and you’re lifted up off the floor. Fear grips your throat, and you flail, aiming your elbow backward at whoever grabbed you.

“Stop, calm down!” Jungkook’s voice snaps you out of your fight instinct, and you sag in his arms. The fighting around you has turned into pockets of isolated struggle.

You blink a few times, clearing the panicked haze from your eyes, finally able to piece everything together. There are a few busted lips and some already swelling eyes, but there are at least a handful of familiar faces around you. Each one is executing some form of hold over individuals with less familiar faces; headlocks, arm bars, and others that look just as effective, if maybe more painful.

Then there is the scene at your feet, right out of a horror movie. Jungkook’s dad and brother are kneeling beside his mom, the knife still sticking out of her chest. It looks like the blood has stopped pooling around the blade, but you can’t seem to remember if that’s a good or a bad sign.

“Jungkook! Your mom, we need a medic!” you urge, struggling in his arms again.

A sinister, wet, cackling laugh cuts through the hushed din of the hallway before it turns into a hacking cough. You can hear the distinct sound of flesh hitting flesh and pained grunts.

”Shut up, you sick bastard!” The ragged cry comes from further down the hallway, where you see Seokjin with his arms wrapped around Kiel’s upper torso and Yoongi throwing fists into his stomach. “How dare you!?”

“Yoongi.” Jungkook doesn’t have to raise his voice at all. The other alpha stops, fist poised mid-punch, his shoulders heaving. “That’s enough.” The coldness in Jungkook’s tone has the hairs on the back of your neck prickling. You’ve never heard him sound so utterly emotionless. “For now.”

Pounding footsteps sound from the other end of the hall, and a few betas come skidding into view, medical bags in hand. “Out of the way!” one of the betas shouts, shouldering his way down the hall before dropping down beside Junghyun and beginning to work. “I need to get her stabilized before we can move her.”

Everything is still a bit cloudy for you; all you have are flits and flashes of memory, but it’s not hard to piece it together. Kiel came after you outside the bathroom, and then Jungkook’s mom tried to interfere. ���Is she, is she going to be okay?” you ask, voice soft, your lips trembling around the question.

Jungkook hooks an arm under the backs of your legs and hoists you up against his chest, and you get your first good look at his face. There is a dribble of blood coming from the corner of his mouth and mild swelling coming up around his left eye.

He’s about to open his mouth to say something when a group of grey-haired alphas cut around the corner at the end of the hall, and the one in the front gasps dramatically, “Good gods! What has happened?” You groan at the loud sound, burying your face into Jungkook’s chest.

“This is what happens when you entertain absurd demands from a known trouble-making pack,” Jungkook’s father states with barely veiled malice.

“This is your mess,” Jungkook says, directing attention to the elders shuffling their feet at the end of the hall. His words are acerbic despite him speaking at a normal volume. It’s an alpha statement, carrying the cutting edge of an unspoken command. The entire hallway stills, the air thick with tension.

“Our mess?”

“If you had listened to me from the start about how utterly ridiculous this whole duel bullshit was, this”—he nods down at his mother, who is still being worked on by the betas—”wouldn’t have happened. I’ll have all of you off the council before the week is over, mark my words,” he seethes. “And, if she doesn’t recover fully, I’ll have more than just your titles. Yoongi, Seokjin, you know what to do.” With that, Jungkook turns and stalks down the hall, carrying you with him.

🌙🌙🌙

Jungkook

There is so much rage simmering beneath Jungkook’s skin that he thinks he might explode if he doesn’t let it out somehow. However, the only outlet he wants right now is you—to get lost in your body and your soul—but you’re in no state to take the brunt of his emotions.

“Jungkook.” Your soft voice draws his gaze down to your face. Seeing the swelling around your eye makes him want to turn around and finish what Yoongi was starting. Jungkook isn’t violent, but he could level the entire city right now if he weren’t so focused on getting you checked out. You bring a hand up and lightly trace the break in his lip. “What happened?”

“Raiden and Demetrius. I think this was their plan all along. One minute, Father and I were talking to the council while we waited, and the next, Raiden and Demetrius, along with a half dozen of their pack, came bursting into the theatre and attacked us.” Jungkook sighs, shaking his head. “I felt you, I felt the…” the trails off, not wanting to voice those feelings aloud. The pure terror he felt through his mate connection to you. The tie between the two of you has never really been an open street, he’s never been able to feel your emotions so viscerally before. It was almost enough to take him to his knees. If he didn’t need to fight off a pack of rabid alphas, it nearly might have. “I’m sorry,” Jungkook rasps.

“You don’t have anything to apologize for. We knew they were up to no good. I should have been more vigilant or, at least, taken you up on your offer to escort me to the restroom.” You try to laugh, but it turns into a groan as your head pounds.

“Let’s get you to the hospital so they can check you over.”

No amount of protests from you will deter Jungkook from getting you to a doctor. Junghyun texts him shortly after he places you in the backseat of the SUV, letting Jungkook know that everyone else is on their way to the hospital and an ambulance is en route to get their mother but that the betas are hopeful.

Several hours later, you’ve been released from the hospital with confirmation of no lasting damage, just a recommendation to get some rest. Jungkook’s lip is patched with a butterfly stitch, per your insistence, and it itches as he sits on the edge of the bed in the hotel room he booked before leaving the hospital. Even though you aren’t concussed or anything, Jungkook didn’t want to risk taking you all the way back to pack lands.

Besides, his mother was admitted and is still there for observation, and he doesn’t feel comfortable being too far away while she’s in recovery. She went in for surgery immediately upon arrival and woke up not too long ago. Junghyun and their father are staying at the hospital with her until she’s cleared to go home, which will hopefully not be more than a few days. Apparently, her wounds looked worse than they were, and she was fortunate Kiel didn’t get her an inch further to either side. Otherwise, it might be a very different outcome.

Jimin texted him a bit ago, letting him know the entire Barton pack is being detained at the local precinct, and the authorities are awaiting word from Jungkook about charges. The council sequestered themselves behind closed doors, but the duel was considered null due to the circumstances. Jimin feels bad about being part of the ruse, even if he was just being used as a means to get close to the Jeon pack.

It’s come to light that the Bartons decided to use their feud with the Parks because they knew the Jeons wouldn’t sit idly by. One big, elaborate plan, all to get close to Jungkook’s Luna and try to tear down the hierarchy. If Jungkook lost his Soulmate, he’d lose his foundation of power as well. Or so, that’s what the buzz was when some of the Barton betas were interrogated, according to Jimin.

Jungkook knows everything is going to be okay, that you’re going to be okay; the doctor told him as much. But, despite that assurance, he can’t seem to relax. You’re curled up in the bed, facing him, and you look so peaceful, even with the swelling on the side of your face, but all he can feel is rage when he sees that…rage and so much guilt.

He never should have let you go to the restroom on your own. If he has his way, he’s never going to let you out of his sight again. It’s such an alarming realization, going from one polar sensation to the next. The fact he could give two shits less about you just a few months ago, and now here he is wanting to murder someone for touching you, is hard to wrap his head around.

Yet, here he is, fisting the edge of one of the blankets as he battles this feeling inside himself. The fact his alpha has been mostly silent since Jungkook laid eyes on you in that hallway is just as alarming. It’s almost like his alpha is giving him space. For the first time since coming into his designation, he feels like a giant void separates him from his alpha; he doesn’t like it.

There’s also the pile of papers sitting on the desk, a few feet away, that hold another key bit of information that won’t let him relax. It was standard testing, just something to help rule other things out and see what kinds of tests they could and could not perform to assess your head.

You’re pregnant.

Now that he knows, Jungkook can tell. There is a distinct, underlying change to your scent. It’s sweeter somehow, more alluring in the sense that you now smell partly like him. He should have known before. He knows that if he hadn’t spent so much time away from you, he would have realized it sooner.

You were surprised, but your shock seemed more subdued. When questioned, you told Jungkook what his mother had said to you. Somehow, even his mother knew before he did. Jungkook feels like a failure, like he’s done nothing right by you. It had to have happened the night of your designation celebration. Neither of you had bothered with any preventative measures that night, too lost in the touch and feel of each other to care.

And now, here you are, pregnant without a bite on your neck and a knot on the side of your head. If anything were to have happened to the baby…Jungkook isn’t sure he can even think about that right now. Not without wanting to put his fist through the wall.

He’s spent weeks worried about staying away from you when all along, he was clearly concerned about all the wrong things. The doctor assured him that even the most attentive of alphas take several weeks before they can smell their own child in the womb. But that doesn’t make Jungkook feel any better.

He thinks back on all the curt and what he thought were nagging messages he had gotten from his mother the last few weeks and can see them in a different light now. She wasn’t just trying to chastise him about his duty; she was trying to coax him home so he could be there for his mate in a way he should have from the start.

Jungkook knows what he needs to do now. There is no question about it. Though, it’s not because he feels obligated…no, he truly wants to solidify that bond with you. As soon as you’re ready, he’s going to offer himself to you, finally and fully.

