#[possible future operator aesthetic...maybe?]

[tarotnoob]

BTS group reading 6/18/24

This is the full BTS reading I did around the Jin discharge/reunion. I think that's important to note since I caught the vibe around that event as opposed to everyone being at their respective bases.

Disclaimer: Tarot readings are not fact; please don't let anyone make you feel they are. Using tarot readings as proof of anything related to BTS or the members is, frankly, silly.

You can also check out the reading I just did for Jimin. There were things that I noticed in Tae/Jimin's readings here that seemed connected. What does that mean? Nothing other than their energies crossed, so I interpreted it as having a convo about some stuff.

Essentially while there's a process to tarot, there's also a bit of guesswork trying to work out the pieces. Not to mention readers operate with their own biases.

RM - Even before I looked at the guidebook for the Oracle cards I got the sense that this is his time to not really give a s*** about anything. I feel like he's working on trying to take things less seriously so much to the point that he might be trying to go out of his comfort zone. I feel like he's trying to simplify things in his life, whether this means literally getting rid of clutter or getting rid of the BS. There's a lot of energy focused on the self. Whether this is more self-help books or working out or even pampering himself in some ways. The spirit card also makes me think that maybe he could be reading more philosophy books or even diving into different religions or spiritualities. If he has time off, I still think that he likes to spend it in nature. 

I really think that there's a lot of energy being put into physical fitness and health. He might even be eating better and simplifying his diet. I think that in terms of clarity he's definitely seeing things about what he wants to do in the future. He might be thinking a lot ahead to the next steps that they could take as a group or just him himself on projects. The candle and spirit definitely gives me Ace of wands vibes. So he might actually be working on a collaboration with somebody. I guess that could be a romantic spark as well. It kind of has a romantic vibe there. But it could just be vibing with people who are on his same wavelength. Talking about life and all kinds of things related to that. I see a greater sense of understanding his purpose and what he wants to do and where he wants to go and how he wants to be perceived. I just really get a no-nonsense don't give s*** kind of vibe. I think people do that when they need to shed something. They need to just start over because he was getting too frustrated and worked up and realized that he just had to go back to the basics or throw it all away. But I mean he's not doing it by being a hermit. Even with the number nine popping up lol. There could be some of that but I still see him being rather a social with other people who think similarly or interesting that way to him. I definitely see him talking to somebody about the future though. Having two figures in each card's could mean again like a partner or one specific friend or could stand in for a group of people but he's definitely making plans with someone besides himself. If not specific plans together then just a person that he likes to talk to about the future. 

I'm also feeling like he's more in a very sensitive and feminine type of energy where he's more open to receiving possibly. Like so more interested in learning and gaining knowledge and getting in touch with taking care of himself both mentally and physically. I feel like you probably also bought something really nice recently. Like some type of luxury item. From a car to a house to like a really nice watch or a piece of art. But I definitely feel like he's spending if it makes him feel better. I know that's getting away from decluttering but I think he's like I don't give a f*** I'm just going to buy things that make me happy and look aesthetic. 

Jin

Jin has strength and nature. This could be specific to a trip coming up in Leo season for him. So very soon. Where he might take a vacation to someplace where you would think of nature. It could be anywhere from Jeju to the mountains to getting away from Korea but I get a sense of somebody probably taking a trip to a location that's not necessarily a busy city. It could be to go camping probably. I think also it means like a sense of wonder. In the book it says something like and every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks. And the keywords are gifts wonders and home. I just feel like this is going to be a time of relief for him to do things that are fun and carefree. I wonder if he's able if he goes on the trip will he like do a live or share a diary about it. It could involve music or gathering with people from the music industry as in friends or it could just be a situation where they go to camp and they have a campfire and it's very chill. It could even be like something I don't want to say spiritual but like a retreat where you have events that make you relax like yoga or sound baths. 

That doesn't really sound like him but that's kind of the vibe I'm getting. Or like a get together where people play music but it's not like loud music. It would be like you know if you get by campfire on somebody has an acoustic guitar. So they play folk or soft music together and just sing acapella. I see him having a good and relaxing time. Just trying to get back into the groove of things not trying to rush into something. Not to say that he might not start working on music right away. But I just see him even if he's doing that he's kind of playing around and trying to have fun and relax. Also maybe a lot of appreciation for what it means to have your own time and to not be stuck in the military anymore. I'm sure that sounds obvious but when I did a reading for him right before all the guys met the other day, I actually cried because of the cards that came out. Because it was just such a lovely energy. 

This is somebody who like has really figured out how not to let external things affect him and to just live in the now and like to approach things with such a wondrous and joyous type of energy. I think he is a person of strong character. If there's anything that he wants to do he has the willpower to do it. I don't think he lets anybody step over his boundaries. I think they've already said this but there's an energy of being a kid. I'm not saying he's immature. You could look at him and say the pranks or the things he says are silly and that's immature but it's not from that. It's from someone who just has decided not to let negative things affect him or even if they do because he's human, he won't let them beat him down I guess? Because life is too short? I feel like there's a lot of wisdom people could get from him if they sat and had a chat with him. And you could get him to be a bit serious. I think he doesn't want to be serious. Not because he's avoiding anything but just like he doesn't want to be lol. That's not his vibe. But yeah I think he's ready to rest and relax and recharge right now and so I would definitely expect him to take a trip very shortly to a location where he can feel relaxed. 

Yoongi

I'm a little surprised to see joyous especially given the tarot cards. But joyous here the keywords are appreciation, overflowing choice. The intention phrase for it is choose to spread your joy contagiously. You will keep your spirit healthy. Your joy will make others happy. The quote that goes with it is from Carlos Santana and it says if you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment. 

On the one hand I can't tell if I'm being biased especially given his tarot cards but then how I feel he probably feels about his military service. So part of me is wondering if this joyous card is a bit sarcastic. But when you read the description it's a lot like gratitude or being optimistic. Which I do think he is. It's living and practicing an existence of being joyful needs to come within. Celebrate being alive and having the freedom to make your own choices. Follow the path leading upwards and see the candy jar as half full rather than half empty. Positive thoughts and actions will attract higher vibration surrounding you, granting you pure joy. I have wondered from things he's said for years now if he has not necessarily a spiritual practice but more like a mental practice of letting things go and not having attachments. 

So I think he has adapted some of that to life. The tarot cards kind of indicate I don't want to say bitterness. But we have the nine of wands which is a little bit defensive or having seen some s*** or being determined and the devil tends to have those like negative self thoughts. The joyous part could be advice for him for how he feels right now. I can only imagine how someone like that feels when they have to do something that they don't believe in. I don't think he gives a s*** about military service. He probably doesn't think that he should be doing it. He probably doesn't believe in anything that has to do with authority or nationality or patriotism. I'm not saying he would be a critic or anything although there's much to criticize so it wouldn't surprise me. So I think this is kind of a difficult thing for him to wrap his head around so he's just trying to see the silver lining. Which is probably that eventually it will be over. I think he's trying to find things to be grateful for. I think he's looking forward to the end. 

I have always wondered if he has a companion or like a partner of some kind. I don't think it's a friend. I do lean toward a companion, I feel like they've been together for a while, and I feel like this person provides comfort as much as possible and could be the joy that he finds in what is probably an annoying experience for him right now. I think probably this person is the only one kind of keeping him grounded. I think the relationship could be a little codependent in that regard. I also feel like there's something hidden. Something sneaky or secret. This could be anything like something he's doing in secret. That could be the relationship. Or somebody involved is doing something that he's not aware of or he's doing something that other people aren't aware of. It's interesting that in all the cards there is this little extra animal. Which is part of why I'm leaning toward there is somebody significant in his life that provides comfort. That or he just got a dog lol. 

15, 9 and 6 could be relevant so maybe something happening in September between September 6th and 15th. Something that could be a secret being revealed. I'm not like super confident in that I'm just guessing what the numbers could mean if anything. I'm kind of seeing five of wands as well within this nine of wands, so there could be other types of conflicts happening. These sticks are burning and this is a snowman and that dog is also made of flames so technically the snowman could melt under the heat. And the devil obviously hell. Kind of silly but like literally he could be somewhere right now that is extremely hot lol. He could feel under pressure or feel the heat. There could be some type of temptation. It could be that he is involved with someone or something that could potentially cause harm to him. Of either a slight degree or more than that. Something that he's doing or indulging and might be kind of iffy but at the moment it seems to be bringing him joy or happiness or a way to get through stuff. I don't really know what that could be. 

Besides indulging in a relationship that's codependent, it's not like he could really be doing drugs or abusing substances. I think it's something else it's like tempting but at the same time it's harmful. I don't know what that could be given him not being able to do much. It could also be that like he's in a situation where he can't react the way he wants and feels confined. But that's me just like assuming things. I'm not really feeling anything. The devil is also a card about restriction so again maybe feeling restrained and kind of at his limit. I mean that sounds really dramatic, this is obviously somebody who can handle anything but like I just can only imagine him being incredibly irritated that he has to do this stuff. I just hear him being really sarcastic in my head about the idea of joyous. Like yeah what a joy this is. But he knows he's going to stick through it so what can he do. I mean he can't go into it completely like I hate this because he'd be miserable. 

Even though I think he's miserable but he's trying his best to find the things that make it endurable. I also wonder if with this person whether it's a new person or like I felt like an old person that maybe this person has like melted him in some ways and made him softer. Maybe because this person has seen him through good and bad. But I would definitely guess that if it's a person it's a bit codependent. Like they don't want to go out with everybody they would rather just stay in by themselves and only interact with each other. Kind of like when you invite a friend and no matter how many times you invite the friend they always want to ask if they can bring their partner. Which some people might be like what's wrong with that well that's weird. Okay it's weird. You can separate for a night to hang out with friends. And often your friends don't necessarily want to hang out with your partner. But yeah I'm not really getting much other than like irritation and sarcasm and just dealing with it and probably a person involved in his life that's pretty serious and is sticking close to him. But something about it is a little maybe toxic. Because again the snowman wants to take care of the little flame dog but the flame dog does end up melting him. But he seems to really like this person and I would guess it's a woman Yes. She might be older than him. I know all the little animals and stuff look younger but like I feel like she could be older 

It could even be that he's actually the little pet in every single card because of how much he seems to look up to her or be like obsessed with her. And if in her eyes that she's rather powerful and like caring and taking care of him. That's why I kind of think she's probably older by at least 5 years it could be more than that. Anyway. I think I said that last time I did a reading about him where I felt like he was talking to somebody about creative projects. And I think it's the same person probably so. Don't ask him to marry you because I'm pretty sure he's already got somebody in mind and it's pretty serious and probably long-term. But it's just a guess and a feeling. I don't feel 100% about anything going on with him. 

But I do probably think he's taken. However I feel like it's a non-traditional type of relationship. As in like they don't like labels or it could be open. But it just doesn't feel traditional hetero dynamics. I think they would call it like a companionship or even like one's a superpower and one's a familiar. She might also be kind of spiritual or has that same type of interest in those philosophical ideas without being spiritual. She could even be a little witchy. She could be into Japanese religions or spirituality or be Japanese I say that because of the fox. And they have legends about foxes being able to change shape. And this animal seems to keep changing shape in the different cards from being a dog to a fox to whatever is with the devil. So in that way in terms of non-traditional this woman is just not into labels. Maybe they're even non-binary? I don't really feel like that though I feel like they're quite feminine in nature but it's more not believing in labels and thinking everything is a social construct with a bit of scientific spirituality thrown in lol. I just don't see them as into incense and tarot yet they apply certain philosophies like that to things. Anyway interesting. 

J-Hope

I am not surprised that he would somehow pull the focus card out of a lot of really like spiritual worded Oracle cards lol. I am always thinking of him as being high focused and a little not uptight but like wound a little bit tight yeah. Very respectful and kind of serious. But deeply charming. As for the photo we have somebody who is in a white gown with flowers. And we have the four of wands, so it's almost giving like a wedding vibe. I think I said this in a past reading about him too where I thought there was some kind of wedding so I don't know why that keeps coming up with him. If you look at the four of wands as well that guy has like white hair and it reminds me of J-Hope when he had that white blonde hair before he enlisted. So there's definitely I mean I would look at it and be like okay well somebody is putting their attention into like an event that looks like a wedding and there's a little bit of anxiousness and anxiety about it. I don't know is he going to get married, is he going to a wedding, is he going to be in a wedding? The other thing could be there's some type of celebration or contest coming up where he would perform and there's some anxiety and he's just focused on that event right now. 

Reading the book for focus also sounds a lot like somebody and the steps you would take to manifest something and make something happen. Especially like achievements or things that you want to accomplish. So it's putting in the effort toward that and being aware of what you want. So there is a moment of celebration that he's working toward and focused on. This could be like any of them where it's a focus on being discharged and celebrating that moment afterward. And maybe he's like super highly anxious and focused on that specific countdown day. So I think he's really looking forward to the end. And at the end there could be some kind of celebration that would include a wedding. I don't know if it's he's seeing somebody I don't know. There are lots of people in our lives who could get married but it's just interesting that he got four of wands and this card looks so much like a bride carrying flowers. They're both carrying flowers. So there's nervousness here. I mean we won't know until he gets out but maybe he has promised somebody that at the end of his discharge they could celebrate something. It could be anybody else throwing a wedding or party but I'm just saying it's looking like I want to imagine a situation where he is with a woman Yes a woman probably very likely and they're both looking forward to this moment and there's a celebration and there are flowers and there is somebody in a white dress so I'm just saying. 

It's interesting that the focus card talks about manifestation and creating things when the character on the four of wands is the person who created BMO and a lot of robots. So there's this idea of creating a dream reality. Creating his own happiness. Highly focused on what's going to make him happy and what's coming up in the future. There's also an interesting take on flowers. It could be that being with Jin now he has flowers in mind and that's how he associates the end. It could be a focus on beauty and happiness and things that are good. Also to have flowers you have to put in the dedication to grow them. And when you do that something really beautiful comes out and you've created something.they are white roses so it could signify like a friend getting married. 

Of course I like don't see anything in the cards to indicates to me a person that he's seeing now or whatever. I'm just like literally this is exactly what it looks like on the cards. But like I said it could be a friend's wedding. Once he gets out and he's looking forward to that. Or it could be way in the distant future that there's some type of marriage. We have the numbers four and the numbers 9. So this could be something for next April or it could be something in September or the event could take place on the 4th or 9th of a month. I don't think he's getting out until early October maybe. I'm not sure of the specific date. But maybe he's getting out on like the 9th or the 4th I don't know. But there is no way a guy as amazing as he is is not dating somebody. Like I don't know if any of them were dating and they took a break because obviously it'd be difficult to keep a relationship while you're enlisted. Especially for JK and JM who are like in the middle of nowhere and mountains and apparently it's hard for them to get a lot of time off. 

I'm not sure what to totally make of the nine of swords beyond being like a generally anxious as a person always he seems to be. But this character has a harp and the swords kind of make me think of communication and writing. So I think when he gets anxious he might be writing and working on things like at night you know when he's in bed and about to go to sleep. I also think this just indicates dreams. I'm really focused on the wavy one the second one from the bottom. I don't know why. Although it does kind of remind me when you like put a song together and you see the waves of the sounds. Also in the nine of swords on the bed there's another woman who looks like she has a bridal dress on lol. It's clearly princess bubble gum but it looks like yeah so I'm sorry but I definitely think there's a wedding coming up for him. It would be weird to be that focused on a friend's wedding unless it's like your best friend or you're going to be in it or you're worried about whether you're going to get out in time to make it to the wedding. But somebody's getting married 

Jimin

Okay for Jimin. We have the sun which can indicate Leo timing or Leo signs and we have Divinity. Kind of interesting already because flame princess is a royal person and people used to think that being royal was a divine right or divinely given. Despite there being a moon in the divinity card I also get the sense that it could just as easily be the Sun instead of the moon here. Or it's just a mix of the sun and the moon meaning feminine and masculine energies happening at the same time. Because the divinity card would definitely make me think of high priestess right which is a very feminine energy and in the sun is that powerful masculine energy. So there's like a balance theme happening here. 

More about the divinity card. So the intention says embrace your soul and true self. You are filled with the ability, strength, and knowledge you need to navigate your life's path. It's interesting that it says strength which is the other leo card. So I think clarity and bravery and being bold and getting out there or bringing something into the light could be a part of this. This could be more about the balance of those energies. If we're talking about the high priestess which usually means secret and we have a card about clarity, there could be a revelation of some sort that's happening for him or about him or will happen to him. It's such a nice balance of energy lol. Because there's such a softness and empress vibe and high priestess vibe rolled into this divinity card. It's very soft and elegant and then you have this powerful loud sun card. And flame princess is focusing on this crown and this particular red jewel but she's also not wearing it on her head. We see that there is red prominent on both cards. There's also a little bit of yellow and then a bit of green but I'm mostly seeing red which is the root chakra. Yellow would be solar plexus green would be heart.

I'm also wondering if he's kind of in the mood to dye his hair red lol. Or like he was just talking about what color will I dye my hair when I see you again and I'm wondering if right now he has an idea in his head that it will be red. Or is he like I'm between red and blonde because we see yellow here too. Another line associated with the divinity card is never forget that you have the spark of divine in you. Whatever you do or don't do won't change this fact. And the keywords are wise, sacred, deity. I kind of feel like both cards are talking about a deity or a god or the divine or fate or whatever you want to call it. Spiritual wisdom. He always has very spiritual cards and more often than not I typically get cards for him that are like the sun, the moon, death. Like with other members I tend to also get a seven card with him at some point. 

The number for the Sun card is 19 or 1 and 9 or 10. So any of those numbers could be significant in some way. More about the card it says you are quite surely a goddess with extraordinary powers and in other worldly realm. Hold yourself to the highest standard of exquisite excellence. You are walking on this earth to make the difference that was intended for you to achieve. Stand tall on the highest mountain. This line is interesting. Once you reach the apex, you will discover the entire spectrum of the rainbow waiting just for you. It's weird because I think that the universe has special intentions for him which can probably create a lot of tough burdens and challenges and lessons for that type of person. There's a lot of focus on embracing who you are and you know embracing the feminine aspects and the beautiful aspects and the graceful aspects. So the card is really encouraging the feminine traits or skills or talents of his personality and even of his physical looks. 

But then like you see this other card that definitely represents all those masculine traits. I'm not necessarily seeing a conflict. I'm pretty sure that he's mostly resolved a lot of the issues he used to have about what it means to be masculine versus can I accept these feminine aspects of myself and how will these be perceived. I kind of thought that would come up again going into a place like the military where you can't paint your nails, you can't wear makeup, you can't dye your hair, and I thought he was maybe worried about what he would look like without his hair and not being able to present himself as an idol. I don't see conflict here maybe if I clarified. I see someone embracing both sides. I feel like sometimes the fandom misrepresents him and it's interesting because everything he stands for is in contradiction with what the fandom likes to do to him. 

Because he is sometimes seen as “slighter” physically or because he did contemporary or ballet or because he has that feminine type of face that's very beautiful and artistic or he wears jewelry. But sometimes the fandom likes to treat him in this very heteronormative type of way where it's like okay well he's a little bit more “fem” than the other guys so that must mean that maybe he's gay or somewhere within that LGBT spectrum which is none of anybody's f****** business but anyway. But like what he has always said is that labels can be silly. There's a moment in maybe it was bon voyage the first one where he said you know what does it mean to be a man. He's always saying let men cry. 

And that's not to say he's always been that way because I remember this moment in an interview and JK was being asked what do you think about bikinis and he said something like I know all I need to know about bikinis and then jm says something like they don't even see us as men do they. And we know that at the beginning he thought he (Jm) had to be a muscle pig and ironically he's kind of switched roles with JK and JK became the muscle pig (but he doesn't seem put off by showing a fem side these days). So I don't know what's going on there with the flipping of the roles… or that both of them have kind of learned from each other about embracing both sides because I don't know if you saw the Calvin Klein cropped shirt photo but it's one of my favorite photos of jk and I think he looks amazing. Just as amazing as when he dresses in all leather and masculine fashion. But anyway my point was going to be you can't put people in a box because of your conceived notions of what you think people could be based on looks or how they act. 

So I can understand why he's also interested in both sides and you know how do I balance this and where do I fit. And I think you can have those qualities and be extremely powerful and still quite masculine in that energy. I just think he conveys both and he always has to me. I find him very beautiful in his dance and then when he puts on makeup and dresses up it's just beautiful. I don't think oh well he looks girly. And then you see him in in the soop wearing a baggy shirt and some shorts and chopping wood. Or he's got a baseball cap and a jacket and he's just like looking like any other well-dressed guy. 

What's my point? I just think it's probably always going to be a part of his life or the earlier part of his life to figure out the balance of those traits and what society tells him they mean but what he feels they mean could be completely different to that and then just balancing that within himself. I also just think he has spiritual powers lol. There's always something so sexy about him and that's probably the wrong word but it's because I just think the moon really fits him so well. But then yet it's clear that Sun is another aspect of his personality. This is a person that's meant to shine and can be bold but is quite like on the other side of it quiet and soft and elegant. Because you could look at these two figures and these cards and look at divinity with the cloak and then you look at the flame princess and it looks like that figure could be cloaked in flames but also it could be that flame princess is wearing this cloak and then she's taking it off. Maybe red is also his favorite color lol. 

So it's like somebody who is a feminine being or body or embraces that feminine energy being cloaked in a color that is a masculine energy. I also see it as somebody who's extremely passionate but it's like a quiet passion. Not that you'll never physically see his passion but it's such a strange thing to have to describe. But I'll just say it reminds me of dancing. Like specifically contemporary dancing. You have to make these fairly simple movements and portray them just using your body and emotions. And you have to do that in an elegant and sleek and slow way. And you have to contain it. It's like a contained passion right. And flame princess is also a very passionate character. And she probably had a moment too where she didn't know if she wanted to wear the crown and take over from her dad and so there has to be this choice of you know am I going to wear this crown and do this. And that could be about: do I want to wear this label do I want to openly wear a label of how I describe or see myself. But in Divinity there's a bit like it is hidden by this cloak right but then looking at this crown maybe I'm looking at the day where I don't have to hide in this cloak. I'm not trying to make this a metaphor, I'm not assuming anything about him because hiding things about yourself makes sense as a celebrity. you can hide all kinds of things especially when you have this complex about if people see parts of you that they don't like especially when you're a person you're a Libra of course and you don't want anybody to dislike you so you're afraid to show certain parts for fear of turning people away from you. 

Even if you're confident in yourself so I feel like one side of him wants to be able to show everything that he is but then there's this other part that wants to keep it hidden right to keep it secret for whatever reason. But there is hope here I think and looking at this crown keep feeling like this is somebody who's looking at something and dreaming of what could be and since it's a card about clarity it also feels like being able to live in the light and do this and be bold about it and like wear that crown. I still don't feel any conflict between the cards like I'm either this or that or I'm ashamed to live in the cloak. I just think they're two parts of him and I think he wants clarity and wants success as well. There's like quiet hungry passion for success. Yes I mean like physical success and awards and validation. Being the best, and having it to do with performance for sure. Like he gets super excited about the idea of performance and super excited about the idea of awards and winning things and being acknowledged in that way. I can also see the love of roleplay and even of costumes. Because look at how dramatic that is to be wearing that cloak and then her little warrior outfit. It almost looks like a kendo outfit though doesn't it too. 

Maybe he'll win a martial arts award while he's in the military. I also feel like maybe he'll win an award. I think I said that in his longer reading but like maybe he gets an award for a job well done for something. Oh you know and now that I look at the sun I'm starting to see Jack skellington's face in the Sun with like the stitches as the mouth and the little eyes. Anyway. There's a lot I could look at for in his cards and I feel like his cards always convey this type of feminine masculine energy with the moon and the sun. How he can be this quiet person walking through the woods but at the same time he could be this regal royal hot-blooded all in red flame princess right out in the sunlight for everyone to see. So it would make me think you know yeah he might perform wildly on stage and be very loud about it but he's also a very private person. I also wonder if there's a place he can go by the base. 

I personally think and have seen in the cards that there are a lot of mountains and I think I've already heard people say that but I wonder if there's a spot with trees that he can go to to take a walk. Even in the Sun card it looks like a barren rocky mountainous place and you have to put on this uniform. But then there's this very peaceful woods area with trees. If he doesn't have that then maybe there's some way that he can find this type of peace even at the base. Like looking at this little object like the crown can help transport him. So this could also be him on his phone when he gets to read it at night he's reading stories. Like manga or fantasy fiction novels. Or maybe putting on these costumes and going into this role as performer is also kind of like a safe space that he dreams about. 

You know since I thought his album was very cinematic in the way that the songs told stories or how visual it was or how concrete the video concepts were. I'm also seeing like okay this divinity card represents his imagination and flame princess is looking at this crown and imagining scenarios. Like if you are a writer sometimes you can imagine scenes like movies in your head so it could be him imagining himself in these different roles like being this cloaked figure and playing RPGs but also that feels tied to how he imagines songs or his love of movies. It feels very creative. Or maybe he can imagine things like paintings. Maybe he's inspired by art. There's probably just a lot of stuff about him that we don't know. I would love to have a chat with him because I find him pretty relatable. I think he's a tough cookie, I think people often underestimate him and treat him like s*** especially people in our own fandom, but this is a really strong and caring and creative and talented person that seems to also have some type of blessing from the universe. Like if he actually took up tarot and tried spiritual practices I think he would be able to do it intuitively or his power/gifts comes from his ability to interact with people and heal them oh well.

Anyway, I know that wasn't specific but I just think it's a bit of a time for him to figure out some things about himself and who he is and what he wants to show. Again, I'm not saying that the cards say he is XYZ. But the cards just say that he hides some aspects of himself, which we all do. And I think that that can be a struggle for him. But I think he has an ability to visualize very strongly and that might be why he is able to manifest certain things. I think he sees songs or scenes for songs or videos very concretely. But that also tells me that he probably visualizes things that he wants or things he hopes for the future very clearly as well. 

Do I think that any external debate from the fandom or anywhere else reaches him and still affects him in terms of that feminine versus masculine energy? I don't really think so. I doubt he pays that much attention to comments anymore or at least I hope he doesn't. Besides that aspect of feminine versus masculine, there also seems to be a layer of public versus private. However, this has gotten pretty long so cut it off here especially since they already did a longer reading for him. 

Taehyung - 

I took a couple days break before I did the last two. So tae has some interesting cards. For the tarot, there is high priestess and death. Uniquely spiritual cards, about wisdom, also about things that are somewhat secret. That's a little bit interesting because I feel like it's slightly tied into some things with Jimin. But putting that aside let's just talk about the tarot, high priestess can indicate knowledge, or secret knowledge, intuition, having to do with the moon, feminine energy. While death represents Pluto, cycles of death and rebirth, what they have in common is both cards indicate something being hidden or subconscious. So we definitely know that there is something pointing here to things that are hidden or covered or secret or quiet. So we have to look at the oracle cards, one says goddess. The other says serenity. Goddess gives me the vibes of going back to high priestess or empress even but looking at it you might also think about three of cups or even three of pentacles. Serenity kind of makes me think of hanged man. What also comes to mind is the serenity prayer, which ironically has the same sort of message about letting go of things that you can't control.

I put the Oracle box away and just kept the pictures but now I need to look up what the oracles are. Honestly I wasn't really going to post the group readings but I kind of feel inclined to after seeing that Jimin has a new album coming out. So I feel a bit excited about talking about some of these things coming up in the readings. 

To talk about serenity, the keywords are acceptance, peace, choice. The intention says make peace with your situation, unless you can and want to make a change for a better outcome. Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance. 

So before we move on to the next Oracle I'm again getting the same thing as the tarot which is I feel like he's totally embracing military life and what's happening wholeheartedly. It doesn't surprise me that this matches the energy of his letter. It's different than jins outlook about him going into the military or his general state of mind which is often you know live in the moment. But even when Jin lives in the moment It's as if he is having a reaction to the world and it's not like a genuinely carefree attitude. It's something that is practice by him and is almost like a meditation or when you have to practice a certain mindset. Whereas with Tae this feels like organically I don't give a f*** That's not putting it right because it's not like there's this rebellious thing. It's just like excitement for the unknown and what is to come and just like completely having his arms open to it and going with the flow. Which is probably something he's always done throughout life. And I think that explains some aspects of what's going on here. The secret stuff or the hidden stuff is a little bit something else. Which we might find in the last Oracle so let's see. 

Also sometimes when you get multiple secret cards it's also possible that someone doesn't want to show you something or it's unknown. So with goddess, the keywords are sacred, light, warrior. it says every stage of life lays the foundation for the next stage of life. Treasure each stage of life. And the intention says magic runs deeply through your veins, be wild and free. Awaken your soul and embrace all of your journeys around the Sun, whether they are traditional or all your own shining uniqueness. We are all warrior woman. 

Mentioning the sun when Jimin got that, I'm again maybe drawn to something connecting jm and tae in this reading. I'm not sure what that is and maybe it plays into the secret. Definitely since the goddess tends to look like three of cups and one of the women seems to be pregnant, which could be kind of like an empress vibe, you have to wonder if lol he's full of secrets. That might have to do with Jimin. There's also more moon energy because the goddess card talks about triple moon goddess. Which again makes me think of high priestess and empress. Then it says fundamentally, she is the same person entwined and wrapped into one being. Each life stage is associated with a phase of the moon. That's fascinating because literally we have death which is about life cycles and he got besides the moon card the other Moon card. The death card is a card I associate with Jimin. So again there's like some tie here in this current energy in this current reading that seems to be connecting tae and JM. I'm not entirely sure what that is or how it connects to what I said about Jimin in this reading. It could be that the things that Jm is hiding within himself or cloaking or however you want to call it, that these are things that he has recently shared with Tae. Over the phone or through a message or whatever. So that might be why they are connected a little bit. Or a lot, hard to say. I do see in the goddess card we have three people discussing things amongst themselves. I think it's like a deep conversation because we have the moon. I'm not getting three of pentacles unless there's some practicality to it but I see three people discussing something deep and important. 

The middle person seems to have a lot to say it could be because she's pregnant. They might be talking about something not just deep and emotional but having to do with the cycles like life and death or what are we going to do next in the future. My guess is they probably did have a deep conversation in the last couple of weeks. Because I'm definitely feeling strong ties at least on taes side where we're talking about secrets and cycles and maybe a little bit of abundance but that's kind of vague. We have elements of letting go of control and kind of accepting what's coming. So I think they probably shared some thoughts about life and who knows. Like I said you know with Jimin, it felt like he was reflecting on his place in the universe so it's very likely these two had some type of deep, emotional, extraordinary conversation lol. Like the kind where you are on the phone or your FaceTiming and possibly staying late into the night. I don't know how that would be possible with military or maybe they had it in the time that they were together. I think I pulled the cards for the group after the reunion. That doesn't mean I know when the timing is I'm just saying they spent time together so maybe that's possible. 

