#I was mostly practicing shadows and stuff

[noblebluebird]

Since I 100% foretold that there would be a corrupted Link in Echoes of Wisdom, I had to draw my version of their dark reunion

Hope you like it!

I will be making a part 2 to this later.

[itz-pandora]

I feel like people often forget the "prim and proper" side of Shadow and just focus on the edgy, cool, badass side

[yanderedrabbles]

Yandere Seasons of the Year

Autumn is the nerdy girl in your book club. Pigtails, pleated skirts, too thick glasses. Whenever she's forced to speak up in class, she almost always stutters. Getting softer with each word until the teacher finally has mercy on her and let's her trail off. She has few friends, mostly other slightly dorky kids who band together because otherwise they'd all be stuck eating alone. You don't really notice her at first.

But then you read Jane Eyre and for once she isn't shy at all. She tells your whole book club all about the symbolism, the themes, how she doesn't fully consider it a gothic novel but that it definitely has gothic elements. Her cheeks are just a little flushed, her hands darting around when she talks. She's pretty, you realise slowly. When she isn't folded over herself or scurrying through the hall like she doesn't want to be caught.

Afterwards, you strike up a conversation with her. She's all shy again, not really meeting your eyes.

"My dad's got a whole collection of classics. Special edition prints, with these hand painted edges," you tell her. "Why don't you stop by and you can borrow some?"

She narrows her eyes at you like she thinks you're making fun of her. "Maybe. If I have time."

She doesn't drop by. When you see her in the halls after that, you always stop to greet her. But she looks so uncomfortable that you never get to have a conversation. Always running off with her head bent so far down that you wonder how she sees anything past the tips of her shoes.

After a few weeks of half finished sentences and always keeping her books clutched to her chest, you're about ready to give up. To take the hint that she doesn't want to be your friend.

But then... she starts seeking you out. Tentative at first. Waiting outside your class and only saying hello if you're alone. Changing her route so that it takes her past your locker. Sitting just a little closer to you at lunch, almost always two tables away so you're in her line of sight.

Maybe she realises you aren't setting up some elaborate prank by talking to her. Your hurried hellos become actual conversations. She starts walking you to class every morning. When you again invite her over to borrow some books, she actually shows up.

Standing on your doorstep with the trees flaring yellow and orange behind her, her hair pushed out of her face with a red Alice band.

"Hi."

You lead her up to your room and she perches on the edge of your bed like she's scared to touch it. Scared to be in your space.

You were in the middle of sorting through your makeup before she showed up and now you look over at her with a twinkle in your eye.

"Will you let me do your makeup? Please?"

Her eyes go all wide behind her glasses. "Uh I don't know...I don't really wear that stuff..."

You sit in front of her, your kit spread on your lap. "Come on! You'll look so good. You've got such a great bone structure, it's practically a crime to not try some bronzer."

"I guess..."

You carefully reach up and take off her glasses. She flinches. "Shh, relax. It doesn't hurt."

You tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and tilt her chin up with your finger. When you smooth primer over her skin, she subconsciously tilts her face into your palm.

"That feels nice..."

Her eye makeup is the trickiest part. She flinches every time you bring the eyeliner even close to her. Eventually, you slip your free hand around the nape of her neck. She freezes just long enough for you to add some wings. Her ears turn a bright red and she ducks away from you, stuttering.

"Ah sorry. Were my hands too cold?"

"N-no. No, your hands are...perfect."

You end up so close to her face that when she finally opens her eyes after mascara and lashes, she gasps. You run your thumb across her cheekbone to clear away a little spilled eye shadow.

"All done."

Even after you step away, it's takes her a few seconds to move.

"Do you like it?"

"I look so different."

You stand behind her in front of the mirror and rest your chin on her shoulder. "That's the magic of makeup! It's a good different. And besides, we're matching."

"Oh." She touches her fingers to her lips and looks down at the lipstick smeared on her fingertips. "I didn't notice. I...I really like it."

You pull away and grin at her. "Aren't you glad you let me do it?"

"Yeah," she says, still staring at her fingers. "Really glad."

When your lipstick and then your lip balm go missing, you don't even notice. What was it the kids used to say back in elementary? That if your lips touch where someone else's did, it counts as a kiss?

Autumn walks home through the falling leaves and wonders if you realise you're her first kiss.

Winter is the student council president. Confident, clever, a guy everyone says is going to be a great leader someday.

Oh, but he's cold too. Doesn't have any real friends, only achievements. Everyone knows him. Everyone respects him. But being respected and being liked are not at all the same thing.

You wonder if he ever gets lonely. You walk past the student council office during lunch one day and see him at his computer, a half eaten apple forgotten at his elbow. You shouldn't feel sorry for him. He's on the fast track to an ivy league and a career in finance. In a few years, he's going to be richer than you could ever hope to be. He takes home every performance award in every subject.

You shouldn't feel sorry for him. But you do.

"Hey, you got a minute?" You lightly rap on the doorframe and he turns to face you, not at all ruffled by your sudden appearance.

"Sure. You're y/n, right? I think we had algebra together a few years ago."

"Yep. Before you started taking AP classes and leaving all us peasants in the dust."

You're not surprised he knows you, despite never being introduced or even having a conversation before.

You grin at him. "Is an apple really the only lunch you're having? You've got to keep your energy up if you want to protect your title as smartest guy in school."

He frowns at his apple. The parts he's bitten are already starting to brown.

"I'm not that hungry."

You lean in the door frame and cross your arms. "I'm supposed to let our student present starve? If I let that happen, who's going to be around to defend our debate title? Stand up to the tyranny of the chess club?"

He scoffs and uses the tip of his pen to nudge the apple into the waste paper basket.

"Come eat lunch with me. I've been wanting to join some clubs and you can tell me what looks best on a college application. You can call it community service if you want," you offer.

That gets you a slightly raised brow. The most expressive you've seen him yet.

"What are they even offering today? I don't really stop at the cafeteria."

"Oh, you're in luck," you say. "Mashed potatoes and gravy. And it's only slightly congealed this time."

"Yum." Still, he stands up to follow you. He's much taller than you realised, and when he picks up his backpack his muscles flex in a way that tells you he isn't afraid of hitting the gym. Again, unsurprising. Except for his lunch, he seems the type to have his life in perfect balance.

When you finally sit down in the cafeteria, it isn't long before the other kids notice him. You're scarcely two bites into your lunch when the student magazine editor starts asking him about the budget for next semester. When that's settled, the chess team are next in line to complain about the state of their boards and to ask pretty please for some new pieces. It's only when the bell rings that they finally leave him alone. His lunch sits untouched in front of him.

"I'm sorry. I didn't realise."

He shrugs and shoots you a half smile. "Thanks anyway. This was...nice."

It's only when he's gone that you start to wonder if anyone else has ever seen him smile.

You start taking him lunch in the office a few days a week. Mostly sandwiches and chocolate milk. Not exactly the pinnacle of good eating, but anything is better than nothing, right?

You always end up on his desk, ankles crossed while he reclines in his computer chair, chin tilted up slightly to meet your eyes. It's casual, easy. He's funny, in a deadpan kind of way. You end up learning a ton about college admissions, about extra credit, about Ivy League rankings.

When applications open, he's the first person you go to when you need help. Eventually, he just sighs and plucks your half finished essay from your backpack.

"Just let me handle it, jeez."

"Really? Oh my god, thank you!" You stand on your toes and pull him into a hug. "You have no idea how stressed I've been."

He freezes. And then slowly wraps his arms around your waist.

" 'Course," he mutters into the crown of your head. "I'd be happy to."

The thing about Winter as a season is that it can be so insidiously misleading. You assume the greatest danger is the ice, the cold. You don't realise that most deaths are from broken gas lines, from excess alcohol, from persistent coughs. You prepare yourself for all the wrong dangers.

You assume that if Winter wants something, he'll pursue it outright. You don't notice that your college applications are only being sent to places he's applied to as well. You don't notice the way he sneaks your name into the records for the debate team, the chess club, volunteering hours - a blatant forgery just so you have a better chance of being accepted at the institutions where he wants you.

You don't notice the way he always comes up to you when other guys are talking to you, dragging you away with a tight smile and an excuse about scheduling issues or needing your help with the budget.

You don't notice him falling for you until it's far, far too late.

Spring is the ultra cool, earthy girl in your art class. Always sporting a full afro or long goddess braids. Effortlessly chic, with gold jewellery in her hair no matter how busy school seems to get.

She moves through everything at her own pace. Not part of a clique but never alone either.

You've always known each other a little. Had a few classes together over the years, shared lunch once or twice. But life is hectic and your paths don't always cross as much as you'd like. So when you end up in art class hoping for extra credits, you're more than a little glad to see her.

She's talented. Her portfolio has art schools all across the country drooling, practically on their knees to offer her a full ride.

It would be easy to get jealous, and you have no doubt that more than a few of your classmates are. But you? You're just glad to see talent being appreciated.

It's a beautiful spring day when she comes up behind you and offers to give you some private lessons. Your hands are covered in charcoal, there's streaks of black on your cheeks and despite your efforts, your canvas is an unartistic mess.

You smile at her like she's heaven sent.

"Would you really? I know art is subjective and all, but I'm afraid everyone thinks I'm objectively bad."

She tilts your head at your canvas, beads in her braids clinking.

"Not as bad you think. I can see what you're trying to do. You just don't have enough technique yet."

When you meet her after school, the classroom is gold and hazy with the late afternoon sun. She makes you sit at her easel and leans on the back of your chair.

"Draw some perspective lines for me."

You try to, but by the third line her hands are already coming up to guide yours.

"No. Always try and stick to your vanishing point. Like this."

Her voice is low in your ear and you can smell her perfume, something sweet and flowery that makes you want to bury your face in her hair.

"See?"

"Mm-hmm. Easier when it's so direct."

"Good."

She stays right by your chair for the rest of the lesson, occasionally leaning down to adjust your grip. When the day is done, your hair smells like her perfume and your fingers ache from work well done.

She doesn't seem like the type to have a boyfriend. Maybe you're being unfair, but you just can't see it. She's so nonchalant, so very much herself, that the antics of teenage boys seem so very beneath her. She must like someone though, because a few weeks after she starts tutoring you, you get a glimpse of her latest piece. A sketch of her leaning down to kiss someone, their face obscured by the fall of her hair.

If it were anyone else, you would tease them relentlessly about it. Who do you got a crush on so bad that you want to draw them?

Not her though. You respect her art too much to make light of it like that. And when her portfolio starts filling up with love poems, with tributes, with re-interpretations of Le Printemps and Le Sommeil... Well, you pretend not to notice.

It's only at the very end of the year that you start to really wonder who it's all about. When you finish your final piece - the best canvas to date, the one you and her poured hours of work into - she leans down and presses her lips against your signature. It leaves behind a lipstick print in a deep, gorgeous red. Somehow brings the whole piece together.

"I love it," you tell her, eyes on your art.

"So do I," she says, eyes on you.

Summer is the tanned, laughing jock who's always filling up the hall with his voice. Friendly, likeable. Just about everyone has a crush on him.

Not a bully, though he has the size and strength for it. Helpful, in his big, well meaning way.

His future is clear for everyone to see. Working in his dad's construction company until its time to take over, marrying a girl just as pretty and golden as him, becoming the kind of father that other kids look at and long for. It's a good life. It suits him. Days filled with sunshine and love and laughter. He deserves it.

So when he asks you to tutor him, you assume he doesn't want anything more than a better grade. Books and calculators spread out on the bleachers after practice, the smell of fresh cut grass in the air, summer sun warm and gold over the football field. If you were more his type, you'd call it romantic.

As it is, you just appreciate the good weather and the good company. When his teammates joke that he's tanking his grades on purpose just to spend time with you, you laugh and say you're sure he's got better things to do with his time that that.

It takes a few months, but his grades do improve. And when you go through the homework together, it's clear that he understands what he's doing.

"Well champ, seems my work here is done. You're ahead of the class, you understand the methods and your papers have all come back with Bs and above."

You shrug, smile at him. "You're free to go. Have your afternoons back."

"What?" He frowns at you, water bottle halfway to his mouth. "No. The year isn't over yet."

You laugh, a little flattered that he seems so upset to see you go. "I know. But you don't need me anymore. Just practice the problems I marked out for you and you'll be just fine."

For once, he seems at a loss for words. You stand, sling your backpack over your shoulder. It's just you and him left on the bleachers, the empty football field a behemoth between you and the school building.

When you're halfway across, he catches up with you. Grabs your backpack and stops you in your tracks.

"What about English? I really need some help with the novel. And my chemistry is a mess. Seriously, we can't stop now. You can't just...leave me like that."

If you didn't know any better, you'd say he sounded almost panicked.

"I think Jackson from homeroom is your best bet with chemistry. Oh, and I'll send you my English notes. I did a whole section on themes and stuff."

He frowns again. "No. No. I don't want any of that. I want you."

The skin at the nape of your neck prickles, despite the late afternoon sun being full on your back. Was he always so much bigger than you? How didn't you notice it before?

"Hey, listen. I know you're worried. But we've put in tons of effort. You know your stuff. When exam season rolls around, you'll be just fine."

You try and walk away but he's still holding onto your bag.

"I can pay you."

"I don't want money," you say, irritated and offended both. "I never wanted to be paid for any of this. You're a great guy. I'm happy to help you out."

"Then stay."

Why is he being so persistent? His hold on your backpack tightens when you don't immediately answer.

"Please."

That decides you. How can you say no when a nice guy is practically begging? You're not a monster.

You sigh. "Fine. But only until after homecoming, 'kay?"

"Sure," he says. "I'll let you go when I'm done. Promise."

In the last light of a long summer day, you make the mistake of believing him. 

[vetyr]

hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

[supernova41st]

Baked with love 𖦹

Sonic/Shadow x Baker!Reader

(Separate)

A/n: Okay so y’all really like my Sonic stuff 😭?? I was a bit worried about it flopping but it did so well, tysm!! I’ll probably be doing a request fic after this and some random quote posts between then, hope you like this <33

Warnings: None

Divider creds: @thecutestgrotto

Sonic

𖦹 Sonic isn’t really a sweets guy (surprisingly) but nonetheless he does enjoy your stuff. He’d eat that shit in one bite, especially the expensive stuff!

“Wha—Sonic you gotta savor it! That was like 30$ worth of matcha that you just ate there”

“Whoops, sorry babe..it just looked so good!”

𖦹 If he gets a sugar rush then it’s over. He immediately goes running laps around your house to release all the energy—hope you don’t mind your place getting a little messy (and losing power for a few minutes)

𖦹 Sonic definitely woudnt be the first person you’d choose to bake with. He’ll try rushing through the recipe and end up with a dense cake, watery frosting, and inconsistent sprinkles all around the cake.

“Alright, so first we need t-“

“Done. Ta-da!!! Doesn’t it look great, (Y/N)?”

“..mhm 🙂”

𖦹 His favorite pastry of yours? Cake pops. Quick and easy to eat + it has just the right amount of sugar before he goes sprinting across the country

Shadow

𖦹 The emo guy? No, he didn’t really care for it at first.

𖦹 Every time you offered him one of your sweets he’d always refuse to eat it, he deemed it “unnecessary” since it mostly never provided healthy nutrients, and shadow never really needed to eat as a whole.

𖦹 Eh, why not. He’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t curious on the obsession that humans had with sweets, so he obliged.

“Really? You wanna try something??”

“Don’t overreact, I’m just curious as to why you’re so eager about me trying sweets.”

“Uhh—alright! I’ll have something going that you’ll like, trust!!”

𖦹 You practically went scavenger hunting, trying to find the espresso powder you had lying in your pantry for nearly a year. As soon as you presented the small espresso cake to him you were quite nervous..

‘Oh god, did I put too much frosting?? He’s always so blunt about not liking something so imagine how he’ll respond if he won’t like it! Then again, he is my boyfriend so it’s not like he’ll be too cold on m—‘

“more.”

“Wha?”

𖦹 As soon as you looked down the cake was now GONE. Oof, and here you thought he wouldn’t like it. Now he’s become obsessed with your work

𖦹 His favorite pastry of yours? Macaroons. He has an old man in him, and that old man just wants to sit on a rocking chair while having tea with macaroons

[pituliya]

List of Sims 2 Custom Content (CC) Sites

Something for any sims 2 newbies who might stumble upon my tumblr. This is not an exhaustive list, just some web sites and blogs I know of and like.

Just a little warning first, english is my second language and while I read it fluently, I have some trouble with phrasing stuff. So the following might be a bit wonky.

Multiple Creators

Mod the Sims: one of the biggest sims 2 sites, also has content for the other sims games

Garden of Shadows: it's forum but you don't need to register to see or download stuff, also has content for sims 3 and sims 4

simblr.cc: quite new, also has content for the other sims games plus inZOI

Plumb Bob Keep: CC for historic themed games, the Download section is visible without registration

Sims2Artist: another forum

Simspearls: forum, registration needed before you can access it.

Creators with their own sites

Nixed Sims: Has historic and modern themed content

LordCrumps: Sims 4 to Sims 2 conversions

Around the Sims 2: inactive, but has lots of nice stuff. Creator is still actively making CC for Sims 3 and Sims 4.

Pick'n'Mix Mods: they made some really practical utility programs for the game

The Medieval Smithy: mostly medieval CC but you can find some CC for other eras too.

Some of my favorite Simblrs (in no particular order)

@deedee-sims

@creesims

@letomills

@platinumaspiration

@fracturedmoonlight

@lucilla-sims

@kaluxsims

Skell Downloads, The Maxis Match Repository Project and Old timey Skellington: Creator is inactive.

Creators on Dreamwidth

Almighty Hat: Some of the best medieval CC. Creator is inactive as of 13.04.2025.

Magical Girl Sandbox

Mrs Mquve

Angela Pleasant

Other important places

The Sims Graveyard: Stuff from disappeared Sites. Warning: Always quite slow

@sims2packrat: another important place to find lost CC.

@sims2tutorials: Links to many Tutorials

@lazyduchess: They made some very important fixes and mods for any Sims 2 game

Sims 2 Default Database: Don't like a Maxis Outfit, here you can find replacements for them

Object Default Database: Same but for Objects

Pinterest: Some Simmers make collections that link to CC sites and creators there.

[neos127]

park sunghoon x idol!fem!reader | stuck by the glue onto you

wc. 1.2k genre. strangers to lovers(??), pining + clingy hoon cw. none!! notes. idk what this is but this was todays daydream! so i had to write it into a fic (kinda messy bc it’s a brain dump but!)

you were laid out in your bed after a long day of practice, taking time to admire the view out your window while also scrolling through tiktok. you wanted to see if fans had watched your group’s new variety show with enhypen yet, knowing how excited both fandoms were after seeing the teaser.

when you scrolled onto a particularly interesting video, you sat up, your heart rate increasing as your eyes narrowed on the text.

‘sunghoon realizing that he’s in love with y/n’ was the caption in the middle of the screen along with ‘glue song’ playing in the background. you took a deep breath before allowing the video to play, already feeling butterflies invade your stomach.

CLIP #1

you were very nervous while being interviewed considering that your group had only recently debuted. it was your first week doing promotions and due to being a foreigner, you weren’t very confident with your korean yet.

as your shaky hands held the microphone close to your face, you began to stumble over your words. the dialogue on the script you were supposed to repeat suddenly blurring together. panic crossed your face for a split second, and mc sunghoon noticed that. he quickly mumbled the word you forgot into his microphone and you shot him a grateful smile before repeating and continuing with your small speech.

CLIP #2

you had remembered seeing this clip about a year ago, trying to brush it off even though the moment had never left your mind. apparently sunghoon couldn’t divert his gaze from you at an award show, his eyes practically sparkling as he observed you in your gorgeous dress. sunghoon rarely looked at any other female idols, so fans seemed to single out the moments when sunghoon’s attention was only directed onto you. when the two of you crossed paths, he smiled and politely bowed which caused you to do the same.

CLIP #3

your group was meeting enhypen for the variety show you had recently filmed with their group. everyone was shy and timid even though you had met each other many different times due to being under the same company. fans seemed to mostly focus on you and sunghoon though, who were very giggly and flustered. sunghoon’s ears turned a light pink as he shook your hand, his palms already sweaty due to the small encounter.

CLIP #4

sunghoon tried his best to be nonchalant about the fact that you had both been paired together for the field day activities, which was hard considering his long time crush on you. once the two of you started playing the games, you became more comfortable with each other. it seemed as if you two had been lifelong friends as you laughed and joked with each other.

the members teased him about being your shadow while completing missions, noticing how sunghoon never left your side even for a second.

CLIP #5

during your lunch break, sunghoon still seemed to follow you like a lost puppy. he timidly walked up to you, watching as you served yourself from the mini buffet the company set up.

“what are you eating?” he asked softly, causing to quickly look up at him with wide eyes. he scared you a bit, but the momentary surprise was soon replaced by comfort due to his presence.

“oh um…i was just combing some stuff. i came up with this really good combination, want to try it?” you asked, your tone becoming more light once you got over the initial shock of sunghoon being so close. sunghoon nodded his head in agreement, allowing you to take his plate and serve him.

when you had expected sunghoon to walk away and join the boys at a smaller round table to eat, he didn’t, keeping close as you looked around for an empty seat. since you concluded that sunghoon wanted to eat with you, you led him to a picnic table for two, smiling at the boy as he sat across from you.

the boys all gave him curious looks, the editors making small question marks appear above their heads as they observed you two. sunghoon didn’t seem to care— or maybe he simply didn’t notice, too focused on your pretty smile and the way your cheeks puffed up as you shoved rice into your mouth.

CLIP #6

while walking up a trail to find your next mission, you had nearly stepped into a deep mud puddle that would have definitely ruined your favorite pair of sneakers. sunghoon stopped you quickly, placing a strong arm in front of your torso to stop you from moving. you looked at up him with a raised brow before realizing that you had nearly stepped into the mess.

“ah, thank you.” you giggled nervously, feeling grateful that the gentleman next to you had been looking out for your safety. the boy mumbled a small ‘your welcome’ before grabbing onto your sweater and gently tugging you around the puddle. the action made your insides melt.

CLIP #7

when everyone had finished their respective missions and mini games, you were all called back to the picnic area where you had first started. sunghoon and a few other members were already there, waiting for the rest to arrive. the boy was about to sit down on the plush grass until he saw you and a couple of your group mates walk into the area. you sat down behind jay and a member of your group, causing sunghoon to look longingly at you. before he could even warn himself about being too obvious about his crush, he walked over and sat down next to you, a small smile on his face as your gazes met.

you looked at him for a second too long, causing you both to quickly look away in a flustered frenzy. you bit your lip to suppress a giggle, trying to focus on jungwon who was congratulating both groups for finishing the tasks.

