#but she’s also very ‘must protect and attack’ because of the killing game. which makes it very hard for people to view her as approachable.

[nite-puff]

Found your Danganronpa OCs and I'M IN LOVE WITH THE ART FOR THEM! Assuming you haven't talked about them yet, can I hear more about Polaris by any chance?

Ah! THANK YOUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!! And yes, I’ll tell you more about Polaris!

Getting it out of the way: Polaris is also the Ultimate Soldier. And yes, she’s part of a mercenary group. I know, I know, Mukuro. But she doesn’t exist in this universe, so it shouldn’t matter, we don’t have to bring it up. Okay? Okay.

She go in involved with the mercenary group young, very young. At first it was just so she would have people that would look out for her as she grew up, as her only biological family then was her uncle who joined the group. Growing up, the group sort of became her family as they traveled and helped any population of people that needed protection. It was through these experiences that she developed an inherent need to help people. But she still has to learn that not everyone can be helped with violence and can have their problems solved with just like….chatting. She’s working on it.

As she got older, she learned more about being on the battlefield and was trained to fight with weapons. With that, and all of the knowledge she learned from observing her group in action, she became a pretty skilled fighter very quickly, moving more towards the frontlines with every new mission.

Also important backstory detail! She was very close to her uncle, and he became like father figure to her. He was the main one that taught her everything she knows and he as kind of like her only tie to her life before the constant fighting and running. So she had a very hard time after he was killed during one of their missions. But she had no time to mourn in the moment because she was in the middle of something important. Maybe that experience will shape how she approaches the killing game idk!!!! Haha!!

While she may come off as very stoic and serious, she is very awkward and nervous to talk to people. She didn’t grow up around a lot of teenagers, especially other teenage girls. That and the hostile environment she’s grown accustomed to has led to her being disconnected from other people her age. She’s also just naturally shy with everyone.

But she wants to make friends! She wants to so bad! It was the main reason she accepted the invite to the academy and was okay with leaving her home and group for a little while. She even tried to research on things that people her age like these days. She’s very determined to make at least one friend!

I wonder how that goal will clash with the instant defense mode that activates in her when she finds herself in the killing game.

[yandere-daze]

I see your writing for fire emblem engage and I really love that game and I just finished it for maddening. I don’t know if this is a request or not but may I ask in the context of the base emblems, can you rank them based on how extreme they would be as a yandere like I think I would rate emblem Celica as 12th cause even if she turns yandere she still very passive and more so she’s just clingy but I would rate Byleth a 4th due to him being extremely manipulative and overprotective

Hii, welcome to the blog! I´d say normally I would consider this a request but I´m kind of in the mood to write for fire emblem right now so I thought this would be a fun little thing to do ^^

Now I must confess that for most of the lords ( which the majority of emblems are) I have some difficulty with trying to think of them as a yandere or in a self-shipping context in general. Don´t really know why that is. I also haven´t played all of the games yet so I can´t say too much about some of them, I hope that´s okay!

Also because I have a real hard time ranking things in order, here are just some thoughts on most of the emblems as yanderes ☺️

3.7k words

gn reader

tw yandere, obsession, worshipping, self-sacrifice, kidnapping, possessiveness

Characters: Marth, Celica, Sigurd, Leif, Roy, Lyn, Eirika and Ephraim, Ike, Micaiah, Lucina, Corrin, Byleth

How are the 12 base emblems like as yanderes?

Marth

Now I´ll have to be honest, I actually haven´t played any of Marth´s games yet so I´m not very familiar with his character. But as with most FE lords, he strikes me as a very kind and heroic character. In Engage he kind of takes the role of a supporter and protector of the Mc and we can see that in general, he is pretty gentle.

He probably wouldn´t be a very bad yandere to be stuck with, I can´t see him ever getting violent with his darling. He strikes me as a protective yandere (something that can be said for most of them) who will do whatever he can to keep you safe while trying to make your stay with him as comfortable as possible.

Celica

I haven´t quite finished Echoes yet because I´m very bad at finishing games but I agree with your take that she also wouldn´t ever harm her darling. She´s a very devout follower of Mila and I think that same mentality could also apply to her darling. Slowly but surely, she starts seeing them as a divine being worth worshipping. She´s been completely alone for most of her life and after she had to leave Ram Village, she´s been craving more human connections. So when she finally met you, it was like Mila had sent down an angel for her. You were so kind to her, so trusting and good-natured, Celica was immediately fond of you.

She will do whatever she can to aid you in your daily life, she has to repay you for everything you gave her. She´s not very likely to attack other people, even as a yandere, because above else she wants peace. Nonetheless, if a monster or a criminal were to try and attack you, she would kill them no questions asked. No one is allowed to lay their hands on someone as divine as you, she won´t stand for it.

Due to a certain spoilery scene that happens in Echoes, I believe that Celica would also be willing to sacrifice herself for you. If there ever was a point where she would have to choose between your or her own life, she would choose yours without any regrets.

Your survival is of the utmost importance and if that means giving up her life in exchange for yours, then she is happy.

Sigurd

I have only played the prologue and chapter 1 of FE4 and ragequit when Jamke was killing my units in the forest because I couldn´t get them out in time to recruit him. Oops.

Well from what I know with how his story with Deirdre develops, I believe that Sigurd would fall for you much in the same way: Hard and fast. And if nothing else, Sigurd is stubborn. Once he has his mind set on wanting to make you his, he won´t give up until he finally has you, no matter the consequences. I mean he was literally forbidden from getting with Deirdre and he still did it. He doesn´t care what anyone else says, he doesn´t care if you already have a lover. He knows that the moment you two shared together at your first meeting was magical for both of you. He knows the love between you two is true. And he´s willing to risk it all for you.

It´s a good thing if you actually do feel the same way about him and are single! Because even though he isn´t a bad person, he does conquer several territories in Fe4 without any specific orders to do so. He may not like doing it but if it means he can have you, he would be willing to kill any romantic rivals there might have been ( or any he might have imagined).

Once you´re actually with him, he naturally is very protective of you and doesn´t let too many other people get close to you.

Leif

Now I have to admit, Leif is probably the character I know the least about here. As I said, I never played Fe4 to the point where you would get him and I haven´t played Thracia either. So most of this is just the vibes I get and a few lines from Heroes.

Now Leif has quite a tragic story and has been driven out of his kingdom when he was still young. Ever since then, he had made efforts to try and reclaim what had been taken from him. Because of that, he also strikes me as someone who would fight for his darling. He knows what it´s like to lose people that are important to you ( his parents) and now that he has clawed his way back from the brink, he doesn´t want the same to happen to you, the person he has decided he wants to spend his life with. He´s pretty desperate to protect you actually.

Still, he´s pretty young and so the love he feels for you very much still is a puppy-love kind of thing. He likes talking to you and finds it comforting to do so. He´s very nice to you and you aren´t really in any danger when being with him. I think being with him isn´t all too bad, he´s just a bit over-protective if anything.

Roy

I´ll be honest, I know almost nothing about Roy so I´m sorry if this is short😭 Predictably, I haven´t played Binding Blade yet.

He´s also one of the younger emblems here and that shows itself in how hard he tries to impress you. He´s usually pretty dense when it comes to romance but he knows what he feels when he sees you. You make him happy. I feel like he could be a bit hot-headed because of his age but as far as I know, he´s actually one of the few lords that can potentially make peace with the final boss of the game so there definitely is quite a lot of kindness to him as well. He doesn´t really want to pick any fights with people he trusts, all he wants is to be with you and if you don´t resist then honestly, it´s all going to be okay.

Lyn

Finally, after quite some time, we get to some more games I´ve actually played! And here we go with Lyn! Fe7 was actually the first Fire Emblem I ever played and it really hooked me even back then <3

Now Lyn actually doesn´t strike me as the type of person who would really actively be looking for any sort of romance. She´s lived alone for most of her life and so she does crave some companionship, but romance is something she really doesn´t have any experience in.

When she meets you, she does feel a bit strange but doesn´t put a lot of thought into it. Quickly as you two spend more time together, she really begins to take a liking to you. It´s nice to not be alone and you´re good company. The more you stay together, the more she grows attached to you. If you can fight, she´ll want to fight along your side, if you can´t or are frail in some way, Lyn will prefer you to stand on the sidelines, where it´s safe. She doesn´t know what she would do if you were ever truly harmed. The attacker definitely wouldn´t be living for much longer, that much is sure.

So to sum it up, Lyn is very protective of you and only trusts a select few people with you, anyone else could be a potential danger and she doesn´t want to risk anything.

I think it would actually be kind of tough for darling to figure out that Lyn is obsessed with them. Lyn doesn´t strike me as very physically affectionate. Only if you watch very carefully can you see the way her eyes soften when she gazes at you or the way her hand around the handle of her sword tenses when a particular troublemaker starts hitting you up. She definitely won´t tolerate anyone trying to flirt with you. She´s known you for way longer than they possibly could have, who do they think they are?

Eirika and Ephraim

I know it´s mainly Eirika and Ephraim is only really present in the special attack but I thought this was more interesting.

So having one person obsessed with you is bad enough but two of them? And they´re siblings too? Things are about to get quite a bit more complicated. The thing is, you´re not really sure if this is better or worse than only having one of them?

Of course, having two people focus all of their attention on you is very overwhelming. It stresses you out, the way they both fuss over you, the way they look at you.

Eirika is definitely the gentler one of the two, speaking to you very softly and taking great care of you. She makes sure you aren´t lacking anything (except your freedom). She also isn´t very fond of conflict and would prefer to avoid it altogether.

Ephraim is the brash and more hot-headed of the two, always picking fights with people he deems a threat ("He doesn´t pick fights he can´t win" or whatever) and generally being bolder with his affections. He doesn´t hesitate to throw his arm over your shoulder to show off to others that you´re his while Eirika prefers to simply hold your hand in her own.

Them being siblings also causes conflict from time to time. After all, what kind of siblings never have any petty squabbles? Suddenly one of them believes that the other has been getting a bit more attention from you than them and the arguing begins. Wild accusations from Ephraim that Eirika is coddling you too much while Eirika complains about the brutish ways in which Ephraim disposes of rivals. It can get annoying really fast but it´s also something that you could potentially try to use to your advantage.

Playing clear favorites with them might make them argue with each other, potentially giving you an opening to try to make your escape while they´re distracted. Do be very careful with this though because once they realize that you´re gone, they´ll quickly get over whatever argument they were having and work together to find you again. Siblings tend to have petty fights with each other but they will have each other´s backs when it comes to the important things. They *will* find you again, who knows what dangers you might be getting yourself into?

Ike

Similarly to Lyn, I can´t really see Ike as someone who is very interested in romance. In Radiant Dawn, he only has two paired endings, which isn´t a whole lot honestly ( and they´re kind of vague on how romantic they actually end up being). So maybe he would be more of a platonic sort of yandere? He cares a great deal about his friends and his family of the Greil Mercenaries and he tries his utmost to protect them. It would be much the same for his darling.

Ike wouldn´t be very physically or vocally loving in the traditional sense, he strikes me as someone who would struggle a fair deal with expressing his feelings, especially if we´re talking POR Ike where he is still fairly young. In the end, his confession would be pretty blunt, a simple "I like you." or "You´re important to me." maybe but nothing flowery or dramatic, that just isn´t the kind of person he is.

That being said, Ike cares a great deal about your well-being, even if he isn´t all that great at putting it into words. So to show you that, he does the one thing he does best: Protecting you. Ike is a very strong and capable fighter and so he will be quick to dispose of anyone that tries harming you. I don´t see him as someone that would try to isolate his darling however, especially not the Greil Mercenaries. These people are his family, he trusts them dearly and he would want you to grow connections with them and enjoy being around them. It would shatter his heart if you didn´t like being around them.

Micaiah

Micaiah I see as another worshipper type of yandere. She´s had a rough life so far, only having very few people around her that she could call friends in the Dawn Brigade while fighting for the liberation of Daein. It´s a lonely life, even with Yune whispering into her ear that one day, she will meet the partner of her dreams, the one to make her happy.

And then, on a day like any other, she finds you. It´s a very unremarkable meeting, one you wouldn´t have thought much of afterwards, but to her, it was like all the stars aligned, as if all of her life and past suffering suddenly had a purpose. She was completely starstruck, a loud pounding in her chest when she laid her gaze on you. At that very moment, Micaiah knew that you were the one Yune had been telling her about all along. And so, she vows to let you know just how much you mean to her.

As a yandere, Micaiah is very caring and thinks of you as a higher being, someone who has more worth than any other mortal walking this earth. You are special to her and so she will be damned if anything were to happen to you. She refuses to allow it. If you were ever in any mortal danger, Micaiah wouldn´t hesitate to use Sacrifice on you to transfer over her own life energy to you.

