#and that’s the element of tragedy

[ilmarin]

Sauron’s single tear when he killed Celebrimbor genuinely gives me so much brainrot because it feels like a self recognition through the other moment where whatever is left of Mairon within him shines through. He and Celebrimbor were both talented and ambitious smiths and they both got seduced with power by a more powerful, fallen Ainu, much to their undoing, didn’t they? They are such mirror images. Maybe Sauron’s tears are selfish ones of self pity from losing Celebrimbor as a tool, but I like to think deep down a part of him also mourns that Celebrimbor broke out of the bonds Sauron laid on him, and resisted to the end, and ultimately his fëa goes to back to Valinor for healing. It’s what Sauron himself could have been. But what has become of Mairon now? He can never go back; and for a while he had a peer of sorts in Celebrimbor, a companion and partner—but now he’s lost him too, at the hands of his own destructive ambition.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Charcuterie Board, as designed by your votes! Thank you to everyone who participated; this was a fun challenge!

[fkapommel]

"Nav, when I saw her face, I decided I wanted to live. I decided to live forever just in case she ever woke up."

I may be 10,000 years late to the party but holy shit. HOLY SHIT. She decided at 10/11 to become a lyctor, to live forever in order to see Alecto awaken. She pushed herself the entirety of her pre- and post-pubescence to be the greatest necromancer of a generation in order to become a lyctor; she devoted her entire existence to the rarest improbability she could actually piece the Eightfold Path together on her own, as John's invitation was so unbelievably unlikely. And that's why she was willing to use Gideon as her cavalier, that's how she could stand the agony of asking for help and depending on the bitch she swore to hate, that's why it was so goddamn important to have a competent cavalier. And when the true purpose of cavaliership was revealed with Ianthe's ascension, after she had realized how much she couldn't live without Gideon, she was willing to give up her whole life's purpose, the one thing in the world she had ever truly wanted- Alecto - for Gideon!! screaming crying throwing up disemboweling etc etc

[poirott]

Poirot + ruthlessness AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT (1989 - 2013)

"And he is ruthless, ruthless with those who commit crime. And they will be brought to justice." - David Suchet, BFI Q&A, Nov 12 2013

[rmbunnie]

One of the most poignant things about tlt to me is the way that so many things that could have fulfilled Harrow were always so insanely close to her, but everything about her life on the ninth prevented her from ever connecting to people or being vulnerable in the way that she would have to be to even know that being fulfilled then and there was an option. That one convo Ortus and Harrow have in the dream river version of Canaan House after she realizes that its a false reality, and she's shown that everyone who could stay with her did stay behind to support her. When Ortus apologized to her for how everything ended up, and told her he should have understood more about the situation before. When she mentions how she couldn't trust that her perception was accurate to reality, and then he confides in her that long after his dad died in that ritual, he would hear him turning the doorknob outside the door and its not succumbing to madness it's just that extensive pressure shapes your mind sometimes. Like Canaan House is fake, but that is the real Ortus and the real Harrow and real tenderness that could have been expressed before one of them died if only. All the love Harrow or Gideon could have ever wanted, the other one wanted it too, and the only thing keeping them apart was the cumulation all of the tragedies that were ever part of their home and everything that ever resulted from them. And of course it's a main theme of the book that even if everything could have been fixed and wasn't, the love and understanding that could have fixed it and didn't can and should be expressed just for the sake of that love existing in the open, regardless of whether or not it can do tangible good anymore. And that's beautiful! but it still stings that Harrow spent all life since eleven fully convinced her perception of reality was irreversibly ruined, when one of TWO existing peers could have absolutely assuaged that if even just one thing was a little different.

[whetstonefires]

See I don't necessarily disagree with what seems to be the primary reading that Yue Qingyuan's shifu fucked him over, caring nothing for his needs or preferences and only for whether he was useful. That makes sense, it ties into plenty of the generational and societal themes of the story. It fits.

But iirc we don't actually get enough information to know that's what happened.

And the thing is it would be so in-character and also thematically appropriate if Yue Qingyuan absolutely did not explain his goals or why he was working so hard, because it was private and shameful and he didn't expect any sympathy, and there was a high risk of losing everything if he blabbed.

And also if he engaged with the existing ruleset with which he was presented, i.e. 'can't go off on your own on personal business until you've mastered your sword,' in the most negative and controlling manner possible, as absolute commandments.

He's a different kind of guy but he comes from the same background as Shen Jiu! It fucked him up also!

He is very very very not a guy who trusts the system to make allowances for him--even once he has all the power he 'does what he wants' and 'makes selfish choices' as a conscious transgression; not something he has a right to do, just something he can get away with so he's gonna. (And ofc he spends almost all the latitude he grants himself on sqq.)

