Oh, lovely, we have to go through all this again.
Ending the Cycle is a fan-made Tumblr askblog/ARG/continuation of the Henry Stickmin Series by MelonSalts. It can be found here
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Two years after the events of Completing the Mission's Triple Threat ending, Henry is suddenly thrust into a "dead end" timeline starting off at Breaking the Bank, with a letter in his pocket from a mysterious sender telling him to find the others and a way to get back to his main timeline before time runs out. There are still choices (and fails) to be made, however, but with the help of some new mysterious voices in his head, Henry sets off to figure things out.
Warning: Unmarked spoilers for the entire Henry Stickmin Series ahead.
Ending the Cycle contains examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: Dave is revealed to have the power to teleport.
- Alternate Universe: While Henry is no stranger to going back in time, this time when he was forcibly thrown back, he was landed in a slightly alternate universe where the alternative version of him has hit a fail ending.
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: Henry knows literally nothing about his parents, and never wants to know.
- Art Shift: The characters have gone from simple stick figures with only hats and hair to distinguish characters between each other to having bodies and full outfits.
- Audience? What Audience?: Downplayed. At one point, Henry answers several asks while in a helicopter with Rupert. While he doesn't speak or sign, he does make several faces in response to various questions, with one ask causing Henry to realize that Rupert (who can't hear the asks) is giving him an odd look due to said faces.
- Blind Obedience: Henry to the two original voices and the choices they give him, believing them to be immutable, though he notes he hasn't had a chance to test that in a very long time.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Due to the nature of his powers, Henry is constantly being pushed into this by making friends with people in one timeline and then the next time he goes back, destroying everything they cared about through a different timeline as one anon points out.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Due to the nature of choices in timelines, Henry has seen and done a lot of horrifying things. At this point though while it does mildly haunt him, he is pretty chill with it all.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Subverted; It takes place after the Triple Threat ending, but there's also existance of other timelimes as well, albeit only Henry's mind.
- Elective Mute: Henry is selectively mute and primarily communicates through sign language, but his thoughts can be read by the viewers/voices through subtitles.
- Entry Point: While fans could always interact through the Tumblr ask function, they slowly started to notice there were definite puzzles to solve. With the introduction of the files and the creation of a Discord server, fans flocked together to solve the puzzles.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Dave is able to push Right Hand Man off of him, Henry asks Dave how he managed to get behind him, to which Dave says he'll tell him later. The next page reveals that Dave has the ability to teleport.
- Fourth-Wall Observer: Only a limited number of characters are able to hear the 'voices' (AKA the asks) and are able to tell what direction they need to look in order to properly respond to them. Lampshaded when one asker questions how Henry knows where to look in order to properly respond to them, which Henry states is because he has a general feeling about it, with it later being shown from another perspective that it looks like Henry is looking at thin air.
- Lampshade Hanging: In one ask, an asker misspells "You're" and Henry makes a remark about it. 2 asks later, a different user asks how Henry heard the misspelling of a voice in his head, and Henry is equally confused by how he did it.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Ellie, after being teleported to the Wall, tries to pretend to be a new guard there by wearing one of their hats and pretending she can't find the rest of her uniform. All three people who take note of her are able to see through her disguise, even though she, from their perspective, shouldn't have any reason to be there.
- Paradox Person: Any of the new characters for Ending the Cycle, like Bruce Force, while they certainly exist attempting to view their files makes it very clear they never were supposed too.
- The Sneaky Guy: Henry
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: Sort of. Thanks to a change in the art style, the characters are no longer simple stick figures and have actual bodies, so as a result all of the characters now have clothing and outfits other than hats and hair. To name one example; Henry himself now has a grey turtleneck and a dark blue hoodie.
- Shout-Out: Unsurprisingly, it wouldn't be Henry Stickmin without it.
- Time Travel: Henry has this as a very situational power.
- Wham Shot: As Henry is pulling out his cellphone in an attempt to call his friends, he ends up stumbling across a newspaper which reveals that he's in one of the fail timelines, specifically the one where he used the Goodball when he tried to steal the Tunisian Diamond and died from it.
- Wild Card: Henry thanks to the nature of his choices.