But while she is very nice and caring with you, Micaiah can be quite a bit more snarky and ruthless than you might have initially thought. She doesn´t shy away from making negative or rude comments to people she thinks you spend too much time around. (Remember that scene where she snarkily calls Ike "the father of Sothe´s children" because Sothe talked about him so much? Yeah.) She´s also willing to do bad things if she feels like she has to. If it´s for you, then no crime is bad enough for her not to consider it. She doesn´t like hurting people but she will if her hand is forced.

Also, can we talk about her having a goddess on her side? Yeah, you´re going to have a very difficult time trying to get away from her anytime soon.

Lucina

Lucina is someone that I think actually has great potential to be a yandere. She comes from a ruined future, a world where all her loved ones and friends died and the entire world is doomed. Now she has travelled back in time to change fate and make things right.

A particularly tragic possibility would be to have her witness the death of her darling in her future. It was an event that deeply scarred her forever and one that she is now desperate to avoid. She can´t allow you to die again, she can´t let it happen a second time. She wouldn´t be able to go on if she ever had to experience that amount of grief again.

So when Lucina finally makes it back in time, her top priority is finding you again. To do that, she has to go back in time quite a bit. Maybe she makes it back to a time where you two aren´t dating yet, or maybe even back to when you hadn´t even met each other yet. You´re so overwhelmed and honestly confused when you´re just going along with your day when suddenly, a young woman rushes towards you and engulfes you in a crushing hug as she cries into your shirt about how much she has missed you.

It´s quite terrifying honestly and you don´t know how to react other than trying to rip yourself out of her grip, which only makes her cling onto you even harder. Her explaining to you that she´s from the future where the entire world has ended and you, her lover, had tragically died and that she now traveled back in time to make things right, doesn´t really put your mind at ease either. I mean, who would honestly believe that?

But no matter what you say, Lucina is determined to not repeat past mistakes. She had been too careless, letting you roam around freely without her at your side, it´s what led to you dying! She won´t let it happen again!

Lucina will try and be sweet to you, knowing how hard this must be for you to believe, but she won´t give you a choice in this. She´s going to stay with you and keep you safe no matter what. She´ll follow you wherever you go with her blade at the ready, prepared to strike at anyone who tries to take you away from her again.

Corrin

Corrin has lived a very sheltered life for the most part, never really leaving the Nohrian castle. Because of this, they had many opportunities to picture what life outside the castle could possibly look like. What else was out there? What adventures or new experiences could wait for them there? Yes, they were always loved by their Nohrian siblings but they couldn´t help but yearn all the same.

Maybe being read some romance books in their childhood led to Corrin developing a fantasy of one day meeting their ideal partner, the one that would shake up their entire world, the one they would spend the rest of their life with. They had dreamed about it a lot in the comforts of their own room, delving into daydreams about what meeting you for the first time might be like.

And then they leave the castle for the first time and they meet you. And just like they had always imagined, Corrin feels themselves immediately lovestruck when you send a smile their way. This was it. This is the person they´re meant to be with, they just know it!

They´ll immediately be very friendly and way too trusting of someone who is basically a complete stranger. But they just can´t help it, their sheltered life hasn´t really helped them in growing a healthy sense of suspicion. No, instead the thought of you possibly doing something shady is completely off their mind.

Ever since that first meeting, Corrin would want to see you again every day. It´s the first real human interaction they had with anyone outside of the Nohrian royal family and the servants in the castle and they´re hooked on you. Listening to you talk about your mundane life is so exciting to them, both because they love listening to you speak and because it is genuinely interesting to them to know what a normal person´s life might look like.

And soon enough, they just won´t leave you alone. They´re sweet and their curiosity is kind of charming, but they are so very annoyingly clingy. They will pout and beg you to stay around for just a bit longer when you tell them that you have to leave. After some time they start inviting you over to the castle and you can´t really refuse to go when a royal carriage is standing before your home one day.

And then suddenly, one day you just aren´t allowed to leave anymore.

" The servants have set up your own personal room for you. I made sure that everything was just to your liking! Now we can spend even more time together, isn´t that simply wonderful", Corrin will simply tell you one day and then it is a done deal. Whatever your life was before, you will have to abandon it to fulfill Corrin´s dream of a happy married life alongside the person they adore the most.

Byleth

Honestly, I´ve kind of strayed completely away from trying to rank them as yanderes ( sorry about that) but I agree that kind of everything about Byleht makes them a scary yandere.

First of all, they´re a trained and experienced mercenary, they have all the fighting prowess they might need to keep their darling in check or make sure that nothing happens to them.

Then, they have their affiliation with the church and a certain position of power. Whether you are a student or not, Byleth is still a respected figure in the monastery and has all the benefits that might bring. She has connections to the Knights of Seiros and even with Lady Rhea herself. If you ever were to run away ( or rather, if you were to be stolen away by bandits, is what they would tell everyone afterwards), several knights or even their students would be sent out to look for you. And do you really think you could get away with so many people looking for you? You´ll be back right by their side within 3 days.

Then there´s also the whole... a goddess is in their head talking to them and them having the ability to turn back time thing. Yeah, you´re very much screwed here. How are you supposed to fight back against someone who can simply turn back time? With this ability, they have so many chances to choose the right words when talking to you or to get rid of someone in secret, without you ever knowing these rewinds even happened. In-game we might have a limited amount of uses but I don´t think it´s ever been confirmed that this is actually something that Byleth needs to adhere to in the story.

And then last but not least, there´s the fact that Byleth is just impossible to read. They don´t show any emotions in their facial expressions and their voice is mostly monotone. You would not be able to tell just how obsessed they are with you from interacting with them. You think you´re just having a friendly tea party with them and suddenly you find yourself drugged and locked up in their room.

And even when they finally have you, they´re just kind of creepy with them staring at you for long amounts of time while not saying anything. They´re not very affectionate either.

But what help could you possibly count on now when everyone at the monastery loves the professor?

[spawnofbhaal]

Theorizing about what might have happened to Marazhai's mother, Farkaza Aezyrraesh . . .

Marazhai says she was a leader, and the family name Aezyrraesh seems very connected to the Kabal of the Reaving Tempest. She was also powerful enough to be protected while she carried two pregnancies to term. Therefore, I assume she was the Archon of the Reaving Tempest prior to Yremeryss (although iirc this isn't explicitly stated).

I also assume that, as she is no longer Archon, she is dead. My theory is that one of three things happened: (1) Yremeryss had her assassinated; (2) another kabal had her assassinated; or (3) Farkaza died during the dysjunction that occurred in the Path of the Dark Eldar books (which also could have led to an opportunity for assassination).

Because I like seeing connections between stories, I guess I like the idea that Farkaza died during that dysjunction, which occurred in 842.M41 (Rogue Trader takes place roughly around 999.M41 or the beginning of M42). So, with around 157 years taking place between Path of the Dark Eldar and the game, it would make sense if Marazhai and Yremeryss were alive during the dysjunction, and it impacted their lives.

A dysjunction, from my understanding of it from reading PotDE and playing Rogue Trader, occurs when there's a warp breach into Commorragh and daemons flood into the city. In addition to the danger posed by daemons attacking the city, many Drukhari take such occasions as an opportunity to attack enemy kabals or grab power if there's a power vacuum (which is apparently what Yremeryss wanted to do by causing a dysjunction in Rogue Trader).

In PotDE, total chaos ensued from the dysjunction. Many Drukhari (and other species, of course) died fighting the daemons or each other. But in addition to this, Commorragh's overlord, Vect (the guy who Marazhai fears enough not to talk about, and who is also the ultimate leader of the Black Heart Kabal that Nazrakhei was an Archon of), decided to regain control of Commorragh by unleashing weapons of mass destruction on everything and everyone inside it. (As a side note, there is an *awesome* Harlequin character in PotDE, Motley, who hates Vect for this).

What all this means with regard to Marazhai's mother is that she easily could have died during the dysjunction, whether from daemons, other Drukhari, her own daughter Yremeryss (who as we know thinks dysjunctions are a great way to shake up the power structure), or Vect basically nuking the place without caring if he killed daemons, rebels, or his own loyalists.

Anyway, I wish there was more info on what Marazhai's mother was like; she must have been a very interesting character.

[archivalofsins]

It's really weird to me that Kotoko's fight with Mikoto is being used as evidence that the other guy must not have fought her and so there must be more alters. Because it simply ignores the fact Mikoto himself could have just fought her. He said he dislikes using violence, but I personally disbelieve anyone dislikes violence enough to not defend themselves from being jumped by a person with multiple weapons. Plus, the fact that Mikoto has just been boiled down to this nonviolent pushover is just like kinda off to me for multiple reasons.

That's just me, though.

Like Mikoto even tells Kotoko while wishing her happy birthday let's get along for now. Implying that they weren't getting along prior and that isn't the other one that is Mikoto. So, like he probably clashed with her for a minute during the intermission. He's also shown to have more control over their strength throughout MeMe. Then, in the third anniversary art, as we've brought up before, that seems to be the prisoners directly after their sins/crimes he's holding a vape pen something specific to him.

Like Mikoto, from my perspective, may have very clearly just defended himself from being jumped, and no personality change was necessary. Yet it was during the birthday because the prisoners that are properly restrained literally can't fight while the guards awake, and the other personality is unrestrained, meaning they can.

Still despite being unrestrained and the rule around prisoners not being able to fight while the wardens awake definitely not applying to him because Jackalope bluntly said the rules don't apply to the other one- Why they're still not fucking jumping Kotoko while she can't do a damn thing about it is fucking beyond me!

YOU WANT TO BEAT HER AT HER OWN GAME FUCKING JUMP HER, NOW! DO IT- IT'S THE PERFECT FUCKING TIME! SHE CAN'T FIGHT BACK END HER- Why is the Mikoto who is restrained labeled the nonviolent one when the other one has the perfect opportunity to get rid of their fucking problem and isn't taking it?! He's not taking it they're literally being threatened with restraint and they're not taking the shot.

I'll beat you at your own game- No, you don't understand you literally uniquely have the perfect opportunity to do the funniest shit in Milgram history and you're not taking it. Which severely makes me doubt that this is the one who did the murder because if he did kill once to protect himself then I fail to understand what is stopping his currently unrestrained ass from doing it again now?! Fucking she attacked you with brass knuckles a police baton and steel toed boots she can't fight back right now just get her.

I'd assume they don't know that which fine they might not, but at the same time, they already know from folding Es like freshly washed laundry that some rules don't apply to them. I say just start testing shit at this point it would get them pretty far. It would get them further than not testing shit has that's for sure.

[esther-dot]

Fans are stating that Jaime killed the Mad King. So how he could go back to another Mad Queen. Like as if Cersei wasn't his twin sister, lover and mother of his children for years. Also Jaime killing Night King was way different than what he is in books now. Plus he killed Aerys to protect his father Tywin who sacked KL and killed Elia and her children. Also why was there rage when he going to kill another Mad Queen. Do they forget that Dany wanted to kill Jaime for killing her father?

Men killing their lovers is gross and I keep saying no one wants to read /watch that, but it isn't true for this fandom, is it? They were very enthusiastic about it and wanted it, just for some women, not others. They wanted Jaime to strangle his sister/lover/mother of his children, declared it character assassination when he didn’t, but then said it was sexist that Jon killed Dany to stop her from carrying out her stated intention of attacking other cities/castles. 🤦🏻‍♀️

As for Jaime's morality regarding "mad kings" and "mad queens," I do think the books and show made it pretty clear that Jaime wasn’t exactly a picture of virtue. I mean, he was fucking his sister, he was down for a little kid killing (sorry, Bran), even though his big dishonorable act is revealed to have actually been a good thing, it doesn't change his characterization over-all. I don't remember anything specific that made me believe it, other than a general, "born together, die together" idea, but I always thought he would die with Cersei. When that happened on the show and fans had a major meltdown, I argued he was a better man for trying to save his lover than if he hadn’t. And, I appreciated it too, because, as riddled with nonsense as s8 was, what made the show (more so, ASOIAF), compelling was that the characters weren't standins for us. They surprised me because what they did wasn't what I wanted, but what they wanted. Jaime's feelings for Cersei were real, the lust, betrayal, anger, obsession...it made for an immersive experience because I couldn't project or predict. I treasure that. I admire that aspect of Martin's writing so much.

Let's think of it this way, what is the point of a POV story unless we accept that every character has a personal history and limited perspective which will impact the choices they make? It made total sense to me that people in Westeros would reject Dany, she's invading! So, Jaime deciding to try to take her out makes sense not only because he must keep up his tradition of Targ killing, but also, who would welcome someone who shows up with monsters who can just...burn an army alive? Destroy a city in a few minutes? Why would you think that person has good intentions? Why would anyone think, "I don't know, maybe they'll be nice." Add on the fact that her dad was intending to burn women and children, it isn't plausible that Jaime would think well of Dany, not when he just witnessed her burning countless men alive. Attempting to kill her makes an awful lot of sense for him.

