#so i get that it's easier for me than for those who are still in full hyperfixation mode
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I come in peace! I don’t wanna try to convince you to take commissions! But I am curious about why you’re so strongly against them, did you have a bad experience working on one? Anyway, love your stuff, your tarot designs go so hard
Thanks for the love!! The reason isn't a bad experience or some such, it's 19 years of being a professional artist and knowing the field!
TLDR: I'm a traditional pen and ink illustrator, so it's not financially viable or creatively fulfilling.
I'm always down to talk art business, so here's a brief breakdown wall of text:
On the financial side, commission designs are almost always done at a net loss/break even for the artist, and I'm no exception. They're alright for starting out, or if you're looking to incorporate them into your marketing (IE: doing a poster design for a band to gain exposure), but typically they're roughly half the cash-per-hour for any established artist VS making an original design, and creating a print run of it.
Example: while tons of folks would look at someone charging $1k USD for a commission and think that it would be crazy cash, once you break down the math, it's pretty bad. An average design for me takes on average 30-40 hours, and that's because I don't have to communicate with anyone else. I'm just drawin' my idea. Assuming this is a dream client who has the mind-meld with me, wire transfers the $1k straight into my bank account the second it's done, that's roughly $25/hr. Once again - this looks *great*, that's around $50k/yr from drawing custom stuff! But that's not how it works. First of all, most folks would lose their *minds* at paying $1k for a commission - over the years I graphed it out, and back when I was a less-established artist, most folks would start with a budget of $100, have their limits pushed at $300, and outright refuse $500. You have to sift through all of those folks in order to get that reasonable commission. That includes folks who aren't willing to commit to a commission, don't want to say no to the price, but will still take up your time. Roughly, for me at least, 10 hours a week of it. You'll also have to run collections on roughly 20% of your customers - they may pay the deposit, but you'll have to chase them for the final payment. Even if you take the payment *in advance* you'll end up having to chase them down/get ghosted. So, realistically: you end up taking the $500, for *at least* 50 hours of work. On average, it clocked in closer to 65-70. $7.14 an hour. That's less than a third living wage and less than minimum wage. You cannot grow an art practice while actively starving. It's easier to make a design, sell it/license it/etc. to make more cash without losing your mind.
That said - After 2020, I reached a point in my career that when I take on custom work, it's typically from a larger brand with a larger scope and larger budget, ranging anywhere from $5k-$30k. That said - these businesses are typically ones that understand the industry and are far less of a headache to work with than individuals, and will give several months worth of work at a time at a living wage.
On the creative side, I enjoy making my own designs and work as opposed to other folks. I have a ton of drawings and projects I'd rather work on and share with folks of my own that are infinitely more fun than the 200th identical commission request (a biblically accurate angel that also is the grim reaper that is also Baldur's Gate 3 thirstraps/Dark Souls fan art/primarchs because Y'ALL AIN'T CREATIVE BUT MY ASTARION X SANGUINIUS SHIP CAME FIRST.) Also, most of the fun of my career is knowing as many folks as possible get to enjoy my art junk. I'd rather go through a few extra hoops and have thousands of folks see my stuff vs something only one other person gets to see.
If you made it this far, congrats, here is my favorite image I have saved in my camera roll:
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Please please please please, Kim Seo-wan smutty smut... Ever since I read your Seo-wan x Reader I couldn't help but fall in love with that man more than I already was, so... PLS. if it doesn't maik ya uncomfortable obvs (。•́‿•̀。"). ((TAKE UR TIME!))
YAYAYSYXTDGEGSYT I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO WANTED TO LET HIM INN BYE ugh i want him (respectfully) added squid game tags since most of you guys watched ddos cuz of roh jae won and i want other ppl to see his role here! <3
kim seo-wan nsfw headcanons <3 || warnings: 18+, cunnilingus, fingering, fluff
∘˚˳° first of all, his daily routine consists of studying, gaming, and being schizophrenic making him not have time for all those romantic, especially physical affection kinda stuff, so you have to convince and show him! it wouldn't be difficult, he's still a guy after all, let alone a guy who plays those "gooner" type of games, and to put it simply: he's a virgin.
when he starts dating you, he'd add a new lesson to his routine: porn. he's already failing his other exams, he doesn't wanna fail you!
no bias guys, but he is a touchy dude, and a kissy one at that. your lips are his revival potion, the taste of your lips is healing his whole being, same goes for your other set of lips, when he found out you make cute cute sounds while he eats you out and make out with your cunny? oh he has defeated that dragon. damn. "y...you like it here, right?" he'd take a small kitten lick on your clit, making a soft moan elicit your lips. his hands on both sides of your waist, holding onto you tightly as if you'd run away from him. "mhm.. there's good.. s'good." he's happy for your praise, lapping his tongue up and down faster, you could feel him mumble a mantra of "you're s'..yummy.." against you, you were so tasty, he loved it so much. he wouldn't even take off his small circle-framed glasses, being pushed all the way to the bridge of his nose. "ah... seo-wan..♡" you could feel the metal frame hit your twitching clit, it was a different kind of feeling.
when you guys are finally comfy, you both know study dates are cute n' all. he'd have his headset on, listening to music, a hand to flip the textbook's pages, and his other arm to be hooked around your waist, holding you securely. you'd be doing whatever too, you liked his company anyway. but whenever studies get stressful and hectic, he won't lose the chance to grope your soft tits, they're the best stress relievers after all. he's definitely a boob guy. "ah.. y/n. move closer, please? .. need ..easier.. access.." i fear he is very touchy, clingy, he doesn't want to let you go.
cosplays!! oh, when you guys save enough money, he absolutely loves to do cosplays with you! he's very grateful your character has little to no clothes, he'd savour your body everytime it's spread on his bed and would treat you like a princess for real. tell him he's super duper strong, it will make him cum in seconds. :< probably accidentally rips off your expensive cosplay too, makes you mad, obviously, but will fuck you as a consolation prize.
he's more of a giver than a receiver, he just wants you to be happy and pleased all the time! ...also makes you overstimulated every session. his fav part on himself is his hands, he knows how fond you are to them, foreplay always takes long because his fingers are stretching your poor hole for hours <3.
again, he barely has the time to do full-on sessions, but when he does, he's gonna make you a squirting mess. holding hands while fucking is sooo real <3.
"mmfh.. don't leave me, okay? stay.." he 'reminds' you, slowly pushing his dick back inside your hole, his thumb pressed firmly on your clit, how were you gonna leave him anyway? he was holding onto you like you'd escape! "i.. won't seo-wannnn..." "ahh... good girl... my healer..." he whispers, kissing you softly, his mind is definitely in another world right now, atleast you're in it. (。・ω・。)ノ♡
someone requested seo-wan x patient!reader so I AM GONNA FO THAT NEXT HELL YEAH
#nam-gyu#nam gyu x reader#nam gyu#squid game 2#squid game#squid game smut#squid game x reader#squid game season 2#kim seo wan#daily dose of sunshine#kim seo-wan#kim seo wan x reader#kim seo-wan x reader#kim seo-wan smut#player 124
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This does still ignore that we don't have to choose one avenue or another when it comes to the intersectionality of this topic.
This post is about misandry being a bad "avenue" for sociopolitical analysis, not about "choosing one." you'd know that if you read the post.
I recognize in my experience as a latino that latina women don't experience the demonization that i do simply because of my gender.
and thats your fucking problem. First Of All you aren't even black so why are you here on my post on anti-blackness like this (and i did notice how you replaced all discussion of black people and anti-blackness with "poc" to get your nasty foot in). And second of yall YES THEY FUCKING DO. You really think being a woman of colour saves you from the racism you experience for their race in any meaningful way? You obviously a misogynist but you might actually be stupid too. Idk how long u lived as a woman or man but maybe go ask your grandma or sumn if being a woman made being latine easier. My exact problem w this misandry shit is how easily it becomes for you people to simply not think abt the women in your community and how obviously misogynistic it is to think their experiences of discrimination and violence must be softer than yours bc shes not a man. choke. moving on.
The darker you are, the more pronounced the fear surrounding you becomes, but it is also amplified by how masculine or feminine your gender expression is. I don't quite agree that "projected hypermasculinity" is the only cause of this.
i think its awesome that this non-black dude thinks he's in the position to explain colourism to me now. Also, I didn't say it was. You'd know that if you Read The Post.
for many poc, they are often in the cross hairs of white-enforced gender binaries. Many people in positions of power [even other poc] will use gender as a violent means to police us, often seeking to turn our own expression of gender against us.
you ever notice how in turning our gender expressions against us, there might be a pattern of projecting violence and aggression (traditionally masculine traits often praised in non-black people), that isnt actually there? This is masculinisation. This is racism. You'd know that, if you read. the post.
This intersection is important to acknowledge and I think very overlooked when poc trans macs like myself have been begging people to listen to us.
Ok. I'm a black i mean poc transmasc. Listen To Me! you are actively talking over what im sayin and barely listening bc it challenges the validity of misandry, a word that has apparently done soooo much for you, and me too obviously, given the nature of this post that you definitely read.
Also the section on adultification is sound. But very strange claim that "black people aren't actually masculine!"
Didn't say this. In fact i also very explicitly said black i mean poc adults also experience adultification. Try reading the post again, and applying my logic that you say is so sound.
Like???????? What about those who are? I have black transmasc friends who have extremely different experiences than my black trans femme friends and I can tell you that it absolutely is about gender there.
thats crazy. you're gonna bring black i mean poc transfemmes into this when the murder statistics for black transfemmes look like this? i wonder what happened there... i thought femininity was supposed to protect femmes from racislised violence...
Everything intersects with race in these conversations of course but there are those of us who are trying to communicate more nuanced experiences.
so sick of yalls "but my unique experiences!!" whinging. fuckin grow up n read a book. you arent the main characters. there are socio-political forces above you shaping our oppression and i am talking about those! i'm not your mother!!! think abt society outside of your feelings for 5 seconds n then get back to me!!!
ALL men benefit from patriarchy just as ALL white people benefit from white supremacy just as ALL cis people benefit from cisnormativity just as ALL rich people benefit from poverty. you think you're being intersectional but you aren't! you're just absolving your ability to perpetuate or benefit from a certain system in your own mind because you too are marginalised. being a man does not create a unique intersection with your race because men, unilaterally, are not oppressed for being men, no, not even sometimes, no, not even when you're black i mean poc or gay or broke or trans. and you can still benefit from misogyny against the women who are just like you.
Masculinity does not equal power.
Yeah ok. neither does whiteness or cisness or money or nun. nothing equals power cuz anyone can be oppressed for any reason. get fucking real.
There is the similarity of not equating feminity with powerlessness.
erm actually... you're the real misogynist for noticing how women are systemically disempowered by men instead of uplifting femininity (by refusing to acknowledge that women are systemically empowered by men) I Am Very Smart.
And Finally, lets talk about these tags a mo.
"white" "american" and i am very explicitly neither white or american. easy to guess from the way i write this post. easier to confirm from looking at my god damn bio. and thats how i know you arent serious bc you really think only white americans utilise male privilege as a concept? yk the feminist you haphazardly snatched "intersectionality" from was a black woman explicitly naming the way that the misogyny she experienced from black i mean poc men and the racism she experienced from white women was rendered invisible by both groups failing to acknowledge the intersection she had of being both black and a woman? of course not. you're an idiot.
"black people are seen as hyper-masculine and face a lot of violence for it, so yes you can be oppressed for seeming or being masculine"
AHT!! lets talk! black people are not actually hyper-masculine. hyper-masculinity is a projection by people trying to justify anti-black fear and violence. it is not a true and then demonised observation about black existence. the hyperfocus on the masculinity of black people is itself racism!
when you call this issue of racism anti-masculinity or misandry or whatever, you are obfuscating the bigotry at play. ESPECIALLY given that it is overwhelmingly just white women's fear about black people's supposed hyper-masculinity that actually gets listened to & acted upon.
in addition, there are other addendums people tack onto their anti-blackness that completely cause this logic to fall apart when applied. Namely, adultification! black people, black children get adultified by white society.
We are assumed to be older & more independent, and thus less in need of the safety, care, sensitivity, accommodation one would give to a child, and this results in violence and neglect. it is directly observable in the way black children are more likely to get detention, suspended or expelled for the same behaviour as their white peers, s/a rates for black youth, and the arguments that 40 y/o cops give for brutalising & murdering black 20, 16, 12, 8 year olds who so much as breathe in their line of sight.
Given this then, following the misandry logic, we can say being recognised as older or as an adult is a form of oppression.
