#i'm sowing chaos cause i'm bored

[melishade]

Turns on the mic Galvatron's Revenge is the Food Fight of the Transformers Fandom. Turns off the mic.

[blood-starved-beast]

IIRC part of Hades's curse in the first game is that he would never have a heir no?

So I've been thinking about this, and thinking about the direction Melinoe's arc might go in the final full-fledged game and hm. At the start of the game, pre-character development Melinoe seems like the perfect heir. Diligent, hard-working, conscientious, task-oriented in a way Zagreus never was. Hades 1 Hades would dreamed for Zagreus to be like her here.

And yet it never happened. Chronos takes over not after Melinoe is born, and she's raised far away from the House and its norms (I wonder then, since Mel is aware of the Family Curse that this is the reason why she blames herself for the demise of the House). She works hard to restore that, but she does it at the cost of her own well-being and who she Is as a person.

And that's the kicker I think. There's a lot of evidence - convos between Melinoe and others - that highlight how much she doesn't have a life. Eris is constantly pointing out how ~ boring ~ she is and trying to get her to "enjoy life" albeit in Eris's own terms and ways. Heck, even Hercules warns her against Olympus and even her Father (even if it's projection on his part), suggesting her task might not be what's cranked up to be.

So I wonder. Melinoe is the Goddess of Nightmares and Ghosts in the myths yes, but also she's associated with invoking Madness. We see a little bit of that in her repeatedly giving Chronos no peace (I wonder if defeating him for real would involve getting into his nightmares. I mean, Hypnos is asleep for a reason right?). But also she's described as being a beast apparition with many forms, a way for people to communicate with the dead. That seems to tie her more to the Surface in a way.

Anyways, what I'm saying is, I think her arc is gonna go in the direction of her relaxing her stance on her Mission. Taking and enjoying herself. But cause of circumstances, she returns home, but it's not the same. She's not a member of the House structure in a way that matters, Time cannot be stopped, things cannot be the way it was before. She's gonna stick to what she knows, stick to the Crossroads and Hecate and maybe fighting Chronos to keep him down and up to the surface all the time, maybe causing her own version of chaos and doing it cause she enjoys it, or wants to, not just cause it's expected of her. So maybe she drives everyone insane or sows mayhem cause of it so what.

Basically

[legokisser]

imagine if you were like a relatively normal rabbit guy living in like cartoon animals delaware or something and one day you receive a vision in your sleep from an unfathomable ancient God of chaos and destruction and rage and hes like Hey whats up. sooo im trying to choose someone to be basically my avatar in the mortal world and spread devastation and fire and death across the world and well you're the lucky guy. so like just agree and i'll basically channel my fucked up dragon energy into your puny physical form and make you a horrible unstoppable beast and you can basically fuck shit up everywhere forever. it'll be a blast i promise ive looked into youre dreams i know youre the kind of spite filled bastard who would be into that.

and youre like hmmm that sounds a little Problematic but also you have no friends and hate your job and hate your life and the world so basically why should you care. so you take the deal and for a few hundred years you run around with your cool new lizard satan power sowing distrust in the masses with your trickery and burning down buildings and eating farm animals whole while nobody's looking. and the more you destroy the more the hatred and fear you kick up amplifies your connection with your god powers, widening the scale of your rampage until there are no more cities left to raze, no more kings left to devour, any remnants of civilization are few and far between, and they all know to fear you.

so your god rolls up again like Heyyy you're doing a great job man im giving you a gift. take the power of my claws and tear through reality. go find other universes full of worthless squishy mortals to terrorize.

so youre like Okay cool sure sounds like the reasonable next step here. so you do that, ripping massive holes through reality and destroying everything that dares to exist within your reach. and you do this for what starts to feel like an eternity, endless violence spread across countless worlds, it all starts to blur together.

it gets fucking BORING so you kinda start slacking off, changing your form to enjoy the simple pleasures of mortal life without the stress of actually being one of them, but then homeboy dragon god comes back and is like Hey dude hold on. you can't do that we had a deal. i grant you my power. and you fuck shit up for all eternity right? you cant be doing this pussy shit with my power that's not what it's for.

and youre like well im sick of the destruction and the fire and the screaming it's all the same. it never surprises me anymore. can't i have a break every once in a while? and he's like FUCK no absolutely not. i made a mistake granting my power to you I'm cutting you off. you can keep what you already have but im not giving you any more and you can't have the boon of my dimension-rending claws anymore either. have fun with your smelly little mortals IDIOT! and he disappears.