And, I should add, I don't take issue with Dany wanting to have him executed either! The fascinating part of having a huge cast, having people with histories that have them on opposing sides is to allow them to interact in that context, not to dismiss it as soon as it will make things interesting. I can't defend how D&D wrote any of this, we've all criticized it endlessly, but tbh, a good portion of the fandom had worse ideas. Worse interpretations of the characters, far more cliché ideas of everyone getting along, far, far more insulting dream endings.

But, I suppose that was largely a result of how D&D were playing games. They didn't understand that emotionally manipulating your audience into siding with (or against) characters by undercutting or rewriting characters at whim would result in absolute confusion about the moral framework of the story.  You can't have a satisfying ending if that ending supports ideals you've deleted from the story and condemns the ones you've been celebrating all along.

[rottenbrainstuff]

BG3 playthrough: still stuck in the Tiefling camp, and an amazing roleplay experience

(Spoilers)

First some quick notes, but then I want to talk about how this game is really making me get into *actual* roleplaying in a way I’ve never had a game do to me before. (I’m not sure why my phone keeps capitalizing Tiefling and I’m too lazy to correct it)

First of all: I am never going to leave this Tiefling camp, there’s too much to do and too many people to talk to. The Absolute is going to overrun Faerûn and I am going to still be sitting here having gruel with Otka and playing my violin for the kids.

What am I going to do if I run across another area that makes me this emotionally invested?? It is going to take me years to finish this game at this rate!!! (Well, this week I’ve had a bit less time to play though, which has also really slowed the progress down)

Hey a quick note: there was a little glitch for me with the Auntie Ethel conversation. I introduced myself to her as my tav, and got Astarion’s approval when I told her about our tadpoles, because he thinks it’s delightful how demented she seems. Then I talked to her again using a different character, got the same conversation, and got a SECOND Astarion approval. (Didn’t work again with subsequent tries) Someone told me you can do something similar when you pet scratch. Nice little bonus.

Ok anyways the main thing I wanted to talk about was the crazy fact that I am actually roleplaying in this game, getting emotionally involved, and legitimately able to make what feels like natural and realistic decisions based on what my character would actually do, rather than… you know… interacting with the game feeling very much like a player. Oh ok, here’s the conversation, here’s the normal dialogue option, here’s the smart dialogue option if my talk stats are good, and here’s the evil option, which is always bad to choose because it messes up your game. And I know, because I am a player playing a game, I should pick the normal option. This is how games always go.

Me and my friend were talking about our extremely different reactions we had to the Druids in the Emerald grove, and why.

So the Druids have been letting the Tiefling refugees stay there, but the welcome is wearing thin. Supplies are running low and goblins keep trying to attack. Now with the old leader of the Druids missing, the next highest in command wants to finally kick these Tieflings out. The current leader is creepy and militant, but mostly the other Druids range from “following orders” to “ok-ish”.

You have been told Nettie the healer might be able to help remove your tadpoles. She’s being a little evasive at first, but it’s because mindflayer infection is serious business and she wants to protect her people. After she realizes you are not going to be a threat, she confesses that unfortunately she actually doesn’t have a way to heal you. Their absent leader might though. She gives you a vial of poison and says she needs you to swear to take the poison if you start to change into a mindflayer, because if you transform in the middle of this grove you are going to kill everyone. You must swear: if you don’t directly swear it to her, she will become hostile and start a fight.

My friend who is playing is terrified of transforming into a mindflayer, and he likes Nettie, so he took the poison and promised sincerely.

In a normal game this would be the “good” route and the one I would normally take, because I am a computer game player playing a computer game and the goal of the computer game is to make the good numbers go up. Right?

My experience of the grove though has been very different from my friend’s. I am playing as a dark urge seldarine drow who is trying to be a nice guy. The Druids have been rude and racist to my character, which I’m sure he’s used to, but the contrast between that and how the Tieflings are friendly and welcoming to me is very noticeable. I had a conversation with the pickpocket kids about how people say lies and racist stuff about Tieflings too, just like they do with the drow. My character has been spending so much time getting to know the Tieflings in the grove, mediating arguments, playing with all the naughty Tiefling children, doing sleight of hand tricks for them, watching them pet Wyll’s cat familiar. (I need to be really clear, I’m not simply imaging that these activities are happening, this is flavour that is actually programmed into the game, ie the kids do literally follow around my cat and make comments about it)

So I get farther into the grove and find some frantic Tiefling parents being held back by Druid guards. Their daughter has been taken away because she stole something, (which she only stole because she thought it would prevent the Tieflings from getting kicked out of the grove, and anyway, it’s since been returned.) and they won’t let them see her. The Druid guards are, as always, being rude and racist to me, and my tav is getting angry at the way the Druids are treating his new friends.

So he goes to talk to the Druid leader, and is absolutely shocked to find she is threatening a Tiefling child with a venomous snake. Yes the kid stole something but I have to say again: she stole it because they are going to die on the road if they get kicked out, and the damned item was returned anyways. The leader is a real nasty piece of work, and when she saw me she even said that she feels this must be a good omen, having a blessed child of lolth visit their grove!!! First of all, yikes lady, but also: Lolth-sworn drow are different from seldarine, my kind rebels against the more brutal and merciless lolth-sworn, this was NOT a good comment to make to my character. By this point in time, my tav is absolutely fucking done with these fucking Druids. Yes, objectively speaking, most of the Druids are not terrible and I can see their point, but I felt like my tav in this specific situation would be feeling quite angry and hostile at this point.

So then we get to Nettie. The very first words out of her mouth to me are that the last time she saw a drow, it tried to cut open her belly, and did I have any plans of doing the same? She brings us into the back and there is a goddamned dead drow laid out on her table. I guess it attacked them and they’re studying it because it also had a tadpole infection but goddamn.

She is being evasive and asking a ton of questions. She confesses that if she decided she didn’t like us, she was going to poison us with this little thorn branch she was holding. Then she holds out the poison and demands that I swear to take it.

As a player, I know the best option is to swear, just to get her to shut up. It makes the good numbers go up, and that’s what it’s all about, right?

But my tav in that moment - I felt like he would have absolutely lost his goddamned temper. I’m doing a dark urge run and he’s trying his hardest to not hurt people horribly, but this has pushed him over the edge of his patience. The Druids have been shit to him, shit to the people he’s come to like so much, they’re dissecting another goddamned drow over in the corner, and this woman is sticking poison in his face and telling him to swear to her that he’ll kill himself. He told her fine he’ll take it, but she says that’s not enough, you need to SWEAR to me. You know what? No, he’s not! He refused, she started a fight and attacked us first, and I switched to non-lethal damage and I knocked her out.

This wasn’t just me making a fun decision on my own, like, oh: I have decided on my own, because there’s no game dialogue for this, that my stardew valley farmer is lonesome and feels like an outsider which is why she gets along with Elliott. This is like. Actual things happening within the game that are provoking a legitimate emotional response from me, and I am able to respond to it in a realistic way. When Kagha called me a blessed child of lolth, I had dialogue options to be offended by it.

I am, once again, just absolutely blown away. My friend and me were talking about how we’re both playing “good” characters but how our game experiences still have been so different that we had completely different reactions.

I think that’s absolutely amazing. I can’t remember any game I have ever played ever where I was able to actually get into the roleplaying aspect as much as this, and feel like I was making choices totally based on what my character would do, because this situation was utterly unique to the experience of my friend who is playing the exact same game.

I’ve only really scratched the surface of act 1 here. What the heck else is going to happen by the end?

[auxiliarydetective]

For Part 6, whole set for K'Rala's polycule. And yes, I know what I'm signing up for.

Perfect... Let the games begin!

⚠️LONG POST⚠️ as in extremely long. Nine questions with one answer each for all of K'Rala's five partners. I'm serious, if you’re on desktop, please open it in a new tab and don't unroll it on your dash if you're not committed to reading through it because you'll be scrolling for a while.

1. Who is more protective? Who needs to be protected?

Data and K'Rala aren't very protective of each other when it comes to physical danger. They logically know the other can handle themselves and only step in when necessary. But say anything attacking Data's humanity/dignity and you will be verbally bitch-slapped by K'Rala.

With Will and K'Rala, it's once again pretty even, on a basis of trust. But if one of them gets protective, you’re either faced with a giant or an angry Vulcan - pick your poison. A special situation is a phaser fight though - you'll see later why. If phasers are out, Will immediately becomes 100× more protective.

Now, K'Rala is more physically protective than Deanna while Deanna is more emotionally protective. K'Rala knows Deanna is weaker than her and a lot less of a fighter, which is why they feel the need to protect her. Deanna, in turn, knows that K'Rala overestimates their mental and emotional capacities a lot or just straight up ignores them which can lead to Deanna sometimes hovering over them like a helicopter partner, begging them to just please take a freaking break.

Tasha is definitely the more protective one. It's not that she doesn't trust K'Rala to defend themselves, she does, but it's just in her nature to be protective. In turn, K'Rala lets themselves be protected because she knows it makes Tasha more comfortable to know that her partner is safe.

Continuing the trend of the chief of security, Worf is more protective than K'Rala. A part of him feels like he inherited that duty from Tasha, but it also came very naturally. It's very "small. must be protected." but also "I've only had emotional K'Rala for a day but if anything happened to them, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself." He’s so proud of them for what they've gone through and just wants to support them wherever he can, even though he doesn't show it that openly and affectionately. K'Rala knows though.

2. Who is the one who gets hurt and who takes care of the other when they're injured?

Data is built to withstand great stress, so, obviously, he doesn't get hurt (or damaged, I suppose) too often. K'Rala, on the other hand... Yeah. Data is very gentle with them when they're hurt. He'll systematically assess the injury and the state K'Rala is in before determining the optimal treatment options. You best believe he will carry his partner, whether the injury is particularly bad or not.

Did you know Andorians are very vulnerable to phaser fire? As in deadly vulnerable? Oh yeah. Now, K'Rala may only be ¼ Andorian/Aenar, but if you hit them in the right spot, they will fold like a sheet of paper. If that happens, Will is immediately at their side if in any way possible to take care of them. He's extremely tempted to break off the away mission immediately, but K'Rala will remind him of his duties and he'll begrudgingly settle for leaving their side once he knows they're safe, stable and will be treated. Once he's back from the mission though, he heads straight to sick bay.

Deanna, poor Deanna. Either she's hovering around K'Rala because of a physical injury or K'Rala is glued to her side because Deanna got mentally assaulted again. If it's Deanna taking care of K'Rala, she's very gentle, saying calming words to her and sending all the good vibes she can. If K'Rala is helping Deanna, it really depends on the type of mental assault, but lots of times, they'll be fighting a telepathic wrestling match with the intruder.

In Tasha's case, we're dealing with pre-emotions K'Rala who still has a bit more impulse control. This leads to them getting hurt less, so the hurt person here is Tasha. In her line of work, she obviously collects a few injuries over time. Again, this is pre-emotions K'Rala, so they're not exactly affectionate in their words yet, but they absolutely will shower their lover with acts of service. If nobody's looking, they'll even hold her hand.

Let's be honest, Worf gets tossed around so much in TNG, he even beats K'Rala's record. K'Rala's number one priority if that happens is to get him out of the danger zone - they’re half Vulcan, they absolutely can carry him, but it looks a bit funny. After that, they’re talking to him to either stop him from trying to push through his injury or assure him that he isn't a failure, one of the two. Once it's assured that he'll get treatment, they stop by sick bay every once in a while to check on him, but not too much so he doesn't feel babied.

3. Who wears the other's clothes? What does the other think about that?

I have here a visual demonstration of the heights in this polycule and you might notice something

Clothes sharing usually only goes in one direction here. (By the way, I didn’t pick those models, they change according to the height you enter)

Data doesn't really own any clothes aside from his uniform. Sometimes, when K'Rala gets cold (which they do a lot, after all, their home planet is pretty warm), he'll put his own uniform jacket over theirs to keep them warm. He has worn one of K'Rala's wider robes once and he would absolutely do it again. K'Rala thinks he looks very handsome in them.

Will is definitely the kind of guy to have shirts with fun patterns. You can pry that headcanon from my cold dead hands. Let me tell you, K'Rala adores them and will take every opportunity to ask him for one - and who is he to turn them down? After all, they look absolutely adorable in them and they give them gender euphoria, which is always nice.