“Jungkook, are you okay?” your sweet voice breaks him out of his thoughts and makes him release his tight hold on the sheets.

Your eyes look so big and bright even in the dim light of the hotel room as you sleepily blink up at him. How he never wanted to give himself over to you so completely before now marks him as a sure fool.

He sighs, exhaling a slow breath. “Yeah. How are you feeling?”

You stretch, wincing only slightly as your arm brushes along the side of your face. “Better, I think.”

“Can we talk?” he asks after a pause of silence.

You give him a guarded look as you slowly sit up and gather some of the blankets in your lap. The doctor told him you might start feeling the need to nest and gather comfort items, so he had specifically requested the Omega suite, which comes with complimentary brand-new fuzzy blankets and extra pillows that guests are allowed to take home when checking out.

“Sure,” you finally say.

Jungkook watches as emotions cross your face, echoing the pulse he can feel emanating from his chest. His alpha perks up, rousing for the first time in hours it feels like.

“Okay.” Now that he’s been given the go-ahead to talk, he’s suddenly feeling very self-conscious and uncertain. “I know you told me I don’t need to apologize, but I’m going to anyway.” Your lips form a thin line when he says that, so he hurries to continue, “Not for”—he gestures vaguely in your direction—”but for everything else. I want to apologize for everything before this. The way I’ve treated you and how I’ve acted. You’ve deserved better than what I’ve offered you these last few weeks—for being an asshole and a fucking dick,” Jungkook uses your own choice of words for him, and that earns him a small smile from you.

“I want to apologize, too, then. And before you can protest”—Jungkook was 100% about to—”just let me finish. Sure, you’ve not been the greatest the last few weeks, but I know I haven’t either. I should have tried harder, fought you on you being gone all the time, stood up for what I wan–er, needed, and been honest with how it was making me feel.”

Jungkook shakes his head, unable to believe how you’ve yet again turned the tables on him. “I, uh, there’s something that…there’s something I want to do,” Jungkook barely manages to get the words out as anxiety spikes at the prospect of you refusing.

“What is it?”

The look of intrigue on your face turns into pure shock as Jungkook prostrates himself on the bed in front of you, deliberately turning his head to expose the side of his neck to you, an act of submission. “I’m giving myself to you, wholly and completely. All those weeks ago, I claimed you and made you mine, and…now I’m yours.”

🌙🌙🌙

You stare at Jungkook, not sure what to say. “I-I don’t need,” you begin, reaching for Jungkook and encouraging him to sit up, “you to do that. You don’t have to bend to me…as long as you promise never to make me bend to you either.”

Jungkook shakes his head. “I can’t promise I’ll be perfect, but I’ll never force you to be something that you’re not ever again. I’m sorry I didn’t realize this sooner, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you when you asked to come with me to Jimin’s. From now on, I’ll listen to you, and I’ll not dismiss your concerns or voice. I don’t want you to feel like you’re beneath me simply because you’re my mate. I want you as my equal instead.”

The truth behind Jungkook’s words is evident in the fervent way he delivers them but also in the way your omega mews in satisfaction. A bite for a bite, an equal. Even though you wouldn’t be leaving a permanent mark on his neck like he will on yours, it’s still the intention, and it’s completely unheard of in your world. There are stories, myths, really…but nothing wholly substantial.

You shift on the bed, gathering your knees underneath you. Your jeans went into the trash, and all the hospital had was a thin pair of shorts and a t-shirt for you to wear. You fluff out the blankets absently as you mull over his words. “Your equal?”

“Yes,” Jungkook resolutely declares.

“I think I would like that,” you whisper, eyeing Jungkook’s mouth with a quickly burning hunger.

“Are you sure?” Jungkook asks, swallowing hard as you lean in closer to him. “If you need more time to think, that’s okay.”

“Are you sure?” you counter, raising a questioning eyebrow.

Jungkook responds by kissing you hard on the mouth, wrapping his arms around you, and dragging you against his chest. He tastes like home; his tongue is warm and wet against yours, and you’re certain you could drown in the sensation if he let you. But, he comes up for air, breaking the kiss for a moment before pressing open-mouthed kisses along your jaw.

Even with the aches in your face and body, you respond to him. With every teasing nip of his mouth, you feel yourself growing wet. The fragrant cream of your slick blooms in the air, melding with his masculine and spicy scent to create the perfect, heady bouquet.

“I’ve never been more sure about something,” Jungkook whispers the affirmation between kisses until his warm breath ghosts over the scent mark on your neck. “You smell so damn good,” he groans.

You can feel his lips part over the skin there; his tongue laves out and swipes up the side of your neck, sending shivers down your spine. With trembling hands, you help each other discard your clothing, finally coming back together skin to skin. Jungkook pulls you into his lap, his thick cock sitting snugly against your ass. You can feel the bulge of his knot already as if his body is automatically responding to just your closeness.

“You can say stop at any time,” you tell him, earning a surprised grunt when you shove him back against the pillows and deliberately slide your ass slowly over his cock as you move backward.

There is a challenge in his eyes as you meet them. You move until you’re kneeling between his knees, cock sitting prettily before you. “Where, ah,” Jungkook sucks in a stilted breath when you take the head of his cock into your mouth, swirling your tongue around it, “did you want to?” Pink tinges Jungkook’s ears as he looks down at you, mouth full of him. You tap the inside of his thigh and raise your brows in silent question. “O-okay, just…just be gentle.”

That makes you chuckle, the vibration coming up your throat, and you can tell it sends a shock through Jungkook; his head drops back, and his mouth opens with a loud moan. “Gentle says the man about to put a permanent bite on my neck. An act that is none too gentle, I might add,” you say, letting his cock slip out from between your lips.

“Okay, that’s fair,” he relents, his words breathy as you trace along the underside of his dick with your tongue. “Be as aggressive as you want, then.”

Feeling egged on just a little by that declaration, you plant your teeth firmly into the meat of his inner thigh and bite as hard as you dare. Your teeth pinprick his skin, and the metallic tang of blood leeches onto your tongue. Jungkook grunts; his whole body shivers against your mouth.

“Was that okay?” you ask tentatively once you’ve pulled back to admire the twin crescent impressions you left behind. There isn’t that much blood. The two small wounds from your teeth are already clotted.

Jungkook lets out a heavy exhale as his body finally relaxes back against the bed. His cock twitches beside your face, producing a thick string of pre-cum that has your mouth watering for a taste.

“That was,” he pants, “hot as fuck.”

Pride fills you, and your body kindly reminds you with an intense throb in your clit, how much it turns you on when Jungkook talks like that. “Your turn,” you urge, desperate to get his teeth on your skin and his cock in your pussy.

Jungkook growls his approval, letting his alpha strength take over, and maneuvers you easily into a kneeling position in front of him. Using a gentle hand in your hair, he pulls you up until your back is pressed against his chest, giving him unfettered access to the front of your body while being able to tease your clit with the tip of his length.

“Are you ready for me?” he asks, using the hand in your hair to angle your head sideways so he can lick along the side of your neck. “Let’s see.” His other hand slides down the front of your body, tweaking your nipples on the way, until his middle finger grazes over your swollen, aching clit.

“Don’t tease me,” you say between clenched teeth. Your omega adds her indignation to your own, making your words come out laced with additional grit.

“I just want a little taste,” Jungkook whispers as he hooks his finger lower and massages it along your slit, collecting a generous amount of slick as he does so. You watch as his finger comes up and disappears beside your face.

The wet laving sound of Jungkook sucking his finger sends a shudder through you. You reach down with your hands, cupping Jungkook’s cock in one and using the other to part the lips of your pussy so you can fit him against your entrance. “Fuuuck,” you drawl out as the broad head of his cock slides in.

“I love the way your pussy tastes,” Jungkook moans, dropping his hand to your hip and using it to guide your ass back against him, forcing him deeper. “It’s almost as good as how it feels.”

His fingers prod along your hip, sliding until his palm rests over your lower belly. You whimper, rocking your hips the best you can, and place your hand over his. “How do I look?” you ask. “You once told me I’d look so pretty once I was pregnant with your pup. Do you still think that?”

“You are,” he starts, “the single most”—he emphasizes the words with long, rolling strokes of his cock that have his knot kissing your lower lips with every forward motion—”beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on. Even before I fucked you raw and knocked you up.” The beautiful, endearing words contrast so wildly with the dirty confession he tacks on at the end. Proving once again that Jungkook knows exactly how to wind you up and have you begging for more.

“Prove it,” you goade, intentionally dipping your head to the side to expose your neck further to him.

The moment his teeth touch your skin, you both freeze. It lasts only a second, the time it takes for them to sink into the tender expanse of your scent gland. It’s like a double punch to the gut; you can feel it all the way in your soul. The bond snaps into place the same instant Jungkook fits his knot inside you, and you explode, disintegrating into a million tiny little points of pleasure.

