To hell with it

[ideal-gas-law]

I propose a very funny game.

Find a that talks about female characters, their treatment in the fandom and the misogyny surrounding it, then start a stopwatch go to the notes and scroll until you find someone making the post about a male character. If it takes you longer than 5 seconds, you win

[ashoss]

its an elusive club.

[the-fallen-blue]

rainbow Honmoon drives me absolutely insane, frankly

there's this incredibly widespread belief in fandom that the golden Honmoon would hurt Rumi somehow. burn her. suck her down into hell. this isn't really suggested by how we see the Honmoon act in the text but it is also such an obvious and reasonable thing for the fandom to extrapolate because like

why else from scratch, and even more, why rainbow?

they could have been written to rebuild the Honmoon as shades of blue like it was before. very standard superhero stuff. reset to the status quo, with a very promising near future: Gwi-Ma made one wild last gambit and failed, the Honmoon is back to where it started at the beginning (very close to the good guy win condition of gold) and huntr/x are in an even better position to finish the job

they could have been written to rebuild it as gold. that was the end goal, the complete seal. a lot of people interpret rainbow as a complete seal after all. because that's so obviously the desired state, the thing canon wants us to want for the girls and their world. very standard action movie wrap-up; they had a goal at the start and they got there by the end, after some tribulation. it would make a sequel more difficult but requiring a minor retcon to bring the bad guy back in the sequel has literally never stopped anyone ever

but they make it a completely new color scheme. which in the most clear and obvious language of cinema available indicates this Honmoon is different. fundamentally unlike blue or gold. and because it was set up as the climax of the hero's victory moment, there is no way to read "different" other than better

but you can't do better than a perfect seal. there's no room here to suggest that gold would have been real good but rainbow surpasses that. which. functionally. means that we were told a lie and both gold and blue are bad.

there was something inferior about gold. it was an incorrect goal. at best it represents the Old Ways, the Bad Logic, the Restrictive Traditions. it's the physical embodiment of "flaws and fears must never be seen" and if it existed Hunters would never be free. at worst it represents oppression and bigotry, it would have harmed Rumi, it hates her and would make her suffer for being Half Demon, despite Half Demon being a reasonable and healthy thing to be. either way, it was not the culmination of 400+ years of heroic women's love for each other and their community, it was the dangerous ambition of 400+ years of fucked-up traumatic ideology. it was correct for the old Honmoon to be torn violently to shreds. blue's endpoint is gold and gold is bad and so it had to go, it was a perhaps not even particularly regrettable sacrifice so the better, sane/woke Honmoon could be put in place and Rumi could be healthy/safe. the saja boys were actually doing a good thing all along in ripping it up and it was part of Rumi's heroic arc to finish the job

and i don't think this is unintended? i think that's at least some part of the message of the film, that rainbow is better than gold and gold was not the ideal goal, because "so we can make a new one" reads like that by default and also like. again. very clear and venerable symbolic coding in the color change

but unfortunately it's also completely inconsistent with the entire rest of the movie including all the visual and audio coding in the moment of destruction itself

like. when the blue Honmoon is first formed, it protects people. it is explicitly made from community and love, and keeps demons from consuming innocent people's souls. it is implicitly a metaphor for the way that human connection and support can protect us from pain and destructive behavior. we can see how happy and in sync huntr/x are and how much they love their fans when they're sustaining blue and seeing flashes of gold. we can see it when they are singing meaningless hype song How It's Done and cocky aspirational song Golden and deep healing connection song Free. when the blue Honmoon is damaged it is 100% of the time something being done by a demon (= shame = bad) or by Rumi expressing demon powers (= in pain/feeling isolated/ashamed). when huntr/x comes back together in community and love it makes a Honmoon that forces demons back into the underworld, exactly like the blue one did, which is the triumphant climax of the entire story

for the destruction of the blue Honmoon and thus rejection of gold to be a good thing we have to completely invert that entire other 1:40 of runtime of symbolism, and say that just this once when Rumi is in incredible pain and at full demon mode she's making rational and good and triumphant choices and then go directly back to her becoming more and more human as a symbol of healing

we have to say that just this once Hunters working together to make the Honmoon was about repression and hatred for people who are different all along and then go directly back to making the Honmoon by the exact same method being a symbol of connection and recovery

or we have to say that just this once the traditions of Hunters have no room for imperfection and then go directly back to Rumi knowing Zoemira share her insecurities and mistakes because they have been open about them the entire time they've been getting closer to gold

we have to say that just this once blocking all demons out of the world forever was a bad thing to want and then go directly back to blocking all demons out of the world is the win condition

we have to say that just this once doing this raw violence that drops the visual palette of the film into gloomy spooky shadows and minor chords and spiky jarring magentas and voice reverb and flat despairing affect and has an ominous accompaniment of The Most Deliberately Redpill Song Ever Written is heroic and then go directly back to light and inspirational music and bright complimentary colors are the indication of triumph

and yet. and yet there is no symbolism more basic and more obvious than "we did rainbow instead of gold and therefore gold was the Wrong Goal and fucking up the thing that was going to turn gold was a Good Thing"

like i said. drives me insane

[zoloteh-volossya]