And even less is he a guy who opens up easily.

He isn't too proud to ask for help or pity, so much as he just doesn't expect to get any.

So in this interpretation, he understood that rule as a non-negotiable barrier in his path, the target to overcome, and focused all his considerable will and talent on overcoming it through the sphere of action he felt he had control over.

And fucked himself up bad.

Whereupon his teacher, possessing absolutely no context for this dumb shit their star pupil pulled, did the only thing they thought might work to save his life, paying in the process no attention to the raving of someone deep in a psychotic break.

Like, I feel like there should have been a better, kinder medical option, but I don't know for sure that there was, so I can't say with certainty this was the kind of cruelty that derives from not caring enough.

And it really would be kind of elegant and so typical of Yue Qingyuan's fundamental tragedy if the real mistake was 'not confiding in anybody' the whole time.

And he was just so deeply sunk into the understanding that explaining and asking were useless that, even looking back, it never really occurred to him that maybe his mistake wasn't 'fucking it up when trying too hard to solve everything on his own' but 'assuming there was no help to be had, and that he had to do it all on his own.'

Like. What if this really could all have been avoided if he'd just trusted and communicated with the adult in charge of him? But of course, of course his history of trauma (neglect, child abuse, exploitation, being the One Responsible for the younger kids whom he could not keep safe) meant he was absolutely not going to do that.

It was basically impossible. For the person he was, the person the world had made of him. And that's always been the core tragedy the whole novel circles back upon.

People can only ever be themselves, and so very often the elements of self that let them survive until now are that which dooms them, that means they need someone else to intervene if they're ever going to be saved. Because your personal doom is always the thing from which you can't save yourself.

[neversetyoufree]

(Template)

[turbodrawn]

Despite everything, it’s still… you.

———————————————————————————————-

Dewdrop/Sodo angst? More likely than you think

[inoankin]

coming to terms with the fact that aside from some very unspecific ideas of "family" and "trust" and "the power of hand-holding", AWO is a pretty shallow game.

[lovesickeros]

☆ the dove

{☆} characters tsaritsa {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings violence, blood {☆} word count 0.7k

Her hands are weapons, forged in a tragedy as much as a war of ash and blood that seeps into the earth and rots it from within. To them, however, she is salvation. Her hands are a kindness, not a threat. She sees it in their puffy, red eyes just brimming with tears, their fragile body so delicate and weak is still remains marred by wounds new and old – the gold still stains their skin, even long after it had been washed away.

She has seen it all �� and she takes the injured dove beneath her wing with the sickly sweet promise that someday she shall mend its broken wings and teach it to fly again.

And in their stupor, they do not see her clip their wings.

It is for the best.

The wolves still salivate below the nest, waiting for her little dove to fall again – no, she shall not send her little bird to fly when it will just fall into their waiting maws once again.

This..this one is hers, she has decided.

Her little bird who dreams of the sky and the woman who clips their wings..what a tragic pair they must make, she thinks.

Not for her, of course. Yet not to them, either, unaware of the way she grounds them and keeps the key to their cage tightly in her fist.

"Tsaritsa?" The soft, meek lilt of the little bird draws her from her reverie, and she smiles – all teeth and little else, wolfish and predatory.

Yet the bird sees nothing but love in the sharp points of her canines.

As it was meant to be.

"Yes, little bird?"

She coos in honeyed tones, brushing her cold, cold hands against their skin, reveling in the way they shiver and shake beneath the ever present chill in her very bones. They do not fear the claws that ghost across their skin, and the smile they offer that illuminates their eyes like stars only proves her right – she wants to devour them whole. To see the stars in their eyes burn out beneath her teeth, their golden blood burn upon her tongue and down her throat.

"You promised to take me to the gardens today, remember?"

Her pearly, sharpened fangs peer out beneath her lips as she grins wider, unnerving to all but the little bird who sees not the wolf but the wool it wears, her hands finding their place upon their shoulders as she whispers into their ear.

She will guide her little bird where they cannot go, where their clipped wings cannot take them.

She will give them that bittersweet taste of freedom and then watch them try to catch the stars..

Just to drag them back down to earth where they belong.

"Of course, Creator – I am a woman of my word, am I not?"

Such sickly sweet lies come to her with ease – she lies and she lies and they do not see past the woolen cloak of the wolf until its jaw has snapped around its throat and its blood has painted the world a shimmering gold.

She will delight in that, too.

"If I may be so bold, Creator, you have been distant lately..have you grown tired of me already?"

Her words were as sharp as a blade, yet as dull as a rock, as sweet as they were dangerous. Like watching a mouse trap luring in its prey, she would snap it shut as soon as the little bird strayed too close.