and for a while you can kinda do whatever, fuck that guy, what does he know? as long as you keep causing mayhem every once in a while you can maintain your power. but eventually your antics get you in hot water with a particularly powerful empire, and they have particularly powerful mages, and they devise a magical trap to contain your power and seal you away for a thousand years. so you end up bound to a pair of enchanted golden bands locked in a chest in an ancient temple for like, wayyy too fucking long. not fun. not cool. big fucking bummer honestly.

once you're finally released, the first thing you see is this weird really tall ripped bird guy with sunglasses. and you naturally expect him to cower or whatever but he doesn't seem to know who you are at all, and he's confused why a bunny man with horns and claws and a tail came out of these weird bands he found while exploring the forest but he's, like, really nice to you and introduces himself as the bodyguard of the unikingdom.

you don't know what the fuck a unikingdom is but you're hesitant to tell a royal guard about your past, especially in your current weakened state, so you kinda just skirt around the issue and say you don't remember anything. so he offers to show you around and shit and you're learning about all the new things that have been invented in the past millennium and it's pretty cool you guess but that little lie sits like a pit in your stomach. it is your nature, your destiny to destroy it all, but hes so nice. no one has ever been this nice to you in your life.

and he introduces you to his friends and they're all really nice too and it just makes you feel even worse because you're getting attached now, but it's only a matter of time until you're forced to face the truth. the truth of who you are, who you have always been for as long as you can recall, a monster. why couldn't some jerk have freed you so you could just backstab them and regain your power? why did it have to be this guy? why is he so pretty what who said that

[casspurrjoybell-27]

Moving Forward - Chapter 36

*Warning Adult Content*

Frozen

At Max's side, Kyle was becoming a force to be reckoned with, Max's hold on his fur the only reason he hadn't already leapt onto the porch but it was... so clearly a trap.

********

They'd been watching for a least five minutes, the rain doing its best to drown them and the cherry scent was strongest here... but there was no sign of anyone being here.

No brainwashed wolves guarding the area, nor any movement inside the house.

A laugh carried on the wind.

High and feminine, the familiarity of it had Max's teeth grinding.

The rumble of a growl vibrated through Max's tight fist but no real sound escaped Kyle.

Lara's laugh was only a harbinger, timed perfectly to set them on edge.

There was no clear source, it came from no direction.

In front and behind, both loud and faint, it sounded as if it came straight out of a horror film.

So she could do more than just make scentless zombies.

Good to know, but Max would've preferred to have the info earlier.

They should just go, just back out and recover.

Do some recon, get more on their enemies other than the fact that one had some kind of magic ability on some unknown scale and the other was the boss.

God, what a shit-show but Kyle wouldn't, he'd never allow Finn to be their hostage without good cause and according to Kyle, no cause was good enough to leave him behind and Max agreed.

He did but he was also selfish.

Kyle leaving Max here to get Finn back was the best option but that wouldn't happen either.

"Kyle..." he started but was cut off by another bout of laughter.

*********

"Thinking of running Maxie?" Lara voice was taunting.

"You know the odds aren't good. What? You'd rather get your mate to safety than his little brother? What kind of monster are you?"

Max scoffed.

Sure, she knew him but Kyle knew better.

Sowing dissent wouldn't work with them.

Kyle's gold eyes met his and Max could tell that he didn't believe one word coming out of her mouth.

That was enough for Max.

They were getting nowhere hiding in the bushes.

Un-holstering his Glock, he swept the area and crept forward, Kyle crouched and following behind.

What an odd pair they probably made.

When the guns came out, Max was usually the one shifted.

Reversing the roles had a weird effect.

Like sitting in the chair to the left the one he'd been assigned, unsettling... another tilt.

********

The PTSD was setting in with a force that had Max wondering if Kyle had always been a part of his team.

He gave hand signals, letting Kyle know that the enemy hadn't yet been spotted before he remembered that Kyle had never been taught them.

Lara giggled, ominous and clear.

The porch door was open.

No sign of forced entry other than the wicker chairs being strewn about the garden.

Inside was a different story.

Blankets were piled in the corners.

Furniture shoved aside.

Even the fluffy rug had been flung behind the breakfast bar.

Max felt himself tense up at the mess they had made, that he'd no doubt be required to clean up.

