stubbornjota

[stubbornjota]

Just finished Legends: Darkstalker for the second time and i need to ramble a little bit

Legends: Darkstalker spoilers ahead.

I don't know if i'm making it up but somewhere i heard that books need to be read at least twice for you to grasp their meaning and hot damn that is true, it felt so more meaningful now.

The first time i read Darkstalker i was in a hurry to finish it so i could go on and read arc 3 catching up to everyone, during the entire book i felt this feeling that i was just waiting for the inevitable doom, the point where everything was gonna go wrong leading to Darkstalker imprisonment because i knew it was going to end up like that (read all arc 2 before starting the Legends), then when it came and i finished the book all i could feel was a hole on my chest and this familiar sad feeling, that i just assigned to the fact i was never going to see Indigo and Fathom again so i spent some days feeling bad and soon enough forgot about it.

Then some days ago i decided to pick it up again just to see how Fathigo was built and my goodness all the feelings came back hitting me with a bat, without the rush to see what happens next it was like i could keep a better track of the events and understand how things ended up so terribly wrong.

At first i thought the reason i felt that sad feeling was because i was mourning how bad Arctic and Foeslayer turned out, their history is like Romeo and Juliet with dragons ffs (i still haven't read the winglets) and Arctic just seemed so bright when he met her that seeing what they had turned into was deeply saddening. I kept reading and now i think i finally figured it out why this book in specific made me feel so hollow and incomplete even when most of the characters have a mostly happy ending.

Right by the beginning of the book the concept of how the events unveil is told to us, Clearsight can see every possible future and wants to steer fate to the brightest one, where they are happy and safe, the book shows how things can end in a beautiful, happy way, how at some point it was totally possible maybe even the most likely future was where Darkstalker never trailled the dark paths and the trio of friends would be happy together, then things start to go wrong, and this bright future i hoped for knowing it couldn't be real starts crumbling page after page right in front of my eyes and jeez does that hurt the heart being given a taste of how it could have been and being hit in the face with how turned out, the ending feels bitterweet to me because out of the possible endings their story could have gone this was a sad one, it was not a terrible outcome things could have been much much worse but it wasn't a happy one either, right Fathom and Indigo lived a happy life, Clearsight found love again and Whiteout also lived a happy life but it feels more like a consolation prize than anything, Fathom will never see Clearsight again, Clearsight will never see Fathom or her parents again, Whiteout lost her entire family and her home, after believing in a good ending the one the book gave me just left me feeling defeated, the empty feeling in my chest was because there was a good ending for them, Clearsight fought for it with all she had but still failed, their story is written, these dragons are long dead and the end is a tragic result for so many possibilities.

Darkstalker is a tragic masterpiece and i am so glad i read it again, it's so well written and evokes so many emotions, in my opinion is the best book in all of the wof saga (i was not a fan of multi protagonist books mind you). I just needed to get it off my chest i guess

[stubbornjota]

Winter can't catcha break lol

hey buckaroos looks like my winterwatcher from a few days ago did some numbers

thank yall so much! im happy ppl liked it

its all kinda part of a wof au ive been workshopping, heres a lil doodle too with some context:

in this AU theres a bunch of things different cuz of butterfly effect stuff but this particular doodle is on Darkstalker and Peacemaker

in this au Darkstalker gets his shit rocked and dies

8 years later Moon and Winter have their firstborn, Peacemaker, who looks a disturbing amount like Darkstalker

this is because Peacemaker was born with the same soul housing Darkstalker/hes one of Peacemaker's past lives

normally the personalities housed in souls will never interact with the current living inheritor/host, but Darkstalker's ambition and malice is so great that hes leaking his memories to Peacemaker as dreams and trying to take over

now why was poor peacemaker saddled with darkstalker's soul?

because dragon god was like "ok darkstalker you were evil and terrible and so terrible i really should just destroy your soul but i'll give you one more chance. but if you fuck up this one too im smiting you"