OK, so. I'm an engineer, which means that 10 years ago I took a class on steel metallurgy (I promise this is going to be relevant to the honmoon discussion). And one of the really interesting things about steel is how it deforms. To give a very simplified (and filtered through a decade of memory) overview, metals are a crystal lattice of molecules. They contain within themselves dislocations - flaws - where molecules aren't in the correct place. The fewer dislocations you have, the stronger the steel is. However, when the steel is subjected to forces beyond the point where it begins to yield (its nominal strength), these dislocations allow the molecules in the crystals to move a little bit, into the gaps left by the dislocation. Because the dislocations permit movement, the metal can take more deformation before it fractures.

This means that the strongest steels, the steels with the fewest "flaws", also tend to be brittle (major generalization, ignoring a whole bunch of other factors wrt alloys and such). They can take a lot more force, but once they reach their strength they fracture right away. Meanwhile, steels with a lot of "flaws" are weaker overall but can maintain their strength at deformations that would snap stronger steels like twigs. The end result is that in applications where the metal will be subjected to large deformations - like rebar in regions subject to earthquakes - there's actually limits put on how strong of a steel you can use, because the most important thing is that the rebar in that column doesn't fracture while the building is shaking.

Anyway, I think the various Honmoons work sorta like that.

In my interpretation, the blue/gold Honmoon isn't bad so much as it is brittle. The original Hunters swoop in with the blue Honmoon and save people, but they're also positioning themselves physically above the people. They're community leaders, and they need to maintain a specific image in order to successfully maintain that position. If they don't maintain that image, the Honmoon suffers from it. The blue (and therefore the gold) Honmoon requires purity of public image (from my understanding, a notable aspect of Korean and other East Asian cultures) from its Hunters - it cannot cope with flaws.

By that inference, the Golden Honmoon blocks all demons with an incredibly strong and pure, but brittle, shield. So long as the Hunters maintain their popularity and public image as people to look up to, everything's golden (pun not originally intended). The shield is impenetrable. But as we can see that the blue honmoon is particularly vulnerable both to declining popularity and Rumi's cries of emotional pain, I do wonder if the golden honmoon would survive/maintain its golden state if the girls publicly messed up and took a major popularity hit. It's an incredible feat to achieve (seriously, kudos to Huntrix for coming so close!) but is ultimately unsustainable to maintain.

If my hypothesis is correct, the problem with the golden honmoon is not that the blue/golden honmoons are bad or evil, just that its inability to cope with flaws is a weakness in its fabric, and that the pressure of maintaining a flawless image damages its Hunters.

Conversely, by accepting their flaws and that their flaws do not make them unlovable, Rumi and Huntrix are able to weave a rainbow honmoon that is able to take hits because it has embraced/included flaws. It is resilient in a way that the golden honmoon is not. It can survive an earthquake/scandal, and there is less pressure on its Hunters in the course of maintaining it.

And that's my essay on the metallurgy of the Honmoon, tune in next week for an assessment of what aspect of public water infrastructure each member of Huntrix embodies.

[the-fallen-blue]

I think you're right, steel is a pretty great metaphor, but let me take it a bit further with a specific example (and @01d55, this actually should answer your comparison as well):

The Colombia Interstate Bridge is about a hundred years old and has critically low seismic tolerance. The next time there is a major quake in the metro Portland area, everyone on that bridge will die. There's no "if" and no "maybe." There is eventually going to be a quake, and the bridge, which has a few hundred people on it at once nonstop for eight hours a day, cannot survive it. (It will also trash the river, close the port, and screw with the country's economy all the way to the Mississippi, much like what happened in Baltimore two years ago).

What this means is that the Interstate Bridge, with its brittle, shearable steel, is a bad bridge. Maybe it carries people, but its full job is to carry people safely, and does not do that job correctly. It is intolerably dangerous, and every minute it is open to traffic represents a small risk of enormous damage and loss of life. We cannot say it is good in some ways but bad in others, because this particular badness compromises the entire purpose of the thing and overrides all other considerations. It is a bad bridge, full stop.

Thing is, though. There is not a civil engineer in the country who would claim that the I5 is a good bridge. No one in the construction field who didn't pay for their degree would try to argue that we should be expanding and shoring up the I5. Every single applicable local and federal agency has been trying to get rid of the thing for more than twenty years.