Wolves blocked every entrance, any angle of escape covered and there, in the middle of the chaos, was Lara.

Surprise streaked through Max at the sight of Gillespie, though he shouldn't have been.

"Gun down, please," Gillespie said, tone annoyingly cordial but as chilled as it was the last time Max had heard him speak.

Max kept his gun pointed at the man's chest.

"Fine," Gillespie merely waved a hand.

Finn appeared in Lara's arms, tears streaming down his face and chest heaving with sobs.

"Kyle," he screamed, kicking Lara in the shin to break out in a run.

He almost succeeded, almost ploughed right into Kyle's dense fur but between one blink and another, he was back in Lara's grasp, her face... sad.

"Max... put the gun down," her gaze seemed to bore a hole in him.

Max holstered it.

"Lara."

"Now now, I'm the orchestrator of all this," Gillespie drew their attention back to him.

"And I've got demands."

Kyle growled.

"See? This is why it should've been you in human form. At least then we could negotiate. As is, you either agree or you die," Gillespie's smile was gleaming, pure white with sharp pointed teeth, Max's were bigger.

"You're going ta renounce the title of Alpha and bequeath it to me," he shrugged.

"The Evergreen Rivers pack is mine."

The same shade of sun-kissed blonde, pretty blue eyes and the light brow with the Roman nose, delicate on Lara but proud on Gillespie.

"You really are related," Max muttered.

"You know what happens," she smiled but it was angry,

"When a witch and a wolf make a baby? You get one or the other. It's all hereditary and when Gillespie's father died, he came ta us."

"It's a shame he's a dud," Max said, knowing that Gillespie wouldn't like it.

"I reckon we could do with a pause, Lara."

"Coming right up," she lilted and just like that... the world froze.

********

Kyle's paws no longer padded in restless anger.

Finn's chest was suspended in a broken hiccup and Max... was fine.

Stepping away from the frightened child, Lara was grinning.

"You see my power?"

Tilting... Tilting... Tilting.

She was talking but all Max could hear was gunfire.

Pinned down by the enemy, unable to do anything.

Trapped behind enemy lines with no one coming to save them.

The men beside him frozen in fear.

It was nothing like this situation but the moments merged as if they were the same.

It didn't make sense, the forced stillness here to the overwhelming chaos there but it might well have been.

He wasn't there... Max wasn't back in Afghanistan.

Body flushing, hot and cold, he wondered if he should've been listening but he couldn't.

All Max could do was stare as he recognised the powerless position he'd put them in.

Lara's power hadn't touched his body but his mind was trapped.

Rage, absolute fucking rage.

How dare she?

This woman came into his life pretending at friendship and she turns around and does this?

Lara lured him into trusting her and she thought it was okay to toy with him like this?

Magic tricks and spells worked to hold Kyle and Finn but Max knew his body was fine.

It was his mind, it was all in his head.

The noise, the distortion, the inability to distinguish the past from the present.

Weakness, this was a weakness and they were exploiting it.

Did they even know they were doing it?

Max could use that ignorance.

Wading through his PTSD back to the surface, all he'd have to do was wait for the right moment and hope that his limbs obeyed him.

[nikkywrites]

Cruel Kings Make Cruel Worlds

Prompt: "What did you say?" | Fictober Day 21

Three weeks in! I'm struggling. But I kind of really like this piece? Hope you guys do too. Warning that it's very angry (idk, I feel like I should give a heads up).

*****

Kelan's palms slam against the table, causing it to wobble on it's uneven legs. His breath rattles down his throat, shaking steam. "What?" he demands, teeth clacking as he bites his mouth shut over harsher words. The steam swirling in his gut, lukewarm growing hotter growing molten, threatens to boil up his throat and drip from his mouth to set the table aflame. Set everything aflame.

"You heard me," Jule says softly, inching back with her arms wrapped loosely around her stomach. As if the heat burning in his gut is something he can inflict upon her at will, as if she's preparing to hack it up if he does. As if he's going to lunge for her and force his vile greed down her throat.

As if he's scary. A threat.

After everything he's done. As if he's been waiting for the opportunity to hurt someone.

His vocal cords convulse around a laugh he barely manages to keep back, at price of looking insane, judging by the soft concern that beckons her closer though fear is still tall in her body language, in her face, in her eyes. She is afraid of him.

