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illuminatedquill · 3 years

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Extracurricular, An Analysis

Oh Ji-soo and Bae Gyu-ri

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is sign on as it’s accomplice.” - Tom Robbins

You know the story. You’ve heard it before, right?

Boy meets girl.

Girl finds out that boy is running a side protection business for prostitutes.

Girl decides to blackmail boy into letting her join his business.

Classic high school criminal shenanigans ensue leading them into more dangerous situations where they are forced to make desperate decisions to stay alive.

Oh, and they fall in love along the way.

Oh? You haven’t heard this one before? Then let me introduce you to this delightful kdrama called Extracurricular.

I watched this one while waiting for the newest Hometown Cha Cha Cha episodes to drop and ended up binging the whole series in two days. There are many remarkable parts of this series: it’s a crime drama, first and foremost, that showcases high school teenagers caught in a cycle of violence and crime, abandoned by the society and adults that are supposed to be protecting them. There are no clear good guys and bad guys in this drama; everyone is cast in shades of grey. Our main leads, Oh Ji-soo and Bae Gyu-ri, run the prostitution business, and are both from broken family backgrounds. Their actions are morally questionable at best, but the top tier performances from Kim Dong Hee (you might remember him from Itaewon Class) and Park Ju Hyun make you cheer for them anyway. You want them to have a happy ending, despite the horrible things they do. The audience is always reminded that despite how clever they are in staying ahead, their actions have consequences, and they’re just high school kids. The drama never pulls it punches.

But, weirdly enough, it’s also a love story. And that’s the part the really sticks with me until now. (The chemistry between the main leads is absolute dynamite and I could watch ten episodes of them just verbally sparring with each other. They don’t even kiss. They’re that fantastic when together on screen.)

I’m writing this because this is undoubtedly one of my all time favorite kdramas and I have a lot of feelings about our main pairing, Ji-soo and Gyu-ri. I can’t call them a couple (wait, didn’t I just say they fall in love) because their relationship can’t be labelled simply as that. Think of it as something similar to the main leads in My Ahjussi. Two people who should have become soulmates, yet met at the wrong time.

This kdrama is not particularly happy, and while I do encourage people to watch this, I am warning that the subject matter is extremely dark. If you’re sensitive to scenes depicting sexual assault, graphic violence, or anything in that zip code you’ll want to steer clear.

Also, I’ll be diving into spoiler territory in this analysis. So if you want to go in clean, then stop reading here.

Still here? Awesome. Let’s dive deep into the messy, amazing pairing that is Oh Ji-soo and Bae Gyu-ri. First, let’s do a brief character background on our two main leads, starting with Ji-soo.

Oh Ji-soo is one half of our main pairing and this story starts with him. He lives by himself and has been essentially abandoned by his only parents; his father is a failed businessman who gambles whatever money he acquires on scams and his mother ran away. His apartment is small, sparse, but functional. He owns only a few outfits aside from his school uniform. The only unique item he owns is a pet hermit crab that he takes care of. His life outside of school is non-existent; he has no friends, no one to hang out with and do typical high school teenager activities with. He takes care of himself and lives only for himself and his “dream”: to graduate, attend college, get married, and have kids like a normal person.

But to do that, he needs a large amount of money. He has no other financial means to do so (his father is largely absent, as is his mother), so he decides, at some point, to start up this protection business for prostitutes. The drama doesn’t go into detail about the how and why he came to this conclusion that this was the best way to make a lot of money in a short amount of time, so you’ll have to suspend your disbelief from the get go. Considering the themes of the story (how youths abandoned by society tend to act out in extreme ways to make it in this world), it’s not hard to believe his desperation would drive him to make such a decision.

Ji-soo, despite his shady business, is actually a decent person. There’s a streak of humanity that exists inside him that refuses to go out, despite the increasingly dark and bleak events that start to overtake his life. He’s attached to his hermit crab, cares for his “employees” outside of them being tools to make him money, and doesn’t want to see anyone get hurt. He goes above and beyond what’s required to help out people at the risk of his own life (in particular, Gyu-ri, and we’ll get into that shortly).

What we learn from the first few episodes is that Oh Ji-soo is extremely smart and methodical in how he approaches his life. At school, he is known as a model student - quiet, top of the class in terms of grades, doesn’t draw any attention to himself, always follows along with what the teachers ask of him. Only his homeroom teacher, Mr. Cho, seems to consider his quiet style of existence to be concerning and tries to make him less socially awkward by pairing him up with another student in a new extracurricular club. This leads to the introduction of Bae Gyu-ri, Ji-soo’s longtime crush and future partner-in-crime.

Meet Bae Gyu-ri, the other half of our dynamic duo. Her introduction into the story kickstarts the entire plot, as one of her earliest actions leads to a domino effect that spells increasing doom and tragedy for our main leads. She messes with Ji-soo’s operation at a critical moment and she spends the rest of the drama doing her best to make up for the consequences that follow.

In my personal opinion, she is probably the best main female lead I’ve ever seen in a kdrama. Hands down, no other character exists (currently) that rivals her sheer cunning, wit, and badassery. Gyu-ri is Crazy, capital C, and is the chaos to Ji-soo’s control; the fire to his ice. Despite being the direct cause of half the events that happen to Ji-soo in the drama, he can’t help but need her because of what she offers. They make an incredible team. Her competitiveness, her need to win no matter the odds, helps them survive time and time again.

Gyu-ri is from the opposite end of the spectrum of Ji-soo; he’s dirt poor and she’s insanely rich (always nice to see a reversal of typical kdrama tropes). Her mother and father run a successful entertainment company. Gyu-ri is popular at school, friends with seemingly everybody, pretty, cheerful and gets along well with her teachers. Ji-soo, and the audience, believe from the beginning that she has the perfect life. It’s not hard to believe that she’s just involving herself in Ji-soo’s business because she’s bored and needs an outlet, at first.

We soon learn otherwise. Gyu-ri has more in common with Ji-soo than he initially realizes, in that they’re both trapped in circumstances beyond their control - it’s just that Gyu-ri’s cage is gilded, whereas his is not. Her parents are strict and have her life planned out for her, all without her consent or input, leaving her feeling frustrated and powerless despite her rich lifestyle. A suicide attempt hasn’t done much to change her parents attitude towards her, only serving to further their control over her life.

So, when she learns of Ji-soo’s operation she immediately seeks to angle her way into it. First, she tries to rip him off, believing that he’s an evil “pimp” and thus deserves it. But after spending some time with him, she changes her mind last second and decides to help him out instead.

And, now, let’s get into their relationship, which is one of the best (if not the best) aspect in the entire series.

I need to be upfront about something: the relationship between Ji-soo and Gyu-ri is not exactly healthy. I wouldn’t describe it as toxic - the circumstances surrounding them aren’t exactly the best environment to encourage open and honest communication - but it’s definitely not what should be considered ideal, especially for young adults, and especially for young adults who are dabbling in crime instead of studying.

So, why do I love them so much? If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you know that I loathe toxic relationships in kdramas, so I understand if you think I’m coming off as hypocritical here. Why do I like Oh Ji-soo and Bae Gyu-ri when I didn’t like, for example from recent history, (oh boy, here I go again on my Nevertheless BS) Park Jae-eon and Yu Na-bi?

First, Ji-soo and Gyu-ri are way cooler than Jae-eon and Na-bi ever could be. They run a criminal enterprise that involves having a high amount of intelligence, cunning, and daring to do so. Do Jae-eon and Na-bi run a criminal enterprise as a side business? No, they don’t, because they’re boring art students.

Secondly, Ji-soo and Gyu-ri actually progress in their relationship and change their views as they learn from each other. Now, granted, that progress isn’t towards becoming better versions of each other - quite the opposite. But at least they have progress. Jae-eon and Na-bi stayed in the same stupid cycle for the whole series and then decided that it was better staying that way as opposed to trying for something else.

Last, but certainly not least, Ji-soo and Gyu-ri are actually interesting to watch for me. The chemistry between Park Ju Hyun and Kim Dong Hee is explosive and they way they spar, exchange looks, and just generally exist around each other on screen is something I can watch forever. I’ve said this before but Han So Hee and Song Kang’s on screen chemistry, outside of their intimate scenes, really didn’t impress me.

Okay, back to Extracurricular. This relationship, man. It’s all I can think about (other than HomeCha’s Du-sik and Hye-jin, but that’s another post). Ji-soo and Gyu-ri are so good together.

I’ve noted before that Ji-soo is methodical in how he approaches his life; he plans out everything ahead, and rigs any situation as much as he can in his favor. It’s brilliant, but when a crisis happens, he doesn’t know how to deal with it effectively. He panics and flounders; becomes indecisive at a time when clear, decisive action is required.

Enter Gyu-ri. She quickly becomes the partner he never knew he needed. When there’s a situation, she becomes invaluable in her quick thinking and wit, coming up with solutions on the fly. It’s not perfect, but it keeps them just one small step ahead of whatever is coming their way.

The only thing preventing them from becoming unstoppable is the lack of communication and trust they have with each other. A lot of that has to do with how Gyu-ri entered Ji-soo’s business - she blackmailed him first, and, when that failed, she strong armed her way into getting him to accept her help. It’s implied in the drama that Ji-soo has had a crush on Gyu-ri for a while (since ninth grade, I believe) and in the first episode he actually gets the chance to spend time with her outside of school on a sort of quasi-date.

It goes sideways pretty quickly because of some shenanigans from his business, but not before she gets to know him and says some pretty touching words regarding his situation. Poor guy is head over heels - even after finding out that she’s the one blackmailing him, his feelings are only dampened, not extinguished. When he catches a glimpse of her family’s situation, he gains a deeper understanding of her and why she acts the way she does. Even more importantly, Ji-soo treats her the same after finding out this information which, to someone like Gyu-ri, means more than if he comforted her about it.

If you want to see a physical representation of how he feels, other than paying attention to his actions, you can see it in him keeping mementos from Gyu-ri. She has an interesting habit of folding bags into origami shapes and giving it to him. Even after the blackmail reveal, you can see that he continues to keep these in a container on his desk. It’s really cute that he keeps these, when it probably doesn’t even matter that much to Gyu-ri.

Towards the end of the drama, Ji-soo prepares to turn himself in to prevent Gyu-ri from being implicated in the crimes they committed. And it costs him almost everything to protect her. Ji-soo, the quiet, nerdy kid, puts himself on the line time and time again to protect Gyu-ri, knowing that it puts his life and his dream at risk to do so. And all for what? For some girl that he thinks doesn’t even like him in return?

Well, let’s talk about that. Because I’ve seen some comments that Gyu-ri was only using Ji-soo for her own selfish gain. And I can agree that was how it was at the beginning for her; she definitely was only interested in acquiring money, like Ji-soo was, in order to achieve her own goal of being free from her parents.

But, oh man, that is not what is motivating her at the end.

It’s actually pointed out relatively early by some of her friends that it’s obvious that she likes Ji-soo more than he likes her. Understandably Ji-soo is keeping her at arms length from him given the whole recent blackmailing, so it would make sense that it looks that way.

Further questioning reveals what she likes the most about him:

“It’s not like I’m crazy about him. He’s fun. And amusing. He’s smart. And there’s a certain charm he has. He also has a wolfish side to him. But he thinks he’s a puppy.”

- Bae Gyu-ri

But, as she gets to know Ji-soo better, you can certainly see that she starts to fall hard for him. As a cover story for why they hang out so much together during and after school, Gyu-ri states to everyone that they’re dating. The reactions across the school definitely imply that this is a shocking development, which means that Gyu-ri hasn’t dated anyone before. So why Ji-soo other than the reasons she herself states?

He challenges her, just as she challenges him. Gyu-ri may be the more dynamic, quick thinking of the pair but Ji-soo is every inch her intellectual equal - just in different ways. She doesn’t seem to be the type to be easily impressed, but you can tell that she’s definitely impressed by Ji-soo’s operation and how thoroughly set up it is. When Ji-soo is frustrated at the beginning by his setbacks, he blows up at another student (knocks him out in a crazy punch) and immediately walks over to Gyu-ri afterwards (who saw the whole thing) to inform her that she is now his partner in crime.

The look in her eyes, and the small smirk she has speaks volumes about her attraction to him in that scene. Smoldering.

And, oh yes, she’s prone to jealousy. Another classmate, Min-hee, gives Ji-soo a present out of the blue (it was supposed to be for her boyfriend, Ki-tae, but that’s another sub-plot) - all within view of Gyu-ri. It’s hilarious how she tries to brush it off. Later, for plot reasons, Ji-soo has to spend more time with Min-hee which only furthers Gyu-ri’s annoyance.

And her motivations stop being entirely about the money and more towards helping preserve the dream that she and Ji-soo share about being free. There’s a scene in episode 8 where it’s revealed that, due to a business partnership with a local gang (set up by none other than Gyu-ri herself in a desperate move), Ji-soo would have to drop out of school permanently to work on their behalf. Gyu-ri overhears this and, despite badly needing the gang’s help in sustaining their own business, immediately terminates the partnership.

All because it would interfere with Ji-soo’s dream.

Man, if that isn’t love.

In the following episode, Gyu-ri, and later on Ji-soo, is kidnapped by the same gang in retaliation for terminating their partnership. Ji-soo comes to her rescue but Gyu-ri is already almost free (again, she’s really, really badass) and is demanding that they bring Ji-soo to her instead of running for her life.

Surviving this latest attempt puts the two in a reflective, vulnerable mood and Gyu-ri asks Ji-soo why he keeps saving her. Ji-soo asks later on why she keeps risking her life to be with him. They don’t say the answer in words but in an almost kiss (yeah, you read that right - almost).

And then, if you aren’t already convinced, Ji-soo crosses his one last remaining line in an effort to keep Gyu-ri safe; he accidentally pushes a fellow classmate down some steps and, instead of helping her, leaves her to die after grabbing the evidence she has on him and Gyu-ri.

Extracurricular pulls off quite the magic trick here, hiding this well done love story in the middle of a serious crime drama.

The real tragedy is that Ji-soo thinks that Gyu-ri views this whole business, and by extension his life, as one big game. It’s something that she takes offense at, visibly becoming upset when he says that.

But even if that were true, he should be assured since Gyu-ri doesn’t like to lose.

As they hurtle towards the end and face up to the consequences of their actions, Ji-soo and Gyu-ri undoubtedly lose sight of their original goals and dreams. They do some fairly horrible things to stay alive and ahead of the police who are close on their trail. You can’t really blame them for doing what they did; in the face of a society that has abandoned them, what they’re doing is a logical outcome to gain what they want so desperately and deserve so much: the chance to be free to live like normal, care-free people.

I can’t say for certain that they achieve that. The drama is serious in consequences and, at the end, the net around them is drawing tighter and tighter. I won’t spoil the ending scene for you, because I highly encourage you watch this drama yourself but I will say this: Ji-soo and Gyu-ri seem stuck in an impossible situation with nowhere to go, and no one to help them, with a clock ticking down towards either death or discovery by the police.

But, all the same, I’m always the optimist. They’ve gotten through situations like this before and they can certainly do so again. Maybe not as bad as this one, but not too far out of their league. And, like I mentioned before, Gyu-ri doesn’t like to lose. Especially when it comes to Ji-soo.

Their relationship is truly dangerous, as Ji-soo himself notes. Them being together is the source of their problems; they’re too much alike now, as opposed to the beginning of the drama where he stated that they’re too different. Their love is the kind of love where both of them are willing to burn the whole world down if it means keeping each other safe.

I’m a real sucker for those kind of love stories. No one’s a hero here. They’re just kids in high school, doing the best with what they know.

Who are we to judge what is right and wrong? Especially when the one committing the acts are high school kids who don’t know any better and just want to save each other?

Do we have that right?

Do they really deserve that punishment? Shouldn’t we be pointing fingers at the society that forced them to act this way?

Extracurricular really makes you think about that. Is it really so outlandish and terrible what Ji-soo and Gyu-ri do to survive when the adults who are supposed to be protecting them, teaching them better, have failed in their duty?

Maybe they really did win at the end. Not so much in succeeding in their goals but in gaining something that not even regular people are likely to find - a partner, a soulmate, someone who will stand by you no matter what.

If you do watch the ending, and are not an optimist like I am, then all I can say is this: whatever happened, they were together at the end.

They were together.

#extracurricular netflix #human class #netflix #kdrama #oh jisoo #bae gyuri #park joo hyun #park ju hyun #kim dong hee

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 3 years

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IOTA Reviews: Lies

You guys ready for almost twenty straight minutes of Angstdrien Depreste? Neither am I.

Let's get into the third (chronologically the second) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season: Lies (Oh, I get what they did there).

We open with Marinette struggling to decipher the grimoire she inherited from Fu, before two of the Kwamis screw around and play a video about Adrien.