"black people are seen as older/more mature and face a lot of violence for it, so yes, you can be oppressed for seeming like or being an adult"
we can for the sake of this post name this oppression adultery.
i kid. but do you see the problem. being recognised as an adult is obviously, not itself a form of oppression, in fact quite the opposite, being recognised as adult can grant you a lot of privileges that children do not have.
and black kids are evidently, not adults or people who act like adults. they dont mature faster. black 18 y/os will also face the problem of adultification to justify violence against them. black maturity is not a true and then demonised observation about black existence. the form of oppression is racism, and adultification is the deployed means of enacting racism.
the means of combatting the adultification of black people would not come in creating adult positivity or "advocating" for adults or telling children not to fear adults. it comes in the form of learning about anti-blackness, unlearning anti-blackness, and actually directly combatting anti-blackness.
similarly the means of combatting the hyper-masculinisation of black people comes in the form of learning about anti-blackness, unlearning anti-blackness, and actually directly combatting anti-blackness.
Racism explains both of this phenomena far better than "misandry" ever could.
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vii. stage fright
pairing: gi-hun x gn!reader x in-ho
word count: 12.5k
ao3 | masterlist
“You should eat.”
Rolling over onto your side reveals Gi-hun, standing over your bed with a frown. “I’m not hungry,” you mumble before returning to your original position.
“You need to keep up your strength.” The mattress dips down by your feet and the bed creaks softly as it adjusts to Gi-hun’s weight. He seems to start a sentence a few times, his inhalations quiet yet sudden, but whatever it is he wants to say seems impossible to speak aloud. In the end, he relinquishes himself to an awkward pat on your foot.
How many times have the two of you been here? Each of you lost to your own grievances, trying so hard to push through the fog and failing every time. How many times has he texted you a reminder to get to bed early, to be careful when you go out the next morning, to eat something filling before class? How many times have you tried to do the same in return?
“I’ve lost my appetite,” you tell him, even as you’re moving to sit up and swing your legs over the edge of the bed. “The thought of eating anything makes me feel sick.”
Gi-hun nods once in comprehension, his eyes suddenly softer as he watches you. “I understand,” he murmurs. You try not to think about how much it makes your heart flutter knowing that he cares.
It’s that very understanding, you think, that leads you both to the meal line. Neither of you wants to eat, but neither of you wants the other to go hungry. Eating will keep his mind sharp, it’ll make him faster and stronger, and it will do the same for you of course, it’s just that you can’t stop thinking about all those people… All that blood…
Try not to think about it, you tell yourself, but it’s so much easier to say than it is to do. Everywhere you look is a reminder of just how dire your circumstances are. The ominous piggy bank hanging overhead, the player count, the blood still on Gi-hun’s face, each of them a ghost intent on haunting you. How can you possibly–?
“[___]?”
One moment you’re lost to the horror of it all, and the next you find yourself blinking up at the face of the last person you would have ever expected. “Young-il-nim?”
Your first thought is that you’re imagining things, so traumatized by the first game that you’ve fully lost it, but then – oh, then he’s smiling and he laughs, and it’s him, it’s really him.
“Oh my God,” you cry, throwing your arms around him in a desperate embrace. “What are, what are you doing here? How did you-? Why did you-? Shit, are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?”
Young-il chuckles to himself as your trembling hands go scrambling over his shoulders and chest to check for injuries. “I’m alright,” he assures you, as if he hasn’t a care in the world. But then his expressions shifts and he ducks his head to try and catch your eyes. “But what are you doing here? You don’t belong in a place like this.”
A brief image of the masked man invading your home comes to mind before you banish it. You shake your head. “It’s a long story,” you sigh, “and difficult to explain. I…” Words are lost to you. You have so many thoughts buzzing inside your brain that it’s difficult to think clearly, to conjure up the shapes and sounds you need to explain yourself.
“It alright,” he says after a moment. You catch him glancing to the side, meeting Gi-hun’s eyes over your shoulder, before looking back to you. “Eat first. I’ll find you after and we can talk then.”
He nods his head respectfully to both of you before walking off, food in hand and the numbers ‘001’ sewn to the back of his jacket. Something twists painfully in your gut, probably the knife he’s just lodged between your ribs.
“Who was that?” Is it your imagination or does Gi-hun’s voice sound deeper than before?
“A friend.” But now the words are sour on your tongue. Because Young-il was the one to break the tie. Young-il was the one to trap you here for another game. Young-il was the one who stood up against everything Gi-hun has been fighting against, and your face is awash with shame because of it.
“Young-il-nim.”
From his spot on the steps, he’s forced to tip his head back to meet your eyes and for a moment, you almost forget the reason you’ve sought him out. His hair is different, you suddenly realize. It swoops over his temples, soft and boyish, and it changes his face just so. All those harsh edges you’ve grown accustomed to are rounded out, less garish despite the fluorescent lighting and the terrible circumstances. And still, the blue patch on his chest marks him as a traitor. It may as well be soaked in your own blood and Gi-hun’s for what it’s worth.
He smiles and gestures to the empty space on his left with his elbow. “Come and sit.”
How can he be like this? How can he sit there and look at you with such blatant fondness, how can he still have an appetite after the things you’ve both just witnessed?
Your voice comes out much harder than usual once you finally find it. “What are you doing?”
Confusion flickers in his eyes. “Eating?”
“No. Here. What are you doing here? Why did you vote to stay?”
Young-il glances down at the X on your jacket, nodding, and the light-hearted tint to his smile finally fades. “I’m sorry.”
Your legs kick into gear before your mouth does, bringing you to the step just below his. You can’t quite bring yourself to sit beside him, to allow yourself that familiarity or closeness when his betrayal still sits heavy in your stomach, but this is not a public conversation either. You’re not here to embarrass him.
“You’re angry.”
“Can you blame me? People died, I almost–”
“I know,” he sighs as he hangs his head. “I know.”
“So why?”
Young-il’s expression turns distant, serious. “It’s complicated.”
Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that around here. But there’s something more, something he’s not telling you. He’s usually decent enough at keeping his more intense feelings close to his chest, but for once you find that you can see the intricacies of his heart quite easily. Regret and uncertainty are the most obvious to you, yet there are others lingering in the creases of his eyes and his mouth, things you don’t know how to put into words but that strike you as profound all the same.
“Your business, is it… Did something happen?”
A shadow passes over him, then, that flicker of something cold and distant that you’ve seen only once or twice before. He nods thoughtfully. “You could say that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
His mouth curls into a frown. You might almost consider it a gesture of concern. “And make you worry needlessly? There’s nothing you could’ve done even if I had.” He looks over your shoulder again, surveying the room, his throat bobbing near your eye level. “I could ask the same of you, but I’d wager I already know the answer.”
You huff, irritated and frustrated and a million other things, turning so he’s behind you as you open your dinner. “It’s not what you think. I didn’t come here for the money.”
The toe of his shoe nudges into your back, drawing your attention. “You let that recruiter talk you into it?” Young-il tsks. “What have I told you about talking to strangers?”
He’s only teasing, of course. You know that. But even as a joke, the words hit too close to home. You’ve never told him about your encounter with the ddakji recruiter. You’ve never told him about how you met Gi-hun. You’ve never told him that since coming to Korea, every problem you’ve faced has arisen in part because you were stupid enough to engage with a stranger. Before now, you never had any intention of telling him any of it.
You eye the dinner tin in your hands. It smells good enough, but you still feel a bit queasy. You’re not sure if you’ll be able to keep it down or not.
“It wasn’t the recruiter that got me here.” It’s easier to tell him when you can’t see his face, for some reason, when you’re pretending that it doesn’t rip you apart just to admit the truth. Poking your utensil at the rubbery looking egg in your tin, you let out a sigh. “Someone took me.”
The muscles in his calf go tight against your back. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I was kidnapped. One of them.” You nod in the direction of the dinner line. “The men with the masks.”
His voice is softer when he replies. “You didn’t call the number like the rest of us?”
“No. I promised Gi-hun that I wouldn’t, but I guess… I guess it didn’t matter, in the end.”
Glancing down at your food is a challenge, actually eating it is even harder. It tastes like sawdust in your mouth and the instant it hits the back of your throat, you gag, very nearly spitting everything out on the floor. You don’t, thankfully, but it takes a long swig of water to ensure that the food stays down.
“Why would the soldiers want to kidnap you?” he asks once several long minutes have passed. You can hear the low clinking of his dinner tin behind you as he presses the lid shut.
Your first instinct is to claim ignorance, and it wouldn’t even be a lie if you did. You have no connection to these games, no desire to play, and no reason to stay. Gi-hun provides you with everything you need. But that’s just the problem, isn’t it? Gi-hun is the sole connection you have – you shredded the ddakji woman’s business card ages ago, the night you swore to never play the game again, and you shredded the last one too.
Your attention narrows in on a single grain of rice, as if it holds all the answers you seek. “I can’t help thinking it’s because of who I know,” you admit, reluctantly.
You glance up and over your shoulder in time to see Young-il fixing his eyes on something across the room – Gi-hun. “Player 456?”
You nod quietly in agreement.
“Isn’t he the one who’s played before?”
Another nod.
“So, he’s a friend of yours, then.”
The distant recollection of a night long since passed floats across your mind’s eye. That night seems so long ago now. Sure, it’s been a couple years, but it feels like even longer now that you’re here, as if the businesswoman and the ddakji are memories of another life.
“He warned me about this place, told me he didn’t want me dragged into all of this. That’s why I called you, you know – that one time, a few months back? I thought someone from this place had killed him and you were the only person I could think of to go to when I thought he was gone. And then last night, before the soldier, he came to say goodbye and I thought…”
You’d thought a lot of things. But you hadn’t thought of something like this ever happening.
“I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought. I’m stuck here now.”
It isn’t something that you mean to imply, but there’s an unspoken ‘no thanks to you’ that haunts the space between you. It’s not entirely his fault. Young-il has his own problems that he has to work through, that much is clear, and he has no way of knowing all the chaos going on in your personal life. If you have blame to place, it can’t rest solely on his shoulders, but that doesn’t make the reality of his vote any less painful or disappointing.
The stairs behind you groan as Young-il stands, the long shadow cast by the overhead lights falling lengthwise across your body. “You know,” he begins, steadily easing himself to the ground level on step at a time, “if your friend has played before, maybe we stand a better chance at winning the next round.”
Huh. That hadn’t even occurred to you. You were so busy being scared out of your mind that you hadn’t stopped to think there might actually be some hope. It’s slight, of course, and mostly obscured in your mind by the splatters of blood and lifeless bodies you saw on the field today, but the hope is there nonetheless. If you can survive the next round, then…
“Do you think there’ll be another vote?”
“Yes,” he nods, “after each game.”
Your shoulders suddenly feel a little lighter. “Then we could make it long enough to get out of here, vote a second time and go home.”
Young-il purses his lips in consideration. “Maybe.”
Before he can elaborate any further, a shout echoes across the room. It starts somewhere over his shoulder, near the middle or front of the room where a group of three younger men have gathered. You and Young-il both turn toward the sound just in time to see one of the men fall to the ground while the other two loom over him, slamming their feet into his body over and over again, and every time he tries to stand, they smack him down. They’re hitting him hard. The man on the ground isn’t fully screaming, but he’s clearly in pain.
You’re on your feet before you even realize it. There’s nothing you feel you can do, not without risking one of the attackers turning their vengeance onto you, but it flips your stomach to see someone being beat so mercilessly. You cast a quick glance around the room – none of the other players nor any of the soldiers stationed near the doors look inclined to intervene.
“God, they’re gonna kill him,” you mutter, more in disbelief than anything else. Isn’t someone going to stop them?
Someone, apparently, means Young-il. When he first moves, you think he’s trying to get a closer look. Because of course he’s intrigued by the violence, you think with a slight roll of your eyes. God forbid he, or anyone else here, do something actually useful, but he surprises you. Instead of observing, he acts.
“Boys, what are you doing in the middle of dinner?” His voice cuts through the cursing and the flurry of fists and feet against skin. One of the men left standing, the one with the purple hair, glowers at him as he approaches. “No fights during mealtime. There are elders present. Mind your manners. And two against one? Aren't you embarrassed?”
You’ve… never heard him speak like that before. With you, he’s often quite easygoing, soft when he needs to be and rarely ever stern unless he’s concerned about something. But with these men, he does speak sternly. His body moves with the ease of a man who has no doubts about his own strength or perception.
The man with the purple hair – Thanos, you think you’d heard – curls his mouth into a sneer. “You're lecturing me when you ended up in this shithole too?” As he advances on Young-il, you’re immediately taken aback by the amount of disrespect – he’s gesturing rudely, swaggering into Young-il’s personal space, quirking his eyebrows as if to suggest that there’s nothing about Young-il that he takes seriously. “Dude, stop running your mouth and take care of your own damn kids.”
You’re so stunned, you almost forget to breathe.
Young-il is equally surprised. Even from far behind him, you can see the way his body stills. “What did you say to me?” You can’t see his face, but honestly, you don’t need to. You can hear it all in his voice, can read it in the line of his shoulders.
