What happened with the Driftmark throne succession? How is that matter not settled yet?
In all seriousness though, the succession crisis doesn't seem like it's getting resolved anytime soon.
Corlys is going into battle at the end of season two, and for all he knows, he could die. Which would leave the 6-7 year old Joffrey as the new Lord of Driftmark. While that's not necessarily an issue, Corlys made it one when he expressed his displeasure at having a child as his remaining heir. But I do believe that the writers are trying to avoid having Corlys act against Rhaenyra in any way, such as by pushing Joffrey aside from the Velaryon line of succession to name one of his own bastards (as happened in book canon). So Corlys simply does nothing.
If HOTD was still closely following the book, then Addam as the eldest of Corlys' bastards could've been legitimized as the new heir. Addam being named heir would've been an open and shut case because he actually does want it. Even in the show, Addam is the one who expressed interest in the Driftwood throne. But he's also younger than Alyn now so it's not possible unless Alyn dies first. The show made Alyn the elder sibling, and he doesn't want anything. This is probably part of the reason why their ages were switched in show canon. HOTD is going to milk that deadbeat father drama for all its worth by dragging out the succession issue.
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Apologies AU - Good Ending Drop
Hey, everyone.
It was my goal to finish Apologies in tandem with the Tournament, but for health reasons, I won't be able to as I planned. Because I tied the story to the tournament and don't feel like untangling it again and making everyone wait more, I'm going to give you all the ending spoilers, as I promised I would if I became unable to finish the story.
What I'm about to describe is THE Good Ending.
The True Ending I had planned out almost from the beginning!
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In the main-verse...
Susie, who sees too much of herself in Adeleine, decides to take matters into her own hands to bring the girl's older brother back.
She takes the vial of Dark Matter Swordsman DNA that was harvested from King Dedede. Meta Knight catches up with her and argues against it. It's foolish, dangerous, and liable to be nothing but painful to all parties involved. But Susie anticipated interference and asked Zan to bodyguard her. When Zan arrives (late) to the lab, the argument has caused the vial to begin to react to all the negativity in the room. Zan recognizes its contents as Dark Matter and insists on calling Lord Hyness, who in his own quirky way, analyzes their problem and suggests that while the contents are too weak to survive on their own, a resurrection could be possible, using Void's powers to mimic a hive queen, supplying whatever creature emerges the power to survive on Popstar without burning up into ash...
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In the tourney-verse...
White-Haired Noir is at peace with his life and has come to accept the death of his precious little sister many years ago, but...a part of him still wishes to make Adeleine happy.
Using his fairy-born dimension sight, he discovers an Alternate Noir who is 98% percent compatible with main-verse Noir. This is the Purgatory!Noir from the Re_Birthday post. And he drags this unstable, utterly clueless Noir out of this peaceful void without his permission and secretly "volunteers" the massively confused, un-alive but un-dead teen boy for the Kirby OC Tournament.
It is White-Haired Noir that is the "good" voice on phone and in Noir's head, encouraging rationality. His goal? Get Noir some friends. Get him to face up to/open up to people about his past. And get him caring about his life enough that he wants to live...!
White-Haired Noir has seen what the main-verse Star Allies are attempting and knows that the odds of them actually bringing "Noir" back instead of just an emotionless monster are low without a compatible "Noir Soul" (haha) to inhabit the new vessel.
Over the course of many in-tourney events, including Noir learning to have faith in the sibling bonds he built with Gooey despite being Dark Matter at the time, learning to separate himself and Adeleine as individuals instead of clinging to her to his own neglect, privately opening up to King Dedede, who put the pieces together post-possession, about some awful stuff Noir put up with for years in secret from Raquelle's father (who privately loathed Neichel AND her kids and took it out on Noir) to "pay" for Adeleine's good life...
And lastly, using the power of wishes to interrogate if THIS Noir's true wish is to die and be free, to have never been born, to have had a normal "perfect" life, or if he simply wishes for a second chance to be with those he cares about... White-Haired Noir determines that Tourney!Noir is ready and reveals his plan to him. Noir confesses to him that he really does want to live and be with his family again and offers up his stronger soul for Susie and the gang's vessel.
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Back in the main-verse...
The experiment is a success! They have brought, well, something back. It is not quite like Dark Matter Swordsman in form, nor is it exactly a human boy. It looks a little bit like a spiky haired-Gooey.