Jesus Christ... it hasn't even been an episode since she broke up with Luka, and the writers are already back to making her simp over Adrien again. And this part of the episode takes place during “Truth”, where she's still dating Luka. This is supposedly meant to show her conflicting feelings regarding both Adrien and Luka, but it just comes across as yet another joke about Marinette simping over Adrien because the writers have forgotten she has other interests outside of her hero life.

And here we go. The writers are going to go out of their way to make the audience feel bad for Adrien in this episode by showing how tough his life is. What do we see him do that is allegedly so exhausting? He models for another statue, goes to a photoshoot, and then goes to some drama class where he repeats some phrase (I think it's supposed to be a warmup, but it's never explained why he's there in the first place). That's it. This is his definition of an “endless day”? Oh yeah, his life must be soooooooo hard.

Adrien is a rich white boy who is the son of one of the biggest names in fashion across the world, has legions of fans, an honest education, and is also one of the most beloved superheroes in the city while not having to struggle with the same responsibility his partner has. But no, Adrien's life is much harder than anyone else who has suffered this past year. It's yet another trick the writers are pulling to make people feel bad for Adrien instead of criticizing his behavior. I'm sorry, but I find it a little hard to relate to someone whose biggest problems amount his diamond shoes being too tight.

Good lord, I'm not even a minute in...

So Adrien transforms into Cat Noir and heads off to patrol. Keep in mind that the first part of this episode takes place during the events of “Truth”, so we see how he reacts to Ladybug not showing up for patrol. He waits for a while before he starts, but not before leaving a message for his partner.

Now, this moment honestly could have worked. What doesn't make it work is the air quotes Cat Noir starts off with. If he had said something like that honestly and kept his feelings a secret, it could have shown he understands the burden Ladybug has to bear now that she's the Guardian, but doesn't want to worry her. The problem is that the way he phrased the first sentence coupled with the air quotes make it seem like he doesn't care about what Ladybug has to deal with now, and only wants her to spend time with him.

You think I'm being overdramatic or I'm just jumping to conclusions? In the very next scene, Cat Noir actually tries to see if Mr. Ramier is emotional enough to get akumatized into Mr. Pigeon again just so he can see Ladybug.

This is just... why? Why would any of the writers expect the audience to feel bad for Cat Noir here? It's one thing for him to miss Ladybug's company, which is natural considering how much time they spend together, but wanting to start a life-threatening situation just to see Ladybug just isn't cool. What makes this any different from Chloe causing a subway to go out of control so she can save it herself, or Lila intentionally akumatizing herself and working with Hawkmoth just because she hates Ladybug? If you can find a reason other than “because the plot says so”, I'll want to hear an explanation.

So Cat Noir goes to Le Grand Paris to drown his sorrows in alcohol with his favorite drink, a White Russian without the vodka and coffee liqueur. Also, instead of cream, it's skim milk. And speaking of Chloe, we see her get into a brief squabble with Sabrina over missing a bag she has underneath her shoulder, and Cat Noir gets excited again at the prospect of getting to fight an Akuma, but thankfully, the situation is resolved fairly quickly.

Ignoring how unheroic this makes this supposed “superhero” look, I have a quick question. SHOULDN'T CHLOE BE IN PRISON RIGHT NOW? She essentially committed treason against her country by willingly conspiring with a terrorist. I get that everyone in Paris was paralyzed at the time, but did Ladybug not tell anyone what happened? How is she not in trouble? Did her father pardon her or something? Is she not even going to do any community service? You would think given how much Astruc hates her, Chloe would be forced to face more consequences for her actions other than losing her Miraculous permanently. Hopefully, “Queen Banana” will shed some light on Chloe's situation, but I'm not exactly holding my breath on that.

But yeah, Cat Noir actually gets excited at the prospect at fighting an akumatized Sabrina, while ignoring how cruel Chloe's being to her, because I guess it's a day that ends with a “Y”. Remember when Adrien actually called out Lila and compromised with her in order to get Marinette back into school? Good times.

Cat Noir keeps calling and leaving messages for Ladybug, but changes his mind as soon as he sees Kagami, because he has the attention span of a puppy looking for someone to play with. Adrien stares at his phone's wallpaper of Ladybug, implying he still has feelings for her, and is then informed by Nathalie that his fencing class with Kagami was moved back by an hour. In reality, it was a trick by Kagami to get the two to spend some quality time together.

They choose to hang out in the art room because, get this, Kagami has always had a passion for drawing. Of course! That explains why it's never been mentioned in any earlier episodes, not even the one where she attended the premiere of an animated movie, which is a similar form of art. It's almost like the writers wanted to have Kagami do something that doesn't involve swinging a sword around. It's a good reason, mind you, but maybe if it was foreshadowed more, I would be more open to it.

Kagami says that she loves drawing because “art never lies”. Because it's not like someone can draw something completely inaccurate to what's actually being depicted, much like a certain character who likes to make up stories of people she knows to get others to like her, right? Kagami also says that her mother doesn't let her draw because she doesn't think her art isn't good, even though she's blind. Because when it comes to parents in Miraculous Ladybug, they're either amazing people who love their children, or they're emotionally abusive pieces of garbage who make you wonder why they even had kids in the first place. There is literally no middle ground. Maybe some of the writers have daddy issues?

So Kagami decides to draw a picture of Adrien, but wants him to give her a more “natural” pose instead of the standard model poses he usually gives.

Okay, this scene is raising so many red flags, the dialogue might as well be in semaphore. Where the hell did this side of Kagami come from? Why is she so controlling and forceful all of a sudden? In fact, why is she so obsessed with Adrien being “perfect”? The two made jokes before in the past (Desperada), and even spent half of the Season 3 finale playing around with Marinette? Why is she now Little Miss Serious?

Also, Kagami is really overstepping boundaries with Adrien here. Like, to a seriously uncomfortable degree. I get she isn't good with social cues, but how can she not see how anxious Adrien looks while she forces him into a pose, all while saying how wrong he is for doing what he sees as “natural”? This is not what a healthy relationship looks like, and spoiler alert, this isn't exactly why they even break up at the end of the episode.

Before the two can kiss while they're actually at fencing practice, Adrien is forced to leave Kagami to help Ladybug fight Mr. Pigeon (which means the narrative basically gave him what he wanted for no reason), leading to the same scene where Ladybug almost kills him, while he jokes about how he likes how angry she gets, and she apologizes for something that wasn't her fault. Just remember, he flirts with Ladybug right after he left his girlfriend to join her for an Akuma battle. The same montage from “Truth” happens, only it's Adrien missing opportunities to be close with Kagami, culminating with the little Kitty Section concert that happened right before Luka got akumatized.

While the two wait for their rides, Adrien accidentally drops the charm Marinette gave him all the way back in “Gamer”, which Kagami picks up. When he sees an Akuma flying, Adrien soon heads off to fight him, saving Ladybug from blowing her cover. After the events of “Truth”, Adrien apparently heads to Prince Ali's birthday party (yet Rose isn't there for some reason), meaning the second half of this episode takes place immediately after the previous one, even though it's been established that Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth needs time to recharge.

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After Cat Noir flirts a little with Ladybug again, he heads off to the party to meet up with Kagami. When he had to leave to fight Truth, Adrien claimed that he left something on the Liberty, which Adrien later claims was the charm Marinette gave him. Kagami soon realizes he's lying about something, and doesn't take it well.

There's a good performance from Kagami's voice actress here, and it's a nice parallel to Luka, who also feels a sense of betrayal when Marinette can't be honest with him. But this scene does tie into the problem with Adrien and Kagami in this episode, and I'll get into it towards the end.

Kagami storms off, and is immediately akumatized by Shadowmoth, turning her into Lies.

Like Truth, the design here is really forgettable. The design is all white and gives Kagami a haircut that looks like it belongs in The Jetsons, but that's it. The one thing I like about her is the way her powers work. Instead of going from victim to victim, Lies creates an energy dome that slowly grows and paralyzes anyone has lied before in the past, which is basically everyone who comes into contact with it. It's a pretty interesting idea, and it means that Ladybug and Cat Noir have to rely more on strategy while avoiding any contact with the dome.

Adrien transforms into Cat Noir and charges into action, with Jagged Stone offering to help out.

I don't think you can say the same for your family, can you, Jagged?

Cat Noir tells Jagged to get to a safe place, but much like his one night stand with Anarka, he refuses to pull out, so he gets paralyzed by the dome, along with everyone in the building.

Ladybug meets up with Cat Noir and immediately summons her Lucky Charm, a remote control drone. Since it hasn't lied, it can go into the dome and be used as surveillance while Cat Noir distracts Lies. While it seems like nobody inside the dome can touch Lies, Ladybug realizes that Fang, Jagged Stone's pet crocodile, hasn't lied either, so she uses the drone to lure him out of the building.

Cat Noir thinks of a way to distract Lies by doing what he always does to increase the tension.

You know, I thought of a little game we could play. Why don't we count how many times Cat Noir sacrifices himself this season? So far, the Cat Noir Self-Kill Counter is at 1, but I'm guessing it will be higher the longer this season goes on.

So while Lies is distracted by Cat Noir's unconscious body, Fang runs over and breaks her corrupted object, Marinette's charm. So after using Miraculous Ladybug, Ladybug runs over and, for good reason, I may add, scolds Cat Noir for recklessly sacrificing himself yet again.

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You know if this plan failed, not only would Shadowmoth get your Miraculous, but Ladybug would be all alone, you idiot! And we're supposed to find this reckless endangerment funny!? Seriously, Ladybug smiles at Cat Noir's stupid little quip as he still flirts with her right after he got into a fight with his girlfriend.

The next day, Adrien apologizes to Kagami, but she says she can't trust him, not as a boyfriend, and not as a friend either. And here is the problem with the Adrigami breakup. Like with the Lukanette breakup, it chooses to focus on one detail instead of the other, and glaringly obvious detail. The episode is trying to say that the whole reason Kagami and Adrien can't work as a couple is because of Adrien keeping his life as Cat Noir a secret. In reality, both of them have problems that they need to work on before they consider dating. Kagami has shown herself to be a massive control freak in this episode because of her own vision of what Adrien is like, showing she doesn't respect his boundaries or beliefs.

And Adrien? Where do I begin?

Adrien clearly shows several signs that he hasn't moved on from Ladybug with how much he flirts with her, even before he and Kagami got together, and there's the fact that unlike Marinette who realizes how she can't have a love life, it doesn't feel like Adrien actually learned that lesson.

We are supposed to see Adrien focusing on his secret life as Cat Noir as the responsible thing to do, and that like Ladybug, he needs to prioritize being Cat Noir over dating. The thing is that this episode has only showed how he doesn't take any of the hero stuff seriously. Throughout the episode, he treats being Cat Noir as a fun pasttime, when it comes to craving Ladybug's attention to the point where he's just short of causing an Akuma attack out of desperation until he sees someone else to spend time with, constantly flirts with Ladybug despite how annoyed she can come across, doesn't understand any of the stuff she has to deal with now that she's Guardian, and will sacrifice himself all so Ladybug can do all the work for him. He doesn't care about anything unless he gains something in return. It doesn't matter if lives are in danger, he thinks his personal feelings are more important because his civilian life is sO hAaArRd.

At one point when we were all kids, we all wanted to be superheroes because we all thought the idea of having superpowers and the freedom to do whatever we wanted sounded awesome. But that's not what being a hero is. We never thought about the responsibility that comes with being a superhero. One of the main themes of superhero media that we all watched growing up was that they would help us to learn right from wrong, and that sometimes, personal sacrifices have to be made for the greater good, and our feelings just aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. Whether we learned this lesson from Superman, Spider-Man, Sailor Moon, the Power Rangers, or even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, what matters is that by the time we reached the age of these heroes, we would have a similar moral compass so we would understand why these heroes would make some of the choices they did, and we would be able to make similar choices if we encountered situations like the ones they went through.

Part of growing up is realizing that being a superhero isn't all fun and games. Sometimes, you need to put your own personal desires aside to make sure nobody gets hurt because of something you did or didn't do. We are currently in the fourth season of this show, and after 82 episodes, Cat Noir has still failed to learn that lesson. He doesn't understand that even if his “true self” is clowning around, that's not how a hero acts. You don't see Batman or Captain America acting this way, and you don't see real life soldiers or emergency workers acting this way either.

And that's not even getting into the fact that this is the same problem the Lukanette breakup had. Even though Marinette had a valid reason to break things off with Luka because she realized being Guardian was more important, the narrative framed it like she was still into Adrien, no matter if she was making an effort to get over him. Likewise, even though both Adrien and Kagami have issues the narrative refuses to actually acknowledge, they frame it as Adrien's hero life was ruining their relationship, when in reality, the reasons for both the Adrigami breakup and the Lukanette breakup should have been flipped. “Truth” should have been about Marinette coming to terms with her new responsibilities as the Guardian, and “Lies” should have been about Adrien realizing he needs to work on his own personal issues before he considers his feelings for Kagami or Ladybug.

So the episode just ends with Ladybug and Cat Noir saying that even if they have to keep secrets about their identities, they can still trust each other. Also, before Kagami dumped him, Adrien reaffirmed his feelings for Ladybug (the only time they were actually referenced outside of flirting and his phone's wallpaper), which implies that Adrien is going to continue to pursue Ladybug, having learned nothing from this whole episode.

You know, after watching both this episode and “Truth”, and seeing how it undid two of the major changes from the Season 3 finale, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all? Does it almost feel like you've been here before? How am I gonna be a optimist about this? Hell if I know, this episode's honestly worse than “Truth” was.

Put aside your feelings on the Adrigami breakup, the pacing here was awful. Because the writers thought it would be interesting to have some continuity for once by having it take place right after “Truth”, the timeline is incredibly confusing. Can Shadowmoth just create more Akumas at once without having to recharge? And shouldn't Ladybug and Cat Noir be exhausted from having to fight two Akumas and a Sentimonster in one day?

Even then, about half of the episode was spent following Adrien as he whined about how hard he supposedly has it, proving despite what Astruc continues to state, he is far from perfect, and like what he loves to say about Chloe, refuses to change. Wow, that's so interesting. And we're supposed to feel bad for Cat Noir and be mad at Ladybug for missing their patrol, forgetting everything she's been going through in the last week, considering how Gabriel just fixed the Peacock Miraculous, suggesting that the events of “Truth” and “Lies” happened not too long after “Miracle Queen”. Even the Akuma fight wasn't that interesting because it was crammed into about five minutes thanks to everything else going on in this episode.

In an attempt to make the audience sympathize with him, this episode only made me loathe the way Adrien is portrayed even more. Seriously, he reaches “Frozer” levels of unlikability in this episode. Maybe he'll get some much needed character development, but given how much Astruc will put him on a pedestal and ignore his flaws, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon.

But I still don't see the point of spending so much time building up this relationship for two seasons just to end it as soon as they hook up. At the end of the day, all Lukanette and Adrigami amounted to was filler. It was a way to get in some romantic scenes for the fans while the writers continue to drag out the Love Square drama like a taffy puller. And now that Luka and Kagami have served their purpose, watch as Astruc and the other writers start to slowly remove them from the narrative until they appear about as often as Nino does now.

After all, why care about anything in this show that isn’t related to the Love Square? It’s clear none of the writers do.

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softyoongiionly · 4 years

Text

Portraits of a Tiger || 02

Legends of a great and equally terrifying warrior nicknamed the Tiger have been emerging from your fellow villagers for quite sometime. Stories of his skill, his stealth and his supposed wickedness have been passed around to the point where he is more prophecy than person. You have lived your life with a strong sense of conviction, rarely letting gossip influence your opinion. However, you would be lying if you said that his legacy didn’t intrigue you. When the Tiger and his infamous army arrive in your village to refuel, you come face to face with the man behind the myth.

And no amount of marketplace gossip would ever be enough to capture the true complexity of his nature.

Pairing: Merchant! Reader x Warrior! Yoongi

Genre: Adventure, Romance, Smut (later), Fluff, Angst

Word Count: 7.1k

Warnings: language, depictions of violence both verbal and physical however they are fairly mild, mentions of war and power dynamics, there will be smut in future parts so, (18+ only please).

Current Tag List (let me know if you want to be tagged!): @gldnrecs @naajix @bluewhale52 @nikkikenji @lustedkisses @loveyoongles @hear-me-growl

A/N: oh hiiii. I’m a little obsessed with this universe so, I hope you guys are enjoying all the Warrior! Yoongi content. Love you!

Once again, I want to shout out @bulletproofbirdy for everything she has done to make this fic possible. I love you so much!

“I’m just saying, some of the women in this village should at least attempt it. Wedding a solider is an honor, not to mention the fact that it sets you up for life.”

