#mostly happy ending anyway

[ye-olde-trojan-horse]

ATLAS

That sounds so fun and cool and mythological I must know everything!!

I wish it was mythological but alas, it is not - I do hope it’s (mostly) fun though!

Basically this fic is a series of completely seperate chapters based on the songs / lyrics from the album Atlas: Enneagram by Sleeping at Last.

9 songs, 9 unrelated chapters, 9 different povs.

Each chapter will be a short, character depth study told in a fictional way - from the pov of a person who (I think) fits that personality type.

This snippet is from chapter four, which is Pandora’s.

[heymacy]

IAN GALLAGHER + his journey with bipolar disorder

╰┈➤ “At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of." - Carrie Fisher

[reineydraws]

i have this fic series i'm still working on where mihawk sort of becomes rayleigh's kid and spends ages 11-17ish on the oro jackson.

shanks and buggy imprint on him (bugs considers him a sort of older brother figure/sparring inspiration and shanks has a crush that eventually turns into full-blown love) and this is how i imagine they're like on the day mihawk sets off on his own haha.

[gogglecannon]

[actual-changeling]

"I love you."

Crowley stops dead in his tracks, his hand wrapped around the door knob with white, trembling knuckles, and closes his eyes.

There were nights, many nights, way more than there ever should have been, during which he traced the constellations in the night sky and imagined what it would be like to hear those words from his mouth. Whether he would say them softly, wrapping each one in gentleness, reverence, or hurried, afraid of who else might hear, terrified that this will be the last words ever spoken between them. If he was particularly drunk and particularly lonely, chasing after the feeling of Aziraphale's brushing over his wrist as they walked by each other in the comfortable mess of the bookshop, he imagined them as a slow drag of breath right next to his hear, a whisper not even God would be able to hear; a promise of worship.

In all of the fantasies, and that is what they were, nothing more than shameful imaginations Aziraphale could never know about, he said it back. Whispered it, screamed it, forced it out between sobs or kisses or panting breaths.

When Crowley opens his eyes again, uncried tears are clinging to his lashes.

Outside, the first splatters of rain are painting the sidewalk black and people hurry by, trying to escape the storm as the sky breaks in two. Within seconds, the steady drum of water against the window is louder than the noise of the traffic, louder than his heart's attempts to beat out of his ribcage and bare itself to him.

He cannot look at him.

It is his first thought and the only one that matters now, he cannot look at him or he will shatter like hot glass dropped in the snow, flying apart into thousands of tiny shards. Crowley tries to rip the image of violet eyes and his perfect fucking cupids bow out of his mind without success (he knows what it tastes like now, remembers tracing it with the tip of his tongue and opening his mouth with a hunger he has never felt before).

Swallowing his own, he listens to the familiar rhythm of Aziraphale's breath, undisturbed and distinctly human in a way that makes them too human to be real, his mouth opening and closing around unshaped replies.

The sidewalk is empty save for a handful of people diving for cover in the pub across the street, and for one precious, fragile moment, the world narrows down to an angel and a demon who watched the first storm rain down on Eden, a white wing held steadily above his head to keep him dry.

Crowley never asked why, and over the centuries, the question got lost in all the others piling up every time they met. He knows why, though, without needing to hear it from him, and it is not because Aziraphale already loved him back then or saw a pitiful creature in need of protection. The answer is so much simpler - he was being thoughtlessly kind because that is who he is.

He is being thoughtlessly kind now, too.

The tension drains from his knuckles and he presses his palm to the cold metal, settling back into a body that now recalls the taste of those three words in the air and yearns for nothing more than to taste them straight from his mouth.

Crowley pushes the door open and steps onto the sidewalk, his clothes clinging to his sharp angles as the rain drenches him completely within seconds, and then he walks home without a single look or word back.