“I said save the lecture for your own damn kid–”
The speed with which his arm shoots out is startling. You don’t even see it, really. One moment, Thanos is yapping his face off, and the next, Young-il has his fingers digging into the tendons of his throat. He twists his arm just so and the other man bends unnaturally at the waist to accommodate him. Then the other player – 124 – surges forward with a swear and you feel your heart leap into your throat, terrified your friend has just gotten himself into a fight that he cannot possibly win, but then Young-il kicks him in the shin and 124 goes sprawling on his back.
When you’d asked yourself if someone would do something to stop those two, this isn’t what you’d had in mind. Young-il isn’t ancient or decrepit by any means and he clearly thinks he can handle himself, but these men are younger than he is. What if he gets–?
His fist smacks right into Thanos’ chest, doubling him over as Young-il takes the opportunity to loom over him instead. This will be it, you think, a surprisingly swift punch to the sternum and it’ll all be over. He’s already proven himself, already made a fool of both these players.
Thanos raises a hand quietly, begging for him to stop. Only he doesn’t. Your feet are already carrying you to the floor, your dinner abandoned as you watch Young-il grab his hand, twist, and use the momentum to slam the other man into the ground. For a moment, they’re both frozen like that, Young-il lowered onto one knee with his fist raised while the other chokes and squirms helplessly beneath him.
You’re no longer worried about the poor player that had started this whole fight, you’re worried about the man who had attacked him. He’s choking and Young-il won’t let go. You can see his entire body shaking, his face flushing as his mouth twitches, his fist rising higher. He’s gonna kill him instead.
“Young-il!”
There’s no way he can’t hear you, but you’re terrified that he’ll ignore you anyway. He wouldn’t kill this guy, would he? He doesn’t seem the type. But the grip he has on Thanos’ throat is too strong, too intentional, and you’re just about to rush in and pry him off the man when he finally lets up. The other player takes a deep gasp, hands clawing at his neck as he recovers the breath Young-il had squeezed out of him, and then the entire room is bursting with applause. For the life of you, you cannot fathom why.
How long have you known him now, a couple years? Never, not once, in all that time has he ever said or done a single thing to make you look at him as anything other than what he is – your friend, a lover of coffee and fine art, a dedicated businessman with a tragic past and a penchant for terrible jokes. He was and always has been Oh Young-il, nothing less and nothing more. But as he clambers to his feet, his head bowed bashfully as he accepts the praise offered to him, you find yourself wondering if there isn’t just a bit more to him than he’s let on.
And though you’d never admit it, you’re also a bit… flushed. Seeing him react so effortlessly, witnessing the strength you never knew he had – it’s stirred up a bit of warmth in the pit of your stomach. You don’t really want to consider what that says about you.
He returns to you some moments later with his eyes averted. There’s something lingering on his tongue, perhaps an explanation, but he seems hesitant to give it and you’re equally hesitant to ask for it. Still, you’d be a fool to overlook how deeply Thanos’ words had affected him.
“Are you alright?”
Young-il nods as he passes, taking your attention with him. “I’m not hurt,” he assures you. He’s moved to pick up your dinner tray, as well as his own, stacking them on top of each other in his hands.
You reach for your water bottle before trailing after him, following his path to the front of the room where the trash cans are. “That’s not what I mean.” He’d told you to lecture your own kids, you think, and you snapped. He became someone else entirely, someone you don’t recognize, and that worries you. It also eerily reminds you of someone.
If he intends to respond, he shows no sign of it. He makes light work of your trays, emptying them of any leftover food before handing them and the utensils over to the nearest guard, a Circle Mask manning what remains of the dinner station.
“Young-il-nim.” You try to catch his eye when he turns to you once more, but he’s remarkably evasive, which only serves to further unsettle you. “Are you going to ignore me, or…?”
And that, at last, is enough to grab his attention. His shoulders drop with the weight of his sigh. “What do you mean, [___]?” If you didn’t know any better, you’d actually think he was upset with you.
“I mean, you…” There’s a flash of fists in the back of your mind, of Thanos choking. “I’ve just never seen you do that before.”
He lifts an eyebrow, then, as his expressions shifts from irritation to derision. “Does it bother you?” he asks.
Is that what he thinks? That you’re bothered? “No. But I didn’t think you were going to stop and that worried me.” It’s more honest than you had intended to be and you feel stripped bare because of it, like Young-il can see right through you because of your vulnerability.
You wish you knew what he was thinking. While you’re at it, you wish understood your own thoughts just as much as you wish you could fathom his. This – beating a younger man to a pulp simply because you’d expressed concern over an unfair fight – feels like something you should’ve known about, though you can’t help feeling like that’s a pretty ridiculous expectation to have. When would it have been relevant to reveal his secret self-defense moves? And why? Is it even fair of you to feel wary of him when it was your instigation that had prompted him to act in the first place?
Something dark flickers in the very depths of his eyes, something you don’t understand, but it’s gone before you can linger on it. His attention settles just past your shoulder, in the direction you’d seen Gi-hun and Jung-bae go to pick at their meals, and then he looks to you once more. Whatever darkness you thought you’d seen is long gone.
“Why don’t you introduce me to your friend?”
Gi-hun and Jung-bae have settled in the far corner. You’d noticed earlier that some of the other players had gathered around them at one point, likely asking any number of questions now that they knew a previous winner had returned. They’ve even made a new friend, from what you can tell – a very expressive younger man with long hair, number 388 – though Gi-hun seems less enthused about the younger man’s presence than his friend does.
You have no reason to hesitate when it comes to introductions. Gi-hun is your friend as much as Young-il is, yet you still feel the pull of uncertainty in your gut at the idea. They’ve been separate for as long as you’ve known them. Young-il is more of a school friend than anything; the coffee dates (not that they’re dates because they’re not), your initial meeting, all of it had happened on campus. Gi-hun is your strangely wealthy friend who keeps to himself and lets you fire weapons in the depths of his abandoned motel. One of them is clearly more normal than the other. And only one of them has kissed you thus far, so there’s also that.
You try not to think about it. Every step you take brings you closer to Gi-hun, who has not pulled his eyes from you for more than a second, not since Young-il suggested the introduction. Every step brings both halves of your life closer and closer together, and you feel a bit nauseous because of it.
It’ll be fine. You don’t even have anything to worry about. It’s not like Young-il’s betrayed everything that Gi-hun stands for with a single vote. It’s not like Gi-hun still hasn’t addressed the fact that he kissed you last night and he’s about to meet the only other person in the world that you could possibly consider kissing after him. Not that you would.
Ah, shit. Here goes nothing.
If it’s shame that begs you not to lift your eyes in Gi-hun’s presence, then that’s something you’ll be keeping to yourself. “Young-il-nim, this is Jung-bae-nim and–”
“You said you've played these games before, sir.”
Your mouth is still hanging open, Gi-hun’s name still caught between your lips as Young-il quite literally talks over you. He’s never talked over you before, not ever. And neither does he stop. He waits only for Gi-hun’s acknowledgement – a hesitant inclination of his head – before finally continuing, and he doesn’t even spare you a second glance when he does.
“I pressed the O button because of you. Honestly, I was scared. I wanted to quit and leave. But you made me think maybe I could play just one more game.”
And you’re not offended in the least by his startling new rudeness. Not at all. Certainly not enough to snap your jaw shut with an audible click.
Jung-bae’s eyes suddenly alight with excitement. “Some of the other players said that!” He turns eagerly to his new friend with a grin, then nudges his elbow into Gi-hun’s ribs. “You see?”
Gi-hun is not amused and for once, you feel comforted by that. You don’t shrink when his gaze lingers on you, you return it confidently, if only because you’re less irritated with him than you are with Young-il. He braces his forearms atop his knees, his arms stretching out as he looks back and forth between you.
“If you had pressed the X,” he finally says, “everyone here would've made it out alive.”
Young-il hums lightly in response. “That's right. I was the last to press the O button,” and it’s remarkable, really, how unashamed he is to admit it. “But there were 182 more people who wanted to stay.”
“And there were also 182 people who wanted to leave. [___] included.”
Three sets of eyes settle upon you. Oh. You don’t like that. You don’t want to be brought into this discussion and you certainly don’t want Young-il to be looking at you like that, like he’s only just noticed you exist. You don’t like that everything you thought you knew has suddenly been flipped on its head, without rhyme or reason, and you don’t like that you’re left trying to fit the pieces back together entirely blind.
Gi-hun raises a brow. “You are friends, aren’t you?”
“We are.” He smiles and for the briefest moment, you feel like you’re watching a stranger rather than your coffee companion of two years. “But you’re a previous winner, Gi-hun-ssi. Why would you allow a friend to come here if it’s so dangerous?”
You don’t think much of him using Gi-hun’s name – why should you? But for Gi-hun, it seems to startle him. His eyes sharpen as they flicker across Young-il’s face, studying, searching, and then, “How did you know my name?”
You blink, pausing to look between the pair as you suddenly realize that you’re not sure you’ve ever explicitly used Gi-hun’s name before, not with him.
Young-il, to his credit, takes the inquiry in his stride. His smile falters for a moment as he tries to explain himself. “Oh, I… I heard [___] using it earlier, in line for dinner, and I thought I might try it.”
Did you? You can’t remember, though you aren’t sure that it really matters. You’ve loudly proclaimed Gi-hun’s name a handful of times since your reunion earlier today, so even if you hadn’t said it in line, it’s likely that Young-il noticed and made the connection himself. He’s always been perceptive like that.
Young-il leans in, his voice lowered and his face softened with an unspoken apology. “Does it bother you?” Just like he’d asked you only minutes prior.
A chill starts at the base of your spine. The air is thick with tension, both men gravitating toward one another as if there’s some grand competition going on that you’re entirely unaware of. You don’t like that either.
But before the tension can rise any higher, Jung-bae jumps in and attempts to diffuse the situation. His hands go fluttering about in the empty space between them, using some clever turn of phrase to smoothe out all the surface level ripples that have already transformed into waves rocking against your boat. A truce is formed, superficial at best, but it clears the air enough for you to breathe and for that, you’re grateful.
He keeps thinking about tomorrow. He keeps thinking about the sugary sweetness of dalgona on his tongue and the possibility of a pistol lodged against the base of his skull.
Gi-hun closes his eyes and takes a breath. It doesn’t change anything. The light from the pig lingers behind his eyelids as much as the thought of watching you bleed out and die does. The cool chill of a late night still clings to his bones, even among so many bodies. Or perhaps it’s Gi-hun who is cold. Perhaps he’s already dead and this is merely a delusion brought on by a half-sane mind in its final throes.
That would certainly be easier than the truth, wouldn’t it?
The stairs that lead to his bed creak beneath the weight of a foot, then another, and Gi-hun opens his eyes to see you standing close enough to touch. From this angle, the light doesn’t catch your face; you’re simply haloed, some bright and shining thing that he’s dragged with him into the pit of damnation.
“Hello.”
He hates that you sound so timid. You sound like the fragile student he once met in a snowy alley, not the passionate and bright-eyed person he knows you to be. But then, he supposes that it’s hard for you to find that spark he’s grown so accustomed to when you’re trying desperately to claw yourself out of a grave that is constantly demanding to swallow you whole. Unfortunately, he knows the feeling.
“Hello,” he replies. It feels forbidden to smile when he’s blockaded by memories and ghosts, but for you, Gi-hun finds that he can do all kinds of things. Even attempt a smile.
“Can I sit with you?”
Eyes darting first to the timer behind your head and then to the small stretch of open mattress by his feet, he nods haltingly, drawing his legs in so they’re folded atop on another. “Of course.”
There are no butterflies fluttering in his stomach when you sit on his bed. There’s no distant tremor in his hands or the drifting of his mind to far off places, imagining the sort of things he’d allowed himself only two nights ago. This isn’t the Pink Motel. He doesn’t know why he expects to feel the same stirrings in his gut that he usually does when he shares his space with you.
Then he remembers kissing you and he ducks his head in shame.
You take the far end of the mattress as expected, but it rather feels like you’ve placed yourself on the far end of a canyon. “I don’t want to talk,” you tell him, voice soft and uncertain. “I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just… don’t want to be alone right now.” Your feet dangle listlessly over the edge of the bedframe. “I can’t sleep.”
Gi-hun recalls feeling the same way on his first night. So much of this is painfully familiar. He almost wonders if Sang-woo’s spirit is watching him now, studying him from somewhere among the beds or lurking in the Squid Game field. He keeps expecting to see him every time he turns a corner. What would he think of the man that he’s become? The mattress squeaks when you adjust your posture and Gi-hun suddenly finds it hard to breathe. What would Sang-woo think of you?
It doesn’t matter, he tells himself, so why does he care?
“I’m sorry.” Your apology draws him blinking from the recesses of his mind. “For everything. I know this isn’t what you wanted.”
Of course it isn’t, but why on Earth are you apologizing? “It isn’t your fault,” he starts.
“Maybe. But I still feel bad.”