Jane’s voice sounds beside you and it causes you to smile to yourself; she’s always coming up with plans for other people, attempting to live vicariously through them.

“Like Y/N- you’re young-” She tilts her head, her frizzy red hair almost twirling above her scalp, “-ish. You would probably be able to convince one of them to take you for a bride.”

You scoff, “Thank you for having so much faith in me Jane, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Jane quickly moves on to another girl in the market, throwing the same amount of enthusiasm her way.

You know she means well, even if she is a little brash at times.

It’s been two days since the market place was riddled with thieves and soldiers. Things have mostly gone back to normal apart from the same armored men loitering about your village.

Over the time that’s past, you’ve been able to meet or at least learn more about Yoongi’s fleet.

Seven men, each of them possessing an incredible amount of skill, made up the group behind the gossip.

Seokjin was indeed in charge of community outreach (and the cooking) but, he was also an incredible marksmen; his aim was unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed. Whilst you were cleaning up yesterday evening, you saw a few of them practicing and Seokjin through a dagger from nearly 200 feet away only for it to land directly in the center of the target.

Namjoon, you met in the library whilst you were reading more about a new remedy you were planning to try. He was extremely brawny but very mild mannered. He introduced himself and thanked you for the bread you had delivered and upon speaking to him, you learned of his position in the fleet; psychological warfare. According to Namjoon, he was in charge of depleting the moral of their enemies by various means that he didn’t specify. His gentle demeanor made it very difficult for you to believe that he was apart of such a dangerous team but you realized that, that was the very reason he was so successful.

Jungkook, according to Seokjin, was the fleet’s first responder: The first man on the ground during a battle and usually the last one to leave. He had two things on his side: speed and strength. The fleet calls him the Terror Cub which is supposed to be a play on Yoongi’s nickname. You’ve also learned that Jungkook is Yoongi’s younger brother and upon minimal observation, you can tell they have a very close bond.

Jimin, you met at the tavern during an evening out with Rachel. He was incredibly kind and his beauty was nothing short of offensive. His position in the army made sense; he was known as a Red Herring or in civilian terms: the distraction. Jimin’s beauty and charm was the fleet’s secret weapon and after spending a bit of time with him that night, you could definitely see why. Without a uniform, Jimin looks like a soft and unassuming man. A target would never suspect his true intentions.

Taehyung and you had a lot in common as he too was an Apothecary only- he didn’t specialize in the same type of medicine you did. Taehyung was the fleet’s resident poison expert. You met him at the tavern as well as he was the man Jimin hung off of the entire night. You learned of their romance throughout the evening and, couldn’t help but admire the sheer power between them. The Herring and the Poison Expert, what a duo.

Hoseok was still a bit of a mystery to you as he rarely ventured into the village. According to Seokjin, Yoongi placed him charge of training the new recruits specifically in the art Hoseok was most familiar with: archery. Upon the introduction of his position, you quickly recalled a story regarding the legendary archer. Hoseok’s expertise had made it into the discourse in your village roughly a year ago when the Royal Army took down invaders in the snowy mountains just west of your home. In accordance with the story, Hoseok defeated their front line from the treetops before they were able to reach the rest of his fleet. You hadn’t had a chance to speak with him much but, he did introduce himself when you brought a second basket of bread to the camp.

Aside from being their general, their leader and, the most expert swordsman in all of the land, Yoongi was also the fleet’s strategist. He mapped their every move, their every course, their objectives and several precautionary measures should things go sour. He was essentially the brains behind everything but of course, you didn’t learn this from him. The rest of his men had revealed bits and pieces about him throughout your interactions with each of them.

In addition, you also learned that Yoongi’s army was a defensive force. They were established as a means of protection by the Queens which would mean that the stories of them ruthlessly invading territories around the region were null and void. The seven of them preceded over a much larger fleet; 22,000 men who follow closely behind them but never fight unless Yoongi calls in for backup.

The Tiger’s fleet was the frontline, the brain, heart and soul of the royal army.

You feel a bit of sadness for them. They have done so much to protect this land and although they are revered and admired, they are also unnecessarily feared.

The morning passes easily and it’s one of those days where you actually enjoy being out in the plaza.

The weather was nice, temperate and cool just as you like it.

Clouds encase the otherwise sunny sky which keeps it from growing too warm in the marketplace and, with the slight breeze wafting throughout the atmosphere, you feel content.

A minimal afternoon crowd makes it easy for you to provide accurate and lengthy consultations to your patrons.

“Yes- just apply this three times a day and you should notice a significant reduction in the inflammation.” You smile sweetly, passing a lot the salve to your customer before you notice a familiar color making its way through the crowd.

It’s platinum and the curve of the ponytail its attached to belongs to someone you hadn’t anticipated on seeing.

It causes your heartrate to go a little wonky whilst you attempt to look away.

The salve Yoongi purchased from you days earlier prove to be very popular amongst his crew and now his tin that was supposed to last him three months is nearly gone.

He may have other reasons for returning to the market as well but, his story was air-tight and would need no further explanation.

He would know, he checked.

“Good morning,” You smile at him and Jane’s train of thought is derailed the moment she sees your next customer. “How can I help you?”

He raises his hand, a large metal tin between his fingers, “Do you have any more of this? I woke up this morning to find that my men have ransacked it. If you have the stock, I’d like to buy 7 more tins so I can have one of my own.”

You can’t help it but allow your eyes to widen at his request; the profits from 7 more tins would be enough to feed your family for the next month.

But you compose yourself quickly and nod, “I have more than enough- you said 7 right? Did you want the big tins again?”

He lowers his hand and sighs, his eyes flitting back towards his tent, “Please. I don’t trust the younger ones to use it as you instructed so, I want to make sure it lasts as long as it can.”

Snickering, you bend down and grab the requested amount of tins for him and nod in understanding, “Makes total sense. I’m guessing one of the main culprits was Jungkook? I saw him rubbing his hands together for a really long time and, now everything makes sense.”

Yoongi smirks, his teeth peeking out between his lips, “Aish that kid- he's gonna give me a heart attack one of these days.”

“He’s younger brother right? I can see the resemblance...” You tease, wrapping the tins in paper, spending a little too much time on each one and, no it’s totally not because you’re trying to prolong your interaction with Yoongi.

“Adopted brother yes- my parents took him in when he was 7. It’s interesting you think we look alike though, you’re not the first person to say that.” Yoongi’s hands have found their way to his uniform, smoothing it out subconsciously.

“Oh really? Yeah I wouldn’t have suspected that, you guys have the same mouth-” His brows raise at your comment and the glint in his eye makes you backtrack, “his lips are a little bigger I guess though so- uh not that I’m looking closely at your mouth or anything but-”

Yoongi starts chuckling then, the shakiness in your tone amusing him “I understand what you mean don’t worry. What’s my total?” He nods to the tins, which you’ve finally finished wrapping.

“Oh! Right, I’m sorry- your total is 24.50...” You slide the tins towards him carefully before Jane’s shrill voice sounds from beside you.

“Give the man a discount Y/N, he’s practically buying out your entire stock!” She urges, gesturing wildly towards your cart.

Your mouth opens as your eyes move quickly between her and Yoongi “O-”

Yoongi raises his hand, “Nonsense. Ms. Y/L/N’s products are some of the finest I’ve come across and are certainly worth the full price- 24.50 you said?” His brows raise again, looking directly into your eyes, not even bothering to turn to Jane’s direction.

The direct way in which he addresses her sends a bit of heat to your cheeks. Jane is someone you have mutual respect for but, her attitude isn’t your favorite nor is her incessant need to put her nose in everyone’s business.

“Yes, thank you.” You smile sheepishly, bending down once more to grab a paper bag from beneath your counter, “I’ll put in a few bags of rose hip and peppermint tea free of charge; they help with inflammation. I know you all will be training over the next few weeks so, you should get some use out of it.”

He offers a small smile and bows his head, “Thank you. Uh-” Yoongi turns once again back towards his camp, “Seokjin hasn’t stopped talking about your bread, has he arranged for you to bring more?”

Giggling, you accept his payment, tucking it away beneath the counter and nodding, “Yes. I’ll be by this evening with a new batch.”

“Has he offered any payment? We appreciate the hospitality of course but, I do hope he plans on compensating you for your trouble.”

Waving him off, you shake your head and slide the bag his way, “It’s no trouble at all honestly, I’ve been wanting to hone my baking skills for quite some time so, this just gives me an excuse to do so.”

He grimaces, “Still, you should be-”

“I really don’t mind Yoongi, I promise. This transaction is going to take care of my family and I for quite some time. Not to mention the fact that you all saved my village A LOT of trouble. Take the free bread.” You insist, smirking slightly and if you aren’t mistaken, you notice a light blush come across his cheeks.

Clearing his throat, he steps back away from your cart, moving the smile off of his lips as best as he can.

He likes the sound of his name on your lips a little more than he cares to admit.

He needs to get out of this plaza before he smiles at you one more time.

It’s getting a little out of hand.

“Appreciate it.” He mutters before bowing his head once more, “I suppose I’ll see you this evening then?”

Something flutters around in your stomach, “You will. Thank you again for coming by.”

His mouth fixes over a tight smile as he fashions the bag around his wrist, which is quite delicate for a man of his nature.

When Yoongi is fully out of earshot, you take a deep breath and begin straightening up your cart, trying to distract your mind from his presence

Jane however, has been foaming at the mouth ever since he shot down her suggestion of a discount and quickly rushes over to you, smacking her hand across your arm.

“Ow! Ok- listen we have got to find another way to greet each other because, you’re going to leave some permanent damage on me one of these days.” You admonish, your brow furrowing as you rub your arm.

She ignores you and leans down, her eyes wide with curiosity, “You ARE going to pursue him aren’t you? He’s clearly interested, did you see the way he smiled?! He was quite literally hanging on every word you said!” She whisper yells, her eyes darting around

This conversation is giving you deja vu and given your flustered state you don’t necessarily have the capacity to argue with her.

“Maybe he’s just kinder than you all gave him credit for.” You answer coolly, giggling as she tugs frantically at your dress.

“He’s kinder to YOU. He barely gave me a second look.” She insists, sound slightly bitter

You quickly move on, waving over another customer, a smile still on your lips, “Aren’t you happily married Jane? I’m sure your husband looks at you plenty...”

She kisses her teeth and rolls her eyes, “Happily is a loaded word dear. Regardless, my point stays the same. You said you were bringing bread over to him didn’t you? Are you planning on using that chance to further this little bond you two have?”

Its your turn to roll your eyes now, “I plan on using that chance to deliver bread.”

With a grumble, Jane reluctantly returns to her cart as she too has a customer heading her way.

The rest of the day passes easily, which you are quite thankful for given that you’re evening plans are a little out of the ordinary.

It’s hard to get Yoongi out of your mind but, you really do try, he is just a man after all.

Just an interesting, intelligent, handsome-

“Y/N...” Rachel’s voice drags you out of your train of thought and causes you to quickly shift on the stool towards her.

You went to her house after you day had ended because:

She’s the absolute best

and

She has the better oven

“What? Sorry I was-”

She smirks knowingly, sprinkling flour over the dough on the cutting board, “Just thinking about how you plan on charming the Tiger tonight?”

You’d like to deny it but, she isn’t entirely wrong.

Instead, you just go back to wrapping the current loaf of fresh bread in the same paper you use to wrap you wares back at the market.

The cheese in this batch makes the outside of the bread a little greasy so, you always gift it with some wrapping; it also keeps the bugs away.

“You know- you should come with me. It's your one-way ticket to Jungkook, you only have a few weeks to gain his hand in marriage.” You point out, smirking.

Rachel blushes profusely, “I- well- you know?!?! He really is something.” She stutters, swallowing back a bit of her nerves before continuing, “I don’t know if I can do that. You've seen me in social settings...”

You snort and point in her direction, “I have. You’re great in social settings. We panic- in private- together remember? That’s how we bond.” Clenching your fist to your chest dramatically, you continue with the rest of her concern, “Honestly he’s not that intimidating face to face. He was practically hiding behind in his friend when I was there...”

Jungkook had stood out to you for that specific reason; his demeanor at the plaza would have never lead you to suspect his shy and rather docile nature.

He certainly was perplexing.

Rachel smiles whimsically, staring off at nothing while she half-heartedly kneads the dough. She then lets out a sigh before giggling at the end of your sentence, “I suppose you’re right. He seems gentle underneath that brawny exterior. He’s so handsome too- and such a high rank for being so young. I’m just a village teacher...”

You smirk again, “Gentle is one way of putting it.” Then you scoff, feeling actual offense at her comment regarding herself. To express your distaste, you throw a piece of dough her way, “Stop that. You are literally the most eligible woman in this entire village. You are an artist, an educator and-” You take a bite out of a spare loaf of bread and shove it in your mouth, relishing in it’s doughy, cheesy texture. “- a damn good baker. Don’t sell yourself short.”

She rolls her eyes playfully, “Oh alright...you’re quite eligible yourself you know! How does it feel to have caught the eye of the Tiger himself, hm????”

“So you’re coming?” You ask excitedly, bouncing on your stool before promptly looking away in denial, “I have done no such thing. He’s just being friendly to me because I cured his dry skin. Soft hands will change a man let me tell you...”

“Ohhhh I suppose I will.” She sighs with a shrug to her shoulders, “My curiosity will always get the best of me, for better or worse.” She leans closer to her friend, conspiratorially “we can’t have that Tigers paws TOO soft—don’t do your job TOO well, oh esteemed herbalist.”

“In sickness and in health til death do you part...” You finish with raised brows, before giggling “esteemed and eligible? Now you’re just flattering me. I don’t think he’ll need to come back to my cart at least, I gave him enough salve to last the winter.”

Rachel shoves rounds the counter suddenly, heat blooming on her cheeks as she tries to shove you off the stool, “Oh YOUUUUU!!” She rolls her eyes again, looking at you pointedly, “Regardless of salve, you don’t give yourself enough credit. All jokes aside, Y/N, from what you have told me about your run ins with the general, he seems to appreciate your conversation. I don’t imagine people treat him with such frankness.”

Your laughter increases as you hold onto the counter for dear life, “Hey easy!” Biting your lip, you try to think of the right words to say without giving yourself away, “He’s very interesting. I am- you know, very intrigued by him that’s for sure.”

She lets you off the hook, her own laughter dying down as she returns to her place, “He is fascinating...I am a bit surprised at how different he seems to be from the stories...it raises so many questions like- how did he end up where he is?”

“I don’t know honestly. I kind of feel bad that so many people had him wrong- Seokjin said they don’t get a lot of hospitality due to the rumors about Yoongi.”

Rachel pouts before turning to pull one of the last batches of bread out of the oven. As she tugs the tray out of it’s warm resting place her lips tug up into a smirk “Oh it’s Yoongi now? On a first name basis with the nation’s greatest general I see- that was quick.”

It’s your eyes that roll this time, heat rushing to the tip of your nose, “That IS his name... I can’t keep calling him Tiger now can I? That would be weird...”

She continues smirking but, her eyes hold a bit of sympathy as she addresses the rest of your sentence, “Seriously though, that breaks my heart for them...he handled that raider with more kindness than he deserved. It makes me wonder how many other rumors are unfounded.”

“Yeah it really surprised me- I was expecting there to be bloodshed...I still can’t believe he just let most of them go. I’ve seen soldiers administer worse punishments for lesser offenses.

“I suppose you are right. Yoongi seems to be shrouded in mystery, but perhaps you will have a chance to learn more about the man behind the myth?” She suggests, brows rising with her inquiry.

“Typical teacher- rooting for me and all my hopes and dreams.” You tease as the two of you load up the bread into the basket, “Perhaps YOU will have a chance to learn more about the man behind the chest plate hm? Are you all ready to go?”

She smiles, “I will ALWAYS root for you!” And as the two of you begin packing everything up she huffs, blushing once again, “You really won’t stop teasing me, will you?”

“Nope.” You smile cheekily, dodging as she tries to wack you, “I can see it now- you, educating the youth and him- protecting the innocent. It’s a match made in heaven.”

Rachel offers a shy grin as the two of you head out the door, “A girl can daydream...”

The walk to the camp doesn’t take long but within the short period of time you spend walking, your stomach manages to work itself up into a frenzy.

“Ok- the main tent is the one with the flag on the-” You begin, pointing it out to Rachel but your voice is quickly swallowed as you spot him:

The Tiger aka Yoongi, strolls through the courtyard of their camp towards a group of awaiting recruits in the distance.

He’s wearing crème colored linen pants and a matching peasant blouse, his long white tendrils wrapped up into a bun atop his head. He strides through the grass with confidence, his dark eyes observing his surroundings.

“You were saying?” Rachel eyes you curiously before following your line of sight.

Before she can say anything, you rush to return to your explanation, “Seokjin is the one that I made the arrangements with so, we can deliver these in there.” You gesture to the main tent, swallowing back a bit of nerves.