"I," he says, face burning, too hot, heart drumming destruction and destroy and kill in his ears, bringing bitter taste of defeat to sit thick on his tongue, making him choke on a syllable alone. "That's not what I told them to do."

He-- he told them everything. Things he was sworn to silence on.

He betrayed his blood and everything he's ever known and they-- they ignore his attempts to help fix the wrongs his bloodline has wrought on the world. Ignore his plans that build to breaking the foundation his father uses to terrorize the kingdom he stole so they can liberate it back to the boy prince who was supposed to lead it next.

Because despite his eager willingness, his honesty, his proof, his evidence, the shackles he agrees to wear, the guards, the locked bedroom-actually-a-cell door, the lack of any privacy, of course it's all part of some plot to weed out those seeking to kill the False King.

Because what does truth matter, when assumptions paint him as such a beast?

If he leaves, he's dead. His people, his father's court, does not tolerate betrayals and broken oaths.

There is no going back and they've seen proof of others who attempted similar things and they still believe he's been attempting the same? The False Prince, walking into death, baring all of his blood's weakness in some game? Like he's toying with them? Willing to risk losing his heritage (as if his father was ever going to abandon the throne to him) and his life to rid would-be liberators from amassing a rebellion in the midst of another war?

As if he's a fool.

"I know." Her voice is weak.

Because he's a monster, exactly the beast he hails from. No different from the others of his kingdom. A heartless bastard who lives to sow chaos wherever he pleases. A ruthless prince playing with lives because he got bored lounging in the castle his father stole.

As if he hasn't given everything to aid them.

The very thought (and proof, proof. They sent men to die over trusting a turncoat prince's word) foams acid in his gut. Months of building trust and they ignore it. Toss it in a trench because surely they know better than the prince who lived the life they're looking to ruin. Because they cannot trust such a man. Because he was born to a rotten nation and rotten blood so therefore he too must be rotten, disregard the knight who was orphaned and brought over the border and was now trusted.

Because they did not grow surrounded by black lies. They did not lounge on the lap of barbarity, eat the fruits of sin. They did not grow the rancor son of a sadistic man who took a throne that was not his to have and burned the plentiful goodness of the nobility and the people in hungry rage that never dulled. Because surely a child who grows in a noble court of lies and rage and greed must be the same as those who reared him.

Apples come from trees and wrath comes from greed.

Blood makes the man, makes the monster, makes the beast. No freshness comes out of a rotten barrel.

"Get out," he tells her, teeth bared, feeling rabid. A wolf foaming at the mouth, a bear roaring, a lion bellowing. Snapping at anything that dares breathe because he is wild in rage, like his father, like the court he grew up in, like he was taught to become. He's a beast and beasts have no rationality, no wisdom, no thought. There is only hunger and fury and bloodlusting wrath.

That's all he is. An animal.

She does not listen. She lingers, tempting the savage brute before her who only knows to shred apart everything he touches.

"What did I say!" he screams at her, and she flinches like she should because he’s a risk, he’s a killer, he’s untrustworthy with anything that’s not getting tossed to let decay into sliming toxic putrid filth.

Because men are dead. Because they did not listen and that is his fault. Because he knew, somehow, that they were going to disobey and he’d planned everything just right to ensure that only three broken men out of over twenty made it back. Men who are dying, who are dead, who will not live to hear of his father’s corpse or their people's defeat.

"Kelan," she soothes, stepping closer, tempting death, tempting him, tempting-- how long have his eyes been burning with tears trying to spill over?

He swipes away the growing wetness with his knuckles, harsh and quick, like the brute he is.

"It's okay." Her voice is so soft and the fear he'd seen before (smelt, like an animal) is weaker, clouded over with silken concern and satin kindness. Her hands lay on him, one by his elbow and the other in his hand (larger than hers, a paw against a palm, waiting for the moment instinct decides to crush her with all the ease it would an upturned root).

Her fingers skim over his own, the softness calling to the man he's tried so hard to be: the one who is kind, who is not an incubator of explosions, who incurs suffering upon himself to ease the mind of another, who has a heart of warm sunrise instead of a sooty gorge dug in his soul.

"It's not your fault."

And just like that, the heat flickers out. Anger hardens into shame.

He'd acted like him. With all the brutal might that stole a kingdom well enough that it still sits under his rule, years later. That same anger had burned within him.

The men who left would have returned if they had listened.