"No! No, that's not..you've just been busy lately, I didn't want to intrude."

They remind her so much of a rabbit in those moments, and she so badly wants to know what would happen if she just took a small, insignificant bite..yet she restrains herself with a far too wide smile, her jaw clenched so hard she almost thinks they will hear it creak.

"Intrude? You could ever hardly intrude, Creator – what is mine is yours. Though, perhaps I shall have to lock you in my room to ensure you compensate me for depriving me of your presence."

In just a few short words, she snares the rabbit – her little bird, her Creator. They will see nothing but the sickly sweet lure of her smile, letting out a pretty laugh of their own as they press closer, like a bird wandering into the open maw of the beast lying in wait.

"As long as it has a nice view, I suppose I won't mind."

They jest, but she does not. And oh, how easy it is to ensnare an unsuspecting prey.

"Of course, Creator – just for you."

It won't be long until her little bird returns to its gilded cage, now. Permanently.

It is better that way.

[cerusee]

Finally finished Goodbye My Princess and I was not expecting a happy ending—this show famously does not have a happy ending, and I knew it going in—but the ending still gutted me like a fish and had me openly weeping. (Normally when I say a piece of media made me cry, I mean, “I actually teared up a little”. Not this time! Full on ugly sobbing! A lingering sense of devastation even a couple of hours later!)

I assumed at first it was going to end on that shot of Li Chengyin’s face when Xiaofeng’s brother carries her lifeless body away, which would honestly have been bad enough. But somehow, what really pushed it over the edge for me was the coda, where LCY has, decades later, voluntarily abdicated to make way for his successor. It’s clearly the end of a lengthy tenure as emperor, and maybe even a good one, since they make a point of mentioning that it’s the first peaceful transfer of power in generations (a marked difference from the bloody succession struggle Chengyin and his brothers endured) and Pei Zhao is notably still hanging around.

But LCY is still pining for his lost Xiaofeng, and has either recent,y developed the delusion that she’s not dead, or has been clinging to that delusion ever since he watched her slit her throat in front of him and then die in his arms (straight up I do not know which is worse), and is now going to spend what remains of his life wandering in the desert searching for a woman who is forever lost to him. What was it all for, LCY? Was it worth it? (Maybe it was! I think it’s implied he was actually a decent emperor and he’s leaving the place in better condition than he found it.) But worth it or not, he’s never gotten over the price he paid for all this, never known true contentment, never stopped searching and waiting and longing for Xiaofeng in his heart. Oh my god.

[darlingofdots]

I am unreasonably fond of that moment in LoD when one of the Shen Lung comes to Laurence with news and he like. greets her politely and takes her into the war room with him and people are so busy arguing they don't even notice her, and then somebody says something stupid and she gets protective and the generals remember that oh, right, this is Will Laurence, the absolute madman dragon whisperer and Prince of China and if we're not careful we will in fact face consequences, and then Laurence walks back out with her and goes "come along then, you'll sleep warmer with Temeraire 🥰" and I??? Will Laurence the man that you are

[xxgothchatonxx]

I love that we don't know what Claudia and Madeleine said to each other before the sun hit them.

Because Claudia finally got to have ONE moment of privacy.

(...on a stage in front of an audience just before she dies)

Back in New Orleans, Lestat and Louis read her diaries. Privacy violated. Then in Paris, the theatre coven literally used it as a stage prop/'evidence', passing it around to the theatre audience. Privacy violated and then some. Now in Dubai, not only are Louis and Armand 'editing' the diaries by removing pages, they've also given it to Daniel to help him write a fucking book. Even in death, her privacy is being violated.

So, Armand "doesn't know" (or didn't care to know- who knows?) what Claudia was saying to Madeleine? Good. We don't need to hear it. Let her words stay with who they were meant for. Madeleine. No one else.

[starculler]

strap in for this week's fic flavor: the failsafe episode of season one of the young justice cartoon except the simulation just won't. fuckin. end.

(fics that inspired this at the end)

If I ever did sit down to make my own fic, I'd split it in 3 parts:

The Simulation: bits and pieces of the 40 years Dick lives after most everyone he knows has died

The Return: the immediate aftermath and healing from the trauma of having not-quite-actually lived a whole life only to wake up and find out it was all fake. nothing traumatizing about that whatsoever.

The Unintended Consequence: aka the twist I'd love to add and would hint to in the second part - finding out the simulation, through martian mind fuckery, pulled from the real world (and in many cases, from real minds). Dick meets a bunch of people he didn't think were real outside the confines of his simulated life. A bunch of rowdy, heroism-inclined teens across the years get to meet the sibling/friend/mentor figure they all dreamed up one night.

(actual idea snippets under the cut)

.

