#of course it has a hopeful ending I'm too weak for scarian

[anxiouspotionofgloom]

'Third life timeloop but like evil and not third life' excuse me you can't just drop that title and expect me not to ask for more details, that is my whole genre! Also, if I'm allowed to send more than one WIP title... 'Finding yourself a boyfriend in the middle of the apocalypse step1' too, please! <3

ksksksksksk yeah ok it was to be expected lol (I will make a separate post for the second part because it's quite a change of the vibes ahahah)

Basically a while ago, I thought about timeloops. What's exactly happening with them? Well, in most stories, a timeloop starts because the protagonist has something to accomplish, a goal to meet. You need to confess your love, need to save your doomed friend, even save the whole world sometimes. So you loop and loop, trying again and again to meet this nebulous goal, and once you've gotten to it, woohoo congrats! The loop is broken (and you will never be the same again, probably.)

But what about a timeloop that's too late? A timeloop where the body's already cold? The world already ended?

And so Grian wakes up the morning after Third Life ended, blood and sand stuck underneath his fingernails. He doesn't know it yet, but he'll be doing it for quite some time.

It would be a fun exploration about how deep you can spiral when literally nobody knows you're spiralling because to them it's only been a day, while it could be weeks to you. Even months. How far can you go when the only limit is yourself and the 24 hours that keeps repeating again and again?

There would also be the concept of grief that isn't: Scar is here, on Hermitcraft, warm and alive. And yet he's dead. The Scar in front of you is a stranger, a lookalike of the one you left behind in what you feel was forever ago, but was, in fact, yesterday. This Scar doesn't know how much the desert sun can burn.

Fun times for everyone!! But then, dozens of loops later, standing still in the darkness of his own base, I think Grian will hear a knock at his door. He will open it with bloodstained nails he's given up on cleaning about 10 loops ago, and come face to face with Scar, looking just as surprised as him as to why he's standing here, on the other side of the doorway. Flowers spill from his hands - lilacs and poppies, the same colours of a bruise that refuses to heal - and so do his words, passing through a half a frown. "I just had a feeling."

And all that Grian can taste are iron and ashes in his mouth.