K'Rala has a set of Vulcan robes that Deanna absolutely loves. She will wear them around her quarters or K'Rala's and just lounge in them. Plus, she swears they somehow strengthen her connection with K'Rala and they make her feel safe and protected. After her whole falling-apart with her mother, K'Rala is very meh on Vulcan culture, but seeing Deanna so happy about those robes heals the wounds a little. In turn, K'Rala sometimes borrows some more loose-fitting things from Deanna, usually things with traditional Betazoid patterns, because that's a part of their heritage they barely get to indulge in. Deanna adores them for it and showers them with fashion tips. The two of them also definitely own a matching set of at least one piece of clothes.

Oh boy, Tasha and K'Rala - they basically have a shared closet. Whenever they're not in uniform, they constantly wear each other’s clothes. If there’s an event coming up that allows civilian clothes, they plan their outfits together for peak gender slay. Also, remember Tasha's outfit from The Naked Now? Yeah, that's actually K'Rala's. They bought it from a Betazoid vendor despite quite possibly never wearing it and it ended up in Tasha's hands for that specific occasion.

Now, Worf is not the type to share clothes. At least not in most conditions. But on the rare condition that he does shove a piece from his closet into K'Rala's hands, he comes up with some sort of excuse. He never regrets it because K'Rala looks very adorable in oversized clothes.

4. Who is constantly teasing the other? How does that person react?

Data doesn't tease and he doesn't react to teasing, only sometimes getting confused. As such, K'Rala only very rarely teases him, but they sometimes make little quips about his behaviour. It's almost always platonic and without any mature thoughts behind it - aside from when K'Rala murmurs about Data being fully functional. Nobody knows how they found out about that one sentence but they'll never let it go.

Will doesn't really tease a lot, he just flirts. If he ever teases, it's in a platonic sense. That doesn't mean he isn't capable of doing it in the bedroom though. K'Rala does tease a bit more often, usually telepathically or through a brush of their hand. Whenever Will catches them doing it and throws them a look, they put on their pokerface - which is a very-well practiced Vulcan pokerface, so no person that isn't in on their telepathic bond has any clue as to what's going on.

Once again, there's little teasing involved with Deanna and K'Rala, so K'Rala ends up being the bigger tease. Telepathically, of course. These two regularly have whole-ass conversations across their link without anyone ever knowing and nobody will ever know the content of their conversations.

Tasha loves to tease and pre-emotions K'Rala doesn't tease at all. Them suppressing their emotions is exactly why Tasha teases them because she loves to see them crack. Might turn into an arm-wrestling match or something else once they get some alone time.

Worf doesn't tease and K'Rala does, so... It's a pretty dangerous game to tease a Klingon and they're one of the few people who can do it without suffering a terrible fate. It might happen that Worf challenges them to a B'aht Qul (essentially Klingon arm wrestling) which gets pretty intense because they're both very strong. Usually nothing more though because their relationship only very rarely swings that way, if ever at all.

5. Who's more physically affectionate?

Data or K'Rala - tough question! Data generally isn't very versed in affection-giving, so I suppose K'Rala, even though they're also not very physically affectionate with him. But if we're going by who has their hands on the other more, it's K'Rala.

Will, probably. I mean, he's obviously very verbally affectionate and less physically, but he's still Will Riker. Then again, K'Rala does get very handsy in private but only in private because he's still their superior officer.

Deanna and K'Rala- I'd say they're equal. If they touch, it's for telepathy purposes lots of times, whether that's the truth or an excuse. Lots of hand holding, hands on each other’s cheeks, forehead touches...

Worf is not physically affectionate generally and K'Rala is not physically affectionate with him specifically. The only time they touch is when they're sparring which might as well be flirting to them. Their relationship is very ??? as a whole, so nobody has a clue what status they're at, including them.

6. Who's the better cook?

Data! Pure android perfection, nobody beats him.

According to canon, Will's cooking is apparently terrible (except to Worf), so K'Rala is automatically the better cook.

I'd say Deanna and K'Rala are equally good at cooking and like to exchange recipes from their various cultures.

I feel like Tasha is pretty meh at cooking or sees it more as a chore, so if any cooking needs to be done, K'Rala does it and they do it well.

Believe me or not, I think Worf could actually be a good cook. There's only one issue: His palate and that of K'Rala don't match. So, either of them probably considers themselves the better cook.

7. Who's the bigger flirt? How do they handle being flirted at? Do they blush easily or get nervous?

Since Data doesn't (intentionally) flirt, K'Rala wins. They don't really flirt with Data often though because that's not the way their relationship functions. If Data ever does flirt at K'Rala, they're in absolute awe. They're caught so off guard that they have to reboot their brain for a second.

I mean... Will Riker? THE Will Riker? The only one who has any chance at beating his flirting game is Lwaxana Troi. When he first starts doing it, K'Rala has no idea how to handle it. Brain.exe has stopped working. They eventually learn to deal with it and even flirt back, but it takes time. No matter how much time has passed though, they always blush. Not as hard anymore, but it's still there. It's one of Will's reasons for flirting with them (if he even needs any at all, let's be honest), he loves the way their cheeks just turn turquoise and how it contrasts with their skin, eyes and hair (their blood is turquoise by the way - Andorian blue and Vulcan green make turquoise).

Most of the flirting between Deanna and K'Rala happens telepathically and Deanna is the more active party. But she isn't as straightforward about it in public as Riker is, so K'Rala usually can avoid blushing through some good old Vulcan control.

Pre-emotions K'Rala doesn't flirt much if at all, but Tasha definitely does. She loves seeing some emotions glow beneath that logical exterior.

Worf doesn't flirt traditionally but he has read poetry to K'Rala at times to "proof-read" and ask their opinion. K'Rala sometimes flirts with him, but it's rare. But there's sparring, arm-wrestling... you know.

8. Who's the better driver?

When it comes to cars, definitely Data because K'Rala has no idea how to drive a car. With spacecrafts, it actually depends! K'Rala is a damn good pilot and so is Data. If you value precision, want to transport something or pilot a larger vessel, Data is your man. If we're talking about being chased, an antique fighter barely being held together, or similar things best described as "antics", K'Rala reigns supreme.

K'Rala is a better pilot than Will, Deanna, Tasha and Worf. There's not much else to say about it. No matter the situation, they will bring you home. None of them know how to drive a car, so no competition there either.

9. Who removes the spiders/bugs?

Data gently relocates them. K'Rala isn't really scared of either but if they're in places where they shouldn't be, they have to be relocated. The only reason they have Data do it is to go "Look! Cool bug!" and listen to Data give his Wikipedia rant about them.

Will might be inclined to kill a bug if he sees one, so K'Rala relocates them to save their lives.

Deanna actually is scared of spiders and bugs, so K'Rala comes in and removes them.

Tasha is also someone to kill bugs, same situation as with Riker. So, K'Rala removes them.

The bug is dead before K'Rala even knows it existed. Worf will exterminate them.

[znenix]

This doesn’t make much sense but it makes a lot of sense to me so umm)

Ok so obviously I MUST combined my interests, so here is my ideas and art of the fnaf animatronics and their respective character of which possessed them matched with the shadow knights in mcd. So I think the general principle is the similar, the children in fnaf are killed and ‘reborn’ to possess the animatronics where they attempted to kill the night guard. (The reasons for this are because they think he’s William afton in the first games, it gets more complicated in the further games like baby trying to escape), as in mcd the sks are killed and then are reborn more literally to serve a purpose to the shadow lord and his power. Both William and the shadow lord do this for power;the shadow lord to expand his army and such and William also for power/ramnant/immortality (for the most part). They both do it sorta to make their creations of the sks and the animatronics.

Anyways that probably didn’t make sense so now I am going to make even less sense.

I matched each of the sks to the fnaf animatronics and who possessed them based on story but also like vibes lmao

GENE-bonnie

so this is less about Jeremy and more bonnie the character animatronic himself. Springbonnie was an early iteration of bonnie, who was then used in fnaf 3 as springtrap from William afton. I think of this is that bonnie as a character as been used by William to kill Micheal, is like gene being a helper to the shadow lord for his overall aim. (This probably sounds like a massive reach but it makes sense to me)

FRED BEAR- Laurence

Ok I half chose this because I think it’s a little funny lol but also because again as a character of Freddy fazbear (not Gabriel) , he has evolved to become glam rock Freddy who helps Gregory compared to the others animatronics do not obviously, the other animatronics are not presumably not possessed or anything so they are programmed to attack Gregory, this is to me similar to how the zombie sks are like.

He goes against Vanessa and what not like Laurence rebelling against the shadow lord. To get into it further, to go with the theory that glam rock Fred is possessed by crying child , it’s similar to me how Laurence doesn’t want people to suffer the way he did, he says himself that he ‘doesn’t like seeing people being forced to do things’, he wants to protect like CC does for Gregory if we’re going based on that theory.

CIRCUS BABY (Elizabeth Afton)- sasha

I can get more into circus baby’s personality since she speaks a lot lol. She is cold and unnerving similar to Sasha but Elizabethan and Sasha pre skification were both presumably kind and caring. Both circus baby and Sasha are slightly grey, circus baby helps Mike through the whole thing until she attacks him at the end, Sasha is similar in her actions, she is somewhat against aphmau as she ‘is close but not too close’ with gene (obviously changed by him alternating her memories) but is also ok with her (and Laurence) she doesn’t really try and do anything against her later on tbh. This isn’t the strongest comparison since the two scenarios are much different but they give me the same vibe lol

FOXY- Zenix

Literally I have no explanation for this other than it just fits to me, if you go with the foxy as the bite of 87’ culprit, it could link to how infamous the zenix absorbing sks is like the bite of 87 is. Foxy is somewhat different to the other animatronic as he isn’t backed off by the mask, it makes him seem a little more powerful and versatile, like how zenix is very powerful in the nether and has alternate means of getting what he wants, he isn’t swayed by the shadow lord you know.

(Will try to post Sasha and laur art soon)

PUPPET (Charlotte)- vylad

This one makes the most sense to me so buckle in >:)

Ok for Charlotte doesn’t Henry speech to her sound like something garroth would say about vylad ? Or at least I section of it. All of the animatronics here have passed children possessed in them, but I think Charlotte died relates most of vylad she is ‘shut out and left to die’, the details around vylad’s death is vague but it’s implied that it’s similar to that, he was betrayed and died and then left to be tortured in the nether. (Also Charlie’s death is in the cake mini game lol)

The puppet although seen to be sadistic, Charlie is described as having a nature to ‘protect the innocent’ (shown in the way she as puppet set the souls free) vylad is shown to do this with levin and overall has a thoughtful and caring ideas (burning the books to protect the villages, helping Laurence etc). Although, he is not completely innocent, it is similar to me that vylad is good in his true self like Charlie is, although does bad things from becoming a sk like Charlie becoming the puppet. Like foxy, the puppet is not changed by the Freddy mask, she has retained her own thoughts and is seemingly more sentient like how vylad is unchanged by the shadow lord. If we’re going with the charlotte is the Freddy plush in fnaf 4 and that she is trying to help CC after her experiences with the animatronics and what not its similar to how vylad helps Laurence after his experiences as a sk (hahaha linking together Freddy as laur).

[tokyogirl07]

So, Hades and Persephone: Dread King and Queen of the Underworld, Eventual Rulers of All, and Ancient Greece’s Ultimate Divine Power Couple. So why don’t they have children? Well, depending on the myth, they do, but they keep being retconned into being Zeus’s kids. One such kid is Zagreus, and yes, players of the game Hades, he’s a real God.

University of Georgia’s late former Classics Professor Timothy Gantz speculated in his book that Zagreus was originally the Underworld’s heir before being combined with an early version of the wine god Dionysus, son of Zeus and the mortal Semele, which changed the mom to Persephone (*Puke*). For more information: see OSP‘s video on Dionysus.

I have a headcanon to explain how Dionysus can have both sets of parents and explain Hera's attitude towards him and later (possibly grudging) acceptance. This combines a bunch of Dionysus myths together, so bare with me.

First off, he began as Zagreus: the son of Hades and Persephone and heir to the Underworld. Zeus decided to make Zagreus his chosen heir to the throne of Olympius. This, from a logic standpoint, actually makes sense. While Zeus is the ruler of Olympius and thus Top God, Hades is the first born son of their parents and the former rulers of the world, the Titans Kronos and Rhea. By birthright, the domain that the three brothers (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) share would belong to Hades if they hadn’t agreed to split it between them. Not to mention that, as King of the Underworld, everything living eventually falls under his domain anyway as everything must die. As such, the throne, by birthright, belongs to Hades’s son, not Zeus’s.