[nintendont2502]

can't stop thinking about an alternate, narnia-style ending to homestuck where they can stay on earth c for as long as they want, but they always have the option to go home

sure, living on a planet you made and ruling as immortal gods forever sounds cool at first, but eventually it's going to get... stagnant, yk? what is there for you to do now? you won. your character arc is over. this is your happily ever after, in a world that reveres you as gods even though you're nothing more than a bunch of traumatised teenagers.

what if you could go back? go back to the day you were meant to play, go back to being 13 and powerless and a kid again, but with all the knowledge that you gained over the years - eventually, it'll fade, but you'll always have that experience. you'll always feel like somehow, somewhere, you were a hero once. John learning to appreciate his dad and his friends and his 'boring' life, and having a chance to reflect on himself. Rose realising that her Mom *does* care about her, just as much as Roxy does - just as much as Rose cares about both of them, enough to try and bridge that gap. Dave knowing that his Bro *isn't* some untouchable, flawless hero, knowing that Dave can stand on his own two feet and take care of himself and his friends even if he doesn't do it how his Bro would. Jade reunited with her best friend, armed with the knowledge that she *will* get out of here, that she *will* see the world and see her friends and loved ones and *live*. Everywhere they look, they see faint memories of people they think they once knew and loved and forgot - in the faces of family, old photos and preserved corpses, terrible movies and buckets and playing cards and the stars in the sky.

maybe they don't go at first. maybe eternity seems easy to them, an entire life left unlived laying in front of them, but once they've done all they can, lived as much as eternity will allow and more, once the only thing left to do is go back - I think they all would. maybe not all at the same time, but I think eventually, all four of them would choose to go home

because they're. yk. they're h. the. they're h. ho. they're homes-

[mmhue]

something something chaining a beast then being surprised it attacks something something

[in-study-hell]

TFone doodles that I need out of my system immediately. Airachnid was so cool she stole the show, coolest copter ever… I tried to remember how exactly she looked but there ain’t much refs of it online yet ToT

[prince-liest]

Current mission: Make myself SAD!!

[anti-fairy-world]

You know, while we don't think Stuck In My Head/Mind The Gap were bad episodes or anything, we kinda wish they'd been cut in favor of making that time the part one to The Battle of Big Wand, with the actually episode being part two. Make it a whole big forty to forty-five special instead of trying to fit it with a twenty-two to twenty-three minute run time

We actually like everything they were trying to do with the special, but we just wish they had more time to flesh things out and play around with the jokes between the plot moments. The writers probably didn't really have much of a choice with the time they were given to work with and had to prioritize where screen time was used, and honestly they did what they could, but sometimes it felt like 'and now this is happening so we can get moving with the plot'

[skitskatdacat63]

For @sansebastinae and @boisinnot, my fellow saint seb truthers :)

+ the usual

Yayyyy finished a drawing! Haha only took me...2 weeks. I kept going back and forth on whether I could finish it tonight, and I really wasn't going to. But then I looked at the unfinished version on a different screen and was like oh? Not too bad actually?? So I finished it :) First of all, ofc, here is the process. Kinda weird seeing it for smth like this, it makes me feel like I'm the painter in rennaisance au, not Mark dhjfkf

Ah I was gonna draw a silly renaissance au comic to accompany this(read: lighten the mood), but it's 5 am and I've still not really drafted it well, so! I'd like to finish it at some point bcs I wanna draw more chibi comics, but when I finish smth, I can't help but immediately want to post it, so part 2 will have to wait. I'll show you the outline though so you can at least imagine 😭

^ So many renaissance and beyond paintings of Saint Sebastian are always the most horny thing ever. Like pre/early rennaisance, yeah he was naked and all that, but they were pretty chaste, and uhhhhh suffering?? Well the newer paintings are suffering, but in a different way, if you know what I mean.

So I feel like Mark's the type to be overly pedantic about it, and refuses to make borderline porn of a saint, I mean, god forbid, Seb!!! But then he just. Does anyways. Because he can't control his lust for Seb even when drawing him half dead. I just imagine him holding the paintbrush in a death grip like "must not be horny. Must not draw him sexy. Must make him chaste." And then he ends up with the one seen above. Seb is all smug about it. "Wow you'd wanna fuck me even while I'm all bloody and dying? 🥺"

Mark: "oh I'll make you bloody, alright."

