#and this hits that tragedy so hard

[river-of-wine]

A long way from home

[destinywillowleaf]

one of a kind living in a world gone plastic

baby you're so classic

@most-tragic-character-tournament

(all my thoughts in the tags)

[ash-and-starlight]

.

[icanmakewords]

Seeing people hate on Alicent for being “uninteresting” while the basis of her story is one I can trace back to so many women in my family as recent as my grandmother and even my mother to a degree is actually insane to see

[p2ii]

"all is hushed for the song of Orpheus..." my own take on udad!Orpheus, partially inspired by @/reegis's design (making him a sad goth boy is such a concept <3) and these images of ts/jl:

[everypanelofizuku]

Chapter 83 - Loss

[raayllum]

one of my favourite aspect of foil dynamics is when you have a pair of (although not always) foils who switch narrative positions. for examples i’ll use frankenstein and the creature and burr and hamilton from hamiltion bc hamilton is good from a literary standpoint good god.

frankenstein starts off in creating/playing god in order to gain recognition and glory, but also as he increasingly isolates himself for his cause. the creature awakes in a world where he’s rejected by his creator & by all other humans and endures then painstaking isolation. after killing/threatening to kill some of frankenstein’s loved ones, the creature demands victor make him a wife - an eve to his adam - despite knowing it’d condemn her to a similarly lonely life, save one person, and frankenstein refuses. the two then become mutually hellbent on killing one another, even as they’re cognizant that whoever completes the murder will truly then be alone in the world and without purpose

for hamilton and burr this is even more clear. both orphans, though in increasingly different upbringings, and both ever cognizant of mortality and the notion of history. burr never takes a stand, hamilton arguably takes too many. but over the course of the play, burr becomes more like hamilton and hamilton becomes more like burr. this means that while they switch perspectives, they still fundamentally never understand each other, and it’s this misunderstanding that makes hamilton assume burr would never act like him and shoot him, and burr assume that hamilton would never act like him and throw away his shot, yet this is precisely what happens.

we even see this in star wars. luke chooses to save leia & han, just as anakin tries to protect padme and obi-wan. anakin cuts off luke’s hand, luke cuts off anakin’s hand. farmboys on tattooine, ace shot pilots, etc etc. and luke is nearly successfully turned to the dark side, yet reaffirms his father’s place by refusing to bend... in the last movie. that point couldn’t have come any earlier because 1) it’s the triumphant victory and 2) the narrative tension of the foil dynamic means it has to go on as long as possible.

arc 1 is kind of a perfect example, where viren starts out powerful and close to the king and magically strong, and ends the season falling to his death thanks to his elven guide, and callum starts out powerful and close to the new king and magically strong, and ends the season literally soaring to new heights thanks to his elven guide. but like - that’s arc 1. that’s the arc where the heroes win. of course it ends that way.

but now we’re in arc 2. 

we’re in the arc - s4 to s6 - where the heroes Lose. 

and we know that TDP is aware of these principles when it comes to callum and viren precisely because they are in many ways already in the process of being switched. in arc 1, callum is the one going through a season without magic and being pursued before a powerful creature can be reunited with its place in xadia’s hierarchy; in arc 2, that’s viren, even if he’s far more passive about it and callum is more active. they’re brother-mage-advisors to the king, placed in proximity to power but never allowed to fully wield it, they both chase magical agency in s2 beat for beat (2x04 -> 2x07 -> 2x09) only really diverging in the finale of the season. viren is now going to be having dark magic dreams while callum is presented with the coined elves viren imprisoned. 

like yes it’s true that they’re not the same person and won’t make all the same choices, but in a show that’s all about the younger generation struggling to not repeat the same choices as their predecessors, and still getting caught in the cycles of their own journeys... it’s like “i have always been ready to do anything to protect my family however dangerous however vile” and “i value those close to me more than anyone and anything” when callum means it even more than viren does (because viren is and has been willing to sacrifice his family - hi soren - pretty blatantly) is like... yeah they’ll Diverge. just not till s7 lmao

[to-rise-above-monsters]

envisioning the most sickening, heartwrenching edit imaginable. if i could edit, it would be OVER for y’all

[kittythelitter]

Tragedy Enjoyers when the tragedy ends the way they knew it inevitably would:

[mostdeviouswizard]

Need to be asleep but I can't stop thinking about my current favorite oc. She's the angriest most tragic broken bitch on the plane. There's a specific flavor of tragedy to her, and it's someone whose lived past her expiration point. Someone who never expected to make it past 19, or 20, or 25, but now she's 44 years old and she has to deal with the fact the only people she ever considered family are dead. The only reminder she has of them lives in her own memory, and in her nephews face. She's not even really related to him but what else does she call him?? His parents were the first people to accept this angry, burning 19 year old for who she was and show her unconditional kindness expecting nothing in return and they're gone. They're GONE and it should've been her, it should've been her haunting the narrative instead of them but it wasn't and she has to deal with that every single day. Her nephew should've had his parents, but instead he only has her, and she's as good as a ghost anyway, haunting herself. Anyway her name is Kate Lennox she is a butch lesbian and not even therapy would fix her at this point. She's like an abused dog who hasn't known anything other than being hit and biting in retaliation, she should've been a martyr but she lived and now she's burning up from the inside out like a dying star like a fever. Jesus christ.