I think it also means that tae has been fairly sociable in the military. I think he is connecting easily with other people. I think that even so, I don't think he is getting super close to these people. It might be a very superficial type of relationship. I'm not sure on what deep type of level he's connecting with the people that he's meeting. But he's probably having fun. I almost wonder if he's purposely like not opening up. It might seem very much that he's being social and like talking to people but it almost feel like there's some barrier he's put up with new people that he's meeting where he presents as having fun and letting go but like inside I'm getting this feeling that he can't open up to just anybody. Unlike say a conversation he could have with Jimin. Where they have very deep conversations obviously based on years of trust and being okay to be vulnerable with each other. And I find I'm getting emotional lol that they are so deeply trusting of each other. That they probably know all kinds of secrets about one another. And definitely ride or die. I know that's very probably obvious to people. It's just interesting that I'm feeling this bond when those two are separated right now. But I don't think that that matters much when they come together. And I think that Jimin still reaches out to tae when he needs to talk and vice versa. 

I mean it also in the goddess card there is a sense of gossip as well. Like news being shared amongst the three women. Almost like you know besides having deep conversations there's this sense of urgency like oh hey I heard this thing by the way and then you call up your friend and you're like hey I heard this have you heard this is it true. I don't know what it would be about. It could be related to those deep conversations. Or it could be something separate. 

I think a lot of the feminine energy that's coming through really has to do with receiving. I think this ties in to being open to accepting whatever is coming his way. But I also think literally he's receiving things like secrets and information. This could be from people around him or it could be specifically other friends or members. Again I feel like a tie to Jimin. Jimin has shared something with him that's a secret. Probably. Again not necessarily gossip but information and secrets. Which can be hopes and dreams or fears or all kinds of things. 

I also wonder if he's a bit lonelier than he gives off. I don't doubt that he's probably making the best of what's happening and is probably genuinely enjoying these things. But I get the sense of somebody who's a bit alone. You don't get the moon coming up constantly to not have like some little bit of you that's lonesome. Do I want to say feeling misunderstood? Sort of. Not as in oh I feel so sorry for myself but more as in not always feeling like he belongs. Feeling out of place describes it better. Like imagine if you were an alien. And you looked like a human. You came to this world. You look like everybody else. But you just don't belong or that's how you interpret it anyway. I mean Tata is coming to mind but that's just how I feel right now. He might say all these fun things in a letter and it might be very convincing but I just feel like he's a little bit alone. Alone might be different than lonely. I mean it is different. 

So I feel more like the word is alone. Not lonely. Again I just keep getting more Jimin and how they must have had some conversation about life and cycles and what's next. Everything I said about Jimin and those things that he's reflecting on I just feel somehow it's tied to tae. And when I did the longer reading for Jimin, when I was talking about a friend from the past, I almost wanted to tie it to tae but it didn't make sense so I just deleted it and then I ignored it. But I wonder if some of that actually is connected to tae. If you end up reading that longer reading, it's about somebody from jimin's past coming back. I optimistically said it was about closure for both of them but given any situation it could just be somebody who feels unsettled about something that happened between themselves and Jimin. And has come back. I'm not saying if that encounter that I was reading about is either positive and harmless or like a little bit negative and concerning. I didn't look into that. I just knew that the person who felt left behind in that scenario was holding on to some negativity about being abandoned. 

So this could be somebody they both know. And there could be things going on with this person showing up again already maybe. I thought maybe they would show up in the future but it's possible that this person has already showed up. It's a person that these two know. It's just the possibility. As for whether these are the secrets being exchanged between the two. I don't know. I was feeling more like it was more about conversations regarding life. But this would also make sense for the hey did you hear about this. Maybe they had a conversation that was like hey do you remember this person from back XYZ. I heard from them and it's a little weird. I don't know. Or they're talking about rumors not sure. That would probably be a waste of their time though. But I definitely feel an exchange of some type of secret information. Only between them. Or a small group. I don't feel like it's serious or anything but I just don't really know there. 

That might go back to the serenity and conversations about you know there's nothing you can do about it. 

However looking at serenity again it says you know make peace with your situation unless you can and want to make a change for a better outcome. This reminds me of the idea of a two of wands… and you can choose a path where you don't do anything and maybe nothing happens or you can expect it to go away. Or you can take action. It says a better outcome. It does go back to reminding me of if you had an issue with somebody in the past and you can choose to ignore them or ignore it. Or if they're doing something weird with you you can actually take action and confront them and do something about it. I'm not saying that's what's happening here I'm just offering something. In the art for the serenity card it looks like a witch but she's actually a mermaid and she's sitting on the cliff with a cat familiar. When we think of this position and a mermaid usually it's somebody maybe considering well I guess in case of the Little mermaid it would be pondering if she wants to give up her tail to join the human world. So this could be about an unfulfilled wish or desire. It could be that this desire is already here and now you have a choice to make. 

The art is a little lonely or is giving me that vibe. I get the idea of again back to this conversation they're having… talking about feeling alone. And it's like I want to be able to feel like I am a part of that world lol. It's weird we're talking about this and I literally was talking about aliens. So definitely this is probably on to something. But we have somebody contemplating how they want to be part of something, but they feel kind of alienated from that even when surrounded by people or even somebody who is very good at drawing people to them. Or seeming like they are perfectly extroverted or sociable. But it's kind of like an act. I don't want to say that I think he's fake. It's coming across like somebody who's trying to find that feeling of belonging. But just can't seem to make it click. My guess is there are probably few people that tae feels absolutely himself around and I do think one of them is Jimin. 

As for his other friends that's a possibility too. I don't know enough about them to dig deep into what I'm seeing. But even in this picture we have one lonely person talking to a cat. So the cat could be one particular person like Jimin or the cat isn't anybody. Like it could be you know a dog. As in this person is feeling alone and doesn't have anybody in particular they're speaking too. I get that from the art like this is someone who is just alone and the cat isn't necessarily anybody that we know of. I also think maybe there is some acceptance and peace. Not just about being in the military. Now I'm sitting this more as someone who is accepted a feeling inside of themselves. Maybe he has accepted that he's always going to feel this way at times. Like he's always going to feel a little bit lonely or sad in any situation. I think he contemplates it more than we probably realize. I guess I want to say he might not come off seriously in content. At least that's even my perception of him. But I'm seeing somebody who does a lot of deep thinking about life. And then he has these conversations with someone like Jimin. I'm sure there are plenty of other members he converses with. But I'm just seeing Jimin at the moment. 

Let me look at the tarot cards again I have to scroll all the way to the top to see if there's any imagery I want to focus in on… I just see more of someone who is told certain information and then is left contemplating about things. And the information is shared or gathered or received among multiple people and then one person is left alone thinking. I see that with the high priestess card as well. Somebody who seems to be holding on to something. And then a death card that also signifies things that are hidden or secret and being resolute. I think he is probably a lot of people go to him to tell secrets to him because they know he won't ever say anything. So I think he knows a lot of things about a lot of people. From being directly told or other people go to him to tell him about things. I don't think he particularly gossips himself. At least not anymore unless it's still like someone like Jimin lol. As for digging into whether it has any relations to a romantic situation. I don't see anything. I remember reading for him previously and feeling strongly that there was someone. There is feminine energy around here but I really think that's about receiving things. Receiving information and being open to new experiences. Almost in an experimental way. The only relationship I see clearly has to do with Jimin. And I'm not saying that's romantic lol. I'm just saying they are closer than you will probably ever know when we already think that they're close. 

But even then there is something about tae that feels like devastatingly alone in this universe. I think some people just feel that way. If they're an old soul or they haven't found that perfect match outside of like maybe a platonic soul mate. Which is great too but like not that one single person that you would expect to be a romantic match. That might just like make you feel like oh I'm not alone. I think that sounding a lot bleaker than it is but I do I just get the sense of feeling like an alien. All the time. Everywhere. And then brief times of closeness with people close to him. He might have also come across some life wisdom. To me it feels more self-developed and not somebody came and told him some advice on how to live life. I mean I guess that's possible given that somebody in the cards looks like they're talking about information amongst each other and then somebody's contemplating right. but overall it still feels like it's self-made wisdom. But yeah it almost feels like somebody came and told him something and then you had to go have a think about it. 

Granted it could be vice versa and it's like contemplating about something and then going to talk to friends about it. But it's a secret lol. It's a secret in the sense that sure maybe it's not meant for us. If it wasn't meant for me to read it wouldn't show up in the cards. So I'm saying the information is meant to stay only among the couple of people that he's speaking to about it. It could be that he's actually depressed. I'm not seeing tons of that. But it could be like you know I'm a little sad. I'm a little lonely sometimes even when I'm around people. This could be a theme that he's felt throughout his life. It is a little sad. It actually reminds me of the little Prince. I know we associate that with Jimin. But I am getting somebody who's dressed up like the little Prince and sitting on the planet and maybe he has the little rose to talk to. But even when he's talking to the Rose it's like the rose doesn't really get it. Like the rose just can't human. So it's still really lonely. 

I mean beyond that it seems like he's okay. Given times. Well you could say something like oh between cancer season and Scorpio season perhaps this information or this feeling of being alone could be happening then. I'm more inclined to read something related to the moon in Scorpio. That definitely would be a time about feeling things deeply or being deeply introspective. It could be about a timing thing. I'm not sure when the next moon in Scorpio is. I'm not sure what his moon is. But there's a lot of deep reflecting and receiving information. This information could be coming from people or it could be coming like from the universe. In terms of like sudden thoughts and moods coming to him to contemplate about life and cycles and stages of life. But there's definitely secrets in hidden things involved. That might be the barrier for me not to see exactly what is being talked about and that's fine. Oh lol apparently the moon is in Scorpio right now. That's weird. So again this is a conversation that probably recently happened or just happened is happening now. Again they were together recently so that's probably a good time to have a longer deeper conversation. 

I mean it would also just reflect that I'm doing the reading right now lol. So this is about current energy. 

What else can I say. Both cards are about water energy. There's the moon and there's Pluto. I mean both bodies here represent cycles and phases. Things that are hidden, emotions. So definitely a lot of strong emotions that are either buried underneath or hopefully something that he talked about recently to somebody. I do feel that that has to be the case given what the one card looks like. But that card is also a lot about phases. It just seems interesting that he and Jimin both have similar things on their mind at the moment. Which maybe they always exist on each other's wavelengths somehow. Just like how women sometimes cycle up on their periods who knows. So yeah I think you know if they could talk and have a live in the next few weeks they would say something like oh when we met up for the reunion Tae and Jimin had a long conversation about life and changes. 

Again secret feelings or sharing secrets with one another. But I think a lot of that is also about the things that he hides. From a lot of people. And maybe it's simply about how lonely he feels. I don't know what to do about that. I kind of feel for him. I don't think he gets depressed when he is away from the people he can talk to. I think he just endures. You know how some people feel lonely and they just feel so sorry for themselves or they think they just can't find a match. But he just…can't seem to find people to relate to and doesn't try to fake it. And I'm saying this isn't always surface stuff this is something he probably hides but it's not like he's not aware. He just hides it and this is a lot how he feels on the inside. 

I felt a bit focused on the flag on the death card but I don't really know what that means. Plus I can't see it very well in the photo because I'm pretty blind. 

So I think that pretty much covers everything I see for right now. It could change in a month you know. So let's move on 

Jungkook 

10 of cups and abundance. I mean what can you say. On the surface that certainly looks like emotional happiness and abundance of love. Being around family. This could be at this particular moment when I did the cards which was around the reunion they could have been celebrating and having a great time. And he could have just been vibing. Not that there's anything wrong with being happy lol. There are times when I have read his cards in the last 6 months and it looked like he was having a good time. Ironically it was around the time when there was like a military game that they were doing. And I got the sense that he was enjoying himself during that? Or at least that time. I don't know if he participated in the games but there was like cards I had that involved fun or playtime and being in the mountains and it just felt fine. So let me look up that Oracle card for abundance. He's just happy or he's something else. Like there's not a lot of thought happening there. That didn't sound right lol. So again 10 of cups, this is as good as you can get. If it were a relationship it would be super happy and ecstatic. It can also be a card about family. Blood or otherwise. I mean if I wasn't trying to look too deeply I'd be like yep looks happy. Looks like he has an abundance of happiness. Why question? 

So looking at the abundance card you have a witch and two cats. It almost looks like one cat has its nipples pierced lol. That's just kind of funny. The witch is holding a basket of again I can't see anything but maybe it's like a basket of the moon and stars. If that's not it then it's just apples but that would make sense since they're growing on the trees. I don't know. So we have a sense of stars and moons. There's another phase connection here. Stars usually represent wishes or goals. There seems to be two other cats. So again maybe there was a conversation among the three youngest of BTS recently. I am not sure on that so it's just interesting there are three and I keep getting this idea of phases. So it says abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into. The key words are harvest, grateful, overflowing. The intention says count your blessings, goodness prevails. Your life is full and you have all you need. 

I didn't do this for the others but I'm going to go ahead and read the whole page for this. Delve deeply into your life…past, present, and future. Take into account even the smallest gifts that have been bestowed on you. As humans, we sometimes forget that the simplest blessings are often the most important and meaningful. We think we will always have them. Life is fragile and can change in one second. Begin this very moment showing the universe appreciation. The sun has risen another day. Again the sun being mentioned here. Continuing on it's warm rays offer you comfort as they wrap around you. The moon hovers above, glowing in the night sky. Her dim light casts dancing shadows allowing you to dream. That sounds like stars and goals and stuff. These are just two examples of miracles in themselves. Simply say thank you to the universe.

We can talk about the tarot. We have Jake and Lady rainicorn. This certainly would indicate potentially romantic love. I mean they are husband and wife so it could also be a familial love. It could be that he was literally meeting up with family as well. This could be BTS or literal family and just having a good time. There's the potential that there was also a romantic meetup of some kind or an abundance of a romantic type of love happening. The rainbow kind of makes me lean toward love actually. It could mean other things lol like celebrating pride month. A rainbow has seven colors. So I think maybe it was just a real appreciation for that moment that he got to spend with BTS. 

I don't think there's much to read into his cards. Like I'd love to read in and maybe it had some insight into the military life. I don't think from his letter that he's having a super amazing blast all the time. So I think in this one moment that I shuffled his cards, he was having a good time. It could also be the universe's way of saying you know you don't really have anything to complain about. That you have everything you need, that you have a lot right now. That might be something he realizes that he doesn't want for anything. I just see the card saying this is somebody with a lot to be thankful for. Especially when it comes to people who care about him. I wonder if he got spoiled a little bit during this reunion. Let me just like since I actually have the Oracle cards around shuffle one more. And just get an extra vibe check for him not like I'm trying to be like okay it's suspicious that he's this happy and fulfilled. If I were in the military would I feel that way? But it doesn't matter because it's about in the moment what was he feeling when I shuffled the cards. So I got three cards. 

We have unity so again I'm kind of sensing a reunion there. We have nurture which has a picture of somebody by the fire with all of these little pet companions. And we have soulful that has an owl that looks like a baby owl on the branches and then there's a little be above it or wasp not sure. The owl makes me think of him. Lol it has these big eyes and it looks like a baby owl. I don't know what the b or wasp represents. This owl is so cute lol. It really does look just like him. I kind of feel like this baby owl is maybe watching the witches in this unity circle. It's 8 which is joined hands in a circle under the moon. And then you have this lovely cozy image of the witch reading a book around the fireplace. So yeah it feels like a family or cozy together and the little owl is kind of taking it in with wonder and appreciating it. And I think that makes sense for the tarot cards right. Around all these people and having a good time and feeling comforted and loved and cared for. So whatever was happening in that moment for him it was a very good feeling. I should probably take a picture so you can see how f****** cute this owl is

So I don't know where he was. But it looks like there was a party, there was this feeling that reminds me of in bon voyage 4. When they played the card games and they were listening to their old music and started dancing around. Like when they listened to their old songs and then JK heard his part with his young self rapping and then he like danced around out of embarrassment and it was so cute…. Yeah so probably not in the military at this moment. Probably just taking it in. Trying to ingrain the image of whatever happened into his mind so that when he's alone he can remember it. I'm still really curious about this little wasp/beathing. A hornet? Maybe I should look up what that means as a spirit animal. Well a hornet is about tenacity and determination. That doesn't really fit the image so maybe it's just a bee. And it's about honey and something sweet. It could be about being stung about something. It could be that he was buzzed at the moment lol. It could represent somebody on his mind in particular. Now I have to look it up to see what the hell this card says about the bee. Okay creepy I turned right to the page. It says happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul. That's interesting since he had the ten of cups. 

It says feeling, depth, journey is the keywords. The intention is let your magical light glow around you. Soft stardust will dance like fireflies and the wondrous Twilight sky. Interesting again because that's what looks like is happening in the unity card. So maybe they got together and they were singing and dancing. Movie there was a fireplace or they were in somebody's house or had rented a house that was very cozy and maybe even near the woods. It just feels like a really cozy and nice atmosphere. And it was like kind of like balm to the soul maybe. Like a honey. I want to also read this card for you. 

Since I obviously feel most drawn to this card. Your soul is the spiritual part of your being. Look closely into the mirror of your innermost existence and you will find your deepest, Ross, most authentic thoughts and feelings. Each memory and experience that is part of your soul is safely tucked away inside of you. Light the sparks in your soul. Be carefree. Let your colors dance wildly around you. This kind of looks like the ten of cups card by the way. As in like dancing around and being carefree. Let your colors dance wildly around you. Dig deep and your garden will flourish and bloom and Leslie. Your own sole journey is very personal. Protect your internal soulful powers. You are the keeper of them. Remember, you are a wondrous soulful being who knows you best of all

And almost immediately the one song started playing in my head. Like who are you You're not the girl I fell in love with. Anyway yeah. 

I'm just so curious about this stupid little bee it didn't get explained in the car did it. Let me pull one more card and be like okay what is the deal with this b. 

Ironically I got the card balance. Isn't that crazy how you're like what's the deal with this b which voice to text refuses to say b e e. So we're definitely going to rebalance. It's just a card with trees at the bottom and then the moon and there's like this branch coming in that looks like it's covering the moon. So let's look at balance real quick especially since we have a confirmed b.

Of course be is also an album. So I think we are again confirming that maybe when BTS got together they were singing some of their old songs. Or even watching old videos where they sing or whatever. 

Okay so keywords for balance, then, being, namaste. The intention says find your happy medium, take care of your mind, body and spirit. Find yours in explore your being strive to create balance. The other part says self-care is, fundamentally, about bringing balance back to a life that has grown imbalance from too many commitments or responsibilities. Well that's interesting right. So I think he must have had this moment during the reunion probably where he spent time with the group and it was a very healing moment. They probably danced and shared stories and had a good old time and it made him feel like he was having fun and it was a really nice cozy warm feeling for him. That's it. I don't think there's more to read in that moment other than we have put to catch a glimpse of him having really nice time with the group of people. And it made him feel in balance after moments of probably not feeling quite like himself or feeling out of balance. And I still don't fully know what to bee was about besides leading us to another card. I guess it also looks like a shrimp lol. Maybe he was just really hungry for shrimp at but the time.

I don't really see anything else for him. You can't argue with abundance in 10 of cups. 

It's not much to go on but in terms of dates, the 10th could be a significant date for JK. That doesn't really narrow it down. Or the month of October can be significant for him as well. We just have in terms of numbers 1 or 10 to go on. So something about the self or something about completion or something about a cycle. That's sort of vague so I would just assume that we're close to the end of a cycle. Is it time for a full moon? Did we just have one. I don't remember but usually you start saying tens around the time that it would be a full moon. But again 10 of cups emotional abundance, literal abundance Oracle card. Yeah. Pretty good cards to get. Maybe he'll receive something in October in terms of abundance. Like whether it's emotional abundance or like a ten of pentacles abundance. 

Or something about the number 10 it will be significant in terms of abundance. I don't know but like for example putting out a song or album called 10 or getting 10 on the billboard or releasing something on the 10th or releasing something in October.. if it were a song, it would be a dance track I think. Like electronic dance music or trap music Wait is that the right thing I want to say. So maybe after jm releases music in July you might see more music from JK in October. That's just a guess. I guess besides having some electronic music happening, there could be like soulful music or slower music. Something that would be comforting and quiet. Maybe you'll see like a b or a hornet or something on the jacket cover I don't know. Or maybe the album title will start with b. Or song that starts with b. Or he's wearing a yellow jacket lol. Or it's about the 10th track on an album. Which would be surprising since none of them seem to have more than a handful of tracks. Or maybe if you go back and look at Golden whatever the 10th track was.

In case you're wondering, it's shot glass of tears so maybe that's relevant. Maybe that's a mood. There you go!

Okay wait I went to look at the song lyrics. And besides mentioning the Sun, I was drawn to the 42 and body because first of all I was like what the hell does that mean. I didn't listen to Golden a lot. I love standing next to you but the rest of the songs I couldn't really relate to I'll say. Though I think I remember shot glass full of tears and it was fine. So I found this I don't know if that song was written by somebody British or not 

I love interesting since we were actually talking about 10. But supposedly yeah okay someone on Twitter was like oh it's about hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy. I'm reading more like this is probably what it meant but like slang that most of us don't know. I'm American. I have never heard anybody say this. And I don't watch Love Island. 

So it's saying that yeah whatever her body is perfect or something. A 10. But also I think it's still stands about the number 42, which the other side of it is yes related to hitchhikers. And then there's this thing about how 42 is the ultimate answer to whatever ultimate question but nobody knows what the actual question is. This has been like a running thing through a lot of entertainment stuff. If you ever watched the old show X-Files. Mulders apartment number was 42 based on this. Point being that yes it does represent the mysteries of the universe. So I think it's a mix of all of that. You're probably like WTF but I mean related to his cars there's something about an ideal or something feeling or saving perfect in this moment. There's also a sense of maybe serendipity. Something coming together. Something the universe has put together serendipitously that feels perfect, that feels like a 10. 

[sodiumlamp]

Picard

I built myself a new desktop PC, and I finally got around to setting it up and seeing what it could do. One of the reasons I wanted a new computer was because I watch a lot of DVDs using an external drive, but I've had a lot of trouble doing that, and I recently discovered that it's a power issue. My laptop can only operate the external drive properly when I unplug any other USB accessories.

So tonight I decided to see if my new rig could do better, and yeah, it works really well. No more VLC media crashing because the drive powered down while it was paused. To try it out, I put on Star Trek: Picard. After watching the first twenty minutes, I realized I was on Season 3, because CBS decided to make all their Star Trek DVDs with silver-on-grey labels, making them impossible to read. Then I put on Season 1 Episode 1, which sucks ass.

This show is so up its own ass that it's not even funny. I don't think it's going to get much better, because I saw part of Season 3 and I have some idea what I'm in for. But what really sticks in my craw is the scene where Picard goes to talk to a scientist about how to clone a robot, and she has all this dumb shit on her desk. Look at this.

I hate when TV shows do this. They need to make a lab look extra science-y, so they put some random glassware on the set and fill it with colored liquid. There's two beakers with green and purple, a Florence flask with orange, and a graduated cylinder with blue. Great. Also, on the far right are a couple of automatic pipetters. I think that blue box might be a case of pipette tips. I recognize all this stuff because I've seen it in various labs I've worked in my whole career. This show is supposed to be set three hundred seventy-five years in the future.

Now, let me pick apart any possible justifications for this. Maybe this is actually futuristic equipment for cybernetics research. Well, no, because in this show all of that has been banned. Picard openly laments that she's not allowed to make anything. Instead she can only run simulations. So this junk serves no practical purpose.

So maybe it's an aesthetic thing. She collects antique lab equipment to spruce up her workstation. No, I don't buy it. Picard keeps a bunch of old souvenirs, which is kept in a "quantum archive" that allows the producers to show off all the nifty special effects to make things appear and disappear. He can't just pull out an old painting from his attic, he has to teleport to San Francisco and have a hologram escort him to a secret vault where the painting emerges from a weird box or something. And it's a good painting, not "Dogs Playing Poker" or some cheap nonsense that would hold no meaning like a loose assortment of uninteresting glassware that tells you nothing about the character.

"Well, what do you expect? It's just a TV show--" No. I would let this slide, except everything in this episode is cluttered with special effects to remind you that we're in the world of the future. The reporter who interviews Picard has some floating holo-screen where the makeup artist can preview an exact hue of lipstick. When she interviews Picard there's floating robot cameras in the room. This laboratory is supposed to be a dilapidated shell of its former self, and yet it's still fancier than anything I'll ever work in, because in the future everything is just that fancy. Except the lab equipment, we'll just slap some random old glassware on a desk.

Here, let me offer this for comparison:

This is from TNG Season 1. For some reason, Sickbay always had these big glass jars of blue and red liquid. What were they? What was the liquid for? No one knows, because it's the future, and the equipment is supposed to be strange and unfamiliar to us. They didn't just leave a stethoscope lying around on a table. The sheets and pillows in this shot are pretty much like what you'd see in 1988, but they didn't tip their hand by using sheets with Snoopy prints on them. The prop master could have at least fabricated some unfamiliar looking glassware, but no.

This is what irritates me about this show. It's so determined to impress me with all this big budget prestige TV stuff, but they blow it little stuff like this. The dead boyfriend has cool alien eyes, and every smooth surface on this show is a secret computer, and Mars is on fire, but the story is about Picard having prophetic visions, and how you can clone robots with a single drop of robot blood, which... yeah, okay. That's what we're going with, huh? Neat.

[camilliar]

recs for someone new to omgcp

[February 2021.]

Reading, or not reading, OMGCP fics has come up in a couple of conversations I’ve had recently with artists newish to the fandom (ie. @jovishark; @decafffff), who are making OMGCP art (!!!) but haven’t started exploring fic -- but maybe want to? Which of course reminded me that I’ve never bothered to make an actual, concrete recs list for this fandom. So, I mean. Here is one.

The approach is, what do I think about when I think about OMGCP fanfic? What comes to mind, what stands out to me? I have excluded some very popular fics. Some of these I just don’t think are very good, and others I do think are good, and/or I enjoy them, but I don’t see why you’d need me, specifically, to recommend them. I am thinking of a story like maybe i’m waking up, which I discuss below because I link to a podfic of it. It has a lot of merits, to be sure, but it’s the second-most-read fic in this fandom by hits, and it’s got thousands of comments, and it’s by an author whose work is relatively widely praised and circulated. I am not sure what telling you more about this fic will add to the conversation; if you want to find and read it, you inevitably will. I’m happy to, say, answer asks about these kinds of fics, or talk more generally about them via DM or whatever. Feel free.

Also, I don’t think there’s a point to pretending to be objective about fanfic; this list has a perspective and that perspective is mine. In this fandom I largely read stories that navigate the tension around Jack, Bitty, and Parse, in various permutations. This is not to say that I’ve never read fic about the frogs, or that I have no interest at all in other pairings, but I am by no means an expert on Dex/Nursey and can really only speak to the one fic about them that sticks out to me because it goes beyond being merely Dex/Nursey and does something else. This is just to say that I am sure there are great and interesting fics about other things and ideas--but I’m not the person to hear about those from.

Likewise, I’m not super interested in stories that really reproduce that which is already in OMGCP. I like Zimbits--albeit maybe not in the ways or for the reasons most fans would--but I do not really need to see endless iterations of the same story about them falling in love and being cute together. I don’t think these stories are bad or they shouldn’t exist or that they have no merit by default. Still, I don’t need fanfic to give me more OMGCP. I need fanfic to complicate, to comment on, and to transform OMGCP. Many people don’t work like this! Totally okay! But I can’t rec you fics that do that.

What I have noticed, however, is that over time there appears to have been a shift in how people do write fic for this fandom. (Other than, you know, increases and decreases in activity pending the status of the comic, pairings going in and out of vogue, and so on.) Early on, say during Y1 and Y2, the comic was about the group of friends having a cool time at college together; about whether the burgeoning attraction between Jack and Bitty would manifest and, if so, how; and, especially, Jack’s past coming into fuller view for Bitty and how it would have to be dealt with in order for a relationship between them to work. YMMV on how great the comic executed there, but as Y3 went on these themes increasingly disappeared from the story. I think this means a lot of fic written over 2015-2016 or 2017 has one kind of tone, and was written mostly around these questions; after that, it feels like a new crop of writers and a new crop of ideas started circulating, that is, either embracing Jack and Bitty’s canon relationship and accepting its relative straightforwardness in text--or deconstructing it, imagining what readers aren’t seeing, or how problems not dealt with in the comic would manifest later. People who have read my fic know which of these I’m mainly interested in exploring.

All of which is to say, looking at what I’m reccing here, when the fics were posted or when I first read them probably has a lot to do with why they stick out to me so much. Because there’s no real culture of fanfic criticism--and I mean that in the positivist sense of broad evaluation not explicitly for fault and merit but rather, for context--I think it’s really hard to keep this in mind. But I’m obnoxious and I can’t just be easy about things.

Fic recs

In alphabetical order, somewhat unsorted; if a stand-alone fic has a summary I’ve included it, but in other cases I’ve recced a couple of conceptually related fics or series, which I’ve tried to just describe or explain as opposed to copying the summary off AO3.

There are so many more fanfics I think are great and worth reading! In an ideal world I’d come back and add more later, or create a secondary list that’s more along the lines of “if you like this, read these,” or whatever. But, being realistic, this is a starter kit. I’m open to talking about fanfic.

- - - - - - - - - - -

7-0-2 by Idday; Friends in Low Places and Sorry for the Blood in Your Mouth; I Wish it was Mine by blue_rocket_frost | I’m not sure it would be correct to say that I don’t like Parse/Tater, or that I’m not interested in Parse/Tater. I’m not interested in Patater a priori; I think it could be interesting, with teeth. These fics stick out to me when I think about this pairing, because they feel different. Accusations of a preference for just linking any two white men who happen to be hanging around have validity, but because of what hockey is and how it works and who’s hanging around it, it’s not exactly a leap to imagine what kind of gritty spark the friction between two closeted NHL players would create. A little violence in your sex? A little sex in your violence.