This pisses off Hera and there are two reasons for this:

1 - Let’s assume there are rumours that Zagreus is actually Zeus’s son with Persephone, thus why he’s claiming him as his heir, and that Hera believes them. Her usual MO is to kill the bastard baby and its mom because she can’t do anything to Zeus since, well, he’s the king. This time, however, she’s in a slight pickle. She can’t kill Persephone. Not only would she have to deal with Hades, effectively declaring war on the Underworld, she’d also have to deal with big sister Demeter who would blight the land forever and cut off their source of sacrifices should Persephone die. She did it when her daughter was just kidnapped, don’t tell me she wouldn’t do it if she died. She can, however, attack the baby. Not openly, obviously, but she can get some titans to do it for her. And she does.

2 - Let’s assume everyone knows Hades and Persephone are the kid’s parents. This also pisses her off. You see, Hera gave Zeus two sons: Ares and Hephaestus. Ares, the elder of the two, is the least liked of the family, often humiliated in myths with his only supporters seeming to be his mother and his lover Aphrodite, wife of his brother, Hephaestus. Zeus’s favourite children, by contrast, are his “eldest”, Athena, and his youngest, Hermes, the former of whom is his daughter from his first wife, the Nymph Metis, and thus “technically” his eldest, as well as a war god like Ares, but is more about strategy rather than brutality. As his first wife’s only child, Athena, unlike most of the others, is a legitimate child of Zeus. Hephaestus is just ugly and Hera threw him off Olympus herself (Also he imprisoned her this one time), so this is mostly about Ares. So, having his only legitimate sons passed over as heirs makes their mother very angry. Cue titans tearing the kid apart.

After the titans finish, the kid’s heart is left intact. To save him, Zeus put it into his current mortal lover, Semele, to grow a baby around. Hera finds out she’s pregnant, tricks her into getting herself killed via divine burning (think opening the Ark of the Covenant), and Zeus sews what was formed of the kid in his “leg” to finish growing. Once he does, the kid is sent back to be raised by his original parents, now with the witness protection name Dionysus.

From there, Dionysus grows up, has adventures, discovers wine, Hera makes him go insane for a while before Rhea fixes him, and eventually, to get Hera to stop being a prick, Hestia gives up her seat as one of the twelve Olypmians to Dionysus, making him a full God of the pantheon and beyond Hera’s wrath. This works because no one goes against big sister Hestia. No one. (This part isn’t confirmed in myths and appears to be continuity flubs, but it works for this headcanon.)

And that’s my theory on how Zagreus became Dionysus in myth. Goodnight everybody!

[monoke-shades-diary]

This account will mainly be treated as a diary for my M.C from a game called twisted wonderland. her name is Monoke Shade and she is 22.

in her world she is the crown princess for the kingdom of Cirain.She is the oldest of 4 siblings and has 1 younger brother (Tavak age 18) 1 younger half brother (Keito age 16) and one younger half sister (Veta age 7)

her father died in a war. And her stepfather ‘’died’’ afterwards her mother was so stricken by grief that she desoveld herself in her work and left Monoke to raise her siblings by herself. Including her baby sister who wasn’t even hatched yet. And the rest of her interactions with her mother weren’t pleasant either with her mother constantly belittling her and saying that she ‘’would never be a good Queen’’ and ‘’that she should just focus on being queen since that’s all she’ll ever be’’.That coupled with the fact that Monoke thought that if she becomes queen she’ll also have to cast her family aside like her mother made her never want to become queen however due to the rules of the crown since she’s the royal heir because of her mother’s blood she has to.

the first member of the royal Shade family was an orphaned human who was raised by the mythical creatures of a forest because of this when humans came to burn the magical creatures he sacrificed himself to protect them. In doing so he died however came back to life through the tears of the magical creatures from weeping over him. Thus turn him into the most powerful creatures that had wept for him. The 2 dragons. he granted them immortality and the forest was now their safe haven while he went to make a kingdom beside it where all magical creatures could live.

Because of this his descendents are shapeshifters who can shapeshift into any of the creatures that cried for him basically lion,wolf,bunny,mouse,star deer,dragon,sea beast, and a 9 tailed fox. They also have the guidance of the immortal creatures to help them.

Monoke’s and Tavak’s mother is a dragon and their father is a human. Which is why Monoke is a human and Tavak is a dragon.

Keito’s and Veta’s dad is a wizard however they are both dragon’s like their mother.

the crown has a spell where when a member of the royal family dies they can use whatever magic was left in their body to make a form for them to host in basically becoming ghosts and normally the blood born kings and queens stick to just helping out the heirs.

the heirs of the throne must pick a permanent form to be in this will also make their heirs more stronger in the form that the previous heir takes.

the crown also comes with a curse. If it’s off the heir’s head for more than a week the kingdom of Cirain’s land will slowly die.

The kingdom of Cirain is also considered to be the evilest of all the 4 great kingdoms so because of this around the age of 5 a member of the royal shade family will get a bounty on their head and constantly try to be assassinated. Which is also why each member is heavily trained from a young age to avoid any casualties.

Monoke’s almost been killed 5 times

the second hand children are also given powers called affinity’s basically that child will excel in a certain category for instance.

Tavak’s affinity is swordsmanship and his signature spell being ‘’Army of eternity’’ where he can summon suits of armory to fight.

Keito’s affinity is singing and his signature spell being ‘’Song of the dragon king’’ which sends sound waves that knocks everything not nailed down into a wall.

Veta’s affinity is beast keeping meaning any animal no matter what they were doing previously will turn very docile when they see her and her signature spell is ‘’ Creatures of the kings forest attack’’ and it essentially alerts every creature to help and protect her from whatever’s attacking her.

also the way they cast spells is through singing

[kurt-wagner-official]

Post #119: Marvel Comics Presents issues 10-17 (Colossus and Longshot stories)

Normally, I don't read these anthology book because frankly it's just too much for me to handle, even the Christ Claremont ones, but I'm so starved for Ann Nocenti X-stuff that I'll make an exception for these two stories in Marvel Comics Presents. The first is called Colossus: God's Country, which was serialized over eight issues, and the second is a one-off Longshot story. These story is not on Marvel Unlimited, so I will be reading them on the high seas, don't tell anyone. I'm also just gonna read God's Country as one issue cause I'm lazy and it's short. Into the story! Peter is on vacation to America's heartland to find himself during the horrors of the Outback, and starts his quest to find America at a carnival. He makes some passive aggressive comments about a big news stand covered in porn, saying it's an abuse of free speech, and the guy starts shit talking the Soviets. This makes Peter angry, saying no one gets to judge his people, and he transforms and runs off. We cut to a family on a picnic; the son, Zackery, is playing soldier, fantasizing about killing crack dealers and squashing bugs that he pretends are enemy soldiers. His father is the adult, no longer harmless version of that, spouting Cold War propaganda for the whole family. His mother would rather avoid talking about all this unpleasant stuff. His maternal grandfather is a bit of a middle ground, trying to teach Zackery a more thoughtful approach to life and getting frustrated with his son in law. Peter, wandering around a field, thinks about how similar America and Russia are. The Soviets have very limited free speech and information, but the Americans have the news twisted and weaponized against them, so both countries are clueless and misinformed. Speaking of misinformation, Zack's grandfather is desperately trying to convince his son in law that global warming is real and Ronald Reagan is not helpful to this country, so Zack gets bored and wanders off. To him, the whole world is a game; he's a cool airforce pilot, flying around battling the ozone monsters. Until he runs into a group of men about to murder someone, who decide to kill him as a potential witness. While his family debates large scale politics, they're oblivious to what's happening nearby in these woods, as these men, who have superpowers, call their boss, an old man dressed in white named Alexander, who tells them to finish the job and kill the boy kindly. Peter runs into the family when they all hear Zack scream and rush over. Peter beats them up and gets the family out of there. The dad, Bruce, insists they go to the cops, but they seem to be in on it because they attack them and they must flee once again. They get back to their house, where Bruce starts babbling like a nut about defending his property, his wife, Roxanne, just wants to make everyone lunch, and the grandpa sits around offering advice. Peter begs them all to get away from here so he can handle the threat, but none of them will listen to a Russian. Bruce tells Peter that this country is great one because they have freedom, and Peter points out that he, a Vietnam Vet, lives with his family in a rundown farmhouse with no healthcare, whereas Peter's family at least had shelter and medicine. The people hunting them attack then, trapping grandpa in his car outside. Peter fights them off with the help of one of the team, who introduces herself as Number Six. She says they were a black ops CIA squad called the Cold Warriors hunting domestic terrorists that got so black ops they broke off from the government. She's fed up being part of this and wants to get the story out to the press, which is Alexander's greatest fear. Number Six says she'll stay here and keep the stalemate up between the Cold Warriors and the house if Peter will go take down Alexander.

Before he leaves, Bruce thanks him for protecting his family, and apologizes for how he's treated him. Peter goes off to Cold Warrior HQ and starts beating them up. He takes them down no trouble, and some of them start begging for him to kill them. Back at the house, one of the Warriors attacks and almost kills the Roxanne. Bruce starts getting paranoid again, gagging his wife when she starts having a mental breakdown and tying up Number Six, who he believes has betrayed them. The family's neighbors, who have been standing near the edge of the property being nosy, hear Roxanne scream and get cut off, but decide it's none of their business to report it. They'll stick around to hear the gossip though. Peter makes his way to Alexander, who gives him a monologue about how people don't want or deserve the truth. After he washes his hands, he agrees to go with Peter to be arrested. At the house, Bruce finally lets Number Six go when the Cold Warriors start attacking again. During the battle, the grandpa decides it's time to die, so he lays down and gives up. Peter stops the battle when he shows up with Alexander and makes him and his men turn themselves into the police, who have just arrived. Roxanne, who's spent the whole story denying everything that's happening, is the one to share the story with the press, and Bruce, who up till now has been single-mindedly defending his belief in America, lets his wife take the wheel and spill the beans. Number Six is finally free of Alexander and goes off to find her own way. Before he's taken away, Alexander tells Peter that none of this will see print and he'll be free soon. And that's how the story ends. I'll be honest, a lot of this flew over my head. Ann Nocenti has a masters degree in international relations and worked in journalism during the Cold War, and that shows in this story. I also just feel like her work is so hard to describe. The cadence of the dialogue, the word choices, the use of voiceover over art, it's so incredibly good. I will say, it was a bold choice to have a Soviet man on the X-Men and it's even bolder to have him defend the USSR in 1989. Although he doesn't do it as well as Nocenti does here, Claremont does seem very aware of that part of Peter. He doesn't mention Russia or communism by name much, but if you read into it that is very clearly the philosophy he's coming from. The X-Men are an inherently political concept, and although he's subtle about it, Peter's presence on the team and in their debates brings something pretty unique to the political table. He'll give up everything he has for the community of the X-Men, and he often treats them more like a collective and less like individuals, especially himself. I think this might be why he's struggled to be relevant in the franchise since his death and resurrection. In the eighties, he can be this foreign perspective on politics. In the nineties, around the fall of the USSR, he also loses faith in Xavier's dream and struggles to find a direction. It's mostly sub textual, but clearly part of that storyline is the loss of his homeland as he knew it. And then in the early 2000s, he finds a way to sacrifice himself for his entire people by curing the Legacy Virus. When he's brought back a few years later, Joss Whedon has no interest in the Soviet Union angle, and by the time another writer gets a hold of him, the USSR is no longer really relevant to the political discussions in the books. It's not like that's the only angle you can take with the character, because he's very interesting and has a lot of layers, but so much of the focus of the books in the years after Whedon was on the concepts and ethics of nations and global communities and politics, and the only thing he could add to those discussions is the USSR perspective, which at that point thanks to the way the timeline shifts towards the present fell when he was a little kid. So he's just a little more limited than some of his peers. Plus the whole thing with Whedon and Kitty, but I don't want to get into that. I think that's enough on this one.

Longshot: Dreamwalk is as far as I know the only time after the Longshot mini that Ann Nocenti has scripted the character. He's running around the outback racing a kangaroo when he almost trips over a man meditating. The man says he was dreamwalking, sleeping and astral projecting into his own mindscape. Longshot thinks it sounds neat, so that night he tries it. He falls asleep in the X-Men HQ and encounters a god of dreams, who looks like a hyena bird thing with nebulous, shifting form. They run around like children for a while, throwing things and wrecking the place, until the play fight gets a little too rough on the god's end and he knocks Longshot down the stairs. In real life, he's sleeping peacefully, but the whole place is really wrecked. And that's...the whole story. I have no idea what this means. I mean, it was cute. I love Longshot having silly weird adventures. If I have a takeaway from this, and from the Colossus story, it's to bring back Ann Nocenti. She did an X-Men Legends arc recently, but I want her on an ongoing book. I know people like Claremont and Peter David are tricky to bring back because their egos get in the way of working with the modern line, but Ann Nocenti in interviews has always struck me as very humble and clearly still very creative. She's written some cool creator owned stuff recently too! Put her on an Exiles or X-Statix book or something, give her Longshot, who nobody else wants to use, and let her go wild. I'd buy it. Not much else to say on that. Ann Nocenti is a genius.