CLIP #8

the clip was zoomed in, and you hadn’t even noticed that the camera had still been recording your actions. you and sunghoon walked away from the picnic area with the rest of your groups back to the car, playfully bumping shoulders as you trekked up a hill. it wasn’t much compared to the rest of the clips, but it was enough considering the compilation you had just watched.

you breathed out a shaky sigh before opening the comments, noticing how everyone cooed over the interactions and gushed over how sunghoon seemed to be enamored of you. people described how his eyes lit up whenever you smiled and how he had been attached to you like glue throughout the whole video.

you were a bit surprised that you hadn’t noticed how clingy sunghoon had been that day, only focusing on how you finally had time to get to know the boy more.

you smiled upon playing the video a second time, your finger hovering over the ‘share’ button before finally copying the link and sending it to sunghoon on a whim.

you waited all night for a response, barely being able to stomach down your dinner and constantly darting your eyes over to your phone that only seemed to light up from company emails and your group’s chat.

suddenly as you were getting ready for bed, your phone lit up with a notification from sunghoon. you quickly grabbed the device, toothbrush dangling out of your mouth as you read over the text message multiple times. a squeal threatened to emerge from the back of your throat once you had finally had processed his words.

[sunghoon: ah, i guess they caught me…it’s been hard to take my eyes off such a pretty girl ~]

[mullermilkshake]

A well known announcement goes public

Part 12 <- Part 13 -> Part 14

The Chairman announces your pregnancy publicly.

At twenty weeks, the twins are around the size of bananas.

Yandere!Jinwoo Sung x Fem Hunter!reader Tags - Pregnant reader, Manipulation, intrusive thoughts, thoughts of harming others/murder/ torture,

<<< For more Dark/Yandere content, click this link to go back to the Masterlist! >>>

<<< Or back to this fic's Master list. >>>

EDIT - I have only watched the anime and haven't gotten round to reading the manhwa yet. Please refrain from spoilers.

The Chairman reluctantly waited until you were twenty weeks along to make the announcement. Leaving it a little late, the public were already starting to ask questions and rumors started spreading online as to what caused your absence.

The rumours were spot on, a hidden pregnancy from the public eye for now, and views on it were mostly positive. What sparked controversy, was who the father was.

Some lost hopefuls begged that Jong-in was the father, having already fathered two children by now with Hae-in and another hunter Jinwoo didn't bother to learn the name of, they surmised you being the third. Others spoke of Baek being in the lead over your body, fathering a child with you, though they were just hopeful romantics with a huge heart for the guild master to start a family.

And there were those that called themselves ‘team Jinwoo’, speaking out how he would make the best match for you. Admittedly, the comments and whispers made his head swell. He didn't need to be told tha, he knew full well what was best for you. 

It was him.

It was Jinwoo who battled your hormonal mood swings and crazy cravings in the middle of the night.

It was Jinwoo who let you use him when you were sexually frustrated as your belly grew bigger.

And it was Jinwoo who was slowly starting to take care of everything you needed and wanted without resistance from you like before.

He was best for you. Not Jong-in. Not Baek.

Him.

Some disagreed and hated that theory, that Jinwoo would never dream of being with you, let alone getting you pregnant. They were just haters though, swinging their dicks in the wind and despite making his eye twitch, Jinwoo ignored them for a time and drowned out the negativity because he had to.

Reading a comment on the wrong day made him want to go out and kill something. For a time, solo raids satiated him, but as of late, the bigger the babies got and more vulnerable you were, anything talking ill of you made Jinwoo want to choose violence.

You didn’t speak much on it though, not to Jinwoo at least, sitting quietly at anything suggesting you in the news or online. Even during one of your days where you'd cry non stop at virtually nothing, the opinions of the public did not seem to sway you.

It wasn’t until the day of the announcement of your pregnancy that Jinwoo found out who you were consoling with.

Hae-in, and by extension, Jong-in. By now, the Chairman had moved Hae-in to the association's facility and practically left her there. She had been forgotten. Jinwoo assumed that’s where your newfound connection with Hae-in formed. With Igris watching closely in your shadow, Jinwoo understood a lot when he took the chance to see.

Now, Igris couldn’t talk, but his presence allowed a more detailed overview that his regular shadows couldn’t produce. A window into another place. At times it was simple stuff, pregnancy things you and her could relate to. Hae-in spoke of how she missed Jong-in and for a while it seemed like she had grown fond of him and less of Jinwoo.

Perfect. 

And then, you started bringing up Jong-in unprompted. It triggered a long conversation about him and what he was like behind closed doors, his likes and dislikes and all the things that made him tick. Hae-in confirmed what everybody already knew. Jong-in was a great guy, and it made Jinwoo want to vomit. He didn’t care what everyone thought, only you, and if you still enjoyed Jong-in’s company, Jinwoo was doing something wrong.

Just like now, you flocked to Hae-in immediately during the public event and left Jinwoo standing against the wall just waiting for the Chairman to make the announcement.

“So… Twins, huh?” Baek appeared beside him, talking discreetly with a whiskey in his hand. “That’ll be quite the handful.”

Jinwoo wasn’t in the mood to talk, yet he pandered to him. “Yeah, it was quite the shock, but she’s doing really great.”

He watched you closely with adoration in his eyes and burning curiosity on his brain. Jinwoo always did love your smile, though he wondered why you were smiling so much when he wasn't there to make you laugh or see your face brighten up when he came into view.

“I can imagine. I don’t know what I’d do if I heard that news.”

Baek’s tone sounded sincere enough. Yes, the news of twins was a shock, but as more time went on, Jinwoo couldn’t see his little family any other way. And now that you were safely into your second trimester, the Chairman had cleared more pairings in the programme.

“Oh, that’s right, you’ve been paired up now with someone, too. How is that going?”

Baek nodded and sipped his whiskey. “Mhm, an A-Rank, actually. She’s nice, it’s kinda weird though. Not to mention all the pressure of being a guild master, I can relate to Jong-in now. Weren't you thinking of starting your own guild? Are you still wanting to do it, or waiting until after the birth?”

Jinwoo knew the feeling all too well. Though the first few times he slept with you were a dream come true, you and he still needed time to understand each other’s likes and dislikes and get into a rhythm. And as far as the guild went, Jinwoo did have plans on starting the guild properly with Jin-ho, things got waylaid. But in honesty, he had been neglecting his responsibilities to be with you.

I should really contact him. I'll do it later.

“Yeah, I'll get around to it after the twins are here. And to be honest, you’ll move past the awkwardness eventually. It takes time but, as soon as you see the scan for the first time after seeing those two lines on that stick, you’ll just get it.” He told him what he wanted to hear.

No one would have an experience like Jinwoo did with you, no one.

Baek pondered on those words, swirling his whiskey before downing it in one last gulp. “I guess you’re right. It’s the Chairman that’s making it awkward, I can see why you two were so stressed out.”

“Yeah, it’s… intense. Things will ease off once you get her pregnant. It did with us.”

It didn't, though Jinwoo was working on a vice to keep the Chairman away for a while. Hs stifling presence seemed like good faith most of the time, but the very sight of him made you cringe, and therefore stress out. If you were stressed, the twins were too.

“Well, I guess it’s about time I became a father. I’m sort of glad I’m not with another S-Rank truth be told, not that some others are upset by it.”

“How so?”

Baek shrugged. “Being a guild master, some people think I should have been with another S-Rank, it’s just elitist bullshit. I tend to ignore it where I can.”

Jinwoo agreed, like civilians knew what things hunters actually went through… they’d never survive any of it. “Yeah, just buckle down for now, you’ll get past it.”

“Yeah… it’s time to father up, I guess.”

A father. A dad. Jinwoo thought about your idea of letting the association get their hands on his children, would Baek let that happen? 

Jinwoo knew you meant well, he did, after he managed to really calm down he saw some reason. Yet his mind would not let that sit as an end result and stand by while his babies were separated. He’d get by with what he had and his children wouldn’t go hungry, or cold and would have a roof over their heads with you as their mother. Being S-Rank hunters, money wasn't a s much of an issue and you made it out to be. Jinwoo could sell things left right and centre as he continued levelling up, and people would buy it, guaranteed.

Different meant scary, it was how you saw it. But it didn't have to be.

You hadn’t spoken about it since that day in the car. It was still on your mind, that much was clear.

“You won’t put the baby in the facility?” Jinwoo asked, curious to his response.

“Hell no. If I’m going to be a father, then I’ll be a father.” He hesitated to speak after, but he asked the question Jinwoo really didn’t want to hear. “Are you two going to do that?”

Now, Jinwoo wasn’t about to reveal the invisible heart in his sleeve to someone that wasn’t himself or you. 

“We aren’t, I was just curious. A lot has changed over the last few months and it got me thinking, that’s all.” Jinwoo lied, but it was to protect you, to protect your delicate mindset.

“Right, I think that’s what Jong-in and Hunter Cha were thinking about. Y’know, getting support now that Jong-in’s been given more responsibilities. Hunter Cha is settling in well at the facility, apparently they’re waiting on her hand and foot.”

If they were waiting on Hae-in’s every wish, then how would they look after you? Jinwoo did wonder, he often thought about that place and whether it was truly what was best. But only if he came with you.

“Hunter Sung, I was wondering where you had gone to.” The Chairman popped into view with that signature smug smile on his face with your own name at his lips. “You’re usually by her side most of the time. Though while you’re here, I’d like to talk with you in private before this announcement is made public.”

This isn’t good. 

“Of course.” 

Jinwoo nodded Baek off and followed the Chairman into a room off of the main atrium of the association headquarters. A quiet room to the side for serious conversations, leather armchairs to sit and swirl whiskey before exchanging thoughtless words of politics and stocks.

“What is it, Chairman?”

“Well, now that you have made the progress you have, I have a new preposition for you- please, sit.”

Jinwoo sat and slouched, the way his stomach did when his gut screamed in the deathly silent room to keep his wits about him.

The Chairman said your name again more seriously. “After the announcement, I will put through the paperwork to move her to the facility with Hunter Cha…”

No, no, no… 

“Twins with S-Rank mana are truly a marvel and she needs all the support she can get, we have the best doctors and equipment on site to ensure those babies are healthy when they arrive and you can visit whenever you want. I’m excited to see what other pregnancies follow suit with you at the centre of it.”

No, no, no! 

“You want… you want to split us up?” Jinwoo couldn’t believe his ears. “You want to send her away?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way so bluntly, but putting her there will allow another hunter to move in with you. I think this is perfect to really get the programme going. You can’t relax freely if she’s there.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no, Hunter Sung?”

“I said no. There’s nothing more to it. She’s not going anywhere with my children inside of her and even after that. She’s my responsibility and this conversation is over.” Jinwoo shot to his feet and aimed for the door.

“Hunter Sung-”

He stormed out of the room to find you, using Igri’s energy to locate you quickly while the adrenaline pumping through his body heightened his senses. Little did he know, you were talking with Jong-in, laughing at something he said in the right way to just piss him off.

If he wasn't already pissed off and thinking off all the ways he could explode the Chairman's head, he fucking was now. He blinked rapidly to try hide the rage he had to the side to talk with you, heading over there when Jong-in spotted him first.

Jong-in was on that explosion list too. He could only explode someone's head once, so it had to be perfect. Crushing it was one way, listening to the sickening crack and squelch of the brain squirting through the cracks as it opened. Maybe he could get Iron to do it do him, slowly enough so he heard the screams of terror.

No, it hard rot be Jinwoo himself to even get a scrap of enjoyment out of it.

Why the fuck was Jong-in talking to you with such familiarity.

“Jinwoo, it’s been a while… Are you alright?” Jong-in shot up from his seat with more than an ounce of concern behind his glasses.

You caught sight of him and climbed out of your seat as best you could. “Jinwoo-” Your face screwed up and you grabbed onto his shirt with white knuckles and gritted teeth. “Shit- shit, leg cramp- leg cramp!” 

Jinwoo held onto you and let you ride it out, spasms and back pain were becoming a nuisance, even with eye's handmaiden takin the brunt of it. 

Still, looking around, Jinwoo didn’t have the time to give you, seeing the Chairman head over to address the crowded room full of hunters and journalists. “Baby, we need to talk, now.” 

“What is it-”

“Greetings all, I am truly grateful to have all of you attend on this wonderful occasion.” The Chairman commanded the room and the mic. “As you know, the hunters association has taken the initiative in doing our part for the future of hunters after the loss of several S-Rank hunters during the events of Jeju island.” 

The whole room stood silent, hanging on every word the he said. Jinwoo watched on with very little control as it slipped through his fingers and into the man on stage’s large hands.

“And in our endeavour to try and restore confidence and passion in the association after our loss, I am very proud to announce that we have been blessed with twins who are exhibiting high levels of mana in the womb.” 

The room erupted into hushed whispers and glances around until the Chairman announced that it was you who was pregnant, then all eyes were on you. Jinwoo held your hand as people came over congratulating you and him with smiles and flashes from cameras.

Whilst you were swarmed, the Chairman took this distraction to announce the second part of his speech. The bastard. 

“Hunter Sung has valiantly supported the association with his hard work and will continue to do so. Whilst he will support the growth of the children he has fathered like Hunter Choi, he will take another giant step and begin trying with a new assigned hunter to continue the effort to gain back our world from the effects of Jeju island. For that, you have my respect, Hunter Sung.” 

Jinwoo didn’t know what was worse. 

The fact that the Chairman spoke for him and pulled some underhanded shit to make Jinwoo want to throttle him in front of everyone, wring his neck and let Beru punch a hole through his chest so he could shower in the spray of blood and clean himself from the fury he struggled to hide.

Or that the look of betrayal in your glassy eyes, your trembling lip looking back at him.

"Jinwoo... is that true?"

<<< We interrupt this broadcast for a vote. >>>

(I've never written childbirth before so it'll be an experience for all of us 🤗)

Also, do you wan't a gender reveal poll? Let me know! 🤗

Part 12 <- Part 13 -> Part 14

If you would like to be tagged, please let me know! Thanks so much for all the support on this likes, reblog and comments appreciated! ❤️

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@yessirr7 @aussie-boys-wife @yihona-san06 @mashiromochi @daiyanomochi

@justatimidcreator @alia-17 @otomegamesforlife @m00n-estelle @towomatos

@stormnightingale @johnnysactualgf @solarisstarrsolomonsbeloved @johnnysactualgf @notleclerc

@minkuro @misakicchi @lovingyeet @soft-dots @gina239

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@shortchubbytat

DISCLAIMER - Crossposted from my AO3 - I do not own any of the characters or anything from the anime or manhwa. This is a work of fan fiction and is absolutely not representative of the views or intentions of the original creator(s).

Also please don’t post any of my work without permission thank you!

[arminsumi]

geto who's way bigger than you. just imagine sitting on his lap while he hugs you. he might kiss you in the hair or make you ride him until you're dripping all over his pants <3

TOO SMALL TO TAKE IT ALL, HUH?

𝐆. 𝐒𝐔𝐆𝐔𝐑𝐔 — 夏油傑

🔞 smut / n.sfw / 18+ content

NOTE: did I just read Geto Suguru with a size kink or do I need to get my eyes checked out again 🥴 anyways hehe my dearest mama pieck in my inbox good to see u angel 💗

WARNINGS — fem reader, size kink, implied clothed sex, implied unprotected sex + creampie, hair pulling, light roughplay, teasing/playfulness, dirty talk, slight dom/sub dynamic (?), nicknames (daddy, good girl, baby, etc), lmk if i have missed a warning thank u lovelies

That’s the first thing he noticed about you – you and him, the sheer size difference. It made his eyes light up, it made him smirk. He immediately compared his body size to yours and relished in the fact even your shadow was smaller.

Satoru had introduced the two of you to each other years ago during one especially hot summer. You’d coincidentally stayed at the same hotel in Okinawa for the holidays. Geto Suguru very unashamedly chuckled when you looked up at him, noticing how your eyes skimmed the strip of his physique that showed through his Hawaiian shirt. One of the first things he said to you was “You’re so small” as a playful, cheeky little remark.

And it wasn’t the last time he said it. That was a very common phrase to come out of him. He loved making you very aware of how much bigger he was than you.

Never mind the obvious height difference, he was just bigger than you in every aspect. Hands, feet, forearms, chest, torso, shoulders. So often in the early stages of your relationship, he would put his hand out and splay his fingers so that you’d bring your own hand up to compare, showing off his finger length by curling them over yours, with a suggestive smirk too. At some point he made the very expected dirty joke, “Bet you’d prefer mine over yours, huh? Yeah. I could reach much deeper.”

The size difference between you and him was on his mind whenever he hugged you. He made sure that you felt the tones of his torso pressing tight against your chest.

And it was killing him inside whenever you perched yourself on his lap. You felt his muscular thighs supporting your weight.

Pair those together – hugging him while on his lap? He was conscious of every part of your body that pressed against him, as were you; how could you ignore the press of his biceps against your sides? No one could.

His pants started tightening when he mentally compared every aspect of your body and his body. Your hand and his hand, your shoulders and his shoulders, your leg length and his leg length. You wouldn’t expect nasty thoughts to be circling his mind when he’s pressing such innocent kisses into your hair. But he’s thinking of pulling on that pretty hair, making you squirm on his cozy, comfy, big lap while he stuffs his cock inside your tiny hole.

He sweet talks you while palming and kneading your ass, feeling the supple skin bounce and jiggle makes him giddy.

 Geto was a giant, but a gentle giant. Well, mostly gentle – gentle when he wasn’t thrusting up into you.

He fucked you like a real show-off, ‘cause Geto wanted to make your pussy remember his size. Splitting you open and stretching you out always earned a wolfy grin from his lips. “Feel that? ‘so deep I’m in your tummy, baby. If I cum inside I’m sure not a single drop will spill out.” He coos into your ear, firm grip unmoving from your hips.

The curve of his cock had you seeing stars, it made your body so weak – he liked that. He liked that he had the ability to make your body practically melt in his embrace, he savored the feeling and sight of your body going half-limp like a ragdoll when you were getting fucked too good by him.

Sometimes he was so needy to feel you stretch around him that he didn’t bother fully taking off his clothes, he’d just unbutton and unzip his pants.

“But I’m gonna soak ‘em.” You forewarned.

“Yeah.” He hummed with a smirk, “I like that, baby. Soak daddy’s jeans with your pretty pussy like a good girl. Make a mess on me.”

Now, Geto only gives you a bit of freedom when riding his lap. Those big hands are always attached to your hips and helping to work you up and down. Sometimes he’ll give you the liberty of bouncing on his cock all by yourself, as clumsy as you are in that cock-drunk state, so he can hold the back of your head and give you feverish kisses all over your face. When he feels the tickle of your hair as it slips through his fingers, that’s when he takes a grip of it and pulls back so gently. Geto’s so sweet and gentle – ‘till he’s cumming, that is, then you feel a slight tingle across your scalp as he really pulls on your hair.

“You’re so fucking tiny, baby. Too small to take it all, huh? Deep breaths, there we go – angel you’re so good for me, always listening to me – fuckkk – s-so fucking small, so fucking small ‘n tiny, ‘gonna milk my cum out with that tight hole of yours? Yeah? Good, be good and milk my cum out.”

When he’s through with you, he always praises you like a princess.

“You impress me.” He tells you, “it's so hot that you can take all of me like that, even thought you’re so small. Mhm, that’s right, you’re my baby angel, aren’t you? C’mere, let me kiss you.” He feathers tenderly against the crown of your head, ignorant of the fact his pants are soaked through with his pretty girl’s juices, and presses pretty kisses to your skin.

[slippinninque]

🎙️Wings and Two-Steppin'💐

Elias "Stack" Moore x  supernatural!blackfemreader 

warning: MINORS DNI, 18+, cursing, sensual themes, mentions of sex, mentions of desire, drinking/alcohol, supernatural!black!femreader!(Think earth/forest elemental) , long-fic, vibe fic didn't watch the movie but I have been moved 😅

The night was beautiful and you were finally able to find some good music.

You were somewhere between the moon and stars, the winds beneath your wings playful and thick as it carried you from state-wind to state-wind. When the sound of happy breathing, heavy shoes, and string picking got up to you–you looked for a place to land.

Feeling more and more solid as you traded your wings for paws, you searched amongst the warm little homes for what you needed. There were mothers and children gathered around rocking chairs, reading from a thick book made up of pages that reminded you of butterfly wings. In the yard with the tasty yams, you nipped at the clothes on the line for whichever felt like leaving with you.

Trotting with your prize, you tried to think of how to fit it again. It took a while since you’ve been anything but wild, but you knew some times were better had when you had thumbs. The dress fit good enough and you shook out the bramble shocking cloud and downpour that was your locs and coils. 

The whole time that lively music followed you. You’d reckon you were a few miles off but now that you had feet–you couldn’t keep them from dancing either way. The only time you paused was when you caught sight of your skin, deep and brown as healthy soil and mahogany.

It wasn’t long before you saw the joint, standing and vibrating with all the good time that was going on inside. You lingered at the treeline, mostly behind the leaves as you watched folk flow in and out of its doors. 

The excitement made your tongue tight, you whispered a few of the words you knew by heart to loosen your voice. You've speaking wild for so long, you weren't sure what words were People anymore.

There was a gleam that caught your eye followed by a smooth laugh that made your skin goose. You caught a sweet-husky scent of liquor and honey, caught the edge of maroon vanishing through the side door of the proud structure.

There. That’s where you wanted to be.

Peering around first, you shadowed yourself along the ground. Leaping and hopping to those who lingered outside to enjoy a smoke with the cool air. The last fella was a bit wobbly but luckily he used the wall to steady yourself so you could step off into the dark side of the juke joint. 

It wasn’t very much seeing that got you around, but feeling. You felt along the edges until you were able to bleed beneath the same door your good time went through.

The only problem was that now you didn’t know where you were. Things were put up on shelves and boxes, jars and jars of some stuff made your nose twitch. Looking around, you wondered if there was anything tasty enough to tempt you but all you could find was more of that river-clear stuff in pretty bottles of glass. 

You were running your fingers along the raised lettering, turning to find your prize when you knocked into the softest tree you’ve ever met. 

“Whatchu doin’ in here, girl?”

An unsmiling man looked down at you, plumes blowing from his nose like an angry bull. HIs eyes were like twin obsidian as they skipped over your form. Watching him back, he reminded you of one of those smooth river stones with how pretty brown and blue he was.

You tilted your head and considered his exciting smell. Close, but not quite. Almost-right. 

He raised his brows, waiting for an answer, “Where you comin’ from?”

“Above…”

The man reared back as if you shouted but you only smiled sheepishly at your garbled voice. So maybe you should have practiced a little longer before speaking to anyone. 

The man’s head tilted back at you, he stepped closer to look down at you more closely. When his eyes got stuck on the mess of flowers and moss that was curling up your ankles from where you stood, you wiggled your toes.

Liking the attention, you preened as surely he was taking in the pretty flowers that had begun to bloom along your hairline. 

“Move aside, Smoke.” 

“Annie…”

“Move, go’on.” 

A beautiful woman came from the corner shadows, eyes kind and fixed on you. The man lingered but stepped aside as she said, Annie. She glowed from her center, familiar in the way that the moon was. Turning to her and taking her offered hand, you no longer cared for the almost-right beside you.

This woman smelled like the almost-right but there was the ocean beneath her skin, the yawning night sky beneath her tongue. She reminded you of where you came from.

“What’s it that you need?” Annie asked warmly. Relief washed over you once you realized there was someone who understood. You buried yourself into her, Annie chuckling in surprise as you sighed at the warmth of her. She wrapped her arms around you in a solid hug and it felt like your hearts were doing the same in greeting. 

You looked to the man who watched you more carefully now that you were in Annie’s arms and pointed to his face. Then you pointed out the door, blinking insistently. 