A Sight Worth Seeing by sadtomato | A four-fic Jack/Bitty/Shitty/Lardo explicit BDSM series. Either you want that or you don’t. It’s nothing hardcore, and not properly a four-way, really; more properly a kind of voyeuristic round-robin. There’s a more open and egalitarian view of sex here than I really get from the characters in the back end of the comic. It’s an expansive, propulsive view of sex and relationships that’s really nice to see. I love Lardo's detached coolness, and Bitty as a smooth operator; if you’re looking for some kind of Dom/sub dynamics world, this really isn’t it, but it’s a lively exploration into the sexual dynamics in a group of friends that’s super close to the good-times vibe you get from Haus scenes in the first couple years of extras.

call me son (one more time) by Summerfrost, Verbyna, and blithelybonny | This is a series, incomplete, and you will love it or be massively put off by it. I mean that as a compliment. I love it. The premise is, Bob Zimmermann and Kent Parson have been having sex since Kent was, like, 19. Everyone in this story has been chewed up: by themselves, by each other, by hockey. Plainly, this is a pretty bleak view of what OMGCP, as a story, is supposedly offering. If you want fic that is dark and glamorous, treading the toxic melange of substance abuse, sex-as-sublimation, and so much money you can’t possibly throw all of it away without trying, this series has that sick-inducing shimmer to it. But, again, its strength is its examination of Kent Parson, textually and meta-textually, as someone to be projected onto. Bob, Alicia, Jack, and Bitty all impute certain feelings of their own onto him, displacing their own issues to a character who’s centralized in every fic but defies neat or total comprehension. Some critiques I’ve read of this series feel it’s too dark, and I’ve also seen it argued on FFA that an overwhelming amount of praise heaped onto these stories has made it tough for other writers to make headway in writing Bob/Kent fic. But I’m also not sure you could engage with Bob/Kent fic without going down this road at some point? I’m sure there are ways to scale it back, but ultimately it’s a story about how hockey’s violent, homophobic, old-guard gatekeeping has continued to set the terms for a younger and ostensibly less toxic culture. I fully embrace PWP fics that tread on the power dynamic without fully excavating it, but buried within any PWP is the fact that a 53-year-old man is ensnaring a 19-year-old, no matter how much the latter is, realistically, into it, and legally empowered to consent. Not to mention the dynamics of it being a 53-year-old man who is the father of the 19-year-old’s ex-boyfriend, and a 53-year-old man who is an eminence grise in the field the 19-year-old is trying to make a career in  The sexual element--the vaguely incestuous nature of it--is making textual the subtext of how hockey works, actually: objectification of teenage bodies as older men’s capital.

Coach Z by thistidalwave | Just before the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, tp prospect Jack Zimmermann overdoses on his anxiety medication and is admitted to rehab. His future turns from a clear-cut road to the top into an uncertain path filled with therapy appointments, ignored text messages, a group of boys who aren't there to teach him a lesson about himself, and, of course, hockey. | I keep reccing this fic because it has 360 comments on AO3 but nobody, as far as I can tell, has ever read it; it never appears on rec lists. This isn’t the kind of fanfic I usually go in for, but I can’t help being charmed by it. This is a character study in the truest sense, a kind of Mighty Ducks-but-better view on what Jack’s time coaching peewee hockey might have been like. I have no interest in kids and my own aesthetic is maybe a little darker than this, but I admire this story because it injects vibrancy into a period of Jack’s life that OMGCP has left largely unexplored, and so has the fandom. We know nothing about what made Jack want to go to college, nothing about how he spent his days in between juniors and Samwell. It posits a very sympathetic and patient Jack/Parse dynamic, showcasing the exact kind of ragged teenage push-and-pull that would have led to the circumstances we see in Parse I-III. The outside perspective Jack needs is largely present in an OFC who’s not a love interest. Super unique, somehow both engrossing and low-key.

#dirtbags by angularmomentum | A series that is a Kent Parson/Claude Giroux fuckfest with feelings. I’ve long suspected that Parse is popular in part because he is the character who most easily elides OMGCP with the actual NHL, or rather, NHL fandom; I think he made it appealing to write OMGCP fics where the NHL is a factor. Case in point, this series, which is basically “what if Kent Parson was a real hockey player and therefore part of NHL RPS”? I have only read some NHL RPS, so I’m not the person to assess accuracy, but what I do know is superstar IRL hockey players take turns here as the caricature fanfic versions of themselves, and since Kent Parson is already that, it’s great how seamlessly he integrates into their social fabric. Rambunctious energy peppered with regret and loss, but ultimately this series is farcical, and it doesn’t take its sentimental ending too seriously--which, good.

fated to pretend by nighimpossible | 5 Jack/Kent fics that Ransom and Holster dramatically reenact for the Haus + the truth. | As a fic format, 5+1 doesn’t usually work for me, but this one isn’t just front-loaded with five too-knowing vignettes; it then wraps up by using its +1 better than you might expect. Sometimes I talk about economy of fic, and this one exemplifies it. A zero-waste fic.

go ahead and move along by originally | "Leave, Parse," Jack says. Again. Or: Kent finds himself stuck in a time loop. | Kent Parson is trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario on the day of Epikegster. I’m sure you can imagine, just from that, what happens. And yet I think this fic is super entertaining, reserving some key surprises. What this story is doing is something a lot, and perhaps even the majority, of great Jack/Parse fic wants to do: digging into the question of just why this can’t work in comic canon. Most often this is approached from the past, by writing teenage Jack/Parse deep-dives that examine their lives mid-juniors, or by writing AUs where enough circumstances are shifted that it does work, or via future fics that posit enough growth has happened, and enough things have changed. But this fic makes Parse live the same bad day again and again, testing multiple theories about just how dependent on circumstance and incident real life actually is. Another day, another tone, 10 minutes sooner, not at all--you just can’t know why it didn’t work until you exhaust every possible variable. I worry that this rec has sucked the life out of the story, though--it’s so fun!

I Saw a Life and Strange Lovers by @bluegrasshole | Most AUs in this fandom seem to retell the story in a new setting or with some big detail change, following OMGCP’s rhythm beat-for-beat. I think of this as, “It’s the plot of Check, Please, but” -- they’re doing high school football? They’re acrobats? They’re a/b/o? They’re in a DIY punk band? And so on. These two stories are not that! They’re both 1950s AUs, each deeply felt, and yet hugely different from each other. I Saw a Life is about displacement and fragmentation, two sides of a similar but incongruent social critique; Strange Lovers is a finely wrought social drama about coal mining in Nova Scotia in the 1950s, centered around historical events. I suppose a theme on this rec list is something like, “I don’t even like this, but” -- yes, okay, I don’t even like Dex/Nursey, but--! This fic is so overwhelmingly complete, the AU laid out so carefully that the story breathes with all the background details informing the writing that aren’t actually, in the story; you just know they’re below the surface. (With the exception of one investigation of Jack’s character in a short, separate fic.) I Saw a Life, meanwhile, really tests the limits of the notion that Jack and Bitty are soulmates--not by calling it into question but by asking, rather innovatively, how the setting and place of the comic itself activates that.

Les Hivers de mon enfance by staranise | What do you do when hockey is the language of prayer for your soul, and also the toxic thing that almost killed you? 2009: Jack Zimmermann takes a mental health year. God knows he needs it. | Here’s a fic by someone who’s no longer around so much, but she felt ubiquitous in 2016-2019 OMGCP fandom. Before any of that, though, she wrote this one lovely fic about Jack’s pre-Samwell recovery. The author is Canadian and really irritated by hockey culture, and I think this fic benefits greatly because she is clear-eyed about Jack’s being caught in an exploitative system; it’s hockey he’s in recovery for, in a way. There’s an epistolary element that works for me, too. I read this early on in my time in OMGCP fandom and it really stuck with me.

Lysistrata? I Hardly Know Her! (by which I mean everything) by @tomatowrites | It feels somehow like cheating to recommend OMGCP fanfics by my OMGCP BFF with whom I make an OMGCP podcast where we talk about OMGCP. You know the fics I really want to rec, like truly the ones that speak to some kind of shared depravity, are the ones where Jack is miserably mpreg for the second time and accidentally lets his kid see Kent Parson’s Long John Silver’s shrimp scampi promo spot, which obviously would get twisted into a self-hating three-way. How many times do I have to rec this fic? As many as I need to, is my feeling. If you don’t know, Long John Silver’s is an American fast-food chain that sells, like, fried pollock sandwiches; it is nautical-themed; I have never eaten there; I don’t know where there is one; I don’t eat fried fish. (Shrimp, on the other hand?) All of which is to say that it takes a real genius to investigate a premise that far out. And while a lot of people almost certainly will start reading this humanity’s depths-themed sex scene and back the fuck out, readers with refined taste will note that Kent, the point-of-view character, is right there with you, despairing that he can’t help himself. And so long as you’re in that story collection, honestly, you’ll love petite gems like Jack is transmasc, Jack and Shitty play hockey in 18th-century England, and oh, right, he’s from Georgia. Tomato holds the distinction of being probably the gamest author I know in this fandom, just really like fearless in her pursuit of any range of concept she’s pushed to. (I can push her to?) See, for example, a sublime bandom AU; Bitty is cancelled for buying a maybe-unethically exported Roman fragment of a youth’s torso; or, god, the masterwork that is this future fic series where Jack keeps relapsing and Bitty exiles him to their guesthouse. Do I think you need to read a fic where Bitty is snide about the teen prostitute whose baby they’re adopting? Yes, I mean, he would be snide, don’t tell me he wouldn’t. I could go on, but my main thing here is, if I have to pick just one, I’m going to pick this Lysistrata fic. The premise, literally, is that Bitty reads the Lysistrata and it gives him ideas. Like most of Tomato’s OMGCP fic, it’s a stripping away of the comic’s polite fiction that Jack and Bitty could possibly attain the ideal it reaches in the comic without some kind of messy, efflusive breakdown. Life is like that, you see! Tricky. Like a lot of people, although it’s tough to say precisely how many, I have always intuited that maybe Bitty is kind of a natural top? But obviously when you meet him, as a literal virgin, it’s hard to see how he’d go from zero to self-actualization so neatly. This fic floats a theory, and it has a fun little side plot for Whiskey, something I never thought about or needed before Tomato built it out herein. In conclusion, BONUS: Dex’s gay lobster novel.

only fools rush in and the light of all lights by decinq | This person wrote of the nature of the wound, one of the early, formative Jack/Bitty fics that was oft-recced when I was getting into the fandom in 2016. It forms part of a larger series that deals deeply with how Jack has been shaped by his struggles (? I hate this word) with homophobia and his own mental health. It’s a picture of the character as you might have imagined him much earlier in the comic’s run. The formatting is atrocious and he author’s flair is what Tomato would call “AO3 house style.” It’s a voice that works great for her writing. I think it’s at its best in these shorter fics; the former is about Parse and Shitty stumbling into a relationship almost accidentally; the latter, an eerie PBJ vampire fic. I had begun writing a fic where Parse is a vampire early on in this fandom, only to read this and immediately quit, because you only need one, and this one’s all I need. The Parse/Shitty rare pair fic shares its exuberance with hockey RPS when it’s good: here’s how fun it can be when you’re young, rich, and jocular. And I don’t even like accidental marriage AUs, they’re usually boring, so that says a lot. By all means, read the wound fic; read the entire series. But these are highly unusual.

OVERDOSE and Oomph and a little spin-o-rama by jedusaur | None of these are long, or plotty, and they’re all a little experimental. OVERDOSE is an AU set in a world where you know how you’ll die, but no details; Oomph, a little fic where Jack hears hockey pucks talking to him. This is the kind of stuff I used to think I’d find in fandom forever, coming out of Lotrips lurking in the 2000s: short, zany bursts of energy that surprise and delight. a little spin-o-rama peers at Kent’s character through the grim reality of being the hypertalented superstar stuck on a dead-last team. All three are sparse and stylish in a way that’s really smart, practically economical.

Sowing Season by @agrossunderstatement | Parse and Zimms, Zimms and Parse. Kent Parson's life, from the Q, through his early years with the Aces, to Jack's senior year. Canon divergent. A story of love, loss, moving on, regressing, hockey, and found families of all kinds. | Effectively a novel, digging into Kent’s personal history, mostly concerning his life in juniors but expanding into his present, overlapping with the plot of OMGCP. I think there is room enough for endless speculations on what went down pre-canon; this one offers a fuller life for Kent than nearly any others, digging into him as a whole person rather than as a satellite to Jack or the plot of the comic. Which isn’t to say that the Kent/Jack stuff isn’t dealt with here; it explicitly is. But the fact of Kent Parson’s life, if we can begin to imagine it beyond mere text, would exist before, after, and alongside Jack; he gets to juniors without Jack, presumably, and he is the captain of a hockey team without Jack, and Pinkerton lays the foundation of Parse’s character within a junior hockey that Jack also inhabits, more so that Parse existing for Jack, so to speak. And I’m not implying this latter tactic is wrong; I have certainly employed it, and others have employed it to great impact and effect. But, still, the title of this series tells you what you ought to know: Kent and his story are the potentiality of OMGCP, up to a point; seeds being planted. Young hockey players, similarly. The question implied there is, what will be reaped? And the answer to the latter, in a sense, that reaping is a sort of violence. Which makes this series sound pretty heavy, but it’s not -- more like, realistic.

(tell everyone) you were a good wife by @queerofcups | The biggest problem with pretending that he doesn’t know that Kent Parson is fucking his husband is that Jack can’t tell Kent how grateful he is. | The ne plus ultra of PBJ triangulation; I’ve been squealing to the writer about how good it is since August, begging for behind-the-scenes insights, and I’d only do that if I really meant it. The precarious social fabric stretched across these three chapters is fraying before the reader’s eyes. The details are delicious, and I don’t want to spoil them, but they sing in chorus with the plot. My favorite OMGCP fics, honestly, remove the romance narrative guardrails that keep things in the comic itself humming along. I think Dann’s take is to ask who in this comic has power and what they would end up doing with it. (Or not doing, from another angle.) At one point, early on in its telling, OMGCP looked like it was going to be a story dealing with the compounded traumas of hockey’s discontents. Then, of course, it wasn’t. This is a fic that steps back and asks what the fallout of that oversight would be. But that’s just the moldering core of this fanfic; it’s actually embroidered, like I said, with glittering detail. The color of the suit Bitty wears to his wedding is burned into my brain. The gray manicure of a woman Jack knows. The ingredients in a cake. This is one of those fics I still haven’t reviewed because the thought of stacking everything I could say about it into mere AO3 comments is inadequate.

when you’re ready by megancrtr | The Aces’ director of communications gets the call at 3:13 a.m. Jack Zimmermann has withdrawn from the draft. | “What happened at the draft” is so mythological it gets asked in the comic proper, and I’ve never counted how many fics attempt to answer this question--from Kent’s point of view, even--but it’s gotta be, oh, hundreds. This story replays the situation from the perspective of an Aces staffer who just wants to do her job, and gets at the jarring discordance between the plot of OMGCP in its quest for social justice and the business of actual hockey. Important context is that this story was written around the time the comic was playing out the end of Y3 and start of Y4, and Bitty pointedly asked Jack the question, “why can’t we?” This story reframes the question as literal, rather than rhetorical. A sterling example of fanfic being a gloss on its source.

BONUS, podfics

hockeyed up | There are many things on Jack's mind. Namely: hockey, hockey, Bitty, hockey, anxiety, hockey, hockey, anxiety, Bitty, hockey, hockey, anxiety, and hockey. | A fic read aloud by its French-Canadian author. Also a relatively early OMGCP fanfic; composed while the first semester of Y2 was posting, the story suggests a version of OMGCP that was in some ways more and in other ways less complex than what it would turn into not long after. The real power of this podfic, however, is that it’s read by the writer, so you can hear the intended emphasis in every line. Also, because she’s French-Canadian, Sophie’s intonation is what I picture when I read or write dialogue for Jack.

maybe i’m waking up | It’s almost funny. All he ever wanted was to play hockey, to play in the NHL, to win the Cup. This—Samwell, the team, the Haus—was supposed to be just a detour, but now it feels more like a destination he failed to realize he’s already reached.(Or: Jack signs with the Falconers, graduates, and leaves. It's the hardest thing he's ever done. What comes after is even harder.) | Don’t get too excited; this isn’t finished. A podfic of probably the best-known, most-recced fic in OMGCP fandom. Striking for its use of metatext woven into the story, this is one of several early longform Jack/Bitty fics that posits that maybe Jack has a lot more development to undergo before he can really, truly, be okay--or be okay enough to be with Bitty? To be honest, this story strikes me now as too long, but the parts in it that work are effective beyond that which fanfic demands. Meanwhile, this audio version only covers six chapters, but it’s so slick, so well-realized, so true to the story. Podfic as art.

my own dear friends | Ever since the day he met Jack Zimmermann, Shitty has seen it as his solemn duty to aggressively love him. (He just didn't know how aggressive the love Jack needed would be.) | There’s previous little Jack/Shitty in this fandom and a lot less quality BDSM,

the city’s ours until the fall | Kent has been, historically, good at this—forgetting about things until suddenly he doesn’t, and then it’s like the scar has never been there in the first place, just the wound. (Or: Kent Parson lets himself be happy, after all this time.) | I’ve never read this fic and I never will. I cannot imagine how, no matter how good it is, it could compare to the version that lives in my head, with Kent’s voice so totally realized. Vocal fry and pathos, a languid energy that I still think about when I think about Parse.

the model home | It’s going to be better, and that’s great, but sometimes Jack thinks, why can’t it be good right now? | j/k j/k, this is a self-reminder to finally one day review this.

[sheriff-caitlyn]

I started this blog in 2014, as the first Caitlyn on tumblr, and obviously I’ve been through a lot of retcons and changes myself, not only adapting to Riot’s own public retcons (from the minor, like her aesthetics, to the major, like the removal of the Institute of War as an integral part of their lore) but also to my own. That’s the thing about playing a character as complex as this, is that you learn more as you go. In your interactions with others and the creation of backstory, history, and other bits of worldbuilding to better understand the world you’re in, a character goes from a handful of images and some in-game voicelines to a fully-fledged person with a complex narrative. Sometimes things change, and that’s fine. But there are some changes which... aren’t. 

For all the fingerprints I’ve put on her, she is still not my character. But I care. Sunk-cost fallacy, maybe, but I care about this character I have been involved in and I care about the direction she has been taken. So, without further ado, I’d like to delve into:

The Recent Caitlyn Update In Piltover’s New Context or, We Gotta Fetishise Police Violence, I Mean, Look At Her, She’s So Hot

Back in August 2015, I went, ‘Oh No, they’re going to try to turn Piltover into Gotham City, aren’t they?’, and lo and behold, suddenly we have Poison Ivy now. But I will get back to that, later. In this particular thread, I noted that many of the characters in Piltover seemed destined for a revamp that would rob them of what originally drew us to them in the first place, and that Piltover seemed destined for a rework that would wash out much of their character. Piltover and Zaun were always meant to be polar opposites, but suddenly we were seeing glimpses of Piltover being ‘not as good as everyone thinks’, which hinted that Piltover and Zaun were destined not to be polar opposites in the future, but indistinguishable from each other. It worried me that the only thing telling these two fascinating cities apart would be the sunlight.

So, when we have so much potential for a clash between Zaun and Piltover, between ‘Science No Matter The Cost’ and ‘We Must Advance The World With Care’, why change Piltover to some murky middleground, turning peace and security into wartime capitalism? A world where the people are shitty, where weapons and profit come first, and the only ones making a stand are the ones who are so embittered they have nothing better to do?

Because it has to be ‘interesting’. We’re going to lose bits that we like, that we’re familiar with. And that’s why I’m concerned.

This was before Piltover and Zaun were squished together in an ugly - and utterly ham-fisted - method of showing How Complex The Future Is. There’s layers, guys! Literal layers to this one single city! That means it’s deep! But when I say ‘bits that we like, that we’re familiar with’, I’m not clinging to a fanon interpretation. I’m saying the things that drew us to the world and to the characters to begin with. I could adapt from Caitlyn turning from brown-haired and brown-eyed to black-haired and blue-eyed, because even through I had been doing art, at that point, the change gave me an opportunity to express and discover more about her character (her eye colour being influenced by her mother’s magic, for one). But some of the more stark changes - to family, to job, to personality, to the city of Piltover itself - these result in a character changing completely. I was worried that the cool detective who literally made the world a better place would be chopped and changed into something unrecognisable. I even expounded on my concerns in November 2016, where I could see some of the ways the writers at Rito might make adjustments in the direction of their lore updates.

All this to say, I’ve been working on her for a while, and I was bracing for some bad news. This? This is kind of the worst.

Caitlyn has always been the Sheriff of Piltover, an authority figure, a representative of the law and order that Piltover is famous for. Piltover’s peace and financial prosperity has been directly linked to Caitlyn’s concerted effort to eradicate crime (not criminals, crime! Which, as I have mentioned particularly in this post from 2014, means she upended and reformed the justice system, from the legal process to the prisons to how people are treated as citizens). The city is safe, people have greater access to personal wealth and development, classism is erased, society is flourishing. Zaun, as Piltover’s polar opposite, is a corporate nightmare, with ‘do as thou wilt’, private bodyguards for the rich and powerful while the poor scramble to survive in a system that barely treats them as human. Vi, as a Zaunite, brings a lot of her ‘violence as a problem-solver’ methodology to Piltover’s law-enforcement, though she seems to have no intention of returning to Zaun and seems to have bonded with Caitlyn (‘teamwork!’) to Get Shit Done. And, apparently, there is still shit that needs to be done, though nowhere near as much as there had been in the Bad Old Days.

Vi was, at the time, the awkward-grit-teeth-grin-ha-ha-um-yeah representation of police violence. ‘Resist arrest’, she cries gleefully, as she beats people and breaks down buildings, and we are supposed to go ‘ha, isn’t that funny’ with varying degrees of sincerity. Of course Piltover is going to have problems: anywhere that has wealth and stability is going to be targeted by the envious and the needy. Peace needs to be protected. The problem lies in how that protection is enacted.

So now we have the recent Legends of Runeterra update to Caitlyn, an update which looked at the context of Piltover needing protection, as well as the modern context of Riot’s California location in the Years of Our Lord 2020-2021, and then decided ‘you know what we need? Police violence, everyone loves police violence’.

MAN I thought the stripper-cop skins were bad but here we go!

Her Yordle Snap-Traps (which I envisioned as from the Yordle Military, rather than a racially-profiling weapon as, y’know, they work on human-and-larger-sized people as well) have now been replaced by electroshock grenades, the intent gone from incapacitation and observation to outright paralysis and destruction. Her net-short is now apparently electro-conductive (admittedly, I have had one (1) single RP where that happened, but it came at both a cost to Caitlyn and to her weapon’s efficiency as a result, a last-resort against a dangerous opponent). Caitlyn’s cards in LoR take her from being a detective coordinating ideas and people and putting together a case to a SWAT team leader. This might be the biggest problem in working for a non-combat-oriented character in a MOBA, or in any fighting game: the game needs to find rationalisations for all of their characters being there, being combatants, being able to kill (even if, as Riot says, the lore is separate from the game). We have monsters and soldiers and ancient powers who of course they know how to spill blood and relish in doing so. But pacifists, like Karma or Bard? Explorers like Ezreal? And a sheriff, a peacekeeper, a law-keeper, someone mindful of responsibility and the importance of saving every life possible, like Caitlyn? They’re stripped of that depth and complexity in-game, but there was always the lore that backed them up. But they’ve done away with that completely. Caitlyn was never special operations. She was never military. But now she is, because she had to be changed to fit better into a fighting game. They had to make her violent, and as a result, they have undermined not only everything about the character that made her interesting to begin with - turning her now into a representative of police brutality, but with long hair, pouty lips, and a thigh gap - but they’re also re-writing the context of Piltover. It was bad enough to squish Piltover and Zaun together. But now, Caitlyn’s update is proof that Piltover has gone from a steampunk utopia to a violent, oppressive and cynical post-industrial world. The depiction of Caitlyn as a SWAT team leader (complete with special-forces beret, because hat! Caitlyn wears a hat! Nevermind the fact that she’s no longer wearing a distinctive tophat but instead a symbol of extreme state-sponsored force!) shows us that Piltover’s ‘army’ is not designed as a defence against outsiders, but as an offensive force against their own people. Caitlyn is supposed to be the representation of how peace and order is maintained in one of the largest factions in League of Legends, and if her method of maintaining order is straight-up police violence against their own citizens, then it’s not really peace and order. It’s authoritarianism at best, and facism at worst.

Piltover was different from every other nation in Runeterra because it didn’t have a military. It had defenders, and it had a powerful economy, and it had a democratic political system. But the Piltover update retconned Caitlyn’s hard work. The gangs were back - though now they’re big powerful families like Clan Ferros - and Caitlyn has been de-aged so that she’s still new to the force, that she hasn’t even had her chance to change anything. Her importance to Piltover is minimised... and why is Vi even there? (Oh boy I guess you’re going to have to watch Arcane to find out! Coming to a Netflix near you soon!) With a younger Caitlyn in a violent society, she has no choice but to be violent herself... even if that undermines everything previously established about Piltover and about Caitlyn. This update has made Piltover just as ugly and oppressive as Demacia, Noxus, and Zaun. It’s just another army equipped to do violence, but now that violence is turned inwards. This isn’t protection, it’s control. It’s fear. It’s oppression. Caitlyn is no longer a peacekeeper. She’s a monster. Chopped and changed, as I feared, into something completely unrecognisable from how she began in a world that no longer looks like what it had been... or should be.

It’s hard to tell what came first, the change to Piltover or the change to Caitlyn. Either way, the changes are inextricably linked. Caitlyn was integral to Piltover’s modern state, and Piltover is integral to Caitlyn as a character. Her (original) drive was to make the city and all its people better; Piltover was a utopia because of the effort of Caitlyn, and of people like her, people who wanted a better world. This new iteration of Piltover - full of fear and violence and hypocricy, layered over Zaun in such a way that makes ham-fisted commentary about the wealth/class divide - undermines the value of the individual. It removes agency. It removes hope, which had been integral to Piltover. Piltover is no longer the CIty of Progress... it’s the City of ‘you better be rich and pretty if you want to progress’. And Caitlyn is no longer a force for good or a representative of responsibility, because those things don’t exist in Piltover anymore. Legends of Runeterra has turned Caitlyn into a bitch, someone to hate. She has a marked lack of respect for people, as demonstrated in her new character traits of ‘casually-racist’ (her lines to Veigar), ‘condescending’ (her lines to Viktor), with some added pride in her violence (’here’s my calling card *shoots gun*’ and ‘I aim to win and my aim is excellent’). She is a representative of her city, and she is a terrible person now. Piltover is terrible. Piltover is ugly. 

But Caitlyn avoids that last part. And she’ll get away with it, because she’s a hot twenty-something.

In 2015, I drew Caitlyn-as-Swain, as an AU for what might have been. The overwhelming response at the time was ‘aaa she’s so hot I’d follow that leader of Noxus’, prompting a good friend Swain RPer to comment that Swain - who was, at the time, the withered man in green and gold who needed a cane - was just as smart as Caitlyn if not more so, a proven capable leader, but when it comes down to it, sex-appeal will always trump characterisation and storytelling, and that’s disheartening for someone who puts so much work into stories, to context, to something deeper than ‘Just another MOBA’. And here I am, in 2021, looking at how Caitlyn has been stripped of her fascinating and complex characterisation while maintaining her long legs, long hair, and corsetted figure. Now, I do appreciate the fact they’ve given her a better costume than miniskirt and boobtube. She deserves so much better. I even commissioned back in 2015 for a Better Look for Caitlyn; Tom aka FaerieFountain went on to make her new look canon. But she’s supposed to be a detective. She’s supposed to be careful and methodical and mindful of her status and power. Instead, she’s been made gleefully violent, leaving a lot of depth behind in order to become just Hot Cop With Gun. (As an aside, was anyone else uncomfortable with Caitlyn’s high-school skin? Especially when the writer actually tweeted ‘step on me’? Hello? Ma’am? That is a high school student, that is a CHILD you are talking about? But Caitlyn is hot so it’s fine! Sexualise a child! it’s fine, she’s hot, it’s fine!) Almost everyone who has contacted me about Caitlyn’s LoR cards has been excited to see her. Good! She’s a great character! Or, she was. But the enthusiasm about her is tied to how she’s so violent, how she uses her power to abuse those who don’t conform. But she looks great, smoking hot, you know? And when she’s smoking hot, her dangerous and abusive behaviour and attitude are completely excused. An update to a character needs to take into account characterisation as well as the visuals. Her update, sadly, has focused on the all-too-prevalent problem of the viciousness of state-sponsored violence, rather than the complexity of detective work, of puzzle solving and intellectualism, but because she looks hot and speaks in that British accent, no-one’s going to care. Hot ladies can get away with so much, because legs and pouty lips, but I guess she’s also a cop or whatever.

And, as a momentary aside, why is an eco-terrorist suddenly Caitlyn’s longtime foe? It makes zero sense for Piltover and for Caitlyn that someone who plant-based powers is her biggest rival and the city’s biggest threat. Zero sense, until you take into account that Piltover has been stripped of its character and made into something more aligned with modern authoritarianism than the hopeful vibes of steampunk. Environmentalism? Not on my watch! Deploy the police (the good guys!) to silence the protesters (who are obviously the bad guys becase they’re protesting)! Because Piltover and Zaun are one city now, and therefore indistinguishable, we have a fucking Poison Ivy character causing enough trouble in Piltover to warrant entire fucking SWAT teams opening fire within the city limits and around peoples’ homes! Not Zaun, which is the environmental nightmare, but Piltover! With its fresh air and open skies! Yes, that’s a great place for an eco-terrorist to blame and/or try to fix! The whole thing is honestly so backwards! Like they’ve decided to make a cool character in the form of Corina and just shove her into the story, rather than finding a place in the narrative that suits her. The idea that Corina is C makes no sense. Caitlyn vs C is supposed to be Sherlock versus Moriarty, Ganimard versus Lupin, ACME versus Carmen Sandiego, world’s greatest detective against the world’s greatest thief. It focused on the intellectual battle, the need for self-improvement, and - most importantly! - that this was a fight that didn’t result in gunfire or people being put in bodybags. But we can’t have that in our fighting game! We can’t have people thinking, because that’s not the kind of game we have, it’s left-click-shoot out here on the Rift or in the cards. So now we have a woman with plant powers bombing Piltover, and a policewoman kicking down doors and opening fire. And she’s right there, in Caitlyn’s new splash art, within reaching distance of the sheriff!