Your body opens for him, both physically and mentally. What was once a small trickle of feeling now becomes a deluge of intensity. You’re vaguely aware of Jungkook groaning as he meets his own release, throbbing heavily within your walls. You can feel him beneath your skin, feel the way your own body is wrapped so tightly around his knot, and the infinite pleasure that’s flooding through both of your systems.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jungkook mumbles against your neck, his teeth finally pulling free from your skin. “I can feel everything.”

It’s hard to tell where he begins, and you end. There is a sense of middling permanence, the perfect balance between alpha and omega. You once feared that submitting to him completely would change you in some cataclysmic way. And, it has…only, you don’t feel damned. In fact, it’s far more empowering than you ever thought possible.

Jungkook brushes his tongue along the fresh bite, tending to your wound in a tender way that has you slumping over. He follows you down, gently rutting his hips, which forces his knot to rub and grate inside of you, flooding you with another luscious rush of dopamine, like a second orgasm.

“Jungkook?” you ask, trying not to fall asleep as he continues to nuzzle your neck, and his knot keeps you secured so close to his warm body.

“Hmm?” he hums. Jungkook settles you both on your side, holding you against his chest with one hand and stroking and petting with soft, sensual strokes along every inch of your body that he can reach with the other.

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

“I promise never to make you doubt me ever again. You are my soulmate, my Luna…the mother of my child. You are my everything.”

And just as Jungkook said, he made you his, and now he’s yours. Forever.

⇽Previous Chapter ◅ Back to story masterlist

◅ Back to Master List ©️    2024-02-14    ColorMePurplex2  

[crylirium]

THERE IS SOMETHING infinitely tragic about zack fair, and i know i am not the first buffoon to come to that conclusion considering he’s a character quite literally created for the catalyst of his death, but like— hear me out.

if you play the original ff7 a certain way, you can bypass his storyline completely. crisis core came out ten years after the original game and yes, we are given his story, but before that all we had was the scraps that could be scrounged up in ff7. he’s a shade. a shadow. a presence in the background. he’s haunting the narrative like no character has ever before, and yet he’s so easy to miss.

imagine it. he is zack fair, SOLDIER first class. a birth and a childhood. parents that loved him. his favorite boots scraped marks into the floor right beneath his mom’s cherry wood chairs. his fingerprints on his sisters’ mirrors and his bookmark snug in between the pages of his grandfather’s books. he taught his younger brothers how to drive their dad’s beat up old truck without it backfiring. he helped his mom with the laundry because she couldn’t quite reach the clothesline. his father called him “son” and “boy” and “kid.” he joined the military at fifteen years old and quickly outranked his peers. he worked with the elite. he made it to first class, and now he’s dead on a cliffside. no grave to bury him in. and the only kid on the goddamn planet who witnessed zack fair fighting to live and succumbing to his death immediately forgets him.

without him and his death, cloud strife does not exist in the form we know him as. zack is cataclysmic, omniscient, an entire universe of untapped potential and yet, AND YET, he exists just for his death. there is no need for the potential of zack fair: living. the importance of his character is in zack fair: dearly dead. imagine it. he exists for the purpose of not existing. he exists to extract all of his potential and purpose and importance just to stuff it all into cloud.

ff7 is cloud strife’s story and zack fair’s grave. it’s always been like this. he cannot exist outside of his own dead body on the cliffside. he’s been dead since the beginning. he’ll always be dead. he’s never going to exist. there’s no moment in time where zack’s importance falls outside of being fucking dead. god i could go crazy.

[justdiptych]

The original Fallout had one group of raiders. That was the name the game map gave to them - 'Raiders' - but they were in fact known as the Khans. They were a relatively minor faction, being tied to quests in the first town the player is likely to visit, but we learn a lot about them in their brief appearance.

Many of the Khans are given names and dialogue, and will tell the player about their history - including how they came from the same place as the people of Shady Sands, Vault 15, and feel entitled to share in the town's wealth. Some see their raiding life as a way to claim control of the post-war world - ruling through strength and fear, believing that old ideas of morality died with the rest of the world. Others treat it as just another job - they support their group by trading, maintaining equipment, preparing food, and other everyday tasks.

In short, the Khans are a fully-realised community, as much a part of the story as any other. We learn that their brutal leader, Garl Death-Hand, took command after killing his abusive father. The player can kill him, or negotiate with him, or impress him with acts of cruelty, or even challenge his nihilistic views by convincing him that they're his father, back from the dead. Killing Garl and destroying his compound is treated as the best choice for the region as a whole, and is confirmed to have happened in the next game in the series, but it's certainly not the only option.

Fallout 2 has two groups of raiders. One - again marked 'Raiders' on the map - turn out not to be raiders at all, in that they're not attacking towns to steal their wealth. Instead, they're a mercenary company, hired by a disreputable businessman from one town (New Reno) on behalf of another town (Shady Sands again, now the capital of the New California Republic) to harass a third town (Vault City) to convince them that they need outside help in maintaining their defences. It's part of the game's major subplot about the three societies competing for control of northern California and western Nevada.

The other group are the New Khans, founded by Garl's son Darion after the original Khans' defeat. These Khans aren't nearly so fearsome as their predecessors - they mostly operate in secret, hiding behind a group of squatters who have moved into the ruins of Vault 15 and pretending to help them restore it for use. Darion is wracked with resentment over what happened to his father's crew and guilt for having survived, and his gang ultimately present little real threat to the outside world.

What I'm getting at here is that, in the world of Fallout as it existed in those early games, 'raiders' were not a major factor. There was one group who conducted raids as part of their regular economic activity, but only against particular communities - Shady Sands saw them as raiders, but to the Hub, they were just traders. Raiders only existed in a particular context - they had particular interests, beliefs and opportunities that would not always be possible or applicable.

Most of the games' conflict came not from the existence of raiders but from bilateral political and economic competition between groups with overlapping but not identical interests, which was reflected in their respective ideologies. We see this in Killian and Gizmo fighting to control the future of Junktown, and in the Master's attempt to reshape the world with the Unity while the different groups of New California try to retain their independence.

We particularly see it in Fallout 2, with its three-way battle for economic domination between the constitutional democracy of the New California Republic, the mafia-ruled narco-state of New Reno, and the elitist technocratic slave state of Vault City. Which of these groups continue to rule and expand, and which crumble, is what ultimately shapes the region's future - with control of Redding and its gold supply as the linchpin.

While the Enclave are the story's primary antagonists, they're chiefly characterised by their refusal to engage with this new socio-economic order - they believe that all outside authorities are illegitimate, and all outsiders non-human, and their only plan is to release a bioweapon into the atmosphere and kill literally everyone on Earth but themselves. The Enclave's defeat is necessary for New California's survival, but, otherwise, they change very little about how people live their lives. They're like Darion's New Khans on a larger scale - relics of a fallen order, robbed of their purpose, hiding in an old bunker and driven by nothing but resentment of having been left behind.

I might, in future, talk about the contrasting depiction of raiders in Fallouts 3, 4 and 76, and about New Vegas's use of raider and bandit groups like the Khans, the Legion, the Fiends and the White Legs. For now, I think I've made my point - that raiders are not a fact of life but a product of a particular place and time, and much less relevant to the universe of Fallout than other forms of competition and violence.

[httyd-art-requests]

Hellooo!! I saw a drawing come across my dash recently by you that I believe was original art with your ocs?? I’m a big sucker for httyd ocs and I was wondering, how many do you have? Would you be willing to talk about them maybe??

YIPPEE I love talking about my OCs!! Thank you for the interest, I'm more than willing to talk about my little guys and gals <3 It's probably going to get long, sooo...

OC lore and art under the ominously placed readmore button. smile

Dreamer

The pair you (probably) saw the art of are my self insert, Dreamer, and his Deathgripper companion Draugr. Dreamer is a scholar and healer's apprentice who arrives on New Berk to study dragons in order to better heal them... except he's also terrified of them. Draugr is one of Grimmel's former Deathgripper minions who was stranded on New Berk after the events of (my alternate version of) THW. Dreamer nurses him back to health, and in return he helps Dreamer get over his fear of dragons.

Dreamer also has 2 Terrible Terror buddies, and they're also the ones who deliver all your asks to me :) They're called Terror Mail for a reason, hehe

Light Furies

I have a pair of female Light Fury OC named Eclipse and Sunny, who are a mated pair. Eclipse is melanistic and a menace to humans and dragons alike, and Sunny is the only dragon she likes having around her. Grumpy one × Sunshine one.

Eclipse was gravely injured in a fight to defend her territory from another dragon, and would have perished had Sunny not stumbled upon her. Sunny, a young female who recently left her flock to establish her own, refused to leave a fellow Light Fury to her fate- no matter how much of a hassle she insisted on being. And thus, Sunny slowly carved out a place for herself in Eclipse's cold, cold heart, and two of them remained by eachother's sides ever since.

I plan on redrawing them sometime soon, now that my style has changed somewhat

The Huntsman

The proverbial meat and potatoes of my OC roster. He has the most detailed story out of all of them, and he's one of my favorite OCs I've ever made <3

His name is Iskar, also known by his moniker as the Huntsman. He's the son of a dragon hunter who, after his father's fleet was burned down and pillaged by a mysterious warlord, was raised by the family of a blacksmith on a faraway island where dragons only exist in folktales.