After some tense questioning of the emotionless, memoryless, unresponsive goo, it...suddenly seems to awaken. With the voice of a deeply shaken and scared young boy, the violet-eyed blob questions the mad scientist, cultists, and masked man surrounding him... Where the hell is he? And where are his little brother and sister?
Meta Knight welcomes Noir back to the world of the living.
Later, after Noir has time to dress himself in an appropriate scarf, Adeleine and Gooey are brought in and it is a happy and tear-filled reunion all around as Noir confirms that, while this form is strange, it's not dangerous and he's not in pain. He is then re-introduced to King Dedede, whereupon it's revealed that even though Noir likes him, he's still a snarky teen punk at heart, as he sasses the king horribly. (Dedede has gained another kid, but at what cost? XD)
...And that's it.
That's the ending to Apologies I've held onto for nearly a year.
For reading through all that, here is a short comic I drew a while back of the reunited family having a snowball fight in White Wafers.
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(Not to unnecessarily over-explain the story but because the comic is a little vague, I have to tell you that no, Noir does not ever return to human after his revival. I meant it when I wrote in several places that their parting on Shiver Star was the last time they'd see each other "...in this form." This is merely meant to depict a moment in which Adeleine, seeing her brother alive and smiling and laughing and having real fun for the first time in so long, is able to imagine his old self smiling and is at peace that her brother is finally free from the hurt and misery he bore up with for so long.)
(...And yes, he has a long, silly tongue just like Gooey. Which is why he hides all but his eyes behind the scarf. Gotta keep up that cool older brother look even as a little goo creature! While Noir can't become human - frankly, he doesn't miss having a human body, given the stuff in his adolescence and being over-stressed, underfed, under-slept and just overall sick all the time in his later teens - he does eventually acquire the ability to shift into his old "Swordsman" form for short bursts of time.)
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(Lastly, you might wonder how I could have had this exact ending in mind from almost the beginning when so much of it is tied up in recent posts like the tourney? ...Well, originally what was going to happen to allow Noir to be properly resurrected into the Dark Matter Goo body is that the Dream Rod from Star Allies was going to appear in response to a grieving Adeleine's wishes to see her brother again, bringing Noir-as-Swordsman back. At least for a LITTLE while, as it would be revealed that with Zero dead, Noir, who was entirely composed of Dark Matter at this point, couldn't survive on Popstar. Every moment he was there, his body was burning.)
(Still, he lasts long enough to have one final talk with Adeleine that helps heal him from the torturous events of DL 3 - in which we learn a highly disappointed Zero drove Noir to the absolute breaking point, shattering his mind and his newly regained soul. Adeleine also tells Noir she has finally realized everything he did for her during their childhood and apologizes to him for not seeing it before. With dawn on the horizon, Noir asks to look over Adeleine's sketchbooks with her before the end... He dies one last time, peacefully, while Adeleine finally gets to properly mourn him.)
(Then, all the "main-verse" sections proceed to happen as stated above!)
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(...Okay, okay. One last thing. There was also an alternate ending planned where Magolor, taking advantage of the fact that Merry Magoland was built on a nexus point, finds a way to reunite Adeleine and White-Haired Noir - still a teen in this version - using his theme park as a union point, as special birthday gift for Adeleine.)
(I was kinda fond of this one for reuniting the timelines, but it opened up a lot of questions such as, if Magolor made it so that Noir and Adeleine from two different dimensions can see each other as long as they're both in Magoland, could others from the WH Noir-verse see the main-verse this way? It invited too many questions, so that's why I scrapped that one and just let White-Haired Noir grow up instead.)
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Ryne and Gaia are like. Such good parallels and foils to each other it makes me just a little insane.
Like Ryne is sweet and caring and she always wants to help others and make them feel better even to the detriment of herself because she has seen and known suffering and doesn't want others to have to live like that too. If she can make someones life better, even if just a little bit, then she will. But she also puts everyone elses well-being and feelings so far above her own that she often ends up trying to help in a way that doesn't actually solve anything because it still ends up with someone hurt (such as trying to properly fuse with Minfilia knowing it might end up with herself disappearing). She's not a doormat, but she does have some people-pleasing tendencies.