She’s right there! In hot pink with a flower in her fucking hair! And Caitlyn doesn’t even notice? Looks like one of my major gripes about Caitlyn being updated - Incompetence - is rearing its ugly head. She cannot even see someone not five feet from her. Oooh, look out, Piltover, no-one can figure out why this single eco-terrorist is causing problems for years, but Caitlyn will figure it out! With her gun! Because she’s a cop with a gun, and cops with guns never cause more problems than they solve, right?

Look... I know. I know she’s not my character. I know that everything I’ve done is fan-interpretation. But I’ve worked for so long and hard and done so much research, and things I’ve done have even been seen by - and used by! - the company itself (not just in the ‘oh what a coincidence’ sense, either, I know my link on Hextech as a form of magic made it to several of the writers, some of whom later contacted me). I might be too jaded by all the disappointment to take it personally anymore, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still happen. We know Riot Games could be and should be better. So many people in this community - and people who have since moved on - put so much love and effort into the characters and the world, building up from scraps and guesswork and extrapolation. It wasn’t our world, but we enjoyed playing in it. We enjoyed struggling in it, because it pushed us to be thoughtful, creative, to be engaged and interested. Critical Theory doesn’t have to be negative... but this recent update to Caitlyn’s character and to Piltover as a whole is... it’s a step backwards. They’ve gone for the ‘ooh isn’t this gritty and dark’ approach, and swept away so much of what made the original so interesting, creative, engaging to begin with. They’d rather have controversy than people genuinely enjoying the thing that they’re opening their wallet for. 

Caitlyn was a detective who focused on responsibility, intellectualism, and care. What she is now is not the same Caitlyn they started with, and expresses a set of values that I do not support. This blog will continue to be focusing on the old lore, on what Piltover has been and what it should be: a hopeful utopia, a place for people to grow and be responsible and thoughtful and mindful of their place on the world stage. It’s not going to be perfect, but there’s hope, and there’s people here who want the world, and everyone in it, to be better than it is. I hope you join me, no matter who you are.

[birdsareblooming]

Infinite is connected to Solaris

This is gonna be a long one, strap in.

Infinite, Infinite, Infinite. The most recent in-game villain, and the most powerful in recent history as well. Despite being only around 3 years old, he’s become extremely popular. and half of that is because of the song.

Mephiles, Iblis, and Solaris. Villains over 10 years old that haven’t been used since their original game appearance in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)

Or... have they?

Now I want to say before all of this, this all could be coincidences, me being delusional, or something otherwise. It is ONLY a theory, but for something as crazy as I’m claiming I need to preface with this for my own sanity. 

But i’m gonna cut the bullshit. You’re here to see how I am going to bs my way to saying that Infinite the Jackal is connected to a dead god from what is regarded as the worst Sonic game. 

And, like most of these, I need to start with some house cleaning, some things you need to understand.

1. Time Eater is Mephiles

You might have seen me meme about this before...

...But yeah that’s exactly the situation.

I had theorized this before I knew Ian Flynn thought the same thing. Their identical color-schemes, almost identical aesthetic, and completely identical power-set. 

Even the name Time-Eater, that was Mephiles, and Solaris’s goal. To eat time. 

2. Ifrit is Iblis

Now i’m going to assume you have two questions

If Time Eater is Mephiles, than where’s his counterpart, Iblis?

Who the fuck is Ifrit

Long and Short, 

But, more importantly, 

Ifrit is what caused Silver’s Future post Sonic 06.

Ifirit was their retcon for keeping Silver’s future the way it is (even though they defeat it at the end of sonic rivals 2, causing the future to not be that way, hence why Silver was 3 conflicting backstories. Thanks guys.)

So, when it comes to fire demon that destroys the world and causes the future that Silver the hedgehog lives in, that’s a good amount of evidence already, especially with the preface that Mephiles is alive in the form of Time-Eater. If Mephiles was reborn, why wouldn’t also Iblis? and Ifirit is so uncannily similar theres no other candidate. 

also, might I add:

(thanks @zorloser​)

For you who don’t know, Ifrit’s story ended being re-trapped in it’s pocket dimension with Eggman Nega. 

3. The Phantom Ruby

The Phantom Ruby... Oh, the Phantom Ruby.

A very new addition to Sonic, and yet very important. It was the leading mcguffin of two games, and is made out to be very powerful. 

yes I know that’s a lot up there, but you need to understand the Phantom Ruby to fully understand this theory. 

It’s also very important that Eggman didn’t create the Phantom Ruby as he claims. He created Infinite, not the stone attached to him. Despite there being prototypes, which does confuse me, but from what info we’re given from the wiki the Phantom Ruby seems to have come from Classic Sonic’s universe, even retreating there after the events of Forces. This is also confirmed in Episode Shadow:

Although, Eggman did name it, seemingly on a whim.

~Tangent Time~

Despite being CALLED a Ruby by Eggman, the Phantom Ruby doesn't LOOK like a ruby, despite being magenta.

Rubies CAN be dark even to the point of being Black, but never connected. They’re usually just one shade.

(And don’t you dare say “The chaos emeralds don’t look like emeralds bc they’re not green. They’re all TECHNICALLY emeralds, they’re part of the beryl family, and even if only green beryls are called emeralds, they are all the exact shades of beryl.)

But what the Phantom Ruby DOES look like, is obsidian. 

note this for later.

4. Infinite

For those who don’t fully know Infinite’s backstory, it’s expanded upon on the wiki and Rise of Infinite 

Now that we’re all on the same page, lets continue to him now. 

Lovingly referred to as the “Masked Clown.” Infinite goes about the entirety of Sonic Forces revealing nothing of himself, the only things we know about him are from Episode Shadow and Rise of Infinite. We don’t even see his real face in-game. 

Although we have enough to know that his personality changed post Phantom Ruby, it’s even mentioned on the Wiki. Although how much of that change was spurred on by being beat up by a 15 year old, we’ll probably never know. 

Although his goal has always been the same. Starting the planet over as a desolate wasteland. What a fun dude to be around. Probably the life of the party.

5. Connections

(i’m using Mephiles and Time-Eater intermittently, same with Iblis and Ifrit.) 

Alright, now we’re all on the same page. Let’s move on.

I’m going to play a game we’ve played before. I’m going to name something about Infinite or the Phantom Ruby, and add something that’s eerily simmilar to Solaris (Mephiles + Iblis)

All of this Info can be found on the Sonic Wiki

Phantom Ruby: -It is an interdimensional gemstone of incredible power- Ifrit: It is an interdimensional, demonic fire-creature of incredible power- (wow those are, the same description huh)

Infinite: -After Infinite's fusion with the finalized Phantom Ruby prototype, he acquired the ability to generate, destroy, and manipulate virtual realities, which he could turn into virtual reality projections to interact with reality.[32] Said virtual realities are illusions, which Infinite creates by exercising control of one's visual and depth perception by feeding the brain false information- Ifrit: -Described as capable of binding one's soul, the Ifrit can enslave others with powerful mind control powers.- -Ifrit, which manages to use some kind of mind control on Sonic and/or Tails (or Knuckles and/or Rouge, depending on which team the player is controlling), but is defeated by the other teams, and is destroyed.-

Infinite: -Infinite's newfound strength proved so great that he was able to effortlessly defeat figures like E-123 Omega and Silver the Hedgehog, and ultimately best even Sonic the Hedgehog twice. He was even able to single-handedly overwhelm the entire Resistance army during Operation Big Wave. His power was such that not even the Miles Electric was able to give an accurate reading of his capabilities.[31] Time Eater: -the Time Eater has demonstrated immense super strength; even in its incomplete form, it easily knocked Modern Sonic and Classic Sonic unconscious with a single hit. After being completed, the Time Eater was able to effortlessly repel both Classic and Modern Sonic's and knock them out using brute force alone-

Phantom Ruby:  Its powers can also warp the fabric of space-time,[1] allowing it to create pocket dimensions such as Egg Reverie Zone and Null Space, as well as teleport entities from place to place. When used alongside the Chaos Emeralds' time-space powers, it transported Classic Sonic and itself to another dimension, and later sucked Dr. Eggman into a rift- Time Eater: Its signature skill however, is creating "Time Holes",[8] spacial rifts that lead to any point across time and space, including alternate timelines and across different dimensions.

Infinite: When everything you know has come and gone (You are at your lowest, I am rising higher) Only scars remain of who I was (What I find in the ashes, you lose in the fire) When there's no one left to carry on (This is an illusion, open up your eyes and...) This pain persists, I can't resist But that's what it takes to be infinite Solaris: -Much like his two halves, Iblis and Mephiles, Solaris is immortal and virtually indestructible.- -As a transcendent life form, Solaris possesses a unique state of existence that lets him exist in the past, present and future simultaneously, making him omnipresent throughout time and virtually impossible to defeat unless he is attacked simultaneously in all eras-

Possible reach:

Phantom Ruby:

Solaris:

(I’m refering to the odd red-stone in the middle, also that the wings somewhat resemble Infinite’s sword.)

~Tangent Time~

remember the first tangent? Where I meantioned that the Phantom “Ruby” looked more like obsidian than a ruby?

Well someone else looks like a certain type of obsidian, Snowflake Obsidian to be exact:

Alright Reaching time over. 

Now you might have noticed that the Ifrit-Infinite connections seemed to fit just a bit more-Maybe it was just me- even down to the Phantom Ruby and Ifrit’s OPENING DESCRIPTION being almost copy/paste, which i’m still amazed at.

This get’s to the next part of my theory.

6. Where are they (Mephiles/Iblis) now?

Welcome to~ where are they now!

Mephiles, or Time-Eater, So far is undocumented. It’s said they were “Destoryed” at the end of Sonic Generations, but for all we know it was just the machine additions, and Mephiles was “destoryed” over 10 years ago and he started kicking again.

Iblis, or Ifrit, was locked in it’s own pocket dimention along with Nega, and hasn’t been seen since...or have they?

haha that’s a callback! Do you remember the beginning of this post or is it too mindbogglingly long for your brain to comprehend in one sitting? 

7. The Phantom Ruby is Iblis/Ifrit

let’s talk about the power set of the Phantom Ruby. Interdimentional, very powerful, capable of some kind of mind fuckery.

Ifrit is, Interdimentional, very powerful, capable of some kind of mind fuckery, immortal and is constantly on fire,

You may be wondering about this “Fire” thing. “Solaris was a sun god and infinite has no connection-” WRONG! 

sorry that was forceful.

Infinite used a very specific and strange method to destroy the planet. He made an illusion of the sun, and set it on the planet. Out of all the methods, and interesting choice to be sure. But not for a sun god.

also: “What I find in the ashes, you lose in the fire”

“What are you saying you dumb bitch?” You might be thinking. First of all, rude, second of all, I’m saying that the power inside the Phantom Ruby IS Iblis/Ifrit, hence their connection.

Before I get to timeline and other stuff, some minor things:

The decision to have Infinite take on specifically Silver, and showing Silver being able to withstand a fight against him for a good amount of time, as well as giving them a minor repertoire, which no other seemingly “unconnected” Resistance Fighters get. 

the name “Infinite” fitting the naming scheme if “Iblis and Ifrit” and you know how this franchise is about naming schemes.

Now, where we last left Ifrit he was trapped in a pocket dimension with Nega. 

Where we first find the Phantom Ruby is “In Sonic Mania, the Phantom Ruby appeared on Angel Island after a dimensional breach occurred in the atmosphere.” (via sonic wiki)

Now, it is kinda hard to connect those two lines, but the dimensional causation is there. 

(I could add an ENTIRE subsection of me trying to connected Mephiles to the time-traveling nature of Little Planet, therefore connecting Solaris to Classic Sonic’s world ((and “fun is infinite)) but this theory doesn’t need to be any longer and I cannot physically do any more research.) 

it’s possible Ifrit would be trapped, Mephiles was trapped in the Scepter of Darkness, so it’s more possible than impossible. 

But, Imma be fully honest with you guys, Most of this is because of the song.

If you haven’t heard “Infinite”, What is wrong with you. Go listen to it. Oh my god. 

But, some of the lyrics, don’t totally make sense knowing Infinite’s backstory. But it makes more sense seeing through the lens of the added Ifrit influence.

“And after all this time you're back for more“ (If talking about Shadow, it wasn’t a “long time” inbetween Infinite’s defeat and his rise. And Infinite has no stated relationship with Sonic. However, Solaris and subsequently, Iblis, do.) “When everything you know has come and gone“ “But that's what it takes to be infinite“

Even the name “Infinite.”

He chose that name after fusing to the Phantom Ruby and “ABAndoNiNg hIS pAsT SeLf” 

But, the Phantom Ruby has no connotations of immortality. None specified. it’s possible it’s power could be used to trick the user into immortality, but it’s never specified. You’d think he’d be called “Phantom” or, even, “Zero” (his working-and possibly true-name) But no. Infinite.

Now, think back to the connections earlier, and the info I took from Solaris’s wiki.

“Omnipresent throughout time and space”

Sounds pretty “Infinite” to me.

Am I saying Infinite is the new Iblis Trigger? Yes.

Ok my fingers hurt from writing this sorry it’s so long 

bye

[rametarin]

I’m excited for stupid reasons.

I’ve been reading about developments in battery technology lately. Because I wholly believe in a future where pure electric cars are possible.

And I’m really excited about the types of energy storage I’ve been reading about that will allow a vehicle to go as far as one that uses internal combustion before needing a recharge, and can then be recharged with electricity. Very quickly. And safely.

And some carbon-aluminum batteries fit that mold. There’s other candidates, and there will always be, but these carbon-aluminum batteries are said to charge sixty times faster than lithium ion. Do you realize how big a difference that makes? Sixty times?

That’s one minute with the new model that would’ve taken an hour with the old. That’s 12 minutes for letting the damned car from ‘05 or ‘07 recharge overnight. That’s FUCKING amazing, my bros and sisses. And with greater mileage than an ICE because of the way electric vehicles can handle stop-and-go, you’ll save fuel just idling vs. an ICE.

Making batteries out of abundant, environmentally safe, recyclable materials that fulfill the needs of long range motorists? That’s amazing. That’s ideal! It eliminates all downsides of cars and enhances the benefits of having them.

If and when these parameters become a thing, who knows. I’d really like to try my hand at an automotive vehicle model and concept. I want to make an electric car as IT-stupid as it can legally be allowed to be- I want an electric car that can’t go on the internet by itself, but might offer access as a conduit for laptops and shit (but doesn’t, in itself, interact with wireless internet in its machines or programming, in any way)

I want as analogue but advanced an electric car as it possibly, mechanically can be. You know the sort. Like a fucking Toyota Hillux. I want a real man’s electric truck. Something that could survive being washed out to sea without the electrical or batteries corroding. Something that could’ve survived getting flooded during Nawleans in the flood of ‘05. You clean it out, turn it on, maybe it sputters a little but like a fucking zombie starts back up and roars.

Something that is minimal. Could be Junior’s first graduated golf cart to get around town; I don’t fucking care. Something just sturdy enough to protect from a bad crash, but still costs what a school kid could make in a year at a job at the mini-mart. Kind of vehicle that’s like a pair of cheapo sunglasses; hard to destroy, does its job, and you’ll eventually upgrade it, but if you’re ever in shitty times you’ll always appreciate it can get you from A to B, even if it falls apart and needs to be put back together again every time you park it.

That’d be the niche a Rametarin brand electric truck goes for. It’ll be ugly and boxy and if you’re hoping to only upgrade to a more expensive, luxury vehicle with some style when the wheels fall off, you’d be better off just selling it after you’ve gotten something better. No status symbol unless you’re the sort that sees utilitarianism as a badge of pride. It’ll get you to work and it’ll keep the rain off when you’re cruising around the countryside on a road trip. That’s it.

And fuck. The model would only ever change to meet new minimum safety standards, and would pre-emptively change and sacrifice aesthetics and style just to meet them years in advance to keep said models suitable for the road, decades into the future. Even if that meant introducing widgets that operate independently, in place of a central computer that integrates into the car itself. Because again, I want my machine only ‘hackable’ the way an analogue car engine is, ‘hackable’ over the internet; in that, it won’t be. You’ll have to tamper with the electronics and chips in person, not through corrupting firmware. Even if everything about this fucking deliberate junkwagon was proprietary, from the battery to the casing.

Outside that, it’d just be The Same Truck it was since the initial model. The only real difference might be the technology for the energy storage that changes, because the technology for the electric motor would be designed as able to handle loads at a gradient, from standard sized batteries to absolutely ridiculous capacity. Be it a battery of today’s size, or a mysteriously source of electricity that for some reason has the charge and capacity of a fucking industrial facility. So parts for it in a catalogue would be the same shit they were for someone’s grandfather, as for them. Widely available, time tested, ubiquitous, available. Cheap.

[thekillerssluts]

My Relationship to Performance Has Changed

A great rock-and-roll show means openness, confrontation, and a kind of danger, and those ideas right now feel too heavy to lift.

Last October, before the second pandemic wave took off in New York City, I had one last band practice in my backyard in South Brooklyn. Five of us were working on songs from my new solo record. Normally we’d play in the basement, but it’s pretty low-ceilinged, and we’d read Zeynep Tufekci’s recent Atlantic article on viral spread, so we were all hyper-focused on air circulation. My bandmate Sara had contracted COVID-19—and recovered—in March, but the rest of us had no immunity. Besides, we suspected that we were in for a long winter and might as well hang out outdoors.

It was warm in the sun. After hauling the drums, keyboards, keyboard stands, guitars, and amps outside and plugging everything in, I hadn’t wanted to bother setting up microphones, so we had to play softly to hear ourselves harmonize. When we paused for lunch, someone leaned out of a fourth-story window in the apartment building next door and yelled: “Are you done or are you just taking a break? I have things to do, but I really miss live music!” “Me too, man!” I called back. “Should be just a break.”

Six months and a difficult winter later, the break is ending. I’m seeing more and more Instagram posts for shows that aren’t just wishful thinking. Low-capacity indoor shows are popping up in New York. Outdoor—maybe even full-capacity indoor—concerts are coming this summer. Am I ready to play? Ask me every other day and the answer changes. I’m torn. I’m desperate for sound engineers to get back behind the board and bartenders to start earning tips. I want venues to thrive again, both as places for art in neighborhoods and for the sake of the network that keeps music culture alive in America. I want my booking agent to feel excited again; he loves music so much. And I want musicians to make a living. So many people have been so screwed by the past year. I guess I just want everyone to get paid.

But the actual performance; the rebuilding of the sonic cathedral, as Dave Grohl wrote last spring; communally reaching for rock-and-roll transcendance? I’m not there yet. I’m not concerned that I’ll get sick. I received my second vaccine shot at the end of March and am ready to high-five strangers on the subway. My hesitance has an element of crowd-shyness, which we’ll all get over. But in my own performance, I don’t know how to meet this moment. A great rock-and-roll show means openness, confrontation, and a kind of danger, and those ideas right now feel too heavy to lift.

I used to think of performance in purely aesthetic terms. In the movie La Strada, a clown wearing angel wings does a high-wire act across a crowded piazza. For his finale, he brings out a table on the wire and, while balancing, tries to sit and eat a full plate of spaghetti. The heroine of the movie watches him with an almost religious ecstasy. When I first started performing, I strove for transcendence and stupidity, high concept and low art. My focus was on keeping myself in the air.

When my band Arcade Fire was playing mostly to people who hadn’t heard us before, we felt that the best way to get them to open up was to blow the windows and doors out. At an early show in Lawrence, Kansas, my brother, Win, bashed Styrofoam tiles out of the venue’s ceiling with his mic stand. We pushed as hard for an audience of six people (two of them my parents) upstairs at AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island, as we did in front of tens of thousands in the desert at our first Coachella show (during which I accidentally cut Win’s guitar cable in half by repeatedly smashing a cymbal into the ground).

At a certain point, as people got to know our music, my relationship to performance changed. The energy from the crowd was greater than anything coming from the giant speaker stacks. The audience wasn’t a challenge to overcome, or an opponent to conquer. We became a team. Not in an abstract, lovey way but how a sports team operates—pushing one another to do better, sometimes failing, sometimes frustrating one another, sometimes just joking around.The high-wire act of live performance—Will the music come together?—was still there. I’ve even sometimes tried to make the metaphor real, climbing arena scaffolding with a drumstick in my teeth and a drum strapped over my shoulder to play 30 feet in the air. Some of our crew members hate it—“Will! You have children now!”—but climbing up there doesn’t actually feel that dangerous, and a little nervousness is good. I’m reaching for primate simplicity and catharsis: The crowd needs tension to experience release.But now I have no desire to make tension. I want people to feel safe and comfortable, and I wonder whether creating a feeling of danger and openness is antithetical to that. I know that cultivating a perception of safety and actually making people safe are different. On tour, in a big venue, every night our management and local security have a briefing. It’s partly to set a vibe—People are here for music. Everybody be chill. If some teenager sneaks into a closer section, please let them. But the briefing is also serious—where the medics are located, what the escape routes are. Most of the time, these safety measures are invisible. I worry that post-pandemic precautions, as welcome and necessary as they are, will be depressingly visible. Some elements, such as temperature checks, will be inane. Some, such as requiring vaccination, will be important. Regardless, they will also set a tone—not You are entering a place for music, but You are entering a secure location. Dancing is hard when you’re looking at your feet; singing is hard when you’re thinking about everybody else’s breath. I bet the crowd could get over this. I’m not confident I could. With limited capacities and tight procedures, I worry that the stage will feel like the VIP section of the VIP room at a members-only club. Sterile, lonely, all of us chillingly aware that we are part of a ticketed event.

I have another concern that’s hard to shake. After this pandemic year, I’m more aware of the responsibility I have not only to the people who buy tickets, but to the driver making deliveries to the show and to the family of the woman working arena concessions, people who really don’t care about what I’m doing onstage. Vaccination numbers will grow, and the pandemic will end, God willing. I’m not worried about the spread of the coronavirus in particular. But these links of responsibility remain. The analytical part of my brain turns off when touring starts. Before scrambling back to normalcy, I want to make sure that this sense of connection becomes embedded in how I think. I would really love to just be a musician—but I’m also an employer and a player in an industry that has chewed up and spit out plenty of people, especially in this past year.

My hesitations are all about shows, though, not music. Over the past year, I’ve rarely played music with others—a few practices and filmed performances; work on the new Arcade Fire record in November; a handful of Zooms with bandmates to help a school’s PTA fundraiser or support a candidate in the city-comptroller race. But in all of those instances, I’ve experienced an ease, a rightness to the communication—not through the screen with whoever was listening, necessarily, but the people I was playing with. That connection felt restorative, like having a night of deep sleep that repairs parts of yourself you don’t know how to access.

I know people are ready for live music, ready to forget themselves in a wash of sound, ready to loudly talk with their friends over the song they don’t like that much. And so, for heaven’s sake, go to Neumos in Seattle when shows come back. Go to the Hideout in Chicago. See your favorite band, or somebody new. Plenty of artists don’t share my nervousness. I don’t want to add worry to the world; I’m just figuring out my new relationship to performance.

The magnolias are out in New York, and some of the apple trees are blossoming. Temperatures are creeping past 60. The vaccines keep rolling out. The future seems more possible. If I miss an emotion from live shows, it’s not any moment of transcendence. I miss the time just after, when, dazed and excited, you still feel the reach of some universal gesture, but the only thing concrete is the people around you.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/world-changed-what-makes-live-show-successful-didnt-arcade-fire/618625/

[missfluffywriter]

Purple Irises I Mafia Park Jimin x Reader

Author’s note: Ooof it’s finally out. That took way longer than I expected!!!! I’ve been MIA for like almost two weeks now. I am so sorry this was lateeee!! And we’re almost as 100k!!! Ahhh I don’t want to dissapoint anyone! Sheesh anyway, that’s it for me. Happy readings!

Word count: 12.3k

Genre: Mafia AU, (slight) Doctor au, (slight) Florist au

Pairing: Park Jimin x Reader

(Series) Summary: You were supposed to be delivering flowers, how did you end up in an operation room digging out a bullet from a mafia boss’ shoulder?

Purple Irises: Royalty and wisdom

Warnings: Guns, language, discription of gore, minor character death,  inconsistant grammar lol

Yes I had make that a header, the gore is like pretty discriptive and I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable. I have put markers where the discription starts and where it ends if you would like to skip the the gory bits look out for the markers and just skip that little bit, you won’t miss anything important I promise!

Previous chapter I Next chapter I Masterlist I Requests are open!

‘Tansies’

“(Y/n)? What’s wrong?” Unease lacing Jimin’s voice as he shadowed your path.

‘No, never theorize before you have data,’ You reprimand yourself, recalling one of the many pieces of advice you had filed away for future use. For all, you knew Duri may have simply liked the vibrance of the golden blooms and added the sunny flower to accent the otherwise monochrome room with a pop of color.    

“(Y/n)?” Tenderly taking your hand into his Surprisingly larger ones. His attention wholly focused on your ever-changing expression.

“Oh, uh, flower一uh tansies一 where? Where is she?” Mind working faster than your mouth could articulate, you stumble on your words, (e/c) orbs searching for a certain peach-blonde female.  

“Where is who?” Jimin questions, his honey-brown orbs narrowing in confusion, your jumbled mess of a sentence further perplexing the silver-blonde.

“Soomin!” Your answer is immediate, almost urgent as your body makes a full ninety-degree turn, holding onto Jimin's comforting grasp, your eyes hunting for the peach haired woman in the space behind you.

“What?!” The woman in question squeaks, startled by your booming voice as she enters the room, having just returned from stationing her men to accommodate the situation. Preparing them to move out at a seconds notice though maintaining a certain level of organization.

“Flowers, did Ji-Eun like flowers? Or did she have an interest in them or anything?” You question the female eagerly, gesturing to the lavender vase as she fluidly makes her way towards the object of your concerns.

Her facial features fold into a frown at your question, looking at you as though you had just asked the most bizarre of questions. “Not that I know of,”

“Do you know who might have put those there?” You blurt, eyes actively scanning over the blonde girl's expression. The imperativeness in your voice may have come out more of as panic as Jimin’s hold around your hand tightens comfortingly, which does to some length relax your posture.

“Why the fuck would I know?” She glares, exaggeratedly dropping her hands to further display her incredulity.

‘Damn it,’ Your teeth grab onto your lower lips, softly nibbling on the soft muscle. The tightness of frustration seizes your chest. This did absolutely nothing to narrow down the variables and possibilities of what had really happened, and this largely widens the margin of error when making predictions or even planning your next move. There was nothing more aggravating than missing pieces of information, especially when lives were on the line.  

“But,” Soomin’s sharp voice breaks you from your train of thoughts. “I do know that Duri would never own something as hideous as that,” Emphasizing “that”, she gestures to the slender lavender vase that held the flowers.    

And she was right, although the vase in itself wasn’t all that awful. It was just that the lilac of the vase clashed with the golden petals of the tansies and the overall aesthetic of the room. But did that actually mean something?

The skin of your palms tingled as sweat accumulated on them from both excitement and fear. Your instincts scream at you in warning, there was more to these flowers. ‘No, that still doesn’t account for every variable. One of the maids could have put it there. Or maybe she just felt like having flowers in her room,’ But this was too perfect, flowers with a meaning of a declaration of a war placed at a kidnapping site of a possible ally. But then why bother leaving a declaration of war in the language of flowers? It would have been much easier to leave it in writing, would it not?

As a matter of fact, not leaving any sort of note or evidence of their presence would have given the kidnappers - or rather the Yeongs - a bigger advantage. So why go through the trouble of declaring war through flowers? And flowers of all things; if you hadn’t been there, the men and even Soomin together wouldn’t have caught it.

Your eyes widen at the thought; if you hadn’t been there no one would have noticed this message - if it was a message. And it clicked, this was a warning, a proclamation. And the reason behind the effort put into this covert notice. This message wasn’t just for anyone to find, this was a message for you to find and in translation for Bangtan. This was Yeong's declaration of war against Bangtan. But more than that, they were targeting you. They chose to relay their words through you.

In other words, this was a warning to you as much as it was for Bangtan. This was their way of letting you know they knew you existed and that they were preparing to deal with you as well. If they knew of your hand in the recent achievements then their mole must be much closer than you might have earlier anticipated.  

“Jimin,” You breath out, your grip on his hand tightening in distress.

“What is it?” Jimin soothingly rubs his thumb back and forth, trying to ease your hold and worry.

“Tansies,” You say. “Tansies mean hostility, “I declare war against you”,” Eyeing the male you guide his thoughts to where yours were. The whites of his eyes are a little more visible as his eyes spread a tad apart, understanding what you were insinuating to.

“Are you sure?” He asks, his voice breathy in the same disbelief you were in earlier. You reply with a tentative nod, his expression souring as he turns to the peach-blonde female leaning against the wooden desk. “And you’re positive it was the Yeongs that called for this attack?” He asks Soomin.

“Well, considering we have security footage of one of Yeong’s closest men calling the shots on the scene,” She scoffed at the male’s question. “So yes, I’m sure,”

“So does this mean what I think it means?” Taehyung quips from his seat on the sofa.

“This is Yeong’s move,” Jimin mutters, his honey-brown orbs narrowing as he moves towards Taehyung and Hoseok.

“So Yeong’s called a war against you, huh?” Soomin’s voice audibly drops an octave, her chocolate-colored orbs sharpening into a glare.

“We’ll have to be extra careful from here on out,” You state, singing as you rest your weight on the desk behind you.

“What a shit storm,” The chestnut-haired breaths out as he rests his head against the back of the sofa.

“I can’t exactly speak for Duri but,” Soomin pauses. “Know that you can expect my full support going on out,”

“Oh?” Taehyung eyes the female.

“Yes,” She affirms confidently. “Yeong dares to take one of my own, my mother, no less. The bastard isn’t gonna get away with this,” Growling as she spoke, anger burned in her chocolate irises.

“We appreciate your support,” Jimin replies formally. An action you wholeheartedly agree with. If Yeong was on the move then Bangtan had to begin preparations as well.

“Don’t worry we can go over those details some other time,” Soomin waves her hand dismissively, knowing you wouldn’t have been satisfied with just her vow.

“Thank you,” Your eyes fall to the floor, head tilting down in respect to the girl.

“And I guess I should thank you too, huh?” Looking to the ebony-haired male that had been standing silently to the side.

“Huh? Me?” Hyuk questions, his eyes blowing wide as he points a finger to himself.  

“Yes, you,” Chuckling, you nod. “If you hadn’t pointed out the flowers I would have totally missed it.”

