#and the tragedy ending for a change

[rivilu]

Elluin you're so fucking stupid..

[wardensantoineandevka]

it's kind of funny that we're back at the start, as it was known from the very beginning, as the story always was, the old lore: "the Divine Gate was built in response to the destruction and suffering of the Calamity as the Prime Deities realized was far too much and, as such, they needed to also remove themselves from Exandria to protect it from the ruin that the gods dwelling here brings"

[demigod-shenanigans]

Feeling some type of way about Leo deciding Jason is the one who needs saving when Jason’s been the one saving people all his life.

The thing is, once they realize what the prophecy means, Jason decides if it’s him or Leo, it has to be him. He outright states this in his narration twice:

As much as Jason loved his life, he couldn’t let his friend die for his sake. He could never live with the guilt. ~ House of Hades

He knew the risks. But he wanted to take those risks himself, not put them on Leo. ~ Blood of Olympus

And the thing is, Leo knows this. Jason never tells him, but Leo still knows it. He doesn’t tell Jason and Piper his plan because he knows they’d never allow it. Because he knows Jason, stubborn hero leader that he was raised to be, would never let it be him.

Leo knows Jason would die for him and he will not allow it.

Thinking about how one of the first things Leo says when he manages to string words together after learning what happened to Jason in The Burning Maze is “He did what Jason always did. He saved the day.”

[mobius-m-mobius]

I know what kind of god I need to be... For you.

[blackbatcass]

there is something so profoundly sad about jaderoy. like. at the end of the day. no matter what she did. no matter how different they are. despite everything else. when it’s all said and done.

jade loves him. and roy loves her.

[bonefall]

Maybe I'll make a post on this at some point but like, something deeply fucked up about TNP and Po3 that people have totally forgotten about is how badly they try to whine that "Tigerstar Had Good Traits :("

Firestar does it, Brambleclaw does it, and they keep doing this after it becomes this GRAND irony that Firestar almost gets Tiger'd to death in a fox trap because he was too trusting. Bramble gets his pity award of keeping deputyship and then cries to his son about how No One Saw The Good In Tigerstar :(

And it's wiiiiild that no one else in this fandom has done anything with the fact that Leopardstar broke the Warrior Code to appoint Hawkfrost, who had no apprentice, an extremely aggressive and warmongering Tigerclone who says things like "Tigerstar wasn't the worst cat to look up to." ONLY qualifying trait was being kinda like Tigerstar.

And she practically did that the SECOND Mistyfoot went missing. And then Leopardstar continued to be one of the most violent and xenophobic leaders through Po3, joining with WindClan to attack ThunderClan.

What I'm getting at is that like, a few years ago, with books like "Blackfoot's Reckoning" and "Shadow in RiverClan" it's like they suddenly decided to retcon in a bunch of "redemption arcs" in hindsight. They just pretended like there was this grand high reckoning with TigerClan, when there literally wasn't, and if anything that caused SERIOUS problems for the cast that the authors didn't fully acknowledge as such.

And now ppl haven't actually read the main series and are just working with their recent memory of all these retcon books.

But TNP and PO3 are still there, and you can go and see the ACTUAL timeline where Leopardstar is really not apologetic at all, and Blackstar is a useful stooge for the very next wannabe dictator that strolls in, in spite of the new side content that COMPLETELY mischaracterized them for their plots to work.

[firenati0n]

people ruin people, i don't wanna ruin you // i am just a sickness and you seem to be the cure

by firenati0n on ao3

M | 4/9 | current wc: 6.9k

tags: musician au, orpheus & eurydice references, a star is born au (very loose), angst with a happy ending, icarus references, alex pov, singer!alex, singer!henry

No one could resist his soulful brown eyes, framed by doe lashes, sitting pretty on a face one could only describe as biblically gorgeous. Dark curls, a chin dimple, the cheekiest smile—Alex was marketable perfection in the sweetest package. But fame comes at a heavy cost.

Or, Alex is a washed-up singer who finds salvation in Henry, and Henry is both his loving disciple and his greatest punishment.

xoxo roop

[its-just-hyper]

In anticipation for the ending of my hero academia, I gotta say: man, is anyone remembering that one time that one beloved book series about a wizarding school ended with the flawed government staying exactly the same, everyone having kids and naming them after killed off characters, and the protagonist becoming a cop?

[luck-of-the-drawings]

POOR GABRIEL MONTEZ! YOU NEVER SAW THIS COMING DID YOU? ALL YOU WANTED WAS POWER. SECURITY. SAFETY. & THATS EXACTLY WHAT YOU GOT! JUST IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR BODY. LETS JUST HOPE NO ONE FUCKS THIS UP. LETS JUST HOPE YOU WONT HAVE TO CLEAN UP THE MESS.

[chimaerakitten]

I’ve been thinking today about off ramps in long running stories, especially book series.

By that I mean like, places where a person could stop reading and have a satisfying ending even if they’re not yet at the actual ending. (Someone tell me if there’s an established Tvtropes name for this I’m missing.)