And if I were to film a movie about a scrappy young transportation secretary who wants to make crossing the Columbia safe, she would not start the movie liking the I5 bridge and wanting to add a lane to it or whatever, because that would make her look incompetent. Her mentor wouldn't tell her that the I5 bridge is the future of bridges, because part of the job description of "managing bridges" is understanding bridges, what makes a good one, and when one is dangerous or weak. If our protagonist did waste time trying to make the I5 bridge better, that would be accompanied by tense music and ominous camera angles and other cinematic tricks to let the audience know that something dubious is happening, not excitement and happiness and upbeat lighting and soundtrack. If the bridge was damaged by weather or smaller quakes the main character would act like that was a natural consequence of the bridge sucking so badly and further evidence that it needs to be replaced, not freak out about how this shouldn't be happening and it means the I5 needs to be expanded even harder. When she finally did order the demolition of the bridge, she would be smiling and satisfied and heroically lit, it wouldn't happen in a dark room with spooky lightning crashing outside and sharp frantic violins while she looks strung out and crazed. Because it's a bad bridge and has always been a bad bridge and that is a core part of the story, so it should be consistently framed that way in the normal language of cinema.

iow: If gold is vulnerable to damage and collapse and getting people killed by demons, it is a bad Honmoon in the same way that the I5 Interstate is a bad bridge for being vulnerable to damage and collapse and drowning people in the river. Not letting demons kill people is its job. If there are circumstances in which it will fail and those circumstances are not only likely but all but inevitable, it is bad at its job, and thus a bad Honmoon. And if it is a bad Honmoon, the movie should not be acting like it's a good Honmoon every single time it is talked about, every single time anyone interacts with it, even the moment of its destruction!, only to swerve in the last 2% of the film with the implication that that big scary emotional nadir of the entire story and triumph of the bad guys was positive and desirable, actually, and we're just gonna have to guess wildly at what was secretly wrong with the thing we were repeatedly told was fine and great (and why generations of experts in Honmoon magic were too stupid to see it).

And I look forward with great anticipation to learning how Zoey is like a storm drain. Small and full of racoons?

[zoloteh-volossya]

This is a very relevant metaphor for me, actually, because I am a bridge engineer and I have been in the position of begging a city on my metaphorical knees to completely replace a bridge due to its seismic hazard. They did not, and now I tell everyone that I can to never drive on the West Seattle bridge if they can avoid it. In the case of a sufficiently large earthquake, the hillside its piles are embedded in will experience something called lateral spreading and snap like twigs. The only question is if it takes down its sister bridge on the way down or not (the odds are high that it will).

However, while the West Seattle bridge is a bad bridge now, and should be closed, demolished, and replaced entirely, it is only considered to be a bad bridge because we know how to do better now. At the time of its construction, it was an incredibly innovative bridge! (A bit too innovative, it used a very new technology at the time - post-tensioning - and the effects of post-tensioning on concrete over the timespan of decades wasn't known back then, which eventually caused major cracks and required extensive repairs). The engineers who designed that bridge were incredibly bright and capable people, they just didn't know about lateral spreading or long-term concrete creep at the time. I myself have only been in the industry for about a decade, and over that time our understanding of seismic risk has notably changed - aerial guideway columns I designed in 2018 and which finally opened in 2024 would not meet today's code. I don't think the flaws of the structures they built reflects poorly on the engineers of yore - or the Hunters of yore - because they were doing the best with the information they had at the time. We stand upon the shoulders of giants and all that.

Second, the Honmoon is not a bridge - the Honmoon is a dam. It is holding back something of immense danger (millions of tons of water / Gwi-Ma) and if the dam/Honmoon breaks then thousands of lives are in immediate danger. And, like most dams (which rely on the geography of a specific pinch point), the Honmoon does not seem like a new version can be built alongside the old version while the old version continues to function (the typical method of replacing a bridge, including - as far as I know - the plans for replacing the I-5 Columbia river crossing). In order to replace it, you need to tear it down.

Given what we see happen when the Hunters are delayed by only a few seconds, a worldwide Honmoon blackout has the potential to have an absolutely catastrophic cost in lives. Given that, I completely understand generations of Hunters choosing to instead patch any cracks in the existing Honmoon and shoot for a stronger, better version. It is just not worth the risk to tear it all down in favor of a possibility that might (it's completely untested!) be more resilient. You'd be risking millions of lives on a hypothetical. The only reason that thousands of people didn't die in the movie itself was that Gwi-Ma was too busy throwing himself a victory concert to capitalize on the opportunity for widescale slaughter offered by the Honmoon's destruction (and if Rumi had been even a couple of minutes late to the final battle, those 40000 or so people in the stadium - including Mira and Zoey and Bobby - would have died and the battle may have been lost entirely anyway).

Quite frankly, from the perspective of an engineer's ethics, Rumi's destruction of the original honmoon was an incredibly reckless and dangerous stunt and a profound betrayal of her fundamental duty to safeguard humanity. I don't blame her, largely because most of the destruction was involuntary, but she effectively gambled every single life on earth on her new Honmoon working. This is not a gamble I could see any Hunter who values human life making unless they had no other choice. A flawed Honmoon that requires constant maintenance is a less dangerous choice than a period with no Honmoon at all followed by the possibility of maybe a more resilient Honmoon.