"I gave them a plan," he says, his insides nothing but heavy heavy heavy. Dragging him down. What does it mean when he's borne all his vulnerability and truth for the world to judge and he is still not trusted? "They would have-- It would have kept them safe."

Her hands move to his hair, ashen black like his father's, ink that stains and predates terrible happenings. She pulls him close, forehead to her collarbone. The position is uncomfortable, splitting on his back, but it is a comfort nonetheless. "I know. They should have listened to you."

He's been nothing but honest. Why was it so hard for them to accept it?

"I've done nothing but give them reason to trust me," he murmurs into her skin, acting as if his shame isn't cracked through with rage, as if he is capable of going from melting to calm so quickly, as if anger is something he drops as fast as he finds it. As if he's not masked the worst of himself so his words may be held with more ease, though the attempt ended fruitless, mask too thin and blood too thick.

He's his father's son in ways he wishes he could rip from his bones. His hands curl in the need still pounding under his skin to shred something apart, with his hands, with his teeth, tearing until it is unrecognizable and fatigue pushes aside the rage.

Jule keeps one palm firm against his head, keeping him close, and runs the fingers of her other hand through the only thing he inherited of his father's besides the too hot, too fast, too big rage.

His next admission comes quieter, shame pooled in his mouth, having filled to the brim like some old cracked chalice, once great and now worthless. "I'm sorry I got angry with you."

"It's alright."

It's not.

If he’d gotten like that with anyone else, they’d have taken his head, seen the burst of temper as proof of his deception.

It would be a far kinder fate than the one that would await him at his once-never home. His father did not believe in mercy for those who have taken action to tear apart what he has built. Cruelty breeds examples breeds complacency among any who would dare disagree with him.

He wears the crown of a king he killed. Lets the people live, if only to enhance the lives of everyone who earned a place in his new court. He’s a mean ruler, born from the shared border of a mad king who wishes to unite the land as one so it sits under his heel. Blind and uncaring to all the ways he nurses a similar madness in his own heart.

Kelan's breath shakes, cold autumn wind. He's trying to drop the anger, telling himself it's poison to hold but holding it is the only thing that kept him alive long enough for him to flee and the thought of not being angry, in any sort of way, is terrifying in that he's been told it's weakness.

So he keeps grasp of the blazing blight, knowing that it will be the designer of his death if he does not let it go.

Death is not fearing to him. His father pushed it in his face as a child and he is familiar with the way it festers in his hands, decaying and decaying and decaying until it is noxious enough that it takes him in the same way he's seen it take others. He is not afraid of his end, having waited for the moment it leaps upon him for all the baneful things he's done.

Healing, however, he is. He is afraid that there will be nothing left, if he scrapes out all the rot within him, if he rips the wavering fondness for where he came from from his head and heart, if he burns the corruption in his blood until it is ash and flushed out and gone.

What if he tears out all the bad and there is nothing left behind?

He is afraid to look in his reflection and find the same creeping greed smoldering behind his eyes. Facing a truth that feels like dying. Cruel kings stain the world when they take decades before they die and the world lives in their cruelty regardless of the spread of their success and the emblem on the flag they live beneath.

Cruelness breeds cruelty from the brave the longer it fails to wither.

Centuries will see the effects of the Crazed King and the False King and all the others who will seek thrones after and until every court has been purged of the voracity plaguing the nobility.

He knows this, though it’s nothing he can speak for the way it will seem that he is encouraging foul wrath in those who are simply seeking peace.

As if angry vile kings will give their crowns before gentle peace.

They will give their crowns to frothing death and none other.

[scriptstructure]

Tips for writing tragedy/stories where the hero loses? Also, somewhat relatedly, for writing stories where the overall theme or question driving the narrative isn't one where you, the author, have an answer so you'd rather just... ask? It's made it difficult for me to know how to end things but I'm still stuck with the fact I don't know the answer to the dilemma my characters are facing. Other than it feels like it has to end badly either for just one character or for all characters involved.

I’m not sure that these things are quite as intrinsically related as you think; you can have a tragedy where the driving question of the story is absolutely answered in the text, and you can have non-tragic stories where the central question is left ambiguous. I don’t think it’s necessary to have a definitive ‘answer’ to the central questions of a story because I don’t think that the function of a story is to provide answers. If anything, it’s to open up the space to consider all options, or to explore things that we are uncertain of, etc.