Gaia, however, is the exact opposite. She's prickly and sarcastic and thinks of herself and her needs first and foremost, everyone else is secondary. It's not that she's cold or uncaring, she doesn't ignore people's problems, she just doesn't see them as her business most of the time (A product of being raised in Eulemore most likely). She doesn't consider the long-term outcome of what she does or says, she lives solely in the present and the future is a problem for when it happens.
These opposite traits also play into each other. Ryne inspires Gaia to care more about others and Gaia inspires Ryne to prioritize herself more. Gaia makes Ryne live more on the moment without thinking solely of what the future will bring, and Ryne makes Gaia think more on what her life will be going forward and to actually consider what she does and says and how that affects things. They feed into each others good traits (Ryne's caring nature and Gaia's sense of self) while also helping them deal with the bad traits (Ryne's people-pleasing and Gaia's aloofness).
Their pasts are good paralells too. Ryne was isolated and lonely until Thancred took her away but even then, he was distant and emotionally neglectful, so she ended up lonely in an entirely different way. Gaia had a family and caretakers that she wasn't particularly close to, but after the 'Fairy' started talking to her they got even further away until she couldn't even remember them, and the 'Fairy' was the closest thing she had to a friend even though it was what isolated her to begin with. Ryne had constant companionship but no support, and Gaia had 'support' but no companionship.
Even just. Regarding the whole identities thing they are just. Perfect. Ryne has lived with Minfilia's shadow on her shoulder her entire life and never got to learn who she actually is. She thought that she had to become Minfilia for her life to be worth anything, that it's the only way her existance is justified. The person closest to both her and Minfilia(Thancred) indicated(in her mind at least) that he wanted Minfilia to be here in Ryne's stead(which wasn't really the case but she didn't know that). The only way to get her out of that shadow was to remove her from the identity of Minfilia, hence why her new name is so important(as well as the hair and eyes being her natural colors instead of Minfilia's all too recognizable ones).
But Gaia didn't even know about Mitron or Loghrif until Eden. She had the 'Fairy', but to her it was just some voice in her head which was nice enough to her. To her, Loghrif is just some lady Mitron loved, she has no real connection to her. She has a connection to Mitron, both as the 'Fairy' and as remnant feelings from Loghrif, but none to Loghrif herself(aside from the obvious reincarnation stuff). Gaia has always been her name. It may have been Loghrif's originally, but she is so far removed from that identity that even for all of Mitron's effort to 'return' her to Loghrif, it'd never work. Loghrif is Gaia, but Gaia is not Loghrif. Simple as that.
Eden's story works so well because Ryne and Gaia are opposites in that specific way that compliments each other, rather than pits them against each other.
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do you ever think about how fucked up it is that Hera is the one constantly under threat of memory wipe obliviation, and yet, in the end, it's Eiffel who loses everything.
Memory loss still haunts Hera's life, even as she herself escaped it. She keeps the memories but loses the relationship she built in them.
i do... i think about it... honestly, this is one of the reasons why i feel like eiffel's sacrifice is still ultimately... kind of selfish? i don't say that to disparage him. it is a sacrifice, and it's brave, and i don't know if anything else could've reasonably been done. he made a choice. but hera is the one who had to pull the trigger, who had to inflict her own worst fear on the person closest to her - who has to live with that, and wonder what he was going to say to her, and wonder "what if?"
when the dust settles a little, i think she's going to be angry at him for that. and she's going to feel guilty, because he did what he had to do, and it's not like he can even remember making the call. but i think it will be something they'll have to work through.
i've said this before, but i think the wolf 359 finale has a powerful statement about identity: eiffel is form without memory, hera is memory without form, lovelace has both but without continuity of experience, and minkowski has all of that - but she's still not the same person she was at the start. all of them both are and aren't the same people, because that's what it means to be a person.
(and all of that's part of why i think eiffel regaining his memory would be a narratively consistent choice: it's all part of the same pattern of him trying to escape himself & learning to live with himself.)
i also think the way eiffel's mind & memory is treated very... mechanically in the finale, at the same time that hera is represented at her most natural / physical, is a really compelling equalizer as a way to present those questions of humanity / memory / autonomy.
and we know that theology / spirituality / the self are topics that hera gravitates towards; i imagine that post-canon she will be thinking a lot about the nature of the soul, especially if eiffel is (as i believe he is) still fundamentally "eiffel" even without his memories. if the self isn't stored in memory, if memory is the part where "you" come in, the result of the interaction between "you" and the external world, then what part is "you"? she's going to think about it.
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