[sacred-stanning]

Chapter 9 Part 8: Rescue Chains are like Daisy Chains but with Rescues

Now, people who are good at GBA Fire Emblem, especially people who do low turn count playthroughs, will not be impressed, but I use a (very small) rescue chain here to get Ephraim to the boss sooner.

In this case, there is no advantage per se. I just want to get this map done with.

Step 1: Kyle picks Ephraim up

Kyle waits here, next to Vanessa, who hasn't moved yet.

Vanessa takes Ephraim from Kyle...

...and cantos herself up here.

This lets Seth run up here and take Ephraim and immediately drop him so that he can act next turn.

His action will be to mess the boss up.

Like this!

Look at that beautiful 23 hit rate the boss has from the axe reaver Ephraim has equipped!

In other goings on, Tana finishes off the monk, and Colm opens the final chest.

It has a restore staff, which heals status debuffs. You know, like the sleep that the monks kept using on us throughout this map!

But don't worry, getting the staff this late in the map is not a waste. There will be plenty of opportunities to deal with status effects later in the game.

I have Artur take a pot shot at the boss, and I make sure to rescue Ephraim out of there.

Lute is close enough that she can take a shot at the boss too.

Then I think about who I want to give this experience to. I decide that Seth could use a level up, why not? So Seth finishes the boss off and picks up the killer axe.

After finishing the map, Seth tells Ephraim that the other soldiers have surrendered. Ephraim asks one soldier about the situation in Grado, and he finds out that Dussel, his former lance teacher, has in fact been expressing his opposition to the war. The soldier says that Dussel's position has become precarious as a result.

Ephraim is relieved in a way to hear that his former teacher hasn't changed from the principled person he was when Ephraim knew him.

But when Ephraim asks about the crown prince, Lyon, he gets a much more ominous answer. The soldier says that there are rumors coming from the castle that it was actually Lyon who really ordered the invasion of Renais, and the start of this war.

Ephraim is shocked to hear this and almost lashes out at the soldier. This is not the Lyon that he knew...

Ephraim shares what he's heard with Seth, and he shares his hope that Dussel can still be convinced to not fight. Seth is not optimistic, and warns Ephraim not to be so either.

Ephraim responds, "No matter who the opponent may be, I will take down whomever I need to take down."

Ephraim also tells Myrrh that she should really go back to Frelia because he can't guarantee that he'll be able to protect her from here on out as he moves into Grado.

Myrrh refuses and says that she can feel her dragon stone in Grado. She insists on coming with Ephraim, and he says, "When you look at me with those eyes, I can't help but think of Eirika".

...which is absolutely adorable. What a brother!

For the most part, Ephraim is definitely a bit of a meat-head jock. But he has genuine moments of showing understanding for other people, and of softness like this where you can see that he is more than just a dumb dude who likes to lance his way through life.

In fact, maybe the fact that he rarely reveals his perceptiveness is part of what makes him so smart? Is Ephraim the precursor to Timerra???

Meanwhile, in Grado, Dussel is sent out on an assignment, and then the emperor talks to Selena alone. She also has a task to complete.

She is to follow Dussel. And she is to attack and kill him.

The emperor says that Dussel (who remember, has been voicing his doubts about the war) has turned traitor and is ready to side with Renais.

Selena protests that there must be some mistake at first, but the emperor insists, and she gives in, saying, "No, there can't be any mistake in your majesty's words".

Selena and Dussel are both loyal, true knights. But Dussel seems more willing to question what is happening, whereas Selena can't bring herself to admit that the emperor could possibly be wrong, or that following his every wish could be less than ideal.

Dussel's reasons for being a loyal general are never really explored to my knowledge, but Selena's town was poor when she was young, and during a famine, the emperor personally sent supplies to them which allowed them to survive. Selena has a very personal reason for her allegiance to the emperor, so in a way it's not surprising how much less willing she is to question what is happening around her. She feels that she, and everyone in the village she grew up in, owes their life to the emperor.

Poor Selena...

[npcsandempathy]

The Last of Us Part 2

The Last of Us Part 2 is the game that initially brought me to explore the use of empathy in video games. It is easy for single-player games to treat NPCs as just that, NPCs, however, The Last of Us Part 2 deviates from this easy admonishment by giving heartbreaking voice lines to the people we must harm and make it a crucial part of the game to read messages left behind by those we don’t even meet and who presumably, didn’t make it very far, we see multiple notes left between loved ones throughout the game and many even connect later down the line, creating a subversive storyline for characters that don’t even exist, heartbreaking stories of horror and loss. We also see this in the context of the zombies we have just killed, we are told early on in the game about two teenagers who ran away from Jackson in order to do some good in the world, later on during a flashback, we play Ellie as Joel kills a crawling infected that attacks her after they find a body in an old school room, Ellie points out these may have been the teenagers mentioned earlier. They never got far. Presumably, Ellie is correct as she later finds a letter detailing how they didn’t even make it an hour, this harsh moment of realisation is recreated many times during the games, placing you as an onlooker to the lives of those already lost. A harsh reminder for the player and the characters of the lost humanity of those we are forced to kill, cementing the infected as more than just bloodthirsty killers but as something once human, people who were just like you and me, people who lost and loved and people who just got unlucky during the end of civilisation.

We also see this with not only the infected and civilians but with the other factions throughout the game, for instance, the fireflies, WLF and seraphites, there is a specific point, a conversation heard between two people who must be killed for the game's progression one of them talking about plans with his ‘guy’ presumably, his partner, to learn salsa dancing ‘once this is over’ which even in the medium of a video game, those few words of human desire make it difficult to press that trigger. This is just one way The Last of Us series creates empathy and compassion even in extreme circumstances.

The Last of Us’ portrayal of the infected subverts the horror idea of the ‘other’. With the infected acting as a uniform ‘other,’ it would be easy to portray them as void of humanity, relinquishing everything that once made them an emotionally intelligent person, however, there are recorded cases from the beginning of runners, the first stage of the cordyceps infection, crying out about being forced into horrific primal acts by the infection, proving there is some humanity, at least for a short while, before the infection fully takes over the brain. This use of audio cements in the player that there is a canon awareness in the infected, something that can make it horrifying to shoot even if they attack you first.

The main component in The Last of Us, for me, is loss, because whether it is as serious as losing a loved one or as impactful as losing a beloved childhood pet, everyone experiences loss, I believe TloU urges empathy through this connection, all of the characters have experienced immense loss, and each is learning to love again which creates a dynamic so strong that the loss of a character, even though one enters the game with knowledge from Part 1 that most people will die, we still hold onto that hope. The driving force for the characters is survivors' guilt, the hope that their survival through each sacrifice they see is somehow redeemable, for Ellie this means sacrificing herself for the good of humanity without actually weighing in the idea that it may all be for nothing and for Joel it is keeping Ellie alive, a redemption of sorts for his failure to protect his daughter, Sarah, in the beginning of the first game.

[arty-shadow-morningstar]

A Failed Betrothal (4)

Am I doing this right? I mostly do write this when I am between the state of sleep and awareness. Hope you enjoy this.

[Masterlist]

(Part 1) (Part 3)

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PART 4

Marinette came to a dungeon cell with two other prisoners. One of them was awake and he looked vaguely familiar. The other had an ugly red helmet that didn’t help with the headache she had.

“Do you know where we are?” She asked the handsome stranger with beautiful green eyes, her throat a little dry.

Wait. Handsome?

No bad Marinette. Don’t fall for fellow prisoners, no matter how cute he looks. Oh Kwamis, she was already screwed.

He still hadn’t replied. Maybe he didn’t understand French. She tried to ask again in another language before her enhanced hearing picked up the sound of footsteps. She faked unconsciousness. Later, she heard the iron door open. She looked through the tiniest slits of her eyes she could muster while the two held a staring/glaring match. Oh shit, that’s the fame Talia Al Ghul, daughter of Ra’s, head of the League of Shadows, and the boy she was glaring at had some resemblance to her, so he must be her son, Dennis? Daniel? Damon?

"Damian, I hope you know what you should do."

Ohh..Damian. Where had she heard that name before?

"To be forcefully married to that little girl. She is no one special. Why am I getting married to her?"

Ouch, that hurts. Well, Damian, just because I forgot your name does not mean you can call me a little girl. I can also kill you very easily and painfully.

“Well, Jason, you are awake. You can be the best man for the wedding.”

“No. I don’t know what game you are playing but you better release us. B is gonna find us and you will pay. Let the girl go. She is innocent in all of this.” Red Helmet, Jason, is officially not going on her hit list for his atrocious fashion choices. But that red monstrosity still needs to go.

"Ladybug may not seem like it but she possesses great power that my father converted for centuries. Speaking of, she should be awake by now."

Marinette felt her hair being yanked. A little pain was expected but the really sharp claws digging into her scalp was not. Making her cry and tear up.

”I am so sorry, kit.” Plagg whispered in the kwami language, loosening his claws.

"Tch, See, she is more pathetic than I thought. She is not powerful." Damian growled out.

Geez, thanks for the compliment, it’s not like you ever had a tiny cat dig its claws into your scalp out of surprise. (Damian once had a kitten thrown at his head and if he knew about Plagg, he would have been sympathetic.) Marinette started begging for mercy, hoping they would buy the helpless girl out of the suit that is ill-suited for the job she had been chosen for and had no idea on how to escape.

“Like I thought, weak. She is not deserving of the title of my wife.”

Oh kwamis, what did she ever do to have such a picky groom? The more he insults her, the less she wants to be married to him.

"Appearance can be deceiving. Despite her demeanor, she is the current wielder of the Ladybug Miraculous and the Current Guardian. The old Guardian, the old fool had promised her in exchange for his protection."

Great, another reason to stop her mother from killing a senile old man.

"That doesn't mean I want to marry her. She is not worthy of an Al Ghul or a Wayne. Look at her, crying at the slightest feeling of pain."

So that’s where she heard it from. The boy was the son of the daughter of a guy who leads a secret order of assassins and a man that owns a multi-million business. How even did a billionaire meet an assassin, ends up in bed with her and lives? Something to think about for later. She quieted down her sobs, (beat that acting, Rossi) kept her voice low to hatch out a plan with Plagg in the kwami language while the mother-son duo bickered.

“Hey, Plagg before you go, you think I can do that thing, the one which your one of your past holders from Japan can do.”

“You have a lot of potential for destruction but you have not used the ring for a long time yet so I am not sure.”

“I will give it a go anyways. Nothing to lose after all. See you later, Plagg.” Marinette smiled, one that drove fear into the hearts of even the bravest of people. Plagg returned it, already loving the new Guardian before zipping out of the cell to do some scouting. Using the enhanced strength the French superheroine got from prolonged use of the Miraculous, she yanked the chains of the walls and wrapped them around Talia’s neck, cutting off her air supply.

The League of Assassins thought that they could kidnap her and get away with it. But they were no match for the daughter of Sabine Cheng, the deadly Blue Reaper. A high ranking member from the group of assassins and mercenaries called the Guild of Night, who had semi-retired. Kidnapping her was a bad move to make as it meant they had declared war on the Guild, despite the reason behind her abduction having a completely different intention.

She whispered as such to the older woman in her tight grip, making sure the League would know how much they had fucked up. After dropping the limp body, she took a deep breath and tried channeling some of her energy for what she was about to do.

Well, here goes nothing.

She breathed out on the shackles, turning it to rust.

Success!

She introduced herself as Lady and concentrated the energy from before into her hand, forming inky black orbs of destruction in order to free her fellow captives. She felt a little drained from doing magic out of the suit and tried not to show it. Plagg returned, informing her of where the Ra’s and the Pits were. She grinned at the thought of showing old Ra’s who the boss is and made sure he regretted ever messing with her. She explained about Plagg as vaguely as she can, no need to let anyone know about the miraculous than necessary. Sure her plan sounds insane but the boys don’t know who they were with.

She would worry about that curse after she got out of Nanda Parbat. Although she could probably find something in the grimoire to reverse it, she was still an amateur at magic so it was best to have a professional to take care of it. Marinette didn’t want to be with such an asshole, no matter how striking he looks in those regal robes.

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Picking off the League assassins, one by one was easy especially in her transformed state. She hadn’t appraised her suit properly but from what she had seen, it wasn’t like Chat Noir’s leather get-up. She was armoured in vital areas and her colour scheme was mainly black with green accents. There were vials that were probably poisons and pouches which she decided to look at later. She still had a long braid as a tail from her brief stint as Lady Noire and she wondered why her suit was different. While hiding in a niche she found, she called the bakery via the comm in one of her various pouches.