“Oh, no!” Hyuk furiously shakes his head from one side to another. His cool disposition melting in a flustered mess. “I was just trying to make conversation, and those flowers were the first thing that caught my eye was all.”

“Well, I’m glad it did,” You smile at the slender man as he fakes a cough, gathering together his composure. “Thank you, Hyuk,” You softly express your gratitude, partly to further fluster the male.

“Uh, no probl一”

“We found her!” Namjoon charges into the room, cutting off the ebony-haired male. A cell-phone in hand, Namjoon power walks to Jimin. “Ji-Eun was there at the location,”

“She was?! Are you sure? Was she okay?” Soomin kicks herself off the desk as she practically rushes Namjoon.

“Yes,” Namjoon speaks. “The location you gave me led us to an abandoned building way far up in the mountains. I had operatives closest to the location scope it out and the building was guarded by Yeong’s men and she was there. Ji-Eun Duri was seen on the third floor of the building,” He narrated the situation.

‘This feels too easy,’ Your forehead knitted together as you listened to the male. Now that you knew of Yeong’s awareness of you, this was too easy, too simple, too straightforward. After everything that’s happened, it couldn’t be possible that straight forward. Almost as if someone had dictated the direction of the scene, like this was meant to happen.

Really thinking about the whole situation, this worked out too perfectly, considering a thousand variables that could have been in play. This scenario was far too ideal. If Duri’s captors had the time to place those flowers. ‘The footprints!’ Your head snaps to the floor as you examine muddy footprints left behind by the kidnappers.

And sure enough, none of the footprints led towards the vase, all of them stopped quite a distance from the desk. So unless they threw the vase onto the desk, someone else either planted the flowers late on or there was someone else with the kidnappers. But the question was who? And if all of this was scripted by the Yeongs then what was the real goal? What were they after?

‘Think, come on think. There must be something I’m missing! What could they gain by kidnapping Ji-Eun Duri? Why Ji-Eun Duri? And Why today? Why would they take her only to let us find her?’ Your breath caught in your throat as you realized you had just answered your own question. ‘So that’s what’s going on,’  

“Well then, what the hell are we waiting for?” Soomin’s booming voice startles you from your thoughts. “Let’s get going already!” She briskly stomps out of the room.

“Hyuk,” Jimin calls for the charcoal-haired male. “Follow her and make sure she doesn’t get herself killed,”

“Sir,” Hyuk salutes before hurting after the female that had stormed out the room. Though normally the peach-blonde was a rational woman, however, going by the way she charged away. Her sense of reason may not be at its peak at the moment.    

“Where is our team right now?” Shining, Jimin asks Namjoon.

“I told everyone to be on standby a good distance from the actual building. Which was made easy thanks to the place being surrounded by a forest,” The syrup-brown haired man reports.  

“Good, tell them to stay there until we get there,” The silver-blond nods approvingly, making his way toward the exit before noticing your lack of presence.

“(Y/n)?” Calling for your name, the don pivots on his foot to meet your rattled expression as you stiffly stood by the desk.

“Where are Jiyoung and his family being kept?” You ask the two men.

“At one of our safehouses farther away from the city… Why?” Namjoon answers his calm features hardening into a serious expression.  

“Jimin, Namjoon before we leave, can you do something for me?” You request.

“What do you want me to do?” The taller of the pair inquires, looking down at his boss questioningly.

“Man, they really dragged us out, huh?” Taehyung yawned, stepping out of the luxurious short limousine, he stretched his limbs.

“Where is Duri?” Soomin demands the minute she steps out of her sleek black SUV.

“Over there,” One of the many well-dressed men points to a cloud-grey, four-story building situated a distance away, and the more you examined it, the more it looked like a school. “She is being held in one of the rooms on the third floor.”

“How many of them are there?” Jimin comes to stand beside the peach-blonde as he questions the man standing before them.

“Not many,” The male answers. “Ten or fifteen at most,”

“That’s it?” Soomin blanches at the man’s reply.

“Yes, ma’am,” He respectfully responds.

“Report,” Jimin commands as the other man bows before beginning.

“The main and back entrances are each guarded by two guys. From what we could see there are men on each floor stationed around the stairs or hidden in rooms. The first floor has the most men, the second floor has fewer men, but the third floor is the least guarded,” He gives a detailed report of the situation.

“Do they have a sniper?” Namjoon asks.

“Not that we’ve seen,” A diplomatic answer if you’d ever heard one. The hickory-brown haired male that had been explaining the situation cleanly offered his findings without promising or assuring you of anything. You would have to remember to bring him up at the meeting, he could prove useful in a higher position, but at the same time, he could also become a threat. ‘No, stay focused,’ Shaking your head you refocus yourself on the task at hand.

“Send out the snipers, we’re going with the usual,” Jimin directs both the man standing before and Namjoon, who acknowledged the command with a nod, walking towards the group that had been gathered.

“The usual?” You question the silver-blonde.

“We attack with all our forces while our snipers provide support from a distance,”

“So basically you’re gonna rush ‘em,” You retold what you had taken away from the mafia don’s plan.

“Pretty much yeah,” Taehyung chirps in, hands behind his head, he strolls over to where you stood.

“What if they use Ji-Eun as a hostage and threaten to kill her?” A questioning brow lifts on your face as you ask the group of three men and a woman.

“I… didn’t think that far,” Taehyung pauses, surprised, his eyelids fluttering as his hands drop to his sides and into his pant pockets.

“Right,” You huff a breath as your brain moves to formulate a plan that would give you a better chance of getting Duri out of her captors hold, safely and quickly. Eyebrows furrowing together, your forefinger moves up to rub the skin underneath your lower lip.

Duri’s safety was the top priority, you needed a plan that ensured Duri’s well being while effectively dealing with the armed men and minimize damage and loss for both Bangtan and Soomin.

“First things first, we need to take care of the men closest to Ji-Eun. Then we can deal with the others as they come,” Heaving a deep sigh, you decide to speak your thoughts aloud when your imagination begins running rampant and muddling any coherent plan that may have formed.

“Tell me,” You call for the attention of the three men standing before you, the same thoughtful expression present on each of their faces. “Can the snipers take out the people guarding Ji-Eun?” You ask.

“Uh. We’ll have to draw them to a place where the snipers have a clear shot,” Jimin answers.

“But that doesn’t mean we would get them all and I don’t think the guys from the first and second floors would do nothing when they hear gunshots firing,” Taehyung adds, waving his hand dismissively as if rejecting your idea.

“If we could somehow clear the first floor, lure the men from the second floor to the first and take care of them there while taking out the guys up top, then we’d be golden,” Stringing together the few intelligible thoughts that you retained from the jumbled mess your mind had been.

“We sure would, wouldn’t we?” An aloof hum leaves the chestnut-haired mafioso’s lips.

“Thanks, Taehyung,” You grumble at his unproductive contribution to the conversation.

“Well then, why don’t we do just that?” A rich, honeyed voice resounds in the vicinity.

“Hyuk,” You say the name of the owner of the sweet voice. “There are too many variables, too many things that could go wrong,” You explain, providing examples of the many mishaps that could occur. “Like what if we don’t get all of the guys from the third floor? Or what if someone from the second floor got to the third floor?”

“Plus, we can’t exactly use guns,” Jimin chimes into the conversation.

“And why can’t we use guns?” Nose scrunching in confusion Taehyung asks.  

“Were you even paying attention?” Your question flatly, your black gaze staring him down. “The loud sound would give us away,” You explain with another deep breath as exasperation made its way into your system. The situation was much more complicated than you had originally expected.  

“No. I think guns will be plenty useful,” Hyuk strums as his forefinger swipes across his cupid’s bow. 

“Oh really? And how would that be?” Shifting your weight in your other foot, you ask. 

“Just leave it to us,” He says, much to your confusion.

“Us?” You repeat.

“Well, them,” The charcoal-haired mafioso gestures to the group of men and woman standing behind him.

“Them?” Your face scrunches at the male’s vague words. 

“Yes, with the team gathered here today,” Hyuk further explains with a proud smile. And though your expression remained muddled with confusion.

“And just what exactly do you intend to do?”

“Hm, I’m surprised you don’t already know,” Your features sour at his words, though it wasn’t exactly his words that off-put you, it was his mocking tone of voice. Besides, did he expect you to know everything?

“And just what might that be?” You ask the ebony-haired male.

“It’s simple really,” He answers. “We’ll need a distraction upfront while people sneak in from the back. And when it comes to Ji-Eun-ssi, our snipers will be watching her until our rescue team has a chance to get to her,”

You fall into silence as you consider Hyuk’s plan. It was by no means a foolproof plan, but a plan nonetheless. It was a gamble seeing as you would be risking the lives of those who would be playing decoy, but it was absolutely better than just rushing into the enemy’s fortress without an organized plan of attack. You look to Jimin for his take on the matter and you see the same consideration that you had displayed on your face.

“Jimin,” At the call of his name he lifts his gaze to meet yours. To find the same question in your (e/c) orbs that he had been mulling over. After seeing a deep breath leave Jimin’s plump lips, you decide it would be better to do something than doing nothing.

Tentatively you pull Jimin’s soft hand into yours, giving it a reassuring squeeze simultaneously letting him know of your thoughts. His eyes fall to your hold before returning the comforting gesture, a soft smile curling onto his plump lips.

“Alright then, change of plans,” The don finally speaks. “Namjoon split the team into two, we will be going with this new plan,” He commands, piercing gaze landing on the syrup-brown haired man.

“Got it,” With a sharp nod, Namjoon turns towards the crowd standing by.  

“Taehyung, Hyuk, you two are with me,” Removing his expensive navy suit blazer, then undoing the cuffs of his shirt, Jimin instructs his operatives. “We’ll be going with the infiltration team,”

“Oh. You’re dead fucking wrong if you think you’re leaving me here,” Soomin’s pointed voice cuts through the atmosphere as she shrugs off her black, business-casual blazer. Subsequently revealing a glossy, cinnamon-brown, leather double shoulder holster, two jet-black guns neatly tucked in their spaces.

“Do what you want,” Jimin’s voice drowns in apathy as he inspects one of the guns from his double shoulder holster - the gun you recognized as a tanfoglio force. You don’t exactly remember much about that particular gun; it looked awfully similar to the one you were carrying. ‘Now’s not the time for that!’ Admonition yourself for drifting thoughts, you return to the situation at hand.  

“We’re going to be in enemy territory, be careful, watch yourself. And remember, the idea is not to get killed,” Separating from your little huddle, Jimin continued, once satisfied with the state of the weapon and securing it back into its place. Soomin and Taehyung wordlessly followed as the mafia boss made his way towards the decently sized group of men and women gathered.

Unsure of what you were supposed to do, you quietly trail behind the trio, assuming you would be tagging along as you had been up to this point. However, you were sorely mistaken as you were stopped by the baritone voice of a certain chestnut-haired mafioso.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Taehyung asks, stepping directly in front of you.

“Uh, with you guys?” Your answer comes out as more of a question, seeing as you yourself weren’t sure of where you were supposed to be or go.

“No, you are not,” Jimin interjected, gently pulling you into him with an arm, a gesture you gladly obliged, making yourself comfortable in his hold.

“Well, then where am I supposed to be?” Craning your head towards the silver-blond you ask.

“Here,” Jimin casually replies.

“Here?” Mimicking the mafioso’s words, you look at the male questioningly.

“Yes, here,” He says, his eyes drifting to Hoseok’s form. “While we take care of that, you and Hoseok are staying right here,”

“So, you want me to stay back?”  

“Exactly,” Jimin nods.

“Why?” The question flies out of your mouth before your brain could register what was coming out of your mouth.  

“You already know why,” The silver-blond’s response is immediate as his eyes narrow at the unusual amount of attitude that laced your voice. You lowered your head as his hardened gaze fell onto you. He was right, you did know why you were being left behind. With your current level of skill, you were more of a hindrance than any help.

“Just stay here, okay?” Sighing, Jimin pulls you into a proper embrace as he speaks to you softly, delicately even. “We’ll be back soon enough,” The warm breath of his whisper brushes against the inner shell of your ear ticklishly before moving his lips higher tenderly placing a lingering kiss on your temple.

The action sent the metaphorical butterflies of your stomach into a frenzy. There it was again, the Jimin effect, you contemplated officially naming this - now - regular phenomenon. With an inaudible groan, you bury your flushed face into his neck, sluggishly nodding a ‘yes’. Before a single coherent thought is finally able to process in your brain.

“Wait if I can’t go, then why are you going?” You ask, tilting your head upwards to meet two gorgeous pools of honey - which are Jimin’s eyes.

“Because I’m the boss,” The nonchalance in his tone truly astonished you, your agape mouth a clear sign of your amazement and dismay. How could he talk about walking into a dangerous and very much so a life-threatening situation so calmly, so easily?

“Isn’t that more of a reason to not go?” You blanch at he male’s coolness.  

“No,” You receive a single worded answer as he gently presses a chaste kiss on your forehead before releasing you from his warmth.

“But一”

“Everything is set, we’re ready to move out,” Namjoon’s firm voice interrupts your oncoming rebuttal to Jimin’s short statement.  

“Then let’s move out,” The silver-blond moves further away from you, though you suspect he was purposefully ignoring you.

“Jimin wai一” You call, only from the man to completely discounts your voice, continuing on his path. ‘He’s ignoring me isn’t he?’ Relenting with a sigh you instead decide to wish the group their best. “Be careful out there,” To which Jimin acknowledges your words, turning to give you an adorably sheepish grin. Before his gaze flickered to the crimson-haired male standing beside you, his golden honey orbs hardened into a chilling stare, a wordless warning.  

“And they’re gone,” You say, heaving another breath, a wistful smile tugging at your lips. In your mind you were sure Jimin would be perfectly fine, he had been in the business for years, life-threatening situations were nothing new to him; he had faced and survived many of these situations since before you had arrived. So why would this be any different? He had survived many times before, he could surely do it again. Yet you still couldn’t help but worry your head off. The rational side of you knew he would be fine, but the irrational side of you ached to be by Jimin’s side to personally make sure he returned safe and sound. Not that you had the skill to actually pull that off.

“Hey, don’t worry about it, okay? As long as Taehyung’s with him, nothing will happen to Jimin,” Sensing your inner turmoil, Hoseok offers words of cheerful reassurance. “Besides I think he’s just trying to protect you,” He was absolutely trying to protect you. If the scowl Jimin had given him was anything to go by. Hoseok was convinced that regardless of if you had prior experience in the field or not, Jimin would have most certainly made you stay behind. A cold shudder reverberated through Hoseok’s body as he recalled the withering glare Jimin had thrown at him. A silent warning, saying something along the lines of “anything happens to her and it’s on your head”.  

“Let’s go sit inside the car, yeah?” The scarlet-haired male gave you the best smile he could muster with Jimin’s warning still ringing in his head. Hoseok had seen the young don when he was angry - when he was truly angry. The palpable chaotic fury that rolled off the don moved in waves, crashing against all those who stood around him. The reason not many knew of the true extent of Jimin’s anger was that few ever survived his wrath. The silver-haired mafia boss was nothing to be trifled with on a good day, one could only imagine what he was like on a bad day.

Hoseok may have been close with the don, but you too held a special place in the mafia boss’ heart. Considering that factor, it would be near impossible to anticipate Jimin’s reaction should anything happen to you.  

“Aren’t you going to sit with me?” Your delicate voice brings the mafioso back from the flashbacks of an angry Jimin on catastrophic rampages.

Hoseok gulps down the saliva that had pooled in his mouth before answering you, “Uh, no, I need to be out here, just in case they need me,”

“Oh, okay,” You return, closing the car door as you did.

Just as you had settled into your seat, the sharp, deafening sound of gunfire reverberated through the area, the pops of gunshots so loud they were heard over five-hundred feet away.

For minutes you sat silently, (e/c) orbs thoughtlessly tracing the stitches and ridges of the leather seats. The popping and booming of gunfire becoming nothing more than white noise, a strange emptiness taking over you. No thoughts passed your mind, you could feel yourself sitting down, you could feel the sharp biting sensation of running your nails up and down the first knuckle of your forefinger. Eyes zeroing in on a single point on the plush seat, it was almost as if your body had been locked in place, you could feel but you could not move - not fully at least, but it was more of you didn’t want to move.

You weren’t sure just how long had passed in this frozen state, but you were broken from your spell-bound state when your ears started ringing from the silence of the area. Inhaling through your nose, you leaned against the back of the car seat, stretching your arms as a drawn-out yawn leaves your lips. Wiping away the tears that had pooled at the corners of your eyes, you rub circles on the pinna of your ear once the ringing from the quiet becomes too uncomfortable. ‘It’s too quiet,’  

Fully registering your thoughts, your eyes fly open, head swinging towards the car door where Hoseok had been standing against. The crimson-haired male had a similar look of confusion playing at his expression; head sawing from one direction to another, trying to make sense of the sudden quiet that had fallen on the previously bustling battlefield.  

“What’s going on here?” Quietly mumbling to yourself, you gently push open the car door. Hoseok jumped, his hands automatically reaching for the guns tucked away in his shoulder holsters when he heard the door behind him open, his attention having been concentrated on gauging the situation, deciding on whether to send you home or not.  

“Hoseok, what happened? Did they win?” Dangling your feet out of the car, you awkwardly ask, your proper communication skill having disappeared in that instance.

“Aish, (Y/n),” He sighs moving aside, allowing you space to step out of the car. “You surprised me.”

“So, are we done here?” Pushing the door closed, you ask the mafioso.

“I’m not sure,” He mutters, his hand coming to brush against his lips. “I haven’t heard anything from either team,”

A soft ‘oh’ leaves your lips as you watch the direction the two groups had left. ‘I don’t like this,’ The eerie stillness felt something akin to the calm before a storm. Anxiousness bubbled and churned in your chest, your palms getting clammy with your sweat when you suddenly felt your heart drop. A cold pricking sensation rapidly spreading throughout your body like vines of ice wrapping around your insides. Inhaling through your mouth while your mind flies in a thousand different directions trying to figure out why you felt that chill.  

‘Just as BBC Sherlock Holmes said, “Intuitions represent data processed too fast for the conscious mind to comprehend.” So think! There has to be something!’ With your brain running a mile a minute, no coherent thoughts were forming, and even if they were forming you would forget them not a minute later as too many thoughts and scenarios all playing out in your head at once. Deciding your brain had once again failed you and that nothing comprehensible was coming out of it the next best thing would be to go into the building in person.  

“We should go up there,” You breathe out, which was also the only warning you gave the crimson-haired male before storming towards the abandoned building.

“No, we’re gonna stay he一 (Y/n)!” Hoseok gets no more than five words in before he is chasing after you as you scamper off in the direction of the building.

“Come on slowpoke!” You exhorted, daring him to catch up to you. A horrible idea really, seeing as he was faster than you and would probably catch you before you even reached your destination, but more than that you weren’t sure what you would do once inside the building.

Usually, you would never rush into unpredictable situations where you weren’t sure just what exactly could happen or situations you had an obvious disadvantage in, but here you were charging headfirst into a practical battlefield with little to no fighting experience. ‘So much for being rational,’ You scoffed to yourself, though you knew you were running straight into the belly of the beast, you could feel the light flutter of excitement, however today, you didn’t have to bite back an excited grin. The ominous chill you had felt earlier was still ever-present, sitting at the forefront of your mind. And you knew this somehow involved Jimin, which only caused your stomach to churn.  

“(Y/n), come back here!” All of the scarlet-haired mafiosos’ words fell to deaf ears. Not really, truthfully you were hearing every on of Hoseok’s words and you actually wanted to go back to the limo as there was a large possibility you would become a major hindrance to the people fighting, but something was happening, something bad, and you needed to be there to prevent it, only the question was, what was happening?  

“What?” A quiet whisper that leaves your lips as your head frantically sways one side to another taking in the sight, or rather a lack of one. There were no people, no cars, no weapons, nothing; just barren empty grounds. You slow down to a jog as you cautiously enter the building. What exactly was happening here?

BANG BANG

You flinch when the loud booms of gunfire reach you, your eardrums ringing as you slowed further into a stalk as you navigated through the desolated building. But a single question rang in your head louder than any gunshot had, if there were people inside then why wasn’t there anyone outside?    

As you quietly climb the staircase to the second floor, once again notice the lack of personale, enemy, or otherwise. The first floor was supposed to be just as heavily guarded was it not? So why was it deserted?

“(Y/n),” Hoseok growls, roughly tugging at your upper arm, you turn to look at him as his grip tightens. “We’re leaving now.” He barks, pulling you down the steps.

“Hoseok, Hoseok, come on,” Your attempt to call for his attention fails as he continues on his path with you in tow.

“What were you thinking!?” He chides you sternly. “What if something happened to you? What if you got hurt? What if they took you hostage too, huh?”

“Hoseok, listen to me,” You struggle against his stronghold, though your intent was to break free from his grasp, all you could do was struggle as Hoseok’s vice-like hold being too powerful for you to break. And thankfully he does. Halfway down the stairs he pauses and turns to you, though begrudgingly, he gives you the attention you requested.

“What?” The single word comes out like a quiet snarl.

“Guns are firing on the second floor, you can hear the fight going on up there. But the first floor is deserted, practically empty, why?”

“How about we go back to the car and then you can sit there and figure that out, yeah?” He says stiffly, turning to continue on his path.

“Hoseok, listen to me,” You plead, futile wrestling against the stronger male’s grip.

“I did and now we’re leaving,” Huffing, he turned raring to leave. 

“Look, we're already here,” You exclaim, jerking your arm towards you, though his hold doesn’t falter in the slightest, instead just moving with your actions.

“Not for long,” Scoffing, he simply ignores your struggles as he moves.

“Hoseok,” You call helplessly, which is again met with indifference. ‘Alright then, be that way,’ If Hoseok was going to be difficult then you would have to get creative. You needed a distraction, something that would loosen his hold. But what?

You desperately searched for something, anything you could use when a wicked smile danced on your lips as you found your distraction.

“Jimin watch out!” Hollering at the top of your lungs, you tear your arm from Hoseok’s grip, his hold loosening as he processed your words. Immediately you break for the second floor, skipping steps at a time, you launch around the corner and into the corridors.

“Jimin, where?一 (Y/n)!” The red head’s voice booms as he races after you. “Wha一 (Y/n)! Don’t!”

All sense of caution out the window you focus on getting as far into the building as you could before you were caught again, a terrible idea.

“(Y/n)! Get down!” You barely register Hoseok’s words before the next thing you knew the floor was getting larger. ‘Larger?’ The only thought you were able to make out as a series of ear-splitting gunshots echo throughout the floor. And this was much, much louder than the one you had heard earlier as if they were right beside you.

‘Oh, right,’ Perhaps they sounded as though they were beside you because they were right beside you.  

“My God! I thought you were supposed to be smart!” Hoseok shouts as he brings you closer to his body. Leaning against the wall next to the door, he returns fire, making sure to push you further against the wall to completely hide you from sight.

You wince when more gunfire follows, the already blasting noise of the shots reverberating against the wall of the abandoned building and becoming louder. ‘Earbuds,’ Quickly fishing out the noise-canceling earbuds and stuffing them at the entrance of your ear canals, effectively muffling most to all of the sounds.  

“What the fuck?!” Hoseok curses while with practiced movements his hands automatically remove the used cartridge, changing them with new ones. ‘How many of them are there?!’ Carefully aiming at one of the two men that had been shooting at you he manages to injure one of them. But this wasn’t right, the first and second floors should have been cleared by now, so why were they still here? Alive at that?

“Shit,” He mutters as he ducks back behind the wall as a few more shots follow. His head snaps to his side when he feels a hand tightly clutching at his arm. ‘Now's not the time for that,’

Heaving out a sigh he uses the hand he had been holding the gun with to cover yours, giving it a reassuring squeeze with the gun still in his hand. His eyes soften when he sees your expression, eyes wide, eyebrows knitted, and lips tugging downwards, worry, and concern written across your face. However, this expression was different from your (e/c) orbs pooled with guilt and anxiousness. And he knew the idiot of a woman sitting beside him was worried for him much more than herself.

“(Y/n), listen carefully,” He speaks gently. “Go to the first floor and hide, then when you can get back to the car and get out of here. Here are the keys一” Your eyes fall to the single key with a sunflower keychain he places in your palm. “一It doesn’t matter where you go, just get as far as you can. Then contact one of the guys, and they’ll come to pick you up wherever you are. But, if you can, go back to the mansion, okay?” He instructs, but this felt much more like a goodbye, which you absolutely did not like. He didn’t even ask if you could drive or not. Regardless, you were not leaving, not yet, not without Jimin... and everyone else of course.

“And don’t forget, Yoongi gave you those for a reason,” His gaze points to the two firearms strapped to your thighs. “If you think you need it, use it,”

“Why are you talking as if you’re not gonna be with me?”

“Because I’m not,”

“Like hell, you’re not,”

“Okay, you were right. Something’s going on here, all this,” He gestures to the space around you. “Doesn’t feel right. And it’s become too dangerous for you to be here. So, you need to go home”

“Then you’re coming with me,”

“No, I am not,” He sighs. “I need to stay here,”

“Why?” You ask petulantly.

“Look, if we both leave then they’ll follow us, so I need to stay here and distract them while you get the hell out of here. Then I’ll just meet up with Jimin and the others,”

“I’m not going, Hoseok,” not without him, the words are left unsaid and you’re not sure whether Hoseok understood the unheard words or not. But more than that, no matter how experienced he may have been, one man against - god knows how many enemies - were not the odds you were leaving him in - not that you were leaving.

“(Y/n), you need to go,” The male pleads, exasperation evident in his voice. “Please,” He adds.

Beats pass though not a moment goes by without the constant barrage of enemy fire, just how many of them were there?

“Fine, I’ll go,” Gruffly, you mutter. You didn’t like the idea of leaving Hoseok in such unfair odds but you also knew that this was perhaps the only opportunity you would get to find what your senses have been roaring at you to find. 

“Thank you,” Hoseok breathes a sigh of relief. “Alright, when I say go, you go,”

You nod at his instructions, you face to the opposite direction Hoseok was, reading yourself to bolt away.  

“Alright go!” You launch off of your position, straight towards the staircases, and up to the third floor. Hoseok’s eyes widen as he watches you ascend to the third floor.  

“(Y/n)!一shit!” Ducking away from the gunshots his eyes fill with panic as he sees your figure disappear up the steps.

“Jimin’s gonna skin me alive,” He snarls before digging for his second gun and fully entering the room, pure rage and irritation filling his veins. ‘Oh, you’re gonna get it the minute I find you!’  

“I’m sorry Hoseok, but I need to do this,” Though in hindsight you never said you were going back to the car, you only said you would go, not where to.  

‘Okay,’ Crouching, you cautiously approached the closest room to the staircase, though making sure to divert a part of your awareness behind you.  

You could hear the muffled booms of gunshots as you made your way closer to the first door. Though judging by how faint the sounds were, you knew the shootout was happening farther up than where you were.

✧•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•✧ 

However, you maintained your cautiousness as you slowly peeked into the room. And the sight that welcomed you was nothing less than bloodcurdling, it was like you were in the set of a horror movie as any normal human being seeing this would be retching their guts out. Not many people understand the true extent of damage a bullet can really do. They don’t realize that a single bullet has the ability to not only pierce tissue but also shatter bones and even dislocate limbs, especially when in close quarters.

Bringing your palm to cover your mouth, your eyes rove across the room, taking in the sight before you. Lifeless bodies were scattered across the floor. For some you could see the damage that had been done; one of the bodies had been shot somewhere on the jaw, and the whole jaw had been destroyed, as a matter of fact, not much of the jaw was left. You could see some portions of the cheeks though the tissues frayed and torn with only parts of the upper jaw remaining.

The other bodies were in similar conditions, holes blasted through the flesh and bones alike. Leaving ruptured cracks and gaps in the muscles, chunks of flesh litter around the bodies, blown off by the bullets that pierced the flesh. Large rust-colored splotches decorated all corners of the room, no area had been left untouched, almost as if carnage itself had washed over. Although the sheer amount of dried blood would have been enough to make the sight gruesome, in this case, the blood was only a cherry on top.  

✧•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•✧

Tearing your eyes from the horrendous sight of the room, you quickly charge ahead, caution once again was thrown to the wind as you try to accept your new reality. This was your new reality, this was your life, this was the world you had entered.  

Your eyeballs burned as tears pooled at the corners of your eyes, blurring your vision. When coming into this life, you thought you knew what you were getting into, what lied ahead of you, what would become of you. You thought you knew, and you did, you knew this would become a part of your life. But knowing that something is a part of your life and watching it become a part of your life, were two very different things.

It was true you had your strange bouts of excitement at the most inappropriate times, in places where you should be fearing for your life, or fearing for someone else's life. But that didn’t mean you weren’t scared, that you didn’t fear the worst, however, that also didn’t mean you fully understood the worst.

Back then, perhaps you didn’t, it was more likely that you didn’t. Sure, you knew people would get hurt, blood would be shed, lives would end. You knew that in your mind, you understood it in your conscious, but seeing the death, the hurt, the destruction was much different from simply knowing about it.  

And now that you truly understood the weight of death, you were scared - terrified. Perhaps it may have been much more bearable if you had only your own life to fear for, but you didn’t. You had eight other lives to worry about. Shelty, Hoseok, Namjoon, Jin, Yoongi, Taehyung, Jeongguk, and Jimin. Jimin.

You could feel a bitter-cold chill spread through your back, all the way to your feet as images of your dear friends in the same state as those people you had found earlier came to mind. Swallowing the lump in your throat you forcefully push away the image as far away as you could. Trying to forget the horrifying thought altogether, you shake your head clearing your mind, refocusing on the task at hand.

Breathing in a deep breath, then slowly exhaling, you steady yourself before moving on.

As carefully and as discreetly possible, you poke your head through the next door. And this room was in a similar condition as the first one. Tearing your eyes from the sight, you move on to the final door. However, the final room before the turn that continued onto a new corridor was without any traces of bloodshed. The room itself was old and worn down but bodies didn’t litter the floor or blood painted the walls.

Heaving out a breath you continue down to the end of the hallway before turning to the new corridor. And you could hear the muted booms of gunfire, though this time there were a lot fewer than before. And seeing as you were on the way to - what you were assuming - the only set staircase in the building, so there could only be one explanation to the reduced numbers of gunshots. People were dying. And you could only hope your friends were safe.  