Following the path of your attention leads him to a bed several paces away, closer to the main floor than his own bed. Your friend Young-il is settling in for the night, one of his legs drawn atop the mattress with the other hanging off as he contemplates something far beyond Gi-hun’s reach. And for the first time in months, probably since the night he followed your friend out of the university parking lot and all the way to his hotel, Gi-hun feels angry.
It’s a different kind of anger than the one he’d directed at you just today. That was an anger born of fear and helplessness and the realization that he’d put you in danger, born of his own guilt and his own affection for you. This? This is not that.
He’s not entirely sure what it is, but he knows that he feels it whenever you look at Young-il or Young-il looks at you. You have nothing to feel guilty for. You haven’t done anything wrong. It isn’t your fault that Young-il voted O and it isn’t your fault that you’re here, and he hates that you feel otherwise.
“You aren’t the one who should be apologizing.”
There’s more he could say, more that weighs on him, but he isn’t sure how to express it. He isn’t even sure if he should. What if he loses you tomorrow? And what if he doesn’t? What if the game isn’t dalgona? What if he’s the one who dies and you’re left alone with only Jung-bae and Young-il to protect you? A bitter piece of his heart flares up at the thought and he pretends not to think about what might happen if Young-il were to die instead because that’s not the kind of man he wants to be.
Instead, Gi-hun shifts around on the mattress until he’s mirroring your posture, his legs dangling over the side as he moves the pillow and blankets around. “Stay here tonight,” he says in response to your voiceless question.
Your eyes flash wide for a second. “With you?” And if he thinks that you sound either horrified or intrigued by the prospect, Gi-hun tells himself that it doesn’t matter either way.
“I’m not sleeping.” He’s going to be watching over you for as long as he can manage. It’ll be a good distraction and it will keep you safe, and he needs both right now more than he needs anything else. “It isn’t good for you to sleep alone here. And someone should keep watch.”
What little light is reflected in your eyes shimmers like water in a glass. “Watch for what?”
For the murderous bastards who like to take out their competition while they sleep, what else? But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t want to scare you and he knows already that detailing the horrific possibilities of the Games right before you go to bed is a recipe for disaster.
“Sleep,” he insists. The bedding is nicely arranged now, as nice as he can make it for you, even though he wishes he could do more. What if you get cold in the middle of the night? What if you overheat in your jacket? Or you get thirsty? He can’t fix any of those problems. He can only give you his protection and pray that it’s enough.
Your protest is already half spoken by the time he’s drawing himself out of bed and prompting you into the space he’s just vacated. It takes some maneuvering and no small amount of whispered requests, far gentler than Gi-hun actually feels under the weight of his memories pressing in against his skull, but finally he manages to convince you to lay down. He tucks himself into the farthest corner of the bed, hoping that your legs have enough room, that you won’t mind him being so close for so long, and he watches the minutes on the display steadily count down.
There are less than ten minutes until lights out when Young-il decides to approach him. “Gi-hun-ssi,” he nods respectfully, his hands already pressing against his thighs as he takes the steps one at a time. His eyes wander over your sleeping figure and Gi-hun has to fight himself not to snap and make a fool out of himself simply because another man happened to look at you.
“Asleep,” he says, if only to fill the empty space with something other than his animosity.
Young-il nods in understanding. “I’ll be quiet, then.” A beat. “Could we talk?”
No. “Sure.”
The narrow space between rows of beds is taken up entirely by Young-il’s body. Perched upon the highest step, it places him at about eye level. Gi-hun’s not entirely sure he likes that. “I think I was out of line before,” Young-il finally sighs. “I'd like to apologize. I'm sorry.”
What he wants to do is tell your friend that he doesn’t care for, nor does he accept, his apology. What he wants to say is that he doesn’t like the way Young-il looks at you, all appraising eyes and quiet confidence, and he doesn’t like how Young-il has stolen almost all of your attention since the moment he appeared. He wants to say it all, but he doesn’t because his mother raised him better than that and Gi-hun has never been one to be purposefully rude except on very rare occasions.
This isn’t the time or place. So, he’s gracious. He bows respectfully to Young-il and allows the apology to settle in the space between them, even if the peace it offers is fraught. “No, I laid all the blame on you.” Even if I was right to do so. “I was out of line.”
And that, he hopes, will be the full extent of it – whatever it is. He’s not interested in having a full conversation with anyone right now, but even if he was, Young-il would be at the bottom of the list. He’s strange in a very off-putting way; quiet, observant, he makes you laugh sometimes, from what he can remember, and he’s able to fight off two younger men and make it look easy. That’s not normal. And then there’s the way that you had followed him during dinner like an alley cat chasing after scraps. You don’t do things like that.
“May I ask you something?”
It takes a minute, but Gi-hun eventually relents, inclining his head just slightly.
“Why did you come back to this place? You said you won and made it out.”
He swallows heavily. “I did.”
“Then why return? You got all the money, didn’t you? Did you spend it all?”
He spent some of it. He wanted so badly to let that money rot in the bank and to never touch a single won, but then Il-nam had happened. Then you had happened. Then so many things kept happening and he thinks that somewhere along the way, he lost sight of what he had set out to do. To remember, to protect.
“That money doesn't belong to me,” he mutters, and it’s like he’s back on the Squid Game field, watching the rain mix with the mud mix with the coppery tang of metal and blood. “It's blood money for the people who died here. The same goes for the money up there.”
“You don't have to think of it that way,” and where he expected to find judgement, he instead finds some gentle, understanding thing tucked behind the corners of Young-il’s words. “It's not like you killed those people and saving that money won't bring them back to life.”
Maybe it’s just the ghosts lingering in his head and his heart. Maybe he’s just a sentimental old fool, but there’s something about the way Young-il says it that reminds him of Sang-woo. He closes his eyes and wishes, probably for the millionth time, that he had been the one to die here three years ago, not Sang-woo. Not Ssangmun-dong’s golden child.
Young-il exhales through his nose, drawing Gi-hun’s attention and prompting him to open his eyes again. Where there had once been a glint of determination, now Gi-hun sees something far more vulnerable. It’s suspiciously disarming. “Not all of us have the luxury of mixing our morals with our money, Gi-hun-ssi. Some of us,” he says, and his voice begins to waver, “are forced to play the hand we’re dealt, blood money or not.”
Curiosity gets the better of him. “And what sort of hand were you dealt?” It isn’t asked unkindly. Gi-hun recognizes regret when he sees it and there’s no need for him to be cruel, but he does want to know.
Silence expands between them, permeating every atom of space until it’s so overwhelming Gi-hun thinks he might collapse beneath its weight.
Finally, Young-il speaks. “My wife.” And Gi-hun suddenly feels like he’s going to vomit. All this time, he’s been seething over a married man who happened to have befriended you. What kind of asshole is he?
“My wife was very sick. Acute cirrhosis, the doctors said, and she needed a liver transplant.” The slight waver in his voice becomes stronger, fluctuating as Young-il finds the strength to continue his explanation. The explanation Gi-hun demanded of him. Now he suddenly wishes he’d never opened his mouth to begin with. “When she was going through the tests, we found out she was pregnant. The doctor suggested a termination, but she wouldn’t listen. Said she'd give birth even if it killed her.”
Gi-hun realizes with a start what Young-il’s clenched jaw and sudden stillness means. He knows because he’s been there before, forced to pour his grief out to whichever person demands a little too forcefully to know what haunts him in the late hours of the night. God, he’s such a prick.
“I couldn’t save them,” he says, and his voice finally gives way. Unshed tears catch in the glow of the money pig and Gi-hun feels like he’s just had his throat torn out. “I need that money to pay off the debts. The hospital bills, the funerals – it costs something, Gi-hun-ssi. Perhaps it is blood money, but it’s still money.”
He can’t imagine. In some ways, he doesn’t have to. Ga-yeong is still alive and he stopped loving his wife a long time ago, but they’re no longer a part of his life. They may as well be dead to him – he knows he’s dead in their eyes anyway. Just another corpse slipping through the cracks of a broken world.
I’m so sorry. He doesn’t have to like Young-il to say it and mean it, but even still, the words stick in his throat. Just moments ago, he had imagined this man dead on his back, unable to touch you or taint you. He’d let his personal feelings get in the way of what really mattered. Young-il could pull a knife on him this very moment and it still wouldn’t justify anything that Gi-hun’s thinking or feeling about him, and he needs to remember that. He needs to remember what he’s here for.
He glances over at you, watching your face as you snore lightly. It’s a poor imitation of a similar situation that feels so far away now, it can only be a dream. The motel. His bed. You, safe and secure. His. That had never been the plan. But then again, he’d never had a plan when it came to you. For all the good it did you both.
He shouldn’t have kissed you. He wanted to, but he shouldn’t have done it in the first place. It should have stayed a secret desire known only to the depths of his shattered soul and the bullet he still deserves to bite. All it’s done is complicate matters. It’s made him twitchy and on-edge, made him grind his teeth down to the bone and search for enemies where there are none. It’s made him turn on a man who could very easily have been a friend if he weren’t so busy being blinded by his own desires.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he’s relieved that the words finally come.
Young-il merely shakes his head. He’s probably heard the same turn of phrase too many times to count by now. “It’s forgiven.”
The timer overhead flashes a one minute reminder and just like that, the spell is broken. Reality comes crashing down upon shoulders. There’s an awkward exchange of glances and half-hearted smiles, murmured farewells, and then Gi-hun is left with his legs dangling off the side of his own bed and the sound of your steady breaths.
The lights click out.
Slowly, so as not to wake you, he leans his weight back against the bedframe and positions himself so he’s facing the wide-open stretch of floor in the center of the room. The X and O carved there are the only lights that still remain, casting his surroundings in faint shades of blue and red, so faint that he can hardly make anything out.
He sighs. It’s going to be a very long night.
In-ho watches the soldiers as they work. It’s strange to be here once more, to be a part of the Games after so long. When he had made the decision to enter, it had mostly been on a whim, an impulsive choice driven from the frantic desire to control, to break, to bend you, Gi-hun, and the Games to his will. He hadn’t stopped to consider all the additional benefits he might reap from this harvest.
Already, a ridge has formed between you and Gi-hun. Something changed in him last night, In-ho had seen the shift, though he still doesn’t know what to make of it. Gi-hun had allowed you to sleep in his bed – and how common a recurrence is that, exactly? – but has hardly spoken a word to you since. Every time you try to meet his eyes, he smiles faintly, nods, and withdraws into himself, and the pain of that dismissal is written all over your face.
That hadn’t been entirely intentional. It is beneficial, no matter how confounding, and he plans to utilize it as best he can because Thanos rattled him last night. That bratty remark about his children had sent him over the edge and it had only been the sound of your voice that was clear enough to cut through the maelstrom of his fury, to bring him back to himself. That had rattled him too and, much like the gallery, In-ho had handled it poorly. He was too short with you, too fixated on a philosophical spar at Gi-hun’s expense, and had unintentionally pushed you away as a result.
He needs to fix that. Curious how the opportunity presents itself almost immediately.
The arena is presented, the instructions are given, and the timer is set. Gi-hun is entirely unprepared.
“Aren't we playing the dalgona game?” demands another player – number 100, who In-ho is sure he saw lurking about and asking questions of Gi-hun over dinner yesterday. But what truly catches his attention is the mention of dalgona.
It takes everything he has within himself not to laugh. Had Gi-hun really expected all the games to be the same as before? While In-ho hadn’t anticipated that Gi-hun would be so keen to rejoin the Games, he and every other Front Man in the world prides himself on his ingenuity. It’s a part of the job description. VIPs aren’t interested in the same old tricks each year. It would be foolish – no, truly stupid – to assume that the Front Man would not alter the Games to discredit or disadvantage Gi-hun in his mission for vengeance.
“No,” Gi-hun finally says as he hangs his head, “it doesn't look like it.”
“What's the game then?”
Yes, Gi-hun, tell us what game should come next. Show us all how carefully thought through your plans are.
Dark eyes trembling with uncertainty flicker aimlessly across the stretch of dirt beneath their feet. “I'm not sure.”
So when Player 100 turns on Gi-hun and demands, “What? You said you’d done this before! Was that all bullshit?”, In-ho is not surprised. Players turning on one another is an inevitability that Gi-hun should have accounted for.
Still, his obvious discomfort and shame is another victory mark on the scoreboard In-ho hides at the back of his mind.
“I'm sorry,” he says, pleading for compassion from a man who has clearly never said a kind word to anyone in his life.
“Sorry won't cut it!”
Gi-hun is trembling now, his entire body flinching with every cruel word flung his way. He folds in on himself like a child folds under the weight of a parent’s belt, and In-ho watches. Will he not stand up for himself? Is he content enough in his self-loathing to take abuse from a man who would kill him in an instant if the opportunity arose?
“You talked like you knew everything! All these people believed your bullshit! What are you going to do, huh? Will you take responsibility?”
