#is there such a thing as a a guide to poetry for dumb people

[platypusisnotonfire]

I want to be the kind of soft dude that gets poetry but I am just too stupid to understand it

[fakescenariosbeforesleepblog]

You're a romantic, y/n.

Ghost x Reader.

You think no one ever would notice you, but Simon has found the perfect moment to confess that he has seen you, all this time, he has been waiting for the right moment.

Warning: spelling and grammatical errors, i think I wrote it for a gn reader but I apologize if I mention a female or something like that, also it's probably not very good.

Anyway I hope someone likes to read how ghosts observe and knows everything about you.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters nor do I claim to own them. I do not own any of the images used nor do I claim to own them.

You always talk about how much you hate romance and all the romantic stuff, your friendship with Ghost is the best thing ever, he's cold and has a different way to show affection, he listens to you, even when you think he's not paying attention, he brings you coffee every morning before an important mission, offer you tea when you're sick, he's different, that's what you like about Simon.

Both are walking by the street, it's a spring Friday evening, the breeze is fresh but not really cold to make you wear a jacket or a sweater, you see an empty bench, you don't say anything and simply take Simon's hand and guide him to the bench.

It's the perfect spot to look at everybody who's walking around, both are sharing a cold tea. You're observing a couple who's close to you, they're holding hands and looking at each other with those deer eyes, and a lot of affection, you don't know what they're talking about but you're observing them cautiously.

- if you keep staring at them like that they will invite you to join them.

Simon's voice brought you back to reality, you hit him softly on his arm and rolled your eyes.

- I just think they look ridiculous...

- I don't think that's what you're thinking of.

- Oh, trust me Lt... I think it's ridiculous, all that sweetness makes me sick.

- No it doesn't.

- Then why do you think I'm observing them?

Simon is not looking at you, he's simply observing what he has in front of him, a beautiful sky and trees.

- You say you hate romance, but I've seen you smiling when you see a happy couple, or when you see old people holding hands. I've seen you watching movies about romance and drama, reading about it and poetry.

You blushed and feel a necessity to defend yourself but Simon doesn't give you the chance, he continues talking.

- I...

- You always say you would hate to receive flowers or chocolates, letters or any kind of present, but I've seen you looking at every flower shop, you like peonies and tulips, those are the flowers that you observe the most, you love chocolates, your favorites are the ones that have caramel inside. You never complain when I bring you coffee or tea, you smile at me and there's a spark in your eyes that I like.

- Simon, that's not...

- I also have heard you talking with Johnny about the girl he's dating, you always smile and you give him advice when he's in trouble, you help Kyle too, at the bar when he wants to talk with a girl.

- They're too dumb to get a girl by themselves...

You're blushing more than ever before, every word he says is something you never expected to hear. You want to hide, you feel caught. But you don't understand why you're feeling like this.

- Yes, but that's not the point, I've heard you cry after a date with some asshole because even if you say you don't expect nothing, you secretly are expecting to fall in love... my point is..., I'm just saying you pretend to hate romance and everything that comes with it but In my opinion you're a romantic y/n.

- What?

- You are a romantic, you don't hate love, it's just your excuse to avoid it or protect yourself, I don't judge you or blame you for trying, you perhaps had a bad experience in the past, or simply someone made you think you didn't deserve details, love or good things. You think it will be easier if you don't ask or expect any kind of love, but it only makes it more difficult.

Your eyes are filling with tears, you're not crying because of any pain, you're crying because he's right, you always expect a good love but you lose your hopes because it's always the same, you're always a "maybe" but never "the one", always a second option, never the only one.

Simon hears your sniffing and looks at you, you're already observing him, he kindly cleaned a tear with his thumb and before he could quit his hand, you hold it with yours, there's a long silence, it's not uncomfortable, as always, a silence with Simon is never uncomfortable, you could be in silence with him for the rest of your life and you wouldn't mind, he makes you feel good.

- There it is, that spark in your eyes. It's my favorite thing about you.

You smiled at him, then without expecting it, Ghost kissed you, softly, it was a short kiss, but once he was sure you were okay, he kissed you again, this time it was deep, sweet and filled with passion.

- I waited for this kiss for a long time.

- Did you?

- I did, I've seen you, I've heard you and the only thing i want since I fell for you, is give you and show you all the love you deserve.

Simon is a man of few words, he only speaks with the truth and when he feels sure to do it, he definitely took his time to finally tell you about his feelings. But, he showed them to you at every opportunity he had, you were just a little dumb to notice it.

[a-certain-romance]

i made the house wife ei and miko thing tbh if u want more i can write u some fr (gonna turn it into a whole ass story for u) tbh skmetimes i imagine shenhe and her house wife to imagine how possessive she could get over her house wife being jealous at every moment

then we have ningguang who adores her house wife who dhe convinced to live a life of luxioury in her jade chamber tbh your not swayed at first untill you know you can worry over her while she works and sew her stuff shes always so pleased so she rubs her hand on your thigh staring at you knowing whats to come she already planned ahead ofc

then hu tao and her house wife (coping with the fact im an og and never got her c1) anyways shes so giggly most of the time watching you cook and giving you soft kisses every time she finishes a meal. your too cute to resist honestly!! so she decided to leave you her outfit who knows what she’ll do next <3

im mot gay iswear-

AHHH ANON U ARE THE BEST!!! (Feel free to share if you have more!!)

Warnings: Smut written by a minor, possessive sex/tendencies (Shenhe), face sitting (Ningguang), Overstimulation (Ningguang), mastrubation (Hu tao), fingering (Hu tao)

Link to pt 1 , Pt3, & Pt4

- She’d get so jealous thinking about all the people you might be around. Shenhe hates crowds so knowing that she’s not at the best of her abilities in the harbor leaves her on edge

- Shenhe who gets so possessive that she singlehandedly builds a house in the mountains away from all those people who might interfere with the two of you. It’s a good midpoint between the Wangshu Inn and Qingce Village, and plenty far away from the crowded harbor

- As she spends her time in meditation and training you spend your time with household duties and tending to your garden of Qixing and other flowers. You spend the days trying to familiarize yourself with new recipes that fit to your and Shenhe’s tastes and even experimenting with a few dishes. On the few times you do travel back to the harbor with Shenhe you always stop at Wanmin restaurant to exchange knowledge and recipes with Xiangling

- These trips can be very fun, though many of them end in a rough fucking against the wall of some alleyway after someone looks at you in a way that Shenhe doesn’t like

- She’s content to carry you for a while since it means you get to be all the more closer to her

- It’s the fact that you aren’t interested in her for her wealth that makes her fall for you

- Being Ningguang’s housewife means you don’t need to lift a finger while you’re in the Jade Chamber

- Yet she still melts when you take it upon yourself to help the maids by cleaning Ningguang’s study on your own or cooking her favorite meals when she’s had a packed schedule

- She’ll order the finest silks or brocades or fabrics; anything you ask for will be in your hands at a moment’s notice

- When she’s especially pleased with your hard work she’ll guide you towards your shared room and reveal her most expensive lingerie & lipstick combo

- She’ll let you suck and nip at her breasts for a bit before locking her legs around your waist. She can’t have all the fun, this night is meant for you. Deep make-out sessions lead to her urging your legs to sit on either side of her head

- Ningguang will lick and suck on your clit until your brain goes dumb from the pleasure, and even after you finish she’ll keep going and overstimulating you further

- Hu Tao who serenades you with poetry as appreciation for all the cooking you do

- She also handpicks the prettiest flowers from her walks around Liyue and places them in a neat vase every few weeks just for you

- She leaves her outfit in plain sight on the bed. It all started with wanting to try on her hat, leading to you wonder what the rest of her outfit would feel like

- You bask in the sweet aroma of red plum blossoms. It’s like she’s with you right now! Sometimes you wear it when she’s not around. Hu Tao catches wind of this quickly and always leaves a spare article of clothing at your place

- One of these days she surprises you by coming early and finds you pleasuring yourself while wearing one of her jackets. Aiya, it was her who got you into this, might as well take responsibility and finish what you started she thinks as her finger teases your wet folds

[ghostoffuturespast]

Your Guide To The Archives...

Howdy, you can call me Ghost (she/her) and welcome to my digital haunting grounds. 

This blog’s been a lot of things over the years, but, as of right now, it’s primarily my repository for whatever catches my fancy and Cyberpunk 2077. I refuse to make a sideblog, so if you’re not up for all my shenanigans, know that I’m not keeping you here. I’ve gotten pickier about who I’m following these days and don't always do follow for follow. Nothing personal, I just already have a hard enough time keeping up with people on my dash, but I know my regulars. I see you!

You don’t have to be a mutual or even a follower to interact with me though, I’m down for tag games and my inbox and messages are always open. (You can’t ask anonymously because I do require a return to sender address.) Almost all of my posts and reblogs are scheduled or queued. I may or may not be online but if you leave a message after the beep, I’ll get back to you eventually.

I like to keep it organized around here and prefer to tag my posts (weird notes included) for archival purposes and batch queue stuff, so expect a delayed reaction on almost all of my reblogs. If something’s not tagged it was probably an accident. I’m not great with buttons.

Tags

#little ghost on the prairie - Me out and about. Could be anything really but most likely it’s probably me standing in the middle of a field taking blurry pictures of plants or bugs.

#friday field notes - I work as a naturalist for my day job and this is a series of really informal posts about what’s happening out on said prairie. Lots of plants. I love plants. Will also crash the car to watch birds.

#haunted - The eerie, the beautiful, the surreal. The things that stay with you.

#ghost's art - Whatever I've been doodling.

#night city streets - VP related to Night City. Could be mine, could be someone else’s.

#from the top - My Cyberpunk 2077 VP collection. Lots of environmental shots, story photosets, and whatever else happens to catch my eye. All taken unmodded on PS5.

#oc: valerie hye jin li - My Cyberpunk 2077 OC, corporate grunt-cog turned merc badass, aka the Notorious Stinky Grandpa V. Alternate tags are #my grandpa v and #stinky not fresh. (She’s got the personality of a grumpy old man, what can I say?)

Writing

So It Goes - My completed CP2077 V/River Ward long fic. If you like part ones of epic length duologies, gritty slow burn neo-noir, vivid writing that waffles between prosaic and poetic, kickass action sequences, convoluted corporate conspiracies, copious amounts of angst, mind-numbingly large portions of smut, poetry references, and dumb jokes with punchlines pages down the road… Boy, have I got a referral for you. Tagged under - #fic: so it goes

Horror - Unrelated one-shot horror stories set in the world of CP2077. Most of these feature original characters and plots but take their inspiration from the game world.

Fluff - The Garden - Shimmer & Shine - For something completely different

WIPS - Coming soon to a theater near you…

Other Helpful Things

Cyberpunk 2077 Console/Vanilla Photomode Tutorials

Happy Hauntings,

🧡 Ghost

[yeahiwasintheshit]

watched this movie? doc? idk.. something called 'mondo new york' and man it was a mess. when i saw it i thought it was like a doc about the underground scene of the late 80s in new york, and it kind of is, but its not really a doc. its just a string of scenes from new york in the late 80s, which in itself sounds pretty good, but its kinda lame. like you start off just following this young girl, and she is the viewers kinda guide. where she goes we go. but she never talks or even talks to other people, we are just kinda watching what shes watching. in theory its sounds promising, but it just ends up being boring. and i think they wanted to be like provocative and edgy or something, so we see some fucked up shit like not one, not 2 but a few animal deaths, or maybe its fake, i dont know. either way its not interesting.

we start off and shes at some gritty bar where a woman is performing a song, and at first im like ok this is interesting, but theres no narrator or any commentary, its just a record of this entire song of this persons performance. and its not good. then its like the girl guide just walks away and shes at some kind of maybe poetry slam or something, idk... this weird guy is at a mic and is talking about weird shit. ive been fast forwarding by this point. certainly through the song in the scene before, but this was also bad. this guy eventually takes out 2 live mice from his pockets, and then bites their heads off. it looks kinda real, i mean the mice are 100% real, but just before he bites both their heads off, he does drop his hand out of frame. so that made me think it was more staged than it kinda looked. personally i think its fake. but thats not the last animal death.

then she leaves this poetry thing, after the guy sets off fireworks in his shirt or something dumb. ohhh so edgy! we then go to a punk bar? skin head bar? idk its a room full of white dudes moshing around to punk music and this girl is there. i was also fast forwarding at this point. for no real reason. she then leaves.

she then is at washington square park (daylight now) and theres a comic with a fairly large audience, so i stop it and hes doing some bad comedy. speaking in like "white" waspy voice. i fast forward and stop and hes saying how black people are always late or something, and then saying how puerto ricans have lots of children. its the routine of the pre-internet hack comedian, but he was getting alot of laughs from the crowd. this part was real long! so i fast forwarded thru most of it as he was doing the jewish voice.

she then ends up in like a burnt out building and someone is shooting themselves up with drugs, and this was no joke. very clearly you see blood fill the syringe and he pushes it back. i was sick. there was some talking, but i didnt bother to listen. again i fast forwarded.

shes then talking to some poetry guy in the street, at night now. ummm. oh she ends up in some basement where theyre doing some kind of voodoo something. whats that religion called? santamaria? or whatever. idk all i know is that the guy bites the head off a chicken. this was 100% real, cause those wings were a flapping and blood was squirting and that chicken didnt have a head anymore, and it was in his mouth. i was sickened. but that was not even the last dead animal. ann magnussun shows up and does some bit i was fast forwarding thru, but it ends in her in some field where theres a dead horse and shes beating it with like a stick or something. get it... beating a dead horse. it was so lame, and trying so hard to be idk provocative? interesting? edgy? idk. i was bored, and eye rolling.

but that wasnt even the last animal in the movie being hurt. we also end up in a cock fight. but this thankfully didnt end in a dead animal. the 2 chickens were absolutely fighting, but they didnt have the razors on their claws. the one chicken was pecking blood out the head of the other, but they do make it a point to show both chickens alive at the end of the scene. so whatever

there were other scenes of other things happening, but nothing looked interesting enough to stop fast forwarding. until the end. the final song i stopped and it was actually pretty funny. i tried looking for it on yt, but couldnt find it. it was a drag queen singing a song, i think was called fuck you, and it was kinda funny. he had a sorta fred schneider kinda voice, so it was kinda entertaining. the rest of the movie left such a bad taste, it was a little hard to get over it lol

admittedly out of the whole run time, i prob watched only 35-40 mins of it. so maybe i not the best judge, but if youre reading this, then you know if this is something you care to even watch. i thought it was boring most of the time, and its attempts to be provocative or shocking were really kind dumb and not at all interesting. wow a dead animal... very edgelordy. the only sort of positive i can think of, is the sort of b-roll scenes of 80s new york. kinda cool to see the city and the people back then. i guess.

[nicoles-mind-dump]

3 AM Poetry

Part 6

Part 7

You are my best friend.

We have grown like vines that tangled together,

Gone from pleading for rides to see each other to showing up at 1 in the morning just needing to sit in silence next to one another,

It’s the little things that keep us together,

Like singing along to our favorite songs in the car,

Or arguing over how much older I am despite the fact that you’re taller,

It’s making fun of each other in the most personal ways but still laughing because we know we could never live without the other,

It’s repeating the same jokes over and over and never getting tired of them.

Its being each other’s parents because ours were never there when we needed them,

It’s picking each other up from the ground when we fall,

It’s celebrating our accomplishments because no one else did,

It’s the I’m proud of you calls that get us through rough times,

It’s tough love.

It’s having to tell the truth because although it may hurt it’s what they need to hear,

It’s crying together and wiping away each other’s tears,

It’s leaving behind people we thought would be with us forever,

It’s knowing that even if everything feels like it’s falling we will always have each other.

It’s knowing everything about one another.

You are my best friend,

But you’re also more than that,

You are my twin flame,

My mother,

My father,

My sister,

And my brother,

You are my teacher,

My taxi,

My 911 when I don’t know who else to call,

My life line,

My drunk text,

And high thought.

Constantly on my mind even though I see you almost every day,

Everyone in my life knows your name,

Even if they have never met you,

Because I cannot help but talk about the person who brings me the most joy,

And sometimes anger,

I hope everyone gets to experience having someone like you in their lives at least once,

But only I get to know what it’s like to have you as a best friend,

I can only wish that I bring you just as much comfort as you give me,

That I put your mind at ease with just a look the way you do to me,

That just one hug can calm you down,

That I make you laugh so hard your belly hurts,

That you hope we had met earlier and still don’t understand how the universe didn’t bring us together sooner,

That you pray you never have to know what it’s like to live without me,

Because I love you.

And I didn’t know what it felt like to have someone love me back just as much until I met you.

I didn’t know what real friendship was supposed to be until you came into my life.

And I hope that in every universe and timeline that we are together,

In one way or another,

I couldn’t have come so far without your guiding hand,

I could go on forever about how much you mean to me but there are not enough words in the whole world to perfectly describe what we have,

We are unique,

Everyone will have a best friend,

But I am so glad that out of every possibility our fates were woven together,

When we first met we may not have known it but we were made to find each other,

And if I could go back I would make very dumb mistakes,

Go through every heartbreak,

Still cry every tear,

As long as it still lead me back to this place here.

[linawritestwst]

hello, lina! congrats on 1k, i'd like a matchup if there are still some slots open? ^_^ i use she/her pronouns, my MBTI is INFJ, and my zodiac sign is Libra!

personality: i've been told i'm a nurturing and perceptive person who can notice the emotions of and encourage the people around me. i have good social skills and can lead when needed but i prefer to be a follower since i'm actually little reserved myself. i also prefer to show my candid self to a select few who i really trust. i laugh at silly things really easily but i usually stifle my laughter. i am also a bit physically affectionate!

interests: poetry/literature, history, intellectual and philosophical topics, documentaries, nature and anything related to tea and herbs.

hobbies: reading books, writing poems, stargazing, taking walks during nighttime.

what i'm looking for a partner: someone who can indulge me on my interests (they don't have to necessarily share them. if they're willing to indulge me even if they don't know what it's about, that is more than enough!), who can tell me to step back when i get too distracted taking care of others, who wouldn't mind that i can be a bit childish and silly at heart, someone who can be honest with me and keep me grounded.

what i'm not looking for in a partner: someone who is brutally inconsiderate, who is impulsive and follows their emotions too much (i value emotions myself but not to the point of carelessness/recklessness without logic), who is self-absorbed, or anyone who is dishonest and don't put the least bit of efforts.

i don't have a preference for specific years or dorms! i really, really want to know who i might be compatible with in your eyes and also, don't forget to take a break when you need it! thank you so much and congrats, lina. your works are always the best <3

THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU'RE TOO SWEET.. i'm so sorry for being so late, but i hope you like this matchup anyway!

the character that i think would be a good partner for you is..

riddle rosehearts!

i'll explain why i chose him:

i think your dynamic would be so cute! riddle could definitely use a s/o who's good at noticing other people's emotions and how their mood changes, haha. also i think that him being more of a leader because, you know, he's literally a dorm leader and he's based on queen of hearts, and you being more of a follower is a very interesting and fun concept! it's like he can be the one who's good at leading people and you can be there to follow him, but also gently guide him and give him advice in case he does something wrong.

it's hard for riddle to admit it, but he actually would love to hear you laugh more often. you can really notice him showing favoritism when he hears ace or cater laughing at something dumb and tells them to stop, but then he sees you trying really hard not to laugh at the same joke and for some reason.. he doesn't say anything and pretends not to see it. also he's not used to physical affection and he has no idea what to do when he receives it, but.. to be honest, he actually kinda likes it. please pretend you didn't hear that from him.

riddle may be a bit very impulsive sometimes, considering his temper, but he started to work on that after his overblot and also he just feels more calm whenever you're around. and even though it can be very hard for him to control his emotions, he still tries his best and trust him, he would never hurt you. he wants to help you as much as you help him, so if he notices you spending too much time taking care of others while forgetting about your own needs, he will remind you that you're just as important as those other people, so you should remember to take care of yourself too. also, you two share quite a lot of interests, so i'm sure you two would have lots of fun together!