But god so funny to imagine Seb doing all these different slutty poses, like arching his back as much as possible, the cloth nearly falling off at all times, etc etc. And Mark finally lands on this pose bcs he hopes the suffering will outweigh the horny. It doesn't. Also Seb is genuinely serious once he actually gets into the pose, focus mode on. And honestly that's even worse for Mark, bcs it's so much more arousing to see Seb in his element, focused. Tbf I think Seb could be drinking water, and Mark would still find some way to sexualize it. Don't look at his sketches!! They're just filled with Seb doing all kinds of random activities.

Also! Here is the painting I referenced this off of, must give credit where credit is due ofc

The Dying St. Sebastian by François Fabre

Also this isn't really relevant in the context of this drawing specifically. But I looked thru a bunch of Saint Sebastian paintings while trying to find one I could reference, and I came across this middle ages one that actually looks so much like boy king seb 😭 I guess it really is meant to be!

St Sebastian between St Roch and St Peter by Pietro Perugino

Lmao but do you see the difference between early rennaisance and later work???

[kristybluebird]

20 years later RGU

[total-drama-brainrot]

I'll be honest all I can think of is P!Noah's family react to his tv persona.

Like, they know the littlest of their family is a little unhinged but they know he's not bloodthirsty so they're just a wee bit confused.

(And since Noah has, like, 8 sisters I just like to imagine the rest of their giant family is COMPLETELY normal. Like, they have their own individual quirks like anyone else but they're just normal people.)

If you can't tell one of my favorite dynamics is gremlin x just some guy but in this au it's multiple "just some guy“s and it's platonic.

And they've never actively troed to real P!Noah in either btw. They're perfectly content with their little adrenaline junkie baby brother.

Though it does make me wonder how they react in the P!Noah getting stabbed ask

No, see, this is a part of the AU that I actually have some thoughts for.

P!Noah's whole schtick wouldn't be achievable without the showrunners being aware that he's not really gonna do anything to permanently harm the other competitors- it'd be a PR nightmare to justify having an actual loose canon on the show risking the safety of the other teens. So, at the very least, the producers would know that a lot of his threats of violence or otherwise concerning behaviour are an act. (Or an exaggeration of his wilder tendancies.)

Thankfully, canon has its' own subtle little explanation for keeping someone so 'dangerous' around - Izzy's audition tape(s). In those, Izzy states that she'll do her best to "not be boring", which is probably the line that cemented her inclusion in the show. She's kept around as a conflict starter and an audience engagement device, since her antics are so entertaining to watch.

In a similar vein, in p!Noah's audition tape he explains that he's only auditioning for the show out of boredom, and he mostly sees the whole experience as a relatively quick cash grab - after all, he's wicked smart and plenty talented; it'd be child's play to outperform the other contestants (keep in mind, pretty much all of the OG cast were under the impression that Total Drama was going to be something more akin to a talent-based competition at an island resort). He explains that he's not really interested in the show itself, but it could be fun to spend his summer somewhere new where people don't know him or his eccentricities.

At this point in time, Noah's already got his gameplan planned and set; he's already presenting himself as the stoic and somewhat egotistical bookworm, which honestly isn't too far from his actual personality. Save for his psychotic tendancies, that is. Of course, Noah really is smart - smart enough to know that if he came in guns blazing to an audition tape for what is at it's core a social game, he probably wouldn't be picked.

And then the video is interrupted by one of his siblings, who points out that Noah's idea of "fun" generally consists of tormenting the people around him, providing examples of his more daring pranks from a seemingly endless list.

Then more of his siblings join in, all the while Noah stares towards the camera with a smug smile, which only grows wider - unnaturally wide, with hints of unusually sharp teeth poking from stretched-thin lips - as they share transgression after transgression. The tape ends without elaboration, nothing but a still frame of Noah's sinister smirk.