Well, except for one...

Iskar's Night Fury, Warden, who was kept as a living trophy on his father's ship before it burned. Iskar formed a bond with the dragon, who then stole him away to save his life. The two of them have become inseperable, and Warden is part of the reason Iskar is feared across the Archipelago. As for the other reason...

Iskar also gets involved with Drago Bludvist, following a trail of rumors in an attempt to find his father again. Drago blackmails him into working for him, and Iskar becomes something like a personal attack dog and assassin for Drago. He earns himself a reputation and becomes a wives' tale across the Archipelago, and it isn't until he meets Hiccup, during Drago's siege on Berk, that he's convinced to take up arms against Drago and free himself. Iskar switches sides to help save Berk, gives Hiccup his own world map as a farewell gift, and returns home to his family after nearly 10 years.

In a sort of epilogue / theoretical second movie, Iskar takes his niece, Valorie, to Berk so she can learn to train dragons "the proper way". Needless to say, Berk is not very happy to see the man responsible for almost getting their island destroyed. Iskar acts as a translator between Valorie and the Berkians, as Valorie doesn't speak their language and Iskar does (on account of his travels with Drago), and through the course of their stay on the island, he successfully redeems himself in the eyes of the Berkian population.

Valorie

Okay she's not actually Iskar's niece. She's the daughter of Runar and Ylva, the blacksmith and his wife who originally raised Iskar, and the ones Iskar returned home to after he was free of Drago. They had her while Iskar was away working for Drago, and she was around 8 years old when he came back home, give or take. She grew up knowing him as Uncle Iskar, the globetrotter and explorer who occasionally came home to bring her cool presents.

She grew up with a Night Fury around the house, so naturally, she became fascinated by dragons and dragon riding- which Iskar definitely didn't help with, considering he engineered Warden's saddle to have a second seat right behind the rider's own.

She eventually bonds with a Stormcutter while studying under Berk's finest (Fishlegs), whom she names Windseeker.

Valhalla's Gate

Not a character, but an island Iskar discovers during his travels as a free man after Dragos defeat. Iskar is a cartographer by profession, thus the handcrafted world map he gifts Hiccup, which just so happens to contain directions to a hidden island Iskar has named Valhalla's Gate.

It's a dragon sanctuary through and through, built around and on the back of a sleeping Foreverwing which guards the island and all of its inhabitants. You can only approach the island on dragon back, similar to how you could only leave Vanaheim by smelling a certain way to trick the Sentinels in RTTE. A natural defense mechanism, if you will.

Iskar often takes detours on his travels to visit the island, and becomes well known by all the dragons that live on it. Hiccup also finds it thanks to Iskar's map, shortly after Berk rebuilds itself and Hiccup has to suddenly take on a lot of chiefly responsibilities- and what better way to deal with newfound responsibilities than to follow a mysterious map given to you by a guy who tried to kill you? Surely nothing can go wrong. Smile.

Conclusion

There's a lot more to say about all of them, but hopefully this about covers the important parts. I could go on about Ylva and Runar, Iskar's relationship with Eret and Hiccup, Dreamer's relationship with the Berkians, etc etc, but this reply is long enough already lol

I'm always happy to talk about my characters, so feel free to ask me stuff about them if you guys are interested! But, seeing as this is primarily an art request blog, I won't be talking about them much unless someone asks. That's what @wardenofdragons is for!

(He says, knowing full well he keeps forgetting to post on it)

[evilbihan]

Bi-Han's and Kuai Liang's father was not a good father

And now it's no longer a theory. Now I have proof.

The last thing I expected to get out of this very strange invasions mode season was confirmation for a theory I've had ever since I first finished the story mode. Despite other characters in the game claiming that the father of the Lin Kuei brothers was an honorable man, something about that never sat right with me, given how cruel that man was in all the previous timelines and how vastly different Bi-Han views his father compared to his brothers, Liu Kang or Sindel.

I made this discovery on the mesa of Shang Tsung's laboratory.

At the very beginning of the mesa when you come in through the portal and head to the right (your character's right) towards the two crates that are next to each other, there's a node featuring a fight against Scorpion.

That node, loosely translated from my language, is called "Daddy's favorite".

It might seem like a small and meaningless detail and maybe I'm reading too much into it, but if the name of that node is anything to go by and if it's a reference to MK1's canon lore (which it has to be, otherwise I don't see why it would be there) this adds a whole new layer to the tragedy of the falling out between Bi-Han and Kuai Liang and Bi-Han's decision to let his father die.

Was he neglected? Despite being the oldest son and the grandmaster's heir, Kuai Liang was the favorite son. He was his father's pride and joy, not Bi-Han. That explains Bi-Han's bitterness and his resentment towards his father as well as his eagerness to earn the respect of others. Because his own father didn't give that to him.

Sub-Zero: I helped you, but I've earned no respect. General Shao: Because there's nothing lower than a traitor.

Johnny Cage: I thought I had daddy issues. But you? Sub-Zero: My family is none of your business.

Would a good father have a "favorite son"? Should a good father not love his sons equally, without picking favorites?

Another small but noteworthy detail is one of Bi-Han's invasions mode encounters being named "Joyless initiate" (again, loosely translated because my game is in my native language, not English). You have to wonder what kind of life Bi-Han lived for the game to refer to him that way and how much of that is owed to his father's strictness or lack of care towards him since he wasn't the favorite son. It certainly implies Bi-Han faced hardships that the main story never really talked about or even mentioned.

It might not seem like much, but I'm sure some thought was put into making these nodes and the references and hints exist for a reason.

I'm aware that a lot of people think the father of the Lin Kuei brothers was a good guy, but as a reminder, in the original timeline, Bi-Han's and Kuai Liang's father was ruthless enough to kidnap the brothers from their mother, potentially even killing her and their younger sister in the process, and turned them both into assassins for the Lin Kuei. Of course, the reboot is set in a new timeline, but as I said in my previous post, all characters are still essentialy the same. Some backstories and allignments have changed, but not the character's personalities and even in this new era, the old grandmaster is no saint.

I think it's messed up that his response to the Lin Kuei killing Smoke's entire family and turning him into an orphan was to take Tomáš in and turn him into a warrior for the very clan that murdered his family.

Sure, some might view it as a noble gesture that he took responsibility for the mistake he made and decided to give Tomáš a home after he was orphaned, but if that man cared at all about Smoke's wellbeing, he could have found a better solution for the situation. He could have told Liu Kang about what happened and asked him to let Tomáš stay at the Wu Shi academy instead of turning him into an asset for the clan that killed his mother and sister.

While that's only a side note, it proves that Bi-Han's and Kuai Liang's father had a twisted idea of what it means to be a good parent if he thought that taking in the son of a family his own warriors murdered was the "honorable" thing to do without sparing a second thought to what that was going to do to Smoke mentally.

Anyway, this subtle hint is one of the few good things to come out of this invasions mode season and I'm glad I found it.

[geekgirles]

Julith, Bakara, and Amalia: History Repeats

If you think about it, Amalia's arc in the webtoon is eerily similar to both Julith and Bakara's roles in Dofus Book 1: Julith.

Like Bakara, she holds a very deep and personal grudge against her sister-in-law partly because of the role she played in her brother's death; that is to say, Aurora and her family's inaction during the Necro War factored in Armand having to sacrifice himself in order to protect the Sadida Kingdom. Meanwhile, Bakara blamed Jahash's death solely on Julith because she was raised to believe she had caused everything in the first place.

Which made both young women see Aurora and Julith, respectively, as nothing but traitors. Because even if Amalia never outright calls the Osamodas as such, it is made pretty clear throughout several points in the story that's what she really thinks of them, as she repeatedly pointed out their abandonment of the Sadida at the Necros' hands.

It's also worth pointing out that what sets Amalia apart from Bakara is the fact that the former has a legitimate and justified grievance against Aurora and her family, unlike Bakara's grudge against Julith, that turned out to be nothing but a ploy orchestrated by a third party. Because, even though the Osamodas weren't responsible for directly harming Yugo, they did betray the Sheran Sharms and their kingdom by going against their word and not sending help while Aurora actually fled from the fight, whereas Julith never betrayed Jahash and was even trying to save Bonta before she was attacked.

And, on the other hand, like Julith, now that she's lost so much (her father, her brother, part of their forests, so many innocent lives at the hands of the Necros...), there is nothing Amalia isn't willing to do for the sake of what she holds dear—her kingdom and Yugo. Just like Julith abandoned all morals in order to reunite with Jahash and try to rebuild their lives with their son, which led to her abandoning all qualms about making others suffer after what she herself went through.

And it's precisely the possibility of losing Yugo and her people at the hands of someone she knows doesn't care about them, and whom she thinks are capable of anything to achieve their goals, that causes Amalia to lash out and brutally attack the Osamodas in retaliation for their perceived involvement in her husband's poisoning, not unlike how Julith forewent all empathy after losing Jahash, perfectly willing to sacrifice hundreds of lives for his own.

