End-of-Saga Blues

This is it. The last chapter. I've been waiting for inspiration to hit me for this one because it's too important of a chapter to try to forge ahead without that critical sense of Flow. Now I'm two pages in and drumming up a steady stream of words.

I took the Mystery Skulls Animated gang and joined it with Greek Mythology to create the Just Legends saga. I had no idea I was opening up a 5-story, 400k+ monster of a fanfiction when I started it, roughly nine years ago. It was not the first time I'd written a romantic couple, but it was my first time any romantic couple and their relationship was a central pillar of the story. It has taken so long to write this tale in full that I'm a completely different person than when I started it. It has occupied a substantial amount of headspace for almost a decade, and the sadness of saying goodbye to it moved in around the last three chapters.

It's not just the story. In part, it's that I miss the community around Mystery Skulls Animated. Rather, I miss what they used to be. I guess infighting and toxicity happen to every fandom once it gets large enough. At the start, we were a tight-knit little group, tossing around sparks of ideas and fanning anything that flamed up into a compelling piece of art or a heart-rending story. The cross-breeding of ideas inspired all kinds of creativity, and many of my stories got their core ideas from a spark flying off someone else's finished work. I miss being able to crow about a particular line or paragraph that I loved working on, or kvetching about the characters not listening to me and sharing that relatable vibe that went around. I miss getting an idea so bright it burned me until I wrote it out of my system. Lately, it feels like I'm writing in a sensory deprivation tank.

It's still preferable. What the community became was poisoning any enjoyment of the stories, making it difficult to finish them at all. I know I did the right thing by leaving, but I miss what was and I have to express that, even if it's only shouting into the void.

Arthur has always been the most compelling character to me. In canon content, he seems like someone who is afraid of everything his group wants to wade into, but he comes because he cares for his friends. He's the first person who wants to run from danger, but damned if he's going to leave them to face it without his shaky-kneed backup. He seems to regularly face down things he'd rather not for those he loves, and that is compelling to me. I love developing this concept further, having him face larger and larger threats until he can offer an eldritch, god-level creature a dead-eyed stare and say, "You'll have to do better than that." By the end of most of my stories, there's not much that can shake him anymore.

I close out this project and I hope that I am leaving the characters with enough joy. It is bitter-bittersweet, but there is redemption and healing and hope mixed in with all the consequences they have to live with. That will have to be enough, because I think even in real life that is the best anyone can hope for.