Quietly, you unlatch the strap holding your tanfoglio witness in place, removing the gun from its holster, you point the nose of the gun towards the floor. Inhaling and exhaling deeply you stabilize any shaking or jittering. If you were going to use such a destructive weapon you couldn’t afford to make many mistakes.

Muzzle pointing downward, hands tightly clutching the grip, you move into the new hallway. Taking deliberate steps you stalk towards the first door in the hallway.  

Courtesy to the noise-canceling earbuds protecting your hearing you couldn’t hear much aside from muffled gunshots and muted shouting coming from the end of the long hallway. And because of those earbuds, you had almost missed the sounds of struggles coming from the first door.

Leaning against the wall along the door, you prepared yourself for whatever awaited you in that room. ‘What?’ Eyes the size of saucers, you watched motionlessly. The scene before you looked as though your nightmares had come to life.

Jimin, pinned to the wall by a tall, bulky man. Held to the wall by his throat, you couldn’t clearly see his face, but you could never mistake the silver platinum mop that was Jimin’s hair.  

“Why don’t you just die already!?” A cry so loud you could hear the hulking man with dark mocha brown hair through your earbuds.

“Jimin?” A faint whisper leaves your lips. The words are so soft that it goes completely unnoticed by the two men.

Seconds pass of you standing there, unmoved, mind blank as you thoughtlessly started. But then your body moves as if it knew what to do before you did. You don’t feel yourself moving however, as your eyes remained fixated on the figure before you, there was a gun held up in your peripheral vision. And it was your arms that held the gun. You don’t feel anything happen but you were leaning forward, arms ready to support the backlash of gunfire. For seconds the gun bounces with the rhythm of your breathing. Up and down and up and down, before slowly the movements steady and you finally regain control and feel of your body. And you know what you have to do.

‘Always aim for the center of the chest. Hitting something is better than nothing,’  You recall Yoongi’s words, reciting them like a prayer. ‘Once you have an aim, lock it. Watch your breathing...then,’

Breathing in through your nose, you click off the safety at the side of the gun, then holding the breath you took in its place before slowly letting it out, watching the minuscule movements that came with the action. Then at the trough of your breath, you squeeze the heavy trigger, bringing it all the way to its end.

BANG

Your solid stance efficiently absorbs the shock of the gunfire. Though the powerful blast of the gun ricochets throughout your body, adrenaline pumping through your veins, you feel your heart’s rapid thudding in your chest cavity.

Your eyelids flutter as you gather your bearings, readying yourself for another shot if there was the need. But as you watch red bloom across the white suit jacket the man wore, your shoulder slack, arms falling to once again point the mouth end of the gun to the ground.

Breaking into a fit of coughs, Jimin gasps for the oxygen his lungs had been deprived of. Taking in as much air as he could and too occupied with accommodating his body for the air it had been denied he had failed to notice just who exactly his savior was.

“Holy Fuck!” He chokes out as he uses the wall he was being held for support. “Ha, ha, Taehyung一 Have (Y/n) sent home,” Taking in another deep breath he continues. “Tell Hoseok to take her home. It’s too dangerous for her here,” He speaks, head down, steadying his breathing, he was still unaware of just who he was talking to.

“Jimin,” Your voice came much softer than you intended to, though it was enough to get the male’s attention. The silver-blond’s had snapped up to meet your quivering form.

“(Y/n)!” He exclaims, immediately walking over the corpse lying on the floor, swiftly pulling you into the room before poking his head out of the door, looking both ways. After determining the area was safe he turned on his heel to face you, his vice grip locked onto your wrist. “What are you doing here?! You shouldn’t be here!” Gently pushing you closer to the back he hisses.

“I told you to stay back didn’t I! What are you doing here? Where is Hoseok?” He releases a barrage of questions, but you stand there wordlessly, eyes tracing his visage. You had almost lost him, you had almost lost Jimin. If you hadn’t come up here, no one would have found him, you would have lost Jimin…  

The tears that were pooling your eyes earlier came crashing, cascading down your cheeks as a river of tears soon following the first few droplets, soft hiccups left your lips as you collapsed into Jimin’s arms, not caring the exterior of his suit and shirt were curated with dried blood. And pushing away the thought that you had just killed someone.

“(Y/n),” The don whispers softly, wrapping his own arms around your frame.

The tears slow once you feel Jimin’s comforting warmth surrounding you. Burying your head into the crook of his neck, you take in the scent of Jimin’s cologne as you felt the calm thudding of his heart and the soft rise and fall of his chest. It takes much longer than you had expected it would take to convince yourself that Jimin was indeed alive and breathing, that he was alright, and that he was with you.

“Yo, boss一oh,” You entirely ignore Taehyung’s voice as a ginger sigh leaves your lips, tightening your hold around the male, nuzzling further into Jimin’s familiar warmth. Though you feel Jimin’s head turns towards the owner of the nonchalant voice.

“What’s she doing here?” The chestnut-haired male asks the mafia boss, only to receive silence as an answer. “(Y/n), what are you doing here?” Taehyung questions you directly, and this time his voice was a deal gentler than what it had been before. Though again his question was only met with silence.

“Is the floor cleared?” Jimin looks at the male standing by the door.

“Uh一 yeah, we secured the building, and uh一 Ji-Eun Duri was freed. And well, everyone gathered back in the room we found Ji-Eun, you were the only one not there… so I went out to look for you,” The younger awkwardly explained. “I’ll just head back, you guys come whenever you’re ready,” Taehyung quickly adds before scampering away.

“(Y/n),” Sighing softly, Jimin speaks. “We need to go,”

“Okay,” You mumble as you reluctantly let go of the male. Jimin tenderly takes your hand into his as he leads you back into the hallway and to - what you assumed was the bigger room.

“(Y/n)! There you are! Oh my god! Never ever pull something like that again! Do you hear me?!” Hoseok’s voice booms in the room as he comes in barreling towards you, though his intentions to chastise you fizzle out as he takes in your dazed form, clinging to Jimin’s arm.

“I’m sorry Hoseok, I promise I won’t do that again,” Your eyes flutter open and close, a small smile curling on your lips as you are brought back from your disoriented state.

“You better not,” Hoseok adds, his eyes narrowing playfully.

“I won’t,” Chuckling, you return. Your quiet laugh smoothly eased the tension that had built on Jimin’s shoulders, his expression reflecting the release of tension as his scowl morphs into a fond smile.  

“So you actually found everything I left, huh?” Duri’s crows from her position on the single chair that sat at the center of the room.

“I guess I did,” You hum.

“Well, good job then,” She gives somewhat half-hearted praise.

“Hah, thanks,” You huff out a playful scoff.

“(Y/n),” Namjoon calls and you hum at the call of your name. “About the thing, you asked me to do before we left,”

With the progression of Namjoon’s words, your mind instantly sobers, now wide awake and fully aware of your surroundings and situation. ‘You can contemplate life choices after we get home. For now, focus,’

“Right,” You reply. “What happened?”

“It was exactly as you said,” The syrup-brown haired male speaks grimly. “There was an attack at the safe house Jiyoung and his family were being kept in. As well as an attack at the hospital Gu Joon’s sister was being treated in,”

“I see,” You mumble, bringing your index finger to rub the skin under your lower lip.

“Wait. Wait, What?” Taehyung arms flail in the air, his eyes wide as he questions you.

“Wait, we did make it in time, didn’t we?” Ignoring the chestnut-haired male, you continue the conversation.

“Thanks to your warning we did,” Namjoon says. “Jiyoung and his family were moved as soon as we left for this location. So was Gu Joon’s sister,”

“That's good,” You breathe a sigh of relief, it would have become quite problematic if anything were to happen to those people.

“Oh? So the little fox able to see past Yeong’s trick?” Duri's eyes narrow as a smile curves onto her lips, amusement dripping from her onyx orbs. ‘So she knew?’ You thought, examining her overly entertained expression.

“I certainly hope so,” Grumbling, you tug Jimin closer to you, more so than you already were. ‘The tansies!’ The words jumped in your mind as you talked to the female, almost as if triggered by the presence of the older woman.

“Tell me, Ji-Eun, do you like flowers? Or have any interest in them?” You ask, tentatively waiting for the charcoal-haired woman to answer.

“Flowers?” She parrots, her eyes narrowing quizzically.  

“Yes, flowers,” You affirm. “I didn’t really take you for someone who would be all too interested in flowers, but the flowers on your desk were really pretty and very well taken care of,”

“What flowers?” Duri questions, your eyes narrowing at the woman as a sly grin twisting onto her lips.  

“You know, the pretty yellow flowers that were on your desk,” You describe tansies without mentioning the flower by name.

“I don’t have any flowers on my desk,” She answers, head tilting back as she crosses her legs. With the sly smirk the woman wore one would assume she was lying, but this Ji-Eun you were talking about. This woman could never be as simple as that.

‘So it was the Yeongs after all,’ You watched as his expression grew ever more amused as the time passed. You may have not known her for longer than a single night, but anyone could tell, she was not a woman so easily interested. She was a cautious woman, you knew that much. It was not possible she would just let herself be kidnapped, for someone who's been in the business for as long as she has, she was taken without much of a fight. From all the experience she had, one would think she had precautions taken for such events.  

Though there may have been a few explanations, at the moment the most probable one was that she let herself be caught. She did this on purpose, but then, she also let herself be found. Why? Why would she let herself be caught then leave a way for people to find her? Though it was more of she was allowed to be found and yet. She had this whole elaborate plan for people to find her. ‘An elaborate plan?’ Your eyes widen as you register your own thoughts.

‘Of course!’ You had assumed that her whole iCloud rescue plan had been created in advance, a just-in-case precaution - seeing as she didn’t carry any trackers - so the iCloud tracking method was near perfect for this situation.

But that was precisely it, it was perfect for this situation. And that is why the method is so flawed - as a matter of fact - the iCloud tracking may have been the most flawed tracking method of all. For one, if the mobile phone had been switched off the computer wouldn’t have been able to track it. And what if her battery had run out? What if they had taken her farther and possibly out of the tracking radius? What if they had destroyed her phone? Or taken it? Like any serious kidnappers would. There were too many uncontrollable variables and not enough information. Simply put there were too many conditions to be met for the plan to work successfully.

And thus the conclusion, she knew she was getting kidnapped and that her kidnapping was nothing more than a distraction for something else. It was a distraction for the Yeongs to be able to regain control over their former operatives or possibly even revenge against them for betraying the Yeongs.

‘But was that really it?’ Revenge against the former members? Did the Yeongs even have the resources for something so petty? But then, why would someone smart enough to make a two prompt plan - infiltrating Bangtan’s ranks then using a ceasefire signing and attack to send Jiyoung into the fray - do something so brash and unnecessary as taking revenge when they had already suffered heavy losses.

“Unless,” too absorbed in your own thoughts, your mouth moves before your brain does.

“What?” Hoseok questions, unsure of what you were saying.

“Nothing, I was just thinking,” A sheepish grin curls onto your lips as you reassure the men around you. The redhead eyes you doubtfully, but drops the subject nonetheless. Sighing in relief, your drifts from the male to land on the awfully entertained expression dancing on Duri’s face, her onyx orbs taunting you as she watched you reach the somewhat guided conclusion.

The many puzzle pieces were coming together, the jigsaws were fitting into their places. Only for you to realize the puzzle you had just solved was nothing more than a piece in a larger whole.

“Right, so how about we postpone that meeting for another time and call it a day for today,” Soomin quips, a hand on her hip - she tries her best to maintain a blank expression, however, an exhausted scowl breaks through her usually well-crafted mask.

“We can hold the meeting five days from Wednesday,” Duri says, massaging her wrists as she stood from the chair she was most likely bound to. “I’ll send your right hand the exact date.”

Humming in acknowledgment, Jimin looks to the three core members present, a silent command lying in his gaze. Quickly recognizing the order the men swiftly move into action. Namjoon turns away, fishing out his cell-phone and calling god knows who; while Taehyung moves to talk to - who you were guessing - the many Bangtan operatives that were standing to the side. Hoseok on the other hand, entirely excuses himself from the group, jogging down the hallway you had come from - probably to get the car ready, though you weren’t too sure just what exactly he had planned to do as you had the keys to the car.

“Five days from Wednesday then,” Jimin bids the two women goodbye as he places a hand on your back, gently nudging you towards the same way you had entered form.

You weren’t sure just how long the whole ordeal had actually taken, but the sharp orange light that covered the grounds told you it was much longer than what you had may have felt.

The rest of the daylight passed in a blur as there was much to do. Many of Bangtan’s members were injured, few fatally so. Those who were gravely wounded were rushed to the gang’s official doctor, but most of the operatives only had minor injuries: cuts, scratches, bruises, easily treatable wounds. And though it wasn’t part of your original job description, your inner doctor wouldn’t let those injured go without cleaning and dressing their wounds.

That was where the rest of your day had gone. Cleaning and dressing wounds of the twenty or so operatives that had participated in the day’s rescue mission. However, with only you on the job, getting to everyone - quickly - would have been nearly impossible. Fortunately, Jin had joined you in your endeavors, putting the skills you had taught him to use. And going by the speed you were getting through people, it was almost as if two long term professionals were on the case. A pleasant surprise really, you had assumed Jin would fumble with the bandages of the first few patients - a sound assumption, seeing as Jin didn’t have official training before working with you - but you were proven very wrong as the older male swiftly and deftly handled the bandages, efficiently treating one patient after another. And thanks to that great efficiency, you were done with everyone long before the moon had reached its peak. Though, you couldn’t help but feel as if the day’s patients were used as exercise tools to improve the male’s skills.  

A soft chuckle left your lips as you stepped into the luxurious waterfall shower, where the shower head was attached to the ceiling. The controls of which were actually quite easy to operate; there was a knob for hot water and a knob for cold, the only problem was - they were both identical to each other… and the shower head was right over the controls as well. So you did the only thing any sane person would do, you turned both knobs to where you thought would be the right temperature, then ran like hell to the other corner of the shower space.

You sighed as the hot water soothed your tense muscles. Looking up, you let the water splash you face, and though the temperature of the water may have been a tad too hot for your face, that was the only thing you could do to distract yourself from the feeling in your chest, or rather the lack of feeling. The warm liquid cascaded down your body as you motionlessly stood under the falling water.

‘Who am I kidding?’ Brining a palm up to cover your eyes, before lowering it, you gaze falling onto the limb. This was the hand you used to pull the trigger, this was the hand you used to end a life. But it doesn’t shake, it doesn’t quiver, it doesn’t tremble now and didn’t tremble then. You remembered it, you remembered everything - vividly - like a film in HD.

How you held up the gun, how you aimed, how your body moved, everything. Though you also recall not feeling nothing.

No, that wasn’t true. That wasn’t true at all. You did feel it, you felt every bit of it. From raising the gun to pulling the trigger, you felt it all. Your body wasn’t moving on its own, it was you, you were the one in control, everything that happened was what you did. Then why did you think your body was moving of its own accord?

A question you were doing everything possible to avoid, a question you didn’t want to think about, a question you already knew the answer to. And you knew, part of the reason you insisted on treating the wounds of those injured was so you had something else to focus on, something to distract you, something you could use as an excuse to not think.

‘Maybe I am heartless,’ You thought as you used a fluffy white towel to dry your body, quickly slipping on a pair of penguin shorts and an oversized t-shirt, you shuffle out your door towards your last patient of the day.  

Softly knocking on the double doors, you wait for Jimin to allow you in. Though minutes passed not a sound came from the room. ‘Is Jimin not in?’

“I’m coming in,” You announce as you hesitantly twist the golden door handle, poking your head through the crack you had opened. And the sight that welcomed you, had to be one of your favorite scenes you had ever seen.

There he was - a ferocious mafia boss - sitting on his bed - running his fingers through the fur of Shelty’s fluffy head on his lap as he read to your seventy-pound puppy dog.

“Well hello, you two,” You playfully greet the pair as you take your usual route to the first-aid box.

“Hey,” Jimin returns, closing the book in his hand, he shifts farther into the bed, making room for you when you return.

“You didn’t come by earlier,” You mention, as Jimin - in fact - hadn’t shown up to the medical room for an injury check. And coincidentally enough happens to be the only one of the four that you had yet to examine. Granted, you did somewhat corner the other three into an examination.

“Were you injured?” You ask, easing your way back to the bed - tentatively sitting beside the male.

“No,” The silver-blond answers shortly.

“Don’t lie to me,” You huff

“I’m not,” Removing his shirt over his head, the boss pouts.

“Uh-huh,” Nodding in mock agreement, you eye the small cuts and scratches littering his forearm.

A peaceful silence falls as you wordlessly apply antibiotic ointment to the healing wound. And even though you had repeated this routine nearly every night since your arrival, skipping removing the bandages still leaves an odd discomfort. It felt as if you had missed a step when in reality it was just the night bandaging happened after Jimin’s before bed shower and the old bandages were removed before he would shower.

Gently wrapping the fresh, clean gauze around the boss’ shoulder your mind drifts as your hands move with practiced ease. The events of the morning felt almost as if it were part of the distant past, not something that occurred just hours ago. The kidnapping, Duri’s clues, her clues actually leading you to her, the tansies, the attack on the two former Yeong operatives, you little epiphany, you killing someone. So much happened in the span of fewer than twelve hours. Your movements slowed as your thoughts drowned your consciousness. A familiar melancholy settling in your chest once again.

“(Y/n),” Jimin’s voice is soft as he calls for your attention.

“Huh? what?” You snap from your thoughts with a heavy sigh as you look to the silver-blonde in question. “What’s wrong?” You ask.

“Nothing,” He pauses. “It’s just, you were spacing out,”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” You apologize, moving on to the smaller cuts and scratches. “It’s gonna sting, okay?” Softly, you warn the male, bringing an alcohol pad to his forearm. For minor injuries, you used band-aids to cover them up.  

You fall into another silence as you individually place each band-aid on each scratch. While reflecting on the events of the day, you fail to notice the stiffness of this silence. It was unlike when you enjoyed the silence and simply basked in each other's presence. This was a familiar silence, a silence that had fallen once before. And Jimin was quick to recognize.

“(Y/n),” He mumbles, gently taking your hand into his then pulling you into him. “I never really thanked you for saving me, did I?” He whispers, rubbing soothing circles on the small of your back.

“Thank you, (Y/n),” The silver-blond murmurs in your ear, placing a chaste kiss on your temple.

“Jimin,” You mutter into his bare chest, turning your body to comfortably rest against the male. “It’s happening again.”

“(Y/n), you did what you had to do,” The hold around your body tightens as he speaks.

“I felt nothing, I feel nothing. Even as I pulled that trigger there was nothing. All I knew was I had to do it, but there was no reluctance, no hesitance, I wasn’t scared,” You barely make out as your throat constricts, eyes prickling with tears that threaten to fall at any given moment. A hollowing feeling burning in your ribcage.

“But that’s exactly what scares me,” You lift yourself from his chest just enough to meet Jimin’s honey-brown orbs. “It scares me I could kill someone so easily, then move on even easier,” Your tear ducts run loose as droplets of salty liquid freefall down your cheeks.  

“Once I even thought my body was moving on its own,” You scoff at your own miserable excuses. “But it wasn’t, it was me. I was moving my body - I raised the gun - I pulled the trigger, I killed the man.” Your voice comes out much stabler than you had expected.

“You know, I think the only reason I thought my body was moving on its own was that I was trying to justify my feelings. I was trying to justify not feeling anything as I killed a man.” Your voice elevated as you spoke, getting louder and louder as the sentence went on.

“Who does that?!” You exclaim, hand moving wildly, exaggerating your words. Jimin opens his mouth to speak, but you cut him off - continuing on your tangent.

“And I know I said that I would take things as they came, but I killed someone. I ended a life with my own two hands. I should feel something shouldn’t I?! Remorse? Pain? Guilt? Something? Anything? But I don’t. And that’s terrifying, but maybe even that maybe I’m just tricking myself into thinking I’m scared, maybe I’m not even scared!” Your voice rises as your words bumble together into barely coherent blubbers.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright, it’s okay, you’re okay,” He shushes you, pulling you back into his embrace, tenderly running his fingers through your locks. The feeling of his digits combing through your hair instantly soothing you.

“It’s alright, there is nothing to justify,” He speaks slowly, calmly. “You did what you had to do to protect your own,”  

“That’s not it! I killed someone just hours ago and I just moved on like it was nothing!” You try to convey your thoughts, but your thoughts were getting louder and muddling as time went on.

“(Y/n),” Jimin murmurs.

“Just what kind of monster am I,” You rest your forehead against Jimin’s bare chest, all your bravado draining from your body as tears continue to run down your flushed cheeks.  

“(Y/n),” All he could do was try his best to comfort you and hope you snap out of your current mindset. Jimin wasn’t all too sure how to react when you reprimanded yourself for something those in the mafia community were trained and schooled to do. The first kill is never light, most aren’t even able to pull the trigger, while some retch their guts out once they do. He had been carefully observing your behavior and temperament from the moment he realized you had just had your first kill. He was prepared for you to hurl your guts out the moment you saw the dead body, or even later, thinking it may have been a delayed reaction. And yet there was nothing, especially after you had regrouped with everyone else. He could see you were distracted, but quickly regained composure then almost instantly returned to your work. As you were standing, he could practically see the wheels in your head-turning. And if there were ever a ranking or a test for newcomers, you would have passed with flying colors. Yet you couldn’t see how useful and quite honestly necessary abilities you had.  

Eventually, as it was made clear you would be spending the night in Jimin’s room - he fully pulled onto his lap. Continuing to rub circles on your back as you cried.

“I don’t know what to do,” After what felt like hours of bawling your eyes out, a quiet whimper left your lips as the exhaustion of the day and the crying hit you like a freight train.

“Just keep going as you are and you’ll be fine,” Jimin whispers next to your ear, his warm breath against your skin sending goosebumps down your spine.

“Whas that supposed to mean?” A muted whine resounds in your chest at the feeling, you bury your head into Jimin’s neck, nuzzling into his skin as you basked in his warmth. The strong pull of sleep swamped you as the pleasant heat of Jimin’s body and his comforting touch ease you into sleep’s embrace. And at that moment, it was just a tad too tempting to resist.

“Goodnight (Y/n),”

◇─◇──◇─────◇──◇─◇

A quick taglist! 

I saw your message and I felt like I should lol hope you don’t mind. Thank you for reading! Lots of love! 💜

@crookedstarlitnight​

Comment or send in an ask if you would like to be tagged too!

[talesmaniac89]

Choices - You Chose Sam

New to Choices? Start Here

Pairing: Sam x Reader

Summary: Choices is an interactive Supernatural choose your own adventure story where your choices determine the outcome and whether it’s a Dean x Reader or Sam x Reader. Go to the intro to start your story now!

Triggers: None really, some mention of Sam questioning his self-worth.

Choice:  [You chose Sam Winchester]

Y/N = Your Name

—

“Right… So, to make sure we’re ready…” Sam said, ignoring the annoyed glare from his older brother as he turned the music down to run through the plan again. As always, the youngest Winchester wanted to make sure you were all prepared. That the plan was bulletproof, and no one could get hurt. 

When you were dealing with not just one, but two witches, that just became all that much more important. Since one spell or hex bag was all it took, and any one of you could end up hurt. Bullets couldn’t tear through words, only cut them off at the source. Possibly a second too late.

According to the briefing, the two witches had moved into the farmhouse not too long ago. The two victims had been connected to the property, and the unfortunate recipients of hex bags. Though, if you knew witches and their opportunistic little hearts, they weren’t done. Sure, the closest town was just a sleepy little thing. But there were quite a few wealthy families with long histories that they could possibly be aiming for, to increase their own bankroll.

“The two witches work as a pair. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be right next to each other in the farmhouse,” Sam continued, a hand absentmindedly going up to brush the hair out of hazel eyes as he reread the information sent to you via text. The small innocent movement easily making your breath stick in your throat as you watched him. 

The big hand that brushed soft brown hair out of eyes the colour of sunlight through a glass of whiskey always made your whole world tilt. Your body heating up at the thought of how they would feel on your skin, clasped at the back of your neck as he drew you in for a kiss, running down…. 

Down girl! Focus!

Shaking the thoughts away you put on your most innocent expression as you focused on the younger hunter’s words instead of on his lips, or jaw or… Damn it. You were a lost cause when it came to Sam. Every soft smile and warm worried eyes had your heart performing Olympic level acrobatic routines in your chest. 

“So, our best bet is going to be to split up. Dean one way, me the other, and…” Sam’s words brought you out of your own dirty mind for long enough to catch the hunter’s attempt at benching you from the hunt. His hazel eyes glancing up at you in the rear-view mirror warm and soft with hesitant worry.

“I’m going in too Sam,” You sighed, unwilling to let him finish whatever grunt work he was planning on assigning you to keep you out of harm's way. Though you were in love with the man, you didn’t just want him to be some romance novel knight in flannel that swept in and rescued you from all the drama. You were a hunter, not a damsel in distress.

Sure, you had to admit that you found the Greek god of a man sinfully sexy. And yeah, the thought of having him sweep you up into his strong arms did unspeakably dirty things to your mind... But that wasn’t why you’d fallen in love with him. 

What attracted you to him was his careful strength, the comfort of absolute safety you felt when you were fighting side by side with him, knowing he’d have your back. You’d fallen in love with the intelligent man whose eyes shone with unfettered empathy. The kind man, whose strength was mirrored in his continued compassion, even as the world tried to break him of it. With the fighter who didn’t just give up when faced with the loss he feared more than anything else, he kept fighting, for that small hope he still harboured. 

It was the man, Sam Winchester, you loved. And no, you didn’t just want to be protected. You wanted to be his partner. To have his back and as he had yours. Make the world a better place, together. To help him save lives. So that he could one day look back and see all the people who had his back, who didn’t abandon him, and finally understand that he was worthy of love. 

“Someone should watch…” Sam tried again, sunshine eyes clouded with unspoken twisted futures where you left the Winchesters, through death or curses. The same worry that always stained his eyes whenever you demanded to be included in the plans. When you stood your ground, refusing to tip the hand in the monsters’ favour by sitting it out and possibly causing Sam to end up the one hurt. Making him the one leaving you behind. 

“I’m not sitting this one out Sam. Three against two’s a hell of a lot better than fifty-fifty when we’re fighting witches,” You shot in, interrupting his weak attempt at changing your mind. You were just as unwilling to see him hurt as he was to see you, or anyone, hurt. There was no way in hell you’d sit back and watch him walk towards a door that could possibly be hiding his future tormentors. Be it temporary or final. 

You loved him too much to let him bear all those burdens himself.

“Yeah, ok… But, you’ll be with me then,” Sam hesitated before answering as his eyes went from yours in the rear-view mirror and back to the phone. Clearly trying, and failing, to find some loophole in your reasoning. Even Sam, with his tendency to act like a sacrifice whenever someone tried to hurt those he cared for, couldn’t find a way around the facts. Three against two was safer. 

Especially when dealing with hex bags, spells and the cowardly scheming you’d have to expect from the two witches.

“Ok, so do we know anything else about them? Are they both inexperienced or..?” You asked, happy he’d dropped the multiple attempts to shield you like some damsel in distress.  And doubly happy since you’d be right there by his side. Ready to watch his back and keep both the hunter, and the heart you’d secretly given him, safe. 

“That’s the bad news. They’ve both apparently been in this business for a long, long time,” Sam’s brow furrowed, his head falling forward a little as he read the information on the phone screen again. 

“Well then Sammy. We’ll just have to scope out the place and decide on the best plan of action,” Dean spoke up, sending you a knowing grin through the rear-view mirror. The type only a best friend could have. Before he revved the engine of the Impala and sped down the old country roads. 

Reaching out with a pointed stare at Sam, the older Winchester easily turned up the music again as your eyes met Sam’s in the rear-view mirror. Giving him your most comforting smile, you nodded, determined. You’d kick some witch ass, burn some spell books, and you’d all be on your way back home in no time. 

Together. With no man left behind. No one abandoned.

--- 

“Nice place they’ve got here...” 

The words left you as you eyed the farmhouse with wide eyes. When you heard the boys call it that you’d pictured something out of The Hills Have Eyes. Dilapidated and falling apart, maybe with some rusty trucks littering the lawn to complete the aesthetic. Not a freaking mansion! 

Looking from the house to the two hunters you couldn’t help the little confused stutter that left you. Gesturing towards the house that was only barely visible through the trees where you’d parked the car.

“They have a swimming pool! A fucking pool! We’re the good guys right? Where’s my mansion,” You groaned as you waved at the house again, watching Dean’s shoulders shake in barely contained laughter as you frowned in obvious envy. 

“It’s not theirs (Y/N). Don’t forget, witches don’t exactly do things the right way,” Sam chuckled with a warm soft smile. Your little overreaction smoothing out some of the worry lines on his forehead and soothing the trepidation in his eyes. Being able to make him smile was always been your favourite thing in the whole world. At least it had been for as long as you’d known the youngest Winchester. 

Giving the farmhou… Fucking villa, one last envious look, you followed the boys to the back of the Impala. The earlier laughter completely dying down as soon as Dean popped the boot open and started handing you your weapons. It might only be two witches. But you were sure to make yourself a walking, talking arsenal. Carefully packing extra bullets and blades in every available pocket. As you busied yourself by filling the chamber of your revolver with the witch killing bullets, your eyes strayed back to Sam. 

Instead of focusing on the task at hand, his eyes were on the farmhouse in the distance. A strange mix of longing and worry painting his eyes a darker colour as he saw what a house, a home, should look like. Albeit a bit on the grander scale. 

Your hands trembled as you forced the last bullet into the chamber of the gun. Physically flinching from pain as the recognition hit you. Though it was bigger than normal, that farmhouse was a visual reminder of what Sam Winchester didn’t have. 

Sure, you had the Men of Letters bunker. But it was both a base of operations and sometimes also a prison. The dark rooms were walls closing in on you, shutting out the light and the world that kept hurdling forward without you. It was a necessity, no matter how much you were trying to make it a home. Something open like that mansion… Hell, that was just asking for trouble. 

Yet, to Sam, the perfectly manicured lawns and the beautifully bright house was like something out of a fairy tale. One with only happy endings and no monsters hiding in the shadows. A dream where no one ever left him, no one thought he was useless, no one died. A safe space where he could smile and relax, where he didn’t have to be perfect all the time. 

Watching him stand there, gazing at the house, you could tell he was imagining a different kind of life. A safer life. Though you knew he’d never give up on the hunt. Not if it meant other people would lose their loved ones. Because Sam knew loss. Better than anyone else you’d ever met. 