He thinks to insert himself into the fight, to diffuse the tension and endear himself further to Gi-hun and his cause, and perhaps even regain your trust in the process by defending the man you so clearly love. But for once in his life (or rather, for the second time), In-ho is too late.
“Excuse me, sir.” There is no feigned politeness in your voice, no deference to your elders in your words or tone. If anything, the tacked on ‘sir’ sounds more like a slap in the face than a term of respect. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
Player 100 blinks back his shock, tripping all over the practiced insults he is so eager to distribute. His face goes red and his mouth falls open, gaping like a fish, until he finally manages to compose himself a few moments later. “This has nothing to do with you.” He closes in on you then, and In-ho sees it before you do, all the rage that’s beginning to boil over, the quivering fists and bared teeth, and he feels the shock of it in his stomach.
“Then it has nothing to do with you either,” you retort, and you go so far as to take a step closer to the man. Are you insane? “You don’t get to talk to him like that.”
It isn’t instinct that drives him to press his chest into your back. It isn’t instinct that pushes him to glare a pseudo-bullet hole into 100’s head. It is simply the movement of a chess piece across the board. “That's enough,” he utters, and the word is final.
And he expects to be rewarded for it. It was a calculated move, intentional and deliberate down to the weight of his body against yours and the timbre of his voice. That’s why he feels so unmoored when, rather than turning to thank him, you immediately rush to Gi-hun’s side. That’s why he’s left blinking at the empty space you’ve left behind and wondering what crucial part of his plan he’d missed. There is no other reason for the taste of bile in his throat or the slamming of his heart against his ribcage. None.
He takes no pleasure in your rejection, either. That’s what he chooses to believe. When Gi-hun accepts your comfort for a few treasured moments only to then pull away when he’s had his fill, to not allow you to dote on him, your reaction is so immediate and so blatant that the entire group can see it. Jung-bae and Dae-ho at least have the courtesy to look away and offer you a second of privacy; In-ho does not.
You chose this and he wants you to know that he knows. He does not look away when your eyes land on him. He does not soften his gaze. Rather, he tilts his head as if to say, I stood up for you. What has Gi-hun done?
The next ten minutes are unbearably awkward. The five of you already constitute a team, so no need to search for any further additions. Dae-ho officially introduces himself, only to immediately stick his foot in his mouth by inquiring exactly how everyone knows each other. Your eyes land on In-ho, then slide over to Gi-hun, and none of them answers. If he were watching this from the observation deck, it might almost be humorous, but he’s not and it isn’t. In truth, it’s painful.
Jung-bae is in the middle of a remarkably boring re-enactment of the time he and Gi-hun had gone out for soju as teens when another player approaches. In-ho has never been so relieved by a distraction in all his life.
“Excuse me,” she says sweetly, “can I join you?”
Jung-bae already seems displeased by having his story interrupted, but he softens his frustration for the girl’s sake. “Sorry, we’ve already got five people.”
“Please.” She takes a step closer, pushing herself slightly into the loose arc the five of them have formed, and takes a turn looking at each person. There’s something about her that gives In-ho pause, something he can’t put his finger on. “Help me. I’m pregnant.”
The girl rests her hand on her stomach, just over the little swell of life below her ribcage, and for a moment In-ho is very far away. He sees the hospital bed, the IVs and faded scars of needle pricks along Min-jung’s arm, he sees her sallow face, and he feels the same blinding needing to protect, defend, defy. To save. It passes quickly enough, but leaves him off-centered and irritable. Vulnerable.
He casts his eyes to Gi-hun first, curious to see just how the mighty hero of the Games plans to handle the situation. He flounders, of course, and In-ho isn’t surprised. Jung-bae is the one to break the news, apologetic and kind, but with the weight of the world on his shoulders because they all know they’ve created a decent team. They all know what it means to turn her away. That’s why it surprises him when yours is the voice that rises in response.
“I can… I can find another team.”
He and Gi-hun both share the same exclamation. “What?”
Your face practically folds in on itself with the force of your emotions. You don’t hide your compassion very well, but neither do you hide your fear – you’re uneasy about leaving the security your team offers you, however false it may be, but you’re equally uneasy about putting a pregnant woman at risk. And while he would never admit it aloud, In-ho finds himself sympathetic to your predicament.
Gi-hun’s mouth is pressed into a thin line, his frustration written into every crease and dimple in his skin. “It’s safest for you to be with us,” he asserts, reluctantly.
“But Gi-hun-a, she’s pregnant!” As if Jung-bae hadn’t already elected to turn the girl away.
He looks to Gi-hun once more, studying, noting every twitching tendon and flicker of regret that cuts across his face. What will you choose, Seong Gi-hun? Which horse is most likely to win the race?
“It’s alright,” says the girl with her soft doe eyes and pregnant belly. In-ho does not see his wife in her. He doesn’t. “I’m sure I can find another group.”
“No!” you exclaim, scrambling forward to take her hand in both of yours. Then your voice drops, it softens and shakes with the certainty of your sacrifice. “No, you should stay with them. They’ll keep you safe.”
You guide her to stand in the perfectly sized space between himself and Gi-hun, your brows now furrowed as you seem to be searching inside yourself for something. Then your chin tilts up and your gaze lands on Gi-hun. Several seconds tick by as you survey his face, so raw and exposed in a way In-ho isn’t sure he’s ever seen on you before.
The cold slice of bitterness cuts across his lungs at the sight. What can Gi-hun do to save you beyond sacrificing someone from his own carefully constructed team? You should be looking at him like that. He is the only one here with the power to save your life, the only one who might possibly be swayed by your fear and desperation.
“Gi-hun-a.”
And something deep within In-ho’s stomach twists in delight. He knows better than to raise his expectations after the countless hundreds he has seen fight and die in this very room, but logic cannot always outweigh intrigue, not for him.
Jung-bae leans forward, casting his old friend a smile. Sweat is already beading along his hairline. “Let them both stay, Gi-hun-a. I’ll go find another team.”
That something in his stomach lifts higher until it’s crackling like a firework behind his ribcage. Another gamble. The stakes are higher, but so is the reward. The question is whether or not Gi-hun still feels inclined to betting on horses the way he once did. In-ho already knows the answer, but it’s Gi-hun’s self-realization he wants to see, the inward understanding and acceptance that In-ho found for himself years ago. Which of your pawns will you sacrifice first, and which of them will come back when the clock runs out? Who deserves to live, Gi-hun? And who deserves to die?
It is Jung-bae who makes the decision in the end, and the loss of Gi-hun’s conflict is admittedly disappointing, but the Game hasn’t started yet. There is still victory to be found and In-ho will find it. The Front Man always does.
Ddakji. Biseokchigi. Gonggi. Spinning top. Jegi.
You’ve never played a single one. There are games that are similar enough in your home country, but the rules or the materials are slightly different. Different enough that you don’t have nearly as much confidence in your ability to successfully play any of these games as you wish you did.
Ddakji is a blatant no. Even though you’d managed well enough against that businesswoman all that time ago, it still feels wrong to play. You promised Gi-hun you never would again and that suits you just fine. The pregnant girl, Jun-hee, takes it, much to your relief.
Gonggi goes to the boisterous gentleman, Dae-ho. He says he grew up playing it with his sisters and seems confident in his skills, which is more experience than the rest of you have put together.
“That leaves biseokchigi, spinning top, and jegi.” Gi-hun looks to you. “Which do you think you’d be better at?”
You try very hard not to look as deeply panicked as you feel. “Which one’s the easiest?” It’s not a question that inspires very much confidence, you know that, but in truth you’re not sure you’d be very good at any of them.
Young-il and Gi-hun share a rather pointed look, which doesn’t help your confidence in the slightest. Defeat already feels imminent. You should’ve picked another team, at least that way your friends would be more likely to survive. Jun-hee and her baby, too.
“Don’t say that,” Young-il chides when you find yourself admitting as much. He rests a gentle hand upon your shoulder. “We’re a team, [___]. We’ll work together.”
“That’s right,” Gi-hun nods. “Why don’t you watch the first round and see how they’re played? You can decide which one is best for you.”
And it would have been such a brilliant idea if the first team to go hadn’t been brutally slaughtered. And the second team too. How are you meant to have any faith in yourself when the Korean-born players ahead of you keep getting themselves shot because they can’t throw a damn rock? You haven’t even had a chance to see jegi played yet because no one has made it that far.
“Don’t panic.” But no amount of kind and quiet compassion from Gi-hun, or even Young-il, is enough to calm your nerves. “[___]. [___], look at me. Look.”
You hesitantly lift your eyes to meet his. For a moment, all you can see are the bodies dropping to the floor behind him, the blood, you can hear the screaming and the gunfire. But then he reaches for your hands and holds them tightly.
“Think back to when you were a child. What kinds of games did you play? What were you good at?”
You try very hard to do as he asks. At the very least, it’s a distraction from the death that looms all around you. Searching your memories doesn’t offer as much hope as you would’ve liked – nights spent playing board games or reading, or the few activities you were decent at when you would go to recess. There’s not much that transfers over. Until, quite suddenly, you remember something.
“I used to skip rocks,” you tell him, a smile finally winning over the despair that’s been clinging to you like a second skin. “At the lake. I was good at it, too. That’s close enough to biseokchigi, isn’t it?” Just by watching the other players, the actions look comparable enough. It takes a certain amount of precision to make a rock skip smoothly over the water, as it takes a certain amount of precision to hit a target.
Gi-hun nods amicably. “Good. That’s good.” He squeezes your hands one last time before finally releasing them and you miss his touch immediately. He keeps you grounded whenever he’s near. “Young-il-ssi. Which one are you better at – jegi or spinning top?”
“I’ll take whichever you pick for me, Gi-hun-ssi.” There’s a softness to his voice, something that you wouldn’t have expected to hear in the midst of all this bloodshed. But Young-il continues to surprise you, as he has since you met him.
Gi-hun seems as surprised by Young-il’s deferment as you are, though he doesn’t speak on it. You can see him trying to work it out in his head before finally giving up. “Then… I’ll take jegi.”
The decisions are made just in time for the next round of teams to start playing. You can’t make out the team on the opposite end of the room, but you recognize one of the players on your side – Hyun-ju. She’s teamed up with several others you haven’t spoken to yet, but the mother player and her son are with her. That’s good. They all seem to have a good head on their shoulders and while you aren’t happy that Hyun-ju voted O, you don’t want her to die either. You end up rooting for her louder than any of the others on her team.
It's a close call. The woman playing spinning top makes several mistakes when it’s her turn and it very nearly costs the entire team their lives. There are several stretches of awful, agonizing seconds where you forget to breathe. So many people have already died today. You don’t want Hyun-ju to die, you don’t want her team to die. You want to believe there’s even the slightest glimmer of hope for the rest of you.
They make it to jegi. Everyone turns around. There are only seconds left on the clock. You can’t look. You can’t bear to watch their bodies get riddled with bullets. Everyone around you is shouting and jumping, and then the clock runs out and there’s no gunfire, no bullets, no blood sprayed across the rainbow track.
You open your eyes to see one of the soldiers unlocking the restraints on Hyun-ju’s ankle. And then you feel Dae-ho jerking you by the shoulder and spinning you around so he can hug you. They’re alive. Jun-hee looks up at you with the truest smile you’ve seen on her yet. You don’t realize until your eyes start to sting that you’re crying.
They’re alive. There’s hope!
Things don’t seem so bleak after that. More players die, yes, but more players survive too. You have to keep your chin up so you don’t fall back into your despair. Despair won’t keep you alive. You and Dae-ho huddle together at one point so he can practice his gonggi skills. Jun-hee sits quietly beside you both with a hand on her stomach, content to watch you both. You try to strike up a casual conversation with them, something to draw your minds away from the dwindling player numbers, but your heart isn’t really in it. Neither is theirs. You’re all too preoccupied to care that much.
When he takes a moment to think on it, In-ho is genuinely surprised to realize that he’s enjoying himself. When another team wins, the celebration is contagious. More than once has he found himself grasping at Gi-hun’s shoulder, his mouth cracked open to laugh and shout, his heart pounding with the joy of community and the relief of hope.
Hope.
He sees it on your face as clear as day. As often as he has found himself cheering and clinging to Gi-hun, he has felt you do the same to him. Both of them, in fact. Your smile has seared itself into his brain, your hands have clutched at his jacket and Gi-hun’s shoulder, and In-ho has found himself truly lost to the rush of it all.
The Games hadn’t been like this when he had been the victor. There was no camaraderie in the arenas he’d spilled blood in. Hope was a fleeting thing for him even then. He’s amazed at just how much can change in the span of a few years, aided by the illusion of friendship.
Jung-bae’s voice calls across the courtyard, then, drawing the entire team’s attention. “Hey!” He lifts his arm high in the air as one of the soldiers latches his ankle in place. “We'll see you again at the finish line!”
In-ho very highly doubts that.
“Yes!” cries Dae-ho, a bit too loudly for his tastes. It makes his ear ring. “We'll see each other again!”