Dick Grayson is 14 and most of the world's heroes have died. He planned a suicide mission that left him the sole survivor of a doomed team he helped found. The invasion may have been stopped, but is this really the price he wanted to pay?

The first face he sees in the infirmary is Roy's, and he has to close his eyes and just breathe for a few minutes because for one painful moment he'd thought it was Wally. But this isn't the world where his best friend miraculously survived alongside him. This is the one where he got his best friend killed and didn't even give him the courtesy of following behind him. Behind them.

.

Dick Grayson is 27 and has lived longer without Bruce than with him. The invasion's anniversary is always a tough day for him, but that morning seems especially harrowing. He'll get shit for it later, but can't resist stepping out onto the balcony of the manor's master bedroom (Bruce's old bedroom) for a smoke -- his first since he'd promised to quit if Jason, just 15 then, did too.

"Bad habits tend to pile up," he'd said, a rueful quirk to his tired grin. He'd tapped the cigarette twice on the railing and added, lower, "and this one's especially nasty, huh."

He inhales, watches the sun creep across the horizon, and lets acrid smoke burn through his lungs for a long moment before blowing it out in a small cloud. His eyes water, but he doesn't cough. It tastes just as bad as it did the first time he smoked one, not even a year after the invasion and treading water as Robin proved insufficient.

There hadn't been enough heroes to go around then, and Dick had been trained by one of the best. It hadn't been fair, but it had been his plan that had ultimately stopped the invasion. His shoulders everyone's expectations fell on.

He takes another drag, then smudges the lit end against the rail he's leaned on when he hears a boot scuff purposefully against the roofing above him.

"Todd and Pennyworth will be upset with you."

He doesn't turn around. Damian doesn't jump down to join him.

.

Dick Grayson is 54 and wakes up in a room full of ghosts. He hears his long-dead father-figure tell his long-dead team about a simulation they weren't meant to win. A training exercise gone wrong and only half a day spent under their mentors' careful, if slightly panicked, supervision.

He looks at his hands, watching the way his gloves crease when he flexes them in and out of tight fists. He looks at his team, their eyes a little haunted but shoulders slumped with relief even as they grumble. Batman's heavy, gloved hand settles on his shoulder and the weight of it is a nauseating mix of foreign-familiar.

He opens his mouth. Closes it.

Tears prick his eyes behind his domino mask, and he tells himself the suffocating, acidic void building in his chest is just some leftover side effect of the ordeal and not the grief-guilt of outliving yet another family (no matter that they hadn't been real in the end).

.

Dick Grayson is 16-going-on-56 and well used to the coincidences piling up between his simulated life and the real thing. Some of it -- missions and villains he remembers cropping up -- he's marked for Bruce to review and sort as he pleases. Some -- security for the cave, team building anecdotes, and training regimens -- he's shared with the team. And some he keeps only for himself.

Tim is one of those. He knows it's not fair to the kid (so much smaller now than he ever was when Dick lived his simulated life), but he can't help being selfish just for this. Tim is the one kid he's sure he didn't make up, and if Dick's taken to babysitting the kid just to be near at least one member of the family he built for himself in the wake of the worst days of his life .... Well, anyone who says shit about it can happily stand in line to have their teeth kicked in.

Despite this, it still catches him off-guard when he sees a familiar face pop up in one of Bruce's reports.

Jason Todd, caught boosting tires off the batmobile, is nearly the same age now as he was when Dick met him. He stares at the words, but none of them really sink in beyond the kid's name and address. He's moving before he's even made the decision.

He's used to the world kicking him when he's down - lived it for 40 frustrating years. But he has Bruce again. And things with Tim have been so good. And he's always been selfish when it comes to family. If he could just see Jason. If he could just meet him. If he could talk to him.

If if if if if--

.

Inspirations:

Circles in Shattered Mirrors by InfinityIllusion

Fine (But Not Okay) by CharlotteDaBookworm

Verisimilitude by mutemelody

[moonilit]

I just love these fics where Bruce straight up losses control and his kids just start serial adopting each others. There is something so funny about someone who is not ready to be parenting, traumatized, going through life, thinking they have it handled. until they see a kid mimics their behaviors (/coping mechanisms) and have the horrible realization thats how their behavior looks like from the outside and they DO NOT, in fact, have it handled.

it happened to Lighting Farron in ffxiii it happened to Bruce Wayne in DC comics and every time its so funny trying to see some stoic badass fumble as they run trying to stop a kid from doing murder

[klbzplb]

quick sketch color practice thing

(scene from chapter seven of i am weary with contending! by the amazing @ari--anon . i am not the biggest fan of the drawing but the fic is the best thing i read in my life so. genuinely its so good. its a masterpiece.)