And, "flawed infrastructure that requires constant maintenance" describes, well, all of our infrastructure! The movie is basically Huntrix trying to perform significant upgrades on an old concrete dam with lots of cracks to make it have no cracks, and then after it is destroyed in a disaster they rapidly deploysa flexible steel wall to hold back the water, which is only possible because the water threw a party about its ability to drown thousands of people instead of immediately rushing downhill to drown thousands of people.

As for takes on Huntrix as public water infrastructure, we can thank the Portland Water Bureau!

Source

[the-fallen-blue]

Your dam comparison is definitely better than the bridge, but it still sticks for me, because we're not just talking about the blue Honmoon not being good enough - we're talking about the gold Honmoon not being good enough. In other words, for the bulk of the movie, we're being told we're looking at a dam that does not need to be replaced. To the best knowledge of every expert in the industry, this dam is not in any way mechanically flawed; it is simply only 90% finished, the leaks are not cracks so much as entirely missing pieces that are steadily moving up the supply chain and will be available soon, and once construction is complete, the whole thing will be totally up to code.

Only, once it breaks, instead of rebuilding it to the original, intended spec, we declare - the original spec isn't what we want, actually. In the last thirty seconds, a few of us did some new math and decided it would be better to build with different materials in a different shape no engineer has even dreamed before today. We're not, as you say, standing on the shoulders of giants - we're not building from blue, we're not iterating on the understanding of those who came before us. We are, from top to bottom, building something with no visible relationship to existing dam science other than function. We didn't deploy a steel wall - that's something other engineers came up with, it's known tech handed down from our teachers and years of study. Instead we busted out some kind of wild new radioactively inert radium alloy. And we're doing this for no reason, because the only thing anyone, including us, ever thought was wrong with the old dam was that it wasn't finished. No one was ever begging to replace or upgrade the old one, or warning about flaws or long-term risks; we haven't been looking at a known engineering problem and working toward being the first ones to solve it. The best explanation for our behavior is that we discovered both a completely novel, completely systemic issue with the very science of dam-building itself, and its solution, in the very same breath. And so threw away 400+ years of accumulated engineering knowledge that our audience spent ninety-two minutes being told was perfectly sound, without even telling them there was something to fix until it was over.

This is my major issue: not that there could be something inferior about either gold or blue, but that if there were, we should know that way earlier than the exact moment it gets fixed. Everyone should know this is a bad bridge dam! If blue truly cannot ever be made good enough, if gold is truly too brittle or genuinely unobtainable, that is core to Rumi's journey and should be hinted at throughout the film! It should be something that previous Hunters have wondered or worried about as understanding of the Honmoon grew over generations. It should be something Gwi-Ma reassures himself or taunts Huntr/x with. It should be seen in blue falling short of things Huntr/x needs it to do, in Celine warning Rumi that it will always have limits even if they get gold. By showing us, instead, that blue comes from the same love that makes rainbow; that blue can protect and resonate with even lying self-hating Jinu; that Gwi-Ma himself is desperate and on the edge of defeat; the film creates an extremely weird dissonance with the sudden last-minute implication that blue was a dead end that could never actually have achieved... the things we've been watching it achieve.

(Almost all of this goes away if the Honmoon isn't destroyed, only badly damaged, and rainbow is built from the threads of the old one. This is how I would probably reconcile it, when I'm not interested in the angst of Rumi regretting destroying blue; ie the visible barrier is just the functional manifestation of something larger and more permanent, and replacing blue with rainbow is comparable to cutting a blackberry down to the soil and watching the same plant grow back in a different shape because those dudes are unkillable. However that would take a lot of drama out of the climax so it'd be pretty hard to crowbar it into canon without losing as much as you gain.)

... Portland is a silly place.

[but-a-humble-goon]

Cass as the leader of her own superteam would be like "okay here's the plan, I'll sneak in there, disable the security system, free the hostages, silently neutralize the armed goons, defuse the bomb, loudly neutralize the unarmed goons and then confront and subsequently stop whoever is behind this. While I'm handling that all of you have the absolutely crucical task of going home and staying as far away from any and all danger as possible. In fact, just make that a standing order." Except instead of actually saying any of that she vanishes when none of them are looking and does it without telling them.

[ideal-gas-law]

Every time people write huntrix completely cut ties with Celine and hating her without any second thoughts after the movie something in me dies.

So, you're telling me that Zoey wouldn't understand how it feels to be torn between opposite sides that demand different things from you and are making you choose while you just cannot choose because these things are equally parts of you and you cannot bring yourself to tear one of them away completely?

You're telling me Mira wouldn't understand how it feels when the whole world you knew is breaking around you and you have to choose a path you never considered you'd have to be on or to be forced on a role you have never meant to perform? That she wouldn't understand how much things you can fuck up like this?

You're telling me Rumi wouldn't understand what it's like to try and keep things under control when this control is slipping between your fingers and you're making every stupid decision possible to hold onto this control as long as you can?