“Gi-hun-a!”
In-ho can feel Gi-hun’s body go tense against his, his shoulders suddenly rigid as he smiles bittersweetly at his friend. In-ho already knows what he’s thinking; likely, it’s the very thought he’d had when faced with the possibility of being separated from you – that he can’t control the outcome of the game if you’re out of his reach.
For the sake of the game, though, he pretends to care. “I believe in our team,” he says as Dae-ho loops one arm in his and Gi-hun does the same with the other. He smiles. “Both our teams. Plus, we have the previous winner with us.”
Suddenly, you lean forward and gesture frantically to get his and Gi-hun’s attention. “Let’s not rush ourselves, okay? If we try walking too fast, we’ll trip and fall and that’ll waste time. Yeah?”
In-ho finds himself nodding. He finds that his smile is a touch more genuine. “Good plan,” he nods, and Gi-hun is quick to agree.
One of the soldiers raises their pistol in the air. In-ho’s heart gets caught somewhere between his stomach and his shoes.
Bang!
Ddakji comes first. The girl gets it on her first try and he’s elated. He swallows up the rush of adrenaline that her success brings and goes blindly chasing for more, his vision tunneling around the stone you’re meant to throw.
“Take your time.” He doesn’t mean to say it, doesn’t plan or rehearse it, it just comes out of him as naturally as anything else might.
Dae-ho nods eagerly beside you. He’s wringing his hands as he tilts out of your way, pressing his shoulder against In-ho’s. (Strangely, he finds he doesn’t mind it.) “Yes! Deep breaths, [___]! You’ve got this!”
But you’re already waving your free hand in his direction. “Ah, quiet, quiet! Let me think!”
The arena falls quiet save for the thundering of In-ho’s pulse and the steady, measured pace of your exhalations. You lower yourself into a partial crouch, feet wide, elbow out, and your lips parted. One second ticks by. Then another. Your shoulders rise and fall with another deep breath and then–
The intercom blazes to life. “Fail.”
Shit.
“It’s okay, it’s okay! We still have time!” Gi-hun exclaims. He’s pointing wildly at the clock and In-ho is grateful for it because it reminds him of where he is, who he is. Not even a full minute has passed yet. Everything’s going to be fine.
It takes about fifteen seconds to retrieve the stone and march back to the starting point. One minute gone, four minutes to go. He might be a bit nervous, but he isn’t truly worried. A lot can happen in four minutes. And besides, he gets a rare chance to study you now. Watching you calculate your next move, cataloging the distance between yourself and the target stone, hefting the weight of the other rock in your hand as you think – it’s exhilarating.
You’re about to throw again when his eyes drop and he practically lurches forward, almost pulling everyone off balance so he can swing his arm out in front of you. “[___], your feet!”
You were standing directly on the line. It would have disqualified your throw and wasted even more time. Self-preservation. Survival instinct. That’s all it is. So why does he get such a buzz from wondering what might have happened if he hadn’t said anything at all? How your face might have contorted when you suddenly realized you’d doomed your entire team?
He loses the opportunity to know for sure when both stones go tumbling top over bottom and the soldier for this station raises their arms overhead. “Pass.” Even so, he cheers just as emphatically as everyone else.
They march steadily on. The entire team drops into a crouch. You and the pregnant girl lean into one another and In-ho does the same on Dae-ho’s other side. His knee knocks against Gi-hun’s and rather than pull away, he embraces it. Camaraderie. Fellowship. Hope. It’s as thrilling to embrace them once more as it is to level a semiautomatic at a traitor’s head and squeeze the trigger.
Dae-ho rubs his hands together. His fingers are deft, his body light, and in seconds – seconds – he’s flawlessly performed each round of gonggi and elevated them to the next part of the challenge. In-ho cheers for that too, and it’s the truest thrill he’s felt in years.
Spirits are high as they round the track. He can hear you and Gi-hun chanting in time, can hear Dae-ho’s excitable mutterings. He can even feel himself smiling again. Apart from your initial slip-up, things are going perfectly and there’s still almost three minutes left on the clock. It’s just such a shame that the VIPs crave a bit of excitement, isn’t it?
The twine is slick with blood and sweat when he picks it up. The top itself is slightly dented along the edge and its lower point dulled after too many landings, but it’s still useable. He had ensured as much himself just last night, but the others don’t know that. As far as any of them know, Young-il could be horrific at spinning top. Young-il could be the one to get them all killed.
He transfers the top into his non-dominant hand and with a flick of his wrist, the top goes sprawling onto its side.
Gi-hun squeezes his arm amicably. “It’s alright. We still have time, Young-il-ssi. Everyone! One, two, one, two, one–”
He restrings the top, stopping only to spare the timer a glance. Nearing the two minute mark, which means he has enough time for one more delay, maybe two if he’s fast enough. He pushes Gi-hun out of the way – rather nicely, actually, all things considered – and positions himself accordingly. He doesn’t even mean to toss it backwards like that.
“Shit, I’m sorry–”
“Ah, it’s okay,” Gi-hun mutters, even though it’s not, even though his voice is wracked with tremors.
He smiles when he hears your voice, how you’re trying to offer him a bit of encouragement but it falls flat because you don’t think he can do it. Because you’re afraid. Because you believe more in Gi-hun than you do in him.
That’s alright, he thinks. Assuming he doesn’t get you killed in the next two minutes – and he knows he won’t because he’s planned for that too – he’ll be able to teach you a decent lesson in patience and faith.
A minute thirty. He has time enough.
In-ho blinks dejectedly at the top in his hands. His heart is caught in his throat. Even when he screams, even when he slaps himself so hard that it makes his ears ring, it sits there like a lump of food that refuses to go down. And he chases that feeling too, allows the dread to settle in his stomach and run cold through his veins.
“You goddamn idiot! You fucking idiot! What’s wrong with you, huh?”
Voices are clamoring over one another. Hands are scrambling and bodies are leaning away. The timer ticks down another few seconds and In-ho fights the urge to smile because there you are. Eyes wider than ever before, your mouth and brows puckered with concern as you reach across Dae-ho’s body and try to soothe him. Gi-hun beats you to it, of course, but he gets what he wants in the end.
“Pass.”
He’s never found jegi nearly as interesting before as he does now. He doesn’t know where to look. He wants to capture it all, every fleeting micro expression and frantic breath, every tense muscle and colorful swing of the jegi. The last non-adrenalined, partially composed piece of his brain that still functions notes the idea of rewatching the game footage once he returns to his apartment. And then he’s not really thinking of anything logical or composed at all because he’s shooting his foot out to save the day, to save his own life (he doesn’t need to), your life (he doesn’t need to), to save Gi-hun, Dae-ho, and the pregnant girl’s lives (he doesn’t need to, but he does it anyway).
“Pass.”
The finish line comes into sight, a pink band that breaks across his chest. How strange to think that such an insignificant thing can make the difference between life and death. How strange to find himself crying out in the embrace of a friend and finally, finally, feeling alive.
And then he sees that flash of pink in the distance. Guns raised, legs stanced. He meets Park Jung-bae’s eyes for a fleeting moment before the gunfire starts, and then the only thing he can hear is Gi-hun’s throat ripped raw from the force of his own grief.
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Hi, guys
Before you continue reading, I ask that if you disagree with my sentiments mentioned below, you refrain from sending/leaving hateful responses.
I will not tolerate that.
Be mindful.
Be compassionate.
Be respectful.
Be a decent human being.
Today is over a month since I was last here. I'm sorry for disappearing for the entirety of January, but I haven't felt mentally nor spiritually well to be on social media, even tumblr, which is realistically one of the very few apps I use.
I didn't plan on taking this break, which has been (I think) my longest break from this app by far.
I had originally planned to take a few days off to rest after the holidays and looked forward to getting back on the app a few days later, but as the days went on, I found myself with a feeling of impending doom.
I know it's probably not easy to tell through a screen, but I'm the kind of person who tries to remain positive and strong in the midst of hard times. I always try to be uplifting and/or offer comfort as best as I can to myself and those around me; family, friends, and even acquaintances and complete strangers, who strangely feel compelled to share with me the difficulties they are going through sometimes.
However, I've found it difficult to remain positive and strong these past few weeks, but especially the last few days. Some of you may know, or maybe don't, but I'm located in this country: 🇺🇸.
I won't go into detail, but there's a lot going on rn and so much of it has been affecting me emotionally, and it's the reason why I've been trying to avoid social media; to balance my consumption of news/updates. I've found myself throughout the days feeling an array of emotions: sadness, worry, anger, disbelief, disappointment, heartbreak, helplessness, surprise...
Although I've been experiencing pretty much every negative emotion possible, I'm trying to regain my strength, positivity, motivation, and hope. It's much easier said than done, but I'm trying not to let myself sink further into this negative bubble.
I debated taking a few more days off, but I've genuinely missed being here and I also didn't want those of you who care to keep up with my shenanigans to wonder about me and think that I'm abandoning the fandom, or something like that.
I'm still here, very much loving on our fav Spider-Man. I will continue to write -- something I haven't done since my last fic update in December, to be completely honest, but definitely looking forward to doing again -- and share it on here. I'll also try to be more active and catch up on notifications over the next few days at my own pace.
Thank you for reading this update. I hope you guys are doing well and taking care of yourselves.
Pls stay safe out there
Alondra❤️
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Ugh! I hate it when sources contradict each other and somehow ALL are awesome when I try to build my stories!
Take Troilus and Polyxena for example!
Ancient sources like we believe Cypria and all mention how Troilus was killed early on in the war when he was literally a child. The Iliad also implies that Troilus was already dead at that point given the speech given by Priam. However other sources indicate that Troilus was killed at the tenth year of the war which could imply that he was getting dangerously close to the age of 21 and sources like Aeneiad seem to also speak on the great talent of Troilus in battle.
On one hand it is the most ancient sources like Homer the ones that speak of Troilus being killed early and we assume he was literally a child! Which makes his death really tragic and sad (or even more disturbing given the OTHER interpretations that seem to be hinted by the vases aka the rape and beheading of Troilus in the altar) as well as the power imbalance and the potential foreshadowing of the brutality of taking of Troy or the madness of Achilles (in one way if we bind these sources with Statius Achilleid we COULD get a connection here but still seems like an overkill for Achilles that early on unless of course he was already charged up with the whole Aulis business)
On the other hand seems rather overkill that Athena sends the strongest of all Greeks to slaughter a child (not to mention what was a literal child doing alone with his horses out in the middle of a bloody war?) The brutality of the crime could be more explained if Achilles was swaying between reason and madness after the death of Patroclus (also Apollo being the father of Troilus could explain his hatred for the offspring of the God that helped to slay his companion) Troilus would still be young but also show a bit off his strength and the explanation as to why he absolutely HAD to be slaughtered so that he wouldn't be Hector #2 and lead the counter attack to the Greeks and it could explain why Athena sent Achilles of all people to slay Troilus (parallels and all) or the urgency for it.
So yeah! I am in a dead end 😫 hahahahaha all sources work so well and have life of their own and create their own individual stories! I might as well create different versions in the end (given that from those who didn't realize it yet I WAS planning to add Troilus one way or another to my Achillochus one-shot anthology)
And we also have Polyxena business and the death of Achilles! We do have the classical version of the story in which after Achilles loses Antilochus in battle he challenges Memnon in a duel and wins and then enraged he charges the attack against the Trojans and leads them close to the walls once more but eventually he is killed by Paris at the gates of Troy. But did you know that one version of the story indicates that Polyxena charmed Achilles so much that Achilles considered fucking treason? He goes to Priam and suggests that he will fight for him as long as he gets Polyxena as his wife. Priam is ecstatic and agrees but it seems that the whole thing is a ploy (most likely organized by his children rather than Priam himself). When Achilles is lured in the temple Paris is hidden in there and shoots Achilles and he dies.
Alright this is a bit easier for me to choose from because apart from the moment of the Iliad where Achilles wishes death to the Greeks to protect his honor, treason goes a bit too far even for him. I doubt he would just randomly switch sides because he wants to marry. If anything he would focus even more to burn Troy to the ground till he gets what he wants. And sure that could explain A BIT his ghost demanding Polyxena as he holds a grudge against her or something but still I'd say nah here. Maybe he was smitten for her but I doubt that he would betray everything he stands for in order to get her.
However I have to say even if I might as well go with the version that Achilles dies by the walls of Troy I find really interesting that there is a version in which the Trojans needed to perform a literal trick themselves because they wouldn’t think they could take Achilles down otherwise or Polyxena also taking some active role as a bait or potentially organizer and it is really tempting the idea of Paris coming out of a vase or something with his bow like "surprise motherfucker!"