You don’t see many of Yoongi’s men out in the yard with the exception of Namjoon. He’s sitting on a bench, dressed entirely in red, sketching on a piece of parchment.

As you ring the bell of the tent, Rachel subconsciously shifts behind you.

“Is that my bread?!” Seokjin yells from inside the tent and after a bit of shuffling, he pushes aside the entrance, a bright smile on his face, “Ugh it is. You are a godsent Y/N...” His head cocks as he sees Rachel standing beside you, “Oh hello, you must be Y/N’s friend. Kim Seokjin, did you assist with this delivery?”

He extends a hand to her warmly and Rachel graciously takes it, smiling softly.

“I did. It’s very nice to meet you. You can call me Rachel...”

He returns her smile, bowing his head, “Rachel- that’s a beautiful name. Thank you for doing this, I haven’t seen these men so energized in quite some time.” Seokjin smirks fondly before his teeth tug at his bottom lip, “Would you two mind joining me in here for a moment? I have a question I’d like to ask you.”

You nod despite your confusion, still in disbelief that you’ve made contact with the nation’s most infamous men.

“Of course.”

Rachel nods politely, following behind you as Seokjin holds the entrance open.

Your hit with the smell of wood as you enter their tent along with a hint of musk. It’s genuinely surprising that the odor isn’t stronger given that multiple men likely share these quarters. There’s several cots on the floor and mini lanterns adorning the ropes holding the tent together. Supplies, personal belongings and various weapons litter the floor and tabletops and, in one of the cots you spot Jungkook, laying down, shirtless.

In front of his face sits a book that needs no introduction; a famous military strategy guide written by an ancient legend. Befitting, you think, of course they would have their men brushing up on military technique.

Your brain also hones in on the man holding the book:

Jungkook is truly beautiful. His chocolate locks reach the base of his neck, disheveled but luxurious whilst his tan and soft features are screwed up in concentration. He doesn’t notice your presence at first but, Rachel certainly notices him.

You can hear her swallow beside you, her face turning bright red as her body subconsciously shifts closer to you.

Her lips part silently and she tries her best to tear her eyes away from his body. The broadness of his chest and the smooth curves of his stomach is enough to capture your attention as well despite the fact that muscle doesn’t normally warrant a reaction from you.

As you the two of you grow closer to him, his eyes finally flit in your direction and, they grow wide like saucers. Hastily, he throws his book to the side before ripping his blanket off the end of his cot and wrapping it around himself.

“Jungkook-ah, make yourself decent. We have guests. I believe you’ve met Y/N already but, this is her friend Rachel...” Seokjin gestures elegantly to both of you, unbothered and unaware of the lingering tension in the air.

“Yes Hyung-” He mutters and grabs his brown linen shirt off the floor and tugs it over his head. He stands, almost robotically and extends his hand towards her, “Nice to meet you.”

Rachel moves in a similar way, her eyes still widened slightly whilst she takes his hand.

“Hi.” She responds, her voice smaller than usual and it causes Seokjin to quirk his brow at the two of them.

Jungkook visibly swallows, his prominent Adams apple bouncing in his throat as his hand sort of lingers against hers.

“I like your- “ His eyes flit to the top of her head, “ribbon. It’s blue.”

Seokjin smirks knowingly at the two of them now and he opens his mouth to break the tension before Rachel speaks up.

“Thanks!” She says a bit too loudly before swallowing the volume a bit, “I like your shirt. It’s very brown- a nice brown.”

Jungkook offers a tiny smile, dropping her hand reluctantly and before their encounter can continue, Seokjin speaks up.

“Uh ok, hooray for first meetings hm?” He nods to the exit of the tent, “Jungkook, I believe Yoongi was looking for you. He needs an assistant for today’s training session.”

Jungkook immediately perks up, nodding in excitement, “Yes hyung.” He pivots towards his cot to collect his armor but turns around once more to glance at Rachel, “Nice meeting you.”

“You too.” She practically squeaks, raising a hand in farewell.

Jungkook’s teeth peek out as he grins before he grabs his armor and practically sprints out of the tent.

Seokjin chuckles warmly and shakes his head before gesturing to the wooden table towards the back of the tent, “You are welcome to have a seat here, this should only take a moment.”

You each take your places at the table, illuminated by the lantern hanging above you.

Seokjin rounds the corner to sit across from you, his prince-like features tightening with a bit seriousness.

“As I said- this will be quick.” He assures you, licking his lips and lowering his voice a bit, “I was speaking with Yoongi earlier today and, he mentioned something that made me quite curious. He relayed a bit of your conversation with him-” He looks at you, “-he said that you told him that raiders were a common occurrence in your region, is that correct?”

You take his lead and lower your voice as well, glancing at Rachel before answering, “Yes. The number of raids has been increasing recently over the last few months actually.”

“I see. Do you have any idea as to why that may be?”

“I mean- our village is known for negotiating with raider clans.” You offer,” Our leaders feel as though it prevents violence.”

His brows quirk, hands clasping on the top of the table, “Has that method been effective so far?”

You look to Rachel for her insight and she tilts her head, considering the question, before she nods in approval which causes you to follow suit.

“I guess so. We have a specific strategy but, we are equipped with defenses as well.”

Seokjin nods, his brows knitting together in thought. His plush lips part for a moment as he contemplates his next response, uncertainty written all over his face.

“Have either of you noticed any similarities between the clans? Anything at all- clothing, weaponry, language?”

Your immediate response is to shake your head.

When a raid is occurring, you don’t necessarily have time to observe your intruders; safety is the only thing on your mind.

Rachel however, has noticed a similarity.

“There is one thing I’ve started to notice actually-” She begins, “They all seem to have a similar strategy. When they arrive, they encircle the town first before working their way inwards. It takes them a very long time to reach the center of the village, which is where we wait for them. It’s very strange actually, the center plaza contains most of our valuables- it's almost as if they are trying to take over in a way. However, they always end up leaving after negotiations and, I’ve never seen the same faces twice.”

Now that she mentions it, you recall that similarity as well.

They do deploy the same tactic but, you just assumed that it’s the most effective way to get the most out of their raid.

Perhaps that isn’t their only intention.

Your stomach shrinks at the thought as you try to push it out of your head.

Seokjin’s features twitch with a bit of unease but, he composes himself quickly and smiles.

“Thank you. I’ll pass that along to Yoongi and see what he thinks of it.” He takes a deep breath, “We really appreciate your cooperation. As I mentioned to you the other day, it’s not very often that we are able to communicate with civilians and it makes our job a lot easier if we have insight from people who actually live in the territories we try to protect.” He eyes you both with a bit of hesitation then, as if he’s contemplating something, “If you wouldn't mind spreading the word that we aren’t a group of vicious demi-gods that would be great. As fun as the legends are, they can be a hinderance to our work...”

You and Rachel nod in understanding, chuckling lightly at his word usage as the three of you stand.

“I’ll pass along the information. Thank you for having us.” You smile, bowing your head.

Rachel follows suit and, subconsciously her eyes drift to Jungkook’s cot, something that doesn’t go unnoticed by Seokjin.

“We appreciate having you very much.” He smirks as his eyes flit to Rachel, “Both of you. I think you should come along with Y/N for future deliveries Rachel, I’m sure Jungkook would enjoy that.”

Comically, Rachel’s eyes widen a bit as she aggressively clears her throat, frantically looking away from Jungkook’s cot.

“What? Why would he? Wh-What do you mean?” She stutters which causes you to giggle fondly at your friend.

Taking her hand, you squeeze it gently and address Seokjin’s request, “Oh she’ll be back, don’t you worry.”

He chuckles and gestures to the door, “I look forward to it. I’ll walk you two out, I hope you have a good rest of your day.”

Rachel mutters something inaudible by your side, towing behind you reluctantly.

After your departure from the tent and a bit of friendly verbal sparring between you and Rachel, you separate to finish the remainder of your day.

That evening, you decide to go against your parent’s judgements and journey to the river once again.

As beautiful as it is in the daylight, the moon provides a rendition unlike any other. She casts her glow on the water like the mother of all spotlights, dancing across the surface with ease.

The truth is, you often sneak out after your parent’s have fallen asleep to find solace in the atmosphere of there. It’s almost magical and you feel as though you can think clearly here.

You always bring your wicker basket along as well so you can collect any herbs or ingredients you may need.

It’s a necessity to switch off between plants though and ensure that you aren’t depleting the rivers natural resources too much; a practice you are continuously getting better at.

The river carries it’s usual orchestra of sounds along with a bit more whistling in the trees.

It’s mating season for the birds here and they are singing to one another in hopes of finding a lover.

You giggle to yourself and think of what the world would be like if humans implied a similar method of finding a partner.

“Should I be concerned that you’re out here alone, laughing to yourself?”

The voice instantly sends energy up your back and you whip your head around to find Yoongi standing a few yards behind you.

He looks a bit worn out, likely from all the work he’s been doing with the new recruits but, his beauty overwhelms you regardless.

The moonlight casts shadows on his face, his mouth pulled up in a smirk, his hair tied back once again into a ponytail.

He’s wearing a set of clean clothes, a white linen top with brown pants, his sword strapped loyally to his hip.

You imagine he never travels without it.

“Should I be concerned that you’re stalking me?” You retort trying to control the smile that crosses over your face.

He smirks, his hand coming up to rub behind his neck, “I’m not stalking you. I’m patrolling the perimeter, common military practice. You just so happen to be along the perimeter.”

“The perimeter is one the other side of the river, there is a path just through those trees over there-” You point to a group of trees to the left of you, “So technically, you’re not walking the ENTIRE perimeter.”

Yoongi smirks broadens enough for his teeth to peak out as he nods, impressed by your knowledge, “Fair enough.” He nods to the river behind you, “I like walking through here, it’s peaceful.”

You can’t help but return a smile of your own as you nod, “It is. I don’t blame you for taking a detour, even if it was to scare the lights out of me again.”

He chuckles, “Are you out here often?”

“Very.” You nod, “This place serves multiple purposes.”

“Oh does it? What purposes are those?”

“Well, I get most of my ingredients from the river or the surrounding forest so, it’s vital to my work and,” You gesture to the space around your head, “It’s the perfect location to contemplate my existence, the meaning of life, the secrets of the universe- you know, stuff like that.”

Yoongi’s expression grows very amused then, his tongue poking out between his lips before he laughs again, “Ah yes- that stuff. Has the river provided you with any answers?”

“Oh yeah- plenty but you know, the answers only lead to more questions. It’s a vicious cycle.” You quip, giggling a bit and feeling very comfortable in his presence.

There is magnetism between the two of you.

It’s something you’ve never felt before.

And deep down within your heart, you hope he feels it too.

He steps towards you subconsciously, glancing towards the moon and then back at you, “I know that cycle very well. Have you found anything worth sharing? My job doesn’t exactly allow me to indulge in philosophy very often, I’d welcome any of your insight.”

It’s perplexing that a famous General would care to know your thoughts regarding the best eateries in your village let alone, for him to care about your philosophy.

It’s incredibly odd.

You've always been a fan of oddities though so, you don’t think as much of it as you should.

“You’d have to be a little more specific, I don’t think you’d want to sit here whilst I prattle on about the complexities of the universe.” You laugh

He bites his lip in contemplation, his gaze on you softening significantly, “I wouldn’t be so sure...” Yoongi murmurs and the way he looks at you sends your heart on a marathon, “But I see your point; what do you think of the war?”

Taking a deep breath, you attempt to compose yourself and your thoughts in order to accurately address his question.

“I understand it to a certain extent. Historically speaking, humans have consistently risen in opposition of one another for whatever reason. Peace seems impossible at times. With so many selfish people rising to power, it almost incentivizes that kind of behavior. It’s rewarded. Peace is only possible when you restrict the empowerment of those who act within their own self-interest. The cycle always continues though so, war is inevitable.” You speak softly, taking your eyes off of Yoongi for a moment to focus on your choice of words.

His dark eyes seem to glimmer with fascination as he nods along to your response, the two of you shifting closer to one another.

Unintentionally, of course.

“How should we restrict the empowerment of those individuals?” He licks his lips as his eyes narrow in curiosity, “Do you think there is a way to do that?”

Chewing on your cheek, you consider his question before letting out a sigh, “The power would have to return to the masses. I think the idea that humanity needs finite leadership isn’t completely accurate. Snuffing out corruption is difficult though, especially since it’s already been let loose. I guess there isn’t a linear path but, I’d like to believe it’s possible.”

He smiles, “So would I. My profession wouldn’t really imply that though would it?”

Your hands play with the fabric of your dress to distract from how close the two of you are as you swallow back the instability of your breath.

“I think it does actually. You aren’t tasked with the corrupt objectives; your job is to defend against it.”

A grimace comes over his face, “I still engage in violence.”

“You do.” You agree, your hands lowering to clasp in front of you, “There is a difference between you and your enemy though isn’t there?”

Yoongi is truly hanging on every word you say, eager to hear the soft twinkle of your voice, eager to understand your mind.

“There is.” He answers tightly, glancing down your hands, “Violence isn’t our objective.”

You notice his gaze on your hands and it causes you to look at his own; they look softer than you remember, which you hope you can take partial credit for.

Amused, you watch as he clasps and unclasps them unknowingly, his nerves starting to creep up inside his head.

“What is your objective?” You ask, smiling softly at him

He bites his bottom lip, nodding as he understands where you’re headed, “Defending the innocent.”

“In times of war, peace also requires an army...” You conclude, hoping to comfort him in some way.

He smiles again but, he doesn’t look up at you, his gaze transfixed upon your fingers, “You should consider becoming an advisor of some sort.”

Your head tilts, your heart rate going crazy in your chest but, your curiosity and it’s need to be sated override your need to be proper.

“Why do you keep looking at my hands?”

He still doesn’t look up but he does blush, nervous laughter emanating from his lips, “Because I want to hold them...”

At his confession, he looks up at you longing, his throat bobbing as he swallows and tries to discern your reaction.

Without thinking you unfurl your fingers and turn your palms so they are facing towards the sky, slightly embarrassed by the way that they shake.

“Then hold them.”

Yoongi’s eyes widen momentarily, shooting down at your upturned palms before he slowly, almost agonizingly places his own shaking hands atop yours.

Simultaneously, the two of you intertwine your fingers, feeling the erratic pulse of one another.

“It’s good to know that my heart isn't the only one that’s pounding.”

Nervously, you giggle and nod rapidly, “Definitely. I thought I was the only one...”

He chuckles in response, stepping towards you a little more so you can feel the heat coming off of his body.

The two of you stand there in silence, enjoying the feeling of one another and the simplicity of the act you’re performing.

Words fall short on your tongue because, you are truly in awe of the way you feel and, part of you worries that you’re actually dreaming.

A shout nearby, coming from one of your fellow villagers rips the two of you out of your moment as Yoongi suddenly remembers why he came this way in the first place.

He drops your hands and steps back, feeling slightly regretful that he let go of you so abruptly.

“I’m sorry.” He clears his throat, looking back towards the voice before gesturing to the forest, “I should go- my men will come looking for me if I’m gone too long.”

Quickly, you nod in understanding, stepping a few inches back, “Of course. Thank you for the talk- it was-”

“I’d like to come by the river more often while I’m here- if that’s alright with you.” He interrupts you, his voice a little shaky as he clears his throat again.

Knowingly, you grin, “I don’t own the river Yoongi...”

Your quip breaks the bit of tension between you and he chuckles, his hands adjusting his clothes unnecessarily.

“I’m aware, Ms. Apothecary. I was just implying that-”

You interrupt him now with a smirk rushing to your lips, “You were implying that we should cross paths again.”

Yoongi bites his lip, cheeks the color of summer roses, “Yes.”

“I think we should too.”

This makes him smile and for a moment, he looks like a young man, completely rid of any burdens.

It’s a good look.

“Are you ok to walk back on your own?”

You want to tell him no but, the light from the main street is yards away and after that, your home is only 5 minutes by foot.

“Yes.” You nod to the forest behind him, “Are you ok to walk on your own?”

He rolls his eyes before chuckling, patting the sword at his hip, “I’ll manage.”

With one last parting smile, the two of you begin to go your separate ways.

Tonight, each of your minds would be filled thoughts of one another and if you were lucky, you’d cross each others path while you sleep.

One could only hope.

“Goodnight Y/N.”

“Goodnight General Min.”

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sl-walker · 3 years

Photo

All right, since I’m in the middle of a flare and have to work manual labor for the next four days despite it, I figured I would make myself -- and hopefully other people -- laugh by talking about one of my favorite OG Captain Marvel stories. Namely, from Whiz #50, with a cover date of January, 1944, meaning it was probably produced sometime in late 1943.