You're telling me they will be able to understand fucking demons making deals for their own benefit when pressed to the edge but wouldn't understand a woman who did everything to protect people of the world making mistakes along the way?

[fakelawyerbug]

Also they're Korean.

Like I'll keep bringing this up because people keep not understanding that Koreans (East Asians in general) have different expectations and family relationships than white people living in the US/Canada.

It just tells me that people don't want to bother with learning about other cultures.

[kittkatabasis]

Somewhat unpopular take, but the Celine rage also demonstrates a weakness inherent to allegorical interpretations of any text. Demonic heritage in kpdh is not actually an especially salient metaphor for queerness or neurodivergence or intergenerational trauma or anything else your parents might be shitty to you about because 'demon' in kpdh is a very squishy category that contains both ontological evil and fuckboy.

(I know it's fun to interpret it in those lights! They're full of interesting angles to discuss! I have been writing fanfic non-stop for two months about this very subject!)

The movie doesn't want you to think super hard about how weird of an analogy it is, because it's a children's movie and the resolution of a children's movie is generally more about whether the vibes feel right than being totally metaphorically coherent.

But if you're committed to taking the world building seriously on its own merits (rather than accepting the vibe of everything *feeling* like your life is falling apart), you have to actually look at the events of the movie as textual. And if you are, it's hard not to interpret Celine's actions in the light of trying to prevent the actual end of the world.

When Rumi destroys the honmoon in her big moment of "you need to respect this part of my identity" emotional growth......*a bunch of background characters in the movie fucking die*. Being a queer person with dipshit parents doesn't lead directly to the death of hundreds of random bystanders or beguile your friends into suicide-by-hellmouth. The metaphor of "patterns as [stigmatized identity]" collapses under more weight than it's really supposed to carry.

[tizeline]

Stuff I've been drawing while reading through the Batgirl 2000 comics.

I've read about halfway through the run now and omg it's so good I have to stop myself from just rushing through it lmao, Cassandra Cain the character ever I love her so much

[ideal-gas-law]

And what if I say, demons in Frieren as a parallel for ai chat bots?

[ideal-gas-law]

The anti Batman post so hateful that makes you wonder if it was the spirit of Bruce Wayne himself to write it

[ideal-gas-law]

Every time people write huntrix completely cut ties with Celine and hating her without any second thoughts after the movie something in me dies.

So, you're telling me that Zoey wouldn't understand how it feels to be torn between opposite sides that demand different things from you and are making you choose while you just cannot choose because these things are equally parts of you and you cannot bring yourself to tear one of them away completely?

You're telling me Mira wouldn't understand how it feels when the whole world you knew is breaking around you and you have to choose a path you never considered you'd have to be on or to be forced on a role you have never meant to perform? That she wouldn't understand how much things you can fuck up like this?

You're telling me Rumi wouldn't understand what it's like to try and keep things under control when this control is slipping between your fingers and you're making every stupid decision possible to hold onto this control as long as you can?

You're telling me they will be able to understand fucking demons making deals for their own benefit when pressed to the edge but wouldn't understand a woman who did everything to protect people of the world making mistakes along the way?

[fakelawyerbug]

My most boring KPDH headcanon is that there are no demon instincts. It's just people all the way down and that's just something they have to own.

[ideal-gas-law]

The thing about Cass and Bruce is the both of them having such a strong morals that crossing them would inevitably destroy them, and at the same time both of them realizing how thin the line they walk on is and how easy it is for them to cross it

[ideal-gas-law]

One of my favorites tropes in media is when character suddenly looks their age, both ways.

Old character who is always so put up, confident and strong, suddenly looking painfully old and tired after someone says something to them or something terrible happens.

Or a young character who is always so mature, competent and unwavering suddenly looking so young when scared or emotional.

Beautiful trope, no notes, keep up.

[cashmerecorey]

fancomic based on hozier’s “cherry wine” for @casscainweek day 2: blood :)

(video beneath cut for music ^^! making it picture-in-picture and scrolling back up should work. tumblr won’t let me upload audio 🤷‍♂️)

[secondtolastrow]

I think you hit the nail on the head with 'beautifying' things. The patterns probably aren't beautiful to Hunters who've spent their whole adult lives learning to identify the enemy by them and attack.

Rumi's claws probably aren't 'hot' they're something that both girls have had to dodge in battle, wielded by full demons, and have probably been hurt by more than once.

They don't have to be beautiful, or desirable traits though, because they love the person who has them.

[No I would not use the peak Autism Mom!speak of 'loving her DESPITE' but instead 'loving her including' because loving Rumi means loving all of her, even the parts that they have to adjust to, and learn to love all the same]

Exaaaaaaactly. You get me anon. Okay not quite exactly bc I don’t hc Rumi as really having traits like claws post movie but that’s completely beside the point so it doesn’t count

Anyway. [hands you this]

The day after the Idol Awards, Mira woke up first.

She rolled away from the warmth of the bodies around her, searching around until she nearly knocks her glasses off the coffee table, and jammed them blearily onto her face.