Random thoughts
#greek mythology#tagamemnon#homeric poems#the iliad#homeric epics#iliad#achilles#troilus#polyxena#priam#athena#random thoughts#random post#thoughts from my brain#thoughts from the void#ancient greek sources#ancient sources#paris#paris of troy#achilles vs troilus#epic cycle#the epic cycle#cypria
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Offerings
An important practice in hellenic Polytheism is the offerings. Many people already have an idea about what they are, so this post is more centered towards worshippers that stress around this concept since I'll be talking about how to handle it/how I handle it.
Offerings can range from a wide amount of things. A quick classification I can make up from the top of my head is: food offerings, other objects, and devotional acts.
When you first get introduced to hellenic Polytheism, food offerings appear as one of the main ways of building Kharis with the deities, since in general, that's what offerings do. The problem begins when we take libations and food as the better way to do offerings, putting them in some sort of subconscious pedestal over the other "methods".
Many followers can't afford to always do them to honor the gods, myself included. So, when all we see is an inability to offer things to our gods that way, it leads us to feel guilty and disappointed.
This is where I start to give tips from my own experience !
First, think of offerings as gifts. It is said to us that gifts don't always have to be something material to be significant. The same concept applies to offerings. I mentioned at the start that there were also other objects that could be given and devotional acts too. Intent is what matters. The gods don't care if you do offerings a certain way, but if the feelings are genuine from your part.
Other objects include jewelry/devotional jewelry, toys, books, etc. Basically, anything that isn't food. Devotional acts, as its name suggests, are activities that you can dedicate to your deities as long as it falls under their domain. Example: I have given Apollo a mouse fidget toy and also dedicate drawing, divination, dancing, etc.
It is as simple as that, trust me. It doesn't have to be elaborated. Now that gets me to the second point: check your resources.
You guys already know I struggled from following recon concepts and practices. You're totally free to follow them too if you can and want, but simply, some of us can't. Many sources for information about helpol come from a recon point of view, or simply others put things way more complicated/elaborated than they really are. Again, people are free to do them, but I'm focusing here on beginners/revivalists. Analyze your information and don't stay just with that. Search for easier ways to do things and overall avoid possible frustrations.
Getting back to my practice, I found out that libations didn't necessarily need to be poured out outside on the ground ! They could be poured down the sink or in a cup. Simple, right? This is mostly for those who still want to offer their gods food but in a more accessible manner. Another one is leaving the first or last bite of your food as an offering. (For Hestia, you leave both of those bites)
Note: Before applying these, know that rules still apply to Chthonic gods, not ingesting, eating, or drinking the offerings !
So now that you have both of those tips, I'll tell you one last thing: don't be afraid. It is also a shared sentiment that us helpols stress over our gods' images of us, our relationship with them, to treat them with respect and, overall, not fuck things up. Relax with your offerings, ease down. That constant worry also affects your feelings towards them, and we don't want that ! It is something that not only makes your deity happy, but you as well. The gods care about your happiness.
That's it for today ! If you want more of my rambles, feel free to interact with this post ♡ I wish you a good journey.
#Boo's rambles#hellenic polytheism#hellenic worship#hellenic community#hellenic deities#hellenic pagan#apollo#apollon
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This is me begging you to wax poetic about Phil's hair
Phil's hair journey is something that can actually be so personal to me specifically.
So, we start with shaggy black emo hair Phil, where he's at university and basically out in the ways that matter to him (slutting it up on main, an icon). And he's got this plan for his life, right? He's going to school; he's got a semblance of an idea for the future. But he's a baby adult at best. And then he starts doing this YouTube thing. He puts all his weird/creative/extraness that had been looked down on for years out for the world to see. And people like it. They like him. They like him so much they give him a platform and job offers and new dreams to realize.
And that's actually terrifying because he has so much to lose now.
Going from the mostly carefree feeling of being himself, accepting himself, despite the culture, to feeling like the caveat to all his dreams coming true is that he has to take that joy, that self-love that took SO LONG to find, and keep it hidden. Not only that, he has to lie to everyone. All the time.
So then there's short black fringe Phil, who's in the closet, mentions his attraction to girls where he can, trying to cover his internet tracks. But people are persistent; boundaries aren't something he knows how to set yet. His past is thrown in his face every other moment, so he doubles down. Sticks with his branding of the non-cursing, family-friendly, boy-next-door type. It isn't untrue so much as it's put on. He loses some of his spark in those years. Not enough rest and looking over his shoulder at every moment will do that to someone.
Then II Phil with the black quiff...
I have the most thoughts about this era, so forgive me for yapping.
II, which was meant to be the end of "Dan and Phil," not that the audience knew. But Phil did. And he changed his hair. Let his past branding slip just a bit, preparing the audience in a way.
And he's talked in the past about how he was scared to change his hair because he genuinely thought people would leave. Because up until then, the audience he'd curated, however extensive in number, was still this intangible, fickle beast he'd not learned to tame.
But that deep-rooted fear persisted. The fear that the love of your audience is so fickle that they would leave because you changed your hair... but it wasn't about the hair, not really. It was the fear that they don’t actually like you or your content and they only like that you represented their childhood or their awkward teen years. So, if you grow up and change, then they have to. And they don’t want to hear that.
So, you put off being yourself (in more ways than one) for the comfort of others. Because if you truly aren’t liked, you can at least pretend for a bit longer. You can keep your hair the same.
And then he comes out, and it's all out in the open.
And then Phil is publicly alone for a bit. After a decade he's just... amazingphil again. "Babysitting the kids until Dan comes back," undermining his content like it wasn't instrumental in getting countless people through the pandemic.
Like his joy, however put upon it may have been, wasn't infectious.
Then we hit 2023 with the messy brown fringe, and it's almost right. It's nearly there. Phil has cultivated his audience, weeded out the bad seeds, and knows more now. But he's still... hesitant. Soft around the edges.
And then dapg is back, and it's... it's silly and light, and it feels like 2009 again but easier, more honest.
Stealing this quote from @silaswhatever here: "and now he's blond messy fringe Phil, and this feels like an almost final evolution of Phil - a reclamation of a mistake he made in his teens, a change to commemorate both 15 years of being a dork on the internet with his soulmate and to highlight the beginning of a "new era" for them. And now he gets to be the person beyond the mask of "AmazingPhil", he gets to be Phil Lester, a messy, slightly mean, but very funny guy who loves the person he's been with for fifteen years and we all love him for it."
Anyway, I am normal about him.
#red you did not ask for all that but it's also ur fault so...#thems the breaks#742 words is me being brief btw#celeste is being parasocial on main again#answered#asks#celeste is talking#phil lester#amazingphil#phan
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DATV negative under the cut. Shouldn't need to be said but all very much my opinion and tastes, etc etc etc
At the end of the day, my biggest problem with Veilguard is that it lacks real replayability for me. But Claire, you might say, you've played four Rooks. And, fair, but that has been putting it on the easiest difficulty (which is turn off your brain easy) and skipping at least 75% of the dialogue each replay.
But that actually brings me back to my main complaint. I might have made four Rooks but it feels, at best, like two and only with very heavy headcanon at that. I made the opposite choices my second playthrough for everything, big and small. On paper, those two characters should have felt significantly different. One was a snarky human mage from Tevinter and the other was a straight forward, serious elven warrior. But, aside from different faction flavor dialogue and other minor changes (a bit of mage stuff for one and elven for the other), they fundamentally felt like the same person. There are a few reasons for that.
Each prior game gave ways to make the protagonist feel like an individual each time. The origins in Origin have a strong staying place to conceptualize who your Warden would be. Although the game was, imo, not terribly reactive to that after, you at least had lots of personal dialogue choices and you could make very different choices through the story. Then, in DA2, you were always Hawke but who Hawke was could feel substantially different. The game had a still unmatched personality system that would even change your ambient dialogue based on that personality. As such, a red Hawke spoke and reacted very differently from a purple Hawke and you even had different opportunities to get through some quests depending on that. Then in DAI, your background opened up different dialogue choices and the world would react to you in different ways. A non mage human noble would have a much easier time in the Winter Palace than, say, a mage qunari.
The second point, which is true for every prior game, is that your relationships with your companions could be very different. On DAO you could kill your companions or they could try to kill you if they disagreed strongly enough. I personally don't like the option to kill companions for various reasons but my point is that your relationship could range from besties/lovers to outright murderous contempt. DA2 has the friendship/rivalry system which, while it had its flaws, resulted in very different paths with companions. The companions also started to ask after you more and you might even be integrated into some banter. DAI was less extreme than the prior two but you could still get different paths with companions based on how much they liked you. Cassandra might get drunk after you're named Inquisitor, you could punch Solas and Dorian, and so on. The companions also reacted a lot to things you went through in the story and even to your specialization.
Finally, every class feels kind of the same. They're all relatively enjoyable but it doesn't really feel substantially different to play a mage, rogue, or warrior. Each class has very limited amount of abilities and they've all been made to feel a bit magical. This isn't quite as big from an RP standpoint (though it is still a thing for me) but it does hurt replay since a fair part of the game is fighting.
How much any of these things worked for players sort of boiled down to personal preferences but they were at least there. Romances wouldn't trigger or might even be broken under certain circumstances in other games, while the only thing that matters in DATV is that you flirt with them. Approval is meaningless. The only major difference in how you interact with them is pretty much just whether or not you talk to them at all/do their side quests. Otherwise you're always on good terms with them and they with you. Also, aside from the choice between Minrathous and Treviso, there simply aren't big choices that can be played differently and the small choices don't much matter. Most of the companion choices have superficial changes at best for them, with the exception of Emmrich.
What was the only thing that made the game feel different? Very, very thorough headcanon. Playing as Kieran felt different not because of anything the game did but because of work I put into it. Which, if that's all you ever want, that's fine. For me, the only thing that kept me making other Rooks was a desire to see certain romances. When I replayed the other games, I never skipped dialogue but this time it all feels so samey that it feels like there's no point in playing through it.
At the end of the day, I feel like Veilguard works best if you're a one PC kind of person. I've liked all my Rooks but that's bc I like the general person Rook is. I like the character creator, which is also enough to get me making new characters. I still don't think it's a bad game but it found new ways to disappoint me in ways I didn't expect for a BW game. I very much understand there are reasons it is the way it is but it's still a bummer when it's very, very likely there will never be another DA game.
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So I was still working (in retail/sales) when covid hit and after finally enacting social distancing, we all were given big plexiglass panels at our desks which was all well and good, but we still had to handle people's phones. Anyway, I got the okay to put a sign up on mine that said "I am immunocompromised, please maintain a safe distance" and I cannot TELL you how many people would look at it and stumble over the pronunciation and ask what it meant. Numerous times, I was asked if I had COVID, had cancer, or was just sick in general (which, yes, I suppose), and those were the "polite" people. A lot of times, people would ignore the fluorescent tape on the floors around our desks denoting six feet and plow through right up to our desks and purposely lean around the plexi or stand off to the side. If a manager was around and available, they'd ask them to step back, but the vast majority of the time, it fell on us to corral the customers.
I can still vividly remember the look of disgust on so many people's faces at being asked to step back and the dramatic ways they'd wave their phone at me and ask how the hell I was supposed to help them. I watched grown men and women transform into literal toddlers in front of my eyes. I was sworn at, yelled at, threatened, had passive aggressive comments aimed at me, and as a captive audience, was forced to listen to so much pro-trump and anti-vaxx rhetoric and ivermectin conspiracy theories. Customers had always had the propensity to become nasty, but the change during and after COVID was wild. It became so obvious how little people cared about others and that they don't view retail workers as humans. In addition to being chronically ill and dealing with everything that comes with it, I burnt out so fast. Before COVID, I could say that overall I enjoyed my job. But with the pandemic, I guess people felt they had more license than ever to mistreat service workers.
All this to say that while I'll never stop believing that as a whole people are mostly good and there are so many who care deeply about others, there are also a LOT of people who simply do not care if they get someone else sick. There are people who have never had an immunocompromised friend or family member and there are people who are uneducated about health in general. It ties in with ableism as a whole and how it would be so much easier for the rest of the public if we disabled people would just "go away" so they didn't have to see or deal with us. We're an inconvenience to them and that became clearer than ever in this post-pandemic world.