[lonelypoetandiknowit]

What is poetry?

Anyone can scoff at poetry.

Anyone can say “that’s dumb” or “poetry is lame and for losers.”

But how many can look at the stars and see a story? Know the names of every planet and their Greek counterpart. Understand that at one time, sailors trusted them to guide them. How many can look at a clock and see not just the hour, but the way humans comprehend time and space? Truly, what number of people question themselves about how the importance of the square root of a number is, compared to the importance of understanding the vastness of the universe? Anyone can shrug poetry away but few can read it and even fewer can understand it. Poetry is such a thing that will come with a calm face but leave mountains crumbled it into wake.

Anyone can be a poet. A boy blindsided by love may be a poet. It may not be the best poetry but it will be from the deepest, darkest chasms of his soul as he tries to explain to others how this infatuation has affected him down to his bones.

A woman broken by the world and it’s cruel ways may be a poet. Her poems may be of heartbreak and grief but it will be be poetry. They may tell tales of crude encounters and wicked smiles but it will be poetry all the same.

A man in a broken relationship may be a poet. He may only speak of sadness and the crushing weight it holds but it will still hold meaning to those who understand. That those traveling on the same path may find that someone knows the value of their pain and regret.

A girl lost to the clutches of fiction may be a poet. Her poems may tell tales of her wishes to be lost in the countryside or to tame dragons alongside warriors. She may lose herself in these hopes and dreams but her words will strike deep into the hearts of others who wish to join her in fantasies.

This begs the question: what is poetry?

Is it words on a page? This cannot be so, or every recipe and scribbled note would be justified as poetry. And what about poetry on a device? That would place every blog and text message in that category. So it appears poetry can not be defined by being words on a page.

Is it words that rhyme? Surely this cannot be, because many famous poets and poems do not rhyme consistently. So many words that grip your heart and wrap around your mind do not have the favor of being audibly similar to another word. So it appears poetry cannot be defined by rhyming words.

Is it words about love? What of poems that share the familiar sense of loss? The poems that speak unto the vastness that is brokenness and vulnerability? It appears poetry cannot be defined by words about love.

Is it words written by men? That is simply outdated thinking. With this thinking you silence all the women who speak out about their feelings and the little bits of their life that are too painful, too harsh and too earth-shattering to be reduced to “bad”. It appears poetry cannot be defined as words written by men.

Is it words that are pretty? If this were so, every poet would need either an expensive education or a thesaurus. This would exclude every broken-hearted orphan from ever speaking words of poetry to one another. No longer could soldiers dream out loud of a better tomorrow and encapsulate in words what war costs.

Or is poetry simply that it would look like if we poured our hearts onto a page?

Raw, unforgiving, ugly, brutal words that we may not want to identify with but do.

Poetry cuts you and makes you think of the feeling again and again.

Poetry soaks in your skin and dissolves into your bones, carving their home there.

Poetry is words but also feeling and emotion.

Poetry is pretty things, ugly scars, brokenness.

Poetry is saying

“I carved out my heart to make flowers for you and used my bones for the vase. Won’t you love me?”

Poetry is saying “I am so in love with you when I think of you, my mind scatters like the bluebirds of the morning.“

Poetry is awareness. Poetry is admittance. Poetry is acceptance.

[katsu28]

🍬 candy- Could you pair me with someone from stranger things or harry potter? Also love your writing so happy for you! Im a female and pref boys <3

LOOKS-I am pretty short 4'11. I have black shaggy medium length hair with side bangs. Im pretty petite and have very pale skin, i also wear golden round glasses cause i cant see for shit. I have a pretty small ahem chest area. Also a Pisces.

CLOTHING-I normally wear baggy clothes like big sweaters and baggy jeans. Always wearing my converse with my outfits. No makeup on this face except cherry chapstick and clear mascara.

PERSONALITY- I can be very shy and quiet especially around new people or alot of people. I have major social anxiety and also ADHD. But getting to know me i can be funny and a bit odd. I'm also very awkward at times even with people im close with im very cut off and not open to sharing things alot. i try not being to annoying or bother some so thats why sometimes im distant. I tend to over think things and my relationships with people. Im not as hyper anymore like i was as a kid but still i space off, get distracted, forget alot of things, and cant sit still sometimes.

EXTRA-I have many scars and bruises from being clumsy or just a dumb ass. In school i can be a target for bullying or just ignoring me overall. Can be oblivious and childish. I get flustered very easily. Some of the things i like to do is drawing and painting. I also play video games a lot. I love listening to music you can always find me with earbuds in. I love reading comics or poetry. I love gardening well most of the time. I see myself sometimes to be such a hopeless romantic sometimes in my opinion daydreaming about my crush or people. I would be the type of partner to draw you stuff or make a playlist for you. I love cuddling, hugs, hand holding, and drawing on your hand if you let me. I always thinking of gifts to give my partner when i have one.

hii love thank you!! <33 u sound adorable omg! i would ship you with remus lupin!

remus would definitely understand your social anxiety, your shyness and quietness around unfamiliar people because he feels the same way sometimes, and he would try his best to make you feel as comfortable as possible! he would never think you're a bother or annoying in any way, in fact he would love it when you talk to him about things. if you're not up to sharing things with him, he's totally okay with that! the most important thing he wants you to know is that he loves you and he's always there for you if you ever need anything. he's a very thoughtful guy, so he would try to remember things for you if you forget, help guide your attention back to things if you get too distracted, and let you fiddle with the sleeves of his jumper or something like that if you're having trouble sitting still!

he would love seeing his jumpers on you as well because you're so tiny they swallow you up, it makes him so happy to see you so cozy in his clothes! he loves your glasses, he always does this thing when he sees them falling down like if you're reading or doing something else where your hands are occupied, he'll reach up and push them up for you! i'm a firm believer in remus helping you tie your shoes if he sees them untied—just a little pat pat on his knee or the chair he's sitting on for you to let him tie it, because again he's such a thoughtful person. and let's be honest, remus loves your cherry chapstick because you taste like it when he kisses you and now whenever he thinks of or sees anything cherry he thinks of you! the same with gardening, whenever he smells the earth on your fingers or sees a specific plant that maybe you've told him is your favorite, he just smiles fondly.

remus would kiss your scars and bruises, and you'd do the same for him. i don't really see him being extremely confrontational with bullies, but for you he would be (or he'd get sirius and james to do it). he loves when you make or give him things! he has a drawer next to his bed full of your drawings and trinkets you've given him, and i think he would even have one of your drawings in his bookbag all the time.

sharing earbuds while listening to music is a big thing for both of you, maybe you recommend songs to each other or listen to the playlists you've made that remind you of him! cuddling, hugs, drawing on his hand, he absolutely adores it all!! his favorite thing to do is sit in the common room or somewhere else a little secluded on castle grounds and listen to music together with you cuddled up against him.

kait's sweetest celebration!

[gotnofucks]

Will you make me a drabble where I ask Steve to be my daddy or just make him my daddy🥺🥺👉👈 love you bestie!!

Title: The Journey to Daddy

Pairing: Steve x Reader

Summary: Five times you call Steve ‘daddy’, and the one times he asks you to.

Words: 1.6k

Warning: slight smut, daddy kink, some jealousy and possessiveness, 18+ Only

A/N: There is only one person who can ever make me go soft. Berry, this is for you. Love you more my queen @donutloverxo

+++++

1.

Sometimes, you felt like an onion. You had a lot of layers around you: secrets, insecurities, dreams you were scared of living, things that were never said. And every time, it felt like Steve would peel a layer to expose the truest form of you. You'd never felt as naked as you did when his eyes were fixed on you, with no judgement or question, only love.

You'd been going out for months now, learning about each other, exploring your boundaries. Steve was the most attentive boyfriend. He was caring and respectful, always there for you before you even asked for him. He'd lift you up when you needed something from the top shelf. He'd cook for you because he knew you liked the domestic look on him. He'd tickle you to tears when you were down, trailing kisses down your forehead to your nose to your chin before blowing a raspberry on the hollow of your neck that would have you giggling.

Steve was so perfect, and it was very unconscious the first time you called him Daddy. You were in the kitchen and had broken a plate when Steve came rushing out, carrying you away from the wreckage to make sure you were okay. he wouldn't let you clean it, afraid you'd hurt yourself.

"You're okay baby?" He had asked.

"Yes daddy" you had softly replied into his neck, soothed by his smell. And though he didn't say anything, the thought kept running in his head. Daddy?

2.

Your cries got higher with each thrust, nails digging into Steve’s shoulder as he pumped into you. He loved it when you got like this, all dumbed down and messy, garbling words that felt like poetry to him. You came around him again, squeezing his length between the velvety walls of your sex and he released into you with a growl.

Sweaty and spent, you looked a beauty to him as you laid under his naked body covered in his essence. His large body framed yours and as he leaned in to kiss your glistening and bruised lips, you tiredly said, "I love you, daddy".

He stilled, whispering a love you back before collapsing next to you. Looking at you drifting away, he got up to clean you and cover you up, holding you close as his thoughts ran wild. There it was again. Daddy. Why did you call him that?

3.

Your birthdays were more important to Steve than they were to you. Every time, even when you’d not been dating, Steve would pull all stops for your birthday. He’d arrange a party that would consist only of your closest friends and family, cook all your favorite food, and would make sure everyone got you a present you liked.

There was that time Steve had made a list and gave it out. “Just get her something from this. I know what she likes.” Idiot. He should have put only his name on the list, since there was nothing you wanted more than him. Today, as you celebrated this day as a couple, he decided to make it intimate and private.

He decorated the balcony in your favorite fairy lights, lightening soft candles and putting your favorite flowers everywhere so that it smelled divine. You both sat under the stars, holding each other as you snuggled in the blanket, talking in hushed tone.

“What did you wish for when you blew the candles?” He asked, pressing his lips on the crown of your head. You looked at him, eyes reflecting the candles that danced in the wind.

“I have everything I want. Here.” You said, touching his chest. “You’re all I want. Thank you for today, daddy.”

You kissed him, not noticing the slight hitch in his breath as you said that. Daddy, he liked how that sounded.

4.

The sounds of typing were a normal in your house, but it bothered Steve when it went past midnight for the third night in a row. He saw you stifle another yawn, rubbing at your eyes as you tried to finish this project on time. You worked way too hard if you asked him.

“Baby, come to bed. It’s late.”

“I can’t, really need to get this done.”

Steve sighed, washing your now empty coffee mug before sitting beside you. He counted three more yawns along with four curses whispered under your breath and he knew he needed to step in. Gently stopping your hand, he turned you to face him and cupped your face.

“You still have four days before you need to turn this in. Come to bed honey, you’re tired and I don’t wanna sleep without you.”

You pouted, tired and internally glad that he finally stopped you. Nodding, you allowed him to more or less carry you into the bedroom and put you into pajamas, tucking you into the warmth of his body as he turned out the lights.

“Sleep, sweetheart. I’ll make you your favorite breakfast tomorrow so you’re all charged up for another day of working. I love you.”

His arms came around you, your back to his chest. Tangling your fingers with his, you pressed a sleepy kiss on his knuckles before whispering into the dark, “good night daddy. Love you too.”

5.

The fifth time you did it, you scared him.

The Avengers Gala was something Steve hated and loved. He loved he could have you on his arm, his girl to proclaim before the world. His friends got together and had a nice time, and people he hadn’t seen for a while surfaced too.

What Steve couldn’t handle was the audacity of men to ogle you. Despite you being on his arm, they would follow you with their creepy eyes, trying to sneak in a word whenever someone pulled him away from you. He knew he mustn’t be jealous; if there was anything Steve was ever secure about, it was your love for him. But he couldn’t stand still watching some good for nothing bastard try to win you over with a pick up line that was older than he was.

“Excuse me gentlemen” He almost growled, taking your arm possessively before whisking you away into a dark corner, intent on having you all to himself. You rolled your eyes, used to this act by now. You’d never told him, but it was almost endearing watching a man like him get so antsy over you.

“You can’t always hide me away!” You chided him but didn’t push him away. You preferred his company over any other, and if were to take you home right now, you wouldn’t mind. Steve bit his lips before cutting a glance to the men who were flirting with you earlier, a snarl lodged in his chest.

“No, but I can do this!” His lips crashed on yours, pulling you into a deep kiss that tasted of his power and love. You melted into his touch, arms hooking around his neck to bring him down to your height, tongues tangling together in a sloppy kiss. Steve didn’t let up until you had to finally break to breath, both panting hard.

“What was that for?” You asked, softly touching your lips that tingled.

“To remind everyone that you belong to me!” He said, pulling you closer. You smiled, pressing another kiss on his lips before tucking your head under his neck.

“Of course I belong to you daddy.”

He spent the rest of the party distracted. You’d called him that a lot recently. But why? Did you want him to be a daddy? You'd both decided to never to have children in the early days of getting together. Why then did you call him daddy? And why did it send a thrill down his back? God, he hoped you weren't pregnant.

+ 1

The morning after the party, he woke you up with kisses trailing down your neck, soothing the sting of the bites he had placed there last night. As you whimpered, wanting to sleep some more, he pushed a hand under your top to tickle your ribs, smiling as you giggled and squirmed.

“Steve!” You squealed as he reached under your breast. He chuckled before kissing up your exposed tummy, loving the sounds of your laughter as he reached your mouth and pressed deep and slow kisses there.

“Good morning.” He said, nuzzling his nose into you. You sighed in happiness, snuggling into him and breathing in his scent.

“Good morning.”

You stayed that way for a while, him gently rocking you back and forth as you hummed, enjoying the quiet morning together. It was after a few minutes that Steve spoke.

“Why do you call me daddy?”

A sudden shyness came over you and you buried your face deeper into his chest, not speaking. Steve tutted, gently pulling you back and titling your face up to meet his eyes.

"Do you want us to have a kid?" Steve asked and you shook your head.

"No." You said, embarrassed.

"Then why do you call me daddy?"

You looked at him with glittering eyes, cupping his cheek softly that was threatening to develop a scruff if not shaved.

"Because I trust you." You said. "I never have to hide from you, never have to worry. You look after me, you love me unconditionally. You care about me in a way no one has ever before. When you take charge, it makes me feel good. I love it when you guide me in bed. I love it when you step up and look after me. Calling you daddy puts those feelings into words."

Steve couldn't look away from you and your eyes. The love and trust you put in him made him a better person, it made him feel worthy. All he ever wanted in life was to have someone to call his own, to hold them and love them and never let any harm come to them. Looking into your eyes, he knew he had all he wanted. He held you closer and tighter, brushing your lips with his.

"Say it again then, baby."

"Daddy"

[notbecauseofvictories]

2021 Book List

I read 66 books and 237 romance novels in 2021, which I am choosing to believe is a net positive---303 books is a lot of books, even if 78% of them were about people wearing cravats and falling in love in the most ridiculous fashion possible.

I didn't read anything that blew me away quite like my favorites from 2020. However, incidentally or otherwise, I found my way to airport paperbacks---Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas series, Sophie Kinsella's fantasies of humble-yet-meaningful British pastoral life, Grady Hendrix's luridly readable horror novels and Elizabeth Gilbert's compulsively readable historical fiction. (Plus the aforementioned cravats & corsets romance novels.)

I don't think I learned anything from this, I don't think I have any additional insight into the human condition. But I had a lot of fun, and it whiled away a lot of hours, and maybe in a year like 2021, that's enough.

2021 SHORTLIST (in no particular order)

Hench, Natalie Zina Walschots

Are you sick of superheroes? I am sick of superheroes. More importantly, this novel was also sick of superheroes and features a protagonist with the kind of chilly competence and anger to do something about it. Overall a twisty fun novel, with an unexpected style and some body weirdness that really worked for me.

The Fisherman, John Langan

A meditation on the tyranny of loss, which I am weak for. I've talked about this one before.

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel

A novel which takes place, in part, after the world as we know it ends and yet humanity keeps going—wrecking violence, making museums, music and religion and journalism, clipping comics and news stories after gasoline has run out; searching the horizon for signs of life. This and Franny Choi’s “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On” have been my compass rose through [gestures]

Homie, Danez Smith

I read a lot of great poetry, and I've even read a lot of great poetry from Danez Smith---but this collection blew me away. From friendship ("how many of us have them?" and "acknowledgements") to HIV ("sometimes i wish i felt the side effects" and "all the good dick lives in brooklyn park") to transphobia ("the fat one with the switch"), suicide ("notes") it feels like gripping a live wire. Some of the best writing this year.

A Face Like Glass, Frances Hardinge

I ended up reading this after borrowing Deeplight from the library, and loving Hardinge's writing---a YA novel, maybe, but YA in the tradition of the Abhorsen series, or the Queen's Thief series. However, while Deeplight was good, A Face Like Glass reduced me to the Jenny Slate meme. The worldbuilding! The Faces and kleptomancy, Caverna and cheese and changelings...just phenomenal.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix

I've put a pretty serious dent in Hendrix's oeuvre (We Sold Our Souls, My Best Friend's Exorcism, Satan Loves You, The Final Girl Support Group) and "Southern Book Club" is the best of the lot. More here.

City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert

I have read both City of Girls and The Signature of All Things and unfortunately I actually really like Elizabeth Gilbert's writing! The Eat Pray Love lady might actually be good at this! City of Girls in particular is screamingly funny, featuring a narrator who is both self-aware and not, clever and dumb as bricks, all of which makes for some truly delicious dramatic irony.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

The Dresden Files really did sneak in there and colonize a part of my brain for a while. I am still thinking about Ghost Story.