I think that if stories were only written where the author was setting out a definitive answer to the question the story poses, then there would be a lot more boring books in the world.

In large part, this is because stories deal with many of the same problems that we face in life, and much of life has no easy answers, and while in some cases easy answers can be comforting, that is not what all of literature is there to do, many stories there are no easy answers, or just more questions, sometimes the fact that the question is being asked is enough to drive the story and looking for an answer would be a whole ‘nother deal entirely.

The other other thing, is that you don’t need to have solid answers to start writing. It’s enough to ask. You don’t have to understand the meaning of your own work perfectly before you start on it, you’ll likely develop an understanding of what you’re doing as you do it, and often there will be things that you won’t see in your own work until much later, when you re-read it with new life experiences, or when someone else points things out to you that you hadn’t realised you put there.

Uncertainty and ambiguity aren’t inherently tragic, they’re just a part of life. Difficult to deal with, a lot of times sure, but also funny, interesting, puzzling, entertaining, there’s no tragedy in not being absolutely certain.

So, writing tragedies is pretty difficult, you’ve got the fact that it’s going to be a downer in some way at the end, along with that you’ve got to carry a whole story until that ending, and make it compelling enough that people won’t sit back after reading it and go ‘wow if I wanted to feel that depressed I’d just watch the six-o-clock news’. It’s a challenge, but it’s doable, and when done well it can make for a wrenching, fascinating story.

It’s important to consider why the tragedy occurs, there are many themes that can drive a tragic plot, such as corruption as in Hamlet, personal evil as with Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, natural entropy as in The Lord of the Rings, and as you figure out why the tragedy occurs, it will influence and be influenced by the nature of the world of the story.

Another vital element is character agency, this is the sense that the choices characters make and the actions they take in the story have real impact on the course of the plot, whether for good or for ill. Character agency is important in making the story feel less like ‘a lot of stuff just happens to this person’ and more like ‘this is the story of this person’s role in these events’.

Hamlet is an example that probably most people have read and studied at some point, the tragedy of the story is the decay of Denmark’s royal family, and Hamlet’s agency shows in the play as he makes many decisions that have consequences that change the flow of the story. You’ve probably done this part in school, where we learn that tragic heroes have what is called a ‘fatal flaw’ which means that they will be doomed to tragedy. Hamlet’s is often called his indecision, his unwillingness to kill his uncle. 

In this set-up, the narrative see-saws back and forth as Hamlet wrestles with this decision, and it exposes ‘something rotten in the state of Denmark’ which brings the story down to the final moment where the slate has to be wiped clean and a new player steps in to take over. All the Danish royals are dead, and Fortinbras steps in to do a little speech about how there’s a bright future ahead now that he’s in charge.

So in Hamlet, the fuel of the tragedy is corruption of the institution of the monarchy, and Hamlet’s agency is the decisions that he makes during the course of the play (when he refrains from killing his uncle, when he accidentally kills Polonius, when he drives Ophelia mad, etc). There are very few parts of the story which aren’t directly linked to the choices that Hamlet makes, even if he makes bad decisions, is careless, cruel, or shortsighted, he has immense influence over his own story.

In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, there is a similar thing happening, but instead of the corruption of a system of government, it is the nuclear family. Also, the story is narrated by the villain, and we know from the beginning that he will be dead very soon after the end of the story. The real tragedy is the evil he does along the way, most notably to the title character Lolita, the step-daughter he abuses and who eventually dies. The tragedy here is the gleeful destruction of innocence by a man driven by his own grotesque desires.

But both of these are very people-focussed tragedies. In each of these cases, these tragedies occur even though there are multiple opportunities for something to have been done differently and so change the outcome. The tragedy is in the missed opportunity, or in the decision to do the wrong thing.

The tragic narrative of The Lord of the Rings and the accompanying texts, most notably The Silmarillion is one which stems out of a basic reality of the world of the story. The wold was created imperfect, and is subject to entropic change over time. Even though there is a heroic narrative taking place where many characters will do their best, do the right thing, work for good, stick together, and they will manage to make a significant difference in the course of the story, there are massive, historical underlying forces which mean that the world can never go back or regain the former glory and goodness.

The scourge of Sauron is defeated, but the age of Elves ends, the ring is destroyed, but Frodo never recovers from his injuries, Saruman is defeated, but the Shire is never going to be the same as before the battle. In many ways, The Lord of the Rings is about dealing with the fallout of tragedy, informed by Tolkien’s experiences during and after World War 1, (HERE is an article that touches on that, written by his grandson Simon Tolkien). But it also deals with the premise of a flawed universe.