Sam was moulded by loss, shaped by it. His softness slowly but surely sharpened, as wave after wave of pain, lost friends and turned backs walking away from him, crashed into his life and destroyed the mountain fortress he had tried to build around his heart. Until the walls crumbled, leaving just the man, afraid and alone, clinging onto the last of his humanity to keep from falling into the dark waves below. 

Loss for Sam was more than just heartbreak. He seemed to believe his soul, the thing that made him human, was only surviving due to the humanity of those around him. That, if the last of the people close to him abandoned him, he would somehow fall, and become a monster. Become less than human and once more lose his soul.

But you saw the truth. Sam was human and he was beautiful for it. Yes, the memories of past loss lingered, and they cast shadows across the warm bright light in your life that was Sam Winchester. Still, they also made the good moments shine brighter. A spotlight in the shadows illuminating that there was still good in the world.

Warm smiles and hesitant sunshine eyes. That was the Sam you’d fallen in love with. 

“Hey...” Your voice was soft and low as you slid up silently next to him to look at the house. Yet, he still jumped slightly as he tore his eyes off the mansion that was playing the part of picket fences and pies cooling on windowsills in his mind. 

“(Y/N), I’m…” Sam sounded guilty and worried as he tried to get what you guessed was an apology out. Guilty for his temporary daydream, and worried you’d blame him for it. That more people would abandon him if he was anything less than 100% perfect. 

“You know, I bet cleaning that place is hell. The electricity bill has to be through the roof. And swimming pools are overrated, I prefer lakes any day,” You said, keeping your voice light as you spoke over his attempted, and unnecessary, apology. Allowing yourself a small hidden smile when the man you love rewarded your efforts with a soft laugh. 

“And it probably has a ton of freakish art,” Sam said backing you up, grateful eyes crinkling in a smile as he glanced down at you. 

“Clown art,” You said with a teasing gasp. Suppressing the laughter that threatened to inform the witches of your approach as Sam shuddered. 

“Shut up (Y/L/N),” Sam groaned, a big hand going up to run through his hair, as if he was combing the last of the repulsed shivers out of it. 

“Yeah, yeah Winchester. Go get your weapons, we’ve got some witches to hunt,” You grinned back, bumping your shoulder into the big guy, though you barely even moved him. 

---

“You don’t have to…”

“Yes, I do Sam,” You sighed, unwilling to go through the same song and dance again as you closed in on the house. Your plan had been revised to fit the size of the place. Which meant you’d all have to split up and go your separate ways in an effort to get a jump on them. 

These witches were tricky. They weren’t going to risk a straight up fight with the Winchesters. They’d either run or try to get the jump on you if you gave them any opportunity. So, there was no way you could leave any of the main three entrances untouched. You were only three people however, so the three main doors would have to do. You couldn’t cover everything. 

You weren’t exactly going in blind. But it wasn’t the airtight plan you’d have wanted it to be either. Especially now that you had to split up from Sam and try to find him again inside the damned country singer’s wet dream of a farmhouse/mansion. All while also keeping an eye out for any nouveau witch that would attempt to get the drop on you. 

Fun. 

But you were hunters. You had a plan. Or at least an entry strategy. Plus, you had enough witch killing bullets to take down half the cast of Harry Potter if they tried to magic you away. 

Dean would go through the screen door by the pool. Your best friend, the man who constantly acted like the world’s shield and sword, taking the most likely exit route by the witches. And also, the most likely gathering point; since you’d spied the living room there on your way down from the Impala.  

So now it was up to Sam and you to decide who went in the front versus who would sneak in around the back. Though, as the youngest Winchester seemed too busy trying to talk you out of it. The choice was up to you. 

Weighing your two options you looked up at the man you loved. Worry sinking in now that you knew you wouldn’t be there to watch his back. Not until you met back up with him inside the house. 

Yet, you knew you’d find him. 

The mansion could be a freaking labyrinth, and you’d still find him. You, (Y/N) (Y/L/N) would never abandon Sam Winchester. Even if the world turned against the two brothers and you, you were there to stay. 

“Alright, then…” You sighed, steeling yourself as you rechecked the chamber of your revolver and made sure every weapon was tightly packed against your body. It was time to go hunt yourself some witches.

—

Make your choice below to move the story along:

Which way do you go?

[Go through the front door] or [Sneak around back]

—

Confused or New to Choices? Start Here Choices is an interactive Supernatural choose your own adventure story where you pick your Winchester brother and go on a hunt for one of 8 different endings in total. Four for Sam and four for Dean (2 happy and 2 bad endings per brother). Go to the intro to start your story!

—

[latealzalost]

Hey I've been in a bit of an Orre craze again and thus am replaying Colosseum and XD. Dumb question though.. what are your thoughts on Michael and Jovi's father? I kinda had a headcanon recently that maybe he is the younger brother of Ardos and Eldes, thus lending to the protag and his sister having similar hair colors to Greevil's sons. And given that the dad is deceased and was the one who spearheaded the purify chamber project before Krane took over.. you get the idea--

Ahhh it is nice to see more fellow fans replay the Orre games ^^

That is a neat headcanon for Michael and Jovi’s father. The theme of red and blue siblings is prevalent in XD with Ardos and Eldes, Razell and Dazell, and Michael and Jovi. With more siblings not remotely obvious but implied in certain pairs of peons and Lovrina with Naps. A secret third brother for Ardos and Eldes would be a neat hc and background for Michael and Jovi’s father.

My thoughts: I believe that the original director of the HQ Lab, M&J’s father, was most certainly once part of Cipher along with Professor Krane and possibly more of the HQ Lab staff. My thoughts for reasoning come from three subjects of observation.

1. Cipher never made a Snag Machine in the five years in between Colosseum and XD because they lost the inventor who knew how to make them. Michael’s father and Krane founded the HQ Lab immediately after the events of Colosseum. Despite being Cipher’s technology, the Snag System was rebuilt with the purpose of snagging only Shadow Pokemon. How did they know how to do that? Michael’s father must have defected from Cipher with his science team.

2. Prof. Krane’s Purification knowledge was secret, yet Cipher came for him anyway as if they already knew him. But Cipher most certainly were not aware of the Purify Chamber Krane was working on with Michael’s father and mother all this time. If Cipher had prior knowledge of Krane, then he must have been once part of Cipher’s R&D team on Purification with Ein while Michael’s father was also working on creating Snag Machines for Cipher’s allies in Team Snagem.

Notice how even the large bulky Snag Machines are left handed...

3. The concept of the Purify Chamber is likely inspired by the process of creating Shadow Pokemon. It was never clear just how Shadow Pokemon were made in either game. But I believe that the source of the process comes from underground from this purple mineral that you see transported in the Cipher Key Lair’s conveyor belts and glowing inside these large machines. If you were to imagine a “Corrupt Chamber” where normal Pokemon are inserted and retrieved as Shadow Pokemon, then the Purify Chamber would be Professor Krane’s reverse engineered Corrupt Chamber where Shadow Pokemon go in and come out Purified from the good vibes from the musical sets inside.

I definitely think most of the HQ Lab’s founders were once part of Cipher. How they could assemble a lab free from any evil syndicate’s control in Orre and it’s aesthetic calls into question. Cipher defectors may as well have been lead by Michael’s father for being apparently a good battler as well as the inventor and scientist he was.

Of course, they probably owe their moment to escape Cipher to when Wes shattered Cipher’s hold of Orre at the Realgam Tower that day. And nobody in the HQ Lab would ever like to admit the part they played in contributing to the Shadow Pokemon incident and putting Cipher into a position of so much power in the first place. Prof. Krane holds on to his secrets, but he has had time to try to convince more to his cause should the situation ever arise, being the former Cipher operative he was.

I have had a lot of time to determine who Michael’s father and Prof. Krane were during Colosseum. This is my theory for who I think the father and Krane were. Two scientists who escaped from Cipher, founded their HQ Lab to create a future safeguard against another Shadow Pokemon crisis they predicted would happen again, and eventually redeemed themselves for the part they played in empowering Cipher in Colosseum. The secret ending to XD, I believe, holds a deeper emotional meaning for Michael who redeemed his father and grew past the challenge of coping with the loss of his father.

“Every story has its end.”

And there you have it. Michael and Jovi’s father is one of the greatest mysteries of the Orre Region. I appreciate all the characters there is and I appreciate Michael for the hidden struggle he had for being just a child with the Eevee his father passed on as his first Pokemon.

I may have dumped too much but I hope you appreciate this passionate answer ^^;

Hope you enjoy your replaythroughs ^^

[storytellersys]

Operation Alarm Clock

Hornet here. Upon realizing that, in theory, we could access any location and time within Hallownest’s history—so long as we didn’t visibly fuck up the timeline so events that needed to happen—I immediately pushed for saving my mom. Long post, the rest is under the cut.

(One of my moms, anyway, Spidermom. Although saving Beemom might also be very possible with some well-placed illusion magic... and she might not be the only one. This needs more thought later but if I’m right, we might be making Ze’mer very, very happy.) 

Of course, we still had to get a portal working. Our current ones are bright pink and can only be maintained by someone currently within the headspace, and we’ve got a room above our “control room” (think a basement room with a big couch, a TV screen showing whatever the current fronter is looking at, and a tiny lightbulb with a chain up top to complete the aesthetic) that we’ve designated our “portal room” just to keep things out of the way.

(We’ll actually try to make up a floor plan/description of what our headspace is like at some point. But if I do that now, I’m never going to write this out.)

...hold that thought, kitten just got up onto a shelf I didn’t think she could get to. Really should have known better. I’m, collectively, about 1/5 of her mom. She learned from the best.

Okay, kitten has been somewhat dissuaded for now, where was I?

Right. Portals. By the time we got one properly working to Hallownest, Pyrrha had already showed up in the middle of the night and had somewhat adjusted to Life in the System. I think our first attempts were directed to Tamriel, and Ayrenn’ll give more details on her shenanigans there at some point.

Eventually, though? We got to Hallownest. Specifically, we wanted to portal to Monomon, some time before the Dreamers were sealed away, because I knew she had been instrumental in crafting the sealing spell, and if anyone could A) make it so that the Dreamers didn’t just instantly die when their seal was broken and B) slip it past a certain bastard bug of a king, it would be Monomon.

Contacting Monomon, however, had its own problems. Specifically, that we couldn’t let her know too much about the future (though we knew better than to think she wouldn’t figure some shit out on her own) and that we’d need something to offer her.

Figuring out what to offer Monomon was easy. Simply by virtue of being a system in this world, where metric fucktons of other worlds are seen as fictional, we could offer her information on absolutely anything this world has to offer. Also, preventing her own death is always a good incentive.

The other issue was how much she could know. I’m still our only bug (barring Holly, and they started visiting after this operation’s conclusion) so unless we really wanted to try disguising someone else, I was the one who had to reach out. I knew better than to think she wouldn’t figure out who I was sooner or later, and given some of the things she got up to in her Archives without anyone knowing until after she was gone, she could clearly lie well.

We settled on answering her questions if she asked them, but making it abundantly clear that absolutely no one could know any of this. And so, we opened our first portal to Hallownest, and I stepped into a side room of the Teacher’s Archives. Tubes upon tubes of acid adorned the room, all undoubtedly holding valuable information. In the middle, with her back to me, was Monomon herself. Very much alive, and very much not asleep.

I admit I may have given her a bit of a scare to start off. I will not apologize for that because it was funny as hell.

Our plan was to tell her what she needed to know (specifically: what we could do, what she needed to do, and what we could offer her in return) and offer more if she asked, after we (I) made it abundantly clear that this was not to be shared with anyone, and especially not PK. 

She figured out almost immediately who I was, because I apparently act a lot like Spidermom (shocker) and Monomon knew what Spidermom had asked for in return for being a Dreamer. Seeing me all grown up made it clear that I was a time traveler as well. Technically speaking.

I only got about twenty minutes there, compared to an hour here. Time in my version of Hallownest goes one hour for every three hours in this world (which was an unwelcome surprise when compared with the three hours in Ayrenn’s Tamriel for every one hour in this world) but I did manage to get her curious enough to hear me out. We did some more experimentation to make sure Hallownest’s end of things would work out, I unintentionally gained a fourth mom (thanks Monomom), and finally we hit upon our master plan.

We would bring Monomon over first of the Dreamers, because she already knew what was going on and certainly wasn’t averse to spending some time in our headspace while we figured other shit out. Specifically, we’d aim for right after Ghost whacked them several times with their nail, but before Ghost woke up.

You see, Monomom modified the spell so that it wouldn’t just kill the Dreamers upon the Seals breaking, it would just wake them up... possibly not immediately, so we were prepared to grab and yeet bugs into headspace if necessary. (Monomom was quite certain that Lurien would be the easiest yeet. She was eventually correct.)

(Monomom also shared some rather disturbing things involving PK that even I didn’t know, such as that she attempted to rescue some of the vessels stuck in the Abyss and may have actually been responsible for Ghost’s eventual escape, and that PK had been oddly insistent on making sure that the sealing spell did not allow for any possibility of the Dreamers’ survival, should it be broken. More reasons to hate my shitty, shitty dad. More reasons to appreciate R’s.)

After some incidents including but not limited to me nearly walking right into past PK, and quite a lot of testing to make sure it would work (or be as sure as we could,) it was finally time. We opened a portal to the exact moment Ghost broke the seal. Pyrrha used her semblance to yeet a maybe half-awake Monomon through the portal, I threw a letter Monomon had previously written at Quirrel as well as a headspace-made device we’ve rather imaginatively dubbed a notification stick, and we bounced.

(In retrospect, that was why Quirrel was still around in my memories. He knew Monomon was coming back, and he knew not to let anything on to my past self. His job was one of the most important: to press the button on the notification stick about a day after past Hornet left for Silksong adventures so we’d know when to drop the Dreamers back off.)

Monomon was in here for about a day, and fronted for a little over an hour. She had a great time, I’m pretty sure, though she’s yet to return or front again. I assume because she’s pretty busy, which is understandable and also a big fucking mood.

With Monomon a resounding success, next on the list was Spidermom, Herrah the Beast. She was a bit more difficult, given that I had to actually talk to my past self.

It worked out, well enough. Barring the fact that I had no memory of that conversation from the other side, but we can attribute that to system weirdness.

We grabbed Lurien shortly after, and then opened up one final portal. Previously, we’d been using our notification sticks merely as signals that we should head over to x world as soon as possible. What we homed in on, however, was the action of Quirrel heading outside Dirtmouth, and pressing the button.

After that, it was out of our hands. But I’m told Lurien gathered some things from his spire and moved into Dirtmouth, Spidermom is working on rebuilding Deepnest now that the Infection is gone, and Monomom is, unsurprisingly, experimenting away in Fog Canyon.

This mission was a resounding success. (And this is honestly the abridged version of it, but it proved that we could in fact fix some things in any of our worlds.)

Hornet out.

[annafm]

(MEDALION RAHIMI, NONBINARY) - Have you seen ANNABEL MAJIDI? ANNA is in HER/THEIR JUNIOR year. The LITERATURE + INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM MAJOR is 22 years old & is a SCORPIO. People say SHE/THEY are DILIGENT, ADROIT, CYNICAL and AUSTERE. Rumors say they’re a member of WINTHROP. I heard from the gossip blog that THEY ARE FAKING BEING A PSYCHIC. (JAMES. 21. EST. THEY/THEM.)

hllo this is anna i hvnt .. played her in a while <3 bt thts okay i think she is very fun 2 play bt like in the way tht she is <3 serious n mean a bit ... bt its okay .. LHKDSGFHLKSDHLKG im sorry this is long this is. an old intro i hvnt rly changed much >.>

CAR ACCIDENT, INJURY TW

aesthetic.

falling feathers darkened at the tips, tweed and pinstripes, red trenchcoats and plaid skirts, worn ballet shoes covered in dust, smudged eyeliner and unruly hair, boxing gloves, ornate canes and pain medication, bandaged hands, classical music floating throughout an empty ballroom, worn jackets and awkwardly cut t-shirts, spilled ink and stained hands, glasses skewed, sneers and jabs, constant fighting, smog in a city, spotlights and encores, piles of books and a long line, backless dresses and sitting alone at a bar, wariness.

basic.

full name: annabel odeda majidi

nickname(s): anna, annie (father only), anna-banana (father only)

b.o.d. - october 31st, 1997

label(s): the catalyst, the charlatan, the minefield, etc.

height: 5′6″

hometown: nyc, ny

sexuality: bisexual

pinterest

stats

favorite song: you’re dead, norma tanega / now, your hope and compassion is gone / you’ve sold out your dream to the world / stay dead, stay dead, stay dead / you’re dead and outta this world

background.

born to two high schoolers who never married, firoj majidi and parvana banai. they were head over heels for each other - when firoj graduated he took up two jobs alongside community college to support their family, until parvana graduated and took on the arts.

growing up was tough - living in the city wasn’t cheap, parvana’s art rarely sold and the two often went without eating in order to provide for annabel. as a child she’d often wear hand-me-downs from extended family.

was taught to be a hard worker and it was reflected in her schoolwork - anna excelled in all her classes but especially english. her love for writing grew at a young age, and as a child she saved up enough money to buy herself proper journals.

the only thing that she grew more passionate towards than writing was ballet - she caught the image of girls flying through the air and landing on their toes in the window of a dance studio on a walk home from school one day and that was it - something clicked inside of her.

that same day she would spend hours prancing about their tiny apartment, trying to mimic what she’d seen. it was easy to spot the passion anna had for the dance - and within a few months they had saved up enough money for a month’s worth of lessons.

anna was ecstatic - her slippers were old and found in the back of a thrift store by an odd miracle, but she put her all into the lessons regardless. she was quick to pick up on each move, and by the end of the month it was clear that anna had a natural talent.

parvana picked up a job in order for them to keep affording the lessons, month after month - they weighed down on their pockets, but it kept anna happy.

flash forward a few years - life was good. money was still a struggle but they were tight knit.

or rather, anna thought they were tight knit.

firoj and parvana split up when anna was twelve - an event that rocked the young girl’s world, something that she couldn’t understand. they had kept up a front of love when anna was home from school or ballet - but behind doors, they had been growing apart.

anna viewed their separation as parvana running off with another man - an art collector who had a fascination with paravana’s paintings. she viewed this as the end of the world. she viewed this as the death of love.

when anna was twelve, she swore she would never fall in love - refused to believe in its existence. she couldn’t wrap her mind around the simple separation.

her father got a third job in order to keep up with payments, and anna pushed herself in both ballet and school - not being able to handle an empty apartment. she decided to get a job - to help ease her father, but was too young.

so anna decided to do what any average 12 year old would do. she started scamming people.

she’d sell store-bought lemonade as if it were homemade, stole ceramics from art class and sold them to neighbors. she found an old girl scouts uniform in the back of a goodwill and for the next month, she sold knock-off girl scout cookies from the dollar store - going door to door.

her personality had changed drastically - anna went from a sweet, optimistic girl with warm brown eyes and an infectious laugh to cold, calculated, and downright cruel. she knew what she wanted and how to get it.

she got an invitation to a prestigious private school, full scholarship, before she hit high school - originally wanted to reject it as the thought of being surrounded by new york’s richest teens was appalling, but their ballet program was a one-way ticket into the american ballet theatre. anna ultimately accepted the scholarship.

high school was immediately hell for her - pretentious rich kids who all shared a collective brain cell and her secondhand uniform being a prime target for them.

ballet got extremely competitive - anna was a threat to every dancer in their program, bullying and sabotage became standard - but anna retaliated when possible.

this all, however, suddenly stopped when anna picked up her latest scam: faking psychic. through a small network of ‘bees’ she’d pay to gather information (gossip, rumors, etc. etc.) she was able to accurately ~see~ into students’ past, present, and potentially future affairs. the money was very worth it.

from that point forward, people were intimidated by her.

when anna was 16 she was handpicked to join the american ballet theatre’s studio company, alongside 11 other lucky individuals. her dream from that point forward was to become the youngest principal ballerina for abt - and she was going to start by winning over the role of clara in their production of the nutcracker.

she was 17 when she was chosen, much to the dismay of the other girls. she had momentarily quit her ‘psychic’ business in order to dedicate the entirety of her time towards rehearsals & practice.

the final week before her first performance as clara, anna got into a car accident heading home after another tiresome rehearsal. knocked unconscious, anna woke up three days later with no recollection of the accident - and her leg freshly operated on.

it was a devastating event that should had killed her - maybe she would had been better off if it had - but instead, it had effectively destroyed any chances of her dancing professionally.

it took two months of extensive physical therapy for anna to walk again - now relying heavily on a cane.

with ptsd and depression weighing heavily on her shoulders, anna turned back to writing - mostly as a coping mechanism, but it soon became the fierce passion it once was when she was younger.

for the remainder of her high school life, anna dedicated the majority of her time towards recovery, her writing, and directing her school’s theatre productions. oh - and claiming that almost dying had given her the gift of mediumship. it wasn’t too far off from her psychic claims - her peers believed it well enough to either stay away, or pay her for a small amount of comfort.

decided to attend yates for their reputation despite her hatred for pretentious schools (very ironic because she herself is pretentious) & also. she had a scholarship <3 so. 

in the midst of writing her first book that’s based heavily on her experiences as a low income student at a private school but like. she’s side-eying all these societies and seeing a Big Money Grab if she were to. write abt them instead

still can’t dance any longer, but she works as a ballet assistant for one of the dance instructors & still tends to barge her way into theatre rehearsals to <3 give her unwarranted opinion

personality & facts.

she’s not the friendliest person. knows what she wants and how to get it, and will not hesitate to use people or push them out of her way in order to achieve her goals.

her cutthroat nature was the reason for her success in academics and dance - tends to intimidate the students in the ballet classes she helps out in.

horribly stubborn - if she’s got an idea of you already in her mind, then it’s hard to convince her otherwise.

still uses a cane - in fact, she can’t really walk without it - unless she wants to be in pain.

it’s sturdy, ornate, and pretty fucking solid. doubles as a weapon if need be - has definitely … hit people with it before, though she’s calmed down now that she’s a little older.

used to be very angry, very defensive as a teenager - is still the same, just … less intense. will not hesitate to speak her mind and let her opinions known - especially in the face of injustice.

doesn’t really have the best … relationship with authority, mainly because of where she was raised and her con-artist businesses. tends to be snarky and sarcastic to anybody in charge - or really, anybody in general.

pretty distrusting, pretty emotionless on the outside, doesn’t like to be seen as weak or somebody to be pitied. keeps herself closely guarded and doesn’t really let others ‘inside’ due to her own comfort levels.

she’ll sleep around but dating is out of the question, for the most part - she’s been on a few blind dates, a few casual get-togethers - but she’s always the one to break things off. is more of a careful hook-up kind of gal.

still does her psychic medium business !! sometimes she wonders if she’s a bad person because of it - but ultimately, it’s on her customers for believing in all that nonsense anyway. anna herself is a skeptic - doesn’t believe in anything unless she can see it and feel it.

is actually … a pretty sentimental person, doesn’t take anything she’s got for granted, and is hugely appreciative of her father. sends him money when she can. hasn’t spoken to her mother in years - pretty sure she’s got a step / half-sibling or two but she’s never met them.

a lone wolf and likes it that way, but she isn’t super opposed to friendship - even if she won’t necessarily call anybody a friend. appreciates others who are similar to her - got their head on right, and knows what they want in life.

has a pretty bad fear of driving - will uber if she needs to go anywhere - even then, being in cars makes her pretty anxious. still has ptsd-induced panic attacks, though she’s managed them pretty well.

doesn’t really do drugs! will smoke weed to ease the ache and her nerves, but otherwise she only takes what is prescribed for her. doesn’t drink anything hard, either. big fan of beer and wine. probably gets wine drunk home alone late at night … like … two times a week.

goes between being high strung and uncaring - she’s not especially moody ( rather, is just consistently angry for whatever reasons ) but she definitely tries to bottle everything up.

probably keeps pepper spray on her at all times, even though she’s got her cane. has cat ear brass knuckles on her keychain - took advantage of the archery club at her private school. she’s not paranoid, she just likes being prepared.

has a soft spot for children, animals, and soft women. kind of person who will put herself in the line of danger in order to protect others - even if she doesn’t necessarily know them too well.

also the kind of person who’ll set something on fire - or do something because you’ve told her not to. incredibly spiteful when wronged. will raise hell if need be.

morally ambiguous tbh.

wanted connections.

who do u think i am ;; either uh. people who have seen her around campus being a bit of a freak like <3 kick someone’s tire in a small fit of rage <3 or spend 20 minutes trying to coax a cat near her so she could pet it <3 or having a that’s so raven moment <3 or someone who tried to help her out with something and she was like. excuse me. what the fuck. get away from me freak loser. maybe threatened them.

slowburn but make it evil ;; uh. when i played her as older she hd a plot where she <3 ws engaged n then broke it off bcos her fiance cheated <3 so i wld like another. plot where she actually <3 tries to enjoy someone else’s company and presence and it just ends up hurting her n reaffirming her idea tht love is? fake n dumb n stupid. thank u.

ykno ... a little dash of spice ... ;; uh. yknow just hookups. hateships <3 or they never talk abt what happened <3 or an awkward drunk one night stand <3 maybe a pregnancy scare and shes like Ah. motherhood Scares me. because she <3 hates her own mother <3 LDSLKFHLGSHLK. it leaves their relationship rly weird the whole ordeal ... maybe even just a blind date <3 or someone she ghosted

read my future ;; customers very classic uh. just people who come to her for her psychic readings <3 and her uh. talking to the dead <3 but also alternately. skeptics ?? people suspicious of her ?? very epic. 

like actually Die? ;; enemies. she hates them so bad. maybe its one-sided. maybe theyre an annoyance. maybe she annoys them? very bad not very good. 

and we dance dance dance, dance dance dance <3 ;; this is just. fr ballet students. or, hold up, consider this: someone who recognizes her frm this. very tragic event where she cld no longer b a ballerina bc i think it ws. like not the Biggest deal bt if ur muse ran in private school circles ykno ??

pet the feral cat ;; these r the soft <3 normal connections <3 someone she’s soft for / protective of. friends that she doesn’t completely hate. 

i Do Not Know ;; i will. take anything. please. weed dealers, people she’s totally sus about for no reason. she steals and reads their mail. they have been rivals for years. they hv a special bond. they r strangers but they get stuck in an elevator. she’s tutoring them bt she wont let them take a break n she keeps making them recite fucking. shakespeare. anything is sexy and fun n cool

[rwby-redux]

Deconstruction

Worldbuilding: Aura

Our first official foray into the worldbuilding category: Aura. The chakra-like soul-energy that functions as the primary fuel source for Semblances, along with a handful of auxiliary features. Despite arguably being one of the cornerstones of RWBY’s lore, the page for it on the RWBY Wiki is worringly short. Like, no joke, it’s not even 2,000 words long. Suffice to say, that’s not a good sign.

Before we get started, let’s make sure everyone’s on the same page by quickly brushing up on our definitions. Aura is the physical manifestation of one’s soul, depicted as a colored emanation around the user. This effect is first visible when a person engages their Aura, and can be seen again when a person’s Aura is close to depletion. As Aura is drained through taking damage, staving off inclement weather, or using one’s Semblance, it begins to rapidly flicker. Upon depletion, it’s represented as either a full-body shimmering effect or a particle effect with “fragments” of Aura falling away from a person’s body, signifying that they’re susceptible to physical damage. Aura is vital not just for its inherent failsafe against injury, but for the other functions it offers, including: an innate healing factor, thermoregulation, conduction of Aura through inanimate objects, extrasensory perception, and unlocking dormant Auras within others. The only prerequisite for possessing Aura is having a soul, something which all life on Remnant (except for the Grimm) has.

You know, it’s amazing just how convenient Aura is. It almost makes you wonder why

EVERYBODY ON REMNANT HASN’T FUCKING UNLOCKED IT.

Seriously, why didn’t Pyrrha use her fame as a platform to raise public awareness on Aura? We know that trained Huntsmen can unlock them for people who have no prior training (looking at you, Jaune). Couldn’t her manager have found the time in-between signing deals with Pumpkin Pete’s to get a campaign going, so she could be sponsored to travel around the country doing exactly that? Why is 90% of Remnant’s population leaving themselves deliberately vulnerable to Grimm and bandits? Seriously, RWBY, what the fuck?

Sorry. Getting ahead of myself. Deep breaths.

Let’s set aside the histrionics for a moment. Aura as a combat mechanic is pretty ingenious when you think about it. It capitalizes on a pretty well-established trope already found in the genre. If you’ve familiarized yourself with the manga and anime scene in the last decade, chances are you know what Naruto is, even if you’ve never read or watched it. Having a magical soul-powered fuel source already gives you the license to justify all of the crazy acrobatics your cast is going to be doing, and given its parallels to chakra, it isn’t going to require too much explaining to a genre-savvy audience. In theory, anyway.

I think part of the problem is that RWBY’s writing relies a little too heavily on fans having at least a vague pre-established understanding of the concept behind Aura. It lets the show dodge having to answer problems that arise from under-developing its world. Aura’s utility as a combat accessory, coupled with all of the extra functions I mentioned earlier, creates the problem of: If this tool is so useful, why doesn’t everyone have it?

If you’ve never seen Hello Future Me’s video on magic systems, I highly recommend you check it out. Without even mentioning RWBY, he manages to pinpoint the flaw with Aura (and by extension, the common flaw with most fantasy magic systems): differentiating between limitations, weaknesses, and costs.

I’ll let him take over from here:

“The most common form of limitation is a vaguely-defined limit of strength, or training, or mental acumen of the practitioner. Avatar: The Last Airbender is kind of like this. There’s no explicit limit to how much fire a person can conjure, or how strong a wind they can muster, but we know it’s kind of limited by their training, willpower, strength, and talent. Think of it as the rule of: THERE’S ONLY SO MUCH AWESOME ONE HUMAN CAN HANDLE. If you’re really trying to differentiate your hard-magic system from this common trope, then think about not relying on this particular limitation, but maybe something else. Perhaps certain powers can be negated or are affected by certain things in the environment around them, like the moon, certain plants, or minerals. That way, your magician has to be aware of their surroundings at all times, or it can be used against them by their enemies.

Secondly: weaknesses. Weaknesses in magic systems can create interesting dynamics in a story where magic would usually make a character a lot more powerful than those around them. Maybe they can transform into a werewolf at will, but that makes them vulnerable to silver bullets, though, once again, making these limitations to your magic too simple can make them…uninteresting. […] If you have multiple different powers in your story, it could be interesting to have the use of one power making them more vulnerable to another, so your character has to be cautious about using their powers around someone who could take advantage of that. …I personally feel the best magic systems affect the way your characters think or act or change the way your fictional world operates.