Now, a lot of book series will have an off ramp at the end of book 1, because many first books are written without promise of a sequel. Like sure, there might be a sequel hook, but the actual second book is still up to publisher whims in most cases. So you can read All Systems Red or The Thief or A Madness of Angels and have a perfectly satisfying ambiguous-end sci-fi story or middle grade fantasy romp or inverted murder mystery revenge quest without ever picking up book 2. This is definitely an off ramp but it’s not necessarily the interesting or revealing kind because again. Whims of the publisher.

There’s also stories that have an off ramp after every installment. Leverage is famous for this—they had a philosophy of having every season be a satisfying ending, which says a lot both about the writers and about the story they were trying to tell.

But I think the most interesting ramps are the ones where by design or by circumstance, there’s a single off-ramp somewhere in the middle. One spot where unless someone tells you there’s more, you’d never be unsatisfied with leaving halfway through.

Sometimes these will be signaled in some way, where there’s a big timeskip after the off-ramp, or the series changes names or has a spin-off, or the POV changes, or after book 3 the author publishes a short story collection before hopping back in to novels, or the series suddenly jumps from being only novellas to a chunky 120k novel. (The Raksura books, Percy Jackson/HoE, Matthew Swift/Magicals Anonymous, and Murderbot all do one or more of these)

But sometimes off ramps aren’t visible in series order or marketing. Sometimes they’re organic to where a story happens to leave off at the end of an installment.

The queen’s thief has one of these after King Of Attolia. I know this was a satisfying ending because for seven years I thought it was the end. My local library didn’t have A Conspiracy of Kings, so I thought it was a trilogy. And you really can leave it there! KoA ends with Gen back in his element and recognized as king, the main internal threat to Irene neutralized, and peace on the peninsula. The Mede aren’t yet the immediate threat they are in the back half of the series, since up through KoA they’re mainly represented by the magus’s vague warnings and Nahuseresh, whom Irene thinks circles around. There’s no real reason to assume the Mede are a threat within the scope of the series. Now I absolutely prefer getting the whole story, but KoA is a damn solid off-ramp for anyone who feels like exiting there.

And that’s one kind of off ramp where the end you get is pretty similar in tone (mostly happy) to the one you get if you go on to the rest of the series. I’ve also read books where you can off ramp successfully right at the lowest point in the series and get a tragedy out of a series that ultimately ends happy, or leave at a high point and get a happier end than the main one, or exit at an ambiguous point and continue on with ambiguity. The Giver sequels make it pretty clear what happened to Jonas and Gabe at the end of the book. but you don’t have to read them or have that question answered if you want to.

I don’t have a really solid conclusion to draw here except that I think the positioning of off ramps says a lot about authors and stories, and choosing whether or not to take an off ramp says a lot about readers.

[daemon-in-my-head]

Crazy that durgetash has been rotting my brain for well over a year now. So to celebrate, lemme show you the concept I put down for them over a year ago and what it’s become.

This was me playing around with my durges concept (and brushes don't come for me) a year ago and my desire to give Gortash a big ass hammer manifesting.

Vs how my ‘im sorry I gotta break canon’ creature ended up looking (pre-lobotomy anyway). I kind of wanted to preserve the OG Bhaalists vestments, aka purple robes and red sash (yk, the one DnD lore uses, not the BG3 lore version), but with a bit of a twist, since this fucker was not fully on board with Bhaals bullshit even back then.

Anyway, I wanted to include a piece featuring your dearest tyrant and him originally, but the precise idea I’ve had in mind isn’t done yet and it’s his post bg3 fit anyway. Soooooo, I’ll post it once it’s actually done on its own cuz if it works out how I want it to it deserves it.

[borgialucrezia]

It's so bittersweet that Juan was the only one who felt Cesare's constant pain, and he was glad he found something to relate to with his brother, with a relieved smile. He found solace in the fact that he could empathize with him as he endured pain all the time as well, albeit for different reasons. I wonder if he ever knew whether Cesare's suffering stemmed from being trapped in a cardinal's robe and not having a career as a soldier. Also, you can see the frustration and conflict on Cesare's face, as if he doesn't want to kill his brother but he has to since Juan became a liability and would eventually bring the family down with him, especially after Juan's descent into addiction, illness, and madness. Cesare is driven by the desire to preserve the family and because he wanted Juan's undeserved position as a Gonfaloniere. All in all, these two tormented brothers were trapped in their father's vicious cycle of favoritism and ambitions, which caused the tragic ending of their brotherhood when they could have been brothers in arms.

[silo1013]

salvaged from the office fire in 1998

[orphiclovers]

The amount of influence that random unfindable fanfictions I read years ago have on the way I look at fiction in general is INSANE

[raisinchallah]

yeah on gay doctor who in a universe different yet oddly similar to our own caves of androzani is a turlough story and hes gotten kidnapped by a mad scientist in fetish gear for his beauty and the doctor must save his life by pouring milk into his mouth

[sysig]

Rosawatts, from memory (Patreon)