Revelator, by Daryl Gregory, was a fun little trip of a book---it doesn't commit to Appalachian Gothic quite as hard as I wanted it to, but the great, gross imagery was too good

2021 ROMANCE PICKS (in no particular order)

Eloisa James in general, but especially, A Duke of Her Own

Lisa Kleypas, Tempt Me at Twilight, Love In the Afternoon

Lauren Willig's "Pink Carnation" series, but particularly The Garden Intrigue, The Orchid Affair

Evie Dunmore, A Rogue of One's Own

Grace Burrowes, The Duke's Disaster

Maya Rodale, Seducing Mr. Knightly

Kate Bateman, This Earl of Mine

Tessa Dare, Romancing the Duke, A Week to Be Wicked

Sabrina Jeffries, Project Duchess

Loretta Chase, Scandal Wears Satin, Miss Wonderful

Courtney Milan, The Duke Who Didn't

Sarah Maclean, Bombshells

Julia Quinn, Romancing Mister Bridgerton, It's in His Kiss, The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy

Sherry Thomas, Delicious

Rose Lerner, True Pretenses

HONORABLE MENTIONS

As mentioned above, Sophie Kinsella is eminently readable, especially I've Got Your Number, and I Owe You One. Also, while overall her pastoralist fantasy leaves me cold, the beginning of The Undomestic Goddess where a young attorney screws something up and runs away to avoid the consequences gave me cold sweats. An actual nightmare I have had before.

Helen Hoang, The Bride Test, which I genuinely did like, though I bounced off of Hoang's previous novel super hard.

[purplecat4321]

Fahrenheit 451 is Bad

Everyone knows that Fahrenheit 451 is a terrible book, right? And yet teachers keep using it anyway because it’s a “””Literary Classic”””.

Well no more!

Guys, gals, and non-binary pals of Tumblr dot com, I present to you:

✨ How to fix Fahrenheit 451! ✨

🛑 !!! CW: Addiction, suicide !!! 🛑

Alright kiddos, buckle up cause this’ll be one wild ride.

First of all, Montag does not in any way fit into the world he’s in. We don’t know if the informative revolution came before or after he grew up, but he seems to be completely brainwashed so it’s safe to say that it came before. He seems to be completely satisfied until Clarisse wakes him up, even saying that “He wore his happiness as a mask…” (Bradbury 20), but he also doesn’t understand the people around him. The world is built to keep people satiated by keeping them busy, but Montag isn’t busy. He’s brainwashed in an entirely different way than everyone else, which makes no sense. So the first thing we’re gonna do is trash that.

He’s going to be just as addicted to the parlor walls as Mildred is (don’t worry, we’ll get to her later), and they’re going to be constantly telling him “life is wonderful and amazing be happy!” That’ll become his mantra, and when Clarisse comes up and is like yo, “’Are you happy?’” (Bradbury 17), he’ll repeat it in her face. Also, he’s not going to have his secret stash of books and he’s not going to immediately wake up, that’s dumb. He’s going to be just like the other firemen, completely robotic and ignoring Clarisse. “’The others would walk off and leave me talking’” (Bradbury 34). She’s going to approach him, ask her questions, and Montag’s going to subtly warn her off, but her words are going to stay with him. Something like the next night, he’s walking home and he suddenly remembers how she said, “’There’s dew on the grass in the morning’” (Bradbury 16) So he stops and looks for dew, then remembers himself and runs away. That’s what’s going to spark his awakening: when he acts on Clarisse’s influence without conscious thought.

So then he’s gonna start looking for Clarisse, and she’s going to approach him again, and he’s going to say “I saw the dew on the grass. What else is there?” And Clarisse is going to guide him through learning how to see things, same as in the book. “Have you seen the two-hundred-foot-long billboards in the country beyond town?” (Bradbury 16) “You smell like kerosene.” Little things that seem obvious but Montag didn’t notice and didn’t describe to us, the reader. His work’s going to be quiet for a bit as he slowly wakes up. The writing style is going to be directly influenced by Montag’s journey since we’re in his perspective. In the beginning, it’s going to be very direct and to-the-point, describing only what things are, like “he opened one of the cabinets along the wall” instead of “he swung the dark grey cabinet door open with a squeak, letting the light drive the shadows out from inside.” But It’s going to be a very subtle change so that we go from 1 in the beginning to 2 at the end without the reader noticing.

After life’s gotten a bit more interesting, Montag starts dreading going back into the parlor again because it’s mind-numbing and he wants to appreciate life, but also he’s never gone more than 12 hours without a parlor sesh. Just to sprinkle in a bit of angst, y’know?

Anyways inciting incident time, he’s going to go to another book-burning with his newly-awakened senses, but this time he’ll be overwhelmed by all the stuff he’s noticing; fire’s bright, smoke clouding his breath, deep gravel of Beatty’s voice as he says “are you good bro”, etc., etc. He regains composure, then has to actually burn books and he notices stuff about them, as well, which isn’t good for his job. He sees the careful binding, the foreword “to my son”, and he reads a few lines of poetry. “Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine” (Bradbury 51), for example. He doesn’t want to appreciate the books so he burns them harder and Beatty’s like “good work today soldier, wish you were that passionate all the time”. Then Montag goes home, avoiding Clarisse because she did this to him, and lays in bed trying to sleep because Mildred currently has the Seashells. The words he read circle around and around in his mind, he keeps telling himself it's utter nonsense, but they just won’t leave, like a song stuck in his head playing on loop. “Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.” Mildred had committed unalivement right before he got home, so he tries to wake her up to discuss the poetry and she’s dead. 🎉 The pumpers arrive as normal, yadda yadda, pretty much everything’s the same as this part of the book (22-25 for reference), except the next morning neither of them mentions it (I’m so hungry, what happened last night?) (Oh nothing dear we just had a wild party) (Yes yes a party, “Hope I didn’t do anything foolish at the party” (Bradbury 29).).

He tries his best to un-swallow the red pill over the next couple of days but is unsuccessful. He notices stuff about the actual function of the world to give the readers more insight into how stuff works, all the while cursing his new powers of observation. In the shower one day he finally breakdown breakdowns (pah pah pah pah), and he remembers seeing Millie’s dead body and cries about it, then he has an epiphany—those poetry lines that he can’t get out of his head directly relate to however he feels about Millie’s death; he now understands the Poetry and that revelation fills him with dopamine, a sense of purpose and accomplishment. He tries to find Clarisse, but she’s dead now :D (“Run over by a car. Four days ago. I’m not sure. But I think she’s dead” (Bradbury 63).)

Now he’s filled with dreaded curiosity, and he really wants to read more poetry, despite it going against all his beliefs and stuff. So he steals the book of poetry, and he gets away with it—he reads it to go to sleep each night, as Millie sleeps. He falls into this new habit of having a poem a day he tries to connect to his world, and he gets better and better at thinking. I said we’d get back to Millie and we are. Millie’s also going to be working a job, and she and Montag are going to work together as partners instead of Montag being the provider. They work opposite shifts, her the day and Montag the night, so they hardly ever see each other, but they need each other to keep going, both financially and emotionally. They don’t romantically love each other, but they help each other out like friends would. This is where I’m going to end it for today. I have no idea how the world actually works outside of Montag’s life, so I have no clue how he could reverse the change the government has brought. Also I’m tired. My fingers hurt. If this gets 1,000 notes, I’ll make a part 2 about my theories and possible endings. Until then 💖

(Also if someone actually wants to rewrite Fahrenheit according to this you have my complete permission, please please do <3)

[we-are-indeed-villains]

Some things I wish I had known before getting sucked into the whole “dark academia” business:

I waited a very long time to start posting here because It just seemed necessary to wait a bit since DA exploded out of nowhere last year. I just couldn’t bring myself to write when I was so disgusted with the community. Now that it seems like we are out of fashion again (lol) I decided it could be worth giving this blog a try.

Also, almost everything I say here goes for pretty much any change in lifestyle, and these are just some general guidelines that I find particularly easy to follow, but do what works best for you!

1 - You DON’T have to spend all of your money to fit into this “aesthetic”.

The biggest problem with what is now called dark academia (but really, it has been a thing for such a long time) is that people put it in the same category as, for instance, VSCO girls or Indie (not that there is any problem with these aesthetics in specific, they are actually quite cute!). I know this sounds like rubbish, but DA really is a little bit more than that. The clothing/visual part of it may be important to some, but the way you choose to live your life and the hobbies you opt to engage with are crucial for everyone!

That being said, don’t spend a ridiculous amount of money on expensive linen shirts and fancy blazers. You don’t need a brand new pair of Oxfords or a 100% leather messenger bag to consider yourself DA. Start small, then make investments if you find it to be worth it. That brings us to our second point:

2 - Find your favourite aspect of the community.

I know it can be very overwhelming to adhere to any new style of living, but there are some easier ways to make a smoother transition (also, you don’t really want everyone to notice that you went from water to wine in one week, and then back to water after two more because you felt lost amidst all of those weird nerds you found on Tumblr, right?).

Begin with figuring out what part of the lifestyle you identify with the most. Is it the musical part? Classical dance? Are you into poetry? Books? History?

Once you have that done (I plan on doing posts on all of those topics and more, so stay tuned!), narrow it down until you find the very core of your interest. For example, I absolutely love literature, but what do I love about it? Is it the writing part? The reading part? Both? Do I have a favourite style? If the answer for the previous question is ‘no’, try to find one! There are so many amazing styles and eras to explore!

After determining what is/are your main interests, make sure to find time to fit them into your life. Buy more books, if possible. There are also public libraries with a great variety of literature to choose from! If you already do that, I encourage you to try getting out of your comfort zone and attempting something new. Why not experiment reading a different style of books? Or maybe getting into the more poetic part of literature?

3 - Get into it!

Have you found your main interest? Great! Now it may be time to actually get into the fashion aspect of the whole thing. Also, remember that, although it is not a requirement per say, being academically successful is something you may want to achieve, so put some effort into that as well.

I won’t get too much into the fashion rabbithole, but I may write something about it later. In the meantime, you can definitely find some great guides on different DA related blogs.

4 - Don’t adhere to all the negative habits that DA romanticizes.

We all know that mental illness and self destructive behaviors are heavily romanticised, and I will say this from the bottom of my heart: DO NOT LET YOUR MENTAL HEALTH SLIP BECAUSE OF SOME 15 YEAR OLD ON TUMBLR! Trust me, it is NOT worth it.

Cigarettes, alcohol, coffee, all-nighters, heavier drugs. All of that may seem cool and edgy from the outside (why people think that, I could not tell you), but it can also defeat the main purpose of DA and, even worse, ruin your physical and mental health for good. How are you going to stay ahead in school and go to Oxford if you are too busy partying and snorting coke? You will get a sore nose and a big hole in your pocket, that’s all.

Nihilism is another one. Note that I said “nihilism”, not "existentialism" (more on that coming in the future). If you enjoy pondering the reason for human existence and you question the religious beliefs that control our society, welcome to the club! But please, please, don’t let that get too much in your head. Existential depression is a very painful and difficult thing to deal with. It will take away any joy you may find and it is not in any way productive. If you have it, you will know what I mean. Thinking about it sometimes, writing poems, debating with friends, that’s all good, even encouraged, but don’t let it go to your head and become a problem. Not worth it.

Some extra things I would like to mention:

1 - Don’t force yourself into doing or enjoying anything. Sure, reading is good, but if it isn’t enjoyable there is no reason to become obsessed with it! DA should not be a burden.

2 - Stay away from the eurocentric ideals that come with the community. Racism is bad even if you want to live in the 1800s. There is simply no excuse to think that European culture is richer or more refined than any other. Remember that the only reason you think that is because some rich, old, white men decided to murder and opress millions of different people for pure egoism. Not really something to be proud of.

Also, if you are thinking “Yeah, whatever, but English culture is a lot nicer than Mexican, or Indian culture”, then you should probably reevaluate the reasons for your interest in DA.

3 - Don’t be mean to people just because you think it fits with your all-new pretentious and arrogant character. I don’t care if you want to be perceived as such, but it can be very bad in the long-run. Just be aware of that.

And most importantly, don’t let DA take away your personality! It’s okay to like video games and read gossip magazines every once in a while. It is also okay to be yourself. You don’t have to (and probably shouldn't) get rid of all the qualities that make you unique (yes, this is a cliche, but there is a reason why people say it all the time). Be silly, say dumb things and play minecraft with your friends all night, for godsakes!

“This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

(Hamlet - Polonius, act 1 scene 3)

-- Shakespeare, William

Memento Mori, dear villains.

[yamayuandadu]

Wikipedia troubles, or “Father Enlil, (...) don't let your precious metal be alloyed there with the dirt of the underworld“

clarification regarding my post about troubles with a certain site i’ve been contributing to a lot for the past few months. To preface this with a mythical metaphor: in Inanna’s Descent, when Ninshubur pleads with the other gods to save Inanna, she uses the formula “don't let anyone kill your daughter in the underworld. Don't let your precious metal be alloyed there with the dirt of the underworld. Don't let your precious lapis lazuli be split there with the mason's stone. Don't let your boxwood be chopped up there with the carpenter's wood.” Currently this is what is happening to the Inanna article, I am afraid.

So, long story short, as most of you probably have noticed I am contributing relatively often to wikipedia as of late, starting with the creation of a Matara-jin article a few months ago. Among other things I wrote, rewrote or at least significantly improved the following:

articles about Mesopotamian medicine goddesses:

Ninkarrak from the western frontier, Nintinugga, who was associated with funerary offerings, Ninisina, who took over Inanna's gimmick in Isin, Bau, who became a healing goddess by chance, Gula, who eclipsed her peers - as expected from someone named “the great” articles about Inanna's courtiers and associated goddesses:

Ninshubur, her sidekick (my best work overall imo, the one article I wrote which I think fully deserves the “good” badge but I am not vain enough to apply myself), Ninegal, a goddess turned into her title, Nanaya, just the horny part distilled (bought a book just for this one!), Irnina, inexplicably cthtonic personified victory

articles about Mesopotamian gods too insignificant for anyone else to care about them:

Tishpak, a god so foreign nobody knows where he came from, Sebitti, seven warlike brothers, Enmesharra, Enlil's evil uncle, Urash, not the earth goddess – there are two... Urashes, Ningishzida, Dumuzi but with a snake gimmick, Zababa, a war god who's NOT Nergal, Ninimma, Enlil's court scribe, Gatumdag, popular as ersatz mom among kings of Lagash, Manzat, the rainbow

articles about Mesopotamian goddesses whose main trait was being someone's wife: Marduk's wife Sarpanit, Adad's wife Shala, Shamash's wife Aya

articles about Hurrian gods: Alalu, primordial vanquished king of gods, Kumarbi, his son, divine Saturday morning cartoon villain, Ninatta and Kulitta, a pair of divine musicians who always appeared together, Allani, oddly joyful queen of the dead, Šauška, who was so firmly genderfluid there's two of them in the most famous image of the Hurrian pantheon, Lelluri, a mountain goddess, Kubaba, who isn't Cybele, Goddess of the Night, who has no proper name despite being a case study in important religious rituals, Belet Nagar, who was like Ashur before Ashur got popular, Nupatik, who was important but we don't know why

articles about Eblaite gods: Ishara, “independent lady of love associated with scorpion and cannabis” popular everywhere where she went, Aštabi, a war god who really wanted to be like the weather god, Hadabal, who used to be famous but vanished out of blue, Kura, whose mask had to be renewed each year, Adamma, who left her husband to hang out with Kubaba

articles about Elamite gods: Pinikir, sort of like a bootleg Ishtar and an international sensation, Jabru, who exists only in Mesopotamian texts about Elam, Humban, mandate of heaven personified, Ruhurater, oddly obscure creator of mankind, Inshushinak, the underworld judge and his Akkadian helpers Lagamar and Ishmekarab, and Simut, the “strange star”

articles which were borderline unusable before due to low quality of sources:

Astarte, who was much more than vintage Bible scholars might lead you to believe (but not a fertility goddess), Dagan, who wasn't a fishman, Qetesh whose existence proves that Egyptians were fond of making ocs for their favorite foreign franchises

assorted articles about general topics pertaining to Mesopotamia:

Sukkal,  Hurrian religion (ongoing project), List of Elamite gods; also a much needed overhaul of List of Mesopotamian deities (ongoing project)

and, last but not least, a solid chunk of the Inanna article.

Two guiding principles of these ventures were the following:

people who cannot access academic resources or don't know how to use them and as a result rely on wikipedia aren't any less deserving of receiving up to date, credible information

Wikipedia's mode of operation isn't flawed in itself and the only problem is lack of will to edit it

I think I did a pretty good job at these two things, honestly. I made sure to rely on rigorous, credible, and, if possible, easy to understand sources, and removed the horrors which sometimes were hidden in bibliographies: a book written by a hate preacher who believed Bush didn't start enough wars; 1930s race science; what I can only describe as a hybrid of Woman's Encyclopedia and a bdsm manual; a fringe book asserting that Minoan palaces were graveyards and that Egyptians only learned mummification from superior Minoans; etc. Of course, it’s a thankless job, but as long as I could make the site more credible undisturbed, that’s fine by me. I even got some help in a few cases, most notably that of the god list, indicating that the work was on some level appreciated. The only problem I've encountered prior to today came from editing the Ereshkigal article – I've removed the claim the Burney relief depicts “Lilith”; this edit was however undone. I left a message on the editor's page, complete with links to articles about the Burney relief AND about the possible Mesopotamian forerunners of Lilith (who are undeniably not depicted on the Burney relief). They're responded rather dismissively to it, and asserted that even if unproven, a connection existed, so I pretty quickly gave up, as they relied on sources which were outdated or fringe. I focused on fixing two long, important articles instead: the god list, and the Inanna article. Some parts of it were alright, but there was much work needed: fringe theories trying to assign greater antiquity to relatively late myths, and frankly insane hyperdiffusionism, had a prominent place in the article, while well attested association between Inanna and similar deities from cultures closely associated with Mesopotamia wasn't, much of the info was outdated, scandalous hot takes about Dumuzi's treatment were all over the place, the section on Inanna's descent favored Jungian confabulations over credible research, etc. My progress on fixing that had been slow and steady. However, today the aforementioned person intervened when, in between editing the Inanna article and the god list, I reverted a dumb, brief , unsourced edit – made by a third party - which asserted that Inanna's descent is “similar to Persephone” which it isn't – if anything is similar to Persephone in Mesopotamian mythology it's Nergal and Ereshkigal. They pretty clearly didn't take it well: not only the unfounded speculation went back up, but they also added a “source” affirming it, from a controversial -medical- author, not an Assyriologist. They also added Persephone to the list of Inanna equivalents in the infobox, removing any credibility whatsoever from it. The author of the claim this is all about relied on sources so antiquated that they interpreted Inanna's sexual character as her being a child-snatching boogeyman. Inanna's primary connection to boogeymen is that she was invoked, alongside Nanaya whose sexual connection is even more blatant, to -ward off- child-snatching boogeyman Lamashtu (whose character was not sexual, because sumerians and akkadians weren't victorian aristrocrats and weren't paranoically afraid of sex - and why would a demon representing death in infancy be sexual in nature, anyway?). Simply put, the book in mention is worthless as a source. Of course, I reverted that; when it went back up (despite a justification being included in my reversal) I edited the Inanna article to remove this outlandish claim (you have a limited number of possible reversions per day for some arcane reason), also adding other information about Inanna I had prepared: a few tidbits on Assyrian royal inscriptions which involved the warlike and erotic aspects at once, suggesting that transgressors should lose both potency and bravery in battle, some info on love poetry about her and Dumuzi, that sort of stuff. The weird person reverted my edit – removing valuable info – and reinstated the claim. For a moment I lost my cool and reverted this edit, which sadly put me in the reversion overuse danger zone, but which was a necessary sacrifice to save the credibility of article I put weeks of work into. See the edit history here. As you can guess HaniwaEnthusiast is me. I left messages critical of this decision on the talk page of the article and on the talk page of the outlandish editor. Sadly, they responded rather rudely, and basically declared Wikipedia isn't meant to be credible, and that favoring academic sources over random crap is an “ivory tower” approach and should be discouraged; they also insulted me but that's much less relevant and much less hurtful than their desire to spread lies. If you ask me it's more of an ivory tower attitude to say people who cannot access or don't know how to use academic sources do not deserve equally credible info and need to be at the mercy of weird wikipedia editors. What's the main problem here, though? That person is a mod. Not a random user. They have 16 years of Wikipedia experience. They spread fringe, pop-spiritual claims about Lilith and the like, so I assume they have an ulterior religious agenda of some sort, which they seem to actively encourage judging from these ventures. I'm not sure if the Inanna article is a lost cause yet but I do think the weird addition of Persephone they made is a step into some hellish direction, and I am entirely certain I cannot win this conflict. Simply put, I think that if this is the sort of staff the site has, this is a lost cause. I am not sure if I will go back to editing.