She rolled back over.

It took approximately two seconds for her to remember what had happened the night before.

It took approximately one and a half seconds for her to process the patterns, jump to her feet, and summon her gokdo.

Mira proceeded to run to the kitchen sink and vomit until she was dry heaving.

She’d drawn her weapon on Rumi. Again.

I don't get to have a family.

Slowly, Mira sank to the floor, tangling her fingers into her hair and digging her nails into her scalp.

That was where Zoey and Rumi found her, eventually.

//

Rumi wasn't a demon. Rumi wasn't a threat. Rumi was her leader-best friend-soulmate-partner-family.

Mira knew those things.

Her heart still stopped when she saw Rumi out of the corner of her eye. Her fingers still twitched instinctively—habitually.

It was a habit. And habits could be broken.

"Hey," Rumi said softly. Like she didn't want to spook Mira.

Just the way she used to back when they were kids, and she was still a fucking ghost who didn't know how to make noise before she'd come around a corner, and—don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it—Mira had smacked her right in the face for startling her.

"Hey," Mira said. "Nice shirt."

Rumi raised her eyebrows, amused, tugging a little on the tank top. "It's Zoey's."

She forced an awkward smile. "I know. You'd look good in some of mine, too."

"Yeah," Rumi said. Her eyes were warm. Mira felt like a disgusting liar. "You've said so before."

//

Zoey hesitated. Mira doubted any of the staff noticed, but she did. And she knew Rumi did.

They were all too professional to look stiffer for the next shot, Zoey's hand settled on Rumi's bare skin rather than her sleeve, but it was there.

It felt disgustingly good not to be the only one. It just felt disgusting, how pathetic they were, unable to stop hurting Rumi.

Mira could feel it trembling under her skin as they kept going with the shoot, even as she played the perfect puppet.

And then the director smiled and he said, "Now maybe we try some with the jacket? Before we lose this light?"

Rumi stiffened. Mira doubted any of the staff noticed, but she did. And she knew Zoey did.

"I know I get cold easily," she said, warmly joking, utter bullshit, "but I didn't think you'd have issues with my goosebumps in the shot."

"Oh, no, I think he meant me!" Zoey added, wide-eyed and cheerful, the barest hint of a threat in her smile. "I saw them pulling one earlier that went with this top, right?"

"I, uh, yes, of course," the director said. "That's exactly what I meant."

And Rumi, their stalwart defender, relaxed a little for once. No asshole would be trying to talk around making her cover up her "skin condition" today.

//

Rumi breathed slow against Mira's shoulder, mostly asleep as the "interesting" part of the credits faded to black, replaced by the less aesthetically formatted scroll.

As the light from the television dimmed, contrast shifted over her patterns, making them look almost purple in the light.

Mira hummed softly and whispered, "Don't move."

Rumi didn't—which was good, because Zoey was half on top of her, and if she'd startled, then Mira's whispering would've been for nothing.

(It was a fifty-fifty chance when Rumi fell asleep around them these days. Far better than the way it had been before, when she'd only fall asleep outside of her own room when she was completely exhausted, and Mira and Zoey would spend the whole time trying not to make a sound for fear of watching Rumi heave to her feet, sputter something incoherent about manners, and race off to her own bed.)

Mira fished her phone out from where it had slipped between the couch cushions, opening up the camera and switching the flash off. She didn't bother repeating the instruction to hold still as the shutter took one, two, three seconds—the point was the colors anyway, not the focus.

She turned her phone back off, trusting herself to remember what she'd been thinking and save the picture to the right folder in the morning.

"Is it bedtime?" Rumi mumbled sleepily.

"Probably," Mira said. "But I'm pretty comfortable here."

That roused Zoey, predictably. "Our couch is not for sleeping!"

Rumi snorted, sharing a bemused look with Mira before they allowed themselves to be tugged up to help with the necessary cleanup—getting the television turned off, removing bowls from where they might get tripped over in the morning—and shuffled out of the living room.

"Bed! Bed! Bed! Bed!" they chanted softly, and it was almost without thinking that they all ended up in Zoey's room.

Mira wrapped herself around Rumi, tugging her down in between them.

"You're cold," Rumi grumbled.

Mira smugly tucked her chin closer to Rumi's shoulder. "And you're warm. Thanks."

"Thermodynamic equilibrium!" Zoey whisper-shouted with a grin, and wrapped herself around Rumi from the other side, which was just the kind of suffocating pressure Rumi apparently enjoyed at night.

Mira was very glad to have a complementary middle spoon of a partner.

Rumi sighed, and Mira tangled their fingers together so she could drag her hand up for a kiss right before she leaned over and kissed Zoey's cheek.

"Love you both," she said, something in her still fearful and embarrassed at saying it out loud.

But Rumi and Zoey never got tired of hearing it, and their smiles were enough to make it so, so worth it.