“Ah, I see.” Annie looked over to the Smoke man, “Y’know who she wants.”

“What she gonna do to him?”

 Annie gave your cheek a soft pinch, and raised her brows high as she looked in your eyes. She spoke in a tone that was both kind and stern. 

“She’s gonna take it easy on ‘em and bring him back home like the lady she is.”

Laughing, you reached up and tapped her nose in agreement. Annie Ocean was right, of course, you only wanted to make good use of this form and chase this age old itch of yours. 

There was a whoop of applause from the other side of the door you saw beyond Annie. Sounds like the music was changing from the jovial, upbeat twang to something that made your hips swim. Smoke Man and Annie Ocean exchanged a few more words you didn’t care to hear as you heard the beating hearts and lungs of the crowd on the other side. When you went to take a step, Smoke Man took one as well to block you.

“Hol’ on now.” He held up a hand then took away a pair of old boots that Annie Ocean found in the corner. She came to take your hands as Smoke Man knelt down to help your feet into the boots. Your nose wrinkled but it was clearly a stipulation, but when Annie wrinkled hers back in jest–you laughed.

Smoke Man muttered about something being fucking wild as he stood from doing up your laces.

“Should hold for now.” He tipped his hat to you then looked to his woman. Annie took your hand into her arm, like a sister in wings, and escorted you towards the door. Before she opened it, she leaned in to steal a bloom from your hair and say,

“Have a good time y’hear me?” 

You gave her a wide grin, a kiss on the cheek, then set out into the joint. 

In there, apparently it didn't matter that you weren't dressed so smartly or didn’t speak. You found yourself being held and spun, shot up and thrown over backwards. There were big wide hands that held onto your hips, full lips brushing against your ear. Slender, pretty hands holding onto your shoulders to show you how to watch their feet.

You had a sip of something from someone’s cup and it lit you up. Lightening water, you called it. 

Inside the deep river of bodies that waved and lapped at each other, you lost yourself. Black and Brown, beautiful, so full of joy and of life. The scene settled like good supper in your stomach. It wasn’t long before blooms were bursting from between your toes and soles, stuffing until your boots were a perfect fit.

After being away from a body like this for so long, trading your wings for feet, dancing was like discovering how to laugh all over again. You felt the eyes you wanted on you from different corners of the room. Getting closer and closer still, remaining just out of reach just to admire you. 

That gleam, though. Settled in between a winning crew of teeth, you couldn’t ever shake your interest in the things that shone. There he was, right there and all wrapped up in that want that you could smell from beneath the canopy of desire and lust blanket over the juke joint. 

It’s funny how he looked just like the Smoke Man but in the way that the hot, clay sands meet cool blue waters. This man smiled like he didn’t care if you said his name or not, he walked towards you like he only wanted to know yours, this man was just right. 

A hand took yours, leading you to the shore of the back wall. You still saw a kaleidoscope of smiles and felt the cascade of the crowd's previous caresses. A big hand took hold of your jaw. You gasped as you looked into familiar, smoldering eyes.

Finally...

“Now, I see every face that come up in here–why didn’t I see yours 'til now?”

Shrugging, you looked into his mouth at those pearly whites and gold caps. It was tantalizing to see, you’ve never seen a smile like that before. Mr. Just Right dipped his head to catch your gaze again, chuckling and offering his name as Stack. 

“What can I call you, honey?”

You batted your eyes at him and looked down the fine line of him until you took that hand of his. He watched you, working the toothpick settled in the corner of his mouth, as you raised his hand to the column of your throat.

You sighed as your eyes closed briefly at the feeling of his stuttering heartbeat. When you opened your eyes again, you pouted slightly and whispered as softly as you could,

“Can’t…riGht…”

Stack’s expression straightened in understanding, “Can’t talk right?”

“Hm!”

Stack returned your affirming nod and stepped a little closer as he took a good look at you. He seemed to shrug himself, thumbing through the bits and pieces of buds “A’ight then, hone–shieet, or should I call ya’ flower?”

He could call you anything. Stack seemed to get that’s what the smile that dawned across your face meant. Unashamed, you leaned up to get a whiff from the source. Praise be. If it weren’t for Stack’s hands on you, surely you’d have melted around the soles of his fancy shoes. 

Where Smoke man and Annie smelled like each other and ray-warmed clouds and deep underwater songs– this man smelled like something else. 

Promises and butterscotch. Deep, hums and humid yearning. 

You gave him a warm hug and then you found yourself being swept off your feet as he spun in a slow circle. The bristle of his beards scratched at your skin as he nuzzled and you had to bite your lip to keep from kissing him.

“We ever met befo’?” he whispered in your ear once he put you down. 

Again, you gave him a shrug. It’s possible but you haven’t found all your memories yet. Stack swapped that toothpick to the other side of his mouth, tongue rolling it there real slow and taking your attention with it. Your fingers twitched. 

Stack took one of your hands, his other kept on your waist as he led you in a lazy semi-circle. In the cradle of his arms, you made a noise you didn’t know he could hear beneath the music. While you had your land legs now, you still watched your feet. 

“Why does it feel like you’re talkin’ to me?”

Because you wanted to so badly. You don’t know how well Stack man could smell, but he had to have a way of knowing you wanted him too…right?

You reached up with your free hand, to run the tip of your finger across Stack’s bottom lip. Shivering when the tip of his tongue brushed your skin as he carried the pick away from your touch–your eyes widened when he folded the pick into his mouth fully. 

Stack chuckled, showing the pick again before reaching up to flick it away. Your eyes followed, tempted and amazed by the little magic trick, and Stack took the chance to glance over to where he knew his twin was watching.

Smoke was pouring something into Annie’s glass, sparing a single nod towards the door before turning back to his woman.

“Hey lil’ flower, I gotta say I’ma bit peckish,” Stack surprised you by pressing kisses to your cheek the spot beneath your ear, “You, uh, gonna share some nectar with me?”

“Hmm…”

You leaned up and returned a kiss to his cheek, the both of you nuzzling for a moment more before Stack cleared his throat and asked if you ever rode in a motorcar before.

It looked like morning time, Stack didn’t know from the strange way light came through his motor’s windows.

He went over to press a kiss to your cheek, wanting to wake you up with another sweet, when his lips met looseness..

Reality hit him fully as Stacks opened his eyes to the sea of flower petals and downy feathers he was submerged in. Digging through them in a stupor, Stacks could only find your dress and one of the too-big shoes that you wore the night before.

He brought the dress up to his nose, the dove-white fabric now a cascade of hues that matched what you left him.

Stacks looked out to the windshield of his motor, he was still parked outside. The two of you never made it inside? No, that’s right. He remembered your kisses and the strange, intoxicating noises you made when Stack had his hands on you. When he put the car into a standstill, you crooned his name and parted for him so eagerly…

In the back of his mind when Stack was still staring down at the crown of flowers bobbing in his lap, Stack thought he should have brought you to bed. You were the type that was too good for the back seat of the motorcar but holy did you make good due with what you had. 

His eyes closed as heat seeped into his belly. You wrung him dry, all of that softness meaning anything but coyness as you rode him with a syrupy smile on your face. Stack got you back, giving it to you as kept a hold on your face to keep those pretty eyes on him as they rolled. 

Pretty, peculiar noises spilled from your bitten lips and it really felt like you were seeping nectar into his lap. How you looked at him reverently and ran your fingertips and tongue over the gold and silver in his mouth.

Stack picked up handfuls of the petals and watched as they fluttered back into the mass. He…didn’t dream of peeling roses from your skin and the dewy sweat beneath. You must have really untangled a vine of the finest tasting green grapes from the curtain of locs from the nape of your neck.

Stack didn’t know what the fuck you were saying between his name but it felt like…promises. You were so sticky, so sweet–

What were you?

His vision focused some more and he saw who was sitting on the porch. Stack cursed, sitting back in the floral bath and tried to get his head together.

 It didn’t sit well that he didn’t get to wake up with you, that he didn’t get to say goodbye, that he cared to…

The sun crawled a bit higher and the sudden company didn’t leave long enough aside to get some coffee. The second mug caught his attention and finally Stack got out of his motor. As best he could without letting the petals out, Stack closed the door up behind himself to be dealt with later. He fixed clothes up and ran a hand over his face to chase away the left-over sleep then set forward. 

If she was here, then his brother was probably inside cooking up something and to tell Stack how thick his skull was. He grumbled a bit to himself at the thought of his brother and his wife just waltzing past him as he slumbered away as pretty as a princess.

Lord...

Annie sat on the last porch stair, setting that second mug down beside her in invitation. Smoke sat down, gingerly, once he felt the ache in his legs and lower back. He huffed a little at her knowing side-eye.

They sat in silence for a moment. Stack looking at the trailing and dancing petals, following a feather until it flew high enough up into the air to vanish into the awakening blue of the sky.

“She ever gonna come back?”

“I reckon she will.”

Stack gave Annie his own look and she only shrugged a shoulder, “I don’t know when but she will. I’ve seen her before, once or twice. Goes all over, I think, but she lives here.”

“You even know for sure? Met anythin’ like her befo’?”

“She's a joy. She’s in every part of life, every bit of the world.” Annie put a hand on his shoulder and used the other hand to gesture to the petals that had not blown away yet, “You’ll see her again soon. Knowing how you are, especially. You might end up being her favorite.”

Hope quickened his heart. Stack took a sip and before he could ask his next question, the call of a bird overhead caught his gaze. 

The sound was familiar enough to loose the incredulousness feeling in his chest, shifting it to wonder and anticipation as he watched that bird settle high within the cover of a nearby willow tree.

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

✨ending notes✨: I....don't even know exactly what this is but I'm happy it's here! 🤣I haven't seen the movie yet but I've been seeing nothing but good things and this is what the vibes left me with. It's a bit long so thank you so much for reading until the end! 🥰This ended up sweeter than what I thought it would be though lmao! tell me what you think and give it a reblog! ✨💓✨💓✨💓

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[asksonicverse]

*not for any of the Bois* but omg I love this. How they're all drawn where theyre all Shadow and Sonic but still uniquely themselves. Esp that glowsticks ask for the SMU duo and how expressive the primes are (the ears omg, one of my fav parts of that show). Love that Lance and Arthur are together like an old married couple. Love this so much and looking forward to where it goes next. (Really glad I watched Snapcubes play through of TMoStH a few days ago, excellent timing on my part lol)

[ CREATOR SPECIAL! ]

I love it when you guys notice all the little details I try to pack in to make sure each Sonic and Shadow is different. I fear I will dip into more OOC/headcanon personality traits for some of the Sonic’s and Shadows as we progress (it’s a bit unavoidable… sorrey)

Paradox and Prism are the only Sonic and Shadow who emote with their ears. I try to keep Latch and Reeves eyes more square and give them pupils. The tops of Bandi and Boosts eyes are colored black. Lance and Arthur are just 🏳️‍🌈 and there’s other stuff like Snap and OG being “low poly” hehe.

Yes!!! I headcanon that he “accepted” and really realized he liked Prism pretty recently (as we’ve seen) but before that it was an unconscious crush from this moment onward.

LIKE OH MY GODDD THE WAY HE REACHES FOR HIM AND HIS PUPILS GET SMALLER AND HIS EARS DROOP OH MY GRRRAHHH

At first he just chalks it up to caring about Prism like a friend after their shared experience. And his ass thinks “man I sure would like to cuddle under the stars with this guy, damn I hate him, must be normal friendship feelings since I don’t have many of those” and now he’s like “ah shit yeah I see it”

Their “task” was just being together with Amy. Which they already were. So they have special permission to exposition dump help out!

YOU BOTH ARE SO SWEET THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU GUYS. I appreciate all the kind words I get on this ask blog and I wish I could reply to every single one of them.

You guys have no idea how much YOU mean to me and this blog, I would NOT be half as motivated to continue it if not for you guys. I do my best to balance the characters based on popularity so if some of them do slip through the cracks, I’m sorry 😭💕

And I’m still learning how to draw Sonic characters… I’m trying my best to get the best I can so that you guys can get the highest quality I can achieve with such my skill set :’D

I think I have a bad habit of mostly doing headshots… but I’m glad to know they get the job done! 🤣

Awwwwh omg thank you so much!!! I love it!!! Thank you for taking the time to create something even if you don’t think it’s great. I think it’s amazing!!!!

As long as you keep practicing and stay consistent you will see improvement fast!! Thank you again 🥹

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[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Original Sin: The Failure of the Dancestors

Establishing an Eden-like paradise from which there is some departure through sin is sort of the boilerplate basis for religious lore. [...] The failed players from peaceful Alternia made a classic "deal with the devil" move by causing the scratch after being given a choice by the mother of all monsters. (Echidna. Hey, she's a big snake!) By doing so they brought Scratch into their universe, and therefore all the things you'd expect that comes with summoning the devil.

Andrew Hussie, Formspring, Aug. 12, 2011.

Warnings for: Mostly? I'm going to be really mean to the dancestors, so if you aren't here for a thorough (and I mean thorough) dancestor takedown, please do not read this. Ableism, questionable consent and outright non-consent, horrific interpersonal relationships, and Cronus ahead.

Overview

I hesitated to write this because I know there will be some really controversial interpretations in here. Many of the circumstances I bring up as failures on the Dancestors' part are interpreted by the fandom as positive things. A common one I've run into before is Latula x Mituna, where I maintain it's bad, but the fandom often sees them as cute. I'll also be condemning things like Horuss's plurality, or Cronus's kinning, not because I have any beef towards this stuff IRL, but because they're framed as failings on the characters' part within the context of the comic, and I'm analyzing the characters within the context of the comic. I'm not asking anyone to agree with me, but I am asking that you approach this essay with an open mind, and not send death threats over a silly webcomic from the early 2010's. I would not be asking for this if it hadn't already happened, which was embarrassing for all of us TBH.

The Dancestors, as made clear from the Hussie quote, are the story's original sin - the initial failure point from which all the comic's problems stem. Their role in the story is antagonistic - with very little exception, the Dancestors are not meant to be sympathetic, and/or their flaws outweigh their sympathetic qualities. Every single one of them succumbed to some major failure (some their own fault, some brought on by others on the team), and practically only Porrim showed any improvement after death.

There's another really important thematic shadow hanging over them: if Homestuck is a coming-of-age, then the Dancestors represent a prior generation that reached physical maturity, but failed to grow up.

[The dancestors' choices] resulted not only turning Alternia into a planet full of violent murderers, but it only technically granted them what they wanted with a huge caveat, as is the case with such ill-advised bargains. The players were strong enough to win, but made a terminal universe, were barred from entry, hunted by a demon, and then started killing each other.

They're an older generation defined by how entitled and immature they are, who invited terrible forces into society and allowed the perpetuation of cruelty to continue after them. In other words, theyre boomers. It's important to note that they literally had the choice, before their Scratch, to prevent the birth of LE by simply choosing to let their species die with them - but they made the selfish choice of what was, functionally, having kids:

The heroes could either accept their defeat along with the extinction of their race, and put no others at risk. Or, [Echidna] could show them a path to a second chance, to a reality in which the chosen heroes of their race would be strong enough to succeed with ease, and claim the reward.

For more on Homestuck's coming-of-age, anti-fascist, and feminist themes, please see my essay on the Alpha Timeline. Note that I have an updated opinion: the ending was, in fact, bad on purpose, because it was a continuation of the theme of narration needing to be refuted - "who's telling the story, and why are we listening to them?" You can read more about that here. Sorry to have to link two long essays at the beginning of a really long essay, but these are the backing arguments to many of the claims I'm about to make.

I also want to refute a common fandom belief. A take I commonly see is "the dancestors are one-dimensional assholes as a snub to the fandom" - this is not true, at least to any extent moreso than the Alternian trolls.

Yes, the dancestors are riffs of Common Fandom Types of Guy, especially Types of Guy on Tumblr while the comic was being written. However, the beta trolls/kids are ALSO Internet Types of Guy - the reason the trolls are named "trolls" is because part of their original conception was that they each represented a common type of forum troll. The dancestors aren't making fun of the audience any more than the Alternian trolls are, since Hussie got his start on fora.

Moreover, they aren't actually one-dimensional, or at least not in a way meant to be a snub to people. In fact, I find the entire attitude people have that they're somehow owed the dancestors being "good" or "likable" weird. The dancestors, as I said before, are antagonistic - if not at times outright villainous. They're the story's cautionary tale, a look at what happens when a session fails and the kids in it don't grow up.

On the whole, they simply don't need a bigger role in the story than just existing, as their past actions are what spurred the plot into action, and their narrative utility now is as a window into those. Moreover, if you read between the lines and analyze them a little beyond the surface, there's actually a lot going on, which I hope to uncover in this essay.

On the Topic of Kid-Kissing

It needs to be addressed now and needs to be addressed early. The dancestors are physically 19, and the beta/alpha kids are 16 at the oldest and 13 at the youngest. Lots of the dancestors are uncomfortably okay with pursuing romantic relationships or performing romantic acts with these actual children. Cronus gets the most flak for it, but the list includes:

Cronus, who asks Eridan on a date,

Meenah, who has a "manic obsession" with Karkat, and later dates Vriska,

Meulin, who eagerly offers to ship Meenah with Karkat in red, and gets really excited about shipping the children in general, calling them her "gay babies",

Aranea, who's willing to smooch Jake in a sexy way as part of healing his brain because she thinks he's attracted to her.

Now, as gross as this all is, I do think it serves a narrative purpose. One can debate whether that narrative purpose was worth its inclusion at all, but I'm personally going to bypass this discussion since this damn essay is long enough. At least I'll clarify what I believe the narrative purpose is:

It was an extant trope at the time of the comic's writing (which has thankfully fallen out of favor) that an adult character would date a highschooler in order to show how immature, and not suited for adulthood, the adult was. One of the most famous examples of this is Scott Pilgrim's relationship with a high schooler in Scott Pilgrim, something other characters call him out on constantly.

Given that basically none of these dancestor/child relationships are intended to be read as comfortable, pleasant, or even good (I'll get more into this later), I fully believe that this is the reason for their inclusion in the story: a demonstration of the dancestors' immaturity and failure to grow up, such to the point that they see actual children as viable dating partners.

Finally, while most of the dancestors have very limited screentime, one thing we DO have is all their classpects. I'll be using my definitions, which you can find here. Please note that, while that essay does not have any textual evidence (as it was already 10k words long without any), I'm willing to back up every claim in there with textual evidence upon request.

The TL;DR is that class is correlated with character arc and starting circumstances, while aspect is correlated with base personality traits, and what qualities would make the character a successful (and unsuccessful) hero of said aspect.

I firmly believe that, given what's in the comic, it's entirely possible to deduce what each class and aspect actually do, so being provided with every Dancestor's classpect means that we have a very powerful vector by which we can understand how their tragedy unfurled.

So please join me as we turn over this big rock and take a peek at all the skeletons living in the dancestors' closets. There are a lot of them, and they are rancid, but the complex ways they interlock are endlessly fascinating, and I hope you walk away from this with some new insight, or at least a new perspective.

Establishing a Baseline

First and foremost, let's factually review the events leading up to the dancestors' Scratch, organized in the way that makes the most sense to me. Many of these events don't have any set timelines, and aren't even described in relation to each other, but by going over them in general, we can get a big picture overview of the tragedies, and it helps to make sense of the interlocking nature of their failure.

Pre-Game

The dancestors grow up in a version of troll society as designed by Feferi Peixes, where the main difference between the two is that "culling" means "coddling excessively" rather than killing. Therefore, casteism still exists, but usually does not have as life-threatening effects. Characters who would've been culled on Alternia are likewise targets for culling on Beforus - this is most relevant to Mituna and Kankri.

Meenah finds the idea of becoming the next empress so distasteful that she flees to the pink moon, where she finds and transcribes the code for SGRUB and bothers her friends into playing it with her, in large part because it promises an escape from her responsibilities.

Cronus believes he's a chosen one destined to defeat an evil wizard, who tried to kill him when he was a wiggler. The story is one part Harry Potter and Voldemort, and one part Definitely About Lord English.

Kurloz and Meulin are probably dating in red, and Kurloz and Mituna are probably dating in pale.

Latula suffers an injury that leaves her unable to smell, something she remains insecure about for the rest of her existence. Communing with her lusus à la Terezi teaches her "new ways to smell".

Damara and Rufioh are dating in red.

Kankri was likely culled on sight, while Mituna was destined for one of the highest/"cushiest'" degrees of culling possible, echoing Karkat's and Sollux's relationships with culling.

Porrim is being trained for the breeding caverns as a jade-blood, and is not happy about it. It's likely that jades are the caste with the least privileges and freedoms, given the culling system (yes, I know culling is still a form of oppression, but it's still a cushy position to be in, compared to jades being forced to work breeding duties by birth).

During the Game

All of this happens over the course of six years.

Mituna spends the whole game attempting to warn his team to stop being such assholes or else something really bad is going to happen to them, using the prophetic insight he has as a Doom player.

Meenah starts cruelly bullying Damara, under the supposed motivation of "trying to galvanize the team into action".

Porrim outright ignores frog breeding, opting instead to go on a bra-burning rampage across her session.

Meulin is shipping her friends. Due to her Mage powers and predilections, not only do these ships come true, but they're really unhealthy and toxic as a rule.

Horuss begins an affair with Rufioh.

Kankri argues with himself nonstop, rendering most memos pointless.

Kurloz has a terrible nightmare and accidentally deafens Meulin, an act he finds so shameful that he stitches his own mouth shut. The two break up, but are still "very close friends"/in a situationship.

Someone talks Cronus out of his wizard beliefs, likely Kankri, and Cronus completely loses faith in magic, as well as a sense of identity. This is really bad, given what Hope does.

Meenah finds out about Rufioh and Horuss's affair and uses it as bullying fodder.

Damara snaps, kills Meenah, renders Rufioh a quadruplegic, and begins to perform acts of "timeline sabotage," which are even more impactful given her Witch class. It's heavily implied that Damara is the cause of the dancestors not performing their own ectobiology, the glitch that rendered their game unwinnable and serves as a "calling card" for LE.

Mituna tries to divert a terrible tragedy, something "only Kurloz was witness to". Said tragedy is implied to be Kurloz's Prince meltdown, and Mituna fails, rendering him brain damaged to the extent that he can no longer think or speak coherently. The team does NOT heal him or even reference TRYING to heal him, as it's implied they're more comfortable with him like this than they were with him telling them they were all doomed assholes.

Kurloz fully commits to his doomsday clown religion and begins using Meulin and Mituna as hynopuppets/conduits to bring about the end. It's likely that they rope Damara into their religion at this time.

Latula and Mituna start dating in red. For various reasons I'll get into later, this relationship seems to have started AFTER Mituna's injury.

Meenah bakes a cake. Isn't that nice.

It's never made very clear how long it took for all of this to go down, but the way it's framed is that everything major happened fairly early on, before the Reckoning, and they spent the rest of their session faffing around. While the beta kids have a nonstandard-ly short session, the beta trolls have what seems to be a more standard timeframe of about 612 hours, or several weeks. Again... SIX YEARS elapse. The dancestors reach the age of physical adulthood within the game.

Finally, seeing no way out, Aranea goes to Echidna for her quills in order to initiate the Scratch. The Choice that she's given is to immediately stymie the harm the dancestors' actions will bring (LE) by letting their species die with them, or to try again by passing the buck onto the next generation of heroes. The pick is obvious.