These pranks themself start off pretty tame sounding, like rigging water balloons full of vinegar above doorsteps. They quickly devolve into Noah cutting the breaks on his teacher's car after recieving an unfair grade, mowing down his classmates on a renegade bumper cart during a school trip to a theme park, and things along those lines. Chris, and more importantly the producers, feel a sense of sadistic kinship with the little psycho after hearing about his dangerous endeavours, and cast him on the spot.

So he's chosen to compete for a similar reason as Izzy; to wreak havoc in an entertaining way, and hopefully to kickstart drama.

His family are fully aware of this, though they don't fully anticipate the gleeful sort of vigour Noah has towards tormenting his castmates whilst remaining undetected... by the castmates. They do, however, expect Noah's sly grins and menacing smirks he throws towards the cameras before each successful prank he pulls off with Izzy. And the blank, uncannily empty stares he fixes towards the audience from the background of challenge footage - as if Noah himself can see through the lens into their souls.

After all, they've dealt with him for his whole life. They know his tricks, they've lived his tricks. The whole family has become accustomed to their baby brother who doesn't fully understand concepts like morality and empathy and, as such, can be a little silly sometimes. And they all know just how committed Noah can be to things he finds fun and interesting.

Their first bout of genuine surprise is during one of his later confessionals, when Noah gets too into the persona he's cultivated and starts portraying himself as violent and out for blood.

In Noah's head, he's just upping the ante of his metasocial game. For his family? They know he isn't nearly as violent as he's portraying himself as.

Sure, he's a little impulsive and thrill-seeking, but he's never had a fascination with blood or sharp objects of whatever else he tries to claim in the confessional. When Noah gets home from his stint on Island his siblings are lining up to berate him for his act - doesn't he realise how dangerous portraying himself as an unstable lunatic for the world to see is?

He justifies that anyone who believed his act is an idiot. It's reality TV - anyone with half a brain knows that things are exaggerated for entertainment purposes. He was just giving the editors something good to work with.

Noah is promptly dogpiled by eight irate older siblings.

(I'm also a big fan of "gremlin & just some guy", in this case it's gremlin & many exasperated some guys who aren't afraid of the gremlin. The rest of his family are perfectly normal people who just so happen to know how to deal with somewhat morally bereft hijinks and tomfoolery thanks to their youngest member. P!Noah has an incredibly healthy home life, he's just like that by design.)

As for the stabbing ask; I'm not sure if I want that little scenario to be "canon" to this AU, (and if it is, it'll be re-written with things like context in mind, as opposed to the shitty sleep-deprived drabble I wrote way back when) but if any of his family witnessed Noah being stabbed on international TV the whole brood would be storming the network's headquaters and/or chasing down the Jumbo Jet to get to him. He's The Baby™, you can't stab The Baby™. (Though, inwardly, they'd all agree that it was karma in action. Noah was tempting fate by playing around with knifes for so long, it was only a matter of time before someone got stabbed.)

[cygniavenue]

been stewing on this one for a while but i said i was gonna post more of my headcanons so here's a little bittersweet tidbit;

childhood was a really rough time for Diomedes and Sthenelus (and the other younger Epigoni as well) full of a lot of grief and sorrow and confusion, and the weight of your father's legacy crushing shoulders too young to uphold it or begin to understand it. Diomedes, for the most part, doesn't even remember Tydeus. All he really knows is the idealized version of him Athena and others hold him to. Sthenelus has fleeting memories of Capaneus but refuses to remember - he only resents. Their childhood was spent being trained up to be weapons.

But even so, I do think there were moments where they got to just be kids. They built their own little fort of escape somewhere they knew would remain hidden. It took weeks of stacking rocks with what little free time they had until it was perfect, and it was theirs, and it was somewhere where they didn't have to be wise beyond their years.

They eventually forgot about it as they got older. They sacked Thebes, Diomedes restored Oeneus to the throne, and then the Trojan War happened, and all the things in between being on the battlefield - getting married, becoming kings, Sthenelus even had children of his own. The fort lay forgotten and untouched, a reservoir of good memories they'd both buried a long time ago.