In a way, what all three women have in common is that their most morally questionable actions are a direct result of being hurt and betrayed in the past, and the deep love they feel for someone and/or something propelling them to take those actions in the first place.

I guess this all comes to show that Julith's involvement in the webtoon makes more sense than I originally thought, at least, if they intend to prove me right and draw more parallels between her and Amalia in the future. But more importantly, it shows how love and hate are extremely volatile emotions, two sides of the same coin that can lead to terrible consequences.

(Credit to @cocogum for their screenshots of the webtoon).

[theoi-crow]

The original Hymn to Demeter (aka the Hades and Persephone myth) is a lot more empowering than the modern retellings of the myth!

Reducing Demeter's role in her own myth not only hurts the original culture whose myth modern authors have distorted but it also cheapens the very empowering message that shook ancient Greece!

The reason why this story has always stood out was because it was a story about a loving mother caring for her daughter's well being by fighting the world along with every god that got in her way.

Modern retellings disregard the original context and choose modern topics like the difficult relationship between an overbearing mother and a tired daughter who dreams of freedom. Without proper historical context, they superimpose their own complicated relationship with their mothers and assume their desire to leave the house they were raised in might also be true for Persephone. These retellings show that modern authors don't understand the difficult life ancient Greek women had to face.

To an ancient Greek mother, the death of a daughter was NO different than her daughter's wedding because she was expected to be okay with never seeing her daughter again.

This is why Persephone marries the god of the Underworld. As a goddess that cultivates the earth by creating life, this was the one place Demeter could not visit at the time of Persephone's kidnapping.

The marriage between Persephone and Hades also represented young girls who died before they were able to marry because young girls who died before their wedding were buried in their wedding attire and were called the "brides of Hades" with their deathbeds also being described as their eternal bridal chambers: (Source Link)

There's an example of this custom in Sophocles' Antigone when the king of Thebes, Creon, sentences his niece Antigone to death and as she is getting ready to die she describes her death prison as a bridal chamber and says Persephone's name: (Source Link)

This was also a time period that placed a higher value on sons over daughters! This was a world that ignored the pain of a mother losing her daughter but that same mother was expected to mourn her son via performing an elaborate ritual that required her to tear out her hair and scar her face: (Source Link)

Also, most women in ancient Greece did not have a say in who their daughters married and since it wasn't unusual for grooms to come from out of town they often didn't know where their daughters would be living. The details of the marriage was between the groom and the bride's father who were often close in age, which is why Hades is older than Zeus since Zeus is the youngest of Chronus' children.

Neither the mother nor daughter knew about the arrangements between the father and the groom so bridal kidnappings were very common as well. The kidnapping of the bride was also an ancient Greek custom, which is why Hades kidnapped Persephone when Demeter wasn't looking.

Marriage was also a defining feature of a girl turning into a women so most brides were married by the time they were 14 though some we're younger while others were a bit older depending on the law and political arrangements: (Source Link)

So if Hades went through the proper channels to marry her, then why is it so empowering?

Even though Hades and Zeus followed tradition to pass Persephone from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead without telling Demeter, Demeter broke customs because of the love she had for her young daughter. She was supposed to quietly accept Persephone's fate especially since the most powerful gods among the Olympians were the three kings so who was she to fight two out of the three kings?

Demeter understood her predicament but when Zeus told her there was nothing she could do about it. She did just that. She stopped and did NOTHING.

She stopped cultivating the earth, she stopped making things grow, she stopped feeding the humans and the animals used for sacrifices and soon everything and everyone started dying.

Hades had an unexpected influx of the dead all repeating Demeter's message of longing to see her daughter and Zeus started getting harassed by gods who panicked about their worshippers dying, losing more worshippers who thought this was their fault and losing sacrifices. Both gods were being pressured to give in to Demeter's demands.

The hymn to Demeter was so impactful it became a secret cult: Not only did she win the ability to see her daughter for part of the year but Demeter's love for Persephone became so legendary that it kick-started the Eleusinian Mysteries (LINK) which also established the Elysian Fields since it was believed that heroes who had proven their worth and those initiated into the mysteries would be granted access in the afterlife (this is often described to be the closest place to an Abrahamic heaven) : (LINK)

Prior to the kidnapping of Persephone, Hades only had one area for dead humans which is described as such a miserable place that in the Odyssey, Achilles said he would rather be a slave to the poorest man in the land of the living than be in the land of the dead: (LINK) so we can date the beginning of the Elysian Fields becoming a prominent feature of Hades after the Odyssey was written (8th century BCE).

Allowing Demeter to be the main character in her own hymn gives a voice to mothers and ancient women

so by reducing Demeter's role you reduce their voices as well. By taking away Demeter's achievements and importance you take away the struggles real women had to face.

By making Demeter seem overbearing and Persephone tired of being "trapped" by her mother you not only lose the context that Demeter had been previously raped by both Zeus and Poseidon so she feared Hades might be doing the same to her daughter but you cause a rift between the relationship of these two goddesses whose love for each other was so strong it rearranged the original map of the Underworld and caused a climate shift that now featured Fall and Winter.

Demeter's myth also explains ancient marital customs and death rites:

By making Persephone seem like a willing participant in her own marriage you are stripping the meaning of these old traditions. It was very rare for a bride to have a say in who she was marrying, that was between her future husband and her father (or whichever man was the head of the household at the time).

Persephone also represents the cruelty of sudden death taking girls who never got to marry so making her a willing participant makes her seem like she's eager to take her own life in order to get away from her mother which might be how some modern people feel about their toxic relationship with their own mothers but it strips the ancient cultural context and meaning.

By changing the role of Demeter you lose the historical context attached to the original myth. You lose the struggle these women had and cheapen the severity that comes with losing a loved one and being forced to accept that you will never see them again. By making Hades seem like an ideal husband you lose Persephone's dilemma of having to accept that she'll never see her mother again and she never even got to say goodbye. And by doing the kind of retellings that are seen today you lose the fact that in the original myth neither Persephone nor Demeter consented to this arrangement because ancient women were not allowed autonomy over their bodies or their fates so:

Demeter forcing both Zeus and Hades to return her daughter she forced them to acknowledge their autonomy and although not entirely successful she gave ancient women a fighting chance

[panic-in-the-multiverse]

Venom

Pairings: father Miguel O’Hara x gn!teen!venom!reader, Venom x teen!reader

Imagine: what it would be like to be Miguel’s son and a spider-man along with venom, spider-venom? Idk guys

Warnings: mention of death, mention of parent death, mention of injuries, father Miguel O’Hara, idk what else, not proofread

A/N keep in mind the first part of this is before Gabriella died. Second I am aware that Miguel has a son somewhere out there in the comics, third don’t mind me referencing Moon Knight in some parts, lastly this is actually based on one of my ocs, but I made this fic x reader instead :)

Side note: I did imagine reader to be male (like my oc is) but I made it gn!reader so that everyone can read it

You lived on earth-TRN1042 (is that the name, it was when I searched it up, might be wrong tho), with you father Miguel O’Hara and your sister Gabriella O’Hara

Your canon event as tragic as it is was to watch as your father died — which would eventually lead you to become Spider-Man

You’d been bitten a few days prior and was still adjusting to the whole power thing

But we are getting ahead of ourselves, Here’s the thing Miguel (earth-928) lost his family on his earth and when he found out a way to go into other earths he found your earth. The one where he still had a happy family

His original plan was to just watch from afar, but when your father died, Miguel made the rash decision to take your fathers place, which didn’t go as smoothly as he thought, after all you had watched your father die

At first you thought you were going crazy when you first saw Miguel, apparently he’d been with your sister all day. You didn’t trust him one but, you knew for a fact your father was dead so when you saw him playing with Gabriella and her dolls you were in shock, you’d told Gabriella to go to her room, once she did the interrogation started, you’d felt your father take his last breath so you sure as hell would find out who this imposter was.

“Who are you?”

“I’m your father”

“No, no, no, no, I watched my father die, who are you?”

Miguel knew you wouldn’t stop your interrogation until you knew what was going on, this led to him giving you a long explanation about different earths, his family and everything in between, how he got his powers and literally his whole life story, only to ensure that you would let him stay, he wouldn’t stay against your wishes

You let him stay, not only because you knew what loss felt like, but you hadn’t told Gabriella yet and you didn’t know how you could tell her that her actual father was dead, and it would prove to be good to have an adult raise your little sister with you, so you let Miguel stay, eventually you saw him as your father too, Gabrielle being none the wiser when it came to her fathers true identity.