Finally and thirdly, perhaps the most common way that people create rules for their magic system is through magic costing something. […] Perhaps the most common magical cost is that of bodily energy. In The Wheel of Time and The Inheritance Cycle, doing something with magic exhausts you, which is fine until you try and be too magically heroic, and you overdose on magical heroin and die.” [1]

Seriously, go watch this guy’s video. He’s great.

With all of that in mind, let’s take his thesis and apply it to Aura:

Does Aura have any limitations? Not really. We’re vaguely told by Kerry Shawcross that it’s possible to increase the amount of Aura a person has, but that it’s “impractical.” Most people try to get more efficient at using Aura instead of trying to get a “bigger gauge.” [2] Unfortunately, the show hasn’t provided any evidence of what “getting more efficient” looks like—whether that’s simply increasing your training, or undertaking a specific kind of training. Is Aura like a muscle that becomes stronger the more you exercise it? We don’t know. The show hasn’t given us a definitive metric for measuring training progress, so it’s up for debate.

Does Aura have any weaknesses? Sort of. You could argue that there’s a trade-off between using your Semblance versus simply relying on Aura to tank hits. A combatant’s innate defense system draws from the same energy source as a Semblance, which could create an interesting choice between offense and defense. Do I rely on my Semblance to win, or should I conserve Aura for other things, like activating Dust or staving off hypothermia? My issue with this being a credible weakness is that we don’t really see characters grapple with this dilemma on-screen. Taiyang tells Yang to decrease her dependency on her Semblance, but that has more to do with Yang’s Semblance enabling an aggressive attack style that gives her opponents more openings, than it does anything to do with conserving Aura for other things. [3]

Does Aura have any costs? That’s a resounding no. A Semblance costs Aura to use, but Aura itself doesn’t demand anything in exchange for activating it.

From every conceivable angle, Aura sounds like a pretty sweet deal. And that’s the problem: there’s no believable in-lore explanation for why the entire world doesn’t simply have a Huntsman unlock it for them.

So how do we rectify this?

What if having an unlocked Aura made a person more likely to attract Grimm? We already know that Grimm track people primarily through detecting negatively-valenced emotions and the presence of nearby souls. If we wanted to give Aura’s aesthetic appearance some more significance beyond simply being cool to look at, what if Grimm can sense that emanation? If a person with a locked Aura is akin to a matchstick, then what if a person with an unlocked Aura looked like a bonfire by comparison? The very tool used to fight Grimm has the drawback of also attracting Grimm, or worse, causing Grimm to prioritize you as a target.

Not only would this give us an answer for why the entire world doesn’t unlock their Auras, but it opens the floodgates for lore and worldbuilding ideas: If unlocked Auras can attract Grimm (even when not in use), do governments have an incentive to regulate how many of its citizens have unlocked Auras? Are only certain members of the population allowed to unlock their Auras, like Huntsmen or soldiers? What happens if you accidentally unlock your Aura? Would the government force you to pay a tax, or make you choose between conscription into either the military or a Huntsman Academy? There’s an entire afternoon’s worth of ethical debates right there.

But let’s say that unlocking your Aura doesn’t attract Grimm, in which case, maybe there’s some sort of societal stigma against it. What if you’re afraid of unlocking your Aura because that means, by extension, opening up the possibility of discovering your Semblance? What if you’re afraid of getting a passive Semblance that causes misfortune? What if you gain a pyrokinetic Semblance that’s hard to control, and without training you run the risk of hurting yourself or others?

We can even take this a step further if we consider how Aura and Semblances can be abused by others. What if at some point in history there was a monarch that would forcibly unlock their citizens’ Auras and force them to serve in their army? Skip forward several generations and picture a well-meaning Huntsman passing through a village. They stop to chat with the locals, and an inquisitive child comes up to them and asks about what it’s like being a Huntsman and having an unlocked Aura. The Huntsman, unaware of the history of the region, offers to unlock the child’s Aura for them. Cue the parents and nearby townsfolk panicking as their thoughts immediately go toward the tyrannical monarch from long ago, and the number of child soldiers forced to bleed for that king.

If we wanted to make Aura inconvenient, we could even introduce Aura- and Semblance-specific diseases transmitted via Grimm. Take a moment to imagine what it would be like if you lived in a world where you never had to worry about getting the flu, as long as you refrained from doing one specific thing. How’s that for an incentive? Now apply that to RWBY, and suddenly there’s a whole list of Grimm-based illnesses that you’re automatically immune to as long as you don’t unlock your Aura.

The possibilities are endless.

With a little creativity it wouldn’t be hard to give realistic, in-world answers for why unlocked Auras aren’t more prevalent: everything from mechanical drawbacks, limitations, weaknesses, risk factors, cultural taboos, stigmas, you name it.

I wanted to complain more about the vagueness of Aura’s healing factor and how it relates to Aura depletion—like how the hell Hazel stabbed himself with Dust crystals while his Aura was still active; wouldn’t the healing factor have caused them to just shoot out of his arms like magical splinters?—but this post is getting long, and I want to wrap things up. I think I’ve made my point.

Join me next time when I put another one of RWBY’s core concepts on the chopping block.

-

[1] Hello Future Me. “On Writing: hard magic systems in fantasy [ Avatar l Fullmetal Alchemist l Mistborn ]” YouTube video.  February 07, 2018. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMJQb5bGu_g&list=WL&index=351&t=0s]

[2] Shawcross, Kerry. “CRWBY AMA.” Reddit interview. February 12, 2018. [https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/7x3w4s/crwby_ama_w_miles_luna_kerry_shawcross_and_paula/du5bpdm/?context=3]

[3] Volume 4, Episode 9: “Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back.”

[thebiblesalesman]

All the Lore I Know About Tekhartha Zenyatta (with sources)

This probably isn’t everything the entire fandom knows- I’m sure people have worked out things that I haven’t -but this is everything I know as of June 2, 2019.

1. Zenyatta was built either after the Omnic Crisis or during its final days.

2051* - Omnic Crisis begins. 205x (2056 max)** - Omnic Crisis ends. 2056 - Zenyatta built. 2076*** - Overwatch Recall / Death of Mondatta.

*Metzen said the Omnic Crisis began 30 years ago, Chu said it began 25 years ago; Chu is the most recent source.

**Orisa’s hero profile indicates that one of her predecessor models was decommissioned 20 years ago "after the war”, putting a maximum Crisis end date of 2056.

***Metzen said in 2014 that the game takes place “60 years” in the future, but for my sanity I am advancing that date 2 years to match the release year of the game.

Zenyatta is 15 years younger than his student, Genji. Zenyatta’s “Shell” spray, seen above, was part of an Archives 2017 spray set that showed heroes as young children.

+ playoverwatch.com, Zenyatta Hero Profile + playoverwatch.com, Orisa Hero Profile + Chris Metzen, Overwatch Unveiled Panel, Blizzcon 2014 + Michael Chu, Blizzard Forums, 2016/8/17

2. Zenyatta, along with the rest of the Shambali, were already outcasts when they had their spiritual awakening.

You can figure this one out through a careful reading of Zenyatta’s hero profile:

Years ago, following the Omnic Crisis, a group of outcast omnic robots experienced what they described as a spiritual awakening. They abandoned their preprogrammed lives to establish a communal monastery deep in the Himalayas.

I’ve noticed a lot of people get this confused, and think Zenyatta was outcast from the Shambali order, but that is not the case. The Shambali were collectively unwanted before their enlightenment. Cultist Zenyatta describes his pre-monastery status as “No one of note. Just one of thousands like me.”

What does “preprogrammed” mean? There’s a good example in the Retribution mission. At the end of the mission, players encounter a host omnic at an outdoor restaurant. Regardless of the disastrous situation in Venice at the time, the host has a few dialogues about dinner reservations, menu specials, etc. The host makes discomforted noises if players attack them, but never attempts to defend themselves. They sometimes even ask “would you like to know the specials?” as they are dying. This is not because the host is unintelligent, but because they have a program in place defining their actions. The host has yet to experience a moment of clarity that allows them to move beyond their original programming.

Understanding one’s own programming does not automatically result in a Shambali either. Theirs was a spiritually-oriented path, but an omnic realizing how they are being taken advantage of can also lead to unrest, or movements like Null Sector. Overcoming original programming (with various results) is a constant theme for all omnic heroes, from Bastion to Orisa.

--[SPECULATION: Despite being built as civilian models with similar modes of operation to the waiters, clerks, and laborers we have seen in various Overwatch media, it is possible that most of the Shambali were unwanted when they finally emerged due to post-war conflict between humans and omnics. They had programming telling them to accomplish a particular task, but they could never act on it. This could explain why they appear to have had a collective epiphany about their nature and moved as a group to establish their monastery.]

--[QUESTION: Omnica Corporation and the omniums were already shut down for fraudulent production claims before the Crisis started. Who was continuing to make new omnics even during the war, and by what method? Was Zenyatta built in an omnium, or by a more traditional method like an assembly line, or hand-built like Orisa?

We also know that omnics are continuing to be made today, such as the “child” companion omnic seen on the Blizzardworld ride poster, or the OR15s.]

--[QUESTION: Where was Zenyatta built? His hero profile only indicates that the Shambali established their monastery in the Himalayas. It gives no indication on how far they traveled to reach that location.]

+ playoverwatch.com, Zenyatta Hero Profile + Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018, Cultist Interactions + Glen Brogan, Overlord Transport Poster, 2018/1/23

3. For Zenyatta, the term “brother/sister” has multiple possible contexts.

--[SPECULATION: Zenyatta uses “brother/sister” in the traditional religious context when referring to other Shambali. But from the previous point in this list we know that the Shambali were already together in a group when they had their spiritual awakening, so it’s possible that they were all built in the same place at around the same time. This would also be a form of siblinghood.

Zenyatta and the other Shambali may consider all omnics as part of their “family”/in a state of camaraderie with them, hence why Zenyatta refers to Orisa as his sister despite her not being a monk. Zenyatta only ever refers to Bastion as “my friend”, but Bastion has no gender so it may simply be the easiest non-gendered replacement for the endearment.]

+ Zenyatta, Voicelines

4. The Shambali established their sanctum in the ruins of an ancient, preexisting monastery.

+ Overwatch Visual Sourcebook, Environments: Nepal

5. Zenyatta’s name...is Zenyatta. “Tekhartha” is a title. Mondatta also had this title.

--[QUESTION: Is the “Tekhartha” title something every Shambali takes upon joining the order, or is it a rank indicative of leadership? The term is a portmanteau of “technology” and “Siddhartha”, the name of the child who would become Buddha.]

+ Michael Chu, Blizzard Forums, 2018/5/25

6. Mondatta was Zenyatta’s master/mentor...maybe.*

*This might seem like a gimme considering Mondatta is the spiritual leader of the entire Shambali religion, but Zenyatta only ever refers to him as his brother in the main game. It’s in his Cultist incarnation that he describes himself as “following in my Master’s footsteps, searching for enlightenment”.

Wisp (Tracer) also refers to Mondatta as Cultist’s master. Mondatta certainly carries himself like someone older than Zenyatta- not that age confers wisdom, but it’s part of Mondatta’s professorial aesthetic. Zenyatta’s profile unhelpfully describes him as “enigmatic”, but this just brings us back to the question of whether or not the Shambali were all built at the same time and from the same facility. So the crux of this point is whether or not you think Cultist’s story is a reference to real-world history, or if it is AU-only.

The Halloween stories have their own little worlds with their own little plot arcs (at least in my head ;)). Obviously there are some (intentional) similarities to the real world, but it’s not intended to be one to one.  [Michael Chu]

+ playoverwatch.com, Zenyatta Hero Profile + Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018, Cultist Interactions + Michael Chu, Twitter Comments, 2018/10/9

7. Zenyatta’s metal orbs were hand-carved at the Shambali monastery and are used to channel omnic energy.

+ Overwatch Visual Sourcebook, Zenyatta

8. Zenyatta’s abilities as shown in the game exist for “gameplay reasons”, but he is canonically able to heal others by an unknown method.

The Mercy interaction is what explicitly confirms Zenyatta’s healing abilities, but I threw in the Moira one because it is such a wonderful display of character. Moira does not immediately see a scientific explanation for Zenyatta’s abilities, and Zenyatta reframes the question to propose that truly understanding how he functions is the same as understanding how he exists, which is not a physical phenomenon a scientist could observe and measure to resolve with a hypothesis.

Zenyatta is hardly an enemy of the scientific method. He’s just not sure how it can answer the spiritual questions he’s interested in. Upon visiting Oasis he will actually wonder aloud “Can science alone unlock the path to enlightenment?”

Check the Bonus section below for a Cultist interaction that also describes Zenyatta’s abilities as non-magical, but also non-technological.

--[SPECULATION: Zenyatta’s levitation is also a non-technological function. Everything that floats in Overwatch leaves a trace, such as jet trails or blue hover-rings. Everything except Zenyatta. The dude just cruises around on pure enlightenment, which is a trope in both Hinduism and Buddhism.

Zenyatta was originally given the ability to float to distinguish him from other heroes (see the Development section below), but as a character there is no reason for him to artificially give himself the ability to float. Remember that Zenyatta does not seek recognition for his spiritual status. It’s more like a side effect.]

+ Zenyatta and Mercy Interaction added in October 2018 + Zenyatta and Moira Interaction added in October 2018 + Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018, Cultist Interactions + Jeff Kaplan, “Blizzard’s Jeff Kaplan Answers Questions from Twitter” by Wired/Youtube [07:39], 2017/5/17

9. Zenyatta’s disagreement with the direction of the Shambali religion was not his primary reason for leaving the monastery. He left because he wanted to learn by traveling the world. He remained on good terms with Mondatta and the rest of the Shambali after his departure.

--[SPECULATION: After Mondatta’s death, Zenyatta’s relationship with the remaining Shambali may have become more strained due to his long-standing opposition to Mondatta’s approach and his long absence from the monastery. This would explain why despite his good terms with the other monks, he wonders if he would be welcome in Nepal.] --[SPECULATION: Genji and Zenyatta are shown spending Christmas in Nepal the year of the Recall. I hesitate even putting this as speculation honestly. I think Zenyatta did finally reconnect with his brothers and sisters the Christmas after Mondatta died, perhaps following Genji’s lead since the monastery is Genji’s home at this point. However since I can only find architectural similarities and not an exact location that matches the comic I guess the devs reserve the right to pop back in 2 years from now and say “actually they were in Singapore.” (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻] + Jeff Kaplan, Summarized comments via Manolo Rosenberg/Twitter.com, 2017/11/9 + Nepal Map, Zenyatta Voicelines + Nepal Map, Genji Voicelines + Comic: Reflections, 2016/12/20

10. Zenyatta and the other Shambali monks use cooking as a tool to encourage empathy between humans and omnics, even if they themselves cannot eat.

+ Overwatch: The Official Cookbook, Til Ko Laddu Sesame Sweets Recipe, ETA 2019/10/1

11. Zenyatta’s belt has the word “zen” written in Japanese on the tassel.

In earlier concept art, the word “zen” was on Zenyatta’s orbs instead, and it was written in Chinese. The word changed languages and locations later in development. “Zen” itself originates from Zen Buddhism, a Buddhist school from China that emphasizes the act of learning over the doctrine of what is learned, making it a very good fit for Zenyatta, his conflict with the Shambali, and his method of teaching through interaction rather than reciting dogma.

--[SPECULATION: Genji gave the belt to him to signify their bond, or they traveled in Japan together at some point and acquired it then.] --[SPECULATION: The tattered scrap of cream cloth under Zenyatta’s belt is also emblematic of a bond- his life with the Shambali.] + Zenyatta Reference Kit + Overwatch Visual Sourcebook, Zenyatta

Zenyatta Development Notes

If you have ever watched the “Making A Hero” panels from Blizzcon or gone through The Art of Overwatch concept book, you know that heroes tend to arise from one of three domains: 1) Narrative need - for example, Ana had a backstory long before the team figured out how to integrate her into the game, 2) Gameplay need - ex. Junkrat was created because the devs wanted an indirect damage dealer, 3) Conceptual art inspiration - Zenyatta and Zarya both originated from drawings organized around a particular theme, “cyber monk” and “physically strong female character” in their respective cases.

This led to Zenyatta’s initial development as a martial artist, with a powerful physicality. Despite a lot of iterations, the team decided his intimidating presence was too much like other heroes in the game, and they began turning him into more of an “enlightened sage” trope, skinny with the ability to levitate to further set him apart from other heroes. His original concept with many arms lives on in his Transcendence ultimate.

Originally his orbs were meant to be physically fired at enemies, but facing technical challenges such as figuring out how he would reload, the devs changed the orbs so that they would unlock and fire energy at enemies instead. This approach also lent itself to abilities like the Orbs of Harmony and Discord.

Above: Video of Baoding balls, metal balls with a distinctive chiming sound used in China for hand exercise

In terms of philosophical and religious concepts, Zenyatta is kinda all over the Eastern cultural map. He’s got two sprays referencing Korean martial arts and games, he’s got two skins referencing Chinese characters, another pair referencing the Egyptian sun god, and another pair for Arabian jinn. According to The Art of Overwatch his legendaries at launch were themed around “enlightened mythological figures”, which the devs felt suited his sage archetype.

Above: Photo of a building in Pashupatinath, a Hindu temple complex in Kathmandu, Nepal

The Shambali religion takes mostly from Buddhism, though the village below the Shambali monastery invokes Newa architecture. The Newari are a group of indigenous Nepali people who mostly practice Hinduism. It’s not unheard of for philosophies and religions to mix and expand on each other, and a multicultural background may be appropriate for Zenyatta who is a wanderer searching for knowledge, but it does make tracking down particular influences on his character a little boggling at times.

I realize I haven’t covered the mudras (ritual hand gestures) Zenyatta uses yet, but considering the length of this post and how image-intensive that would be, I will in fact let you google those on your own, or perhaps I will make a separate post about it at some point.

Bonus Section: The Cultist Conundrum

As part of Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018, Zenyatta’s Cultist character got 10+ new interactions, many of which don’t seem to reference his Cultist nature very closely. There are several that illuminate Cultist’s relationship with the Swordsman (Genji), some that indicate the Cultist is seeking to help others through their troubles just like Zenyatta, and one interaction that takes on a more ominous tone. To be honest it’s a wonderful exploration of a hero, but since it’s trapped in the Junkenstein’s Revenge AU, we have no way of knowing what’s ultimately true about it for the less cephalopodian version of Zenyatta.

All that said, I think these interactions are just really really good, so I’m going to include them in this post.

Shieldmaiden: Your master is a mysterious-looking fellow. Swordsman: I have learned much from him, but little about him.

Genji wants the lore bombs too btw.

Shieldmaiden: What do you make of the monk? Viking: I do not trust him and his strange gods.

Listening back to the audio of this, the Viking is very specifically saying gods, plural. Polytheism is a big part of Hinduism and to a lesser extent a part of Buddhism, but this is more likely a reference to Cultist’s eldritch origins, the “Great Old Ones” of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. It’s also an echo of Torbjörn‘s opinion of the Shambali religion in the main game (“It's like a culmination of a thousand of my worst nightmares!”).

Shieldmaiden: Why did you come here? Cultist: I am following in my Master’s footsteps, searching for enlightenment, though my path has not always been a straight one.

I discussed this earlier as being one of the references to Mondatta as Zenyatta’s mentor. We know he is referring to Mondatta due to a separate conversation with Wisp:

Wisp: How can you trust the Countess after she slew your master? Cultist: Did I say I trusted her?

I recommend hopping on Youtube and giving this interaction a listen if you have never heard it before. As we know from this and other main game interactions, Tracer is extremely pissed about what happened to Mondatta, and views the outcome as her own fault. In this case she actually takes that anger out on Cultist, enraged that he could remain so calm with Countess (Widowmaker) herself at his side. For his part, Cultist is quick to differentiate cooperation from trust. Perhaps the most unfortunate part about the additions to Junkenstein’s Revenge 2018 is that the Countess has no interactions with anyone, so there is no elaboration on Cultist’s thoughts about her.

Shieldmaiden: Is it magic that you do? Cultist: It is not magic, but the power of the spirit that I channel.

Whyisn’tthisjustanormalBrigitteandZenyattainteractionFROWNYFACE. This interaction tells us that spiritual energy is not magic by Overwatch standards. That’s a close alignment with Eastern cultural views, and a clarification from Western ones where anything supernatural is by its nature a form of magic (very fitting that Brigitte is the one asking the question).

To maybe explain this a little better, let’s look at a popular TV show like Dragon Ball Z. Despite Goku having supernatural powers, no one refers to him as a witch or wizard. He instead is considered a manipulator of life energy. Did you feel bad reading this? I felt bad writing it. But I think it’s a good way to differentiate the concepts, especially for anyone who is really hung up on the “Overwatch has no magic!” preconception and then has to reconcile characters like the Shimadas or Zenyatta.

The primary issue with this interaction is its context: Cultist is said to “answer to a foreboding presence- a force beyond mortal understanding”. This is another Lovecraft reference, but it creates a background that doesn’t really match with Cultist’s spirit-oriented response. Maybe he means “the Spirit” with a capital S, but I have a suspicion that this is a regular Zenyatta answer sneaking into the Junkenstein AU.

Shieldmaiden: How is it you have barely broken a sweat? Cultist: It must be my many years of training, simple diet, and careful way of life.

BLESS YOU BRIGITTE. Reminder that the guy she’s asking this question of looks like this:

Swordsman: Watch yourself Master! I cannot mind your back at all times. Cultist: Do you think me so helpless? Swordsman: Battle is not your way.

I like this interaction more for what it tells us about Genji. He’s protective of Zenyatta, not so much because he views Zenyatta as weak, but because he knows Zenyatta would prefer not to fight at all. He wants Zenyatta to live his ideal life rather than the one reality necessitates. This is another interaction that doesn’t quite mesh with the general concept of the Cultist- an outcast who would do anything for forbidden knowledge. I suppose it’s possible that despite his frightening appearance and the broken manacles dangling off his limbs, he is actually benevolent. This concept is echoed in another of the Swordsman’s interactions with him:

Swordsman: It is strange to see you taking part in the battle, Master. Cultist: There are times even I cannot stand by.

I guess Genji already forgot about that robo-spider chilling in a cave that they both decided to beat up for some reason.

Cultist: A pause in the battle. An opportunity to recenter our minds. Swordsman: I am centered.

This interaction starts showing us the other side of the coin- that Zenyatta is trying to advise Genji as best he can on how to proceed through the fight without letting his emotions take control. Genji reacts uh...emotionally.

Cultist: Take care that you do not spend yourself before the battle is done. Swordsman: I am only just getting started!

Genji, in both these cases, is showing himself to be a little prideful.

Van Helsing: You some sorta...holy man? Cultist: Simply a traveler, in search of purpose and meaning. Van Helsing: Aren’t we all.

This goes back to that Zen Buddhism idea that what is important is the act of learning or the journey to an answer, and not the answer itself or what the act of learning causes you to become. In this case, as in the main Overwatch universe, Zenyatta is probably aware that “holy man” is a title conferring a certain deference upon him, and he has no need for that- in fact it may be detrimental. Mondatta’s adoring flocks are never something he has desired.

Cultist: Some believe that the full moon is a good omen. Van Helsing: Maybe...if you’re a werewolf.

Zenyatta, in his Cultist role or otherwise, happily soaks up surrounding cultures. Here he’s bouncing an idea off McCree that he hasn’t embraced himself (”some believe”), but he picked it up somewhere and upon noticing his environment, seeks to learn more from whoever is available to answer. When this interaction plays, it’s always the first interaction of the game- so Cultist is trying to instill confidence for the fight ahead too. McCree isn’t having any of it though.

Viking: Who were you before you entered the monastery? Cultist: No one of note. Just one of thousands like me. But one moment of clarity changed everything.

New lore: Zenyatta worked at McDonalds and then one day he saw god and god asked for some chicken mcnuggies.

Viking: I find your religion unnerving, monk. Cultist: My beliefs are simply in the fundamental ways of life and nature, nothing more.

You coming out here telling me the Cultist and not just regular old Zenyatta is the one saying this, Jeff? (To be fair, I never personally witnessed the Cultist’s response to the Viking’s comment playing in-game- it’s something that seemingly only exists in datamined content.)

Viking: Single-mindedness of Dr. Junkenstein’s creations reminds me of your own! Cultist: You wound me. Viking: Is that even possible?

Cultist confirmed to have inherited regular Zenyatta’s sass. I would also like to use this space to point out that Cultist has more interactions with Shieldmaiden, Swordsman, Viking, and Wisp than Zenyatta does with Brigitte, Genji, Torbjörn , and Tracer. If you want the Zenyatta juice, you really have to look at Cultist closely.

Cultist: You blame yourself for the dragon’s reign of terror, but it is not your fault. Viking: You weren’t there, monk. You don’t know about my failure.

Squid Zenyatta is still trying to help people out. We learn through some of the Viking’s other interactions that his home village was destroyed by a dragon. This might be interesting as a clue to Torbjörn‘s real-life history, but the dragons of Junkenstein’s Revenge don’t necessarily equate to the Omnic Crisis.

Cultist: Rarely has my path crossed a warrior as cheerful as you. Viking: When you’ve seen as much as I have, either you laugh, or you go mad.

Note that any interaction between Cultist and Viking that the Viking starts is very antagonistic/accusatory, but he actually relaxes when Cultist does not reply in turn. There’s a paternalistic vibe.

Wisp: I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sleep! Cultist: Meditation is all I require to sustain myself.

Fun fact!: a small number of Buddhist monks practiced extreme forms of asceticism where they reduced food and water intake to a stopping point, had their apprentices bury them alive in a box filled with charcoal or salt, and meditated until their deaths. This act of self-mummification was thought to allow the monk to remain in eternal spiritual contemplation.

Wisp: Would you tell me more about your religion? Cultist: Our purpose is to show everyone that in the Iris, we are all one people.

Another interaction that honestly would not seem out of place in the normal game, except that Tracer presumably knows about or even practices the Shambali religion already, given her attendance at Mondatta’s speech. At the very least she empathizes with the Shambali’s goals.

Cultist: When I gazed into the Iris, I found a great nothingness. It changed me. You must have experienced the same. Wisp: That is not what I saw!

At last, a properly creepy Cultist interaction! So through some other conversations we learn that Wisp was a traveler torn from her body by a magical catastrophe, and she now inhabits the world as a ghostly wraith. Cultist interprets this to mean she passed through the Iris, and that the nothingness there is responsible for her transformation (just as it was for his? I wonder what he looked like before).

The “nothingness” he talks about may actually be less sinister than it sounds. There is the aspect that comes from Cthulhu stories, the idea of death as an infinite void, and the madness that may result from gazing too long into an abyss. Yes, that is terrifying.

But there is a nearby word, “emptiness”, that has a great deal of meaning in the various schools of Buddhism. The basic idea is that no being or thing in the universe possesses an intrinsic nature, that nothing stands alone but rather is woven together with all other things (does this sound familiar yet?). The Sanskrit word for this concept is sunyata.

So yeah, maybe Cultist isn’t so bad. Maybe he’s just a little misunderstood.

[art4yoo]

October 1, 2020

Dear Design Studio, 

My direction is going to be beauty because I want to learn more about the philosophy of beauty and its connection with modern society. I am interested in this topic because I find beauty fascinating as a designer and a woman. Beauty is a feeling I appreciate and enjoy but it does not control my life. Where does that control of beauty come from? I am interested in how aesthetics and beauty affect our lives and its importance to society.

I watched two videos of people getting questioned about defining beauty (questionnaire starter). The first video was called “How People Define Beauty Around the World”. The main question was “What is beauty?” The answers that stood out to me were elegance, inner peace, intelligence, and it’s subjective. The next question was “What makes women beautiful?” Some answers were natural beauty (when you act natural) and some people got into specific physical features. When asked “What makes men beautiful?”, one said a man might get offended being called beautiful. Other answers had to do with physical traits, taking care of family and being vulnerable. The second video was titled, “Girls Ages 5-18 Talk About What Beauty Means to Them”. Some things the girls said were “beauty is something people like,” “my DNA is beautiful because I have both my parents’ DNA,” “beauty is all around us,” and “embracing who you are is beautiful.” Some other answers were beauty is personality, confidence, learning lessons and growing from them, and subjective.

I am less curious about the surface level beauty that surrounds our culture, and I am more curious about the psychology and philosophy of beauty. I want to understand the deeper meaning of beauty, how it makes us feel, and the future of beauty. What is beauty? And why does it exist?

Adjacent to my topic of beauty is social media, fashion, nature, aesthetics, humans, women, art and society. Social media is the hub of beauty standards and fascination. Fashion is always using the most beautiful women, or the standard of beauty: tall, thin, luscious hair, strong facial feature, etc. The definition of aesthetic is “a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art. It examines subjective and sensori-emotional values, or sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.”

People operating in and adjacent to my topic area area are philosophers of beauty (i.e. Plato, Immanuel Kant), Vogue Magazine, professors, artists and designers, or social media influencers/brands.

I reviewed a Ted Talk called “A Darwinian Theory of Beauty” by Dennis Dutton. The main takeaway about beauty from the talk was, “We find beauty in something done well. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, it is deep in our minds, it is a gift handed down from the intelligent skill and rich emotional minds of our ancient ancestors.” He goes on discussing how the experience of beauty is one of the ways of evolution has of arousing and sustaining interest for adaptive decisions in survival and reproduction. Beauty is a magnetism to give one pleasure by simply looking. I learned that beauty is a natural instinct and it will be around for all of the human generation.

Another Ted Talk I reviewed was “How Beauty Feels” by Richard Seymour. He asked the questions “Do we think beauty or do we feel it?” He said he believes we feel beauty inside of us. Beauty is a feeling. Beauty is rooted in our emotional part of our brains and maybe what we’re seeing and sensing and feeling is bypassing our thinking. He also asked the question, “Is it possible to separate intrinsic and extrinsic beauty?” Intrinsically, universally, and exquisitely beautiful things are very hard to come by. So most beauty tends to be extrinsic mediated by information before or added to the comprehension. He strives to make his designs emotional functional and gravitating. Those are the things that people find beautiful, sentimental, and wonderful. It makes me wonder, if beauty is sentimental because everyone has different views and backgrounds on beauty.

Sincerely,  

         Jamie Yoo