“Hello?”

“Papa, it’s me, Marinette. Do you know where Maman is?”

“She went out of Paris, talking about how this League must pay. I think she is meeting up with several of her old friends. Are you alright, my little blossom? I know you can take care of yourself but I worry.” The relief in Tom’s voice was palpable. However, she was right and the Guild was going to war against the League. Marinette was adored by nearly everyone in the Guild due to her strangely bubbly and cheery personality in the harsh and brutal lifestyle.

“I am fine, Papa. Did Maman use the Horse to leave? And how are my friends?” She knew they might be in a panic after her disappearance.

“I think she did. I didn’t see Kalki when I went to feed the kwamis. Your friends panicked when they found out you were kidnapped. But they are fine now, mostly worried about you. Took care of some akumas and senti monsters by themselves. I think your fencer friend, Kagami, knows more about the League than she lets on.” Of course, she does. Her mother was a member of the Guild before being blinded due to a mission. Kagami and her actually first met during a reunion party of sorts.

“Thank you, Papa. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

She hung up and dialed the personal phone number her mother uses that only Marinette and her father knows about. She waited for the call to connect, trying to think of ways to stop her mother from storming into the League’s base of operation.

“Maman, it’s me. I know you want to attack the League right this minute. But I have a better plan. Can you get Tikki’s earrings from Alix? We can use them and the ring to destroy the Lazarus Pits. Make them really angry.” She peeked out of the niche she was hiding in. She had been there for a while and needed to move to gain some grounds.

“Where are you? And are you okay?” Panic and worry filled her usually composed mother’s voice.

“I am somewhere in Nanda Parbat and I am fine. I was nearly married off to Talia’s son but I am not now. I think.” Marinette replied. Better to rip that band-aid off before she showed up with her would-have-been-husband. She jumped out of the niche and looked

“Kalki, Full Gallop. Okay, we will talk about the ‘nearly married’ part later. What was this plan to destroy the Lazarus Pits?” Sabine thought she was already used to Marinette’s brand of craziness that was her normal but apparently, not.

“I am currently on my way there. Plagg said we need Tikki to get rid of them. Since the League pissed me off and by extension you and the rest of the Guild, I thought our first move against them is to destroy the Pits and a trail of bodies. By the way, can you get some cheese for Plagg?” Marinette ran through the halls, knocking out some poor sod with a whack on the head.

Silence. She thought Sabine had hung up when-

“Voyage. Alix, where are you? We need Tikki for one of Marinette’s insane plans. And Marinette, stay safe, sweety, I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”

“Bye, Maman. See you there.”

Marinette turned another corner, the last one before the path that leads to the entrance where the Lazarus Pits were. She only managed to find it with Plagg’s voice in her head, whispering directions and Tikki’s luck. Unfortunately, the luck ran out because the entrance had a lot of guards who had spotted her.

Crap.

She hoped her mother would get here soon. Thankfully, being transformed gave her a boost and would help her to hold her ground for a while.

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Damian and Red Hood followed the trail of unconscious bodies and sounds of fights, trying to find Lady. Damian was impressed at the level of her skills to defeat many of the League’s assassins although he could probably do better. They relied on his memory to find the Lazarus Pits which was their best bet to finding her as she claimed to be able to destroy them. If Lady possessed such powers, they must find out whether she is a threat to the world or not. And also break the infernal curse they have.

Red Hood was silent mostly. He made a few jabs about how kick ass his ‘bride’ was and how the current Robin should not let her get away. Damian tried really hard not to just maim his adopted brother and also ignore that little fluttering in his chest that happened every time they saw an unconscious assassin left behind by Lady. The sounds of fighting got louder as they got nearer to the entrance. They turned the final corner to see Lady fighting against the guards who outnumbered her. But she seemed to be doing fine against them. Mostly.

One had slipped through her defenses and nearly stabbed her in the back if it weren’t for Damian grabbing one of Red Hood’s guns and shooting a rubber bullet to the neck. He jumped into the fight, grabbing the fallen assassin’s sword and taking out the knife he got from his mother. Jason joined in too, not going to let the two teens have all the fun.

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“Thanks for the save, Al Ghul but I don’t know why you bothered when me being dead would solve your curse problem.” Lady said as the guards laid around them and they tried to catch their breath.

“It’s Wayne. I go by Wayne these days. Being an Al Ghul is not something I learned to be proud of. And as much as I don’t want this curse, your death is not worth that price.” he replied, “Although, I have to wonder why you would choose to die rather than live.”

She chuckled, “Okay, Wayne, to answer your question. Petty teenage drama makes death much more preferable. On top of that, I have responsibilities that I was practically forced into for doing one little act of kindness.” Her tone was joking but there was a touch of bitterness in it. It made Damian want to find out what caused it. Red Hood looked at her in concern. Lady went down the stairs, ignoring their reactions to her words. They followed her, not wanting to lose sight of her again.

The Lazarus Pits emitted a green glow that lit up the cave and cast strange shadows on the walls. At the edge of the glowing toxic green waters was a woman in dark blue clothing and strangely enough wearing sunglasses. Strapped to her sides were two Dao, ancient Chinese swords. She wore a vindictive expression on her face as she stood staring at the green lake, likely to kill anyone who gets in her way. Damian didn’t recognize the woman as part of the League but taking no chances, he got into a fighting stance and Hood did the same. Lady calmly approached the woman. He reached out to grab her to stop her suicidal nature when she shocked him by speaking to the blue-clad assassin in French,

“Hey, Maman, sorry I am late. I had a little trouble with the guards upstairs. You have Tikki?”

Lady’s mother rushed to hug her, “灵儿 (líng er), I am just glad you are alright. I knew you could handle yourself.”

How the hell did Lady’s mother get to the Lazarus Pits faster than them and snuck past several vigilant guards? Before Damian could question further, a red blur appeared and went to Lady’s face, hugging her cheek. It appeared to be the same size as Plagg but was red, looked like a bug and had a black dot on its forehead.

“Oh, Marinette, you are alright. I was so worried when your mother showed up, saying you were kidnapped and needed my earrings to escape.” Unlike Plagg’s nasally voice, her voice was sweet and shrill.

So, my bride’s name is Marinette. Such a unique name for an intriguing girl.

Wait what?

Wayne, stop thinking such ridiculous notions. That is probably the curse working. Resist against it. He will not be ensnared in the traps of such magic. He hoped that the curse will be reversed before he turns and act like those fools in Grayson’s idiotic shows or Todd’s ‘secret’ romance novels.

“I am fine now. See,” reassured Lady, “We actually need you and Plagg to reverse the Lazarus Pits to what it was before someone made the wish that resulted in them in the first place. Oh, I almost forgot. Plagg, claws in.”

Green light flashed, leaving Lady in her wedding robes (which actually flatter her body. Shit. Think of something else. Drake with a smug superior smile that needs to be wiped off his face. Grayson and his plans for ‘family bonding’) and Plagg to reappear.

“Cheese.” whined the cat-like kwami(?) to which the older woman held out a brown bag that smelled and made Plagg perk up in delight. He proceeded to open the bag, taking out a slice of stinky cheese, muttering about the greatness of camembert.

Todd cleared his throat and asked in English, “Umm...Pixie as much as your reunion is touching. Who’s the new lady?”

“Oh Right, sorry. Well, Red Hood, this is my mother, the Blue Reaper of the Guild of Night. Maman, this is Red Hood and the one next to him is my husband-to-be and Talia’s Spawn, Damian Wayne.”

Lady introduced them, also in English. Damian stilled in fear, recognizing the name. The Blue Reaper nearly became his mother-in-law. She was famous for her efficiency and ruthlessness. And gained her nickname from the blue clothing she often wore as she killed her targets. His eyes also widened at how his grandfather had gone a little too far now by kidnapping the Reaper’s daughter. There were other organizations that could possibly take down the League if it weren’t for the somewhat truce between Ra’s and the other leaders. The Guild was one of them and having the Lazarus Pits to revive their soldiers made the League a little more powerful. But if what the mother-daughter duo were planning succeeded, then the League was going to have one of its most deadly wars in its history and would probably never recover from.

“Tikki, Plagg, you guys ready?” asked Lady.

“Yes, Guardian.” They both replied and emitted a blinding red and green light which Damian shielded his eyes from. When it died down, the Lazarus Pits no longer glowed a toxic green and looked… like normal hot spring water.

“Oh. I wished I could see Ra’s face when he finds out.” Lady laughed. Plagg and Todd joined in.

“Pixie, I am beginning to like you.”

“Voyage. That being said, it’s time to go home, Marinette. Your father must be worried sick about us by now. I hope you boys can find your own way back.” A portal opened up, showing a cozy living room. Damian grabbed Lady’s wrist as she moved towards it.

“Wait, let us come with you. We need to contact someone to get rid of the curse on both of us. And we can also call our father to send us tickets for a ride home wherever you live.”

“Curse? Marinette, you never mentioned a curse in your call.” Blue Reaper said, raising her eyebrow.

“I will explain later. They can come with us and I am pretty sure Ra’s knows that we have escaped by now.” Lady grabbed the two brothers and dragged them through the portal.

She then threw herself onto the couch after releasing her hold on them and the two pocket gods went to comfort her after her ordeal. The Blue Reaper stood where the other portal was and fed a floating tiny gray horse, that must be the same species as Tikki or Plagg, some sugarcubes.

“You boys must be tired but the showers are upstairs and we might have some clothes your size. Dinner will be ready in an hour. You can stay the night if you want. Welcome to Paris.”

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(Part 5)

[brushstrokesapocalyptic]

it’s time for the “overanalyzing one-off lines” show!

so the very first thing magnus says when he sees pit in chapter 2 of kid icarus: uprising is as follows:

“Well, I didn’t expect to see an angel here. Hope this doesn’t mean I’ve kicked the bucket.”

now, i’m not sure if you’re aware, but that’s a really weird thing for someone to say, and it’s even more weird that no one comments on it. pit and palutena go on talking about unrelated things, as if that’s a totally normal and expected thing for magnus to say.

now, if you’re like me, you probably also didn’t really react to this line the first few times you saw it. it’s the second chapter, kiu has a lot of slightly-odd lines which turn out to be foreshadowing. me, personally? my first thought was “oh, i guess angels are probably associated with escorting the dead to the afterlife,“ and then i moved on.

they’re not, though. that’s what reapers do. and there’s no way humans have these two races mixed up. just fucking look at them.

do they look anything alike to you??? no. they don’t. which raises the question of why, exactly, magnus said that.

now, we don’t know a lot about angels as a whole. pit (and by extension dark pit) is emphatically not the gold standard of angeldom. we can assume he looks fairly ordinary for an angel, seeing as no one has trouble identifying him as such. beyond that, though, a lot of what we know about angels comes from what pit isn’t. for starters, he can’t fly. and there’s something else, too, but i’ll get to that later.

before that, though, i’m gonna go through the various unsubstantiated comments made by people with a dubious level of authority on the subject. (incidentally, i sourced these screenshots from the wiki— much more convenient than trying to dig through youtube for every single random conversation.)

without any further ado! let’s get into it!

Angels as Messengers

Gaol: Aw, Palutena’s little messenger boy. And Magnus, it’s always a pleasure. (src)

in the specific context of overanalyzing magnus’s first line, this is an important sentence to pick out. magnus and gaol are both humans, both with presumably a fairly similar history as mercenaries up until gaol got stuffed in a suit of armor. but while magnus makes a weird comment about death, gaol calls pit a messenger.

and pit agrees with her!

Viridi: I wish I had an angel to do my bidding. It’s like having an intern.

Pit: I’m not an intern. I’m a messenger of the gods!

Viridi: Poor Pit. Don't you know that the definition of angel is "errand spirit"? (src)

this particular conversation is the most insight we get into angels as a whole, i think. viridi thinks of angels as like divine interns, there to do little tasks for gods, and palutena doesn’t exactly disagree with her. pit says they’re specifically messengers, which lines up with biblical mythology. i could see the traditional role of angels in the world of KI being exactly that, showing up to tell the humans what the gods have to say because the gods themselves are too busy being petty jerks to do it themselves.

The Angel’s Code of Conduct

Magnus: You go in fully dressed? Don't you at least want to change into a...swimming tunic or something?

Pit: Oh, no no no! The angel's code of conduct says that we must always be ready for duty.