The first time you called Miguel “dad” or something alike, he was overjoyed

Miguel didn’t really enjoy you going out to beat bad guys up but he never told you not to, he knew why you did it so he never stopped you, and he used to do it so it would be kinda hypocritical of him to force you to stop, instead he’d be at home, and every time you snuck in through your window you could find Miguel in the living room ready to patch you up, telling you of every time for being reckless and getting hurt so many times

Don’t be offended when he calls you an “reckless idiot” (he’d probably say it in Spanish though) when you get home nearly half dead (Miguel might of overreacted a bit)

It was around this time when you started to get memory gaps from time to time, some fights you didn’t even remember how you defeated the enemy, and some days you woke up in an alleyway, (kinda like Steven in episode one of moon knight)

Before it all went to shit I’d like to think that Miguel gave up on the spider-man part of him and was just a single dad with his two kids working a boring job — not at Alcehmax, he won’t do that mistake again

You all lived rather peacefully for the most part, you’d help Gabriella get better at football/soccer, going to an ice cream shop every time after one of Gabriella’s matches, loss or win didn’t matter there was always ice cream after a match.

And then in a single day it all got taken away from you, in just a couple of minutes all you had ever known was gone

Your whole earth started to disappear along with the people in it, you’d been out on your daily spider-man patrols when it happened, you saw your father/Miguel running with Gabriella and so instead of trying to stop whatever was happening — or more like knowing you couldn’t stop it as you had no clue what it was — you went into the direction of your family.

And when your sister disappeared you didn’t know what to do anymore, Miguel at least able to think somewhat took your hand and soon enough you were on earth-928, and from a screen you watched as your dimension disappeared into nothingness

This left many questions and problems but the question you were mostly focused on was the fact that you hadn’t disappeared

Turns out the spider that bit you had bonded (idk if this works but it does now) with a symbiote — Venom — who was from another earth, and when the spider bit you, you’d not only gained spider-powers but Venom transferred over to you and the two of you bonded, this changed your DNA and caused you to be able to coexist on your own earth along with the earth that Venom was from (does this make sense ain’t got a single clue)

Turns out Venom hadn’t made an appearance (to your knowledge and Miguel’s) because he protected you whenever you couldn’t yourself, and all those memory gaps that you had was the times that Venom had taken over (you know kinda like Jake with Steven and Marc in Moon Knight)

Fast forward a bit and you’d joined the spider-society

You had learned to coexist with Venom, it took some time but it worked out in the end, at first people would think you were crazy as you yelled at nothing (except for you you were talking to Venom who was speaking inside your mind), a lot of spider-people stayed away from you not wanting to be near Venom as he is supposed to be a villain, but when they realized you were one of the good guys they stopped avoiding you and Venom

Venom would deny it to his grave but he is extremely protective over you, if anyone hurt you he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt/kill/eat them

Miguel also became way more protective, after he lost Gabriella he only had you left and he would only send you out on the easy missions — that is until you snuck out on one of their worsts missions and got hurt because no one else new you were there — cue Miguel letting you go on dangerous missions so that you wouldn’t sneak out again and possibly die, at leas if he knew where you were he could make sure you didn’t die.

Not only did Miguel become more grumpy and strict with all the rules, you also become a lot more grumpy as you grieved your sister, and friends

And then all the shit with Miles happened but that’s for part 2,3 (part 2 siding with Miles, part 3 siding with Miguel idk which will come out first)

[syndrossi]

In the AU where Rhaella and Dany get Summerhalled instead of Jon and Rhaegar, I'm curious about how their relationship with Daemon would be different then that of Daemon and the boys. So much of what he's doing to try and bone with them is inspired by his own childhood and/or stories about Aemon and Baelon, that I think he'd be a little bit lost if he had daughters instead of sons. Most likely he would ask Rhaenyra or Rhaenys for help, and while Rhaenys would probably be too busy and/or a bit cold towards him, I think Rhaenyra would jump at the chance to spend time with them. She's always wanted a daughter, and now Daemon has two! And they need a mother! (It would also give Daemon and Rhaenyra an excuse to spend more time together, which I think they'd both enjoy a little too much.) OTOH this could definitely be used as a way for Otto to try and get information on Daemon by having Alicent get close to the girls. I could honestly see it becoming another point of contention between her and Rhaenyra. Poor Rhaella and Dany are gonna have the two most powerful women in the court fighting over them! For their own personal preferences, Dany would definitely adore Rhaenyra, since she'd be able to relate to her struggles as a women whose inheritance is constantly being threatened, but it's possible that Rhaella might end up favoring Alicent, since their situations are somewhat similar. I could see her growing somewhat disenchanted with Alicent once she sees her interact with Rhaenyra and the Velaryon boys, especially if she realizes that Alicent is spreading rumors about their bastardy. (Aerys attempted to spread the rumor that Rhaella was cheating on him, and that some of their dead babies actually bastards, so seeing Alicent do something similar make her upset)

Also if you make this an official AU, maybe it could be called Reverie? If doesn't technically connect, but I think it works since Dany it's a canonical dragondreamer and, although her personality isn't really talked about, Rhaella always seemed like the quiet/daydreamy type to me. (Or she would have been if it weren't for Aerys.) Also it's a pretty word and I think Dany and Rhaella would both appreciate it :)

Yeah, I agree that Daemon would be far more out of his depth dealing with twin daughters on his own. In canon, he had Laena to help with Baela and Rhaena, and married Rhaenyra not long after. Society is such that Daemon just...won't make that Aemon+Baelon connection.

So I think you're right that he'd either seek help quickly or be much more open to marrying Laena so that he has someone to turn to on "feminine" matters. (Laena would be an awesome mom to twin girls, and it's a crime that she didn't get to see her own twins grow up. 100% enabler of all mischiefs and adventures.)

I still maintain that the Dany-Rhaenys similarities are strong, so Aunt Rhaenys would very much love her step-granddaughter, and definitely Dany would have a lot of empathy for Rhaenyra's struggles.

I don't know how much of a parallel Rhaella would see in Alicent, who by all accounts sought the marriage to Viserys, presumably out of ambition, vs Rhaella being forced into it for prophecy's sake. I could see her having an interesting relationship with Viserys, who would remind her a lot of her original father Jaehaerys (this comes up in the Rhaella AU bits I've written). On the one hand, she loved her father, but she definitely hated that he forced her into marrying Aerys.

I could almost see Rhaella really forming a close bond with Daemon, appreciating a father who fights for her wants/needs, whereas Dany has to grapple with her childhood desire for, well, a childhood with her family vs Daemon's overprotectiveness / tendency toward being almost stifling. Like Jon, she was highly independent before--a queen, in fact! I don't think it's easy to go back to being dependent and viewed as a future queen consort (at most). I think she'll have ambitions of her own.

Definitely we'll see some of the same dynamics with the Greens here as in Reversal, though, where marriage to neutralize Daemon + the twins' dragons is highly desirable to Otto, who will be scheming to win the girls over for matches to his grandsons. (And Runestone is still in play.)

Reverie is a nice name! I do try not to name any AUs I don't intend to write, and I'm not planning to pick this one up anytime soon, but if I ever do, I'd probably go with that. (There are...a lot in play right now. 😅)

[marinettesaltprompts]

It's Morphin' Time

Prompt by @rukatofan89

Time for an Adrien Sugar prompt (with some Marinette salt) and a different crossover that is rarely used. 

Adrien (Like in many salt fics) has lost his ring, friends, home and fortune save for the trust fund his mother set up for him before his birth and being the teenage son of Hawkmoth, finding any work or going to school has proven impossible and is living in a crappy apartment trying to milk his finances as long as possible since his aunt and cousin refuse to even acknowledge his existence. He was barely able to hold onto the rings that held his Amok by claiming he never had them. All the while, Ladybug is Paris’ darling hero and in spite of his efforts, Chat Noir is remembered as either a failure or a joke.

This changes one day when Adrien returns home after another failed job hunt to find a tall anthropomorphic dog with black hair and blue scales in his living room. Before he can get a word out the stranger knocks him out and he wakes up in a white interrogation room. His first thought was that someone ordered his arrest or one of his fathers’ victims wanted payback. Looking up however, he sees two men watching him. They’re both wearing black but one of them as an equal amount of green on him.

“You sure you don’t want to witness this?” The one man asks, turning to the man with the green.

“Your power, your choice.” The other man said. Adrien noticed the man had a strange pair of bracelets on his wrists. “Either way though, I approve.”

“Cool.” The first man says as the other turns to leave. “Tell Tanya I said hey.”

“I will. After I talk to Krueger about his capture methods.” The second man replies as the door shuts behind him, leaving Adrien alone with the other man.

“Look.” Adrien begins as the man sits down. “I had nothing to do with my father Akumatizing people.” He’d been interrogated with every method short of torture after his father and Natalie were arrested. While there was no hard evidence linking him to Hawkmoth, it didn’t sway most people. And he never revealed his identity as Chat Noir publicly after Ladybug had outright derided him in an interview after loosing his ring.

“We know.” The man interrupted him. Between Space Patrol Alpha, Grid Battleforce and the various computer experts they had connections to, he knew Adrien was innocent. “We also know you fought against him, Chat Noir.”

Giving a groan, Adrien put his head in his hands. “What do you want? I don’t know who ladybug is, and she won’t even talk to me. I don’t have a miraculous or a means to get one.”