[deafaq]

Comprehensive guide to writing deaf characters

Despite not being intented as a blog resource for writers, we get a lot of questions regarding how to write deaf characters. (and by a lot, I mean like half of questions are about writing)

Since lot of these questions are similar anyway, I wrote up this guide for anyone intending to add deaf characters into their writing. From now on, we shall only answer questions related to writing which AREN’T covered in this guide.

Please, keep in mind that deaf people aren’t a hive mind and this guide is based on our personal experience. We recommend a sensitivity deaf reader if you plan to make any deaf character a big part of your story.

Rest of guide under the cut.

Medical basics

-          Deafness can be caused by many factors.

-          For people born deaf, common causes are: genetics, illnesses of mother during pregnancy (and meds taken), complicated birth, premature birth, etc.

-          For people who become deaf later in life: old age, noise damage, several infectious illnesses (for example meningitis), medication (cancer meds or certain antibiotics), tumours on auditory nerve and in brain, chronic inflammations of middle ear, etc.

-          Most people with hearing loss still have some degree of hearing

 Terminology

-          “deaf” – person with hearing loss

-          “hard of hearing” – person with hearing loss, still has some degree of hearing

-          “Deaf” – person with hearing loss who is proud of their deafness, is member of Deaf community and culture, communicates in sign language

-          “deafened” – person who lost their hearing in later life, often as adult

-          “deaf and dumb” – old terminology, now considered insulting

-          “hearing impaired” – medical term, often disliked by deaf people

 Compensation

-          Most hard of hearing and some deaf people wear hearing aids. Their function is similar to glasses, they enhances the remaining sense.

-          Hearing aids are often pricey, not covered by insurance and need batteries to recharge

-          They can be colourful, however most people use brown to make them less noticeable

-          They need to be taken off for sleeping and bathing

-          It’s considered rude to touch another’s person hearing aid. Hearing people should not try them out, as they can damage normal hearing.

-          Cochlear implant are more complicated, require surgery to insert. They compromise of two parts – inner part (under skull), which stimulates hair cells in cochlea, and outer part (outside on the head and ear), which is sound processor, microphone and battery. Both parts are connected via magnet.

-          Hearing via CI is more electrical than normal hearing and doesn’t sound same. After the operation, users must train their hearing and attend many sessions where CI is adjusted. It can take years for users to hear speech or use telephone. Success is very individual.

-          CIs are often disliked and criticized by Deaf community as they are seen as a threat to Deaf culture and language. There is also a question of consent – for CI to be successful, children must be implanted at young age (1-7 years) and the decision is usually made by their hearing parents.

-          Other compensation: Vibration and light alarms, alarm clocks, baby monitors, door bells. Special phones and headphones. Etc.

 Communication

 -          Children who are born deaf cannot naturally acquire spoken language. (aka from their parents/family) It cannot be learned by lip-reading. They learn it as a second language, often at school.

-          Despite the stereotype of deaf people being also mute, most deaf people can speak. However, they often have so called “deaf accents”, because they cannot hear themselves speak. Because of that, some deaf people prefer not to talk, to not be mocked for their accent.

-          Natural language of deaf people are sign languages. They are not universal, they have their own grammar and rules, they are not simple pantomime and they are not easy to learn. (see Sign Languages)

-          Not all deaf people use sign languages, especially those who become deafened later in life.

-          There are specific communication system, which combine spoken languages and sign languages, often used in education. They usually use signs from sign languages and spoken language grammar. The most common is Pidgin Signed English (PSE) or Signing Exact English (SEE). Some deaf people use them instead of sign language, since they grew up with it.

-          SimCom is simultaneous communication, speaking and using sign language at the same time. As its basically using two languages at one time, it’s difficult and one language often starts following grammatical structure of other.

-          Lip-reading is taxing, difficult and often based on talent. It must be taught. To properly lip-read, there must be good light conditions and you must be able to see the face of speaker.

-          Some deaf people use writing to communicate with hearing people – either with paper and pen, or on phone. This way of communication is often time-consuming.

-          Deaf people often use interpreters to help them communicate. They usually accompany the deaf person to doctors, authorities, important meetings, etc.

 Sign language

-          Sign languages are natural languages and not created by one person. They appeared organically over time.

-          Every country has their own national sign language. The ones most known and researched are ASL (American Sign Language), LFS (French Sign Language), BSL (British Sign Language), AUSLan (Australian Sign Language). There is about 137+ sign languages in the world.

-          Grammar in sign languages is based on 3D spaces and use of face expressions and movement of body. Signs are composed of hands in specific shapes, their movement and placement on the body.

-          Most sign language have their own finger alphabet. Most common are one-handed (ASL, LFS) and two-handed (BSL, AUSlan).

-          Sign languages are not inferior to spoken languages and can express the same things.

-          It takes time and dedication to learn any sign language. Usually at least 3 years for being able to communicate properly and more than 5 to be fluent.

-          You can sign with just one hand (that’s how deaf people communicate while eating or holding something, for example)

 Education

-          Until 1970s, the most common way of teaching deaf children was oralism, a teaching tradition which supressed and forbid the use of sign language and insisted on deaf children learning to speak. It is still often used, despite the fact that many studies prove it fails to properly educate deaf people.

-          Modern research has proven that use of sign language in education is beneficial for deaf children and helps them to better understand the material.

-          Deaf children can either study at school for deaf or be integrated into regular school. Deaf schools used to be very common in past, as they were only available means of education for most deaf people. Kids lived in dormitories. Whether sign language was/is used there depends on the school. Some even had/have deaf teachers.

-          Nowadays, most kids study in regular school along with hearing kids. If the school is good, they offer proper compensation – eg. interpreter in class, note taking services, hearing devices, etc. Some schools still sucks, however.

-          Integrated kids can suffer from isolation, bullying and discrimination from teachers.

-          There are colleges in USA which focus on deaf students and sign language. The most famous is Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C.

 Family

-          90% of deaf kids are born to hearing parents. Hearing parents often struggle with the disability of their child. In general, lot of hearing parents prefer to give their kids CI, to make them more “hearing”.

-          Deaf parents generally have hearing kids. Those kids are then called CODA – children of deaf adults. CODA often speak sign language well. In general, they are either very involved with Deaf community or not all and avoid it all costs. Lot of CODA children become interpreters.

-          Every family is different in how they communicate. Some use sign language. Some only spoken language, requiring the deaf member to lip-read. Some use combination of two or create their own home signs. If only certain members of family learn to sign, it’s usually mother or some other female family member (sister, grandmother).

  Deaf culture/community

-          A community of Deaf individuals who use sign language as their primary means of communication, are proud of their deafness and their culture. They do not see their deafness as disability/disease, but something that connects them, makes them different from others.

-          Deaf people often meet up in clubs, there is big emphasis on community, meeting together, communal experience, etc.

-          Term “Deaf gain” is used – what deafness gives us, instead of the usual what deafness takes away from us. What is important is “seeing”, not “absence of hearing”.

-          Deaf culture has its own set of social rules/etiquette.  Deaf people are generally more blunt and to the point than hearing people. There are special rules for getting attention – eg tapping on shoulder, turning lights on and off.

-          There is a big tradition in storytelling and poetry in sign language, especially ASL. Other visual art – videos, paintings and sculpture are also popular.

-          Deaf community has lot of members who are LGBT+ and has its own deaf organizations for said people. Generally, deaf community is more accepting when it comes to LGBT+ issues then general public, although exceptions exists.

-          Not every country has a strong Deaf community – the biggest one is in USA. In some countries, deaf people are isolated.

 Discrimination

-          Specific term for discrimination against deaf people is “audism” (not to confuse with autism). General term for discrimination against disabled people, “ableism”, is also used sometimes.

-          Deaf people often face discrimination especially when it comes to access to information and unwillingness to offer proper accommodation to them.

-          Movies/Tv shows/videos lack subtitles or closed captioning. Video games have no alternative way of showing audio cues. Lectures, festivals and public events are often without interpreters.

-          There have been numerous cases of arrests and deaths of deaf people after encounters with police due to communication.

-          Hospitals and doctors are often without interpreters and neglect to inform the deaf patients properly. Access to authorities and courts is also problematic.

-          Deaf people have difficult time finding employment due to prejudice. Even if they do find a job, employers often refuse to offer proper accommodation.

-          Many deaf people also struggle in education – see above.

 Common mistakes and stereotypes when writing deaf characters

-          Lip-reading as a superpower, which makes deaf person basically hearing anyway

-          Wearing Hearing aids at night and/or other people touching them and taking them off.

-          Cochlear Implants presented as “cure” or “miracle” which makes a deaf person into hearing person

-          Being able to learn sign language in record time (aka in several days)

-          “Happy” ending being deaf person losing their deafness via cure/miracle/magic

-          Deaf people being bitter and lonely (yes, there are deaf people who are bitter and lonely, but it’s not our defining trait and it’s not *that* common)

-          Using deafness as a “cute” trope to increase angst levels in your story because being deaf sucks, right? ( -_________-)

-          Deaf person only having hearing friends (it’s often the opposite, aka most friends of Deaf people are also Deaf). Same goes for dating.

-          Superpowers or magic that basically cancels out deafness

-          Creating your own Name signs for your characters (pls really don’t)

-          Sign language = English with signs

-          Framing the narrative as a “person overcoming their disability”

-          Including deafness as a punishment for the character

-          The only deaf character in the story is the villain (“bonus” points for ‘deafness turned them evil’)

-          Inspiration porn – see the link

 Also, keep in mind that:

-          Deafness isn’t a disease and isn’t actually contagious (can’t believe I have to say this)

-          We very rarely date people who don’t bother to learn how to communicate with us.

-          Deaf people can and do drive. We also travel. Use internet. Swim. Read.

-          “Shockingly”, we can tell apart yawning and screaming.

-          People who were born deaf think in sign language and asking about it really doesn’t make you a philosopher

[bellamyroselia]

Who could replace Hades as the new big bad? Overly long essay

Like pretty much everyone else in this fandom, I love Hades. Guy’s your typical pure evil villain with a personality larger than life itself and he’s having so much fun with it that it’s contagious. Every time he pops up, I’m delighted to see him. It’s so fun to see him do his shtick and have the time of his life with it, which also makes beating him feel so great. After all the crap he has put the main cast through, it’s so satisfying to blast him into the face because for a moment that confidence finally breaks and once it's all over, people cheer because they don’t have to live in horrible fear for a while at least. This characterization is mostly rooted on the sheer fear factor Hades had in the eyes of ancient people - even in civilizations which have rather chipper afterlife people tended to prefer living over dying, and this of course meant that they were absolutely terrified of the Underworld deities. Hades was mostly addressed by epithets in texts because people thought that if they called him by his name, they were drawing his attention and the last thing a sane person wants is the attention of an powerful god who has power over the dead. So if a god has this level of appeal, be it positive or negative, you may not even need excessive amount of mythological content to create a frame for a character!

This being said, I don’t believe his chances of coming back are as the big bad of a next game are high - that is unless we have to wait another 15-20 years to get a new game, but I’d like to be more hopeful than that. So if he isn’t coming back, who could possibly replace him as the new big bad of Kid Icarus? It’s not like the writers could ever run out of source material because there’s so many monsters to deal with and every god is more or less morally grey, meaning that there’s many possibilities for new bad guys regardless of the scale.

This took a lot longer than I originally expected and I’m sorry for that - there’s no worse idea than to jump into a rabbit hole and bringing a shovel with you because things will quickly spiral out of control into new interesting directions. The more info I gathered, the more interested I was on looking more into it and sometimes it even spiraled out of mythology into history and philosophy. If you’re interested on some specific reasons for why this took so long, here’s few: myths are long and there’s many different versions of them, epics are even longer, Peloponnese people couldn’t be bothered to write their own things down so I had to look what travelers wrote down, it takes Plato way too long to get into the point, Herodotus never gets into the point, someone translated the term metic as resident alien of all things which I thought was the funniest thing ever and Ludovisi Ares is really pretty.

This is the point where I give the obligatory warnings, so here - since I'm discussing mythology here, it's inevitable that there's some talk about violence and death. I'm not going to linger on the gruesome details, but know that it's there. At couple points this will spiral into a full-on history lesson because I thought that understanding the historical context was important regarding the topic I was discussing. Also this is a one long essay - and by long, I mean really, really long. If you want to read it all at one sitting, prepare some time for yourself. But with that all out of the way, let’s jump straight into the discussion on who could be the next possible big bad, shall we?

I’m limiting this mostly to the main 12 Olympians with the addition of some other big names to keep things simple - while some smaller mythological figures such as Arachne or Arke would work fantastically as villains, they don’t have that recognition or presentation the more well known characters have. We’re trying to speculate who could fill Hades’ shoes as the new main bad guy here after all, not who we could add on the list of great yet less significant antagonists like Medusa, Pandora and Thanatos. I’m excluding Zeus, Athena, Hephaestus and Demeter from this list for rather obvious reasons - Zeus because the the guy seems to be MIA for good so Palutena could rule the place, Athena and Hephaestus because Palutena and Dyntos practically are them and Demeter because Viridi pretty much is Mycenaean Demeter on steroids in a package way too small to contain all that anger within. I also don’t think her relationship with Pit and Palutena will change drastically, so she’s sitting comfortably on her friendenemy-zone.

As for already existing characters, I don’t think anyone of them could snatch the title of the big bad. Viridi is off the competition for already mentioned reasons and I don’t see anyone from Forces of Nature defecting to become the new main villain. Pyrrhon is either gone for good or went back to whatever is this world’s equivalent of Egypt to lick his wounds, so I don’t think he’s coming back anytime soon - and if he’s coming, I don’t think he’s coming back as a main bad guy since he really wasn’t one to begin with. Thanatos’ only major mythological appearance is the myth of Sisyphus capturing death which doesn’t exactly strike confidence on his abilities in general and if that version of Thanatos couldn’t do his job correctly when meeting one guy too stubborn to die, do you really think that I believe our Thanatos has any chances of becoming the new big bad? Bringing back Medusa would be beating a dead horse at this point unless they really twist the formula and I don’t think that’s going to happen, so Medusa is off the competition. Pandora wasn’t all that big of a threat to begin with, so if she comes back she most likely stays that way. So it’s definitely going to be a new character, but who could it be?

As for who for sure can’t replace Hades as the new main bad, it’s Hestia. She probably has the lowest chance of any big Greek god to even appear in a possible future Kid Icarus game simply because there’s next to no material of her and that’s for a good reason. She was the goddess of hearth, domesticity, family, home and state. Most of these were and still are considered private, so that explains why there’s very little material of Hestia actually doing anything - we don’t write epic poetry about cleaning the house, making a macaroni casserole for dinner or going to bathroom and so didn’t the ancient people. With Hestia, you’re dealing with the bare bones of a character because she’s so passive and non-confrontational figure. It would be hard to make her a central figure in any kind of plot, especially for a one centered around action, so she’s out.

Hermes is also a figure I don’t think would work as a big bad or as an antagonist in general and I don’t really have any concrete reasons for why I think so. I just feel that he would be unfit for the role. He’s a trickster who started his shenanigans on the day he was born and the rest is mythology - by cunning escapades and underdog tactics he became the messenger of gods and from that point onward he kept collecting even more jobs such as becoming the god of merchants, shepherds and thieves, being a psychopomp, guiding dreams and helping heroes whenever he felt like it. He has a lot of going on but he’s always regarded as someone who knows all the tricks and isn’t afraid to use them, not all bad for a guy whose name was derived from a word meaning a pile of rocks.

As for why I think Hermes would make an terrible antagonist is mostly because of his status as the god of thieves and how it’s pretty much the easiest way to turn him into an antagonist. The thing here is that I just can’t stand antagonists whose main thing is that they’re amazing thieves and/or tricksters in games. While I think they can be enjoyable in other forms of media if they’re written on a smart way, in games this is almost never the case because gameplay and story don’t always match perfectly and writers need to use cheap tactics to make the character work - and by cheap I mean either A.I stands for artificial incompetence and the character is simply bad at being a thief/trickster despite all the characters and lore saying otherwise or that the game just starts cheating against the player to make them feel dumb even though they did nothing wrong. Thieves and tricksters are just really hard to balance in a game when it’s not the player character doing the deceiving. That perfect sweet spot for a great character is too goddamn tiny and if the thief/trickster isn’t exactly in there, you have an annoying character either because they’re incompetent at their job or because computer is a cheating bastard. So while there’s many enjoyable antagonists who share traits with Hermes, combine them all into a one character with the problems I already mentioned and most of the time you have a figure everybody hates due to how infuriating they’re to deal with. We’re trying to make people interested of going on and seeing what happens next here, not trying to annoy them to the point where they can just drop the game and never pick it up again. As for another reason I don’t think Hermes would work all that well as an antagonist is because his whole shtick is that despite his incredible powers, he still manages to be an underdog. Needless to say, the way underdogs are represented in media is vastly different from the way major antagonists are and while it can work, it’s hard to pull off. And of course there’s the thing of Hermes being portrayed almost always as a positive figure in myths, meaning that I and many others have a hard time imagining him as a bad guy. At his most evil we imagine Hermes doing stuff such as saying to his nephew that grandpa equals target practice, not anything that could threaten the world. Though if Hermes is included into the cast of a future game, I can image him having a theme that sounds similar to the BW rival theme for some reason. It has that I’m a one chipper fella but I’m also extremely busy right now so goodbye for a moment, see you soon-energy in it that I associate with Hermes.

As for what kind of role Hermes could be playing, he could work rather well as a quick cameo like Poseidon was in KI:U, where he offers help in some form. If one wants to go deeper into it, he could possibly run some service since he was the god of merchants and trade as well - though if one want to involve the fact of him being the god of thieves in addition to previously mentioned things, make him an occasional scammer because that’s what one would expect from a trickster. Or have him as a boss in a training gauntlet. Works either way.