Magnus: I guess you wouldn't be an angel if you didn't do things by the book. (src)

Pit: Hey! You know the angel's code of conduct! I need to be prepared at all times! (src)

another random little thing is the angel’s code of conduct. without a larger sample size, we can’t know if it’s a real thing or just an excuse to save on laundry, but apparently it’s against the rules to not be on call at all times. in pit’s case, the duty he has to be ready for is doing palutena’s dirty work, but it can easily mean just about anything— including, of course, being a messenger.

No Warrior

Chariot Master: But you are no warrior, angel. Tell me, why do you fight?

Pit: I fight for Lady Palutena. And I fight for the people under her protection!

Chariot Master: That's not reason enough for an angel. (src)

remember how i said there was something else weird about pit? the chariot master seems to think angels aren’t very prone to battle— or perhaps even that they’re actively opposed to it. this lines up well with the idea that they’re supposed to be messengers, peaceful go-betweens for gods and mortals. this does not line up well with pit, the adorable weapon of mass destruction.

and it also does absolutely nothing to explain the question driving the whole existence of this post.

you know what does kinda lean towards an explanation?

No Other Angels

Pit: Do all gods have their own angels, like you have me?

Palutena: No, I don't think that's necessarily the case. (src)

i said before that the Intern Pit conversation had the most illuminating information on angels. this is what i was actually referring to. on its own, it’s pretty innocuous, but it’s just as weird as the magnus line. shouldn’t pit know about other angels, seeing as he is one himself? but he doesn’t know if there are other angels.

the only angels we ever see are him and his clone. no one ever directly references the existence of other angels, they only make general statements about what angels as a whole are like— statements which clearly don’t apply to pit, meaning they’re not just extrapolating based on the one angel that definitely does exist.

the one time someone does comment on the hypothetical existence of other angels, palutena gives a vague answer to the tune of “no,” the topic is changed, and no one brings it up again.

let’s go over everything i’ve established about angels up to this point. they can fly, they’re peaceful messengers of the gods, and pit is the only one that seems to exist as of the start of KIU.

it should be pretty obvious at this point what answer i’m dancing around, if it wasn’t obvious from the start. pit is the only angel around because all the other ones are dead. the reason why magnus said what he did is that his thought process went something like this:

See an angel.

Think “Aren’t angels extinct? Is that a ghost? Am I a ghost? I sure hope not.“

Make a quip about that.

Move on with his life, because he isn’t dead and evidently neither is this guy.

i’m not gonna pretend i went into this post with the intent of any other conclusion to that mystery. anyone who’s bothered glancing over a plot summary for the original kid icarus can draw that conclusion. it’s certainly what i did, reinforced by fics by people who had the same thought!

the truth, however, is that this was all a trick to get you to read my analysis of the theoretical nature of angels as a race. now that you’re invested, i’m going to dramatically throw aside my cape and reveal my TRUE FORM: telling people that fandom consensus is wrong, and my ideas are cooler and better than everyone else’s and you should all throw roses at my feet and bow before your king.

(or just, y’know, take it as the subjective analysis that it is. whatever floats your boat.)

Hot Takes

the original kid icarus does not actually tell you about angels going extinct. here’s the wiki article with the full text of the backstory, just for convenience, so you know what i’m on about for the rest of this post.

so, the part of the story that i think gets misinterpreted is this part about palutena’s army.

Medusa led a surprise attack on Palutena's army which could barely fend off the attack. Palutena's army suffered major losses and was heavily defeated in the final battle.

specifically, i think a lot of people interpret said army as having been made up at least partly of angels. sure, in the actual game it consists entirely of centurions, but you have to take old NES games with a grain of salt. i know i don’t buy for a second that pit was part of palutena’s guard before the original game (he was just too goddamn young), there’s nothing wrong with reinterpreting things.

recall everything i established about angels already, though. this is the hot official lore, from the game everyone knows and loves. angels are messengers, and if the chariot master is to be believed, never warriors. pit is an outlier. palutena’s army consists of centurions, not angels. if medusa wiped them out, it wasn’t because they were fighting for palutena.

(and honestly, i don’t think angels are necessarily associated with palutena exclusively. sure, she’s got the wing imagery, and she’s got the one known surviving angel working for her, at least up until pittoo is born. but angels are messengers of the gods, not messengers of palutena. again, pit is an outlier.)

which all brings us to the real question of this post.

what the FUCK happened to all the other angels? why is there only pit? why does magnus act surprised to see a messenger of the gods, and make a quip about being dead, if not because angels are otherwise extinct?! WHO KILLED THEM, AND WHY?!

thus concludes the “over analyzing one-off lines“ show. see you next, uh, maybe at some point if i feel like it!

(also another thought i had but couldn’t find room to fit it in properly: the gods don’t really act like angels are all extinct, but i feel like that can be explained through the sheer scale of a god’s lifespan. if we assume they were wiped out sometime around the original kid icarus (even if not as palutena’s army) then that’s a whole twenty-five years. that’s a long time for us humans, but for a god, that might as well be last tuesday. “yeah, i know what angels are like. sure wish i could have one. too bad palutena’s got a monopoly on the one single angel that medusa didn’t manage to wreck.”)

[thefools-journey]

So. Some of you may be wondering why we haven’t written a whole ton about the secondaries or what have you. Here’s the reason: we were waiting for them to end before we really dug into the problems we were noticing. We felt that it was only fair to wait for the routes to finish so that we had an understanding of the writers’ vision. Who knew, we thought, maybe they would see the problems themselves and course correct, maybe they are building to something we can’t quite see yet and these issues will have actual payoff, maybe-

In light of Muriel and Lucio’s endings, and the general mess that has dominated Portia’s route for a year plus now, we are breaking our silence. We are actually going to talk about this shit show.

The fandom at large has talked about a bunch of issues with the secondaries but for me, the cardinal sin, the thing that really all the issues lead back to, is this: the writers lost sight of the tarot themes which so strongly defined and held together the primary routes. Let me explain.

The primary routes each center around three thematic cores:

The Love Interest’s Major Arcana and its Reversed/Upright meanings

The MC’s Fool’s Journey, both how it can go right and how it can go wrong

A question about the MC’s identity and their relationship to said identity

Asra’s route asks: Who was the MC? How does the MC navigate a past they cannot and will not remember? What do they owe a past they cannot remember? How do they handle the revelations of what Asra, Nadia, Julian, etc did? How do you right the past? Can you?

Nadia’s route asks: Who is the MC? The MC has no past. Are they the Fool only? Are they actually the same person they were? How can they tell? Who are they, really? Are they an imposter? No one can answer these questions for them.

Julian’s route asks: Who will the MC become? How does the MC see their future? Is there anything worth fighting for for that future? What will become of them and their loved ones? 

Now, if you notice, these themes are expertly woven throughout the primaries. Asra’s past dominates his route, Nadia is also missing memories and trying to construct her identity both with her family and with Vesuvia, and Julian’s fear of the future drives his flailing for control. Asra has to learn to take a broader view of his actions to get his Upright Ending, Nadia has to learn to trust herself and those around her for hers, and Julian has to learn how to let go for his. These lessons are the issues their cards stand for. The primaries are so dang elegant and delicate in their handlings of theme it is honestly awe-inspiring.

Thematically, the secondary routes have completely lost their hearts. First of all, the MC does not have strong, core questions which need to be answered. They just don’t. I suppose the writers did not want to retread old territory (which is weird considering how tightly bound the primaries are; it really tricks you into thinking you’re living the same events but from different angles depending on your route) but they did not replace the old with anything new. Muriel’s route is, on the surface, about discovering and owning his past, the good and the bad. Why not tie MC’s self-discovery to that story? Or they could have taken the angle that Muriel’s route is about convincing him to be present and active in the world while MC builds an identity for themself outside of Asra, the shop, and the memories they cannot retrieve. Why not tie the investigation themes running through Portia’s early route back to MC and their past? Portia has the unique angle of being as in the dark as MC about all of this, why not discover the past together? And for goodness’ sake, Lucio has no future when his route begins, why not tie that to his need for growth, responsibility, and MC’s own future between the Fool, the Devil, or something mortal and in between?

Secondly, the routes lost their tarot backbone. We have a primer on how to get specific endings for each LI and it still holds, but the writers did not follow through on the thematic coherence of each secondary. The Hermit is looking for something, be it perspective, insight, a solution to a problem, whatever. The key here is that the Hermit must find or learn what they are searching for, this thing must change their understanding of the world, and finally, they must bring this lesson back to the world from which they retreated. Can someone please enlighten me as what exactly Muriel learns then teaches the world around him? Nothing Muriel learns from Morga, MC, or even the Hermit ties back into anything. The Devil warns that you are out of control and exerting a lot of manipulative, destructive behavior on the world around you. It asks you to take responsibility for yourself and your actions. So can someone tell me why Lucio’s route actively avoids any interaction or reflection on two of Lucio’s biggest victims: Muriel and Julian? Why does the route only try to make amends with the “easier” of his victims in the cast? The Star is first and foremost the card of clarity, the light at the end of the tunnel. Perseverance, if you will. Yet Portia’s route has been the muddiest of the trio; the writers drop the investigation aspect of her route in favor just handing her and MC information they could have easily found and muddying the waters with Tasya (she blows up the palace but it’s all okay bc she has a secret daughter Julian never thought to bring up or mention) and the complete removal of the Devil as antagonist. 

So that leaves just the Fool’s Journey trying to hold this stool up with only one leg. And well...it doesn’t go well. At best, the secondary route books pay the barest surface level homage to the themes of the individual cards. At worst, they ignore the cards completely. Muriel's Moon book has nothing to do with illusions or delusions or lies or even an Alice in the Looking Glass upside down world. Portia's back half is a complete and utter mess, starting with her Temperance book being so badly mangled that Muriel's aftermath book does it better. Lucio's route too bungles the Tower and the Star. There just isn't enough here to carry the routes alone.

Add to the core loss the loss of intertextuality. The primary routes are very good, even great but they too do have their moments and mistakes. What helps strengthen them when the cores stumble is how the trio is woven together. Things you learn in Asra's route can inform the way you play Nadia's, for example. Julian's route informs what is going on in Asra's route and slots some missing puzzle pieces together. Nadia's route tells you of the power struggles she is facing and informs the other two routes' handling of Julian and his trial. On and on, the three routes support each other because they are built out of the same basic plot beats, just tackled in very different ways. Now, the writers are allowed to try and write whatever they want. They apparently wanted to be more experimental and less tied down to an overarching plot with the three secondaries. Okay, fine, they are allowed to do that. The problem is that they sacrificed one of the key strengths of the primary trio and didn't replace said strength with anything else. They also, on some level, harmed the very premise of the game, which is that only the player's choices and route selected change the overall plot. Instead of feeling like legitimate possibilities or offshoots of the same timeline/plot, the secondaries feel almost like Arcana AUs. The secondaries throw out all relations to the primaries and each other as quickly as possible and for what? 

It is probably the height of arrogance to suggest fixes for works whose behind the scenes I do not know. At the same time, some small, obvious changes could have salvaged Muriel and maybe Lucio's endings (rip Portia). Instead of having the Hermit appear as a disappointing cameo, why not have him say something cryptic to Muriel, then have MC start trying to seal the Devil. Then let Muriel use his forget me mark to cloak MC and hide them from the Devil's attacks. Protecting MC by hiding them from Lucio, keeping him focused on Muriel, seems to me a simple third solution between Muriel's desire to run and his desire to never fight again. It lets him stand up to Lucio and let him have it while holding onto who Muriel has become. The Reversed End would have MC try to draw Lucio's attention at some point, disrupting the sealing, and eventually leading to Muriel killing the Devil. With Lucio's Upright End, I just have to ask: why doesn't MC fully claim the power of the Fool instead of the Devil? We don't need the other Arcana involved in this fight; we have three routes that demonstrate that. Just have MC pull Scout into the conflict, then have Lucio tell MC he believes in them, then add his power to the mix. You got yourself a full Fool who leaves Scout guarding the realm until they and Lucio's mortal bodies fail and they return to the realm to be together forever. Boom, you're done, you can even add some ambiguous lines so that players can decide how happy their MC is with this arrangement, send me the check.

Here is the bottom line. Our group is full of aroace, and several combinations therein, individuals. We are the last group who should have gotten into a dating sim of all things. But the Arcana did something with the primaries that was special; they wrote a compelling plot with dazzling lore, complex characters, and strong themes wrapped up in a dating sim bow. The writers know better and we know they know better. I do not know what happened with the secondaries, especially around books 10-11, which is where minor issues slowly start spiraling into major ones, but it is clear that Nix Hydra needed some more planning before they released these routes. Hopefully they will learn.

TL;DR: Nix Hydra fired their tarot consultants about eighteen months ago and it has wrecked their secondary routes until they were just embarrassments. They never intended for the secondary routes to even exist and once they had to make them, they scrambled and threw out everything that made the primaries work.

- Mod Telos