Damara, who's been uncooperative since she snapped, chooses to help out with the Scratch, muttering that everyone will "get what they deserve".

Meenah uses a tumor-like bomb to kill them all just before the Scratch goes off, in the window where god tier immortality pauses before bringing them back. This allows them to exist in the afterlife with memories fully intact. It's not fully clear how many of them achieved god tier before dying.

Afterlife

Meenah stays in her castle, echoing the way she fled responsibility to the pink moon, for the millenia that her friends have been mingling in the afterlife. Her descent from her castle after LE starts popping bubbles is the first time she's interacted with her team since she died.

Porrim is the ONLY dancestor that shows improvement or reflection, coming to view her frog breeding duties as something she probably should have paid more attention to, and toning down her feminism to thoughtful, reasonable critiques. This still doesn't excuse her total bystander nature while everything else was happening, which continues into the afterlife, but it's nice to see that she's doing better, since that's so rare in this team.

Kurloz starts readying for Lord English's birth, building labyrinths in the afterlife and using Meulin and Mituna as mind-controlled helpers (and possibly Damara as well).

Meulin and Horuss start dating in pale after Horuss is inspired by the meowrails. Despite Horuss's internal anguish and anger, he's been told by Meulin to cover it up with forced positivity no matter what.

Cronus is kinning a 1950's human greaser, an act which he himself admits is probably just a cry for attention, and a greater symptom of his struggles with personal identity in the wake of losing interest in magic and wizardry.

Rufioh wants to break up with Horuss, but doesn't have the backbone to to get pushy with these requests. Horuss has difficulty hearing what he doesn't want to hear, so Rufioh winds up wilting and agreeing to continue dating him every time he tries breaking up with him.

Aranea... does all that, spurred on by a desire to be important.

Meenah decides to encourage Vriska to shirk responsibility, running off with her and starting a romantic relationship with her.

Woof, that's a lot! So, now that we've established an overview of what went wrong, something I should probably note:

It's not JUST that Damara caused the timeline glitch that retroactively summoned LE, or JUST that Meenah bullied her. When I say that the dancestors' failure is multivalent and interlocking, I mean it - especially once you get into the implications of their classpects. Cronus being a Bard of Hope - Hope being the aspect of making fake things real - losing faith in his own destiny of defeating an evil wizard likely had some karmic contribution to the first half of that destiny - the existence of the evil wizard in the first place - coming true. So on and so on. So the rest of this essay will be a deeper look into each individual dancestor, and the contributions they made towards the ultimate blowout.

Porrim Maryam: The Ultimate Bystander

Porrim's drama is the least connected to the various conflicts suffered by everyone else, though it's one of the most consequential.

The Maid of Space was of course our all-important Space player and Stoker of the Forge, 8ut as you know, we never made much progress on the frog 8reeding front, or really any aspect of the game 8efore the reckoning. [...] She challenged these roles wherever they existed in 8eforan society, as well as where she found them woven into our session, in kingdoms, class assignments, consort culture and the like.

While she is pretty much the only dancestor that reflected on her failures - having come to a realization after her game's Reckoning that she probably should've paid attention to frog breeding - the fact remains that she totally ignored this duty in favor of going on a feminist rampage.

I do actually believe there is merit to her viewpoint, something Hussie appears to agree with:

HUSSIE: Porrim is better at social justice than Kankri because she isn't a boring asshole. [...] Porrim wants there to be equality for ladies. Not everybody cares about that though, which makes it hard for people like Porrim. That's the way it is in the real world. CHALLENGES.

Note that while Hussie is a deeply unreliable narrator (he describes his own self-insert as "oafish" and "buffoonish" in the book commentary, and his narration being biased and full of holes is a very deliberate choice), there is still meaning to be gleaned from his words, especially once you identify what biases he's performing. In this case, I think he's being genuine, as Homestuck has a deeply feminist and anti-patriarchy message overall, which I touch on in my essay about the Alpha Timeline.

However, Porrim's failure is that, as correctly as she identified sexism as being an issue, she became tunnel-visioned on it to the point that she failed to do anything useful at all. Frog breeding, AKA creating a new universe, is practically the entire point of SGRUB, and though her energies could've been focused on creating a new world free of sexism, she prioritized nitpicking it in session constructs.

Her other big failure is that of being a total bystander. In her conversations with Latula and Meenah, Porrim doesn't make any references at all to the bullying Meenah perpetrated, and otherwise seems surprised at the Redglare/Mindfang situation. She's also known as promiscuous, willing to sleep around with nearly anyone, tacitly approving of her teams' actions. Much of her feminist rhetoric is undercut by the fact that she has no comment to make on the way Meenah - the team's rich fuchsia - was primarily targetting a rustblood immigrant. It's implied her constant bickering with Kankri was in part due to her complete lack of intersectionality (with the other, more major part being Kankri's misogyny, but we'll get to that).

Interestingly enough, these three failures - poor prioritization, tunnel vision, and bystanderism - are failures of Space. There are two ways for an aspect (which is associated with base personality) to fail - the first is a toxic overabundance of the aspect's natural worst traits, and the second is a dearth of its positive qualities, to the point of resembling its counterpart. Space is associated with cycles and interconnectivity, patience and passivity. Its players are distractible and frivolous, but kind and permissive. However, it's easy for Space players to become so distracted that they lose sight of the bigger picture - we see this in Porrim's poor prioritization, and the tunnel vision she incurs in pursuit. It's also easy for them to become so passive that bad actors take advantage, and this, too, is present in Porrim's complete failure to grasp her team's cruelties.

Maids, meanwhile, are victims of oppression, and start the game under some form of control. Jane's been bombarded with hypnotic subliminals her entire life, and is ultimately directly controlled hy the Condesce; Aradia is killed so as to be Doc Scratch's servant via the Handmaid, and Hussie even outright calls her a slave in his book commentary. Porrim is not an exception to this:

On 8eforus, well 8efore her drinker a8ilities had awakened, she grew up in the caste almost solely devoted to tending to the mother gru8, hatching the young and proliferating the 8rood. The jade 8loods were also an almost exclusively female caste, and she 8egan to resent the roles she was hatched into, designated for 8oth her class and gender.

Ultimately, Maids can't shake off their oppressors alone, and outside intervention is needed to rid them of their shackles. Nobody on Porrim's team seemed to give a shit about what she had to say, however, nor did they attempt to relieve her of frog breeding or attempt to alleviate her workload - leaving her ultimately shackled to frog breeding, which, aside from the final frog (usually implied to be long in the Space player's past), did not HAVE to be conducted by her. In fact, Echidna being Aranea's denizen, when she's normally associated with the frog-breeding Space player, further implies that it didn't necessarily need to be up to Porrim - perhaps the team could've come together to take up frog breeding, splitting the duties equally, freeing Porrim from oppression.

But that didn't happen, and thus, our Maid of Space is disconnected from everything but the breeding duties that bound her so.

Kankri Vantas: The Hemocaste's Number One Fan

Kankri is a casteist, ableist, slut-shaming misogynistic bootlicker.

I'm going to go a bit lighter on the citations, because he uses a hundred words where ten will do, but if you actually bother to read his diatribes, he's all-in on perpetuating oppression. Here's a quick rundown of some of the awful shit he's said:

He tells Mituna that Mituna is bad representation for disabled people, and basically tells him to his face that he wishes everything about him was different, likely as displaced jealousy that Mituna is dating Latula. This shows that his rhetoric is actually just a mask, a tool he uses to disguise his actual intentions.

He complains about how burgundies have to "check their privilege" because they don't know how good they have it compared to off-spectrums, showing that he resents it when others attempt to address their oppression.

He tells Porrim that he thinks misogyny isn't real, and then slut shames her by insinuating that she's even willing to go for the Mayor. Once more, a display of how he resents when others challenge his points, or try to take away attention from his causes.

He calls Horuss and Cronus's beliefs fake even as he's defending their right to believe in them, revealing that it's not about justice for him, but about whatever puts him in a position of power over the situation, as the quote-unquote "spiritual leader".

Kankri was very likely culled on sight for his mutant blood color, mirroring how Karkat would've been. He clearly has complicated feelings about this, as he reacts very poorly to Porrim's mothering, but it's also the source of his deep-seated casteism, and the favor he shows towards the two sea dwellers on the team. While it IS a form of oppression, those culled on Beforus ARE provided extremely comfortable lifestyles, and Kankri would've been subjected to an intense amount of pampering, being a mutant.

In other words, he's been taught his whole life that he's a very special little boy, and he both feels entitled to the emotional energies of others, and gets upset when he isn't the center of attention. In contrast to Porrim, who had valid points but prioritized poorly, for Kankri, "social justice" is just a smokescreen he uses as he verbally browbeats his team into falling into line. Any valid points he makes are twisted to suit his personal agenda of being the loudest voice in the room, and he hides behind them so nobody can properly challenge his position. The actual oppression he did face, and a genuine desire buried deep down to make the world a better place (which I do believe exists), are ultimately undercut by his willingness to play victim in order to sate his own desire for attention and control.

Kankri himself didn't contribute as directly to the team's failure, but he was, overall, a binding force of stasis - perpetuating societal prejudices, fixing them in place. It should be no surprise that the two who find Kankri the most tolerable - Horuss and Cronus - are the two biggest casteists on the team.

Blood is about bonds - familial, platonic, romantic, and societal. It governs oaths, promises, compatability, and all interpersonal relationships. Its players, in contrast to Breath's free-spirited youthfulness, tend to be neurotic and controlling. At their best, they're mature, empathetic, and responsible, and indeed Karkat is one of the most level-headed and generally correct members of his team when he's not flying off the handle, but at toxic overabundance, they become iron-fisted dictators, "my way or the highway" types - to the point of shirking their innate sense of empathy and natural compulsion to be helpful to others.

Seers, meanwhile, struggle with blindness - either by hubris and ego, or else by shame-induced self-infliction. Rose's ego prevented her from bonding with her mother, and her need to be the smartest person in the room let Doc Scratch manipulate her; she later copes with her grief by drinking herself stupid, opposite Light's association with knowledge and insight. Terezi boldly painted herself into a corner where the only option left was killing Vriska, and coped with the guilt by throwing herself into a toxic relationship with Gamzee, a Gamzee victory that triumphed over Mind's sense of justice and karma.

Kankri is so moved by ego - his selfish desires for a society that works best for him personally, and his confidence that he knows better than the rest of his team - that he's blind to how harmful his rhetoric is. He damages their ability to move forward by chaining them in place, an ultimate failure of Blood.

Moreover, he's also inflicted a "blindness" upon himself - due to his staunch celibacy, he doesn't seem to notice that he has clear red feelings for Latula and pale feelings for Cronus - and this is to disastrous effect. The motivator behind his cruelty to Mituna appears to be jealousy, and he interrupts a conversation Cronus is having with Meenah, where she's about to make him reflect on choices that are harming him, just in time to prevent Cronus from reaching his epiphany. In fact, it's implied that Kankri is the one who talked Cronus out of his wizard faith in the first place, which we'll get into later (this is the most direct contribution Kankri made to the dancestor's failure).

As such, our Seer of Blood is sightless, and through blindness both based in ego and self-inflicted, he can't see the damage he's dealing.

Cronus Ampora: Hopeless - And That's Everyone's Problem Now

Cronus is a nasty casteist fuckboy who's greatly disliked by his team, and also everyone else, for good reason. He's mostly irrelevant to everyone and failed to do anything of worth. The problem is, he's a Bard of Hope, and thus, was one of the greatest contributors to the creation of LE.

Cronus as we see him is easy to explain. He's fundamentally a directionless, shitty rich kid, who's never had real problems before, and thus, never had the kinds of formative experiences that would've built him a personal identity. In an effort to find something to give his directionless (after)life some meaning, he's decided that he's humankin, specifically a 1950's greaser. He's also trying to get laid for similar reasons. What else is there to do when you don't feel like you have a real personality, and thus, don't really know how to open up to others or connect on a deeper level, but still crave an intimate relationship of some sort?

The thing is, Cronus wasn't always this way, and in fact, started out his game quite different:

[H]e once had a deeply a8iding faith in magic, and dedicated himself to 8ecoming a great wizard. He 8ecame convinced he was hatched to defeat an extraordinarily evil magician, one he swore the angels foretold of. Though when pressed for the name of the man, he would not say it, claiming it was too dangerous to even enunciate. Part of his self-aggrandizing mythos was that this magician once somehow from afar tried to strike him down at a young age, so he would never have to face him. 8ut the evil spell was deflected, sealing the magician's spirit away in a series of unassuming vessels until he could find some other cunning way to enter our universe. The attack supposedly left him with his distinctive scar, which he was not reluctant to point out when trying to hit on me.

Now, while this is definitely Harry Potter, it's also worded so as to resemble Lord English, and this is not a coincidence. You see, Hope is a power that makes fake things real.

Believing in things reduces their fakeness attribute. It's the force that shapes your reality, used to snatch personal meaning from the jaws of a cynical and nihilistic environment. Could this be why Hope is framed as the most fundamentally powerful aspect?

Ultimately, it didn't matter if Cronus's stupid wizard faith (and it is framed as a faith, a religious belief - put a pin in this) was real or not. In fact, the more credible journey for a Hope player would be if his personal mythos were fake - because Hope would've made it real.

However...

8ut at some point he 8ecame disillusioned with magic. [...] Perhaps someone talked him out of his 8eliefs. May8e a friend close to him. Or, if one is to 8elieve his fantasy held any water, perhaps someone who was in league with the evil magician.

As all Bards do, he suffered a crisis of faith, and he was never able to recover. Now, the identity of the person who talked him out of his religion is never made explicit, but I'm firmly convinced it was Kankri. First of all, who else on the team would qualify as a "friend close to him"? While "someone in league with the evil magician" might refer to Kurloz, Meulin, or Damara, Cronus seems wholly unrelated to the latter two, never mentioning them once, and while he's "scared" by Kurloz, it's not enough to not hit on him.

However, "in league with the evil magician" can also be interpreted metaphorically - someone who represents the same values as Lord English does, especially those of misogyny, fascism, and oppression. Which, again, points to Kankri. In fact, the main interaction Cronus has with Kankri illustrates the harm Kankri is doing to him: right as Cronus is about to have a personal epiphany that his humankin schtick is doing him more harm than good, Kankri jumps in to guilt-trip him until he continues with the act.

CRONUS: to be honest, she might be right. sometimes i think i might only be saying im a human to get attention. maybe i should givwe it up. KANKRI: I'd 6e extremely disapp9inted t9 hear that, if it were true. That w9uld 6e such a slap in the face t9 all th9se wh9 kn9w themselves t9 6e an alien while trapped in the pedestrian 69dy 9f their 9wn race. It w9uld 6e unspeaka6ly invalidating 9f their struggles and massively triggering t9 their em9ti9ns.  #TW #invalidated struggles #triggered em9ti9ns KANKRI: 6ut f9rtunately, I kn9w y9u w9uld never st99p as l9w as that. Y9u understanda6ly have d9u6ts a69ut y9ur feelings and pr96a6ly d9wnplay them as a defense mechanism, since s9 few are prepared t9 rec9gnize the legitimacy 9f y9ur plight. 6ut I am, and I just wanted y9u t9 kn9w that I'm here f9r y9u, and am prepared t9 lecture t9 y9u extensively, I mean, listen t9 y9u extensively, a69ut y9ur ultra-imp9rtant pr96lem.

Fucking Kankri! He doesn't even believe in Cronus's act himself (calling it a "fantasy versi9n 9f [him]self"), but Cronus's conversation with Meenah is pale-coded, with Cronus being the only person on the team able to make Meenah have doubts about how awesome the Condesce (and by extension, her own worst qualities) are, with her able to pierce through Cronus's bullshit and make him rethink his choices. But Kankri has a palecrush on Cronus, so he cannot abide by Cronus having a pale interaction with anyone else.

KANKRI: Listen, I was d9ing y9u a fav9r. Y9u d9n't need t9 6e dating any9ne wh9 can't appreciate y9u f9r wh9 y9u really are[.]

But his interruption of Cronus's character development, and also his breaking of Cronus's faith, aren't just disastrous for Cronus's ability to self-actualize - remember, Cronus is a Bard of Hope.

UU: while the more passive bard coUld be seen as "one who allows x to be destroyed, or invites destrUction throUgh x," as if by the will of the aspect. TT: I'm obviously no expert, but that sounds like a pretty odd thing for a Bard to do. UU: maybe! it's a qUirky class. UU: somewhat like a wildcard role for a hero. very Unpredictable. UU: they are typically known for their spontaneoUs and dramatic story-altering inflUence on the fate of a party. UU: some of the more remarkable tales involve sUch parties, where the bard is single handedly responsible for their spectacUlar downfall or improbable victory. or both!

Bards act as a conduit by which their Aspect dramatically alters fate, for better or for worse, and Hope is a power that makes fake things real. Cronus had a Bard crisis of faith, never recovered, and, in his failure to do so, began to exhibit his aspect at its nadir - where Hope players should be idealists, dreaming up better futures with a naive and shameless sincerity, Cronus has become self-conscious, frustrated with himself and magic, and utterly materialistic, seeking only immediate physical gratification. Hope, at its worst, picks out such bleak possibilities to invest its incredible, reality-altering power into, that it actually serves to close possibilities and ruin everything - mirroring Rage's ability to tear down false truths.

It is, therefore, incredibly likely that the direct manifestation of his Bard of Hope abilities is the materialization of the first half of Cronus's faith - the existence of the evil wizard - and not the second - that he would become a wizard to defeat him. This is one of the single greatest karmic contributions to LE's improbable existence. Perhaps this is the source of Kurloz's pivotal nightmare, which would've sprung out of nowhere, given LE doesn't exist until after the Scratch? We can only speculate, but this seems to me the most likely source of Lord English worship within the dancestors - Hope made him real.

And so, our Bard of Hope is faithless, and by extension, hopeless - in such a way that he breathes active calamity into existence.

Mituna Captor: Tried to Warn Them, but Nobody Wanted to Listen

I'm going to preface this section with a small list of what we will NOT be discussing, not because the conversations aren't important to have, but because they are not relevant to his essay. First of all, I will not be litigating the issue of whether or not Mituna's portrayal of TBIs/neurodivergence/etc. is problematic. I will also not be discussing the greater conversation surrounding those with such conditions to consent romantically or sexually. These are important topics to talk about, but they're just not in the scope of this essay (it's long enough as it is!).

As a break from form, I'm going to discuss his classpect first. This is because the implications of his classpect provide vital context for how we are meant to interpret and understand Mituna's arc.

Doom is the aspect presiding death, sleep, the future, and endings. It sits opposite Life, as Life's equal-and-opposite, which helps shed some light on Doom-specific qualities, as we have little exploration into Doom itself. Most notably, our three Life players are stubborn optimists, and our two Doom players are mutable pessimists. Sollux is literally introduced by changing his mind about being introduced, before changing his mind a second time, while Cronus notes that Mituna has a long-running schtick of being wildly offensive, and then pathetically contrite. Mituna is stated to have visions of the future even without being one of the two future-sighted classes (Mage and Seer), making some degree of prophetic insight a part of Doom.

I'm also firmly convinced that it's Doom, and not being a Captor, that makes both Sollux and Mituna dual-dreamers. Most non-Seer/non-Mage players' main interaction with prophecy will be the clouds of Skaia or the whispers of the Horrorterrors while they're asleep, and being a dual-dreamer gives Doom access to both, as well as an extra "death" to spare - which Sollux makes great use of, as he arrives to his session dead. Moreover, being a dual dreamer allowed Sollux to be "half-dead" in the afterlife, granting him the special ability to leave - and navigate - the dream bubbles. This influence over the realm of the dead is notable, so please put a pin in it.

Heirs, meanwhile, bear a character arc of defecting from decadence. They're born into positions of wealth and comfort relative to their societies - John enjoys an upper-middle class lifestyle, with a supportive and loving father, and Equius enjoys being high enough nobility not to worry about culling, but low enough not to bear any pressing responsibilities, and has a supportive and loving lusus. Mituna, similarly, was born to a supportive and caring bicyclopsdad (as opposed to Sollux's, who was a big terrible idiot), with an eventual fate of being culled for his powerful psionic brain.

Before anyone protests that culling on Beforus is still a form of oppression - it's "a position of wealth and comfort relative to their society." Ultimately, being a stuffy capitalist isn't exactly a great destiny, and being a noble on Alternia still means being subject to a horrific system of murdering and being murdered. In a similar vein, Mituna's inheritance is a wolf in sheep's clothing. In fact, this exact wolf-in-sheep's-clothing nature of inheritance factors into the Heir's arc.

Heirs are on a ticking clock. Their aspects are powerful, but they struggle to control them. After all, they're a passive class:

He is the Heir of Breath after all. It's a passive class, and he's a passive guy. An heir, literally speaking, is one who inherits stuff.

And passive classes work best when they're allowing their aspect to be used for others:

UU: the +/- distinction can mean many things, bUt coUld be qUite roUghly sUmmed Up in this way: active classes exploit their aspect to benefit themselves, while passive classes allow their aspect to benefit others.

We see this with John, who gains the incredible power to retcon the story, unsticking it from the alpha timeline, but doesn't know how to effect useful change without guidance from others. Even Equius's first chronological expression of Void is his mere presence providing a shield for Vriska from Doc Scratch's omniscience.

But because of their privileged upbringings, it's difficult for them to know how to help others, or even that they should. John is goofy and friendly, but doesn't seem to notice that Dave is being constantly abused, and doesn't question the horrific violence of troll culture when Vriska tells him about it (something which Hussie chastises him for in the book commentary), while Equius's blind spots are even more glaring, given his casteism and complete obliviousness regarding his own fetishes.

Thus, like wealthy inheritors in real life, an Heir that fails to interrogate the systemic injustices of the system they were born into becomes swallowed up by their inheritance, another brick in the wall, rendering their aspect out of reach. John's retcon powers, before he gains control over them, nearly take him out of the story entirely (Breath and its associations with freedom and independence), while Equius succumbs to his fetish for submission and allows Gamzee to strangle him to death (Void and its associations with vice and sexual pleasure - Hussie notes on multiple fronts that Equius could've escaped at any point just by flexing his neck muscles, but chose not to because horny).

While we don't have very much information about Mituna before his injury, the dancestors' failure is a foregone conclusion; therefore, we can conclude that Mituna's current state is a reflection of his failure as an Heir, and subsequently being "swallowing up" by Doom. Mituna's injury is, within the context of the story, therefore a bad thing that happened to him, and thus, it reflects poorly on every other player who not only didn't heal him, but never mentions ever trying to.

It's here that I want to point out something odd about the dancestors as a group. Isn't it strange that they retained many of their injuries even into death?

Injuries don't need to carry into the afterlife - here Tavros is with his legs fully intact. Even if you assume that characters who consider their injury to be part of their identity, like Terezi and her blindness, therefore get to keep their body in that state after death, Latula clearly has insecurities about her sense of smell, Meulin was so disheartened by her deafness that she broke up with Kurloz over it, and there's no way that Mituna is happy about the fact that he can hardly string together a coherent thought anymore.