I think an underrated factor in “why is everyone sick??” is that many people have reverted to pre-COVID habits ie they do not wash their fucking hands
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something bad did indeed happen to that man. spent abt 25 minutes trying to find a better picture of that one (1) offical piece with his eyes open that wasnt compressed or tiny
#library of ruina#yan library of ruina#getting comfortable doodling some objects and mannequin shapes for very obvious reasons. i read the keypage story and now it has a grip on#my brain. wanting to go ahead and plan it out and then draw the mangled memory and nightmare that replays behind the eyelids in the darknes#it was cool to see the reason confirmed from my speculation. twas indeed another reason of blocking out present pain with closing of eyes#considering they made angela have a plot important reason for doing so it would only make sense for another to have a reason for it as well#well. after having a prominent part inside the thumb/index story line. its just going to be yapping about yan now i think#let me add a spoiler tag i suppose? vauge but just incase i dont want to be an asshole. even if most already have played rhe game#library of ruina spoilers#lor spoilers#i really liked the typewritter effect over the voice after distortion. especially so when the effect finishes before the actual garbled voi#does. it makes it feel as if it were being read out after it being written down rather than of own words or volition. along with the text#upon the screen during the fight being just prescripts rather than anything relating to the man himself like the other instances with such#text had been. paired w the name of distorted yan being untranslated to keep the intent of the name being unreadable or not understandable#more into the idea of stripping away of the self or any sense of a self. not personal and not even him anymore. the following of a goal for#the goal for it is given and there isnt any hope of having the ability to not do such a thing. people yearn for a reason and something to d#and for it to be given to them to not hold responsibility nor have to do their own choices anymore. once a crushing weight weighs down#inside the face of an absolute cruelty that is perpetuated and that crushed the dreams or even desires having them be but nothing how can#one move on? it was really nice to see at the end of the fight. its easier to just say such things than to actually do them. even if the ac#ions dont even feel as if they are ones own or that there isnt any say in the matter having to endure all the pain for seemingly nothing it#still is pain. that feeling inside is still real. it still happened. regardless of the circumstances that brought them about#the thumb/index or just fingers seem to be an exaggerated to the extreme showcase of how the colletivist mindset in an unhealthy manner#could be exhibited. the thumb with its hierarchy and absoluteness and the demand for respect along with its strict layers of showing who is#below and who is above. the ability to have power over those underneath . the participation inside of it and the already brought up yearnin#to be apart of a group and to have a title and position inside of a group and of power and even a desire like from pete to join one iirc#the index being of the cruel perpetuating cycle of pain people inflict upon one another a behavior beaten and upkept by the systems as they#drift and desire to live. which causes them to partcipate in that cycle out of necessity. cruel acts upon another in order to live and seei#a need to go ahead and do such things for if they dont they die and another will just do the same to them. social sciences talk and rolands#talks abt how the city opperates reinforce that fact. the index and prescripts are really just a show inside that extreme manner and in a#more literal sense of that. it was really cool to read it..
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Goddamn, MTMTE goes hard on the third readthrough
#mtmte#maccadams#first readthrough is for getting the overall gist of the story#still enjoyable but you spend a lot of time being confused and getting characters mixed up#even more so if you're not familiar with previous idw material#and even more than that if you're not familiar with g1 in general#second readthrough is for re-experiencing the story with the added context of knowing what tf is going on and who's who#much easier to keep track of all the little connections and intricacies#plus you have the added knowledge of where the plot's going so you can properly appreciate like. foreshadowing and stuff#there are some offhand remarks in the first few issues that made me have to physically stop and take a moment#once i realized what they were referring to#anyways#third readthrough is for appreciating all the little details#we already know the forest now it's time to appreciate these trees babey#yeah the main plot beats are great but some of these smaller moments go SO hard#and the craftsmanship of it all? the pacing the layout the Excellent use of page turns. So good for building suspense + getting that Impact#Anyways. fantastic experience. god i love comics#And of course this experience is greatly enhanced if you put several years between rereads#so you have a chance to forget about some of the plot twists until they're right in front of you#thus giving yourself the chance to re-experience those 'OH SHIT' moments#even if it's a bit earlier than you're supposed to
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"likes don't do anything" they do
"there's no algorithm" there is
"well nobody uses the for you tab" I do
"reblog all art and fics you see" there's no thought put into that. if this does work on people, then it's just pity engagement borne out of guilt rather than genuine interest, which is arguably worse than having none, because it's totally hollow.
#if I make art of my ocs who I'm personally fond of and spent a few days drawing just right and it gets 3 reblogs then it gets 3 reblogs#it's rational to feel a little disappointed sure. but I can't do anything about that. it's just luck#and I got Very lucky accumulating a few thousand followers on my main-turned-art-only blog off the back of when m.oomin was very popular#(tho realistically many of those users are probably inactive/passive followers now)#and having this number of people tuned into my posts Still only gets me a couple dozen notes on original stuff.#every 3 years or so something might blow up. like that bugs bunny comic lol. and I did Not expect it to#especially bc it happened about a year after I shared it as well.#it can happen any time. so don't feel discouraged when your art doesn't get noticed right away#the one advantage this website has is that there's far less of a fomo culture compared to other socials where trends come and go in a week#and people will still interact with older posts. especially bc it's easier to find what you want through the tagging system. sort of.#there's really no way to predict this or aim for large engagement! oh unless you're specifically catering to the current hot topic#like d.unmeshi is wiiiildly popular right now. I've seen comics get 5-digit notes in under 48 hours 'cause more eyes are on it.#but if it's not something you personally like and you're only creating things for the attention then you're gonna be unhappy#and people will inevitably move on.#I'd much rather swing my art back around every few months or so until it finds someone it resonates with#than make people who were never planning to engage with it feel bad for no reason
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also "textless" versions of these, wahooo
#corned beef#joe iconis christmas extravaganza#bsol#speaking of >:3 & >:3 third time's the >:3 in successfully slammed both up against the window of joe iconis's car (twitter @'d & Seen)#which is really just a :3 but whom among us (orchestra hit) is not a little impish with it#first year i did fanart like wouldn't it be fun if joe saw & liked this. second yr like Same plus it did happen last time#then also recency Fun Times bias sure but he did make it a frame in his End Of Year Good Times Celebration video like >:'3#yes i draw exactly what i wanna draw b/c it's some specific thing i enjoy that much so Yep that is the xmas show to me#so powerfully i was moved like ooh fun xmas villain wrole?? in '19 when i was paying attention & relieved of some bmc closure malaise#by the xmas show but obv Least aware / knowledgable lol. technically showed up in '18 around nov/dec but no chance Right then of tuning in#i mean i had the capacity but did not know it existed / even Less helpful preexisting context. anyway so by the time the show returns#& i've done research in between & gone my god i am i live laugh loving like Yeah i'll do more fanart & omg cyril & omg krampusfucking#able to ramp it up this year & like just thanks to Drawing Experience i'm better at forging ahead through thee process even when it's#extra ambitious like my god am i in over my head? well keep swimming for the surface like only several times going [aaa....] only to yknow#not be that tripped up anyway but still go [(celebrate) christmas!!! (with me)] & be like Do It For The Krampusfucking Gift#one post for another like lighting up my life joe just coming out like ''who wants clips. first up Full Cyril Fucks The Krampus number''#like jeez made that happen And passed it along....it's always the like epitome of my art like i make the specific often really niche stuff#i really respond to; does anyone else enjoy this? if yes; Wheeee; sometimes this is also ppl Behind the really niche shit i enjoy#like i truly hope you do get that kick out of it as i slam it up to the window; worth a Highlight Of Your Year or not#the power of [i do like to Draw the things i latch on to] + [internet] for you#really the bsol design even More an event in ''how did i even do this'' b/c even when planning to make it slightly easier like well#fewer figures; i'll use ink pen so i hone the lineart less than i would to precisely get [line weight mostly irrelevant] Line Geometry#yet still going ruh oh i'm honing for sure. but then like did Most of the lineart all in one night + all the coloring the next round#when i draw quite slowly / the Honing is virtually always an inextricable part of my process like i do Nothing in less than Hours#like i think even my freewheeling bsol sketches posted just this morning took me at Least an hour; judging by vids i played in the bg lol#not quite calibrated to have Attuned Confidence In My Ability To Forge Ahead thusly like oh no if i don't have Momentum or it doesn't#happen to be one of those times things just spontaneously come out great right off without more honing / consideration we're fucked....#not actually the case but yknow still realizing this lol But still able to just pat myself on the shoulder like It's Manageable & it is/was
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Do you sell your pottery anywhere?
Just through the shop of the community arts center I make/work/teach at! Right now it looks like my tumblers and a mug are still there, but I'm not completely sure since the website has been wonky lately. I guess?? They ship? I've only ever bought items in person from there, but you could ask if you're interested!
#ask me stuff!#pottery#sorry that's the only place#i dont have the space or the bandwidth or resources to run an etsy or anything#but thats more than i used to do lol#besides for friends and family#but yeah its a 60 40 split in profit where i get 60%#and honestly i am 10000% cool with yall getting my pots from sawtooth bc that helps support the arts center#i need to make some more things for them#im also thinking of submitting to their holiday sale at the end of the year but we'll see how much brain space i have#the hardest part is actually saving pots to sell bc i give so many away lmao#and with this last soda kiln in march i'll be giving a lot away and a lot to the studio's seconds sale#bc they arent BAD pots but they arent good enough#too many errors#too many nasty wadding stickages making ugly bottoms#but they can still be nice functional pots for someone who doesnt care about that#i do unfortunately have a box of pots that are lost basically#too much silicon carbide drippings on them#i'll break those and repurpose the pieces for drainage in my potted plants#but also selling through the center makes my taxes A LOT EASIER LMAO#bc i get a form directly from them
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Why are there wraiths in my gardening game?
A Wildmender review
The point of Wildmender is that you are given a big ol' desert, and some plants and gardening tools. The plot is superfluous.
So why do the wraiths keep attacking me?
I beat the game! I murdered their leader! Why are they still staging attacks at regular intervals!
Okay, that said, the difficulty settings are super easily configurable in many different ways, so you can turn wraith damage off, etc, to make the game fit your needs and desires. I haven't actually messed with this because I'm cool with smiting a wraith every so often. Also, on standard difficulty you can just surround your home base with tower defense sigils and they will literally take care of everything up to and including the final boss for you. With the teleportation system, all you have to do is go home when a wraith attack occurs, and then lead the attackers to their doom. So the wraiths don't have to be a problem.
I really like climbing around a 3D world building my garden. I think there's a lot of end game potential - I really want to see if, if I upgrade all the springs fully, I can fill the channels of the salt flats with water, for example. (In which case I will need some sort of swim mechanic to get more pearls to upgrade the rest of the springs in the game.)
I liked how you can just garden your way past the game's obstacles. You're supposed to have a special bracelet for the salt flats to keep them from draining your water, but if you just fill your inventory with acorns and revive every spring you come across, the water drainage is manageable without that.
I think there should be more plants. There are a lot at the beginning of the game, and then toward the end it starts to feel kind of repetitive, you've got some half dozen base plants that come in different skins and all the loot is the same. You could get some really cool DLC in there by adding end-game quests to revive old strains of plants, explore seed bunkers, etc.
It's also a very lonely game. You are literally the only living creature in the world when you start. Oh, there are the gods, and your tutorial leader, but once they run out of tutorials it's just... you and the plants. Which is great! It's exactly what I'm looking for! but the loneliness creeps on you. Maybe I'm not hugging my frogs enough.
(Pro tip: Collect pearls from the salt flats and feed them to your frogs not for the upgrade capability but so that they glow purple and you can find them more easily.)
I had a lot of fun, but it would be more fun in co-op. I really want to play with Tea, but Tea cannot handle combat at all - I was hoping for a combat-free game, and then I was working on my save to beat the final boss so that the wraiths would go away so I could get Tea to come garden with me. So that's really why I'm upset about the continued wraiths. (Mind, Tea doesn't have a Windows operating system to work with, so the day is far anyway.)
Blooper Reel
It's about impossible to play the game without a mouse. You can't strafe without one, and even climbing the spiral staircases was extremely difficult. (The difficulty level dropped dramatically when I plugged in a mouse. Wraiths were a minor concern compared to getting the timing right to WASD myself around a spiral staircase with no rails.)
The game does not prevent you from going off the edge of the map, it just puts a really big cliff there. So if you want to push your boundaries, empty your inventory of important material first. I do not recommend jumping off the cliff with all the easily-obtained instances of the most difficult resource in the game. Usually you can reclaim your body, but not if it's rolled off the bottom of the cliff into doesn't-exist land.
The game tells you that you can cycle through tools using the keyboard shortcut T. It does not tell you that if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, you can also use that scroll wheel. For a long time I thought it was the worst glitch in the game (there are others) and also that the game was poorly designed in terms of giving you about a dozen tools that you have to keep jabbing T to get round the circuit of. I still think a hotkey system with numbered tools would work better.
It took me a really long time to find out the cape of winds was useful. I got it to tick off the quest box, and then kept on climbing and using the vine bridge mechanism. Once I figured out the cape holy crap were the salt flats less miserable. up down up down up down infinite umbrella mushrooms...
#seriously environmental storytelling with exploring the seed bunker would be soooooooo cool#let's get some of the folks from HZD in on this#for Stig#long post#hopefully I have not complained too much I really enjoyed myself#I'm just at end game and all that remains is gardening#and periodically disposing of the wraiths who for some reason still gang up on me#the difficulty is also not very consistent - like the final boss battle was easier than a lot of the random attacks#so it's easier to remember those nitpicks#than that I have done exactly nothing with the decorative options#or the aqueduct system#and I have 36 springs left not fully upgraded!
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