I want to share it because why not, this is some absurdly charming stuff.

I’ll get more into why it’s one of my favorites as we go, in the form of running commentary. So, full story (with said commentary) under the cut. If you wanna just read the story without my commentary, stick to the pictures. XD

First, let me say that the cover and splash page definitely live up to the story, though the cover’s a bit more sensationalized. But the premise is pretty damn simple: Our intrepid hero and his newsboy alter ego are on vacation. Cap decides to go swimming. It goes hilariously wrong and thus ensues a bit of a madcap adventure, no puns intended.

Second, the fact that Cap and Billy are depicted as essentially different entities makes what Billy does next the ultimate trolling:

Gee, airing out the stolen laundry on the radio? Really? I’ll leave it up to you, gentle reader, whether Billy actually was trolling his own alter-ego for ratings or whether he was just innocently sharing the story while his other-self winced quietly in whatever ether-space he exists in when not front-and-center.

Either way, I love it.

Continuing on...

I get a kick out of the fact that Billy’s monologue is that he’s no dare-devil. One, because that’s so obviously not true in any way -- (that kid is awesomely, sometimes recklessly brave on the regular even without Cap) -- but two, because the bridge is actually named Dare-Devil Bridge. We aren’t given any reason why this dangerous potential death-trap is there, hanging without so much as a gate or a warning sign or anything, because we don’t need one. It’s there specifically for what happens next.

Which, of course, is Billy calling in Captain Marvel, who does some light complaining about the situation Billy left him in. There’s no bite to it, which I find adorable -- Cap actually does get frustrated once or twice in other issues with Billy calling on him for mundane stuff, though he’s never mean about it -- but there is a bit of the sense of being put-upon there that’s just-- I dunno, cute. It’s something I miss a lot in the various post-crisis takes on the character: That duality, that difference in personality, and the way each of them responds to different situations. Often, they’re on the same page, but notably, sometimes, they aren’t.

Someday, I promise, I need to sit down and write how I think that works between those two without being a truly frightening mental illness manifested, what with them being the same person but not the same person. Because I have so many ideas, and I’ve only had since the early-2000s to percolate them. LOL! But until then, just enjoy this.

Here is another reason why I love the Golden Age Captain Marvel books and why I love this specific story: This is an absolutely normal, mundane thing to do. It’s the human thing to do. These aren’t the actions of some super-serious superdude. These are the actions of a pretty shockingly normal guy doing something mundane. And a whole story is built around that normalcy.

It’s cute. It’s funny. It’s the reader already knowing that he’s getting himself into a situation that he absolutely could have avoided, but also completely understanding how it happened anyway. It’s pretty brilliant writing: I say this as a pretty damned good writer myself.

So much of the reason why, I think, Cap was so endearing as a hero is that humanity. He’s got pretty much god-tier power in the Golden Age, once his powerset is established. He’s utterly invulnerable to all physical harm while powered up. But-- he’s human. He knows he’s human. He acts like it, and decides, “You know what? I’m going skinny-dipping.”

He and Billy are both characters it’s so easy to empathize with.

Also, a reminder that the art under Chief Artist C.C. Beck is really, really good. (He had a whole stable of artists to help produce this stuff!) Ignoring registration issues on the printing press, the actual line art is amazingly good; proportion and perspective and consistency.

But anyway--Cap does get to enjoy his swim. But, then, oh no.

I love the idea of a world where the prime hero -- and he definitely is in that world -- can take off his suit and go swimming, and where someone else is bold enough to steal the damn suit off of him. The first time I read this, I started laughing here. Not at him, but at the situation he’s found himself in. At the idea that some random passer-by saw Captain Marvel’s costume and went yoink!

Another thing I love about this particular story is how much Cap and Billy have to work together, just by necessity. Like-- it’s just really good. But anyway, thank everything Billy Batson is on the ball, coming to the rescue.

Sheer bad luck via the weather keeps this story rolling along in hilarious misdirections. Realistically, that uniform probably wouldn’t be all buttoned together (we see Cap take off pieces of it aside the pants in other issues, including socks!), but who cares? The point of the story is that giant bear rug on the floor’s gonna get put to use.

Man, when have you ever seen Superman creeping naked through some stranger’s house wearing nothing but a random polar bear because he went skinny dipping? No wonder these comics sold so well. This next panel is when I start wheezing, though, and pretty much keep wheezing.

“A lady, too! I’ve got to get away from here!”

I’m dying at this point. That’s such a characteristic response, and yet, I think that’s why it’s funny.

Anyway, because this is an excellent story (I mean this without an ounce of irony, too), our dynamic duo stumbles across a plot in play to rob the hotel they’re staying at.

Here’s a big part of why this is such a good tale: Everything fits. Even when it isn’t explained, like Dare-Devil Bridge, it still fits. Why is the tree down? Because there was just a thunder storm, the same one that blew Cap’s suit into the room with the gangsters.

I don’t know if this is Otto Binder’s story, but I wouldn’t be surprised in the least. It’s a complete story told in relatively few pages that accomplishes everything it’s meant to.

Anyway, using foliage as cover, Cap gets to be heroic----then Billy gets to get back to the business of trying to stop the robbery of the hotel and get his heroic alter-ego dressed again. Which leads to a rather adorable and funny scene of Billy not only trying to describe what Captain Marvel wears, but what size it would need to be tailored in.

(Cap is supposedly a 44 for a suit coat, we find in some earlier appearance, which would refer to his chest size. So, an XL for shirts and suit-coats. He’s a big guy, but he’s actually not a hulking huge guy. But more on that later.)

I love the fact Billy tries to like-- use himself as a model. Maybe in another ten years, kiddo. Billy’s actually pretty buff for like a 12-14 year old, he’s not a scrawny kid at this point, but yeah, no. LOL!

Another thing I also really, really love about this style, though, is that they draw Captain Marvel as being strong, as having a powerful build-- but not as a dehydrated body-builder with deep cuts. He’s got human proportions, regardless of his strength; he’s got a human build, not a superhuman one.

C.C. Beck had a lot of things to say about superheroes who were just muscles on top of muscles, all clearly defined, and he didn’t like it. As someone who first got into comics in the early 90s with Jim Lee’s X-Men--

I do get Beck’s point. I not only get it, but I really highly approve of it. He maintained to the end that he drew (and oversaw) the Marvel family to look like high school and college athletes, and I can see that. I think the one person who’s gotten it right in the modern era is Evan “Doc” Shaner, who did Convergence: Shazam! He not only nailed that strong-but-not-hulking build for Cap, but also how young he looked. College-age, in fact.

But anyway, enough digression into art and why I like this better than most modern takes on the character. Also, that’s just a cute set of panels.

I also like that there wasn’t an easy fix there. Cap’s still in his not-birthday suit, and Billy’s still stuck running around trying to solve the issues at hand. Next comes some other really good panels:

-snorts- He’s locked in. Yeah, that’ll hold him.

Anyway, what I really liked here was again that tandem working; Billy can’t punch through a wall, but Cap can. Cap can’t crawl out while he’s au natural -- well, he could, but he’d probably rather die first -- but Billy’s got no such issue. It’s just fun when you get to see them doing something like that. You have to really think for a minute about the trust each of them must have in their alter-ego.

ANYWAY, we get the rare treat then--

--of Captain Marvel not only yoinking a dude into a dark room, but then stealing his clothes. Except, not his underwear. Because that’s nasty. LOL!

I love that in this series, you do actually get to see him wear other stuff. Go incognito. Get his red suit messed up enough to take it to a dry cleaner’s, wherein he ends up dressed like a musketeer after. Jerry Ordway’s series is, I think, the only other time we see Cap not wearing his famous suit, but it happened enough in the Golden Age that it wasn’t a shock.

Like, I hate to be the one to say this, but I do think DC drops the ball often on just how much you can do with Captain Marvel (or Shazam, depending on timeline, but that’s the wizard’s name to me so mostly I’ll stick with the original name) if you unbend enough to. It’s not just the costume change, or the duality of him and Billy being the same but not, but also his inherent, essential humanity.

But I am digressing again, sorry. XD I just feel strongly enough about these versions of these characters to spend hours writing this.

Anyway, only a single panel later:

And that’s that! Billy Batson has just outed his own alter-ego’s most embarrassing moment to whomever’s listening to WHIZ radio -- thank everything podcasts and the internet weren’t available then, ha! -- and we get to see a recounting of a very fun story.

Like I said earlier, I love this one for its essential humanity. The hero got himself into this mess, he and Billy got him out of this mess, and stopping the criminals was actually just kind of a lucky stroke thrown in there. But even though Cap got himself into this, the story never treats him like he’s stupid. It never treats him like he’s some kind of idiot. You’re laughing, but-- not in a mean way.

I love how human it is. How complete it is. How genuinely funny it is. It’s a thousand times more funny when you genuinely love and respect Captain Marvel and Billy Batson, too.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this dissertation on a skinny-dipping hero. LOL! I enjoyed sharing it with you.

#dc captain marvel #billy batson #shazam #whiz comics

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dreamylyfe-x · 3 years

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I always enjoy your takes on Shameless episodes, they're so spot on every time. I agree with you that Ian's handling of Mickey's grief in the beginning of the episode makes sense from a character stand point (Mickey might not be emotionally ready to be comforted, Ian didn't want Mickey to stray too far from the fact that Terry was a terrible father and person, etc) but I gotta say that it was a pretty bad choice from just a storytelling perspective. The fact that Mickey's crying didn't have much of an emotional impact on Ian made it so that it didn't have much of an emotional impact on me as a viewer. It was sad and I felt bad, but I think that the scene could have been made so much better by showing Ian as being hurt because his husband was hurt (we got this later in the episode which is why I think that scene worked better), instead of Ian giving Mickey weirded out looks and side-eyes. Idk I think that scene should have been more of a gut punch than it was (not helped by the background music, either). Ian could have set an emotional "example" for the viewer by being less stoic in the face of his husband sobbing. That would have made more sense to me just as a way to tell the story to us. I feel like Shameless still has good stories to tell but the WAY they're being told just falls so short, sometimes.

First of all, thank you for your kind words, anon. I truly do love talking about this show.

I get your reaction, and it’s made me think a little more about what the show is going for. Like... It’s definitely not the traditional response to a grieving partner, as depicted on television. But neither is Mickey’s.

I cannot tel you how little I EVER would have guessed that the next time we saw Mickey after his father’s death he’d be sitting on their bed ugly crying and I honestly love that choice so much. SO much. It’s so unusual that a show would let a male character -- particularly an alpha tough guy like Mickey -- be THIS emotional. This isn’t the red eyes while he holds Ian at the police station. It’s not him wiping tears away after Ian tells him he’s going into the army. I find the fact that Mickey is crying so openly and continuously to be as fascinating as it is to have Ian essentially giving him reasons not to cry like this.

I think a lot of people read it as Ian giving MIckey what he needs and @pathoftheranger and @damngcoffee both made compelling posts about why Ian meets Mickey where he’s at. I am particularly moved by @damngcoffee point that the degree to which Mickey is crying is proof of how safe he feels. (Also shout out to @doodlevich and this post, which I DEEPLY relate to.)

Looking at it the way you frame it -- where you had the experience of it lessening the scenes impact -- I can completely see what you mean about how it pulls you out of really empathizing with Mickey (which the music arguably wants to do, too) because Ian isn’t comforting him in a way we’re used to. Like beyond the actual characters and story, Ian’s comments are discordant. This isn’t how we usually see this dynamic presented.

The scene reminded me of a very different scene from Ronan Farrow’s book Catch and Kill where he calls his partner from the back of a cab in despair, pours his heart out, and his partner responds with impatience and says “the only thing that has changed is that you haven’t slept in 24 hours.” -- that kind of brutal logic is absolutely something people do to each other, but it’s SO RARE we see that in fiction, from a character in Ian’s position. What we see is something more gentle and I think it’s so interesting that they didn’t do that. I also think it’s interesting that Cam doesn’t play the hard edge in the dialogue. He keeps his voice soft, even as he’s openly confused by this open display of emotion. Ian reaches out, touches Mickey, and stays in the conversation even after Mickey blames Terry’s murder on Ian. But this is not your normal depiction of grieving.

Buuuuut. Ian and MIckey don’t do normal. So.

I do think there’s value in seeing something that is so different from the average and maybe closer to the way couples would talk four days after the death of a nightmare parent (who has tried to murder both of them) but you are absolutely right that this scene isn’t a gut-punch in the way we might expect. We don’t get the moment of raw shock where Ian comforts Mickey -- but from a storytelling POV I think that scene belonged in 11x08. This episode is about grieving the underserving. And if we had more time, I’d want to see so much more of this particular dynamic, which I imagine is rooted in Ian’s concern about Mickey’s mental health. There is of course the echo of what happened to Ian after his mother died and how that undid him so totally, even though she was very much not a great mother to him. It makes sense to me that Ian would have an outsized concern about Mickey getting lost in his grief and wants to help him draw those lines -- Terry was awful. He doesn’t deserve your tears. I don’t want you to be in pain like this.

None of that is text and this will always be where I get low-key frustrated, because I could watch a whole hour just about Mickey reacting to Terry’s death. Happily. But the show has a bunch of other characters and Frank’s an art thief now, so we aren’t going to get the detail I want. It’s also just very true that Ian isn’t the sort of person to deeply examine his motives. He just feels the discomfort of watching Mickey in pain and reacts.

I love that he doesn’t back off. I love that Mickey doesn’t tell him to go to hell -- because he sure as hell would if that’s what he wanted. I love Mickey’s weepy “I know!” moments of agreement. I love that Mickey is completely baffled by how upset he is. Mostly I love that, at the end of the episode, when Mickey looks completely drained, Ian has his arm around him while he says his final goodbye to his bad dad.

But we never, ever get enough Gallavich in these episodes for my taste. And I do wish we’d gotten just one more moment with them in 11x08.

#asks #thank you for asking!#I'm not a spin-off person but I also could just watch Shameless-but-mostly-Gallavich forever #shameless season 11 #shameless 11x09

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stardestroyer81 · 3 years

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On September 11th, 2020, I posted this, a teaser for a 'faux Earthbound-inspired project' featuring four brightly colored silhouettes of its four main characters. The concept and characters were shrouded in mystery up until April 7th of the following year, where I posted yet another teaser in the form of an in-game screenshot, revealing the character of Lauren Henley and the project's placeholder title, Project 2000.

In that post, I mentioned that Project 2000 isn't the project's final name, and that I would be unveiling its true name later on down the line. The truth of the matter was that I could have gone and revealed the true name as early as... well, 2020 if I wanted to. But a lot of the project was still being figured out at that time (Including the designs of its main characters!), and I wanted to hold off on revealing anything more until I knew I was 100% ready to explain what this 'Project 2000' even is.

Now, nearing a year after I posted the initial first teaser, I feel as though it's about time to introduce a few more original characters of mine to this blog, and with that being said...

Let's talk about Override!

Shigesato Itoi's 1994 cult classic Earthbound (Known as MOTHER 2 in Japan) flopped due to misleading marketing when it came around to being released in the states, but its witty humor, nonstandard JRPG setting and its colorful visual presentation proved to be a hit to the American audience in due time.

This, of course, led to creators opting to shape games around a similar basis to Earthbound, whether its in terms of graphical style, humor, battle tactics, and much more. I think the most popular example when the phrase "Earthbound-Inspired RPG" comes to mind is undoubtedly Toby Fox's Undertale, which shared a lot of the same humor as its inspiration as well as a similar graphical style.

Some fans liked the MOTHER series so much that they wanted to take the franchise into their own hands and create the next installment after Shigesato Itoi stated that MOTHER 3 was the last game in the franchise, and MOTHER 4 began production by fans. Many Winter 2014s later, it was unsure if the game was still in production, though the project was officially rebranded as its own entity as Oddity in 2020.

Override is, essentially, my kind of Undertale/Oddity, mixing elements from Earthbound, MOTHER 3, the Y2K bug and the general 2000s aesthetic together into one. By that first part, I mean it's an Earthbound-Inspired RPG crafted by my own hand (Dating as far back as mid-2019); it, of course, isn't an actual game, but rather a collection of conceptual art pieces and faux in-game screenshots I've made detailing what it would look like as a real game (Like Mega Man Ultimate).

Oh, right, the plot! Bear in mind that a lot of the finer details of Override's story haven't quite been figured out yet, but I can say that I at least have enough to finally get around to talking about it.

Charles Feldman, CEO of Synergon Robotics, longs to spearhead a dystopian world with an invincible army of technologic law-enforcers, though finds it almost impossible to in his current time, the year 2095, where such technology is commonplace.