And then, when they're fleeing Argos, they find it again, reclaimed by the vines and the leaves. All their old stuff is in there still, little wooden swords and shields, animal and soldier figurines, drawings they etched into the rocks. It's the only place they ever had that wasn't overrun by sorrow, where they weren't forced to fill the shoes of men they don't (or refuse to) remember.

But there's just no time left. They have to leave it knowing they'll never see it again. All they can do is hope they can hold onto a fragment of the tranquility their younger selves buried there.

[eriexplosion]

Turning over thoughts about TBB and one of the reasons I'm so against it having a tragic ending (and to a lesser extent, Tech actually being dead) is that the batch hasn't had much agency in what's happened to them up until now. The Empire has been a thing they're reacting to, only coming into conflict directly when they're pretty much dragged into it. The first time they really directly take a stand under their own power is the season 2 finale... at which point they immediately lose Tech. If he stays dead (which I've made clear by now I don't think he will, but let's see the hypothetical through) then you already have an issue where you've positioned your protagonists being extremely passive and letting things just kind of happen to them as the thing that got them what they wanted (Pabu, a potential exit point for the mercenary grind) and taking active action as a horrible decision (kills Tech, gets Omega captured, doesn't do anything to save Crosshair) which is... a questionable plot choice.

If the batch had been acting against the Empire directly the whole time I think maybe a tragic ending where they win a final victory at the expense of their lives could work. Might not like it, personally, but it could work. Because then it's a result of a build up of choices through the story and resistance isn't inherently painted as a futile endeavor. But them having avoided the Empire, been on the very edge of getting safety, and otherwise having passivity work out pretty well... meshes very badly with having their more active choices all result in The Horrors getting immediately worse. This also counts for Crosshair - sure he was already going through The Horrors but finally taking direct action against the Empire certainly made them WORSE and then his active attempt to protect the batch led to the failed rescue attempt.

If we really did end tragically in this final season then literally every attempt to take any control over the situation made it MUCH worse and then everyone died. It completely puts the narrative message into the realm of "Don't fight the evil Empire just gtfo while you can" which I mean. Some media does have that defeatist kind of messaging but children's media generally does not. The storyline falls apart if the ending is completely tragic, and it would already be struggling if Tech was in fact killed off for real.

[3rdsday]

This is a request for a c! Tommy rant

PLEASE YOUR PERSPECTIVE IS SO INTRIGUING I NEED MORE

thank you:))

Okay I've sat on this for a few days because I didn't feel like I was coherent enough to answer it but I think I'm ready now. This is probably still not super coherent but here we go:

The two rules Tommy was given when he joined the server were “no griefing” and “no stealing”.

Obviously these rules stopped being enforced pretty quickly, but it’s worth noting that Tommy immediately and blatantly disregarded and broke these rules. And I think that Tommy as a character gets punished for this throughout the rest of the story, in a sort of karmic retribution gone overboard way.

Tommy took things from others and destroyed their things, so he is not allowed to keep anything he cares about ever again.

Obviously the discs are the biggest example of this, with how many times they changed hands and were fought over and were used to taunt Tommy. But it goes so much further than that.

L’manberg gets destroyed. He gets exiled by Schlatt. Henry gets killed. L’manberg gets destroyed again. Wilbur’s dead. He gets exiled by Tubbo.

Every day in exile, Dream destroys everything Tommy has. It’s not subtle. There he is, isolated from everyone, no friends, no items, nothing. And he breaks in exile, for many reasons, but the fact that everything, everything has been taken from him, and continues to be taken from him, is a big part of that.

He leaves exile and teams up with Techno, but ultimately decides that L’manberg (Tubbo) is more important to him.

The second Tommy chooses L’manberg, he’s not allowed to have it anymore.

And that’s the thing, right? Everything Tommy loses, it’s not about what those things mean to other people, it’s about the fact that Tommy cared about them. Sure, Techno had his motivations for destroying L’manberg, but Dream? The one pulling the strings? L’manberg needed to be gone because it was what Tommy cared about.