______

If Artemis was introduced into the series, I don’t think she would be antagonistic. I can totally see her having a cold personality and her being bit of a hard person to deal with, but I don’t see her being actively malicious character - only example of Artemis being overly cruel towards figures KI-characters seem to be based on would be her sending the Calydonian boar to cause chaos in Calydon. It’s interesting if you believe Magnus and Gaol are at least partially inspired by Meleager and Atalanta like I do, but I don’t think it’s enough to make Artemis an antagonist, much less the main villain so she’s off the competition. Not to say she isn't wrathful, I looked into it and her wrath far outnumbers her blessings, though it's rather messy at times and some of them even can't co-exist the ones about Orion and Callisto definitely can't but her wrath is divorced from the main KI-cast. You'd have to create new characters to excuse it and KI already has a rather large cast, so I don't think it would be all that wise to create new characters just for the sake of goddess cursing them for a plot line that's resolved in couple chapters. Maybe she’s just a cameo or possibly a boss in a training gauntlet.

Apollo would be an antagonist. I just don’t see any other way how he could be introduced into the series. He has potential to be a charismatic, funny and mostly harmless antagonist who isn’t there to cause any trouble, he just really hates Pit and only Pit. But why would he hate Pit? It’s not like the mythological Apollo dislikes Icarus or Perseus and that’s indeed true, but there’s one more thing. For a god who we associate with a celestial body mostly made out of hydrogen and helium, Apollo has extremely high levels of sodium chloride within him - which is to say that he has been salty starting from the moment Hermes robbed him that one time and that lake of salt inside him has only become larger ever since. That salt is directed at people he dislikes and while he doesn’t dislike Icarus or Perseus because he never met either of them, guess who he does dislike? Angel-like gods, or just Eros to be more specific.

The story goes that Apollo’s enormous ego took the better of him one day and so he started to mock his nephew for what he thought was mediocre use of the bow and arrow. Insulted Eros decided that Apollo had officially lost his uncle-license which led him to curse Apollo to have the worst love life imaginable, starting with Daphne. And as we all know Cupid is Roman version of Eros and Pit is named after Cupid, so this was hatred made in heaven and it would be disappointing to not use the opportunity when it has been given to us on a golden platter. And you don’t even have to come up with an detailed and intriguing story to explain why Apollo hates him - something could’ve very well happened during the three years Pit’s consciousness was in that ring. His body may have ruined Apollo’s chances to hit it off with people because it was destroying their cities or something similar. Or just leave it as a noodle incident that’s referenced multiple times, everyone wonders what the heck actually happened but only Apollo knows, refusing to tell the story because he just assumes that everyone already knows it and they’re just messing with him by pretending to not know. Either way, Apollo should be an antagonist if he’s featured in a sequel. Not a villain, definitely not the big bad but fun antagonist to deal with.

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This is something that most of you probably already know or at least you would know if you’ve actually read something other than Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or as I like to call it Jaded man screams at Emperor Augustus because apparently telling the Roman citizens to go all out on every monument the prude ever built clearly wasn’t enough, please tell me you have but Medusa isn’t an only child. She’s in fact one of Phorcys and Ceto’s seven children, both of them being somewhat monstrous primordial ocean deities - Phorcys has been described as a merman with red skin and crab claws, Ceto’s name in the other hand just literally means sea monster. Besides Medusa and the two other gorgons Stheno and Euryale, the list of their children includes the graeae sisters, serpentine dragon Ladon and Echidna, which is quite a lot of snake monsters for two deities who themselves don’t have any snake traits. There’s a lot of potential in this group but ideas of any of them becoming the new big bad end up falling apart because just like Medusa, they’re all rather bland characters like you’d expect from a mythological monster. They’re less like characters and more like plot devices that the hero needs to deal with. The only two members of this family besides Medusa who actually get to do something of importance are Ladon and Echidna and even those acts aren’t all that interesting. Echidna gets to have her many monstrous children with Typhon and then she’s apparently is killed by Argus, Hera’s servant-giant while sleeping on a cave just like her sister. Ladon guarded the garden of Hesperides which was well known for its golden apples and he doesn’t get to die with much dignity either, since Heracles just shoots him in the back and literally the next day other Argonauts find nymphs looking at his still twitching body. Alternatively Heracles just tricks Titan Atlas to do all the apple picking, which leaves Ladon alive.

Possibly one of the biggest problems writers have to deal with is setting. Ladon is very strictly tied into the garden setting and Echidna was cave dweller who never left her home, so writers would have to come with rather specific situations for them to appear. Of course if one wants to be lazy, Underworld could possibly serve as their home. It could very well house caves big enough to house a snake monster and Greek Underworld does have Elysium, which is basically Paradise and it could very well also function as a garden. But honestly even with the right setting, I don’t think either of them would make all that interesting big bads. They would definitely work fantastically as large-scale villains, but they don’t really have that much intimidation factor all things considered - you can blame Argus and Heracles for that.

But I’m not done with this family yet as there’s one character connected to them who’s probably the most feared monster of all Greco-Roman mythology and that’s Typhon, Echidna’s mate. He’s essentially an ancient Greek equivalent of a kaiju, more a destructive force of nature than a monster and everyone fears him - and by everyone, I mean everyone. There’s couple of versions of what happens but the most popular one goes that when the gods saw him, their first instinct was to shapeshift into animals and flee into Egypt. Those who did stay behind such as Hades were said to cover in fear in their homes while Typhon ravaged the land. Zeus tried to fight him but when he went for the kill, Typhon caught him and cut off his sinews, then threw him into a cave under the watch of another snake monster Delphyne. This didn’t stop Hermes and Pan from getting the sinews back and saving Zeus, and once his strength has been restored he and Typhon fought once again. Zeus eventually wearied Typhon down and then either casted him down into Tartarus or dropped a mountain on top of him, that being Mount Etna.

He could work very well as a big bad, problem here are just how high the stakes need to be for him to work. He’d had to be the ultimate villain if that was the case, the stakes need to be higher than they were with Hades. And considering how Hades was pretty much your typical pure evil villain causing chaos, what separates Typhon from him? Just some more chaos and no wisecracking dialogue because everyone is too scared to talk? He comes off as way too similar to Hades without all the fun personality. Maybe if KI:U became a KI:U-trilogy he could work as the ultimate big bad of the last game, but I got to say no otherwise. The bar for making him work is already sky-high due to how destructive he is and we don’t want to repeat the plot of Uprising here. So while he definitely can work, maybe save him for later.

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Hera and Poseidon both have potential to be serious antagonistic forces, but I don’t think they have it to be main villains. Hera simply fits the bill because most of the times she’s the antagonistic force actively trying to make people’s lives worse, all because she can’t direct her anger at correct people. Some times she’s just blatantly evil, like how she imprisoned her own daughter Eileithyia or you may better know her as Lucina to prevent the birth of Artemis and Apollo or how she tricked her pregnant great-granddaughter into disintegrating herself Semele is her great-granddaughter by the way. As for examples of Hera being wrathful which don’t involve Zeus being horny, she was said to be the one who sent Sphinx to Thebes, no reason given why or if there’s one, I couldn’t find it. Works either way.

Because she might as well be the personification of divine wrath, it’s pretty easy to see why one would think she would make a great villain. However that wrath also gives us a big problem, it being that her evil escapades are mostly rooted on anger and spite - while wrath is a good driving force for a villain, it needs more to work. With Hades, he does evil things for fun and is having a blast while doing it. Hera on the other hand just rages and most of the times it’s because of Zeus, who seems to be out of the picture. She’s not there to have fun and when you add her general lack of charisma on the top, you don’t end up with the most endearing character. While wrath can serve as a character motivation, it can become stale very quickly and this means that unless the story regarding villainy her is short (as in solved in 1-3 chapters) it starts to feel like dragging. I overall think that Hera does have very low chances to appear in general, but if she does appear as an antagonist she should preferably be a minor one in the same way Viridi was. You know the meme of what makes villain a supervillain and the answer is presentation? Hera doesn’t have that presentation. Writers can certainly just give her that which is what they did with Hades whose mythological counterpart was more or less a basement dweller, but why go trough all that trouble when there’s so many better candidates to work with?

On to Poseidon, who’s an important figure in the founding myth of Athens - it’s honestly quite odd how it’s never mentioned in any shape or form in KI:U despite Palutena being based on Athena. But then again, considering how much “care” this series put on the names of its cities and towns, this being ignored doesn’t really surprise me even if it does disappoint. He was a really big deal during the Mycenaean period, besides being the god of ocean he was also seen as the head god and the ruler of the Underworld. Then the Late Bronze Age collapse happened and Poseidon was nerfed in the lack of better words - during the Dark Age, Zeus became the new head god and Hades popped seemingly out of nowhere, taking over Poseidon’s role as the god ruling the Underworld. On the other news Poseidon’s antagonistic potential is somewhat dwarfed by the fact that most of his escapades involve banging and they don’t really feature any figures the main cast of KI seem to be based on. It’s annoying because he does so much but because it’s mostly banging people and either helping or bullying very specific heroes, it’s just not something that’s all that relevant in the context of KI. But there’s couple myths and stories that would make him an easy bad guy, first one is that of Atlantis - and we’re going to jump straight to the source material because on it’s core, it’s technically just another tale of Athena and Poseidon having a conflict. Fish people under the sea is fun as well, but by using the source directly it gives us the most potential.

So Plato tells in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias that when Athenian statesman Solon visited Egypt, he found some interesting records about certain events during 10th millennium BCE and translated them into Greek. Only thing here that’s true is Solon visiting Egypt, everything else was made up Plato - if you need more proof, know that 10th millennium BCE was during the stone age for context, Britain wasn’t sharing a land border with just France, but also with Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark during this time. It was that far into the past. As for the actual story, it begins by gods choosing lots of land for themselves and Poseidon chooses Atlantis. He then falls in love with a mortal woman Cleito, builds her a luxurious home, they have five sets of twin boys together and once the kids have all grown up, they divide Atlantis into ten parts and so is born ten different lineages of kings. But by each generation the kings become more and more human, meaning that it’s much more easier for their wealthy lifestyle to hit them in the head - compare that to Athenians in the story, who’re not tempted by luxuries and have quite Spartan lifestyle interestingly enough. This wealthy lifestyle of the Atlanteans quickly leads into colonialism and war mongering, leading into them trying to take over the Mediterranean but they’re are stopped by Athens because naval warfare was the only type of warfare Athenians actually excelled at. Zeus eventually looks down to see what the heck is going on and then tells Poseidon to do something because this racket is technically speaking all his fault. Poseidon agrees, causes an earthquake and then sweeps Atlantis under his rug, that being the ocean. So Atlantis is pretty much an antithesis of a perfect society, a concept that’s discussed more in Republic and the lesson here is that being consumed by hubris in the search of luxury leads to ruin - but since we’re not here for philosophy lessons, let’s forget all of that and think what kind of plot one could craft out of this mess.

Island nation in search of wealth is a good set-up for some action, so I don’t think there’s much that needs changing. Have Atlanteans attack some cities which alerts Palutena and that leads Pit into a mission in which he tries to tell Poseidon what’s going on. After 2-5 chapters of war against Atlanteans, Poseidon deals with the problem either willingly or by force - whether he just destroys the place or makes Atlanteans full on aquatic folk who can’t survive on land meaning that they have to give up the conquest is up to writers. It’s honestly quite refreshing to have the original tale working so well, because usually everything related to Atlantis in media is so divorced from what Plato told. Sure, a submerged city full of fish people could still work but by using the original tale as base we get a story with clear beginning and end which makes perfect sense in context of KI. Or maybe have the a plotline inspired by the original story first and then later have something related to the submerged city with the fish people. Best of both worlds, amazing!

Also orichalcum, the metal Atlanteans were said to have aplenty, is pretty much just copper. Reddish metal and only gold is more valuable than it, it couldn't be anything else but copper. The term even translates into mountain copper! So why is it never portrayed as copper in fiction?

Besides Atlantis, Poseidon has couple other myths I’d like to talk about too. The first one has him and Apollo losing their divine authority for a while and as punishment they have to serve Trojan king Laomedon father of king Priam and grandfather of Hector among some others if you’re wondering. The king makes them to build the legendary walls of Troy and he promises them great rewards, but once he doesn’t deliver them Apollo sends the plague upon Troy and then Poseidon sends a sea monster to terrorize the place Heracles kills it if you’re wondering. There’s also certain another situation which I’ve actually already talked about on a different post and how with little shaking it could work nicely on a future game - what I said was that Pit should do something Poseidon is going to hate to the point that the god is screaming for his head and that he wants to settle things on court.

The myth I used as reference was that of the supposed first trial in history, in which Ares kills Poseidon’s son Halirrhothius for assaulting his daughter and Poseidon loses his marbles over it. The gods gathered on Areopagus which is a real place in Athens, fun fact and I’ve heard two versions of how the trial goes. In the first version everyone agrees that Ares’ actions were justified and in the second one gods side with Poseidon, but goddesses side with Ares and since there was more goddesses present than gods, their words mattered more. Either way, Poseidon loses the trial and Ares gets away scot-free.

Were a future KI-game do their own twist with this myth, Pit would obviously take the role of Ares. Besides the fact that we’re trying to make Poseidon more antagonistic, Pit just being on a situation similar as Ares makes sense thematically speaking and I’m going to talk more about this later since it’s rather interesting. As for why the trial happens in the first place, it could very well be over anything. Maybe mix it with the one where Poseidon sends a sea monster to terrorize Troy just replace Troy with some unimportant city as this series always does and he’s so attached to it that seeing it getting slayed deeply saddens and angers him. You don’t even need to get rid of the idea that it was over a girl, even if the motive for killing the monster is changed along with what kind of relationship the girl could possibly have with the main cast. This is something I’ll get back into later because there’s in fact one other character who I’d like to talk about and how their most cruel and personal form of villainy happens to bound to a certain girl.

So back to Hera and Poseidon. There’s definitely potential for them to be antagonistic, but I’d say they would work much better as arc villains rather than as the main bad guy. There’s only so many things you can do with characters whose actions are rooted on anger or wrath, especially when they don’t have all that striking personalities.

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As for someone who could well work as the big bad, Dionysus is the first serious candidate. It’s partially due to how inconsistent his characterization has been, which I guess is something one should expect from a figure who has been around since the Mycenaean times and who happens to be the god of insanity, vegetation, orchards, fruit, grape-harvest, winemaking and wine. Does this sound like someone you’d expect to be a member of Forces of Nature? Because it sure does for me and I’d honestly be surprised if he wasn’t one if he was introduced to the franchise.

Symbolism behind Dionysus’ birth is pretty neat, my favorite version of it is the one written down by Diodorus of Sicily in Bibliotheca Historica and in that one Demeter is his mother. It starts the usual way in which the poor kid is killed shortly after his birth by Titans and Demeter comes back just in time to gather his remains to allow his rebirth shortly after. It references the harvest process and wine making - the god wine is born from the union of rain and earth just any plant is, he’s torn apart and boiled alive symbolizing the harvesting and wine-making process, his remains represent the fallen bare vines which become fertilizer for the earth and lastly wine itself is supposed symbolize the now reborn Dionysus. All of the versions of his birth myth do have this symbolism to a certain degree but I’d say this version has it the strongest because unlike his other the mother candidates, Demeter is a nature goddess first and foremost and also the goddess of agriculture.

This next point is somewhat tied to the previous one which is that he actually has valid reasons for his absence, that being his meanderings. Long story short - Hera’s angry over the fact that he exists, she injects him with madness and he wanders around like a madman for a while, then Rhea cures said madness and tells him to go on a journey so he could teach people how to make wine. So he goes and wanders around the world with the exception of Britain and Ethiopia for some reason teaching people the art of winemaking and does some other things in the meanwhile, such as apparently founding a city it’s told that on his campaign Alexander the Great came across a city that was supposedly founded by Dionysus. And this is a fun fact, apparently Dionysus’ popularity exploding around late 4th century BCE can be directly linked into Alexander, which is pretty neat. Once he comes back home he firmly establishes his place as a god and then he starts doing shenanigans much more familiar to us, such as giving king Midas his golden touch and marrying Ariadne.

So why do I think Dionysus is the first real contender for a possible new big bad? Well, do you know what’s the first thing he did once he came back to Greece? According to Bacchae, he brainwashed a city to worship him, caused an earthquake, set a palace on fire, gleefully watched when his worshipers teared a man into pieces and then turned some other people into serpents. Now that’s an entrance Viridi would be proud of!

Besides this, there’s also two similar stories in which Dionysus meets some pirates and they both show him as an unhinged god. They capture him and in the first one Dionysus shapeshifts into a lion and unleashes a bear against his captors, causing the scared pirates to abandon the ship and then Dionysus turns them into dolphins. In the other one he turns the mast and oars into snakes, fills the ship with ivy and the sound of flutes to make the pirates go mad and once again when they abandon the ship, Dionysus turns them into dolphins. The tale of him giving Midas his golden touch could also count as him being antagonistic since the act gives Midas nothing but suffering. So while he is much more friendly towards humans than your average god, Dionysus definitely has an antagonistic flare deep inside him and a place in the Forces of Nature and you can’t change my mind.

If Dionysus was a major antagonist or the big bad, I could see the plot going a lot like this - he comes home, causes some racket because he feels neglected, Viridi is happy about all of this and tries to control it while keeping him on this state of mind because who wants a happy party guy when you can have a chaotic deity, for a while she can do it but not for long before things snowball out of control and he becomes an unhinged god dead set on causing chaos. As for how he’s defeated, I can’t really come up with anything concrete on a fly but I don’t think Dionysus would be defeated the same way Hades was. And while he has the personality and presentation needed for a main antagonist, I just can’t see him as a pure evil villain like Hades was. He’s very much redeemable in my eyes and as for what happens to him after his defeat, I could see it leading to him mellowing down kind of like how Greek wine was watered down before it was used for anything - he’s still part of Forces of Nature and perfectly capable of doing all the same stuff he did as a major antagonist, but he would prefer partying with humans over destroying them. Viridi probably isn’t going to be all too happy about this, but it’s not like she’s going to be all that angry about it either.

Also fun fact at the end - in Dionysiaca, Ariadne laments if Eros and Anteros hate her because she had amazing dream about a wedding, only for Theseus to piss off and abandon her on Naxos. But as we all know, she would soon meet Dionysus who she does end up marrying so hey, the dream just wasn’t about the guy she thought she would marry. So if Dionysus isn’t going to be the big bad and the arc devoted to his villainy is relatively short, this could very well be used as a blueprint for a funny side story. Ariadne lamenting about Eros and Anteros would give Pit and Dark Pit valid reasons to be there.

This is not a joke, by the way. The part of Underworld which wasn't either Elysium or Tartarus was commonly referred as "the House of Hades" in ancient texts.