[some-pers0n]

I'm so close to writing about a character being beaten over the head with a rusty shovel and bleeding out dying to prove just how easy angst is to write

[guarding-rose]

Just finished the atlas complex and thought I'd pop in to revel in some dark academia done good tragedy but um. Nope. Seems that is NOT the general vibes around here. Rip to my hopes of finding fanart

[cosmic-aria]

I'VE BEEN OUT OF THE LOOP I JUST FOUND OUT KEANEU REEVES IS GONNA BE VOICING SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG IN THE 3RD SONIC MOVIE

IM SOBBING IM SO EXCITED. THIS GAME WAS MY CHILDHOOD THIS FEELS LIKE BEING REUNITED WITH A CHILDHOOD PET. I WILL NOT SURVIVE SEEING THIS IN THEATERS AND IM GONNA BE A MESS BUT I DON'T CARE. I CAN'T FUCKING WAIT FOR THIS MOVIE

[markiafc]

a good suicide narrative is very important to me tbh!

[summertimemusician]

Honestly the one thing that really frustrates me about Hyrule Warriors is how they cut Linkle being Link's sister, because otherwise it would have recontextualized Warriors entirely as a character.

This is mainly just headcanon territory, but something always bugged me about him being a knight in training from the get go, mainly because it's usually never any Link's first choice with First, Sky and Wild being the main exceptions (Gaepora took him in, and Gaepora runs the knights academy, makes sense he'd want to join then plus he'd probably want to protect Sun, plus Skylofts knights function differently than Hyrule knights, they don't have the same hierarchy and Skyloft is pretty peaceful before SS truly picks up so again, makes sense he wouldn't have troubles joining, we don't know First's reasons besides him seeing evil on the horizon and deciding if no one's was gonna do anything about it he might as well do it himself, and Wild was basically recruited at a young age for pulling the Master Sword while presumably young, he was never given a choice), we see it with Four, he's a blacksmiths apprentice under his grandfather and we see in his manga him practically baring his teeth at his father he won't become a knight and he doesn't pick up the sword unless really necessary, we see that with Time, he was raised as a Kokiri, he dreamt of adventure already from the drawings we see in his room, but he could always just become an adventurer if he wanted to though of course we see that change with the Hero's Shade, I'll come back to that, Wind? Was content living in Outset with Aryll before Ganon decided to fuck around and found out really hard, Legend was also a blacksmiths apprentice and adventurer and he only takes up knight training in the manga because Sir Raven inspired him, like even if he didn't want to be a knight the training would still serve him well (and lo and behold the advice pays off given all the shenanigans mostly caused by divine beings Legend gets saddled with), Hyrule obviously leaves in a very hostile world so he wouldn't even have ANY time to think about knight training, he's self taught because he'd literally die if he wasn't given monsters need his blood to ressurect Ganon so it's honestly a unique case of technically self defense, either he learned to hunt or he'd remain hunted, Twilight is the same case as Wind's, Ganondorf fucked around and found out with the wrong older sibling's people plus the protagonists heavily implied love interest(s) and got shafted into next week, him and Dusk don't have a personal connection besides Midna for him to stick around much and we see him go back to Ordon, so no knighthood there, so why was Warriors different? What motivated him?

I think Linkle being his younger sister would have been the answer.

Long post ahead, continue under your own risk

I know lots of people characterize Warriors as being of a noble line and joined the knights at the urging of his father, but let's not forget most Links are orphans so thinking Wars is an exception is a pipe dream. So that's out, however, in medieval times knights actually get plenty of benefits since they work mostly for lords, ladies and the local crown, being a knight is synonymous with being a noble or at least having a decent life at the cost of serving someone else and the Hyrulean knights don't really have any requisites before joining (though we do see long lines of knights exist, which some Links are descended from without their knowledge, so it's not farfetched to think that a good chunk of the knights of Hyrule qualify as members of noble houses loyal to the Hyrulean crown, would also explain their why they're ineffective a lot of the time too, if most of them grew noble and Hyrulean isn't war seeking {most of the time} then they wouldn't have any real experience), it would be a good way for Warriors to support himself as he climbs up the ranks, and most importantly, someone else, because he'd need to make that money to feed Linkle if she's his younger sister because most Links who take on elder sibling roles are at their best when trying to protect their younger siblings (Wind with Aryll, Twilight with Collin, to an extent Legend and Gulley, all Links are at their best when fighting/protecting someone else), Linkle could grown up without restrictions and he could support them both, making them work harder than other knights because he's already at a disadvantage.

Making it so he's in the perfect place at the right time to get noticed by Artemis before the War of Ages, and give him a reason to go against orders and fight rather than standby like other traineés, being discovered as the Hero in the process.

And as a result since Mask is in the war too, he gets inspired by Warriors (who as an older brother would definitely just snatch him, Wind, Tetra and heck even the Skull Kid under his wing because no way is he letting children younger than even his own little sister fight alone) and eventually becomes a knight too after presumably stopping his search for Navi or using his knight status to search more effectively, which gives us the Time we see in LU who eventually become the Hero's Shade, which trains Twilight. Because he looked up to Warriors while younger.

I just think it's a huge missed opportunity with a lot of room for angst/hurt comfort/drama, and also opportunities for Warriors, Legend and Wild to bond over not really liking the knights because they've all not likely been treated well by his fellow knights while young even though he himself is one, and that Warriors would absolutely be one of the first to throw hands if he heard another soldier talk badly about any of the Links, in this essay I will-

[cleverpaws]

WOOOOOO!!!!! THIS IS SO AWFUL AND FUCKED UP AND BAD AND SOMEONE NEEDS TO STOP THEM