It was after, as they were drifting off to sleep, that Mira realized what she'd done—saved a picture with purple patterns, demon patterns, without thinking about it anything but colors.

Because they were Rumi's, not a threat's.

Mira fell asleep smiling.

Sometimes, at least, she got it right.

[secondtolastrow]

Less “your patterns are beautiful” more “we want all of you” more “your body is not a problem” more “you don’t need to be perfect”

More “my scars a part of me” even

[fakelawyerbug]

Mood.

Something Something expanding the definition of beautiful isn't actual liberation

[iwillberealonceagain]

Less 'your patterns are beautiful' and more 'I've been trained to react on instinct for the greater part of a decade when I see those marks and sometimes catching a glimpse of you out of the corner of my eye sets my heart to racing but I do love you'.

'Hey I've been describing something as absolutely hideous for weeks in song but because it's YOU it's different you make them beautiful' no, no let's have 'beauty is not/should not be used in determining worth let alone being worthy of love'

[secondtolastrow]

And the film takes the time to say this! He whole subplot of Mira and Zoey’s attraction to the Saja Boys is about this!

They literally tell us “sometimes demons are hot; while one might think demonic features are ugly, that is not universally true” and then “also you have to be willing to stab the fuck out of someone you think is hot if they’re a soul-eating monster because beauty is not equivalent to morality or worth”

Saying “actually this thing you had shame about is attractive and therefore everything’s fine” is. Not really getting at the root of the problem. To me

[ideal-gas-law]

I think that the Huntrix girls never really realize just how badly the events surrounding Miyeong's death affected Celine. Like, they theoretically understand that this couldn't have not affect her, they realize that something like this will definitely change a person, they know that Celine before this events probably was different. Theoretically. But they do not really feel this simply because they never knew Celine before, never knew her without these events following her everywhere. They never thought her shoulders could be relaxed, because they've always only seen them tense, they never thought her eyes could be brighter, because they've always only seen them dead, how they've never thought her laugh could be fuller and her smile bigger, because they've always only saw them reserved and rare.

It is most like this for Rumi, she was raised by Celine, Celine made the norm for her, so Rumi never thought Celine could have been different. With Mira and Zoey it is a little bit less easy but still, at first they probably did think that Celine was a little off but at first they were too busy figuring out everything that was happening in their lives at the moment and then they just assumed Celine is just like this, like some people have resting bitch face, so Celine probably just has something similar, which isn't even this wrong.

Even for Zoey, who spent most of her teen years watching old Sunlight sisters' interviews, seeing the difference between Celine during these interviews and Celine she came to know in reality, was a lot easier to count it as Celine putting the act for the cameras. And the point is, she wouldn't even be wrong about this, Celine really did put up an act for the public during her idol years to uphold the image of cute kpop girl group member in the 90s, just not to this extent.

And I think Celine herself doesn't realize just how much these events changed her. She was really busy for the first couple of years after and never let herself to reflect on what happened to her, and when she finally does allow herself to have time for this, she already doesn't really remember herself outside of this grief and she doesn't have anyone around who can notice this as well, everyone who really knew her before is either dead or not there. So, yeah, I don't think Celine realizes herself how much she's changed.

Not until she finds an old photo of Sunlight Sisters on the day off in casual clothes just hanging out in a park, smiling at the camera and Celine spends three long second wondering who the girl between Miyeong and Thirdlight is, that she cannot remember them having close friend outside the group, she even manages to feel hurt for a moment that there was someone important to Miyeong and Thirdlight who she doesn't know about, before being hit with realization that this is her.

She spends next half an hour in front of the mirror, photo cramped in the hand trying to find the girl from the photo in the reflection and failing.

[fakelawyerbug]

Dimension hopping AU where the girls swap with a version of themselves in a universe where Miyeong and Third didn't die/leave.

And they meet a version of Celine who hasn't carried the grief of Miyeong's death and raising a child alone and the burden of being the only hunter left. And it's like meeting an uncanny valley version of Celine. Someone who is so clearly Celine, who has so many Celine-isms. But just seems lighter, and freeer, and happier.

And they realize oh.

Their Celine could have been like that.

[ideal-gas-law]

Rumi can't stop looking at the woman from across the room. She sits on the couch next to her mother Miyeong and looks so undoubtedly Celine that it hurts. She sits with the exact same straight back and head raised high in the clear show of confidence, she holds herself with the same carefullness of a performer and same deliberateness of a fighter, she tilts her head when thinking to the exact same angle their Celine does and when she says the word "consequences", it has the sound to it so familiar, that Rumi wants to throw up a little.

But at the same time.

This Celine looks so much younger despite being the same age, she has faint smile lines around her mouth and her eyes, there is no deep wrinkle between her eyebrows Rumi has never seen their Celine without, her eyes despite clear wariness of the situation are so lively and bright. Rumi cannot point out what but there is something slightly off about the way this Celine holds herself and Rumi, to her embarrassment, only after almost half an hour realizes that this is because this Celine's shoulders are not tense to the point of muscles being uncomfortably hard which Rumi is used to them being. This Celine sits in the same way their Celine does it, but her hand is resting on her mother's Miyeong's knee in such a casual and comfortable gesture of affection that Rumi cannot look at it without the pull of jealousy in her stomach.