“Actually.” The man replied. “We want to hear your side of the story, how you got your powers, and what led to you falling out with Ladybug.”

Adrien was a little skeptical at first, but something about this man put him at ease and made him want to trust him. And so, he began his tale, meeting the old guardian on his very first day of school. Receiving Plagg and becoming Chat Noir and his and Ladybugs’ fights with the Akumas. How their relationship went from being equal partners to her having power over him, keeping more and more secrets, and how he never received any training like Ladybug did outside of ONE meeting with the old guardian. Of how she left him to fight Akumas to go retrieve other heroes and how he was never allowed to know their identities and how she even banned one person from being a bearer again because HE knew her identity. Then his tale turned to Ladybug becoming the guardian and him eventually losing his ring before Ladybug and the other heroes took down his father. Eventually, he ended his story on a tangent about Lila’s’ manipulations and how they led to him becoming ostracized by his former friends once her lies were exposed.

As he listened to they young mans’ tale, Zack Taylor, the original Mighty Morphin’ Black Ranger had to struggle to keep his poker face. While they never exactly asked WHY Zordon had chosen them to become the Power Rangers, he always treated the five, and later six, of them equally and never asked them to keep secrets from each other. If their mentor had pulled with Jason what the old guardian did with Ladybug, Rita wouldn’t have NEEDED to brainwash Tommy into being the Green Ranger. And in spite of what Parisians might think (honestly, who put what in the drinking water there?) they knew Chat Noir was a capable hero, if not a little socially and emotionally stunted. Heck, if both he and Adrien were heroes at the same time and place, they’d probably be bouncing puns and jokes off each other the whole fight while everyone laughed. Zack couldn’t help seeing a bit of his teenaged self in the broken hero before him.

“Thank you, by the way.” Adrien said, taking a drink of water.

“What for?” Zack asked, pulled from his musings.

“Letting me get that off my chest.” Adrien answered. “I think your the first one who’s cared about my side of the story, ever.” He snorted. “Everyone just took a few bad things and immediately thought the worst of me.”

“You’re welcome.” Zack smiled back, a little stunned by this. “Could you do me a favor though?” He asked, reaching into his pocket.

“What?” Adrien asked as Zack put a weathered gold coin on the table and slid it to him. Looking at it, he noticed it had an image of a Mammoth or Mastodon on it.

“Hold that coin and tell me what you feel.” Adrien gives a sigh and picks up the coin.

“I swear, if a little mammoth comes out of this thin.” He’s cut off as the proxy power coin glows and a black light envelops his body. Zack smiles, because sitting before him now, was a new black Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger. His successor has been found. He will teach Adrien to become the new Black Ranger and once his training is complete, give him the actual power coin.

A few highlights for Adrien’s’ new life as an apprentice Ranger.

-Zack explains that several older rangers are seeking successors and convincing Adrien he’s worthy of the power.

-Training with Ninjor at his temple when not training with Zack.

-At one point Adrien runs into a bitter but repentant Chloe. He and Zack see her attempting to rescue kids during a monster attack and short list her as a possible apprentice ranger.(Early SPD maybe?)

-Therapy sessions with Karone. (not a bad person to talk out past issues with I think)

-Meets Minh Kwan (Romance or brother sister relationship-you decide)

-Gaining a new best friend in Jayden Shiba (I can’t help feeling they’d bond over learning to be normal ‘teenagers with attitude’)

-Meeting the Mystic Force Power Rangers who not only sever his connection to the Peacock Miraculous but also transfer his Amok into a surgical pin which Dana Mitchell (Lightspeed Rescue Pink Ranger) then implants inside his body.

-Finding out at a massive get together that not only do ALL the Power Rangers know each others identities, they help each other on both sides of the mask. Many rangers (the rest of the living OG MMPR team included) welcome him to the ranger family (He cried happy tears that day) a few lawyer rangers begin looking into his aunt and many of the goings on in Paris and allow Adrien to reclaim his wealth, even if he doesn’t need it.

-Eventually, a new red, pink and blue ranger are picked to join Adrien and Minh as the new Mighty Morphin’ team and they become fast friends as their predecessors did.

One day, a new villain crawls out of the woodwork and the new rangers investigate activity in Paris. Team Miraculous is overrun by literally hundreds of foot soldiers and when the rangers appear to help, end up getting in the way of finishing the monster. Eventually, they manage to stop the attack, but when Ladybug goes to thank them Black Rangers tells her to stay out of the way and to “let the actual heroes do their job.” The rest of the rangers back him up while gently chiding him, which he accepts with grace.

As more monster attacks are repelled by the rangers, Team Miraculous keeps looking more and more inept in comparison. (Considering they don’t have the support network the rangers do or training it’s unsurprising.) They aren’t dealing with Akumas attempting to capture their Miraculous anymore, they’re dealing with monsters trying to outright kill them all. Support for the team is at an all time low and Ladybug is low key losing it.

Things come to a head when Marinette is watching footage of the ranger battles and recognizes Chat Noir from a pun black ranger makes. After the next battle, Ladybug swoops into a (thankfully) empty battlefield and demands Adrien give her his morpher because “If you weren’t worthy of a miraculous, you aren’t worthy to be a ranger.” Minh leads the rangers in ripping into Ladybug for this, firing off her failings as a hero and for how she treated their friend. She doesn’t back down and sicks the rest of the team on them (albeit some are reluctant) when he refuses her again.

As the fight breaks out, the battle is witnessed by SPA who quickly puts out a call for reinforcements. Soon the five rangers are joined by their predecessors (who now use the proxy coins only when needed) Tommy and Katherine Oliver, Ninjor, The Mystic Force, The red, pink and Titanium Lightspeed rangers, The Samurai Rangers, the red and Quantum Time Force Rangers, and the recently promoted Commander Kruger. During the fight, Ladybug fixates on Adrien to the point that Tommy pops the Dragon coin out of the Master Morpher and tosses it to him so he can use the Dragon Shield and Dagger for added protection.

With sheer numbers, and Adrien’s’ knowledge of the Miraculous powers, they are able to whittle down the team to just Ladybug, the replacement Chat Noir, Rena Rouge, Argos and Ryuko. Argos (After realizing he can’t control his cousin) then uses an Amok to create a 'Sentizord’ for the five of them to pilot. In response, the current MMPR team call the Dinozords with Adrien also calling the Dragonzord. The fight begins but the Sentizord is amazingly fast, allowing it to damage the Megazord and Dragonzord. Albeit this does exhaust the Sentizord as the fight draws on.

Ladybug comments during the fight that no matter what team Adrien’s on, he can’t win. After all, they only beat Hawkmoth AFTER he lost his ring. The fury surges in Adrien and he calls out.

“MASTODON, LION, THUDERZORD POWER!”

The other rangers give their own calls and five bolts of lighting hit the damaged Dino Megazord, recharging and transforming it into the Thunder Megazord. Rallying the Dragonzord with the dagger, the two charge the worn out Sentizord, eventually knocking it backwards and the heroes out of it for them to be captured by the other rangers.

After the fight, Su-Han attempts to recover the Miraculous in his usual bullheaded and ham-fisted way. It goes about as well as you think it does. After being interrogated by Grid Battleforce yields no answers, the red Cosmic Fury ranger Amelia Jones uses her telepathy to read the Celestial Guardians’ mind and finds that the Guardian order is behind a global rash of child kidnappings to restore their numbers by 'conscripting and indoctrinating’ them into their order. The temple is soon captured by a large team of rangers from every team and spearheaded by Adrien’s’ team.

Later, in the same interrogation room he met Zack in, Adrien sits across from Marinette. Tikki floats next to her but she dose not have her Miraculous. When asked what’s going to happen now, Adrien replies that as the world court isn’t ready to handle magic users, so they will defer to them. That said, they understand that Marinette was manipulated and conditioned by a pair of cult members (Fu and Su), but was still a good hero before they interfered. So, SPA and Grid Battleforce will hold onto the Miraculous until she and the other heroes have completed both psychological counseling, and a full ranger training course. From there, they will see if the heroes want their Miraculous back, and if they are truly worthy of them. (Spoiler alert, some of them don’t, and aren’t) As he leaves the the room, Adrien turns to the girl he once loved, but now feels only pity with a dash of hope.

“And Marinette, may the power protect you.”

OP Note: This prompt actually reminds me of some of my old crossover ideas I had for Power Rangers (albiet non-salt related), so I really like this idea, though I think it would be even better without the salt parts.

[remember-digimon]

Good ol' reliable Joe!

When I first watched Digimon back in the 2000s, Joe was the character I related to the least. Now, as a big grown up in my late 30s, I finally understand what Joe is all about.

At first glance, Joe is anxiety incarnate. In the dub, he gets the 'nerd' trope that Izzy avoided for the most part. Joe is always allergic to things, worried about the slightest danger, and constantly trying to be the voice of reason. His 'voice of reason' however is more 'voice of general complaints and worry.'