But remember, Heirs are experts at leveraging their aspects on others' behalf, and Doom has influence and sway over death and the dead. And so, on that note, let's actually begin analyzing Mituna himself.

The primary description we have of Mituna before his injury is this:

The Heir of Doom was once a powerful psionic. He was gifted with vision twofold, and had strong prophetic insights wherever a 8leak future was concerned. He had much to say when it came to warning us a8out the path of doom and destruction we were all headed for, 8ut no one took him very seriously. 8ut one day he lost all those a8ilities when he 8adly overexerted himself. It's hard to get any specifics from him, 8ut indications are that he applied every last 8it of energy he had toward some great act of heroism, saving us all from some looming threat. Not only did his exertion permanently 8urn out his psychic a8ilities, 8ut it left him somewhat... er. Incoherent.

Doom players tend to stagnate and stay in place. Their mutability, ironically, means they have a tendency to go nowhere. However, their pessimism can cause them to become fixated on these nowheres - to become so certain of an unhappy ending that they can become energized by the notion, steamrolling over others, which can resemble Life's stubborn optimism. It seems this may have been what happened with Mituna - though it appears to be far and away aggravated by his injury, there's an implication when he's talking with Meenah and Cronus that he was already prone to being wildly offensive and aggressive even before it:

CRONUS: your vwhole bifurcated demeanor is such an act. half the time you are noxious and incomprehensible, and the other half you are mild and contrite? sure, "PAL." CRONUS: as if im not SO on to you. you only pretend to say youre sorry to get girls to like you more. sure seems like pyropes a sucker for the ruse. like im not familiar vwith THOSE tactics. vwho do you think vwrote the book on that??

MITUNA: 817H1CH WH4Y D0N7 Y0U 5H00V3 M0Y R4D 1NJURJY P4N3L 1N7H0 URR N457H7Y 53XXXU4L3 PR1V457 P4R7H 0RF P3R3RF3R3R4NC3 MEENAH: thank fuck you were never a major playa at least from my personal vantage over the course a this ridicu huge narrative  #way minor character yo MEENAH: probably woulda offed my shellf even schooner if i had to hear you talk much  #really too bad since you got the bestest fishiest name of anyone #38( MITUNA: ..,.,..,,...,..,.,. MITUNA: 50RRY

What's worse, remember how I said earlier that it's implied that all the major problems occurred before their reckoning (which was likely on a timeframe of weeks or months), and then they spent six years faffing around in their session besides? This means that Mituna was left injured for six years, and not a single time does anyone mention even attempting to heal him. Even if you subscribe to the idea that their Life player's class precluded her from healing people (and it doesn't; the Helmsman's lifespan is explicitly extended by the Condesce's powers), Aranea's powerset is explicitly geared toward healing injuries of the mind:

ARANEA: I can see every fault and fissure in your mind. My vision 8-fold sheds light on every injury you have ever suffered, whether emotional or physical. ARANEA: I can repair it all for you, Jake. JAKE: (Oh no...) ARANEA: I can heal your mind. JAKE: (Oh n-n-n-) ARANEA: I can heal your soul. JAKE: N-n-n-n-n-n-n-nooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

... So why doesn't she? Why doesn't anyone? Well, the implication is... that he was annoying! He was the only member of the team who was trying to tell them to stop being such assholes, or else they would be hurtling themselves face-first into a catastrophe, and this was such a bummer and so unpleasant to hear (likely not helped by his aggressive and offensive way of wording things) that his team actually prefers him injured. At least this way, he isn't constantly calling them out for the horrible shit that they do to each other on a regular basis. Doom players are commiserators, not a healers, and their power lies in their ability to empathize and relate, opposite Life's tendency to charge forward, not caring who they trample on the way. Mituna was never able to tap into these powers of empathy enough to get people to listen to him, and he paid for this with his injury - the version of him his teammates prefer, because now they can take advantage of him.

Cronus does so most obviously, with his unwanted advances that Mituna sits there and takes because he can't reason well enough to escape of his own volition, but I posit - and will stand by this claim - that Latula and Kurloz, his two romantic partners, are taking advantage of him, too. Kurloz is implied to be directly puppeting him the way he puppets Meulin, the source of the "rumor" Cronus heard that Mituna is "lucid" when he's around Kurloz - in fact, it's implied that Mituna's injury was directly caused by Kurloz, as part of his Prince meltdown, something we'll get into more when we discuss Kurloz. I believe this is why several of the dancestors retain major injuries into the afterlife - in a dark reflection of how an Heir is supposed to operate, Kurloz is using Mituna as a conduit to exert influence over the afterlife, rendering Doom and death an oppressive force rather than peaceful resting place. I think there's a reason that Meenah questions the fact that some people have stayed injured when talking to Mituna. It should be his area of expertise, after all!

Now, while we are sidestepping the greater discussion overall of the consent of those with TBIs, I want to state that Mituna specifically, post-injury, cannot be considered fully consenting.

Cronus says the quiet part out loud:

CRONUS: i really feel like youre one of the only people i can open up to about my feelings. i guess it really does help to confide in someone vwho basically lacks the ability to repeat vwhat you say vwith any clarity or coherence, or evwen understand vwhat you said in the first place.

And unfortunately, this is pretty true: Mituna is impaired to the point where he:

Can't answer yes or no to whether he's god tier, because he doesn't know/can't remember/doesn't fully seem to understand the question.

Can't seem to understand that Meenah's asking him to strip because she's trying to check if he has god tier wings, instead enthusiastically assuming that she's asking to have sex with him.

Forgets how to take his own shirt off.

Doesn't understand that Cronus is touching him as a prelude to sexual intentions, just that he doesn't like it.

As is often the case with TBIs, he does have glimpses of clarity, but - whether this portrayal is offensive or not - the clear indication to me is that, within the context of the comic, we should come away with the understanding that Mituna can barely register what's going on, can barely understand what others are trying to communicate to him, and can barely voice what few thoughts he is able to string together. And I think it would also be one thing if he was simply born this way, but again, this is the result of an injury that is portrayed as a terrible thing that happened to him, and his injured state is not a reflection of who he was, and what decisions he would've made, before it happened.

[EDIT (March 02): This keeps being a contentious opinion that overshadows the entire rest of Mituna's section of the essay, so let me clarify.

The through-line of Mituna's entire character is that people are taking advantage of him. Whether or not he is, in fact, fully capable of consent (and this is dubious since it's dubious whether or not he's even fully capable of understanding what's going on around him - please note again that I am NOT saying people with TBIs/neurodivergence IN GENERAL can't consent, I am saying that IN MITUNA'S SPECIFIC CASE it's DUBIOUS), people are still using whatever impairment he has to take advantage of him.

I am also going to state again that whether or not it is depicted well, the comic has also chosen to portray Mituna's injury as one of genuine cognitive impairment. Sollux feeds his lusus mind honey in order to "[help] him not be such a complete idiot all the time. Merely most of the time, instead." The clear implication of Mituna begging for mind honey from his lusus is that it helps him think clearer and more lucidly, because his injury has left him cognitively impaired. Not only that, but this is a healable injury, given that Aranea stresses so strongly that she's capable of literally healing minds (not to mention alternate methods of healing available, such as Life powers or killing/god tiering him). There's a reason that Kurloz is capable of using Mituna as a hypnopuppet after the injury, but doesn't ever have seemed to before.

Because his condition is cognitive impairment that could be considered temporary, and because every single person pursuing him romantically is taking advantage of him, and because the team as a whole appears to have left him deliberately unhealed so that they can take advantage of him, and that's the POINT OF THE CHARACTER - to illustrate how shitty his team is by showing how many of them are willing to take advantage of him - I personally find it more thematically coherent if he cannot, in fact, be considered fully consenting, or at the very least for it to be intentionally uncomfortable that so many people in his team have romantic interest in him only now that he's cognitively impaired, because he's easier to take advantage of like this. It completely tracks with how many of them are also perfectly content to pursue literal children romantically.

Feel free to disagree on this specific issue, but please don't let that disagreement overshadow the greater point that I'm making, which is that Mituna is being taken advantage of. Whether or not he's capable of consent, his party is exploiting his injury-induced impairments - which could have been healed - for their own comfort and benefit. That's the point I'm trying to make here.]

And thus the Heir of Doom has inherited Doom in the worst way, becoming Doom as a force of oppression, bereft of empathy, understanding, or peace.

Latula Pyrope: Insecure Poser, Derelict Duty

Latula is a rad gamer girl... not! This is an act, and she even admits that it's an act.

PORRIM: I just think yo+u sho+uld be yo+urself mo+re o+ften. We already kno+w yo+u are stro+ng and go+o+d at games and all that. Yo+u have no+thing to+ pro+ve. LATULA: y34h. your3 prob4bly r1ght. LATULA: 1ts k1nd of str3ssful som3t1m3s, k33p1ng 1t up! som3t1m3s 1 forg3t to put z33s on th3 3nd of words, 4nd 1 r34lly str3ss out 4bout 1t.  #sp3c14lly wh3n 1m off my m3ds

So what's Latula's actual deal? Well, we get a really good glimpse of it here:

LATULA: for most of th3 t1m3 w3 kn3w 34ch oth3r, 1 w4s 4ll l1k3, WHY SHOULD TH3R3 B3 TWO B4D4SS, 1N-YOUR-F4C3 GRLZ 1N TH3 GROUP??? LATULA: sort of ov3rk1ll, r1ght? MEENAH: mehhh  #u searious? LATULA: 1 w4s k1nd of v13w1ng you 4s 4 comp3t1tor, 1n l1k3 4 two grl RAD-OFF. 1 w4s w1nn1ng 1n my m1nd, of cours3. but s33, 1 h4d 1t 4ll wrong!!!! MEENAH: did you LATULA: Y3AH! s33, 1m th3 t34mz R4D GRL, wh3r34s YOUR3 th3 t34mz B4D GRL!!!! 1t 4ll m4k3s p3rf3ct s3ns3! do3snt th4t m4k3 SO MUCH S3NS3??? MEENAH: that MEENAH: is the stupidest glubbin thing to require any sorta rationalization i ever heard  #p lame tules LATULA: s33 p4ych3ck? 1 kn3w 1 could count on you to b3 just1f14bly cyn1c4l 4bout my n3urot1c bullsh1t. you RUL3!!!

Latula is another character we get little direct development of, so I'll head into classpect analysis early, as she's much easier to understand once we have the context of Knights and Mind players.

Mind governs logic, rationality, justice, karma, behaviors, and consequences. The justice and karma associations are explained as a Mindy Thing by Latula herself:

PORRIM: Did yo+u no+t kno+w that?  #Mindfang gave yo+u five #Then left yo+u hanging LATULA: n3v3r r34lly thought 4bout 1t. but now th4t you m3nt1on 1t, th4t outcom3 m4k3s 4ll sorts of s3ns3 to m3. PORRIM: It do+es? Ho+w? LATULA: just do3s, b4b3z. PORRIM: I do+n't really understand karma. LATULA: th4ts c4us3 your3 not 4 m1nd pl4y3r.

Mind players tend to be cunning and manipulative. As the aspect presiding over the "effect" of cause-and-effect, they're finely attuned to the various webs of actions and consequences, but not so much to the inner workings of emotions and identity, which are Heart's domain, Mind's equal-and-opposite. As such, Mind players have a tendency to deemphasize their own emotions, substituting systems of karma, justice, societal attitudes, etc. to make decisions instead. We see this in Terezi's primary character struggle, the way she painted herself into a corner where the only viable outcome was killing Vriska, which happened because she consistently prioritized what Vriska karmically deserved over her own desire to maintain their friendship. In the worst case, their own identity and sense of self can become so confused that they seek out unhealthy relationships with others, in an attempt to supplement their poor sense of personal identity with some sort of external validation - you can see this in Terezi's toxic relationship with Gamzee, or, indeed, with Latula's relationship with Mituna (more on this later).

Knights, meanwhile, struggle with great insecurity. Often provided a significant role by the forces of fate and prophecy, they suffer deeply from imposter syndrome and/or self-loathing, and to help them cope with these feelings, they effect a facade that distances them from their aspect. Karkat, whose aspect presides over bonds and relationships, insists he's a big bad leader who doesn't give a shit about other people, and this breakdown of Blood's bonds culminated in Murderstuck. Dave, whose aspect presides over minutiae, goal-orientedness, and struggle, pretends to be a disaffected cool guy. In the worst case, their insecurity can become so intense that they invest completely into their facades, laying down their weapons and refusing the call entirely. Dave, at the belly of his whale, declares that he won't fight LE, as he "doesn't even think he did anything directly bad to them" - despite Dave literally being haunted by LE for his entire childhood under the guise of Lil' Cal, a detail he'd normally notice, given how often he secretly pays attention (which is a Timey Thing).

Latula struggles greatly with her own personal identity, her anxiety surrounding not having anything unique or standout about her in her friend group. To cope with this, she projects a facade that practically screams its "personality" from the rooftops - she's a dumb but radical "gamer girl". In doing so, she distances herself from her actual aspect - gone are Mind's cunning and intellect, which even Porrim calls her out on:

PORRIM: Yo+u can pretend to+ misunderstand all yo+u want, but we've talked abo+ut this befo+re and I kno+w yo+u're smarter abo+ut this than yo+u let o+n.

But, crucially, it also distances her from Mind's ties with karma and justice. Latula states that, not only does she dislike Aranea, but she can also absolutely understand the chains of karma and destiny that would've led to Mindfang and Redglare having such a contentious relationship that it led to them killing each other.

What else is Latula aware of, that she's completely chosen to ignore, out of desperate fear that it wouldn't suit her image, would make her seem less "r4d"?

Well... let's talk about Mituna. As we've already covered in his section, his ability to consent to this relationship is dubious, and the fact that it's dubious at all is already not a great sign. But I also want to bring up a couple other things. Did you know that, throughout all of Mituna's dialogue - including when he's enthusiastically trying to strip to have sex with Meenah - he doesn't mention dating Latula even one time?

Other characters will bring it up, but Mituna himself doesn't say anything about it. And, again, given that he's enthusiastically ready to get nasty with Meenah... one wonders if he's even lucid enough to know that he and Latula are dating.

MEENAH: look take off your rad shirt deal and lemme see if you got wings MITUNA: 3H3HH3H7H37H37H3 YY35 MITUNA: 7H0NGH7 Y0DU N3V3R 45K MITUNA: 817HCH 4C4M3 4R0UN57 70 MY W1L135 MU7H4FUCK5!  #W1L135 #MUH #FUX MITUNA: W417 H3LUP  #!!!!!!!!!! MITUNA: H3LP H0W D01 74K3 0FF MY CL07H37H 4G41N?  #8( MEENAH: yeah keep your shirt on you made that exchange beyond awful

Hey, maybe he does. He does get sad when Cronus tells him that Latula's only dating him out of pity. But still, the fact that it's in question at all - and also the fact that he's totally up for cheating with Meenah - are bad signs!

But even putting that to the side for a second... what does Latula even see in him? He's constantly saying slurs, he's down to cheat at the first opportunity, he's questionably capable of stringing a coherent thought together... well, good news! It comes up in conversation.

MEENAH: mother glubber MEENAH: seriously didnt think T)(ATD last LATULA: 1dk, th3r3z w4y mor3 to h1m th4n. w3ll, 4ll th3 t3rr1bl3 4nd stup1d sh1t h3 s4ys 4ll th3 t1m3. LATULA: 4nd 1ts 4lw4yz f3lt l1k3 h3 n33ds m3 1f th4t m4k3s s3ns3, 3v3n 4ft3r dy1ng. so th3r3z th4t!!!!

So, let's actually break down what she's saying here.

She feels the need to insult him while she's trying to come up with something nice to say.

She can't actually name anything specific that she likes about him...

Except that he's dependent on her. She likes him because he can't reliably function away from her. Woof.

But I also want to turn your attention to the phrase "way more to him". What does she mean by this, exactly? Does she mean some of the traits he had before his injury? If so, how come it never comes up that Latula wanted to heal him, or tried to heal him? In fact, Aranea - who, again, has a powerset specifically suited for healing minds - comes up in conversation between Porrim and Latula, and Latula doesn't mention ANYTHING about Mituna. She's even on friendly terms with Aranea.

PORRIM: Like, as far as I kno+w, yo+u and Aranea always go+t alo+ng. Didn't yo+u?  #Radglare #Kindfang LATULA: 3h 1 gu3ss. n3v3r sp3nt much t1m3 th1nk1ng 4bout s3rk3t, tbh. LATULA: 4lw4ys thought sh3 w4s 4 s3lf 4bsorb3d snooz3, 1f you r34lly w4nt to know.  #zzzz #not 3v3n th3 r4d k1nd of z33s

The only other possible indication that they might secretly have a good relationship is that she threatens that if Damara touches Mituna, she'll kill Damara. Now, we'll have to save a lot of this for the Damara part of the essay, but I'll note here that Damara is perfectly pleasant and kind to people she doesn't have any personal beef with, with the example being the human kids. However, since the bulk of her team were complicit bystanders (and even Meenah's friends) in her horrific bullying, she obviously has great anger at all of them. However... if there's any exception to the bystander disease that plagued her team, it would've been Mituna, the only one trying to warn them they were headed for a terrible, bleak ending. Wouldn't he, out of everyone on the team, be someone Damara is fond of?

So, there are several options here... but they ALL make Latula look bad to varying degrees.

Damara really IS a threat to Mituna.

This still makes Latula a bystander in Damara's abuse, and a terrible hypocrite, as Kankri says one of the things he likes about her is her egalitarian, non-casteist demeanor, but she totally let a fuchsia bullying a burgundy slide, but I suppose it's the option that makes her look the least bad otherwise. Again, it seems unlikely, given the way Damara operates, but it's technically possible.

Damara is on friendly terms with Mituna, but Latula doesn't know this, and thinks she's protecting him.

This means she's still a bystander, as described above, but ALSO seems unlikely given we know Latula has Mind insight into webs of karma, and is a lot smarter than she lets on, which brings us to:

Damara is on friendly terms with Mituna, and Latula is keeping them apart deliberately.

Unfortunately, it's possible... she's dating Mituna at all, meaning she's already taking advantage of him. Ultimately, we can't say for sure what's going on there, but I don't think it's as fully innocent as it seems, especially when so much of the rest of her and Mituna's relationship is cast in such a worrying light.

Knights are tasked with leadership positions, and their failures to live up to them result in the breakdowns of their teams. Karkat's failure to manage his team's interpersonal relationships blew up into Murderstuck, Dave's refusal to keep working towards their goals means the bad guys win, and Latula's refusal to engage with the lattices of karma within her team, or deal directly with her own insecurities, means that none of these injustices ever get addressed. Even though Latula isn't a casteists, casteists are allowed to continue on being castests; even though Latula has insecurities about her own disability, those who take advantage of disabilities proliferate; even though Latula commands great respect and admiration from her team, she never comes down with the hammer - and passively allowing evil to exist is the same as picking evil's side.

And so our Knight of Mind is too busy pretending to be something she's not, cutting off her intellect, cunning and acumen, rendering justice a non-entity.

Aranea Serket: Enabled Too Close to the Sun

Aranea's another one of those characters that doesn't really directly seem to contribute to the team's problems as much, and ironically, because we have so much more of her available to peruse, there's a lot less that I need to say. It's pretty obvious what happened - she was always secretly pretty selfish and cruel, and ended up desiring the spotlight so hard that she went power-mad, challenged the Condy, and GAME OVER'd herself.

As a result, I'm instead going to do a classpect read on her, so we can better understand what she contributed to her team before her death. Which was mostly nothing good!

Light is, fittingly, one of the most well-explored aspects in the story. Governing the realm of knowledge, fortune, and vision, its players are erudite, learned, and guiding stars. Light players tend to love the spotlight, to be important, to be acknowledged - this is the crux of both Vriska's and Aranea's respective arcs, but Rose also has a flair for the dramatic, and writes her long-winded Gamespot guide as a form of one-upsmanship to the other extant guides. This desire for external validation, however, means that they're always playing to an imaginary crowd, and they don't deal very well with having that attention taken away from them. Light players are volatile and complicated, attention hogs and drama queens, and they deal poorly with embarrassment, shame, and failure.

But we already know about Light. Light players won't shut up about Light. Let's talk about something a bit more enigmatic: Sylphs.

Aranea presents Sylphs as healers and nurturers, but she's hardly an unbiased source. In fact, bias happens to be a common thread linking Sylphs, and their active counterpart, Witches, together. The struggle at the core of being a Sylph is that Sylphs are enablers.

"Enabler" is the single most consistent word Hussie uses to describe Kanaya, and I don't think it's just her Space aspect at play. Even Kanaya herself discusses how one of her major personal problems is a fascination, an attraction, with "dangerous" people. We see this exact tendency mirrored in Aranea, who has a fascination with her team's resident Thief, too.

In fact, one of the most notable things about Aranea's little expositional blurbs is the way she downplays the cruelty of her teammates, especially Meenah. Meenah's bullying was horrific, constant, and had major undertones of racism/casteism, and here's how Aranea describes it:

ARANEA: So you did your 8est to rile up the crew any way you could. Appealing to peoples insecurities, 8uried hostilities, 8rewing rivalries... needling anyone you could into confrontation with others. Your theory was that increasing everyone's state of aggression would make them 8etter equipped to play the game. And you were sort of right a8out that! 8ut the Alternians would prove it. Not our group, sadly. ARANEA: The poor girl who took the 8runt of your 8ullying tactics was Damara Megido. You talked up her matesprit's 8etrayal making her feel even more dreadful, while pushing him further into the arms of her rival, until she simply snapped. She attacked him, paralyzing him from the neck down. You finally got the aggressive confrontation you were looking for. Unfortunately, you unleashed something even you weren't prepared for, and you had to deal with her yourself. After a long 8loody duel, she killed you. And you would have stayed dead if not for me! ARANEA: You never listened to me. You just kept needling and fussing and meddling until eventually you paid the price, and I had to 8ail you out.

Let's notice where Aranea chooses to put the focus: not on the cruelty of the bully's actions, not on the horrific pain and suffering that Damara must've endured, but on how ARANEA had to save poor Meenah.

In fact, this shocking callousness is a constant fixture of Aranea's exposition. It mirrors Kanaya at her worst, as they both pick and choose their favorites in the team to lavish with kindness and attention, and treat others like objects of ridicule - Kanaya mocks Eridan to his face, and Aranea:

Mocks Latula's inability to smell.

ARANEA: She was truly an inspiration, and proved 8eyond a shadow of a dou8t that any handicap can 8e overcome, and doesn't have to stop you from 8eing as rad as you can truly 8e. MEENAH: wuuut MEENAH: serket are you whistlin through my blowhole with his idiotic shit ARANEA: Yes, that last part was a joke. Lighten up, Peixes!

Mocks Cronus's wizard faith (his one redeeming quality).

ARANEA: Whatever the case, it was pro8a8ly for the 8est, since pretty much everyone who had half a think pan thought it was all a 8unch of ridiculous nonsense. MEENAH: serket why do you got to hate on other peoples religions MEENAH: dont you kno they just as much a load of crackpotty bunk as all your spiritual bullfuck ARANEA: 8ut I........ ARANEA: Yes, I guess I was out of line. ARANEA: Sorry, I was just trying to riff with you little on a mutually disliked acquaintance. Is that really so 8ad? Why do you have to take every opportunity to knock my personal 8eliefs? ARANEA: You can really 8e so mean sometimes.