Which was kinda Dream’s whole deal right? If he controls what people care about, he controls the server. If he has Tommy’s discs, he should be able to control Tommy… right?

Except, for as much as the discs matter to Tommy, they are far from the only thing he cares about. He gives them up willingly for L’manberg’s independence. He gives them up a second time when he realizes he’s gone too far, putting them above Tubbo and fighting his best friend. Dream can’t use the discs to control Tommy because Tommy always has other things to care about, other things that would matter to him even if the discs were gone.

So what does Dream have to do?

Take everything else away.

What started with exile comes to a head during the final disc confrontation, with Dream once again making Tommy give up all his possessions the way he’d been conditioned to do. L’manberg is already gone, Dream dealt with that before, so all that’s left is Tubbo.

But things don’t go to Dream’s plan, Tommy convinced the rest of the server to come to his aid, and Dream was defeated.

(Don’t even TALK to me about the disc confrontation being staged by Dream, I don’t want to HEAR IT. It’s not canon to me and if you think I’m wrong. No I’m not <3)

Here’s the thing, though. When Dream was about to be killed a third time, Tommy is stopped by the chance that Dream could revive Wilbur.

Tommy has lost so much, over and over, and the chance to get his brother back is too much for him to go through with killing Dream.

Maybe Dream lost the confrontation, but he still found a way to use Tommy’s attachments against him.

So Dream is put in prison, Tommy has his discs back and, more importantly, Tubbo back. Maybe it’s not everything he once had, but it’s a lot more than he once did.

And then he goes to visit Dream. And Dream kills him.

Limbo is different for every character, but it’s generally supposed to be an experience that’s torturous. And all it takes for Limbo to be the worst thing Tommy has ever experienced is… nothing.

His Limbo is empty.

For all that he lost during exile, during the lowest point of his life… he’s left with even less than death.

All that’s there is the voice of a brother he couldn’t give up attachment to, who is no longer the brother he knew and loved. Who taunts and torments him during his time in that empty void. Wilbur might be there, but Tommy doesn’t even have his brother in Limbo. Not really.

And it kills me because Tommy is, or rather was, such an optimistic character. Not so much in the sense that he had a constant positive outlook, because clearly that wasn’t the case much of the time. But he could have his home destroyed and his friends turned against him and his possessions taken and his pets killed over and over and over and over again, and still find a way to keep going. Still find things to care about.

It generally took very little to make Tommy happy. He loved dirt huts and cobblestone towers and spiders and things that meant nothing to anyone else, that anyone else would treat with neutrality if not negativity.

But in Limbo there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Everything he had, gone.

Even his life was taken from him.

And in the aftermath, after his revival, he was never the same. He didn’t belong among the living, another thing that was taken from him. Wilbur was revived, but Wilbur was so different from the brother Tommy knew. Even then, Wilbur left him in the end.

I hate the finale for a lot of reasons, so I’m not going to go into it much. But the story ends with Tommy dead, again. Is he in Limbo again? Who knows. But Tommy was never allowed to keep anything, and the ending solidified this as true.

I started this by saying that Tommy was punished for breaking the rules of the server. And I think it’s interesting to read the story that way, where Tommy’s relatively small crimes end up resulting in him losing everything again and again and never breaking free of it. This is a story where gods and higher beings exist and are willing to interfere with the lives of the characters, so I don’t think it’s too far fetched to see this as a warped degree of karma. But I also think that what Tommy is punished for, perhaps more than the rule breaking, is the fact that he cares so much. He found joy and love in everything, so he was left with nothing. Because the Dream SMP is a cruel world controlled by a cruel man who became obsessed with Tommy. And Tommy paid the price, but he also never stopped caring for the things that mattered to him. He could be broken but not defeated, not as long as there was more for him to love.

Unfortunately, the story demanded his defeat, one way or another.

And that’s why his Limbo is empty.