If I recall correctly, in the original Japanese, Joe is like this because he's the oldest, at 12 years old. He feels it's his responsibility to make sure everyone is safe since he's the upperclassmen in this situation. In the dub, he's just a worrywort.

Joe takes on responsibility that he could easily delegate to other kids. In the episode where Gomamon evolves into Ikkakumon, Joe tries to break up an argument between Tai and Matt about climbing a mountain, only managing to get drawn into the argument himself. Later, he decides that he should climb up the mountain on his own as a compromise. He doesn't even bring Gomamon with him; Gomamon tags along anyway, of course, but initially Joe intended to go by himself.

He shows initiative, that's for sure. At least when the pressure is on. Others have noted that Tai, Sora, and Joe are the action-takers while Matt and Izzy act more defensively with Mimi, Tk, and later, Kari in mind. I like this thought, especially for Joe. He is often stumbling into danger out of his need to be the 'adult' of the group, feeling responsible for everyone's safety.

One thing we should discuss is his crest. I want to go more in depth on the crests on a different post, but here I think we need to talk about Joe's crest being changed for the dub. Originally it was the crest of faith.

Honestly, I do think reliability fits Joe a lot better. It is awkward for that to be a trait of a child (Remember, their crests were developed back during the original Digimon Adventure OVA, when Greymon fights Parrotmon). But I do think he exemplifies being reliable, because it's the right thing to do.

Conversely, Joe doesn't really expect others to help him. He wants to be relied on, but doesn't want to rely on others. He saves TK from drowning in the bay without thinking of his own safety.

Joe is also the studious member of the group. At one point, while they're temporarily back in Odaiba, Joe takes a practice test and fails it. This causes him a lot of anxiety. It feeds into the situation at home, which is another point I'll get into shortly.

In Our War Game, Joe is unreachable because he's taking an entrance exam. He's in a panic the whole time, showing how important it is that he does well. No doubt he's one of those cram school kids.

As for his family, we do meet his older brother Jim, but not his parents. In fact, Joe's parents are the only ones we don't meet out of the original 8. We do hear a lot about his dad, though, who has high expectations of his sons. Mr Kido wants both of his sons to be doctors like him, and on his terms, too. Jim says he wants to go to less developed countries to practice medicine, and that their father doesn't approve.

Jim also doesn't seem to have much faith in Joe becoming a doctor due to his high anxiety, and the fact that he faints at the sight of blood. Joe seems apprehensive about it himself, even though he does eventually go into med school and become a doctor.

To me, Joe's story is one of perseverance. When he's working off his debt in the diner, he fully expects to work there until it's paid off and is genuinely surprised that Matt would offer to help. When his test scores fall, he resolves to work harder. Even though he doesn't like the idea much at first he does eventually become a doctor. I can see how the original script would give him the crest of faith with all that in mind, but I still think reliability fits him better. He doesn't just have faith that things will work out, he's proactive in making sure they work out. Even if he's a little clumsy about it.

[rubysephi]

This is my take on the Ithica saga, feel free to tell me your thoughts

The challenge: the song starts with the viola, which is Penelope motif. The challenge she prepared is a display of her annoyance to the suitors because she knows only ODYSSEUS can succeed, this challenge is to show the suitors they can never compare to Odysseus, to the true man of the house. Speaking of man of the house, it was a cut song from the musicals, in the original Homer Odyssey, Telemachus called himself the man of the house, however here, he is not, the suitors took too much space in the house. The suitors only want the power that comes with being the man of the house, the challenge is to buy time for Odysseus to come back because she saw the storm, the abnormal behavior of the sea, she knows or at least hope Odysseus is coming. “ I'd rather die then grow old without the best of you” oh she ain't talking to the suitors, she is talking about Odysseus, knowing the suitors won't succeed in stringing the bow and shooting through the axes. Waiting, waiting she was waiting for years and yet she still have to wait for a few moments, she is longing for her husband

Hold em down : ‘ thrown back to the end of legendary with the “ where is he “. The suitors not being able to string the bow, and antinous releasing penelope tricked them, to forever delay them. we can hear Odysseus in the background, he is hearing the suitors plan, ready to kill them. We can also hear the viola in the background when antinous speak about what he will do to Penelope, perhaps showing her lack of say in the matter because only her instrument is there and not her voice

Odysseus: Odysseus chorus being the same as Polyphemus showing he is no longer a man during this, he is the monster. Also he said enough just before killing the suitor, Jusy like how polyphemus said enough before killing his man .All he has been through as shown him mercy isn't the solution anymore. Normally through the other saga the “ open arms “ melody shows that Odysseus still hung on to his friend, polities, view on the world but now he abandoned it . The danger motif keep showing up cause Odysseus is the danger, nother suitors, the electric guitar is always present. He is aiming for the torches, just like Scylla did when she killed his man, taking another inspiration from another monster. He is not letting them threaten his family after Fighting so hard to get back to his island, his loves one. The Legendary motif and Athena motif mixing omg , Athena taking in Telemachus like she did to Odysseus, full circle moment. “ Hold him down “ thrown back to the previous song , but all to the end of legendary “ where is he “. “ Mercy ? Mercy!” His mercy has long since drowned, perhaps like how he nearly drowned in “ get into the water” ; it stayed underneath the way, only ruthlessness remained. Also Eurymachus's askinf for forgiveness just like how Odysseus asked for forgiveness to Poseidon, getting the same answer “not” he truly took something form every foe he fought. Unlike the suitors, his aim is true, the arrows flying right to the target without fail. The end of the song mimicking the end of “ Survive” with Polyphemus, the chorus singing Odysseus, showing how much he embraced the monster, also the screams of the suitors omg, perfect . Perhaps as well the Chorus saying “ ody sseus” is the the same as the chorus at the end of no longer you

I can't help but wonder: nylon or acoustic guitar playing at the beginning , this isn't the monster, this is Odysseus, he softened for his son, once the threat was dealt with. The reunion between Telemachus and Odysseus is so heartwarming, Telemachus kept hearing tales and stories about his father, making up his vision of Odysseus based on those. However Odysseus only saw Telemachus as an infant, he didn't have anything to imagine what he son would be like, other the image of the infant Telemachus once was ( also the infant imagine of Telemachus could be tainted by the fact that Odysseus had to kill infant astanyax). They only could wonder about each other for years, and now that they are faced with each other, they can answer those questions. Also as they start to sing together, we can hear Athena motif, showing she is there watching over them both. I think I can hear a chunk of “ I'm just a man “ guitar before Odysseus says “ show yourself” also a huge throwback to warrior of the mind, them finally meeting back after all these years. The character development of Athena is so massive, going from no feelings to wanting to have a better world where people could be more kind. When she speaks we can hear the piano notes from the end of “ my goodbye”. The clock from the deep dive in the hour Glass, mixing with the guitar, both theirs opinion co existing

Would you fall in love with me again: the viola and the guitar finally together. “ I'm not the man you fell in love with” he truly thinks he became the monster, that the prophecy Tiresias told was true “ I see your wife with a man who is hunting”. When Penelope asked what he did , the ruthlessness motif okay, then thunder wringer motif and then the Scylla motif, showing his journey of sacrifice, the man he lost. The guilt heavy to Carry for a man that wanted to make it home. Penelope didn't ask Odysseus to move the olive tree bed because she thought Odysseus wasn't her husband but because she knew he wouldn't do it, she asked him to make him realize he was still the same man who carved that bed from the tree they first met at. This was Penelope making him know that , no matter what he did, the trouble he went through, it's still him , the man she decided to love and cherish , the man she married and waited for . Perhaps it was also to reassure herself that her wait is finally over, that her husband is truly standing there, in arm reach. ( The olive tree is also a cut song ). Penelope says “ waiting” 8 times because she waited 8 sagas for her husband to come home, this section also last 20 seconds for the 20 years she waited for him . She is so faithful to him, no matter if he did horrible things to survive, he was just a man who tried to survive and make it home to his wife and son. The instrumental of “ just a man “ playing soon after Penelope said you, "Is so genius, because at the end of the day, he was not the monster he made himself to be, he is just a man, who traded the world ( his crew ) for his son and wife.

Perhaps I can also hear in the Instrumental “ just a man, who Finally made it home, after all the years away from what he knows, he's just a man , who has fought for his life, deep down , he traded the world for his Son and wife” also him not singing the lyrics over the instrumental because he made it home, he don't have to sing about going home anymore, just like dangerous where the crew didn't sing “ making back Alive to our homeland” because they died,

And the musicals ending with” I love you “ ,omg , it's was a journey about love and lost, a man doing everything for love and losing a lot during his journey

Also the constant acoustic guitar playing while Odysseus talk showing he is the man and not the monster

Edit : I just realized between challenge and wyfilwma, Penelope sings waiting 13 times (6 in challenge, 7 in wyfilwma) and Ody faced 13 obstacles to get home (cyclops, storm, giants, circe, Underworld, sirens, scylla, mutiny, zeus, calypso, charybdis, poseidon, suitors)