And says this incredibly out-of-pocket thing:

And says this incredibly out-of-pocket thing: ARANEA: It was almost a little eerie how happily she complied with our plan. What did Rufioh say she said? Something a8out how we would all finally get what we deserved... ARANEA: Which at the time, I thought sounded chilling. 8ut there's really two ways of looking at it. One is how the Scratch re8ooted our world into a state of pure chaos, culminating in the annihilation of our universe. 8ut on the other hand, we all got the chance to live out our wildest fantasies as adults on Alternia! ARANEA: At least you and I sure did. And I wouldn't dou8t she feels the same way.

Yeah, it sure was Damara's wildest fantasy to be abused by Doc Scratch to the point of making actual suicide attempts to escape him... and Kankri's wildest fantasy to be troll crucified, and all his friends' wildest fantasies to be hunted down for their association with him and turned into slaves, exiles, or worse... or Porrim's wildest fantasy to be raped by Mindfang.

But apparently that's part of Aranea's wildest fantasies, huh?

We also see from the Terezi situation - where Aranea first frames her abilities as "healing" and "nurturing," and makes an offer to heal Terezi's eyes as an attempt to help her "heal" from her emotional wounds - that Aranea has no idea what healing is at all. Rather, she helps people avoid (Void) what they're hurting from, what they should confront, grapple with, and accept, in order to truly move on. Knowing that Void is associated with sexual pleasure and vice, and that an Aspect often resembles its counterpart when its player is at their worst, what does this say about Actual Rapist Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, or the Jake-kissing Aranea?

Light players have an innate sense of the spotlight, and an understanding that, for it to shine on one person, it must necessarily be taken from another. Aranea enabled the two Thieves in her (after)life until they chummed up so much that they didn't give a shit about her anymore, at which point she decided to enable the one bastard she could count on - herself. And in attempting to hog that spotlight all by herself, she cosigned the entire timeline to obscurity.

And so our Sylph of Light leaves a legacy of cruelty, toxicity, suffering, pain, and oblivion, her light a poison, not a salve.

Kurloz Makara: Gave Up On "Better"

I do want to go through some Kurloz stuff before I launch into the classpect things, most notably that he's really utterly vile by the time we see him. Before his Prince meltdown, which we'll get to, perhaps there was something redeeming about him, but by the time we get to see him in the comic, he's lost any respectable qualities.

Kurloz is an adherent of the same religion as Gamzee, although, somehow, he carries even less hope than Gamzee does. Let's note the basic tenents of their faith:

You belong to a RATHER OBSCURE CULT, which foretells of a BAND OF ROWDY AND CAPRICIOUS MINSTRELS which will rise one day on a MYTHICAL PARADISE PLANET that does not exist yet.

Now, exploring this faith, and the way its interpretation changes throughout the comic, could be an essay of its own, but what's important to note here is that Kurloz will never see its fruition. He's dead, and neither has the ability to revive himself, nor the desire to do so. Thus, it follows that his personal interpretation of their faith must be darker than Gamzee's - Kurloz has so utterly given up on himself and his team that being cosigned to utter oblivion, destined to double-die by their godhead's rainbow breath, seems like a totally great outcome that Kurloz both wants and is working toward. The paradise planet doesn't actually matter to him - the act of betraying his friends, and getting everyone killed (and double-killed), seems reward enough.

KURLOZ: WE SHALL NOW BUST OPEN THESE BITCHIN ELIXIR FORTIES KURLOZ: AND POUR SOME SWEET SWILL OUT FOR THE SOULS WHO SOON WONT BE NO MORE  #:o)

To that end, he's willing to lie to his teammates, and use the two people closest to him - Mituna and Meulin - as literal slaves, furthering LE's goals and pushing for LE's existence, making him one of the most direct forces acting against the dancestors.

But, as I said earlier, he didn't start out this way - so how did he get to this point of utter clowny despair? Well, let's take a look at what it means to be a Prince of Rage.

Princes have a fairly simple arc to discuss, though actually dealing with a Prince is arduous and difficult. Princes are, in a very masculine way, driven by an anxious forward momentum, by feelings of duty, by a masculine need to appear strong and take on burdens. Dirk is the most anxious of his team about their fate to sit around and wait, and Eridan's entire character has been shaped by the duty he had to keep Feferi's lusus placated.

However, these driving forces tend to make Princes controlling, aggressive, volatile, and nasty, and it's difficult to even be near one, let alone help them deal with their emotional problems. Thus are princes on a marching path to self-destruction, overtaxing their engines, burning themselves out. And given that one's "self" is tied inextricably to their aspect, this means that they take their aspect with them.

Thus are Princes on a ticking timer, and left untreated, they'll suffer a spectacular meltdown, which removes from play themselves, their aspect, and whoever is unlucky enough to be in the same room. We see it with Murderstuck, where Eridan goes on a Hope-crushing murder spree, and we see it when Dirk's trickster tirade utterly shatters Jake's self-confidence and self-worth.

But before that meltdown occurs, Princes suffer from an overburdening of their aspect - Eridan is a hipster (Hope and conviction), and burdened by several layers of political beliefs and societally-imposed duties. Dirk is solipsistic (Heart and the self), and is burdened by self-loathing, amplified by all his splinters and Hal staring back at him.

Kurloz's aspect is Rage, one of the most enigmatic, but I'll do my best here. Hope is, after all, fairly well-defined - a transformative force that imposes a new reality onto the old. Rage, its equal and opposite, is similarly a force that defines reality - but it does so by striking things from the record (something both Gamzee and Kurloz are noted to do, the former removing references to himself from recountings of his team's story, the latter creating intricate labyrinths within the bubbles to hide their clowny conspiracy with). Rage encompasses anger, but also the emotions of fear and shame - transformative energies that are the core of great acts of revolution, but also volatile, and prone to great destructiveness. Rage players "tear down false truths" - meaning, they define reality by closing possibilities, crafting meaning from the past by the power of interpretation. Hope is fanfiction, and Rage is literary criticism. Hope pens in something new, and Rage strikes out what it deems unacceptible.

Kurloz, before his turn, is characterized primarily through a single major incident - having a dream so terrifying that he screamed loud enough to deafen his matesprit, and feeling so ashamed of himself (shame being a Rage-associated emotion) that he sewed his own mouth shut in penitance. Given the way Princes are overtaxed by their aspect, it's likely that this isn't the only great shame he was bearing.

He and Damara appear to be on secretly decent terms - she is, after all, a Lord English believer, and who else would she have gotten that religious leaning from? Moreover, Kurloz and Mituna were close, if not actively dating, and Mituna was the one member of the team who seemed to give a shit that they were hurtling themselves towards oblivion.

This means that Kurloz, in all likelihood, was actually on Damara's side, and aware that his team was being shitheads - but he never said anything, later because of his vow of silence, but earlier, because it was himself he was most ashamed of. It's unclear what the inciting incident of his final meltdown was, but given the far-reaching consequences when a Prince does have their meltdown, this is likely the "disaster" that Mituna was attempting to stop - a situation that echoes how Feferi, Eridan's ex-moirail, turning on him to kill him was what finally pushed Eridan over the edge into full-blown murder. Kurloz is likely both the disaster Mituna was trying to avert and the source of Mituna's injury; subsequently, his team was dealing with a post-meltdown Prince and the destruction of Rage.

As I mentioned before, Rage is a revolutionary force, a force of upheaval and change. It's likely that the Mituna injury happened fairly late in the game, concurrent to or shortly following Damara's rampage, because the lack of Rage is starkly present in the six years following the Reckoning, where the dancestors did fuckall. But there's one other place where the dancestors' lack of Rage is present: ever notice how they don't have a single blackrom?

We'll get more into that when we talk about Meulin, but for now, I'll just say that this is directly Kurloz's fault. No blackroms, no conflicts, no change... Kurloz's meltdown was allowed to happen with no one the wiser. Rage, at its nadir, begins to resemble Hope - it gains a steadfast, religious conviction to the belief that nothing matters and everything must be torn down. We see this in Kurloz, whose spiritual belief is, functionally, that all that he and everyone else deserves is utter oblivion.

And so our Prince of Rage can no longer be swayed, a force of religious inertia, directing all beings headlong into oblivion.

Meulin Leijon: Healthy Relationship? IDK Her

Meulin Leijon's ships are all rancid. Unfortunately, they also all come true. This makes Meulin one of the most direct and overwhelming contributors to the dancestors' extant emotional problems, and why every single one of their established romances is a dumpster fire (and, conversely, why none of the healthy ships hinted at - pale Latula/Porrim, for example - are never established).

But to explain that, we have to back up and explain how Mages work. But I'm a bit tired of typing, so I'll just let Terezi and Sollux explain it instead:

TA: 2o yeah. TA: we wiill all diie but mo2t e2peciially me, end of 2tory. GC: BUT GC: DONT T4K3 TH1S TH3 WRONG W4Y BUT HOW C4N YOU B3 TOT4LLY SUR3 4BOUT 4LL TH4T? GC: HOW DO YOU KNOW SOM3 OF TH3 R34L V1S1ONS YOUR3 H4V1NG 4R3NT G3TT1NG K1ND OF T4NGL3D UP W1TH UHHH GC: SORT OF TH3 W4Y YOU 4R3 4BOUT YOURS3LF TA: what do you mean. GC: HOW YOU G3T MOP3Y 4ND YOUR3 4LW4YS TH3 V1CT1M OF SOM3TH1NG 4ND HOW SOM3T1M3S YOU TH1NK YOU SUCK WH3N YOU R34LLY DONT GC: M4YB3 TH4T 1S CLOUD1NG YOUR V1S1ON?

Mages are the active counterpart to Seers, as they're both classes concerned with glimpsing the future. Sollux is most obviously a prophet, gifted with vision twofold and Doom's natural prophetic insight, and at first this doesn't seem to suit Meulin... until you realize that matchmaking is commonly considered a form of divination, and "matchmaker" is Meulin's signature profession.

However, unlike a Seer, who's privy to all the myriad branching paths the future can take, Mages seem to know which of these futures will definitely happen for sure. This seems to be contradictory - how can multiple branching paths and set-in-stone futures coexist, when the comic - and Hussie - explicitly tend to frame even the Alpha Timeline as a result of player choices, and not predestination?

But it makes sense if you turn it around - it's not that Mages are privy to a set-in-stone future... it's that the Mage powerset allows the Mage to set a future in stone. They aren't PREDICTING the future, they're PREDETERMINING it.

This is an incredibly powerful ability, and to balance it out, Mages start out sad, and this sadness and pessimism colors their visions and causes the futures they pick out to be shitty. Terezi directly calls out Sollux's chosen future for being a reflection of his self-loathing and victimization, but wait, isn't Meulin super cheerful?

No. Actually, she's fucking miserable.

HORUSS: 8=D < She's taught me to get in touch with my anger. Through a moderately discernible series of enthusiastic mimes, she has made it clear that it is much healthier to crush all negative emotions beneath a stampede of positivity, and to always be cheerful and upbeat no matter what, even if projecting that facade is at times physically painful. #Such as #All times.

Vriska also later makes mention of how Meulin seems to have a "fascin8tingly dark history", further driving home the point that Meulin's hyperactive, friendly demeanor is a front for some really deep sadness on her part.

Heart is the aspect of the soul and the self. Its players are preoccupied with identity, and naturally talented at sussing out motivations, emotions, intentions, and desires. Nepeta's ships are usually wrong, but she clocks romantic interest correctly - she's able to pick up on Gamzee's palecrush toward Karkat, and Tavros's something-something towards Dave. Dirk, too, has an arc defined by romantic interest, feelings that ultimately don't pan out.

Moreover, Heart players are very vulnerable and sincere, and can't really help it. Divesting Dirk from Hal (whom I'm personally convinced is both his own separate entity and not even a Heart player), Dirk is incredibly straightforward. His idea of manipulating Jane is to directly tell her he's manipulating her. Nepeta's sincerity probably doesn't even need to be said.

But the flipside of this sensitivity towards the emotions of others is that Heart players are often doormats. They tend to prioritize the desires of others - Nepeta being bent to Equius's whims, and Dirk's neediness towards Jake manifesting as some embarrasing "forget how I feel, tell me what YOU want" texts. Their vulnerability also makes them easily hurt, and they tend to retreat into themselves out of fear of pain - Dirk outright states that his aloof demeanor hides the feelings his team has been trampling, while Nepeta expresses that she's afraid to engage too much with others because she's scared they'll mock her for being silly and stupid.

Thus, Meulin's situationship with Kurloz is cast into a much more uncomfortable light - and it was already pretty damn uncomfortable. Being deafened clearly hurt her emotionally, to the point she formally broke up with him, but he is still basically dating her, practically holding her hostage between her natural doormat tendencies and the actual mind control he's using on her. Her relationship with Horuss isn't much better, given the breathtakingly awful way he speaks about her:

HORUSS: 8=D < E%actly. Whoof would have thought? If you a%ed me before we all died whether I would consider romantically pairing with a r*d*culous midb100d, let alone Ms. Leijon of all people, I'd probably have died regardless, due to laughter-induced asphy%iation.

Yikes. Yikes all around. Welcome to yikes town.

Thus, Meulin is miserable, and has never been within ten miles of a healthy relationship - is it any surprise, then, that the ships she sets up for all her friends are similarly ill-fated? Let's not forget, the one ship she's actively seen making is Meenah and Karkat - an adult and an actual child.

MEULIN: (=^-ω-^=) < NOW, BEFORE I WORK MY MAGIC, WE SHOULD GET ONE THING CLEAR. IS YOUR YEARNING RED OR BLACK? MEULIN: (=ＴωＴ=) < I AM ONLY ASKING TO BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, BUT METHINKS THERE IS BARELY ANY DOUBT ABOUT IT. SOMMMEONE IS WAXING SCARLET FOR A LOUD, YOUNGER KANKRI, HMMMMMMMMM?

And it's after this that Meenah develops an "increasingly manic obsession" with Karkat.

You got a CLAWSICKLE! You absolutely love this due to its nautical nature. Also, hoarding items such as this will nicely complement your increasingly manic obsession with Karkat.

This is the secret behind Meulin's abilities as a "miracle worker when it comes to match making". As a Mage of Heart, she's directly picking out futures in which certain characters develop feelings for others - and, as a result, every single existing romance within the dancestors is highly suspect.

But what's also suspect is the lack of certain romances, namely the blackroms. What's going on there? Well, as Meulin herself says:

MEULIN: ~(=^‥^)ノ < GENERALLY I STICK TO THE RED MATCHUPS WHILE HE ADVISES ON BLACK. HE'S 33RILY TALENTED AT PICKING BLACKROM PAIRS! PROBABLY EVEN BETTER THAN ME...

Like how he's exerting control over the state of their death by using Mituna as a puppet, Kurloz is exerting control over their relationships via Meulin, killing their rage - their ability to effect change and grow - at the source.

And so our Mage of Heart has had hers trampled over so many times that she's unable to conceive of a future where lovers are supportive and kind, not destructive and cruel.

Horuss Zahhak: Albatross with the Gravitational Pull of a Black Hole

Finally, we're getting to the biggest Mess of all: the Damara situation. Horuss is our starting point here, as he's the eye of the storm - while he's the least directly culpable for Damara's rampage, he's the inciting incident, as Pages often are.

Horuss's flaws are glaringly obvious - he's a virulent casteist, he's an affair partner, he feels no guilt for the harm he caused Damara, he's really only looking to satisfy his own sexual desires, and he's too bullheaded to listen when people tell him things he doesn't want to hear.

He actually spends quite a bit of time talking about his aspect, and the journey he took to "understand" it. That saves me some time.

HORUSS: 8=D < My path was similarly governed by my aspect. For the longest time, I felt as if I was a blank sheet of paper. Like I had to make myself out of nothing. HORUSS: 8=D < And so I began to listen closely to the void within myself and corral the various personal attributes I herd calling to me. [...] HORUSS: 8=D < And in following sweeps I would keep turning my mechanically augmented, acute equine ear back to the abyss within, and continue to discover more about myself. I would learn that I was more complicated than I ever imagined. [...] HORUSS: 8=D < The second is how if you are faced with any crisis of identity whatsoever, it's really important to do your best to manufacture esoteric features of your personality and believe in them very STRONGLY and tell people about those things as frequently as possible.

Again, we aren't going to get into the plurality of real life people, this isn't the essay for that. In the context of the comic, because the failure of the dancestors is a foregone conclusion, and because Horuss is especially vile and clearly not aspirational, what he is describing is, in fact, an abject failure of Void, and a failing of his character.

To get into it, let's break down what a Page of Void is, and what arc they're "supposed" to undertake.

Pages are defined by their limitless potential.

TT: Pages have a lot of untapped potential. TT: That's practically all there is to the class, actually. TT: But when they eventually find it, look out.

AA: y0u picked a t0ugh class tavr0s! AA: n0ne 0f the really useful c0mbat abilities c0me int0 play until y0u reach a very high level AA: but i supp0se it will be rewarding when y0u get there

They're magikarps - very strong at high levels, very weak at low ones. So weak, in fact, that they're defined by a lack of their aspect when they initially start the game. Tavros, the Page of Breath - Breath governing freedom and independence - is wheelchair-bound and under Vriska's thumb. Jake, the Page of Hope - Hope dealing in conviction and belief - is constantly called "wishy-washy," and has absolutely zero standards when it comes to his taste in media (contrast Eridan, who's functioning with too much Hope as per his Prince class, who's a hipster that castigates Kanaya for liking Troll Twilight).

And Void is simplicity - its two other heroes, much more representative of the aspect, embody this well. They are what they are, they like what they like. Roxy loves wizards and, as mom, loves her daughter; Equius loves horses and archery and being STRONG. Void is also associated with sexual pleasure, vice, and taboo, with Roxy's "sauciness" being something characters often comment on and her alcoholism being so foundational to her character, while you can't talk about Equius without talking about his BDSM fetish.

In fact, we can see this interplay between Void's simplicity against Light's penchant for complexity in the introduction of Rose's mother. Rose has concocted in her mind a grand, elaborate narrative where her and her mother are locked in a deady contest of one-upsmanship, that her mother's various gifts and wizards are part of some sort of ironic or passive-aggressive mind game. The truth is, Momlonde just loves wizards and dotes on her daughter. No mind games whatsoever.

So when Horuss talks about how "complicated" he's decided he is, this is a Page's penchant for regression, for aspect deficit. Horuss refuses to be honest with himself, to deal with his actual emotions of frustration, anger, and emptiness, and instead turns to complication to try to explain them. He complexifies everything he gets involved with - his affair with Rufioh is clearly a symptom of some fetish he has for dating down the hemospectrum, but he refuses to admit to it, instead claiming at first that it was simply a "fleeting dalliance" or "exploration," and then claiming it to be true love.

The one Void trait he does seem to have in excess, however, is its tendency to get so caught up in its own personal pleasures and desires that it becomes pushy to others, drowning them out, resembling Light's spotlight hogging. Equius did this to Nepeta, and Roxy would attempt it with Dirk sometimes, aggressively flirting with him despite his homosexuality. Horuss simply talks over Rufioh, not listening to a thing he says.

Also, another point to how interwoven everyone's issues are, Kankri shows up to enable Horuss and tell him to keep being complicated. Also, Kankri doesn't comment AT ALL on Horuss's constant use of slurs and casteist language. So thanks again Kankri. For nothing.

The problem with Pages is that their failures aren't contained to themselves - their weakness becomes like a black hole, an albatross about the party's neck, and they're often right at the center of major catastrophes - maybe not the direct cause, but often an inciting incident. Tavros was ultimately at the center of the Team Charge debacle, and the Jakestakes tore apart his entire team.

HORUSS: 8=D < It was only to be a very private, fleeting dalliance with a BUOY, but the whole thing became so quickly scandalized.  #A spur of the moment affair, really. HORUSS: 8=D < And soon others were whisked into it such as you and the vengeful rust b100d, and... well, imagine my embarrassment. Trust me, the last thing I wanted was for royalty such as yourself to know I was pursuing forbidden b100d. To be caught with my hoof in the chocolate jar, so to nicker.

And so our Page of Void, by dint of the complicated web he's woven about himself, has ensnared others in his orbit of total irrelevance and inability to move forward.

Rufioh Nitram: Desperately Escaping Responsibility

Let me speak for everyone when I say, "Rufioh, you cheating piece of shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Rufioh, too, has his failures on brazen display. He's weak-willed and spineless, has been trying and failing to break up with Horuss for eons, and cheated on his girlfriend, but has the nerve to ask her for romantic advice.

However, what I want to really focus down on is that the specific flavor of his spinelessness is a refusal to take responsibility. He constantly claims that he "doesn't know" why Damara got more and more upset at him:

RUFIOH: and for some reason... st1ll don't know why... damara just started go1ng a l1ttle more nuts every day... gett1ng more and more jealous when she knew we were hang1ng out...

But clearly this isn't true, because he tells her to get over it.

RUFIOH: d*mn... so cold, g1rl. why can't you let the past go?

He also constantly calls her "crazy" and "jealous," framing the story as though she's the one who went totally nuts, and washing his hands of his involvement.

Remember how I mentioned that Blood tends to be overly responsible? All the way up there, when I was talking about Kankri. Well, meet Blood's counterpart. Breath is, at its best, a force of freedom and liberation - look no further than the Summoner, Rufioh's Alternian counterpart. But at its worst, it tends to be callous and immature, youthful but irresponsible. Rufioh does everything he can to avoid having to take responsibility, whether that's wilting from breaking up with Horuss, avoiding culpability for hurting his feelings, or downplaying what he did to Damara.

This youthfulness is the source of their charm, and all three Breath players share it - John loves his dumb cheesy movies well into his teens, Tavros loves Pupa Pan and Fiduspawn, and Rufioh loves kiddie anime. It's not harmful in and of itself that they like childish things, but it often goes hand-in-hand with a refusal to grow up.

Ironically, they can become so avoidant of responsibility that they wind up trapped, like Tavros was with Vriska, or Rufioh is with Horuss. If you never acknowledge that there is a problem, you can never begin to fix it. But where does being a Rogue come in?

Well, Rogues are natural-born rebels. Nepeta is the only Alternian troll to outright say that the hemocaste is stupid and casteism shouldn't exist:

AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter! AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else!

And Roxy is the most motivated in her friend group to stick it to the Batterwitch. The problem is, while they have unrest and rebellion deep in their souls, they're often at a loss as to how to address it, make it more than just a thought. This leads to them rebelling for the sake of rebelling, breaking taboos and defying commands. Nepeta refusing to listen to Equius telling her to hide and stay put directly leads to her death, and even Roxy nearly blew Jane up with a fake SBURB application in a misguided attempt to defy the Condesce.

And Rufioh? Well, Rufioh cheated. Hard as he could. For a long, long time. Started before he entered the session. Spent the whole time gaslighting Damara and calling her crazy and jealous. After all, if he actually came out and said that he wasn't happy with her and wanted out of the relationship, she'd be upset with him, and he'd have to be responsible for that. Can't have that!