As for someone else who could also work quite well as the big bad, that would be Persephone. You all know the drill with her - Hades takes her, Demeter panics and goes to search her, she causes the Mediterranean summer on the meanwhile and does a thing which looks awful without context Demeter sets a baby on fire which is supposed to make him immortal if you’re wondering, everyone else decides that enough is enough because endless Mediterranean summer is a nightmare, they beg for Hades to give her back and he does that but not before the pomegranate trick. Demeter causes Mediterranean winter to come, the trouble is solved, we have a nice functional couple in our hands and they continue to appear together when Underworld is relevant to the plot - which surprisingly isn’t all that often as only Adonis, Heracles, Theseus who loses his arse and friend in the process, Orpheus who loses his wife and will to live in the process, Odysseys, Psyche and Aeneas managed to go to Underworld and back. That’s not really all that much all things considered.

And before anyone says anything about seasons here - Mediterranean climate is a thing and it’s best known for its hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters. One of these is much more preferable for plant life and in this case, it’s not summer. The more you know.

While there’s not much material of her when compared some other people in this list, I’d say there’s enough to create a frame for a character. In both Theogony and Iliad Persephone is described as dreaded and in Odyssey Odysseus assumes Persephone is the one sending ghosts to torture him while he’s visiting the Underworld. Just like Hades she has her fair share of vague epithets like Despoina (mistress) and Kore (maiden), presumably for the same reason as to avoid getting her attention. And while the etymology behind her actual name is rather muddied, the popular theories are that it means something in the vain of to destroy, to bring/cause death and she who brings destruction. And people have the gall to say she isn’t scary!

With this info and Hades’ characterization from KI:U in mind, you could very easily create a powerful pure evil villain who’s not going to be happy to learn what happened to her husband. As for why I believe she would be pure evil instead of redeemable one like Dionysus, it’s simply so she and Hades would match on their villainy. Considering how the big thing about Hades and Persephone is that they genuinely love each other to the point of possessiveness Pirithous and Minthe learned it the hard way, it would be weird if they hadn’t rubbed on each other during the time they were together. There’s an amazing chance for drama here and it would be dumb to ignore it when it has been given to us on a golden platter. And besides, unholy matrimonies are quite fun in fiction. Villains too have something they love.

As for attempts of villainy that don’t revolve around her being antsy at Pit about Hades, we interestingly need to look at the list of those she granted favors rather than those that had to deal with her wrath - or just one of them in particular, Psyche. As I’ve already mentioned she was one of those mortals who managed to go to Underworld and back and to make things better, she went to Underworld specifically so she could speak to Persephone. Persephone greets her with a nice cushion to sit on and a banquet, which Psyche declines because it’s a trap this is practically just the pomegranate trick on a larger scale. She tells why she came into the Underworld in the first place and Persephone fulfills her request, which is to say that she gives Psyche boxed death.

Coming to Underworld to speak to Persephone in particular definitely gives Psyche an edge compared to others when it comes to exploring Persephone’s potential villainy. But just why is Psyche such a big deal when compared to someone else like Orpheus, Adonis or Aeneas? Well, Psyche just happens to be the girl who would become the goddess of soul, a job that isn’t currently filled by anyone in KI-universe which Hades has kindly illustrated to us in KI:U by eating and repurposing souls for his own purposes. She’s also Eros’ wife with the addition of being the mother of his daughter and as we all know at this point, Pit is mostly inspired by Eros. While Persephone just being angry about her husband’s treatment makes a perfectly fine motivation, why not use the chance when it has been represented to us on a golden platter? Because while KI has a large cast of characters, most them are quite divorced from one another when it comes to their mythological counterparts interacting with each other. This subverts it since Persephone actually gets to interact with someone important to the figure Pit’s inspired of, which is more than almost anyone else in this list can say. The opportunity is there and there’s an open position for a new god, so why not take it?

Also if Persephone is going to be in a future game, I say I’m going to be so disappointed if there's not at least one pun about her epithet Kore. Like imagine if she was introduced on a chapter called Lost Kore or something similar and then the characters would just continue on making bad puns, annoying her. Wouldn’t be too out of line when it comes to this series humor.

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I know what I’m going to say next is probably going to be controversial, but anyway - if Ares ever makes an appearance, I don’t think he would be a bad guy and this is mostly due to how Pit has been characterized. I know that may sound weird at first but trust me, I do actually have a point with this.

So let’s start with something that may seem completely unrelated at first, these being a history lesson and some talk about over-demonization. We honestly don’t know much about how some city states worshiped gods and what specific versions of the myths they had because some people just couldn’t be bothered to write things down. Besides it being extremely annoying for me, this is also probably where the misconception of all of ancient Greece being either like Athens or Sparta came from, which just is completely false. However what is correct is that city states didn’t really like one another all that much and often engaged on stupid wars with each other, only uniting when there was a much bigger threat looming on the horizon - and with war comes propaganda and when only some people write things down, we’re usually left with really one-sided information when it comes to both good and bad. For one example of this coming off as hilariously hypocritical to me is Athena being worshiped under the epithet Areia in Athens. Areia is very obviously derived from Ares and means warlike, but Athenians had their heads so far in their arses that they came up with a reasoning that this version of the epithet is actually derived from areô or areskô, meaning to propriate or atone for. It’s most likely just some crap Athenians came up with to excuse the worship of Athena Areia, which I just can’t help but find pathetically funny - you can only blame your own propaganda for this, guys.

Historically speaking Ares most likely originates from Thrace since besides his popularity in there Herodotus notes in Histories that only gods from Olympian Pantheon that Thracians worshiped were Ares, Artemis and Dionysus, a really odd trio if I have to say so myself, it’s also said to be his birthplace in the myths. His name can be found on Linear B scripts, a writing system that goes as far back as 1450 BCE and which disappeared during the Late Bronze Age collapse around 1100 BCE. This informs us that he was part of the Mycenaean Pantheon in some way, most likely even then as a war god - it also informs us that he predates gods such as Apollo, Hades and Aphrodite who just don’t exist in Mycenaean texts at least in any recognizable forms. As for Ares during the Archaic, Classical and Hellenic period, especially when it came to places that weren’t either Athens/Attica or Sparta, I had to mostly rely on travelers who wrote things they saw down because some people just didn’t bother to write their own stuff down. Pausanias’ Description of Greece was especially helpful with the research, but what must be remembered is that he lived during 2nd century CE and that he was an outsider to these cultural aspects so how old some of this stuff here is and what the exact context behind it was, I don’t know and neither do others at least currently, one sure can hope so we know more in the future. Then again past is another country so maybe I'm setting my hopes way too high. When given anything in Linear A, people channel their best "I never learned how to read!"-impression.

As for how Ares’ Roman counterpart Mars came to be, it’s mostly due to syncretization. He probably was originally an agricultural god who was later associated with warfare once the Roman Republic started expanding. It’s possible that he was syncretized with an Etruscan deity called Maris, who was usually portrayed as a young boy whose caregiver was Menrva, a goddess who was later identified with Athena and Minerva. While this isn’t an universally agreed take, it’s still pretty interesting in context of Kid Icarus even if it wasn’t intentional or in the case of the take, true. Once Romans started to interact with Greek settlers from Magna Graecia Mars was syncretized with Ares, giving us the Roman god that looks familiar to us. One notable thing to keep in mind is that most of those Greek settlers in Magna Graecia originated from Peloponnese and what I’ve managed to find, they held Ares on much more higher regard than those originating from Attica did.

Okay, now when that has been cleaned out of the way, let’s go to the slightly more interesting stuff which is cult titles and epithets. Just like any other god he has his fair share of both, some examples include Teichesipletes (stormer of cities/walls), Hippius (horseman, of the horses), Theritas (beastly/brutish), Enyalius (warlike), Obrimus (strong/mighty), Thurus (violent/furious), Chrysopelex (of the golden helm) and Chalcocorustes (armed with bronze). I’m using Latin spelling of these to make things easier for myself if you’re wondering. But there’s two titles I specifically want to talk about, both them originating from Arcadia around Tegea because apparently all the cool stuff happens in Arcadia.

Interestingly also in Tegea there was a temple of Athena under epithet Alea. Pausanias tells that her priest there was a boy who held the title until he reached puberty, meaning that her priest was a child. Now this has nothing to do with Ares, but it’s pretty interesting when thinking of Pit. It’s not exactly same for sure, but could this mean that he would leave Palutena if he ever grew up?

The first one is Gynaecothoenas, meaning “Feasted by women” - and no need to worry, it’s nowhere near as sexual as it sounds. The story goes that Tegeteans were at war with Sparta and what decided the victory was an ambush by Tegetean women. Because of this, they offered Ares a sacrifice and celebrated the victory alone. The king of the Spartans at the time was said to be Charilaus, meaning that this victory must have happened around early-to-mid 8th century BCE, making this rather old cult title by the time Pausanias was writing. If only the research for everything else here could’ve been as easy as this.

The other and much more interesting title was Aphneius, meaning “Abundant” and under this title he was worshiped as the giver of food or abundance. The story behind this title goes that Ares fell in love with Tegetean princess Aerope and they had a child together, but she died during childbirth. Ares, doing his damndest to keep his son alive, managed to find a way for the baby to still have milk. Once he grew up, his son Aeropus then managed to do the thing that’s near impossible for a demigod, which is to live a normal life as the lord of Tegea. Now this would make a great character backstory…

… What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, history lesson is over! Finally! Now into the fun stuff, which is Pit’s characterization. It’s pretty common knowledge at this point that that Pit’s inspirations are Icarus, Perseus and Eros but when it comes to his characterization, Eros definitely takes the cake as the main inspiration. He is a fully realized character with multiple myths under his wing, unlike Icarus or Perseus.

Starting with Icarus, he isn’t even a character but a plot device. He’s a tool for Daedalus’ character development and that’s where his importance ends. He’s a miniscule part on a much larger narrative in which the most important part is the Minotaur, as it drives the plot for everything else in it. Icarus’ death serves to drive Daedalus’ character to the point which eventually leads into him killing Minos. He exists for a metaphor that pop-culture has blown out to be way more important than it originally was and that’s it.

As for Perseus… The guy is just really bland. While all the other heroes have their flaws like hubris and wrath, Perseus doesn’t really have any flaws. He doesn’t have that many achievements in either bravery or stupidity due to his method of dealing with things being the quickest way possible. This makes all of his battles extremely boring and because he’s one of the first demigod heroes in the mythological timeline, he doesn’t even get to interact with anyone who could be interesting. How many of you even know that he’s supposed be the founding hero of Mycenae? Not many, I’m sure about that. The most interesting thing about the guy his that he’s an ancestor to people such as Tyndareus, Alcheme, Heracles, Penelope and Telemachus but this doesn’t save him from being any less boring. He's that famous ancestor nobody gives a damn, so to speak. Pit certainly doesn’t get any part of his personality from a plot device or a blank of wood, only a literary reference and an antagonist.

Also can I quickly rant about the Angels in art vs. Angels in Bible meme because I hate it? For some reason most of times when people show art of these supposed angels, they aren’t even showing biblical angels but Erotes/Amores or Nike/Victoria instead. Erotes/Amores and Nike/Victoria are winged Greco-Roman gods, not biblical angels and using art of them proves absolutely nothing. Also you may have forgotten that there’s in fact hierarchy of angels and not all of them look identical. In Christian faith angelic hierarchy is composed of three orders, there being nine different kinds of angels - Seraphim, Cherubim, Ophanim/Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels. Seraphim and Cherubim do indeed look terrifying and so do Ophanim, but Thrones are just bizarre because apparently they’re elderly carrying God’s throne, whatever that means also I’ve seen people use Ophanim and Thrones interchangeably which just makes the whole deal even bigger of a mess. And then there’s Dominions, who’re just really pretty winged people, proving that the idea of all biblical angels looking terrifying is completely false. I couldn’t find what Virtues looked like, but if they’re anything like Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels they’re most likely pretty winged humanoids. So yeah, surprising amount of biblical angels are indeed just pretty winged humanoids and only the highest order of them is clearly inhuman - so if you ever wondered why so many angels in art actually featuring Biblical angels have them looking so humanlike, now you know! It's not the highest rank's job to interact with the human world. Though in modern language, the term angel is simply used as an umbrella term which refers into a winged humanoid being regardless of which religion they originated from - so by using this as a frame, it would indeed make Erotes/Amores and Nike/Victoria angels along with some other winged gods such as Eos and Iris. This would also make Iris’ twin sister Arke a fallen angel because as punishment for siding with the Titans during Titanomachy, she was casted into Tartarus and her wings were ripped off so she could never escape from there. And then much later her wings are given as a wedding gift to Achilles’ parents, my god! You could actually a craft a plot out of this, hmmm. When it comes Pit and Dark Pit, I do think they’re angels only on this broad, modern way definition due to them being mostly inspired by the Greco-Roman Erotes/Amores and it’s possible that they’re only referred as angels because not only is the term Erotes/Amores is strictly associated with Aphrodite and only Aphrodite, it's also much more specialized term than just "angel". There has also been cases in art featuring multiple Nikes, but Nike's special role as the goddess of victory still prevents its use as a broad term. So I believe that in the case of KI, angel is just an useful umbrella term and nothing more.

So Pit’s mostly an Eros-expy when it comes to his personality and attributes, so what makes him so special when compared to many other Eros-expies in media? It’s actually a surprisingly small thing, but boy does it make a difference - on a thematic sense, Pit’s a total daddy’s boy and in this case the dad would be Ares. Most of the Eros-expies you see in media are completely divorced from anything related to Ares despite the guy being Eros’ dad but not in Kid Icarus, where we have a very blatant Eros-expy whose connections to his main mythological inspiration come almost exclusively from Ares. Just why is Pit doing Nike’s job? Because Nike happens to be Ares’ daughter according to some sources, like in the Homeric hymn dedicated to him. Why’s he a soldier in an army? Because Ares was a soldier and in some parts of Greece he was seen as a model of a perfect one who’s resilient and has physical strength that isn’t matched by anyone else. Apparently in Sparta they even had a statue of shacked Ares, supposedly as an attempt to keep the martial spirit and victory in Sparta I don’t know about you but for me this sounds like a very bad move, as if they were asking for the god’s wrath. Then again Athenians did the same thing with wingless Nike, so I guess it was fine in some twisted way. Why does Dark Pit exist? Because would you know it, there’s myth in which Ares and Aphrodite spot lonely little Eros and decide to create Anteros to be his brother, their only differences being hair, wings and weapons of choice Anteros has longer hair, plumed butterfly wings, golden club and lead arrows when compared to Eros' golden bow + both golden and lead arrows. Why does Magnus possibly being based on Meleager matter? Because would you know it, the dude’s sometimes a son of Ares. Why did he spend three years trapped inside a ring? It could parallel the tale of Ares and the giants, in which he spent a lunar year trapped inside a jar. Why does a dog help him during that section? It could still very well be reference Ares and the giants as Hermes and Artemis came to save him and one of Artemis’ sacred animals is a dog and Hermes is the god guard dogs. Also one of Ares’ sacred animals is dog as well, meaning that it could reference this as well. Honestly if Pit ends up having a divine parent and it’s not Ares, I call bullcrap.

So now when that has been made clear, what can writers do with Ares? Well if you take the myth of Poseidon wanting to settle things on court and give it to Pit, you end up losing one of his three major myths in which he’s wrathful towards someone odd I know, you’d probably expect a god of war to be much more wrathful but no, he’s not. The two ones that are left don’t really give all that great material either because in the first one, the target is Adonis and whether it even was Ares’ wrath that killed him is left open - in some versions it’s Artemis who wants him dead because she’s angry at Aphrodite for causing the situation which lead to the death of her hunter Hippolytus, sometimes it’s Apollo who still hasn’t forgiven Aphrodite for blinding his son Erymanthus, occasionally it’s Persephone of all people because she’s angry at Adonis for wanting so spend time with Aphrodite and at times it’s just an accident this all makes me think it was an elaborate coup. There’s always a reason for a divine being to be angry at Aphrodite because she just can’t help but cause trouble whenever she can. When it comes to the second one, it’s honestly pretty odd because not only does Ares forgive the man who originally was the target of his wrath, it illustrates how good of a parent he is on Olympian standards not that it’s a high bar but anyway - even better than the lady whose favorite boytoy he is, and she’s well known for being an overprotective parent.

The myth starts with this lad called Cadmus, who founds the city of Thebes, becomes its king and then kills a dragon residing on a nearby spring. Ares is furious about this since the dragon was sacred to him and apparently it’s sometimes his son, don't know how that works and as punishment, Cadmus has to serve Ares for eight years he got it easy when compared to Adonis and Halirrhothius. Once that service is over, Cadmus marries one of the two daughters of Ares and Aphrodite, this being Harmonia, the goddess of harmony. However not everything is all sunshine and rainbows because Hephaestus is still salty about how his marriage with Aphrodite went south and once he hears about a wedding, he prepares two gifts for the bride - first one was a beautiful necklace that could keep its wearer eternally youthful and the other one was a luxurious robe. But there was a catch, since both of these objects were cursed to bring bad luck to those who owned them. The bad luck eventually took its take on Cadmus’ mental state and one day he remarked that if gods fancied those serpents so much, maybe his life would be so much better as one. Gods fulfill this wish, he’s turned into a serpent and once Harmonia notices what has happened, she wishes the same. At one point Dionysus comes to the city, trashes the place and then gives them a propechy of this happening. Either way, Ares comes down to get the unlucky couple and then scoots them to safety in paradise-like Elysium, where they get to reside from now on.

You may already be familiar with this myth to a certain degree because Pokemon B/W could technically count as an adaptation of it. N is of course the most obvious parallel due to him getting his second name from Harmonia and Ghetsis takes a role comparable to Hephaestus. It all becomes even funnier because Harmonia hits some characteristics associated with yin - she’s passive, feminine figure who represents harmony which can only exist due to lack of action, an idea. It gains even more hilarity points thanks to existence of Adrestia, Harmonia’s sister and the goddess of revolt - she’s pretty much yang to Harmonia’s yin and to make things even more hilarious, she was often portrayed as a beautiful winged maiden. Now who would expect the goddess of revolt to be a lovely winged lady and the goddess of harmony to be at least momentarily a serpent?

While this is indeed an interesting myth, I don’t think it would make all great material for future KI-game, at least on its current form. The cast of KI doesn’t really get to interact with humans on a personal level, which is something this myth largely relies on. Honestly, I think the best way it could be referenced in game would be just Pit going to Elysium and meeting Harmonia still trapped on a draconic form. Considering the way Hades had been characterized in KI:U, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had just kept trapped Harmonia as a pet lizard in his garden. Maybe say something on the vain of him eating the husband’s soul or using it for something else to explain why she’s there all by herself. And if you want to make fun of the fact that the fourth wall might as well not exist, throw Adrestia in Elysium as well as a dragon as a nod to Pokemon. “The Twin Dragonesses of Elysium” sounds like it would make a very cool boss fight.