For years, he has meticulously shaped a plan where he, a team of subordinates and all the robo-security he could need would time travel back just before the year 2000, wherein he would corrupt all technology at that point with a 'Y2K Bug' and force the denizens of the world to live a lifestyle not unlike the events of the novel 1984, wherein humanity's every move is closely observed, and if someone steps out of line, they fall to the wrath of the Synergon Police.

His plan, for the most part, is successful. He travels back to the date November 18th, 1997 to have enough time to prepare for his eventual world-ruling plan on midnight, January 1st, 2000. The aforementioned Synergon police are armed with powerful devices called 'Psiometers', which are watch-like gadgets which connect to the user's neural network to unlock the powers of the mind.

Psiometers alongside other tech necessary for Feldman's ploy are transferred base-to-base in the middle of the night via drones, which are equipped with cameras and can hold up to twenty pounds of equipment. However, on the night of December 30th, 1999, a flaw in the wrap-up of Feldman's ultimate plan occurs, when a last minute drone delivery of two Psiometer units results in a crash.

The drone lands in the yard of the Henley residence. Nine and a half year old Lauren Henley overhears the crash and goes outside to investigate, finding the busted drone amidst the snow. After another brief malfunction, it shuts itself down, and Lauren, vowing to figure out its origins, drags it into the garage and goes back to bed...

December 31st, 1999. Lauren brings the Synergon drone to her neighbor's house, and shows it to her best friend, nine year old Casey Treverton. The two shortly discover the drone's contents, and Lauren instantly suspects there's more to the Synergon story. They ultimately are short on answers for the time being, and keep the whole thing a secret from their parents until later that night...

One minute until the new year. Casey and Lauren hurry to the downstairs of the Treverton residence to catch the ball drop for the new millennium. Whatever weirdness happened earlier is put on the backburner as the two flop down in front of the TV, eagerly counting down the seconds left of 1999.

"5... 4... 3... 2..."

Then, a nationwide power shortage. Nobody has any clue what's going on. Eventually, the TV flickers back on, and instead of the new year festivities they had been watching prior, the picture depicts a grizzled although finely dressed man in front of a white backdrop; Charles Feldman.

He states that his message is being broadcast across every television in the country, and reveals his lengthy plan to create a highly technical dystopian society overseen by Synergon Robotics, threatening to rewire any technology he pleases for the worst should anyone oppose him.

Casey and Lauren grimace at each other.

Three months pass. Not a lot has changed this early on in, though the citizens of Maywood are under close surveillance by various automatons to make sure nobody tries anything funny. Lauren decides that she has had enough of this 'Synergon Business' and asks Casey if he's interested in figuring out how the Psiometers work and using them against Synergon to ultimately take them down.

At first, Casey is unsure, true to his nervous personality. There isn't any rational way two children could lead to the downfall of an entity which has taken over the world, but Lauren is sure of their success, and with enough coercing the two embark on a mission to take back what's theirs. Who do they meet along the way? Just how deep does the Synergon plan run? And will they reign victorious? Only time will tell...

Well, now that we have the lengthy scene-setting out of the way, let's check out the good stuff; checking out the four heroes of Override which were teased last year! It's a good thing I chose to wait to show their designs off, because the silhouettes shown in the teaser weren't the same designs as what I have now. So, let's get right into it!

It may have taken much longer than I expected to show Override off, but at the very least that means I can now get around to posting/writing about what I've come up for it! I have a lot of Override-related content on the way, though I find that this is an excellent way to introduce its world! A LOT of work was put into this, so I hope you've enjoyed everything this post has to offer!

#Override #Project 2000 #Casey Treverton #Lauren Henley #Bradley Snider #MacKenzie Connors #My OCs #Earthbound-Inspired #Game Concept #Sprite Art #2000s Aesthetic #Y2K Aesthetic #Coolness #IT'S F I N A L L Y HERE.#It feels SO GOOD to finally show the Override crew off.#I love these characters a whole lot and getting around to talking about them was just so nice to finally do.#Trust me when I say a good portion of Override stuff is on the way: there's quite a bit of it!#I knew I couldn't post any of it until I got an introductory post written...#... which ended up being much longer than I thought it would... apologies #But I'm glad that it's finally up for all to see!#Fun fact: Do you see the font that's used in the character bios/section headers?#Yeah. I made that.#I designed an ENTIRE FONT for Override.#Granted a lot of it is pretty identical to EB's font but there are some tiny differences throughout the typeface #It's not the only font I've made either though more on that in a future post #Oh and uh #Long Post

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blazehedgehog · 3 years

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Are you of the opinion that giving a character voice acting essentially robs the reader/viewer of their agency on how they imagine a character sounded like? So to put it in another way, would no voice acting be better than any? A Sonic-related example would be Classic Sonic, who isn't voiced in Generations, but the main inspiration for this question is Bill Watterson's hesitancy in giving his characters voices.

I mean this is just a different version of the argument people sometimes make where, like... there were people who were against making movies based on the Harry Potter books, right. Because some kids might imagine themselves in Harry's shoes, or retroactively J.K. Rowling said she imagined different characters in different nationalities when she was writing them (famously I believe some people interpret Hermione as african-american).

The idea that movies might damper the imagination inspired by books isn't entirely incorrect. However, in my experience, it's also just different mediums and reaching different audiences, right.

I don't read a lot of fiction. I know I should, I've made more efforts to in the past, and it just never works out. Maybe it's my ADHD brain or whatever, but I'll start a book and never finish it. Even audio books are like this for me a lot of the time.

But there are two books I've finished in my life: Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, and its sequel, The Lost World. They are pretty much the only fiction books I've ever read purely for fun, and also, more importantly, finished reading.

I would have never tried reading those books on my own terms if I did not see the Jurassic Park movie first. The movie is what sparked my interest in the books.

And the books, for what it's worth, are VERY different experiences! By their very nature, books are longer, more detailed stories than most movies. If you translated the Jurassic Park book into a movie, as an exact replica of the novel, it would be something like 6 hours long. Maybe closer to 8 or even 10 hours. To get a watchable movie, you have to cut a lot of scenes out and streamline things to a huge degree.

The Jurassic Park book opens with this long vignette that's practically a whole short film itself -- it starts with recapping the history of the "designer genetics gold rush" of its world, and focuses on a hospital at the edge of Costa Rica that continually receives patients with strange, poisonous bite marks from unidentifiable animals. The head nurse there suspects a conspiracy, because the patients are all InGen construction workers flown in from a nearby island and they refuse tell the doctors how they were injured. Clearly something else is going on. It weaves together with Costa Rican folklore about demons that visit cursed villages in the night and steal their children, only for one of the nurses to witness a creature in the newborn ward doing just that before seeing it skitter back in to the jungle. (The implication being that it was a dinosaur, of course)

If translated to film, that entire sequence would be 10-20 minutes long, if not more. Instead, it was condensed down in to the far more action-heavy "SHOOT HER!" opening scene. It gets some similar ideas across, but it is nothing like the book. It only lasts two minutes.

And not only is there a lot of stuff like that, but characterization is often dramatically different, too. John Hammond is much less sympathetic in the book, and much more of a villain. Alan Grant is more of an Indiana-Jones-type cowboy who is deeply ignorant of even the most simplistic modern technology. It goes on and on. There's one particularly great chapter where Grant is piloting a pontoon boat down a river while being stalked by a T-Rex that swims like a crocodile. They painted concept art for it for the movie, but it never even made it to storyboarding.

There's even a level for it in the Genesis game!

And if we're talking about The Lost World, well... 80% of that book is a completely different story from what ended up in the movie. The book has dinosaurs that camouflage like chameleons! It's terrifying!

For me, at least, it means that they don't even really compare. I find it much like how comic books feature multiverses and showcase many alternate versions of a character, where Ultimate Spider-man's Peter Parker is a different guy from the original "616" Spider-man. The book interpretations of Alan Grant, or Hermione Granger, or whoever are usually entirely different people from how they are portrayed in movies, or cartoons, or whoever. Ergo, it's hard to visualize Sam Neil as the book's version of Grant in Jurassic Park.

Even in comic books. A couple years ago I went through and read all of the original Dragon Ball. I cut my teeth watching the Saban dub of Dragon Ball back in 1995 and 1996, so I knew in my head what I thought these characters sounded like, but after reading deep enough in to the manga, that all kind of faded away and it just became it's own thing. Every now and then my mind would drift back to reading the dialog in the voices from the Saban dub (or the voices from Funimation's re-dub of Dragon Ball from 2005), but for the most part it stood on its own as its own thing. I mean, that's one of those things that lead to Dragon Ball Kai, right? Because the anime ended up just that different, and they wanted to re-edit it to be more faithful to the original books.

Not everyone has a good imagination. Reading can help facilitate and exercise a dormant imagination, I guess, but representing these things in other media formats can also aid those who struggle with the original text. Again, I'd never have read Jurassic Park if it wasn't for the movies. I'd never have read Dragon Ball if I wasn't feeling nostalgic for the anime. An important bridge was formed by adapting these properties so that other types of people could also enjoy them. It all contributes to a richer overall experience for all involved.

The only thing I'd say is that giving Classic Sonic a voice is a different kind of stylistic choice, because as Sonic Mania Adventures has shown, you can still use those characters to tell stories without necessarily having dialog. The difference there is that characters like Calvin or Hermione or Alan Grant are written with dialog in mind, and you change who they are by translating them across media types. How Classic Sonic is depicted is a bit more of a strange beast because he's been left mute. I suppose it's not that different, but it's still a little different regardless.

#questions #winstein-nin #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #harry potter #hermione #jurassic park #alan grant #reading #fiction #books #dragon ball #interpretation

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knochengeier · 3 years

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Drawfee Classpects???

I set a while ago to spitefully Classpect the Drawfee crew because they rightfully made fun of homestuck.

PREFACE:

I should state clearly that this is not meant as an attack on any members of Drawfee, and that I will be leaving out the majority of the negative aspects of the analysis. It should also be mentioned that this is more of an analysis of their online personas rather than who they actually are.

I did mention that I would leave out most negative things, but some things are core to a persons persona something they consciously and willingly put out into the world; again, this is not what I actually think these individuals are like, and is not a reflection of how I feel about them as a person. Things like "Julia doesn't know media" and "Jacob is the bad boy of Drawfee" that are explicitly stated as part of the persona is free game.

So, without further ado

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Caldwell, Prospitian Muse of Breath:

A Muse is the embodiment of and the inspiration to others through their aspect. The Muse class is one in a pair of incredibly powerful and rare classes known as the “master classes.”

Breath is the aspect of individuality, drive, optimism, and most importantly freedom.

As the Muse of Breath Caldwell inspires others to be themselves and be free, motivating creativity and driving others to pursue their dreams. Caldwells unbound optimism and resolve is a force to be reckoned with, in fact he so embodies freedom and enthusiastic ambition that he left Drawfee to pursue his own creative endeavors on the west coast.

Caldwell commands not only the forces of Skaia, but Skaia itself; his inspiring aura would be strong enough to end the war between Prospit and Derse in an instant, and even those that opposed him would find it hard to stay committed to their cause for long.

Caldwell would have the power to: a. control the wind, weather, and possibly even lightning by freeing the electrons from their atoms (though that might be an active ability) b. bypass any restraints, physical or otherwise, by any means necessary which c. Also means that he can most likely teleport at will and d. Probably turn incorporeal.

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Nathan, Prospitian Sylph of Hope:

A Sylph is a person who passively invites the healing and generation with their aspect.

Hope is the aspect of possibility, inspiration, and positivity.

As the Sylph of Hope Nathan is the light that helps others with his positivity and inspiration, not only does he help people but he inspires them to create their own hope. A Sylph of Hope would be able to see the potential for positivity in everything, and seek to be as amiable as possible, in turn helping others do the same.

Drawfee is as much a show about success as it is failure, it’s something that people can watch and say “These people make mistakes just like me” and they inspire hope for those down on their art.

One of the longest held of these humanizing aspects of the show is the apology at the end of every episode, which only became a thing after Nathan disliked a drawing so much that he was compelled to apologize, and it stuck. As much as that drawing might have sucked it inspired others who weren’t happy with their art to keep at it, and we are reminded of that after every episode.

Nathan is one of the first members of the crew to assure somebody that even if the piece didn’t come out the way they wanted, that it still looks good and is impressive nonetheless.

Nathan is the glue that holds this session together; with the presence of a prince, a bard, and a lord this session should have been doomed since the start, but Nathan’s pure awe inspiring hope promoted the best in everybody.

Nathan’s powers would include: a. A buff akin to bardic inspiration that could affect people to fight harder b. Healing abilities c. Probably an energy beam d. Manifestations of other’s hopes and dreams in the form of glowy specters like a JoJo stand.

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Julia, Dersite Lord of Void:

A Lord is the embodiment and commander of their aspect, not through inspiration but rather assimilation and domination.

Void is the aspect of confusion, secrets, and doubt.

As the Lord of Void Julia is the sovereign of secrets; unpredictable, unknowable, and the proprietor of unknown knowledge Julia uses her runes and studied knowledge to summon hideous abominations creatures from the void.

Void players have an inextricable link to the furthest ring; the furthest ring is the incomprehensible and unnavigable space that exists outside of the universe. The furthest ring acts as an impassable border between universes inhabited by massive eldritch gods called the “Horrorterrors.”

Julia would not only have the ability to traverse the furthest ring and visit other universes, but she would also have the ability to bend the horrorterrors to her will. She would be able to switch in and out of grimdark mode at will, and most likely would not be adversely effected.

Julias powers would most likely include: a. The creation and manipulation of black holes and the general desperation of physical matter b. The ability to turn invisible and probably teleport c. The ability to erase peoples memories and mute their senses, and d. The ability to speak, read, and write the language of the horrorterrors.

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Jacob, Prospitian Prince of Rage:

A Prince is a destroyer of and with their aspect.

Rage is the aspect of fate, defiance, and rejection.

As the Prince of Rage Jacob is the destroyer of and through failure, negativity, and rejection. Jacob forged his own path, he destroyed his fate as a writer and destroyed the limits and expectations for what an artist could be, and he got a job at college humor despite the odds.

Jacob is also, or was, a punk; a subculture that is predicated on the destruction of barriers through rebellion.

Even though he can use Rage for good he often doesn’t; he is well known for stirring discourse, his particular brand of Rage elicits anger and hatred thanks to his flaming hot takes.

He is also known for his infinite petty anger at dumb things ex. “see animals shouldn’t live under ground,” “lizards shouldn’t have to lick their eyes,” “muppet is short for man-puppet,” “mayo is food lube,” and “if god’s ever been mad at anything I’ve said, he hasn’t done shit about it.”

Jacob’s abilities would be: a. Becoming physically stronger the angrier he gets, or somebody gets at him b. The ability to create and control lightning c. The ability to pacify or remove the anger from somebody d. The ability to make people fear him or e. turn against their own allies.

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Karina, Dersite Knight of Heart:

A Knight is a person who precisely uses and exploits their aspect as a weapon or a tool.

Heart is the aspect of emotion, passion, and identity.

As a Knight of Heart Karina uses feelings as a weapon. Not only does Karina use her powers to literally use the emotions of her characters (see Schmidt and Nando) as a tool to effect others, but she also has deep passions like Neopets, Digimon, and Yugioh that she uses as a weapon to torment the Drawfee crew.

Karina is passionate about her identity, never missing a chance to mention any of her favorite things like Beelzemon, Seto Kaiba, catboys, or her Texan roots (Bucky’s).

Karina would have honed impulses, knowing when and where to act and how to do (or draw) something challenging. She also has the ability to hype up her friends, strengthening their resolve.

Karina’s abilities would be: a. She can create a powerful glowing weapon by materializing her soul b. She could find out the weaknesses, emotions, and insecurities of enemies c. She could split into multiple versions of herself to create a veritable army of clones, and d. Enter a soul form where she is basically impervious to most attacks.

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David, Dersite Maid of Time:

A Maid is a person who heals and regenerates their aspect or with their aspect.

Time is the aspect of machines, music, and endings.

As a Maid of Time David heals time; more often then not time is not an abstract thing, and the responsibility of time players is to keep the timelines in order and fix paradoxes.

David, as the chief editor for Drawfee is responsible for taking whatever dumb shit the crew gives them and edit it to make the video palatable.

David is also interested in theater (see “Artists Draw Posters for Musicals (They've Never Seen)” one of the only episodes in which they appear) which is related to time through music.

An interesting thing to note about Time is that it is often equated with heat, fire, and lava, something David has experience with, revealed in the episode “Drawing What We're Thankful For In 2019” in which Nathan depicts David with an overheating external drive (something that is also mechanical).

David could: a. Essentially freeze time, making moments last for hours b. Heal paradoxes in the time line c. Fix events so they go favorably, or d. Speed up time to heal a wound

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Tristan, Prospitian Mage of Light:

A Mage is a person who understands their aspect by experiencing it.