And so our Rogue of Breath has been trapped in bondage, having gone willingly in chains, because the alternative - freedom and responsibility - were too difficult for him.

Damara Megido: Babe I'm So Sorry, You Didn't Deserve That

So I'm going to address a pretty common fandom take, by first divulging some personal information. I'm Chinese diaspora; my parents were both immigrants. Obviously, I can't speak for every Chinese person, and especially not every Asian, but at least from my perspective, Damara isn't racist. She's just actual representation.

Yes, Damara plays into several stereotypes, most notably the oversexed Asian schoolgirl - but that's part of the greater point that the comic is trying to make. Hussie has a long habit of putting the reader in the shoes of the characters who are wrong in a situation - for example, having the reader mock Eridan together with Rose, Kanaya, Jade, and Gamzee, or indeed, having the reader sympathize with Meenah Peixes, and hear the story from the point of view of Meenahs' biggest enabler.

Damara's google-translate quirk makes her text difficult to understand, to the point a lot of people won't even bother figuring out what she's saying, and her design makes her seem like a flat stereotype, because this is how her team sees her. And as I have extensively covered in this essay thus far, Damara's team were unbelievable assholes for doing so.

Let's look at her situation objectively for a second, and you'll see what I mean. Damara grew up with the Lost Weeaboos - she was already there when Rufioh ran into her, after he joined up after his wings came in. Yeah, Damara was the original Lost Weeaboo, not him. She was an immigrant from East Beforus, and couldn't speak English, and was seemingly only included in the friend group so long as Rufioh was translating for her - something he doesn't do when he deems it would cause problems (for him).

RUFIOH: 1f people knew some of the sh*t you sa1d... how you say crazy sh*t l1ke you want to serve h1m... f***! RUFIOH: 1t wouldn't be cool... people would fl1p... RUFIOH: h*ll, d1dn't you hear meenah was try1ng to ra1se an army to k1ll h1m? RUFIOH: 1f she could hear some of the th1ngs you told me... sh*t... 1 can't ever let her f1nd out... RUFIOH: 1f she knew, you'd both start f1ght1ng aga1n...  #}:(

Not to mention, she's a burgundy, the bottom of the hemocaste, and implied to be pretty poor, too, given... she was living in the woods with the Lost Weeaboos.

Before the game even starts, Horuss starts visiting Rufioh in the woods, something that starts as an emotional affair, but quickly becomes more than that. Damara catches on pretty quickly, becoming more and more jealous and angry with him as the affair continues, but Rufioh gaslights her and lies to her about it until Meenah discovers the affair and blows it out into the open. Damara breaks up with Rufioh, but Meenah continues to use the affair to mock and degrade her.

ARANEA: The poor girl who took the 8runt of your 8ullying tactics was Damara Megido. You talked up her matesprit's 8etrayal making her feel even more dreadful, while pushing him further into the arms of her rival, until she simply snapped.

Can you even fucking imagine? Damara has nobody else to turn to. Not only are half the people on the team Meenah's friends, not only is Meenah the rich and powerful fuchsia-blooded heiress, while Damara's a poor, immigrant rustblood, but no one on the team besides her ex - who is running around slandering her for being "crazy" and "jealous" - can even be assed to learn her language. She can't defend herself, and even if she tried, nobody would listen. To them, Damara's just a flat stereotype - the meek and docile Asian waifu who speaks engrish and puts chopsticks in her hair.

This is like... actually just what a lot of poor immigrants, not even necessarily Asian ones, have to go through. Damara's struggles are incredibly relevant, and her reaction is very realistic, too. She snaps and decides that she hates everyone and outright wishes for their demise and double-demise. In this context, her hypersexual language is a form of reclaiming power - nobody cared about what she had to say, so now she doesn't care what they have to listen to. It's one of the only petty vengeances left to her, and notably, she doesn't do it towards people she doesn't have beef with - the human kids - and the fact that Rufioh can speak her language at all is why she's still willing to go so far as to call him a friend, even after all the horrible shit he did to her.

RUFIOH: um... you can keep a secret, r1ght? DAMARA: はい、もちろん。私はあなたの友達です。[Yes, of course. I am your friend.]

And death hasn't made anything let up for her. She tells Meenah to go double-fuck herself, and Meenah assumes that they're totally cool now, even though Meenah didn't even so much as say "sorry".

DAMARA: あなたのデュアルフォークを取る。二回自分自身をファック。 [Take your dual fork. Fuck yourself twice.] [...] DAMARA: 私は何も後悔はありません。[I do not regret anything.] MEENAH: apology accepted

Sorry for getting heated, but what happened to Damara - and the fact that the fandom often sides with her bullies in calling her a flat stereotype - is very near and dear to me. The Damara situation casts a pall across the entire rest of the dancestors. Despite how cruel the circumstances were, how objectively unjust they were, how obviously Meenah was the aggressor and Damara was a victim, how clearly delineated good and evil were in her situation, and how big of a problem this became, nobody intervened, nobody tried to stop it, nobody stood up for her. Every single member of the team is an irredeemable asshole by this simple fact alone, except maybe Mituna, and even then, that's a maybe and nothing more. All of them are complicit in abuse, complicit in oppression, and complicit in bullying - if not worse.

Witches are creatures of emotion. They grow up as "outsiders" to society, and as such, are very easy to sway - as they lack societal senses of right and wrong, good or evil, they tend to rely on their own emotions to navigate the world instead. This also means it's very easy to flatter the Witch into believing in something cruel. Feferi loves casteism because being a princess is awesome, and she loves feeling like she's better than other people. Jade constantly allows shitty boys to trample all over her, and the trolls consider her most culpable for Bec Noir's creation because she blindly follows the prophecies of her beloved future-telling clouds, taking direct action to doom them all.

Damara's still friends with Rufioh because he bothers to speak her language at all, even though he does nothing but gaslight her, badmouth her, and use her to his own convenience. She follows the teachings of Lord English because her feelings have been hurt to the point where oblivion sounds like a great idea.

Time is about persistence, goal-orientedness, details, and minutiae. However, its players can often become so tunnel-visioned, so frustrated, that they become destructive forces of anger and rage. In the worst case, this destructive frustration causes them to become overwhelmed with a sense of futility, something that superficially resembles Space's big-picture thinking, or its tendency for passivity. Time has ties to entropy and death, and unfortunately, Damara has come to embody that for her team.

But, most crucially, Witches cause change.

The dancestors' session is victim to a glitch that ultimately renders it unwinnable - they didn't perform their own ectobiology. Such glitches are described as the "calling cards" of Lord English, his way of reserving a universe to destroy. But, as discussed above, LE did not actually exist until the dancestors brought him into their session by scratching it.

It's stated that, after her initial rampage, Damara began performing acts of "timeline sa8otage" up and down their timeline. I believe that it's during this time that she wound up causing the ectobiology glitch - retroactively rendering their system unwinnable, forcing them into the Scratch. After all, Damara knew what would result from the Scratch - Kurloz had inducted her into his religion by that point, and she was heard muttering that the Scratch would deliver them all "what they deserve".

And so, our Witch of Time was tempted by the forces of evil, and ultimately led them down the path of destruction, closing down all options until they had no choice but to Scratch, and - of course - though the dancestors had one last chance to back out, choose the selfless option, and let no more harm come of their actions - they picked the selfish option, and passed their problems onto the next generation.

Meenah Peixes: Ultra-Bitch

Meenah is her team's leader, and she represents the worst aspects of her team - the casual cruelty, the lack of responsibility, the kid-kissing, the failure to grow up. In a way, there's no leader more fitting.

The greatest thing she contributed to her team was her ruthless bullying, which didn't do anything but make everyone feel worse about themselves. Of this bullying, Meenah's favorite target was Damara, but we already covered all that in Damara's section. I want to talk about some of Meenah's other failings here, because I think the comic did such a good job of unreliably narrating her escapades that even many in the fandom seem to think she's a much better person than she is.

In truth, Meenah is a toxic friend, a bad influence, and her "cool"ness serves as a smokescreen to cover the depravity and cruelty of her actions. She is consistently running away from responsibility, consistently taking advantage of weaker-willed individuals, consistently constructing a narrative around herself where her actions were justified and anyone who disagrees with her is just a lame loser. In reality, she's just a rich bitch mean girl. A bog-standard bully. Someone who thinks literal children are pursuable romantic targets. You can't lose sight of this.

MEENAH: i dont verbally torture my cray schemes like all the serket girls MEENAH: and that works ok for me MEENAH: guess i made some mistakes but who really gives a flip [...] MEENAH: i just MEENAH: did shit MEENAH: and the shit i did MEENAH: meant only the things the shit accomplished MEENAH: and if that shit accomplished a dumb thing that sucked MEENAH: then i guess thats what you call a mistake and oh fuckin well

Sure, Meenah. Your deliberate, constant, unrelenting bullying, the active choices you made over, and over, and over again, are completely excusable by just saying "they were some mistakes" and "oh well".

Meenah ran away from responsibility four times over the course of her story: the first time was running off to the moon because she didn't want to be heiress; the second was blowing up her home planet rather than dealing with succession; the third was cooping herself up in her moon palace until a bigger threat presented itself, and the fourth was encouraging Vriska to give up on struggling against Lord English and run away with her and the LE-killing treasure. Not only that, but she tries to convince Karkat to jump off the meteor with her to fight LE - something that's framed in that conversation as a literal act of suicide, as LE is still, as far as Karkat and Meenah know, invincible, immortal, and unbeatable.

Speaking of her conversation with Karkat, let's zoom out for a second and take it in objectively. I think many are tricked by Karkat's softness and vulnerability here into thinking that the conversation they have together is cute or wholesome, but that isn't the case. First of all, let's remember that Meulin has just implied that Meenah's got some romantic feelings for what is - again - an actual child (I think he's literally 14 here). So. Yeah. And then second, let's remember what Karkat's arc is.

Karkat is a mutant, and has lived his life alternately in fear that he'll be killed if anyone ever finds out, and filled with self-loathing, since he knows it means he'll never be accepted by society. Moreover, he's aware of the prophecy that he's supposed to be Troll Jesus's second coming, and he's deeply insecure about it.

MY BLOOD IS NOT FIT TO FLOW THROUGH A SEWER, AND MY SIGN IS A PICTOGRAPHIC SYMBOL THAT LOOSELY TRANSLATES AS "PLEASE HIKE THESE PANTS UP TO THIS GUY'S ARMPITS, CHAIN HIM TO A FLOGGING JUT, AND MAKE A FUCKING EXAMPLE OUT OF THIS SORRY SACK OF SHIT." WHEN I LOOK IN A MIRROR, MY REFLECTION SLOWLY SHAKES HIS HEAD WHILE I WET MYSELF IN SHAME.

The fact that he knows that his ancestor is the Signless puts his initial desire to join the Threshecutioners in a very sad light. As he tells Meenah, he harbored fantasies that he would fight so well that they'd let him join, in spite of his blood color, even knowing objectively that they'd probably just kill him on sight.

KARKAT: THEY WERE LIKE THE DEADLIEST SQUAD OF INTERSTELLAR FIGHTERS UNDER THE COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS. THEY HELPED CONQUER MORE PLANETS THAN ANY OTHER IMPERIAL FORCE. BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO MAKE THE CUT, BECAUSE OF MY BLOOD. SO I USED TO THINK OF ALL THESE ELABORATE SCENARIOS TO HIDE MY BLOOD COLOR. OR IN THE MORE RIDICULOUS FANTASIES, MAYBE I COULD EVEN PROVE MY WORTH AS A SOLDIER? LIKE JUST BE SO AWESOME WITH A SICKLE, THEY WOULD JUST HAVE TO MAKE AN EXCEPTION. MAYBE EVEN BE LIKE A FOLK HERO AND RISE THROUGH THE RANKS TO BECOME THE LEADER. HAHA.

He desires, so so so deeply, to be accepted. He hates himself - this is the first thing revealed to us in his introduction.

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS. As was previously mentioned, it is your WRIGGLING DAY, which is barely even worth mentioning. It is an anniversary, if anything, to lament the faults of your existence, of which there are assuredly plenty.

As a result, he's equated societal acceptance with self-worth - tricked himself into believing that if he can gain the approval of society, the approval of the Condesce, then he'll finally be able to feel less like a worthless, kill-on-sight miscreant.

This is the lens we must look through his conversations with Meenah through. These are not soft, tender exchanges where Meenah helps Karkat deal with his emotional issues. This is the young adult version of the Condesce trying to tempt a literal child into suicide, leveraging his desire to be accepted by her in order to stroke her own ego. When he says Alternia was great, that's a bad thing. Alternia sucked, and it sucked to him specifically, but he wants to be accepted by it so badly that he's willing to act like it was awesome. When he says he respects the Condesce, that's terrible. She's an evil monster who directly caused all his and his friend's problems, a monstrous, genocidal dictator who revels in bloodshed and misery. And when he says:

KARKAT: OH, BUT ON ONE CONDITION. AS THE NEW EMPRESS, YOU HAVE TO APPOINT ME AS GRAND THRESHECUTIONER OF YOUR ARMY. DO WE HAVE A DEAL? MEENAH: oh yes yes you got it yessss

This is sad, actually. This is just really sad. Karkat wants to be accepted so, so badly that he's willing to jump off the meteor on a suicide mission. He wants it so bad that he's willing to lie down and let the forces of fascism, oppression, cruelty, and evil win, just for a crumb of validation.

And, yeah, it's romantic to Meenah. Just to be clear with everyone.

MEENAH: i was standin around in shoutkats place when it all dream switched on me outta nowhere [...] MEENAH: and i think MEENAH: we might be goin on a date later?

Hey, remember how she's 19 and he's fourteen fucking years old?

So, yeah, later on, when she starts having little giggly fits with Vriska, rolling around in the fields with her? When she starts grooming Vriska to dress like her, get tattoos with her nautical themes? Yes, I'm going to use the word "grooming". That's what it is.

Vriska is a vulnerable child. She was raised by an abusive, demanding, narcissistic spider, and all her friends just abandoned her because of her resultant nasty personality. And remember how I pointed out that Meenah likes to run away from responsibility?

VRISKA: What if we just........ VRISKA: Gave up on the mission? MEENAH: gave up VRISKA: Yeah. VRISKA: What do you think. MEENAH: um MEENAH: sure VRISKA: Sure? VRISKA: You don't think that would 8e a wussy move? MEENAH: well yeah MEENAH: it would be MEENAH: if a couple of cowards did it MEENAH: but that aint us MEENAH: so we cool to do whatev VRISKA: That's a very good point. MEENAH: nofin wrong with stickin a fork in a shit idea that just makes you miserable MEENAH: hell the best choice i ever made involved givin up MEENAH: one day i said MEENAH: fuck da throne MEENAH: ran off to the moon MEENAH: thats how this whole crazy mess kicked off MEENAH: and if i didnt do that MEENAH: i wouldnt of met you 38) VRISKA: VRISKA: ::::)

I hope this conversation hits a little different.

[EDIT (March 02): I also wanted to add that, in order to make the above conversation even more obviously a case of an adult taking advantage of a vulnerable minor? Directly preceeding the snippet I included in the essay, Vriska outright admits that she no longer trusts her own judgement. So Meenah heard that, and decided to make a move.

Yikes. Yikes all around. Welcome to yikes town.]

Thieves are, as the name suggests, selfish and greedy - they harbor some deep emotional hole that they attempt to fill with "wealth". For Vriska, it was narrative importance, and for Meenah, it was forward motion, as that's what Life's all about. However, they do so at the expense of others, not realizing that harming their own group relations harms their own ability to self-actualize and attain true happiness. The one time something nice happened on Meenah's team, it was when Meenah wasn't taking, taking, taking, but when she baked a cake for everyone.

But Meenah wasn't content with that.

And so, our Thief of Life defeated her own agenda in an effort to move forward, her mistakes culminating in the doom of herself and all her friends, as her misguided grasping toward forward motion ultimately led to the ugly side of a tumor-bomb.

Final Thoughts

I know I've been really negative towards the dancestors for this entire essay. And I do think they deserve it. However, please don't confuse that with me saying I think they were "bad characters," or that I dislike their inclusion in the comic.

On the contrary, I think they're all very, very good characters. Their utilization in the narrative is excellent, and they perform their narrative function incredibly well. I think Hussie's a fantastic writer, and I find the dancestors fascinating - if you couldn't tell from the massive essay.

But they are shitty people - and that's the point. The role they serve to the kids is as evil mentors, bad influences, dark reflections. Maybe they were redeemable before they ruined everything, but they passed the point of no return. At every juncture, they chose the selfish option, the cruel option, the easy option, and in some ways subtle, some ways overt, they encourage their kids to do the same.

But - crucially - the ones to come after them can choose differently. And I believe in the version of Homestuck where they do.

Thanks for reading.

[deniisu-sims]

Seasons Modular "Holiday Spruce" Tree + Storage Boxes - 4t3 conversion - for @bomberrysims

Another part of her commission, with a Christmas tree separated into (mostly) recolorable modular pieces and an extra storage box. All BGC.

The tree has the first preset as recolorable (and yes, you cna recolor the tiny lights!) + non recolorable presets (the gradient ones)

I didn't double-side the flat modular pieces - they're meant to be used with the tree anyway, the tree will cover the transparent backsides. No need to double the polycount for that

The rug isn't recolorable - I would need five channels for full recolorability - and isn't really a true rug despite being categorized as one. The dark shadow on it makes it practically unusable with everything else

@olomaya, if you're interested in those items for your mod, you have my (and hers) permission :)

The box works in the same way as ATS' chest-likes, you can open them to store stuff!

Also, the way I textured the box (and chose which parts are recolorable and which are overlays because again, too many channels) was based on @hamburgercakes' retexture here (as requested), but it's not exactly the same and all the texture work is EA's + my own

Collection file included :)

DOWNLOAD (package): Dropbox / SFS

[saffusthings]

second chances

mob boss! lando norris x reader

part twenty: you've been made

word count: 3.0k

warnings: paranoia, unreliable narrator

nineteen | twenty | twenty one

It was nearly midnight when Logan appeared.

Appeared was the only fitting word, really. One blink, and the rooftop of Lando’s estate was empty. The next, he was there, his black hood drawn low and a quiet grace to his steps as if the shadows bent for him. The security system didn’t even register. Of course it didn’t. Logan had written in the blind spots himself.

He moved across the rooftop like a ghost, all nimble limbs and practiced silence, until he dropped down to the fire escape and tapped once against the glass pane of Lando’s office window.

Lando heard a single creaking of the floorboards and paused, but didn’t look up right away. He was already pouring two glasses of something dark, standing in front of the fireplace like he’d been waiting. 

The room was dim—just the silver underglow of the city filtering through Lando’s tall office windows, the lights of Monte Carlo stretching like quiet thoughts in the distance. His tie was undone, draped haphazardly over his desk chair. He hadn’t loosened it himself—he couldn’t remember doing anything with his hands other than checking his phone.

Twice.

No, four times now.

"How’d it go?" Lando finally asked, still thumbing through the photos laid out on his desk, in no rush to turn to face his newfound company. He’d told Logan to just use the front door numerous times, but ironically, the kid had a flair for the dramatics, despite having all the presence of a wraith.

Ah, to be young and stupid.

The ornate mahogany desk was covered in documents – surveillance prints, reports, a building manifest. His fingers slowed only slightly in their movements, waiting for Logan’s response.

"Quiet," Logan’s voice answered from the dark. He stepped into the office like he belonged there, hoodie pulled over his hair, hands in the pockets of a windbreaker. "Margot covered the end of her shift. No incident. Everything shut down on time, register closed, trash taken out."

Lando finally looked up. “You’re late.”

“Had to wait until Margot left,” Logan replied as he slipped through the open window, flicking back his hood. His tone was relaxed, but Lando caught the way his eyes darted to the corners of the room—always on alert. He appreciated that about Logan. Sharp. Loyal. Cautious to the bone. “So tell me,” Lando said, handing him the second glass.

Logan leaned against the ledge, swirling the drink absently. “She called out like you said. Margot covered. Pretty boring stuff,” he sighed.

“And before you say anything– yes, I was careful.” He moved like smoke, all presence and no weight, slipping the door shut behind him. “She stayed in last night. Didn't leave her apartment. Margot dropped by, though. Brought takeaway.” Lando lifted his gaze at that, eyes sharpening. “So they’ve talked.”

“Seems like it,” Logan said. He leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. “They talked for a bit, mostly about school. I didn’t catch much more.”

“Did she say anything about me?”

Logan tilted his head, the hint of a teasing smile curling up one corner of his mouth. “Why? Worried she found your face on a wanted poster?”

“M’not in the mood, Logan.”

Silence stretched between them. 

Way to kill the vibe.

Finally, Logan just shrugged. “She didn’t mention you, boss. Not once. And trust me, I listened.”

Lando’s jaw tightened. He wanted to believe him. But it didn’t sit right. “She called out of her shift. Didn’t even text. Margot didn’t say much either—just that she was taking Y/N’s place for the night.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You sure she’s alright?”

“You’re paranoid,” Logan rolled his eyes, throwing a Skittle in the air and catching it with his mouth. Where did he even get those?

“And no, she didn’t say anything. Not to Margot, not to anyone else. She’s not avoiding you, dude. She’s just... processing, I think.”

Lando leaned back into his chair, arms folding across his chest. “Processing?”

Logan raised an eyebrow, then leaned against the edge of the wide windowsill. “The end of a maybe-relationship with a nice guy she probably wanted to work out. You ever think maybe it has nothing to do with you?”

He hated when Logan was right. 

Still, Lando rubbed a hand across his jaw, considering it. “She called out tonight.”

“Pretty sure she’s allowed to do that.”

“She doesn’t do that.”

“But she did,” Logan replied with a shrug. 

Lando’s fingers curled into his palm, the lines of his knuckles going stark in the shadowed light. Still, he said, "So you’re sure she didn’t say anythin’? About me?"

Logan raised a brow, just a twitch. "Should she have?"

Lando didn’t answer. Logan folded his arms and leaned against the wall, observing him with a kind of muted curiosity. "Oh. You think Margot told her something. About you."

"No," Lando replied quickly. Too quickly. "I just—she's been... distant."

He thought of the way she hadn’t responded to his texts right away that week. How her shift at the café had been traded, not rescheduled. How the note on the rota had been written in someone else’s handwriting.

She hadn’t asked him for a ride since the call. Not even to class the next morning, and she hated having to walk across campus for her Tuesday classes.

He thought of the empty passenger seat of his car, where her half-finished water bottle still rolled around, cap twisted on loosely. Her playlist hadn’t been played in days. He hadn’t dared touch it.

Logan opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated.

Lando noticed it in his periphery and set down his glass. His eyes darkened and his voice dropped to a dangerously low tone – not yet threatening, but a warning enough for the wise. “What are you not telling me?”

There was a pause. A twitch of Logan’s jaw, like he had to decide what mattered and what didn’t. “She looked… sad, I guess. That’s all.”

“Sad?” 

Lando turned toward the fireplace, exhaling through his nose. He rubbed a hand down his jaw, trying to reason with himself. There were too many variables. If Margot had said something, she wouldn’t be obvious about it. She’d be smart, casual – a single comment that could make Y/N question everything.

“So she knows,” Lando muttered again, almost to himself.