So a wrath or blessing, Ares gives us not much to work with either of those at least when it comes to him actually doing stuff - but that doesn’t mean we’re left with nothing because there’s three myths that I’ve glossed over quickly that could give us something, one just for comedy and two others actual plot. As for the one that’s just for comedy, it’s the one in which Sisyphus captures Thanatos. Ares is actually the one to save Thanatos from the tough situation since after it has continued for a month, he bursts into Sisyphus’ house, frees Thanatos and drags Sisyphus’ spirit to the Underworld… Only for him to come up with a sad story, which leads into Persephone letting him go only for it to backfire. Ares then disappears from the story, but it ends up with Sisyphus doing P.E for eternity in Tartarus once he dies for real as you all already know. This is pretty funny if a bit morbid myth, so it could be really easy to use it as a comedy goldmine if Ares ever interacted with Thanatos. Maybe have Thanatos trying to act like they’re friends, only for Ares to become more and more frustrated the longer Thanatos continues. Maybe once he mentions some of his escapades involving Pit, Ares finally decides that enough is enough and shows to Thanatos that mortals don’t call him by the name Thurus for nothing.

To the myths you could get some serious plot out of, the first one is very predictably the one in which he earns the title Aphneius. It just has everything a great character backstory needs on its original form, meaning that it could easily be inserted on the game with minimal changes and it could still work fantastically. It has a romance between a god and a mortal which ends up on a tragedy during a moment that was supposed to be joyous not because of any divine whim or I guess it could’ve been Aphrodite being salty because she has a habit of releasing her wrath upon Ares’ loved ones or relatives, usually grandchildren such as Hippolytus, but I think it would’ve been written down had the story actually said it was Aphrodite behind Aerope’s death, but because of something beyond their control. And instead of taking his frustrations on the baby like so many fathers in these stories do, he instead does everything to keep him alive and so Aeropus grows up to be fine ruler, if an unremarkable demigod. A writer could easily use Aeropus as a base for an interesting heroic character… And I guess you can already see where this is going. I already said that Ares would make the most sense as Pit’s divine parent if he indeed has one, so this would make an excellent backstory if that was the case.

I could see the timeline going something like this if this was true - Ares meets KI-universe’s equivalent of Aerope, the two have an adorable romance and are expecting a kid but something goes horribly wrong and Aerope dies, instead of letting Aerope’s family to take care of the kid Ares takes the baby with him because who knows what they would do to a winged baby so many myths have families abandoning their kids for dumber reasons than this so why wouldn’t he take the kid with him + this dude had 3-6 winged kids, one all by himself, so he definitely is the one hogging all the wing genes instead of Aphrodite, he tries single parenting but it’s hard when certain goddess is constantly shooting stinkeyes and paralyzing glares at his direction and it leads into him asking help from Palutena because a winged kid wouldn’t look too out of place among her angel minions. Considering how Palutena and Poseidon were capable of having a conversation in KI:U without any horrible atrocities being committed, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to imagine her relationship with Ares being along your typical sibling-relationship rather than what Atheanians wrote down Ares and Athena were actually worshiped together in the town of Olympia under titles Hippius and Hippias, fun fact. You could also see it as a favor inspired by how Menrva took care of Maris. Anyway, this deal goes swimmingly for a while until the events of a certain other myth take place, which makes Palutena the sole caregiver of Pit - some unspecified amount of time later que the events of the original Kid Icarus and onward.

Fanfic time over, now to the other myth which could explain Ares’ absence - it’s the one about him and the giants. Long story short, there’s these two giants called Ephialtes (derived from the word meaning nightmare) and Otus (either derived from the word meaning insatiate, doom or horned owl) who’re sons of Poseidon because of course they are, goddammit Poseidon and a mortal woman Iphimedeia, they’re also called by the name Aloadae. They were planning to storm into Olympus to kidnap some wives for themselves, Otus wanting Artemis and Ephialtes wanting Hera what great choices, you complete imbeciles, absolutely amazing. So one day Olympians are surprised to find these two giants piling up mountains on top one another and as expected, there’s a big fight between them because no one comes to the Olympian home turf without facing the consequences. Once the two giants finally leave, the Olympians notice that someone is missing, that being Ares. Ephialtes and Otus probably realized way too late that kidnapping the god of war wasn’t the brightest idea and because letting him go wasn’t an option, they locked him inside bronze jar of which he tried to break out without success. It took around a lunar year for the giants stepmother to rat this out to Hermes, who went to save Ares with Artemis. While she distracted the giants and made them throw their spears at each other, Hermes lockpicked Ares out of the jar and so the three returned to Olympus.

So how could this myth be used while crafting a plot for a future game? I’d say it depends on whether writers want to use Ares as a full-blown good guy from the start or as an antagonist at first - and while I do still believe that Ares wouldn’t be a bad guy on his own free will, who said he’s going to burst out of that jar with that free will still intact? It’s not like we haven’t seen brainwashed antagonists in the series before, Gaol was a one.

So if we have Ares as an antagonist who’s brainwashed and crazy, how could the possible plot be handled? I could see it starting with the two giants resurfacing for something trivial but because they’re being destructive, it catches the attention of Palutena who sends Pit down to deal with them. The giants are dealt with in 1-3 chapters and one way or another Pit finds a large jar and breaks it, releasing the crazed Ares. Neither side recognizes each other and there’s possibly a boss fight which ends with Ares leaving and him becoming a wandering antagonist who causes racket when someone angers him. He most likely isn’t connected to any other antagonist or the main villain, but I could see them trying to recruit him without any success. As for how he was brainwashed in the first place, it could be the Aloadae wanting to get some use out of their prisoner and they decided to make him into an indestructible living weapon either to themselves or someone else - maybe it even was commissioned by the big bad because who wouldn’t want an powerful living weapon who’s loyal to you and only you. Either way it proves fruitless as Pit frees Ares from the mind control and slowly but surely he starts to establish himself as a good guy and an ally to Pit and Palutena.

This would actually go pretty well along with a certain another thing about Ares, that being helmet and symbolism connected to it - you see, mythological Ares was often portrayed to have something I like to call Meta Knight-syndrome. He was said to be a beautiful man with a lovely face, apparently much more prettier than any other male Olympian which could possibly explain why he’s Aphrodite’s favorite boytoy and he wasn’t particularly proud of it - just what kind of self-respecting enemy would take you seriously if you have a face of an angel? But that didn’t stop people from drawing or sculpting him without a helmet, and the result were indeed pretty my goodness is Ludovisi Ares a one beautiful sculpture. Just considering how the art we see of Ares can be categorized into him either with or without a helmet, writers could easily craft a narrative out of this - while wearing a helmet he’s under mind control and once freed he fights helmetless, allowing player to see him as who he really is. Helmet obscuring the face equals bad guy and once it cracks, we can have a very confused ally who cries over the fact that his baby is a big boy now, cries some more because there’s two of them now, may or may not join us to missions if there’s a two-player mode for story or just help with training and also maybe cracks dad jokes few times because humor is a valid coping mechanism. This all kind of reminds me how one other popular trend relating to Ares in art was to have him disarmed with young Eros playing with his armor. Cute!

Somewhat relating to the idea of Ares starting as a brainwashed antagonist turned ally once the helmet is smashed, I could see him having two different themes which illustrate the different natures of him. First one should be something brooding and terrifying, maybe something similar to Gustav Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War which a really great piece of classical music that has inspired composers all around the world, even at Nintendo. If you haven’t heard it, you certainly have heard at least one song inspired by it metal genre can thank its existence on Mars, no kidding. As for the other theme, I think it should be a warm, calm and welcoming one with a hint of sadness, a complete opposite of the battle theme when it comes to the first expression. I’ve been recently listening a lot of TSFH and Hans Zimmer so if I had to say what kind of energy I’d want this possible theme to have, I’d probably say something between TSFH’s Friendship To Last from the demonstration album Nemesis, Final Days of Rome from album Unleashed and Now we are free from Gladiator. They all have this bittersweet yet beautiful feeling in them I love. Maybe there’s a shared leitmotif or something between the two themes connecting them into each other. Thurus and Aphneius were both titles for the same god after all, even if they were about wildly different aspects of him.

So just like with Apollo, I think there’s only one way to bring Ares into the franchise and in this case it would be making him Pit’s dad. It just makes way too much sense to me considering how Pit has been characterized that it would be odd if there wasn’t any connection between the two. And there’s even couple out-of-universe reasons why I don’t believe he would be the bad guy, the first and most notable being that the names Ares and Mars are already associated with morally righteous characters or at least characters we’re supposed to root for in Nintendo games. Sakurai certainly knows this, Marth has been in Super Smash Bros since Melee as a playable character and his name just blatantly is Mars in Japanese and his English name is just the Japanese way of saying Mars. You don’t bastardize the face of another franchise in your own one, especially if you’re both exclusives to the same company and the other franchise is much more bigger and important than yours is.

Since it would be hard to introduce Ares into the franchise, I would be completely fine with him not being featured in next game at all even though I would find it extremely disappointing. But if you’re not going to have him, at least have a reference to him in form of a weapon like Blade of Ares or Blade of Mars because would you know it, the legendary sword of Attila was also known as the sword of Mars. We’re probably never going to get actual swords in KI but blade has been used as a synonym for them, so there being a blade with said name could work just fine. That or finally add spear and shield combo into the game. But if you want to use the character who would work as the big bad the best into their fullest, maybe it would be a good idea to have Ares as well... All roads may lead to Rome, but not to the arms of Genetrix in this case.

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Call me crazy, but I think that Aphrodite would make the perfect big bad. Does she have that charisma and personality comparable to Hades? Yes she does, and unlike him she had all that in real life - one of her titles was Pandemos, quite literally meaning “of the people”. This made her extremely popular among people regardless who they were or where they lived, and how can you blame them since there’s not many people whom things such as beauty, love and sex don’t matter in some shape or form. Only Olympian who really matched her when it came to popularity was Zeus, but considering how he was the king of all gods it was to be expected that he’d outrank her on the popularity board. She was the most popular goddess in Greece by a longshot and that was also true for Venus in Rome, even if Mars took the place as the second most popular god after Jupiter. Due to her being the mother of Roman founding hero Aeneas, she was viewed as the mother of all Rome and it was used by people as a way to climb up the political ladder. The Julio-Claudian dynasty claimed to descend from her through Aeneas and it didn’t stop there - you can actually trace the ancestry of multiple mythological European figures all the way back to her! Some notable examples of this include Bladud/Blaiddyd, Leir of Britain, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia of Britain and supposedly even king Arthur himself last one is a bit iffy, but all the others are concrete, Aphrodite just flat out is their ancestor through Aeneas. She definitely has the charisma and presentation needed for a big bad because you simply couldn’t be able to pull of any of the previously mentioned things without them and if she could do it in real life, who says she couldn’t do it in a fictional world?

Pretty much only thing about Aphrodite that stays constant is her popularity because in the myths, her characterization is wildly inconsistent - I guess that something one should expect from a goddess who rules over matters such as beauty and love, two things one can never truly understand. However with that being said, there’s trends that stay with her regardless her ever-changing personality. She’s technically speaking an outsider to the Olympian family tree as her most popular and possibly the oldest one as well birth story has her as the motherless child of Ouranos, emerging fully formed from seafoam. Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon, Hera and Zeus form the first generation of Olympians and Ares, Athena, Hephaestus, Artemis, Apollo, Hermes and Dionysus are principal members of the second generation. By adding Eileithyia, Persephone and Hebe into the mix you get the main Olympian family, making Aphrodite feel like even more of an outsider. She only starts to fit among the family when the third generation is added and speaking of said generation, part of it forms her attendants. The two most important ones are her sons Eros and Anteros, love and love requited, whom she let’s to do pretty much all they want as long as they stay loyal to her. However once that loyalty shifts, she can be quite cruel towards them which is illustrated in the myth of Eros and Psyche quite well - and I’m going to let Aphrodite herself to do all the talking, so here’s a quote from from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass:

‘This is a fine state of affairs, just what one would expect from a child of mine, from a decent man like you! First of all you trampled underfoot the instructions of your mother--or I should say your employer--and you refused to humble my personal enemy with a vile love-liaison; and then, mark you, a mere boy of tender years, you hugged her close in your wanton, stunted embraces! You wanted me to have to cope with my enemy as a daughter-in-law! You take too much for granted, you good-for-nothing, loathsome seducer! You think of yourself as my only noble heir, and you imagine that I'm now too old to bear another. Just realize that I'll get another son, one far better than you. In fact I'll rub your nose in it further. I'll adopt one of my young slaves, and make him a present of these wings and torches of yours, the bow and arrows, and all the rest of my paraphernalia which I did not entrust to you to be misused like this. None of the cost of kitting you out came from your father's estate.’

Let’s file that under yikes. She’s saying this to her injured child and it’s about a girl he loves more than anything but she can’t stand her. And it’s not like Aphrodite dislikes her for any valid reasons, it’s all because Psyche is pretty and Aphrodite took it as a personal attack. This temperament is a stable with her, be the fuss she causes either positive or negative. It goes well in the line of the idea that she was never a child and was born fully formed, as it’s pretty hard to learn those important childhood life lessons as an adult. And do you want to know the best part about this mess? After this massive rant she’s confronted by Hera and Demeter, two goddesses who in all intents and purposes should understand what she’s feeling right now and guess what they do? They call Aphrodite a hypocrite in her face because that’s exactly what she is. Why is she so angry at her child for growing up and experiencing romantic love for the first time when she spends most of her time either being in love or making others fall in love?

Let’s leave the sad lovers behind for a while and talk about Aphrodite in some other myths. There’s not many myths about her that don’t feature romance or sex in some form, but those few are usually about her competitive nature. There’s a myth about Hermes and Aphrodite participating on funeral games yes, this was a real tradition organized by Apollo and she won, her prize being a zither which she later gave to Paris. There’s also a myth about her and Athena having a weaving competition which ended on her losing miserably because as one might expect, challenging the goddess of weaving into a weaving competition couldn’t possibly end well. But since these kind of myths are about things out of her assignments, there isn’t many of them. Most of them are about her helping people with their relationship problems, some examples could be her giving Galatea life on Pygmalion’s wishes and gifting Hippomenes the three golden apples so he could win the race for Atalanta’s heart. But it’s also really easy to earn her anger, some notable immortals who were victims of her wrath are the titan goddess of dawn Eos (she didn’t want to share Ares so she cursed Eos to feel uncontrollable desire towards a new man every day), the titan god of sun Helios (he ratted out her relationship with Ares so she cursed him to forget everyone he ever loved romantically and then made him fall in love with princess Leucothoe - it ends badly and that’s how we got heliotropes), the muse Calliope (Aphrodite saw Zeus asking her help for covering the whole deal about who gets to keep Adonis as a personal attack and so she cursed her son Orpheus to have a horrible death in the hands of Dionysus’ worshipers - interestingly enough this has nothing to do with the fact that Calliope did also sleep with Ares or that she married Oeagrus who’s sometimes said to be Ares’ son, which would make Orpheus his grandson), a minor ocean deity Nerites (he refused to follow her into the land so she turned him into a shrimp) and Pan (Aphrodite and this handsome lad Acheilus had a beauty competition and Pan was the judge - he said Acheilus was prettier so Aphrodite turned the poor lad into into a hideous shark-creature and then cursed Pan to be hopelessly in love with the nymph Echo, the very same Echo who had her eyes on Narcissus). It could even be said that her blessings aren’t going to last for long and by using Hippomenes as an example once again, we learn that in one version of the story she turned him into a lion all because he didn’t pay his respects back to her soon enough. Guileful Aphrodite indeed.

Due to her temperament and general lack of caring about the consequences of her actions, Aphrodite has earned the ire of many gods - just look no further than Adonis, there’s four possible culprits who could’ve caused his death. Because of their contradictory natures, she’s often portrayed as not getting along with Hestia, Athena and Artemis and while there’s not much material for Hestia there’s multiple myths of Aphrodite causing unpleasant situations for Artemis and her hunters, Hippolytus being the shining example of this. The judgement of Paris establishes her relationship with Hera and Athena as a rocky one and the Trojan war has them full-on enemies on opposite sides, Athena even telling the Greek Diomedes during the war that he should avoid fighting literally any god with the exception of Aphrodite - it leads into him throwing a spear at Aphrodite, piercing her wrist and this leads into Aphrodite cursing Diomedes in return. Also in some records such as Cypria Helen’s mother is stated to be the goddess Nemesis, so add her into the list of gods Aphrodite has angered so it turns out the goddess who truly was Nemesis’ enemy was never the one from Blue Sea Star but rather the one who represented Morning Star, how ironic. Her relationship with the male Olympians are a bit better but not always, in fact she has no meaningful one with Apollo at all. Her marriage with Hephaestus was an unhappy one and only after they divorced were they both allowed to be happy, Hephaestus by marrying Aglaea and having a family with her and Aphrodite by continuing her many affairs without any worries. She did scorn Zeus when he tried to get it on with her, but otherwise there’s not much either good or bad blood between them. Besides Ares, Aphrodite did find both Poseidon and Dionysus handsome and had affairs with them, but it’s unclear if they resulted any children - Rhodos has Telchine Halia and Amphitrite as her other mother candidates, Peitho is almost always said to be a child of Tethys and Oceanus instead, the Charites were more often said to be children of Zeus and Oceanid Eurynome rather than Aphrodite’s and Priapus just has no parents set in stone because no telling was seemingly more popular than others. The birth myth of Hermaphroditus starts with Aphrodite telling Hermes to piss off because he doesn’t come even close to her standards, so he asks little help from Zeus to get what he wants and therefore I can’t imagine them having a positive relationship because of this. And after reading so many myths in which Aphrodite targets Ares’ grandkids for whatever reasons, I’m starting to think that he should start running away and quickly. Maybe she really did kill Aerope.

Now returning to the love story with a happy ending which has the most famous victim of Aphrodite’s wrath, Eros and Psyche. It begins in a town with no name given oh, so this isn’t completely baseless in KI where princess Psyche (meaning either soul or breath of life) is having trouble socializing - the people have declared that she’s as if not more beautiful than Aphrodite and they have started worshiping her, denying normal human interaction from her. This obviously pisses off Aphrodite because it has been established that she has the self-control skills comparable to a toddler and so she orders her son Eros to make Psyche to fall in love with something hideous. While he agrees to do the deed, once he sees the beautiful Psyche he can’t help but to fall in love with her and then he chooses to defy his mother, crafting a plan on what to do next. In the meanwhile the loneliness is making Psyche miserable and that doesn’t go unnoticed by her parents, so they go to visit the oracle of Apollo for help. Considering how Apollo is still very much salty at Eros for cursing him to have the worst love life imaginable, his words aren’t all that comforting (another quote from The Golden Ass):

‘Adorn this girl, O king, for wedlock dread, and set her on a lofty mountain-rock. Renounce all hope that one of mortal stock can be your son-in-law, for she shall wed a fierce, barbaric, snake-like monster. He, flitting on wings aloft, makes all things smart, plaguing each moving thing with torch and dart. Why, Jupiter himself must fearful be. The other gods for him their terror show, and rivers shudder, and the dark realms below.’