Light is the aspect of fortune, luck, relevance, and knowledge.

As a Mage of Light Tristan has an innate and personal understanding of lore; Tristan, through his interactions with pop culture, knows a lot about said things.

Mages often experience their aspect in a negative way, seen in the frequent possession of Tristan by the Lore Librarian, and his burden of knowledge about absurd and obscure facts about nerd media.

Tristan is one of the only people on the crew who understands how the game works and what the final boss’s deal is, but you know he’s going to be cryptic and vague about it because it’s funny. Tristan would have the uncanny ability to know what something is without having seen it before.

Tristans abilities are: a. Foresight, he can tell exactly when and where something will happen and manipulate them in his favor b. He can give people luck or take it away c. He can manipulate light and probably use it as a projectile, and d. Know exactly what has to be done at any moment.

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Willie, Dersite Bard of Blood:

A Bard is a person who invites the destruction of or with their aspect

Blood is the aspect of bonds, stability, and unity.

As the Bard of Blood Willie actuates the severing of bonds and the dissolving of stability.

Willie is a change maker, he breaks down the stable and familiar structure of the established group dynamics in Drawfee often in an antagonistic way; Willie is well known for his hatred for Jacob, and his very presence elicits the rage in both of them.

Videos in which Willie appears are marked by hostility, but through him new and interesting things get made.

Being a bard isn’t all bad, Bards of blood are not one sided; A bard of blood has the ability to destroy using the bonds they have, uniting a group of people under a cause to destroy something, like rallying the crew against Jacob.

Willie, like a lot of the crew, has a lot of buffing abilities; utilizing his bonds he can make others more powerful and fight harder than they could otherwise.

Willie’s abilities are: a. Control of literal blood b. Group sync, he acts as a conduit through which the coordination and damage output increases, and c. Dismantle, he can break the bonds of atoms and make physical matter crumble away.

#Drawfee #Classpecting #I think I made it clear in the preface that this isn't meant to be mean spirited #and I tried to make it as inoffensive as possible #but if a member of the crew or one of their mods asks me to take it down i will #in the true drawfee way #I'm sorry

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steropeshu · 4 years

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Theory: What if Tsukasa was a good guy?

All right, first time that I’m throwing out a theory, (with the assistance of @trish-chan!) so forgive me if I’m tripping on my words. Okay, so, theory time. (Also, to avoid confusion, I call No.7 by Hanako, and pre-death by Amane)

When I say Tsukasa was a good guy, I mean as in a good bro before he died. I think the current consensus is that Tsukasa was the one abusing Amane (theorized to be in varying degrees…), but what if he wasn’t the one behind it? What if Tsukasa ended up becoming corrupted or messed up in some way?

This ended up really really long, so the whole this is under the cut...

First, let’s focus on how they were alive. What was their relationship like? Well, we know they were close, at least. There’s this one bit in the Tanabata arc where little Amane says that Tsukasa will get violent if interrupted.

However, in the official translations it says that he’ll throw a fit. Y’know, like an excitable little kid.

It also says that he’s playing katanuki, and he LOVES katanuki, so we can assume he wouldn’t want to be interrupted. (Also, Hanako loves katanuki too!)

But other than that, we don’t really see them being brothers in the past, do we. Right…?

WRONG! Something I completely overlooked before were the volume sleeve illustrations.

Also, in this (^) illustration, I’d like to point out that the Tsukasa’s radio and Hanako’s kokeshi doll are sitting on the chest of drawers!

Something to note in these illustrations (and also the Tanabata arc) is that Amane is happy and there are no signs of bruising anywhere either. So at least as little kids, no form of abuse is present.

Also, something else I noticed:

He says that “WE believe it’s real.” Tsuchigomori said that he doesn’t have friends, and he’s obviously not referring to Tsuchigomori here. Tsukasa is the only one left he could be referring to in this “we”. They both were enthusiastic about this rock that supposedly fell from the sky, ever since they were four.

I feel like I’m grasping at straws in this part, but why would Amane include a third party unless they were important? Especially when it comes to something so sentimental to him.

Next, we have the picture from the Kamome school orientation.

Nothing here either. Just the two holding hands, and Amane is still bright-eyed. Note that they are alone. We know the Minamoto siblings live alone, but Mitsuba and Nene both have parents with them. The Yugi twins don’t. Another theory was that Amane’s parents were abusing him and they just favored Tsukasa, but this can allow us to presumably scratch that.

So that means any harm to Amane happened somewhere between here and his death. So, let’s make a time frame, hmm? We know Amane died around age 13. What age is he here…? Well we know he just entered Middle school, the first level Kamome provides for. What age…

Wow. That lines up perfectly.

This leads into the next major part of the theory.

We all know that Kamome is incredibly “haunted.” Filled to the brim with supernaturals. So, what if these two got caught up in supernatural business and things went south?

Originally this was a theory on proving Tsukasa wasn’t the one abusing Amane, but now I’m possibly considering that it was him. However, he wasn’t fully there, or something caused him to go mad.

In this part, Hanako is reciting a part of Mori Ogai’s “Takasebune”. (Credit to @nanabansama for finding that out!) In the story, a man is being exiled for a crime he committed. He seems kind so the police escort is wondering what he did. Turns out, he and his little brother were orphaned when they were young. At some point after growing up and working together, his brother fell ill. He came home one day to find out that his brother tried to kill himself so he wouldn’t be a burden. The man had finished the job for his brother, essentially putting him out of his misery.

We can draw some parallels to Hanako from this.

The man has a little brother that he killed

Absence of parents, this makes it likely that Hanako and Tsukasa’s parents are dead.

The man is being punished for what he’s done and is fully accepting of what has to happen to him as a consequence. In the man’s case, being exiled, and in Hanako’s case, being mediator for human and supernatural relations.

Perhaps from this we can draw that Hanako killed Tsukasa to put him out of his misery.

(Also, something really interesting, Ogai is spelled 鴎外. 鴎 is pronounced “Ou”, however alone it is pronounced “KAMOME”! While we’re on the subject, kamome means seagull. I had no idea why the school would be named that, but I would not be surprised if this were the reason!)

@daikon-senpai has pointed out that we can see a reoccurring “hole” in Hanako’s stomach. There’s a high likeliness that he killed himself after killing Tsukasa.

There’s a traditional method of suicide called seppuku, where one would slit their stomach to bleed out (though they would usually have someone cut their neck for efficiency and to minimize suffering). One of the reasons one would commit seppuku were if someone committed a crime or had brought shame on themselves. Both of which would be a likely reason Amane would have killed himself, and he even still carries intense guilt now as Hanako.

[UPDATE: I had made a post about how it appears that Hanako pulls his knife out from his stomach, something absent from the anime. Some of the earlier instances can look like he’s pulling out from his gakuran, so here’s a more obvious example:

@shweshishweh and @spades-queen have additionally pointed out that in some official art Hanako is depicted with a bandage over his stomach and Tsukasa with a bandage over his heart (or a heart that is damaged, as shown in the Valentine’s Day art).

With this information, not only can we assume Hanako died from wounds on his stomach, but also that Tsukasa likely died from an injury to his heart.

END OF UPDATE]

Speaking of guilt-

It’s believed that when Hanako cries while confronting Tsukasa, he’s afraid because he’s with his abuser again. I doubt this is true at all. He hasn’t cried since the Mitsuba Arc, though he still locks up briefly.

Obviously Hanako holds a ton of guilt from what he did to Tsukasa, so of course he would freeze up when the dude comes out of no where and is like, “Long time no see!!” He’s being confronted with what he did, front and center. No amount of jokes can distract him from it. There’s no avoiding it. After Tsukasa had entered the picture for a while, Hanako stops reacting so strongly, as he’s more prepared for it. (This was pointed out to me by @trish-chan!)

It’s also possible that Tsukasa is acting the messed-up way he was before he died, and Hanako is realizing that death really didn’t free him from it. He’s mortified at what’s happened to his brother.

Another thing she’s pointed out was that currently, Tsukasa hasn’t hurt Hanako. Not physically, at least. If he was the one hurting him then, why not now? It’s not like he’s hiding being violent in front of people. Let’s see… he turned Mitsuba into a monstrosity, nearly killed Kou, ripped out No. 3’s heart, totally would have turned Nene into a bloody pulp, killed the pufferfish into a bloody mess, and he’s finger painted with blood (who knows where that came from) among various other psychotic things.

Last thing I have here is a kind of lose connection, but worth including, nonetheless.

Only Tsukasa and No. 6 are creepy black mokke. I can’t bring myself to believe that AidaIro would do that for no reason. I wouldn’t question it if it were only Tsukasa, but now No. 6 is in the mix.

This actually made me think of possible connections that Tsukasa has to No. 6. After all, who has a giant gaping hole to the far shore and has messed with someone’s head so hard they basically tried to murder their childhood friend? Is it possible that No. 6 did something to Tsukasa, for whatever reason?

We don’t know enough about No. 6 currently to really be conclusive about this, though. Could both of them been corrupted somehow?

UPDATE ON THIS PART: Since I’ve first posted this, more chapters with No. 6, or Shinigami, have been released. While I have even more doubts that he and Tsukasa have any direct connection than before, I still think there are some shared aspects. Sumire’s seal is probably the most major revelation, now that it’s pretty much confirmed that Tsukasa is a yorishiro. If we assume Tsukasa is Hanako’s yorishiro, then that’s something in common with Sumire and Shinigami. But then wouldn’t Hanako be a black mokke?

This makes me think that that particular connection isn’t the shared aspect Tsukasa and Shinigami have. Perhaps it’s just something that hasn’t been revealed yet (or I haven’t picked up on lol). Something else interesting of note is the fact that Tsukasa has been completely absent this entire arc. His only sort-of presence is through Natsuhiko, who we still don’t know the motives of. We also don’t know how the Tsukasa+Sakura+Natsuhiko+Mitsuba quartet have been dealing with the Severance.

So, there are a lot of questions yet to be answered so I’m not dismissing this idea yet.

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So, in a nutshell, this theory is: Hanako and Tsukasa were good brothers, until they got caught up with supernaturals after entering Kamome. This may have caused Tsukasa to go crazy, and hurt Amane at the same time. This leads to Amane killing Tsukasa. Possibly out of self-defense or putting him out his misery. Following this, Amane kills himself. ~50 years later, present Kamome Academy. Tsukasa makes his way to the near shore and either gets corrupted or was never freed from whatever ailed him when he was alive at the school.

I’m realizing now that this would also explain this:

“Tsukasa is not himself. I know that. So I forgive it.” But we all know that Amane/Hanako is too cryptic and secretive to actually say that.

#jibaku shounen hanako kun #jshk #jshk spoilers #toilet bound hanako kun #tbhk #tbhk spoilers #tsukasa yugi #hanako kun #amane yugi #hahaha yes i think i stan tsukasa

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weirdmarioenemies · 4 years

Photo

Name: Whomp

Debut: Super Mario 64

You know what I’ve been thinking about lately? Super Mario 64. Haven’t we all, really? Between all the recent datamines and general online discussion, I can’t help but wonder about Super Mario 64!

Something I don’t think Mario 64 gets enough appreciation for, is being the birthplace of our beloved Whomps! At least, I certainly belove them. Don’t you? We’ve covered pretty much every “Thwomp” variant in the past, and sure, Whomps may be nowhere near the “obscure” side of enemies, but a splendid design is a good thing to appreciate anytime!

Not only is this their debut, but they get a whole stage themed around them: the Whomp’s Fortress, if by “fortress” you mean a vague collection of scattered obstacles and platforms floating in the sky, like most 64 stages! That sure is a lot of... textures! My favorite part is the little paddling pool near the bottom.

And who could forget the Whomp in all their original polygonal glory? Clearly they just wanted to make an enemy who is just a rectangle with a texture on top, yet the design had all its charm even back then! The sunken eyes with glowing red pupils, the H-shaped mouth with the crooked teeth... it’s very cute, in an ugly way. And on the back, their weak spot is a crack with a bandage on top! Adorable!

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it- that’s why the Whomp has only really had a few subtle redesigns over the years! When they appeared in Mario 64 DS, they looked just a little bit nicer to look at. They were also in New Super Mario Bros. DS, using the same model- a 3D only enemy in a 2D game, how strange indeed! Their first appearance in a new mainline game in 10 whole years- and it probably just happened because they wanted to reuse assets.

Another redesign? Don’t mind if I do! The Whomp’s grand return to the third dimension happened in Mario Galaxy 2, really cementing them (hah) as a modern Mario classic. This time, they’re huge! And square-ish! And uh, their eyes aren’t wacky anymore. No longer having a band-aid, they instead have a big ground-pound symbol on their back now, which must be just awful, right? Can you imagine having a big logo emblazoned on your back which says “crush me with your butt here”?

This here is their artwork from Mario Party 9. It’s the same as the art from Galaxy 2, but their eyes are glowy now. I just thought this was funny. But I’m getting ahead of myself here! Before I talk about Mario Party, I need to talk about...

Their monarch, the big bad Whomp King! He’s just... He’s just a big Whomp. He acts just like other Whomps, but he’s big and takes three hits. What’s totally memorable about this boss, though, is the villain monologue he gives before fighting!

“It makes me so mad! We build your houses, your castles, we pave your roads, and still you walk all over us. Do you ever say thank you? No! Well, you're not going to wipe your feet on me. I think I'll crush you just for fun! Do you have a problem with that? Just try to pound me, wimp! Ha!”

Uh oh! Looks like Mario’s world has a little problem with under-valuing essential workers! Good thing our world has nothing like that. Well, jokes aside, it’s a pretty cheeky nod at how the Whomps are made of stone- but one has to wonder much of this tragic backstory is serious! It must be a pretty nasty lot in life, huh?

Don’t feel bad- in 64 DS and Mario Galaxy 2, the Whomp King got a snazzy new crown! At least someone appreciates him a bit!

Well, it wasn’t just him: Galaxy 2′s Throwback Galaxy was one big reimagining of Whomp’s Fortress, meaning this is probably the most Whomp-focused game released in the past decade. The music was remixed, the boss fight was revamped- all in all, a lovely throwback indeed!

And the Whomp has basically just... stuck around! You may have noticed the image at the top (from Super Mario Party) has a slightly different design, being a little more rectangular with smaller, thinner eyes and a more angular mouth! They definitely redesigned the Whomp again at some point, but I couldn’t tell you exactly when... Either way, I’m glad they’re here for good!

Not that Whomps ever really went anywhere! In the years between Super Mario 64 and its remake, Whomps survived almost exclusively in Mario Party (and other spin-offs), functioning mainly as roadblocks that don’t allow the player to pass!

Which brings me to my final point- between their design and this function, the Whomp is most likely based on the mythological yōkai called... the Nurikabe! And since I’d love nothing more, I’ll now go into a long-winded tangent about what the Nurikabe is, and... Hey, wait!! Come back! It’ll be interesting, I swear! Don’t cut off the post! Hey-

Yeah, yeah. You’re all sick of my long-winded yōkai posts. But I’m happy you joined me here, even if it was out of pity. Let’s talk about the Nurikabe!

Look at this big guy! What a card! Nurikabe literally translates to plaster wall, and they take the form of a big invisible wall that blocks the way of travellers at night. Since they’re invisible, they naturally don’t have many illustrations- leave it to Shigeru Mizuki to depict them as a large, goofy-looking slab of stone! This Nurikabe joined the main cast of the GeGeGe no Kitaro manga, and thus quickly became a cornerstone (haha) of their popular depictions!

(To be fair, there does exist an old illustration of the Nurikabe as a strange, lumpy dog thing... but I’m not MUCH of a fan? I think a literal stone wall is so much more charming!)

Come on, look at this! What could be better?

Ōkami has a rather lovely Nurikabe-looking guy! Though his design is splendid, if you’ve played Ōkami you likely remember him as “the extremely frustrating memory puzzle” or “the memory puzzle that is literally scientifically impossible for the human brain to solve”. Shame!

Yo-kai Watch has the Murikabe, a.k.a “Noway” in the English version! “Muri” means “no way”. So like, it’s a pun. Hoho.

Nioh’s Nurikabe is quite scary, but also rather cool! Don’t you think? I still know very little about Nioh, but whenever I look at its yōkai I think “Dang! That’s cool!”, and I’m right, and it is cool.

The Super Sentai series has two whole Nurikabe monsters, each based on a different Nurikabe look! While the latter is quite cool, I’m in love with the former and its weird, grungy brick wall look! It’s like, the dictionary definition of Gnarly! Though I know very little about tokukatsu shows, I think its kind of fascinating how creative they can get with designing humanoid monsters suits!

You may be wondering: was this entire post just a thinly-veiled excuse for me to talk about the Nurikabe? And to that I say:

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmaybe....???