This universe, from what they found out, is pretty much the same except for one major thing, her mother's Miyeong's death in this universe never happened which, and here Rumi feels really bad for thinking this, didn't really change things globally, there is still Sunlight entertainment, the Honmoon is still not sealed, they still are Huntrix there just trained by three hunters instead of one, this Rumi still has patterns. But looking at this Celine, it feels the same way as if suddenly in this universe Mira's parents were the epitome of kindness, Zoey hated turtles and thought skateboarding without the helmet was too dangerous to try and Rumi considered a sandwich a full meal and planned to settle in by the age of 25. Which is to say, odd.

Rumi knows that it wasn't only her that weighted on Celine for all this years, she knows it wasn't just because of a child in Celine's care, that it also was the weight of a duty to protect the world from demons, it was the pressure of having to continue being idol even after the group's tragic disbandment, it was the necessity of creating the new company to provide better conditions for the next generation, it was a lot of things. A lot of things Celine was good at.

They tell these Sunlight Sisters about their universe, and after the first fear of this scenario crosses their faces and fades with realization of the reality of each other's presence, this Miyeong jokingly says that Celine was always the strongest hunter of their generation, so no wonder she managed, and this Celine just brushes it off with a smile. This Thirdlight dramatically whispers how acting and performing always came so natural to Celine and she isn't surprised she was in the end able to continue performing even without them. Then Thirdlight jokes that it seems at least in both their universes the name Sunlight Entertainment is just a honorary mention and both Celines could have named it "Celine Entertainment" for the amount of work Miyeong and Thirdlight put in its creation. Celine, and Rumi will deny staring at her with an open mouth when she hears this, chuckles at this saying that their ability and readiness to listen to her cursing old assholes in the industry was an important enough involvement to add their names to the company label.

The only thing that Miyeong wonders about, a lot more seriously and with a certain look in her eyes, is "So Celine raised you alone, Rumi-ya?"

Rumi's quite "Yes, she did" has everyone in the room looking at this Celine with subtle worry in their eyes, this Celine says nothing, but Rumi can see clear as day the "I cannot imagine how I could have done this alone" written across this Celine's face in the tightness of her jaw and uncertainty of her eyes. No one says anything but Rumi does understand that she was always the biggest challenge in Celine's life, the only one this Celine cannot even imagine overcoming alone.

Rumi cannot help but think, how closer her Celine would have been to this happy and free one, if at least she didn't have to deal with being Rumi's mother guardian all this time.

[ideal-gas-law]

I think that the Huntrix girls never really realize just how badly the events surrounding Miyeong's death affected Celine. Like, they theoretically understand that this couldn't have not affect her, they realize that something like this will definitely change a person, they know that Celine before this events probably was different. Theoretically. But they do not really feel this simply because they never knew Celine before, never knew her without these events following her everywhere. They never thought her shoulders could be relaxed, because they've always only seen them tense, they never thought her eyes could be brighter, because they've always only seen them dead, how they've never thought her laugh could be fuller and her smile bigger, because they've always only saw them reserved and rare.

It is most like this for Rumi, she was raised by Celine, Celine made the norm for her, so Rumi never thought Celine could have been different. With Mira and Zoey it is a little bit less easy but still, at first they probably did think that Celine was a little off but at first they were too busy figuring out everything that was happening in their lives at the moment and then they just assumed Celine is just like this, like some people have resting bitch face, so Celine probably just has something similar, which isn't even this wrong.

Even for Zoey, who spent most of her teen years watching old Sunlight sisters' interviews, seeing the difference between Celine during these interviews and Celine she came to know in reality, was a lot easier to count it as Celine putting the act for the cameras. And the point is, she wouldn't even be wrong about this, Celine really did put up an act for the public during her idol years to uphold the image of cute kpop girl group member in the 90s, just not to this extent.

And I think Celine herself doesn't realize just how much these events changed her. She was really busy for the first couple of years after and never let herself to reflect on what happened to her, and when she finally does allow herself to have time for this, she already doesn't really remember herself outside of this grief and she doesn't have anyone around who can notice this as well, everyone who really knew her before is either dead or not there. So, yeah, I don't think Celine realizes herself how much she's changed.

Not until she finds an old photo of Sunlight Sisters on the day off in casual clothes just hanging out in a park, smiling at the camera and Celine spends three long second wondering who the girl between Miyeong and Thirdlight is, that she cannot remember them having close friend outside the group, she even manages to feel hurt for a moment that there was someone important to Miyeong and Thirdlight who she doesn't know about, before being hit with realization that this is her.

She spends next half an hour in front of the mirror, photo cramped in the hand trying to find the girl from the photo in the reflection and failing.