She and her parents are obviously horrified by this, but they do as they were told to and Psyche is left alone on a cliffside where the god of west wind Zephyrus picks her up. He brings her into a lovely meadow where she takes a refreshing nap and after she wakes up, she sees a beautiful palace and goes in. She’s charmed by the looks of the place and then a disembodied voice tells her that she will be provided by many invisible servants while living in there. Once night falls she’s nervous to meet her husband, but after the first meeting she starts looking forward on their nights together. This continues for quite some time, but in the meanwhile Psyche’s family is starting to get worried about her and she’s in return worrying about them. Eros promises that her sisters can come to visit, but also tells her that she shouldn’t listen them if they sound jealous. Psyche agrees and Eros gets Zephyrus to scoot the sisters down to visit, but as expected the sisters get jealous really quickly and start to make her worry if what the oracle told about her husband was indeed true - what finally broke the camels back was the sisters suggesting that he’s planning to kill her and their unborn child. So when the next night falls, she has prepared herself a lamp and dagger to see if her husband really is a monster - once she draws the lamp near and sees that he’s in fact Eros himself, she’s awestruck and accidentally stabs herself with one of his arrows, making her fall for him even harder. But while admiring him some oil spills from the lamp on Eros, causing him to wake up and leave. Earlier in the story Psyche had said that she’d much rather die than throw this marriage away and she’s willing to live by that statement, so she goes to search Eros and atonement - meanwhile Aphrodite is beating her son in the head by talking how horrible child he is for daring to fall in love and then she imprisons him Genetrix knows nothing in this case. Hera and Demeter call her a hypocrite, which doesn’t ease her anger in the slightest.

Psyche eventually finds her way into a temple of Aphrodite and she calls her two servants to beat the poor girl to make herself feel better. After having a good laugh over Psyche’s suffering, she gives her another beating herself and then dumbs different kinds of grains on the ground, saying that she should sort them by night if she ever wants to see Eros again. Sometimes prompted by him, ants nearby take pity on Psyche and help her - predictably Aphrodite isn’t all too happy about this and she comes up with a much more deadlier task. By morning she tells her that she should get some golden fleece from the sheep living on a grove across nearby river. This disheartens Psyche because she knows gathering the fleas directly is a suicide mission, but she’s consulted by local river deity who tells her how the sheep behave and that instead of approaching the sheep at all she should just collect fleas caught on foliage. She does as was told and Aphrodite becomes even more enraged, telling her to go gather water from river Styx. While she finds her way to Styx without much hassle, she’s overwhelmed by the hopelessness of the situation - luckily for her everyone has come to the conclusion that Aphrodite is being horrible and Zeus sends one of his eagles to help Psyche to get the water.

At this point Aphrodite’s patience is running thin and she gives Psyche a box, tells her to go into Underworld to get a part of Persephone’s beauty and come back with it because this whole deal of torturing her little daughter-in-law has been so hard for her and she needs to look good while going to the divine theatre. After being consulted by a tower on how to actually get into the Underworld without dying, she does as was told and and it doesn’t take long for her to be greeted by Persephone. After refusing to fall into an obvious trap, Psyche told her why she was visiting her and Persephone agreed to help her without hassle - but after returning into the mortal world, Psyche’s curiosity took the better of her and she wanted to see that beauty herself. Turns out it was Stygian sleep fancy words for boxed death and Psyche drops on the ground like a rock, but at this point Eros has escaped his imprisonment goes straight to her. He draws the sleep back into the box, gently pricks her with an arrow to wake her up, the two have a heartfelt reunion and Eros brings Psyche to Olympus, asking Zeus if the two can now get properly married. Everyone agrees, Zeus tells Aphrodite to stfu and they give Psyche ambrosia, making her the goddess of soul. The two have a glorious wedding and some time after it Psyche gives birth to their daughter, either named Hedone or Volupta(s) depends if it’s a Greek or Roman telling the story, the personification of pleasure, joy and delight. I personally prefer the name Volupta, it rhymes much more nicer with rest of the family.

And since we’re at here, that gorgeous painting by John William Waterhouse that everyone thinks has Pandora wearing a pink dress? It’s actually Psyche opening the deathly beauty box. Don’t believe me? Just check Psyche opening the golden box and you see who’s right. He however did create an equally pretty painting about Pandora though.

So now when the story time finally over, what can we do with all of this info? Well, it does tell how perfect of an antagonist Aphrodite makes for an Eros-expy. She has power over him and isn’t afraid of abusing it when she feels betrayed. Compare this to the tales of Icarus and Perseus which really don’t have a main antagonists - Icarus has no personal stakes in the story because he’s a plot device rather than a character and from Daedalus’ point of view, the main antagonist is Minos but mythology doesn’t really treat him as all that horrible person. After he died he became one of the judges of the Underworld and probably sent Daedalus to Tartarus once he died, which illustrates a one seriously big missed opportunity which should’ve been used if Icarus truly was that important inspiration for Pit. Instead it just makes it even more clear how irrelevant Icarus and the narrative about the Minotaur are to KI. As for Perseus, I already talked about how Medusa is a mcguffin while alive and the other ones aren’t much better. Polydectes, Phineus and Acrisius are all dealt with so quickly that they don’t really matter - his only fight that isn’t solved by a handwave is against Cetus and it’s just a sea monster sent to kill Andromeda by Poseidon. Poseidon’s antagonistic potential is a topic I’ve already discussed and the already mentioned possible fusion of the myths of Poseidon sending a sea monster to harass Troy and Ares’ trial covers the idea of Pit saving a girl from a sea monster which is bit funny because in the former one, oracle tells that king Laomedon should let it eat his daughter Hesione to get rid of the monster, so that doesn’t really add anything new here. But with Aphrodite as the big bad it could be rather easy to craft two different but overlapping plotlines, one with a main goal and the other with a personal one. Aphrodite always was Eros’ biggest personal antagonist who treated him as a trophy child and didn’t take it well when he stepped out of the line - how dare her little doll grow up, behave like a man and then decide that he wants to move on to build a family of his own, which now takes the priority over her? Him choosing Psyche over his mother is his defining myth, with the addition of it being the myth in which he finally gains the respect of the other gods. Besides having its message about heart and soul being capable feeling and creating joy while together, it also functions as a coming of age story for its main couple - and when those stories have an antagonist, things tend get really personal.

So going back to those possible two plotlines and goals, what could they possibly be about? I’d say that the main plot line shouldn’t really be based on any myth but instead it should take advantage of her popularity among ancient people, more so when it comes to Venus and Rome. Even as a city, Rome was massive - by the time of 1st century CE it had reached the population of million people, being the first city in history to do that. And this was only the capital of the empire! Rome wasn’t build in a day indeed. Venus wasn’t worshiped by the thousands, her popularity was in the millions during this time period. That’s a lot of power for one goddess and as we all know, too much power can easily hit one in the head - especially when remembering that we’re dealing with a Pantheon composed entirely of manchildren. Give Aphrodite an empire that looks up to her, doesn’t do anything without a last world from her and you’re set with a supervillain who has it all from power to personality. In this case, the reason why Aphrodite should be stopped is that she’s a conqueror who rules by fear, saying that if she was ever abandoned she would curse them and take away all the blessings she has ever granted, leading her empire to ruin. If you want to make her feel even more villainous, don’t even give her an army of her own like Hades and Viridi had but make her use the people of the empire she rules over. There’s nothing more evil than using people who look up to you for protection for your own selfish goals. What those selfish goals may be, writers can be creative with them - maybe she wants to be viewed as the supreme goddess above everyone else, maybe she wants everyone to worship her and isn’t afraid to use extreme measures to get what she wants, maybe she wants to wipe out everyone who could be a threat to her, everything goes. Considering her role on the judgement of Paris, her causing a war or chaos for selfish reasons isn’t out of character. But whatever her reasons may be, there’s going to sparks in the air and fights of massive proportions. Ares may be Pit’s father but Aphrodite definitely isn’t his mother, so she’s not going to show him any sympathy or kindness if he gets in the way of her plans.

This would be the plotline that’s more on the background and focused on Aphrodite’s relationships with Palutena, possibly Ares and the other gods, the main goal is their goal. It’s why they want her defeated. If Palutena is anything like Athena, she can’t get along with her and she understands that allowing Aphrodite to do whatever she wants will have catastrophic consequences even if she herself couldn’t care less about those. If Ares was featured on a future game along with Aphrodite, their relationship would probably be focused on how they feel betrayed by each other. The myth of her cursing Eos illustrates how she sees their relationship open only from her end so she’s very likely still angry at him for leaving her, be it for Aerope or something else entirely. If you want to go with the depressing idea of her being the one who ordered Aloadae to kidnap him, she probably feels even more betrayed because even under mind control he didn’t come back to her like she had anticipated. And if it’s indeed her favorite ex-boytoy’s son with some other lady who has been foiling her plans, her blood quite possibly starts to boil. Ares’ feelings of betrayal would likely stem from Aphrodite trying to kill his child for no other reason than sheer pettiness, along with orchestrating his kidnapping and torture just so she could get her boytoy back. Other gods probably want her stopped for similar reasons as Palutena, maybe with some selfishness rippled in - the consequences of her actions are hurting them and because she doesn’t care, something must be done to stop her. For example, Viridi could possibly oppose Aphrodite because she doesn’t care about how she’s hurting nature on her attempts to viewed as the supreme goddess. Not to say that Pit doesn’t also care about this goal since he’s an empathetic youngster, but I think that the more personal plotline should be his and it’s goal his main motivator during the story.

As for the plotline with the more personal goal, the myth of Eros and Psyche makes the perfect outline for it. Aphrodite is already the main antagonist of the tale, so there’s no need for any massive changes when it comes to her jealousy and want to dispose Psyche. The tasks she gives to her could also be mostly unchanged, if adjusted with something that makes gameplay more immersive assuming we would get to play as her like we got to play as Dark Pit in chapter 22 in KI:U. However what needs to changed is Aphrodite’s relationship with Pit, how he and Psyche first meet and how their relationship is evolves from that point onward since following the myth to a T isn’t an option in this case. I could see Pit and Psyche’s first meeting being a result of Aphrodite’s wrath manifesting on a relatively harmless way, meaning that she already knows about this new, pretty princess that challenges her status as the supreme goddess and she’s not having any of it. As for how her wrath could manifest, it could be a your garden-variety monster attack in the first chapter disguised as someone else’s troops so no one would suspect it was her behind it. The sheer weirdness of it could catch Palutena’s attention so she sends Pit down to investigate it and to get rid of the monsters. While getting rid of them, he meets Psyche in one way or another - maybe she’s trying to escape from them or she’s trying to fight against them, either way Pit comes to her aid and they befriend each other. Maybe she’s featured on a few following chapters as minor character doing something on the background, giving them more possibilities to interact and become better friends - in these chapters Apollo could possibly be introduced along with reintroducing Poseidon, to foreshadow the roles they would play later on. What side plots would these chapters have, it could anything - maybe Pit meets Ares for the first time at this point of the story, but he’s not freed from mind control just yet.

At this point Aphrodite could be getting more angrier but she doesn’t want to out herself as the main villain yet, so she crafts a plan that would eventually lead into Poseidon hating Pit into the point of him wanting to take things into the court. Maybe she tricks Poseidon and Apollo into becoming mad at Psyche’s home city for whatever reason, like how they got angry at Troy in mythology proper. If this was the case, I think that she would keep Poseidon in the dark while letting Apollo fully know what’s going on - if Poseidon doesn’t know the true reason why Aphrodite wanted his sea monster to terrorize the city and why it was killed, he would be much more enraged when it happens. I’ve already established reasons as for why Apollo would dislike Pit, so he probably wouldn’t really need any prompting to cause Pit suffering since he’d still want some payback from that embarrassing noodle incident. So Poseidon sends his sea monster to terrorize the coastline and once citizens start asking help from the gods, Apollo lets the hate flow through him and offers nothing useful - instead he tells them to take the Hesione/Andromeda-approach and let it eat someone to calm it down oh look, it’s a reference to Perseus that’s not about Medusa for once, nice. In this case, it would be Psyche and Pit’s of course not going to let his friend die so he goes to save her, be it with or without Palutena’s approval. In my head I did imagine this as a chapter that would work amazingly with multiplayer, starting with Pit and Dark Pit distracting the monster, then Pit freeing Psyche and them setting out to kill the monster before it causes more harm. Player 2 would have to deal with changing characters on the fly but if Pittoo and Psyche had similar weapons, I don’t think it would be too distracting since they’d be playable on different parts of the chapter. But once the monster has finally been defeated, the joy is cut short by Poseidon interrupting and wanting vengeance for what happened to his monster, ending the chapter. The plot would immediately catch on the next one and what I could see happening on this chapter is that Pit’s taken into the court by Poseidon and he’s not allowed to have anyone defending him, but Dark Pit and Psyche go into his defense anyway Pittoo being the playable character. After a long and treacherous journey they find they way to the divine courthouse and tell their point of view on the events, which gives Pit the sympathy of the court and he gets away scot-free. Poseidon and Apollo may face on consequences at this point and they may even rat Aphrodite out on a subtle way, but the main group doesn’t catch it.

The following few chapters would be breathers before the plot kicks in again, Aphrodite ousting herself as the big bad in one way or another. Maybe she has sent her troops to attack some place, possibly in search for Ares since he would make a great ally on this brainwashed state. Much to her dismay he declines her offers, he and Pit fight and the helmet is smashed, but Palutena recalls Pit before anything can come out of it. The fight continues for couple following chapters, Palutena and Aphrodite are gradually getting more and more mad at each other and maybe she comes down to face Pit herself because the little brat getting on her way is starting to be really annoying now this would make a pretty cool unwinnable boss fight, but Ares comes just in time save him - que silent, cold anger between them, confusion from Pit and Palutena’s end with some extremely awkward reunions and explanations.

What could follow from here is another set more lighter chapters focused less on Aphrodite’s plans to become the supreme goddess and more of the cast getting to know each other better - Palutena and Ares reconnecting, Ares trying to form a meaningful relationship with Pit and Dark Pit, Pit and Psyche becoming better friends, etc etc. Not to say Aphrodite has given up on her plans - she’s still doing things on the background, but it’s implied that what little chaos she currently causes is serving as distraction to hide her bigger plans. Persephone could possibly be introduced at this point of the story, making it clear that she knows about the events of KI:U and that she’s going to get her payback on what happened to Hades in one way or another, possibly drop an implication that she’s working together with Aphrodite. But since everything good comes to an end and so do the breather episodes, plot would go on with Aphrodite kidnapping Pit and getting Persephone to throw him into some dark part of the Underworld, maybe even to Tartarus. And now we get into the fun part of the myth, Psyche’s four tasks!

I could see the plot separating into two directions from here on, first one being Pit’s great prison escape from wherever Persephone threw him into and the second one being the titular four tasks. The prison escape is more focused on traversing the Underworld and Pit trying get out of there while Persephone throws all kinds of obstacles at him - maybe it ends with a ghost gauntlet, since Odyssey illustrated that she can summon ghosts. Arke would make a pretty great boss fight here as well, since she could be classified as a fallen angel. Maybe her motive for going after Pit is to get his wings for herself as a mean to escape, since her own ones were ripped off as punishment for siding with the Titans. But since Pit’s a brave boy, this isn’t enough to stop him and he eventually finds his way out so there could be reunion and a final battle against Persephone.

While Pit’s great prison break is going on, Aphrodite makes an empty promise to rest of the cast that she can give Pit back, with some conditions - but just like in the myth, all she actually wants is Psyche’s death so the danger factor is amped up to eleven. I honestly don’t know how the one about sorting grains could be handled I guess it could work as a puzzle chapter, but the rest work rather well without massive changes. The one about gathering te golden fleas could now take a more direct approach, the one about getting Styx’s water is now missing the helpful eagle and the Underworld trip is largely same with the exception of Persephone not being cooperative. This would be the point where the two plotlines merge together and they take Persephone down together before leaving from the Underworld. Psyche falling for Stygian sleep in this version is up to debate, I say it could work either way. It mostly depends on when she’s going to wake up - if it’s too early it might as well not matter, if it’s after the final battle I’d say that’s too late.

As one might expect Pit’s escape makes Aphrodite furious and she challenges him into a one final battle - that brat has stolen her favorite boytoy from her, satisfaction of getting rid of the annoying princess and also her chances to become the supreme goddess way too many times, she has reached her third-act breakdown and at this point she has nothing left to lose anymore. Ares isn’t going to come back to her, Psyche is not going to die and the people under her empire have started to become less dependent of her, the last thing she can do is get rid the troublesome kid that brought her into this situation. Of course Pit ends up winning, sending the goddess to Aether to hang with Hades where they can now together sulk over the fact that they got defeated by an angel. Pit triumphantly returns to Skyworld where Palutena and others have been waiting, there’s a joyful reunion between all of them and if one wants to follow the original myth at this point, Psyche could gain divinity or immortality for her bravery for standing against Aphrodite as a mere mortal. People have become immortals for dumber reasons in Greco-Roman mythology, so at least Psyche doesn’t become immortal merely because one god thought she was pretty. Have some little banter at the end between the cast and then credits can finally roll in.

When thinking of some nice bonus content, maybe there could be a secret ending player can unlock after beating all the chapters on a certain difficulty, which confirms that everyone is doing well. If we have to deal with another long hiatus that could last for decade or two or eternity, best the game can offer is closure. Pit doesn’t have to a married man with a daughter, but at least show that he’s doing well and ready for a new adventure or that he has had many of those under his belt at this point. All one can do is hope at this point that there will be a new adventure or a happy ending that ties all the loose ends together. Praise Volupta, maybe one day dreams can come true.

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Welp, this turned out to be much more longer and heavier than I originally expected! If nothing else, that would make an interesting fanfic. Anyway, I think I made my point clear - Aphrodite has everything a big bad needs from power to personality and motives to harass the already existing KI-cast. Even if you don’t want to go with the ideas I came up with, there’s so many myths to use and modify in which she could fill the role of the main villain. And just because there’s heavy themes it doesn’t mean it has to be without humor - I mean, there’s a lot of heavy implications in KI:U yet the game still manages to be a comedy gold mine despite those heavy implications. Writers just need to know when to be serious and when levity is needed, good pacing is something that every great story needs. For some reason I could definitely see there being a gag in which Pandora has regained her true form, only for Aphrodite to snatch it away because Pandora was living on borrowed beauty anyway and she’d like to have it back.

Though I must say that I’m proud of all of these plot bunnies I came up with. It was a fun journey to me to research, overthink, adapt and mix myths while trying to imagine who could be the next possible big bad and what the plotline relating to their villainy could be. And I came out wiser from it, so I really can’t be angry over it even if it took so me so much longer than I originally planned. I never thought that me wanting to write about a Nintendo game would make me read this much about history and philosophy yet here I am. Also now when I’m thinking of it, that last one would tie a lot of threads nicely together if they had a plotline like it on a future game - Poseidon gets to be an antagonist, Apollo gets to be an antagonist, Persephone gets to be an antagonist and Aphrodite gets to be the villain. It’s so nice when things work out this well together! Dionysus is left out though, but I guess it’s not all that bad because having too many antagonists would make the plot feel overly complicated.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my thoughts of who could replace Hades as the big bad. You can’t change my mind on Aphrodite being the best possible candidate but if you disagree with me, who do you think it could be? I’m always open for discussion so feel free to talk with me. Now there’s only one question remaining on my head - if a future Kid Icarus game had Arachne, would she be a jorōgumo?