#mario #mario enemies #super mario 64 #super mario galaxy 2 #whomp #nurikabe #mod f boy

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a-day-in-the-afterlife · 4 years

Text

The 14th Department (AFTERL!FE) Meets the Demon Brothers and Undateables (Obey Me!)

Lucifer

Noah heard he has a dog. He is staying far away from the pretentious eldest.

Oldest big brother? You better believe Youssef finds a kindred spirit, even if they differ wildly in personalities.

Louis lives for the almost regal aesthetic Lucifer has got going on. Lucifer, in turn, lives for the day Louis will stop talking.

Quincy finds this whole trip preposterous (“What the heck is the Devildom? What happened to the Underworld?”) and does not like Lucifer’s condescending attitude (it conflicts with his own!).

Ethan doesn’t like Lucifer—proud and arrogant people with no reason to be so are not to be respected. Lucifer despises Ethan for the same reason.

Day! Will! Not! Go! Near! Lucifer! He’s so scary! But Cerberus is his best friend now (Nine-Nine who?).

Nine and Theo together find out that the eldest demon is into classical music and spend hours discussing early compositions with him.

Ell cannot be around this demon! He is a fallen angel! He tries to be nice (and because Ell is kind, so is Lucifer, even if the sickly sweetness of the angel drives him up the wall), but every good wish is punctuated with a sneeze.

Lucifer is so overworked, so by way of his calm disposition and love for meditation, Jamie helps him find ways to relax.

The eldest demon’s general demeanor astonishes June. How manly he is!

Likewise, Sian can’t go near Lucifer without feeling nervous. The man drips dominating energy!

Verine can’t understand the eldest’s love for classical music. Rock is infinitely better.

Mammon

Um, Mori and him are best friends. They together cause trouble in the House of Lamentation and in the 14th Department with their many get-rich-quick schemes.

Gaudy and expensive taste? Sign Louis up.

Ethan says ‘no’ to the demon’s general pomposity (it reeks of low self-esteem) and by God, doesn’t he own anything that depicts an iota of class?

Mammon is one speedy demon—how can Kirr not appreciate his fleetfootedness when it would bring him so much use whilst hunting? Apart from that, Kirr has no respect for that reprehensible thief, for the very idea of stealing brings back terrible memories.

Always belittled by their peers, Day and Mammon find a kindred spirit in each other, and Day is always reminded of his past life when he sees all the gold that Mammon professes to possess possesses.

Kati bit him twelve times because no dumb tsundere was going to steal his (cough Aitachi’s) spot as cutest in the Department!

Licht is eclipsed by Mammon’s demon form because how is he able to pull off wearing so little clothing so well? He must take notes. When he learns that Mammon is a model, too, he goes berserk with delight.

Cyrille finds the secondborn exceedingly stupid, although he begrudgingly gives him credit for being pretty decent at math.

Sian spots a fellow tsundere and runs away, because oh my God, it’s so obvious that Mammon likes this MC person!

Leviathan

Games? Social awkwardness? Extreme interest in things that no one else seems to care for? Cyrille has found his soulmate!

Aitachi and Kirr cringe at how Leviathan spends his leisure time, but are intrigued because they have never seen such methods of gaming and media consumption before.

Leviathan is forever at Quincy’s mercy, for the fellow demon has no qualms of absolutely crushing Levi’s already non-existent self-esteem.

Even though he loathes to admit it, Sian really likes the rhythm games Leviathan plays, and the thousands of idol posters in his room make him strangely nostalgic of his past life.

June wonders how Levi can go so long without feeling the overwhelming need to burst into a sprint now and again.

Theo almost kills the thirdborn because how is his room filled with so many Demonrito and Hell Mountain Dew containers? What filth!

Speaking of filth, Licht finds some of Levi’s dating sims and oh my darling, some of them are quite … lewd.

Ghilley and Leviathan together construct an elaborate Lego model of a castle from the anime My Sister Is A Fairy Princess, And Her Suitor Is Secretly An Ogre From a Land Far Away And Wants to Eat Us All, And It’s Up to Me to Save My Sister’s Kingdom.

Ethan can’t even walk past Leviathan’s room without a disapproving “tut.” Has the demon no discipline, despite being rumored to be the Grand Admiral of Hell’s Navy?

Kati spends all day poking at the cute monster and waifu figurines situated in Levi’s bedroom. He thinks Azuki-tan is cute, but not as cute as him, and anyone who says otherwise will get bitten!

Aitachi likes to rifle through Leviathan’s anime sword replica collection and giggle because in combat, they would be of no more use than a toothpick.

Satan

Finally! Someone with sense! thinks Ethan. Boy, do these two get along, right down to their educated and proper mannerisms to their mutual hatred of Lucifer.

Verine can’t go near Satan without coughing violently because the forthborn always has some manner of cat hair on him, no matter how diligently he preens.

Cats are infinitely better than dogs, so Noah sticks close to Satan.

Cyrille thought he had found a friend in Satan, who always has his nose in a book, but it turns out, Satan is more philosophically-and-intellectually-versed, while Cyrille is more scientific.

Nine likes Satan, for he is as calm as himself. Strangely enough, they both seem to have hidden wrathful feelings and bond over this.

Kitties! :D is all Day can think when he sees the fourthborn.

Youssef enjoys Satan’s company, too, for they both are anthropological in nature—always watching, but never interfering until there is a need.

Blond and princelike are the two of them, but Louis is sorely disappointed when Satan’s royal appearance is merely a façade of darker emotions to come, where Louis enjoys life in its every aspect. “How disappointing art thou, Satan!” Louis throws rose petals in distress.

Kirr and Aitachi try to hunt one of Satan’s cats, thinking it was some kind of Devildom’s finest prey. Satan does not forgive them for the attempt.

Theo sneezes the moment he enters Satan’s room. Although everything is in its place and not truly messy by any means, he refuses to let the stacks and stacks of books sit idly by when they are begging to be put in shelves!

Quincy and Satan each add to their respective repertoire of curses in their time together. It does not bode well for anyone in the House of Lamentation or 14th Department.

Asmodeus

They are … essentially the same person, so you can bet your ass that Licht and Asmo absolutely live for each other’s company. They literally spend hours modeling clothes together, discussing fashion, gossiping about their romantic exploits, and praising their overall appearance.

Louis joins in too, although he mostly stays for the latter, and the three vanquish away many nights complimenting their own and the others’ looks.

Sometimes Asmo likes to sew patches and sequins onto his clothes and mend them to his own design, and Aitachi, who likes to sew, learns many different ways of stitching from the fifthborn, although he hates the fact that Asmo, like Licht, never shuts up about what an “adorable and cute warrior” he is!

Asmo has to know Kirr’s hair care routine, which Kirr gives in one, succinct sentence: “I wash it. Sometimes.”

Nine has to constantly flee Asmodeus’ presence because it is in his nature to compliment the Soul Reaper on how absolutely beautiful he looks.

Kati expects makeovers, all of which should emphasize his cuteness, every other day.

Don’t ask how long Mori spent calculating how much money Asmo spends on beauty products, because he wept at the end of it.

Verine refuses to step a foot into Asmodeus’ room because do you know how much his sinuses are going to bother him when he spends even a second into a room so deeply entrenched in the fragrance of flowers and perfume?

Ghilley is used to a personality so akin to his roommate, Licht, so he has no qualms in dealing with Asmo and quite likes the gossip he is quietly able to distill from the fifthborn.

Beelzebub

Brothers in their flaming orange hair, June gloms onto Beel with astounding loyalty (Theo refuses to admit jealousy, but ...), especially when he hears of his dedication to his twin.

Cyrille has to interrogate Beel on the structural integrity of his wings in his demon form because there is no way that such a flimsy apparatus could lift a demon of Beel’s stature even an inch into the air! Also, how much does Beel exercise if he expects to gain muscle and burn off the infinite calories that he consumes? It is a scientific mystery.

Day likes snacks, Beel likes snacks! Everything is right in the world (even if the demon accidentally mistook Day’s hair for a mint ice cream cone).

Jamie is constantly offering fresh fruits and vegetables to the sixthborn, but even though he eats them willingly, Beel much prefers foods that will actually fill him up for a short amount of time.

Again, Ethan is appalled by the lack of discipline Beelzebub shows. The demon is simply a slave to his appetite and deserves nothing less than scorn.

Theo cannot decide if he likes or hates the fact that Beel leaves a trail of crumbs wherever he goes. On one hand, he gets to clean, but on the other hand, it’s so messy ...

Even though he has many misgivings of fallen angels, even Ell cannot help but like Beel! As long as he is fed, the demon is very sweet and kind.

Noah likes Beel, too. Something about his easygoing and generally cheerful personality pleases him to no end.

Beel tried to eat Kati’s hair, thinking it was a yummy bun. Sadly, he got bit more times than Mammon.

Youssef is a good cook and is thereby followed by Beel wherever he goes. The kind Soul Reaper doesn’t mind, though.

Belphegor

Noah likes how Belphie takes things easily and calmly, although it probably wouldn’t hurt for him to get more exercise.

Belphegor is even more of a conundrum to June than Leviathan was. He decides that next time he goes to the Devildom, he’s going to bring an extra pair of running shoes because the demon most certainly was wanting of physical exertion!

Kirr is absolutely astonished at the unguarded and completely lax way Belphie sprawls out in the House of Lamentation, sleeping. If he was an enemy tribesman, he would have no trouble in taking the demon down as he slept.

“This kind of laziness is not fit for a warrior at all!” cries Aitachi any time he seems Belphie dozing off.

Jamie likes Belphegor’s way of thinking. Sometimes, sitting under an apple tree in the sweltering summer heat after a hard day of work just causes one to be overcome with the desire to take a nap.

Youssef tries to brew Belphie a cup of espresso, but the caffeine just doesn’t seem to have an effect on the Avatar of Sloth.

Although he is slightly disheartened by the fact that his quiet footsteps seem to have no effect on the seventhborn, as he is always asleep, Ghilley revels in the prospect of drawing unsavory graffiti on the demon’s face when he slumbers.

Day sometimes tries to rouse Belphie, and Belphie, in turn, tries to kill Day.

Like his observations on his twin, Cyrille cannot fathom how the demon could sleep so much. How could one body need so much rest?

Simeon

Ell loves him. How can he not? He is the perfect angel! He is also very curious as to how the Celestial Realm of Obey Me!’s world works compared to the one in AFTERL!FE.

His whole aesthetic mesmerizes Louis. There’s something so tranquil but regal about it.

Licht wants to know where he can get an exact copy of Simeon’s outfit because darling, it's gorgeous.

Youssef probably spends more time around Simeon than he should, but his calm demeanor is so refreshing compared to the chaos in the 14th Department and the House of Lamentation.

Kirr and Aitachi together lament with Simeon on the struggles of working with technology. Why is it so difficult?

Something about the angel’s holy air makes Mori very much not inclined to ask him how much the gold clasp on his cape is worth.

Quincy hates the “pretentious” and “stuck up” angel and bickers with him almost as much as he bickers with Ell. Simeon never responds to his goading, although ... he does get a bit prickly when Quincy criticizes Luke or the Celestial Realm too harshly.

Encouraged by the prospect that he can actually breathe in the (fresh-smelling) presence of Simeon, Verine enjoys his company, but is perpetually annoyed by the fact that the angel seems to pity him for his condition.

Ethan can’t hate Simeon, either. He is the sole honorable character he can find in the entire Devildom, even though he has to admit that it seems that the angel is hiding something.

Day really likes Simeon! He’s so nice and is always ready to play with him.

As a man of science, Cyrille scoffs at Simeon (and Luke’s) unfaltering belief in religion.

Luke

Kati bites him on sight. Luke just seems irritating and how dare he think himself cuter than him!

Aitachi sympathizes with Luke, for they both lament on not being taken seriously because of their age.

Luke reminds him a bit too much of a chihuahua for Noah to be too fond of him, but the little angel means well, so Noah suffers his incessant barking out of (Kind)ness.

Day is a human puppy ... and Luke is an angel chihuahua. They get along great, although Luke makes it his most important goal to Christianize Day, who seems to believe in other things!

Quincy wonders when Luke will stop talking and is constantly entertaining thoughts of hastening the day when he will. Likewise, Luke wishes the “horrible demon” would go away forever.

As a fellow angel, Ell finds Luke to be great fun. It’s strange though, Luke seems to always be expressing the opposite of what he’s feeling in typical tsundere fashion, but he never sneezes.

Sian finds Luke to be of the utmost annoyance. He’s so short (heh) and yappy and annoying!

Kirr wonders if the little angel will make a good hunting dog, but after he realizes that Luke has a lot of trouble keeping his mouth closed, he thinks better of it.

His dealings with Day cause Nine to be an excellent caretaker of Luke when Simeon is away. You just have to deal with exuberant personalities like his carefully, is all.

Ghilley and Licht give Luke “five stars” in terms of cuteness. The young angel does not approve!

Theo stays far away from Luke. Children are walking crumb-and-stain-factories and he is not going to get dirty.

Solomon

Quincy and Solomon exchange many spell incantations and curses and keep the rest of the Soul Reapers, angels, and demons in an uproar with their constant shenanigans.

When he notices that Solomon has many fortune-telling artifacts in his room, Kati rifles through them all (without permission), much to the sorcerer’s amusement, especially when Kati discovers many supposedly unpleasant things about his future.

Although Quincy and Solomon are the true troublemaking duo in terms of pranks (Satan helps, sometimes), Day and Solomon are almost equal in measure, although much of Day’s rogurey is an accident, and he never means to cause any harm!

Licht is instantly enamored by Solomon’s cape—what style! You can see the entire Milky Way embroidered on it (Cyrille instantly assures him that that is not actually the case)!

Ghilley can’t help but wonder why anyone thinks Solomon is shady. He seems to be a pretty upstanding, if chaotic, guy?

Youssef admires the humanity of Solomon. In a land of angels and demons and even Soul Reapers, it’s good to have someone so normal.

Unlike Ghilley, Ethan definitely notices that something shady is afoot when Solomon is around. Because of this, he tails the sorcerer wherever he goes, for he’d rather not a ruckus be caused.

Sian has many questions for Solomon on the status of idols in the Human World since he left it. What are the newest trends? The most popular groups? The most admired dance moves? He wants to know it all.

Barbatos

Cyrille finds the whole time-travel aspect of Barbatos’ powers intriguing and derails the butler from his duties for hours in attempts to understand the nuances of this overpowering concept.

Ethan privately thinks that he looked much better in a butler suit than the demon. What is even going on with the front of his outfit? A diligent and uncomplaining demon is Barbatos, and Ethan has to respect him for that, even if he is a position so beneath his own.

He’s so scary! D: thinks Day, even though Barbatos is nothing but kind to him.

Kirr likes the fine fare that Barbatos cooks, although he laments not being able to win “the mind game” against the butler, who he spends many hours staring coolly at.

Theo and Barbatos spend many an evening chatting about the best way to maintain the most perfect state of cleanliness.

The strong smell of detergent follows Barbatos sometimes, and Verine can never bring himself too close to the demon. However, he has to begrudgingly admit that if it weren’t for the overwhelming stench of chemicals, he would be breathing in a suffocating cloud of dust particles, so he has to thank the butler for that.

Jamie gives Barbatos many good recipes for fruit pies and Youssef can’t wait to try all the (possibly) delicious recipes that Barbatos recites to him.

Ghilley, unfortunately, finds it very difficult to sneak up on the butler, for Barbatos has seen all Ghilley’s attempts to scare him in all the timelines he has observed.

Diavolo

This bumbling idiot is the ruler of the Devildom? thinks Ethan with great distaste. However dignified Diavolo might be, Ethan cannot see past the blindingly cheerful mask he puts on and finds it most undignified.

A fellow royal! How is Louis supposed to resist striking a long-winded conversation? Diavolo entertains Louis’ pompous and overbearing self and they find each other most delightful.

Licht positively drools over Diavolo’s demon form outfit. Just how he is pulling off that much style?

Quincy finds much enjoyment in disrespecting the Prince of the Devildom to no end and is always disappointed when Diavolo responds to his insults with a tolerating smile.

The Prince of Demons and the son of the Demon Lord are titles that are essentially the bane of Ell’s existence, but he manages to be most respectful toward him, even though he is shaking in his shoes and wondering when all their interactions will come to and end.

Day lived like a king in his past life and is not even remotely fazed by the enormous amount of finery found in the Demon Lord’s Castle. He is, however, enamored with the Little D’s, who, when not insulting him, are great fun!

Diavolo’s lifestyle of luxury is basically Mori’s dream, so he takes every opportunity to make notes of the expensive furniture and ancient pieces.

Noah and Youssef like how down-to-Earth Diavolo is, despite his high position. They feel as if he has something to hide, but for the most part, he is a jolly fellow and they enjoy his company.

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