“Or,” Logan said slowly, “you’re reading too much into this because you’re scared of her seeing the real you. And this—” he gestured around at the office, the reports, the late hour, “—is the only version of you you know how to protect.”

Silence fell between them. Outside, the city lights bled softly into the fog.

Lando ran a hand through his curls, frustrated. “She should talk to me if something’s wrong!”

Logan gave him a look that was part sympathy, part exasperation. “Lando. She did. That night you picked her up for ice cream? She barely wanted to talk to anyone, but she called you. That means something.”

It did. Lando knew it did. And that was the problem.

Because the more it meant, the worse it would be when she found out.

About him. About what he really did. About the fact that Liam—the guy who drove her home, listened to her complain about her professors, and shared ice cream on a quiet curb—didn’t really exist.

The bell above the café door chimed.

He stepped in, shoulders tensed beneath the charcoal grey of his jacket. His usual rhythm — scan the room, clock the exits, check the corners — happened without thought. But today, it wasn’t danger he was checking for.

It was her.

She was behind the counter in the same apron with the same sleepy, mid-shift posture as always.

But something was off.

She didn’t look up right away, which was unusual. Normally, she seemed to sense him before he even stepped all the way in as if she had some radar attuned to his presence. But today, she was preoccupied with something in her hand, face partially turned toward Margot.

He slowed his steps.

When she finally did glance up, it wasn’t immediate recognition in her eyes. There was a brief flicker, like she had to place him. Like she was working out whether she should smile or not.

It lasted all of half a second, but he caught it. And then she smiled, a little too politely.

“Hey,” she said.

Not Liam. Just hey.

Lando blinked, heart catching in his throat.

Her smile when she saw him didn’t reach her eyes.

Her apron wasn’t tied the way it normally was; instead, the ends were sloppily knotted.

The music playing overhead was too low, as if she hadn’t bothered adjusting the volume since opening.

She got his drink wrong too. The cup he held today was just straight black coffee, with none of the usual spices and whatever that she usually added, the stuff that made it nice. Instead, today he was handed just plain old black coffee. 

It was small things—the most minute details, imperceptible to anyone else. But to Lando, they layered into a chorus of suspicion. Something was off. Off in a way that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

When she handed him the coffee, their fingers didn’t brush like they usually did. She pulled away too fast. Avoided eye contact just a second too long.

Fuck.

He smiled, casual. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” she said too quickly. “Just tired.”

His mind whirred.

She knows. She knows who I am. She’s acting normal because she’s scared. She’s trying to pull away without drawing attention. Fuck, did Margot tell her? Did she find out on her own? Is she—

“Liam?” her voice cut through the noise in his head.

He blinked. She was watching him, her brow furrowed in concern. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, almost startled. “Yeah. Just tired.”

A lie for a lie.

Margot stepped away to the back, and in the seconds that followed, Lando's eyes drifted to the counter behind her. There, half-tucked into her open bag, was a copy of the Monte Carlo Tribune — folded to a page he’d recognize anywhere. The headline in block print:

“Beyond Forgery and Fraud: Reaper's Circle's Drug Empire Rises”

A photo of some wethered and worn factory near the coast took up most of the page. He knew that place, remembered brokering that first deal that would raise his empire anew.

He looked back at her.

“I, uh,  haven’t seen you in a bit,” she said, moving to pour a cup of coffee for another customer. “Did you try coming by the other night?”

He didn’t answer. His voice had gotten caught somewhere between suspicion and hope.

Was she testing him?

Was this her way of setting a trap — soft questions until he tripped?

“Liam?” she asked, tilting her head.

The mug was still sitting in front of him. He hadn’t realized he had sat down.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

She nodded. “Sorry I wasn’t here. I wasn’t feeling too well.”

Something about her tone was too even. Too… measured. And again — maybe it was just exhaustion, or grief, or burnout — but it didn’t sound like her.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

“No worries,” he said slowly, before his expressions morphed into something that appeared more sympathetic. “You feeling better now?”

Her lips curved into a tired smile. “Hm? Yeah! Yeah, some tea helped. Ha, you know how it is,” she laughed awkwardly, before turning her attention back to the register.

She didn’t say thank you for checking on me. She didn’t say I missed you. Not that she ever had, but still. Lando felt the tension coil just a little tighter around his spine.

He swallowed hard.

Too many coincidences.

She was quieter, more contained. Everything about her felt conscious, like she was trying to force herself to act normal, trying not to be too obvious.

It was putting him on edge.

And yet, when she looked back at him then, her eyes weren’t stony. They weren’t cold. They were just... tired. A little sad, even.

“You okay?” he asked, voice lower now, a bit softer.

She gave a quiet shrug, eyes dropping to her hands. “Yeah. Just… Just tired. Lots of readings I need to churn through this week.”

Somehow, something about the way she said it — soft, with no edge — began to loosen the knot of panic inside his chest. She wasn’t pretending. She wasn’t testing him.

She didn’t know.

He realized it all at once — how ridiculous he must look, tense in his seat, watching her like he was waiting to be shot. Because nothing had changed, not really.

It was him.

He was the one that had changed. The one who had started needing this version of her — this version of life, where he could walk in from the dark and be Liam, and have her smile at him like he belonged in the light.

And now he was terrified at the thought of losing that escape.

He exhaled — long, slow, quiet — and sat back in his chair, coffee growing cold between his fingers.

Logan shook his head once, steady and sure, leaning against the side of Lando’s office desk like he had all the time in the world for the second night in a row. He nearly rolled his eyes, but decided against it even though Lando’s back was facing him. “Nope. Just said she was sick, I’m telling you! Seemed tired, honestly. Like, the normal kind. Not the I-just-learned-my-friend-is-the-head-of-an-underground-crime-ring kind.”

Lando didn’t laugh. He stared down at his desk, thumb tapping once, twice, against the edge of the wood.

“She had the paper with the article,” he muttered. “On the counter. Folded open to the exact page.”

“So do half the people in this city.” Logan groaned. “You’re not the only person obsessed with yourself.”

Lando glared at him, but Logan just raised both hands, palms up in surrender.

“Look,” Logan said, tone shifting to something between friendly and exasperated, “I’ve been around her. You know I have. She doesn’t talk about you like someone she’s suspicious of. If anything, she’s more normal than ever. Maybe a little quieter, yeah, but I’d bet that’s about her own stuff. Not you.”

Lando didn’t answer.

“She still calls you Liam,” Logan added gently, before laughing softly. “You don’t have to spiral every time she blinks weird, man.”

Lando let out a long breath, dragged a hand down his face. “I just— I can’t lose this.”

“I know,” Logan said, softer now. “But if you keep going paranoid like this, she’s gonna notice something’s off. She trusts you. Don’t give her a reason not to.”

He wasn’t expecting her to be working again the next night. He only dropped in to grab coffee — a real one this time, not some excuse to linger near the counter or “accidentally” ask about her schedule.

But there she was, back in her apron and hair pinned lazily back. He could see a textbook open on the counter in front of her. Her highlighter was dry, and she was stabbing the tip into the paper like sheer frustration might will the ink to return.

He took it all in — the focused crease between her brows, the way her lips moved as she silently read through a dense sentence, the soft wrinkle in her sleeve where she'd leaned on her elbow too long.

His heart slowed.

Normal. So wonderfully normal.

And then she glanced up, caught him watching her. There was a beat — the kind that used to terrify him — where she looked like she might say nothing at all. But then, she smiled.

Not the practiced one. Not the polite one from the other night. The real one.

The one that tilted slightly to the left and showed a flash of uneven tooth and lit her eyes in a way that made the ground under his feet feel less like concrete and more like something he’d fall through endlessly.

He pretended not to care, rolled his shoulders back like it hadn’t meant anything. It wasn’t even that big a deal, anyway.

“Hey,” she said, tucking her pen behind her ear. “Are you gonna be around this weekend?”

He tilted his head, before smirking. “Why? You tryin’ t’ask me out?”

She snorted. “Oh please. I have three exams next week. I was gonna see if you still wanted to help me study.”

He smiled, warm and quiet. “So yes.”

She rolled her eyes, but he saw the way her fingers drummed lightly against the edge of the counter — like maybe she’d missed this too.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll bring snacks.”

“You’re gonna bring, like, gummy worms and a Red Bull, aren’t you?”

He raised a brow. “Red Bull?” he asked, scoffing as if she had insulted his heritage or publicly accused her of high treason or something equally preposterous. “Nah, m’actually more of a Monster kind of guy.”

She bit back another smile, biting her lower lip like she didn’t want to let it show how easily he pulled one from her again.

“I’ll text you,” she said. Lando nodded, stepping back, already mentally rearranging his weekend. She turned back to her textbook, and he turned to the door. 

And somewhere between his hand hitting the handle and the bell chiming overhead, he let himself breathe.

Things were okay.

It wasn’t until a few days later, when she dropped into the car with a soft, absent little hum and immediately launched into a useless story about her professor misprinting the final exam, that he  finally felt the weight on his sternum lift.

She was laughing, talking – not faking it. The creases by her eyes were real this time.

And Lando sat there, both hands on the wheel, and felt his own lungs finally expand again—like he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath.

Her legs were curled up in the passenger seat, iced coffee dripping dew into the cupholder of his luxury car, and she was babbling about something new she had checked out from the library. The streetlights passed over her face in golden intervals, washing her in soft light.

She didn’t know. She hadn’t left. She hadn’t pulled away.

And he –Lando, Liam, whoever the hell he was with her– could finally breathe again.

a/n: sorry for the late post! had a twenty page paper that was kicking my butt but hopefully i should be able to give you guys a bit more content (fingers crossed!) now that i'm on holiday as always, i love hearing what you guys have to say, so comments/reblogs/asks are vv appreciated :)

[youleftmenochoicebut]

HATE TO BE LAME — james potter.

SUMMARY. — three times you almost tell James you love him + the one time you actually do.

PAIRING. — james potter x fem!childhoodbsf!reader

WARNINGS. — fluff, angst, uhm… death? if smth else here may be triggering lmk, im still kinda learning all this

A/N. — sorry for cross-tagging! i think i only did on that first post, haven’t done it on the rest and def won’t do it again!

1970.

you’re sitting by an old oak tree, laying back against it, holding an apple in your hand. you throw it up in the air then catch it without much fuss, having been doing this for almost thirty minutes. it’s getting pretty boring, waiting for your bestfriend in your usual meeting spot.

the wheat field you and James have made your personal hang out place is perfectly centered between your houses, both of you having the same amount of road to pass to get here, and it’s been your favorite since forever.

most of the time, like right now, you meet to fly around and practice on your broomsticks, even though you’re too young to even have them. perks of being born in wizarding families that teach magic and all from the moment you’re born.

another heavy sigh leaves your lips, and you bite into your apple, chewing on it completely. the summer’s merciless this year, the temperatures especially high for britain, and the heat pisses you off even more than James being late.

you stand up after eating your apple, gathering your stuff annoyed, when he finally shows up. you hear him first, only then see him when you turn around.

“hi there, mate!” he calls out, clutching his broomstick in his hand as he practically runs to you, and you look at him unamused.

“you’re late, Jamie.” your lips quiver, and you cross your hands over your chest, quickly moving back to picking up your toys and others. “almost an hour.”

“i know, i’m sorry!” he groans softly, approaching you with an apologetic but still goofy smile, reaching out to ruffle your hair. “my mum made me tidy my room first. even under my bed! it was a nightmare!”

you pout, mulling over your options for an answer, careful eyes set on him and sliding over his form. his curls are messed up (you can see a spider web cling to them all the way from here), the glasses on his nose askew, and he’s breathing faster, probably running to you from home the whole way. you slowly nod, putting your things down again.

“i made you a wreath when i was waiting for you.” you say as you search through your bag, then pull out the wreath, motioning him to sit down in the shadows under the oak. the wreath is clumsy, but nonetheless pretty, mostly made of wild flowers, poppies and daisies.

you place it on his head, smiling when you notice his grin only get bigger, and you pull away soon.

“i’m gonna wear it all the time, Y/N!” James exclaims enthusiastically, waving his hands like an excited toddler, and for a while you let him tell you stories. when he mentions going into the nearby river to catch some frogs, you nod, but as he stands up you pull him back down, remembering your mother’s words.

you turn around to your bag, taking out a bottle of sunscreen, then look at him again.

“my mom said that her muggle friend bought her this. it’s a cream to protect you so the sun doesn’t hurt you!” you explain at his surprised expression, and you know you were the same level confused when your mother told you about it.

you squeeze some of that sunscreen onto your palm, from there putting it on James’ face and slowly rubbing it in.

“i think you’re going to be in Hufflepuff.” James murmurs suddenly and you raise your eyebrows, your hands freezing on his cheeks. “you’re just so kind.”

you and James are starting Hogwarts next year and the closer it gets the more excited you two grow, the only fear growing along with your excitement being that of a case where you don’t end up in the same house. with James being sure he’s gonna be a gryffindor, you’re sure you aren’t.

“my whole family’s been in Slytherin.” you shrug, renewing your movements on his face, and you’re trying hard not to chuckle when he makes a stupid face at you.

“well, it doesn’t matter to me!” he tugs at the end of your braid and you push him away playfully, rolling your eyes. “you’re my bestest friend. i’m gonna like you best no matter which house you end up in.”

that’s when it hits you. even thought you’re only ten, even if it doesn’t make sense.

i love you.

i love you, it rings out in your head like an alarm clock going off, i love you.

the words almost slip past your lips, but you manage to happily crook out something else instead.

“you’re the bestest, Jamie.”

1975.

“Y/N, stop running!” James groans as his eyes follow you around the huge room. you, him, Sirius and Peter have been doing the whole ordeal to become animagi for a good few weeks, and now that everything was done, the only thing left was to actually change.

the boys… aren’t having it, for sure. Peter’s all red on his chubby face, panting heavily, Sirius is deeply focused on the task (trying to act like a dog in hopes it’ll just work like that), James only has his eyes on you while Remus just reads a book in the corner of the room.

and you’ve actually managed to change into your animagi form after only a few hours of trying, now running around the room of requirement in your tiny arctic fox body, little tongue out cutely.

you stop in front of James, tilting your head, and then just reach out your paw to put it on his knee. he lets out a relieved sigh before you take off again, your claws making almost a clicking sound against the floor as you run over to lay down in Remus’ lap.

“oh, c’mon, mate! stop bragging, will ya?” James huffs, rolling his eyes as he leans back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. you whine, and Remus scratches you behind your ear, making you roll onto your back playfully. “Y/N, i’m not joking. change back.”

if you could, you would roll your eyes right now, jumping off Remus and freezing in place for a moment. it’s the first time you turn back into human form, and neither of you know how it’s actually gonna go.

so, mere seconds later, you’re laying naked on the floor in front of four teenage boys. Sirius smirks, but turns his gaze away soon enough, Peter looks away so quickly he bumps his head against the wall, and Remus doesn’t even glance up from his book at you.

James, on the other hand, skips over to you, throwing a blanket over your body. you sigh, suddenly feeling sore from the transformation, and you look at him with a frown.

“you alright?” he asks, reaching out to brush your hair back away from your face, and he gives you a smile.

„yeah.” you whisper, the frown on your face disappearing soon enough as you hear the voice in your head again. it’s quiet at first, growing louder by every second passing with your eyes set on him.

i love you. i love you. i love you.

but you keep your mouth shut, painfully aware of your friends being right behind you.

1977.

it’s snowing outside the castle, and it’s snowing lots. for early december you’d say it’s really a big amount. most of the students are out on the hogwart’s grounds, playing in the white landscape, while you are strolling down the halls with an obstinate expression on your face, holding your wand in your hand tightly.

you’re determined to tell James how you feel. finally, after all those years, you’ve decided it’s time. you bump into someone, only realizing it’s Remus after you’ve passed him, not even registering what he’s said to you. it doesn’t matter now, because you’re going to tell James how you feel and you’re going to live happily ever after.

yeah, right. sure.

you storm into the Gryffindor common room, practically jumping with each step you take, feeling like you could just fly off any second. you see James talking animatedly with Sirius on the couches, and they’re both as excited as you have ever seen them.

„hi, boys!” you skip over to them, ruffling Sirius’ perfectly messy hair, which earns a scoff from him, then turn to James „can i talk to you for a moment?”

„sure, foxy. what’s up?” he takes your wrist, leading you into a secluded corner of the huge space, and you can see him beaming. he’s always like a walking ray of sunshine, but now it’s all so… so much more. „oui, actually, i need to tell you something.”

your heart skips a beat at that. that’s it, you think, he’s gonna confess his undying love for me, for sure. well, the grimace that graces your features after his next words is a clear indicator that’s not true.

„Lily agreed to go on a date with me!” he practically, no scratch that, he definitely yells out, and for a moment you swear you can see his ears move in excitement. „can you believe it? i wanted to try, one last time, and i took Moony’s advice! i went up to her alone, and i just… just asked her. and she said yes.”

you nod, mustering up a small smile, but as James continues to yap along you dissociate. that’s not how it was supposed to go. yeah, of course you always knew James liked Lily. at least, that’s what he’s been telling you. you, and Remus, were never convinced. you’ve thought he liked the thrill, the adrenaline, that he just liked bugging her. apparently not.

you don’t realize you zoned out until his finger pokes your cheek, and your eyes snap back to him. you let out a forced chuckle, nodding again, before you manage to speak.

„that’s great, James.” you say, squeezing his hand with that fake smile on, and he’s too spiraled on the thought of Lily to notice you being off. „i hope Lils knows she just tapped a keeper.”

1978.

„stop messing it up, James.” you grumble as you adjust his bowtie for what must be the thousandth time, your tongue stuck out slightly in concentration as you fiddle with the material. sure, you could do it quickly with magic, but doing it like this makes you calm your own nerves.

„sorry.” he mutters quietly, his eyes darting all around the room before setting on you. you step back after a moment, crossing your arms over your chest while you look him up and down.

all the guests are out in the garden, already waiting for the groom to come out so the ceremony can begin. James looks absolutely handsome in his tuxedo, but honestly there’s not a time where this man doesn’t look fine as hell.

„don’t be nervous. you’re marrying the love of your life.” you smile at him softly, reaching out to smooth out the collar of his dress shirt, trying to keep your heart from sinking lower than it already has. „and if anything, Sirius and I will help you escape.” you add jokingly, winking at him in hopes of loosening up the atmosphere.

after all you’re his best woman. yeah, it sounds weird, but if Sirius is the best man, then you’re the best woman. that’s all you’ll ever be, and you’ve made peace with it. somewhat.

„yeah, foxy. right.” James lets out a heavy breath, the corners of his mouth tilting upwards ever so slightly, and he fixes up his curls once more. „we should go. Lils is all ready probably.”

„before we go…” you sigh, your lips pursing for a beat, your gaze turning gentler. „i love you, Jamie.”

you say those words, even though you know they will be misinterpreted. you say them, even though you’ll never explain them. you say them, and you wish you could see something click in his eyes, something that makes him realize it’s you he should be marrying right now.

you say them, and you watch him cheerfully reply.

„oui, i love you too, Y/N!” he chimes, giving you a hug too quick and too short to be anything more than friends, then takes a step back. „now, c’mon, i gotta get married!”

1981. (status: erased)

you’re here.

you feel your heart race in your chest as you stand in front of the Potter’s house in Godric’s Hollow. it’s been hours since it happened, a week since you last saw them, a day since you last talked to them.

you take a breath, then another one. it’s excruciatingly painful to just breathe, and the cold, almost winter air is not helping with that.

you’re only here because it’s your job. your partner’s off, talking to the neighbors, and you’re supposed to go in and investigate.

you know that someone took Harry to st. Mungo’s, probably one of your own subordinates, so at least you know your godson is safe.

but it doesn’t change the fact, the reality of what’s waiting for you inside.

your steps are slow, unsure, as you make your way inside. the house you had countless happy memories from and about, all of them destroyed now. without the lights on, without the sound of James’ and Harry’s giggles, without Lily’s warm smile, the house feels intimidating. threatening even.

you think of simpler times, or even moments from merely weeks ago, when your whole friend group hang out here. now, all that’s gone. Sirius just got arrested, Peter went missing, Remus locked himself out. Dorcas and Marlene grieved, so did Mary.

the wooden floor creaks underneath your leather boots, and you remember the time when last christmas Sirius hung there mistletoe, not realizing he would have to actually kiss someone else than Remus, and ended up giving plenty of kisses to James when they went in and out of the kitchen passing drinks.

you go past that, walking further into the house, and then you see him. well, not completely for now, just his legs. you can feel the lump in your throat grow bigger, and you swallow, your eyes watering already. you approach the staircase, falling down onto your knees without flinching when they hit the stair in a totally painful angle, and a sob rips through you. you look at the lifeless body of James Potter laying across the stairs, and you cannot control the tears that fall down your face.

you move up a few stairs, now sitting by his head, and you adjust his crooked glasses, feeling the salty taste of your tears on your lips.

„i love you, James.” you whisper shakily as your hand rests over his cheek, and another sob wrecks your body. „i’m going to raise Harry the best as i can, i promise.”

[luna-loveboop]

Time. Worried about Wars.

Time. Worried about Wars. Time is worried about Wars- Time has to be so freaking scared for Wars I-

Warriors is going into his first dungeon which has challenges for how he should deal with it, and Time is stressed. Ima rant about it

At this point (update Entrance) Time is obviously... well, terrified. His concern for mr. stubborn after his injury is obvious and he wants to make sure it does not happen again

And his concerns are valid- they are all now painfully aware of their lack of skills in working as a team. And they are heading into a dungeon- where that instantly results in stuff like this lol

And then Wars openly says that he has never done this before

The group is obviously uhh concerned that he hasn't done this or had any dungeon experience

'No dungeon experience?' / 'Has he even seen certain monsters before?'

Time wanted to stay in a group for safety- but they have to split up. Dungeons are cramped and messy and small, and Wars is used to fighting on a battlefield - not this sort of setting

And they still joke around about it- and Wars instantly starts analyzing.

'Tell me. Give me the intel' / 'This isn't practical'

Honestly Wars' response to this is pretty cool- it's totally in line with who he is as a captain and hero. He instantly starts thinking about it and treating it as a different type of battlefield to figure out strategy. Also I think it's pretty cute that he said 'intel' even if he's grumpy about asking the others for advice and what a wallmaster is

Wars can handle it and learn what a dungeon's like- I think it'll be fun to see him go through his first dungeon :D

But. He's still never done a dungeon before. It will be interesting to see how that develops in this arc... and let's not forget he's pissed the shadow and his emo sword off before. This isn't where he fights best and Wars is particularly vulnerable in a major way.

Time was already stressed about mr. stubborn Twilight, but hearing that the captain, that Warriors isn't prepared for this is. Extra scary. I just think he must be really concerned for him- for all of them. And now mr. reliable is in a learning position and not a leading one

Their faces fjdkfsjdksjsk

But these are his boys and he'll have to trust that they'll be ok. Therefore I think this was Time's thinking:

Time, thinking: "Dungeon. A dungeon oh this is dangerous- no one can get hurt-"

Wars: "can't say I've really been in one"

Time, absolutely sobbing internally: "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THE RELIABLE ONE"

.

Art by @linkeduniverse au :))

:)

Hey, don't worry too much about it I'm sure it'll be fine :) (mostly)