In the creation myth of Middle-earth, the world is sung into being, but as it forms a ‘discordant note’ enters the song, and the ripples of that fan out through the history of the world, it is linked directly to Morgoth, whose main drive is to corrupt elements of creation and sow discord, and later Sauron, Morgoth’s servant. This represents a sense that there is a force for decay built into the world of the story, and that if it weren’t for the heroes who stand up to face it, then it would be able to spread corruption and decay unchecked. The nature of an entropic universe is to fall into chaos, but that chaos can be mitigated, the form it takes altered.

The tragedy is that all things must end eventually, but the agency of the characters is that they can make a stand and say ‘not today’. They win, but at great cost, they return home and see how it is marked by what has occurred.

So some things to keep in mind when you’re writing a tragedy:

Figure out what kind of tragedy it is, what is the cause of the tragedy?

Ensure that your characters have agency, they must be able to take an active role in the events of the story.

Work out the scale of the tragedy, is this a personal, intimate story, or is it a metaphysical story? (could be both, most likely somewhere in the middle)

It could help to think of what the ‘happy’ version of the story might be, and that can help you visualise the tragedy as ‘what went wrong’--what made Hamlet go from a teen comedy about a couple of bros at college into the gorefest it ends up being?

I hope that helps, this is a pretty broad question though, so if I’ve missed the mark here, please do send a more specific question.

[dangandidlyronpaimgines]

About the BHNA crossover with the v3 boys, would it be ok for me to request the same, but with the V3 girls? I'm so into BNHA, and DR.

KaedeAkamatsu

Her quirk is that when she sings her voice has a hypnotic quality

(Kinda like a siren)

She found this out rather early in her life since when she plays the piano she can’t help but feel the need to sing along

Unfortunately she has to control the urge to sing because if she did she could accidentally make someone do something that she didn’t mean them to do

It’s also very hard for her to sing without playing or hearing the piano

So she tends to have a playlist on her phone and headphones on her at all times in case she needs to sing

AngieYonaga

She was born with pure white wings on her back

Thus the people of her island claim her to be an angel sent to earth by Atua himself

She can easily fly herself with the wings but carrying someone else or something heavy will be rather difficult for her

However because her bones are rather light and hollow she has to be extra careful with doing things

She doesn’t want to accidentally break anything

(On the plus size she is rather easy to pick up)

HimekoYumeno

She can actually do magic

Kinda..

She needs to repeat the thing she wants to happen three times

Clap her hands and then strike a pose

The thing should happen however currently she can only do very little things

Like make a fork feed her or have her toothbrush brush her teeth by itself

And this is because it drains her of her energy really quickly

MuiIruma

She can unconciously grow or shrink her body

What happens depends on her emotions

If she is feeling high and mighty or happy she grows

However as soon as someone yells at her she gets scared and shrinks

She has to do her best to control her powers when she gets yelled at because she does not know how small she can get

(That doesn’t stop Ouma from trying to find out though… which causes quite a bit of chaos)

KirumiTougi

If she takes an order someone gives her, her body gets a temporarily boost

She can move faster, is stronger and takes less damage than normal

However this ability only lasts if she her actions are what is ordered

If she has to do something that is not ordered than she has to do it normally

Because of this she makes sure her orders are as detailed as possible

Vague orders can cause her powers to give out

MakiHarukawa

She has the ability of intangibility

Which means she can go through anything she wishes

And yes that includes other people

The only problem is staying tangible

One sure way of reading her cold mask is looking to see if any part of her is intangible

Intense emotions makes it harder for her to stay tangible after all

TenkoChabashira

If she is fighting against a male she will get stronger

Yes this quirk is a bit weird but specific

But the more testosterone her body detects in the air

The more energy her body produces and the stronger her skin gets

Of course she regularly trains

In case she has to fight a female villain one day, she can’t afford to rely on her power

TsumigiShirogane

She can move fast like really fast.. but only with her hands

And only if her hands repeat a certain pattern or sequence

Which makes it so easy for her to sow costumes!

But she has to be careful not to accidentally hurt herself while doing this

And pay attention to what she is doing

(Even if watching the same repetitive action at super speed is really hard and boring)