#THE LOSS OF JUST ONE LIFE

[art-o-gant]

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[shepscapades]

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [PART 6] [Part 7] [Don’t Let it Reach the Heart]

[This comic is part of my dbhc au, following the chaos and panic that ensues after Doc and Xisuma try to get Etho back online at the start of s9 after a very rough s8 finale that leaves him a little. broken. It's set to the vibes of Joywave's Destruction!]

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[dirtytransmasc]

Eywa's fleecy little lamb — the blood sacrifice of Her chosen one

[animocity]

i think it's such a shame that more fanfic writers don't read comics. there's so much good material out there ripe for the taking. like how bruce originally didn't wanna be part of the jla, a group he calls overpowered and untrained, except for clark. how they both have such a close relationship compared to the rest of the jla, and hold such esteem and respect for each other. or in one of their first meetings, bruce literally teared up when clark flew away, saying how "maybe in another universe we could've been friends"

also bruce does say good job to the robins. it's so obvious as you're reading that he loves and cares for them.

[thinkershipman]

SHAUNA SHIPMAN: AN ORESTEIA

[creative-robot]

I know The Founders Cut, generally, is the edited scrubbed over version of genloss from Showfall in-universe (as well as a not-8-hour-long-three-stream-binge-night whenever we want to watch it again) but something that struck me as odd and I haven’t seen anyone mention yet, is this warning

It shows up right at the junction where the third act starts, where it appears the Hero is breaking free of Showfall thanks to Hetch. But here’s the thing, while a LOT less than the previous acts the audience still played a significant role in this act, even when really only given two audience interaction choices. Which makes me wonder, how real is this warning, and who is it for? Obviously the audience involved knows what happens past this point, but the audience is also implied to be an integral part of the Social Experiments, which is part of why things start to tweak out when the Founder removes them in the Founder Cut as the Generation Loss generation loses.

My first thought, was that obviously this is another bait and switch, a way to draw the audiences attention, seeing something that’s secret, something that’s not “meant for them”, which is a tactic I could see Showfall using in universe to keep people’s attention and add an air of mystery to their shows.

But

Showfall is doing all their experiments and these shows with a LOT of help from their censors to show it off, displaying a fun silly show that is definitely not uber fucked up and that is 100% just slime don’t worry about it, it’s kid friendly if it’s green! And I don’t think they’d want to bet all their cards on this one experiment doing well enough to their audience to not question the sudden shift in tone that follows this warning. Which makes me wonder.

They did their test, they did their experiment, and the evidence of this last act? I think it was a one time run, they don’t want anyone seeing this, it isn’t for the audience. Act three is specifically to both test and play with their Hero, Hetch’s new lines add a level to this, never once does he call the Hero by their name, just refers to Ranboo as their Role, and he’s not exactly. Nice? About literally any of Ranboos concerns, which wouldn’t really seem conductive to making an audience trust him, especially with his monologue at the end. Ranboo has escaped before, possibly right before act 1 started, they tightened the security on his mask to be unremovably part of them, Hetch doesn’t like the Hero but they’re a fan favorite so he can’t just get rid of them.

Act three is the cumulation of Ranboo being punished for things they don’t remember, for daring to break free from Showfalls control, this is Hetch taking the Hero and essentially majorly fucking and manipulating them to take his frustration out on a fan favorite they can’t otherwise get rid of or give a smaller role like Slimecicle. which is exemplified by the fact that we now know Charlie most likely was never able to actually able to fully snap out of the control, that even in act three in panic and confusion there was at least still a part of him being influenced by Showfall.

So the first two acts are the usual show, they have their posters, they have Squiggles to introduce them, they have goofs and silliness and only a couple slip ups that’re quickly dealt with, the usual rose tinted curtains. Act three?

Do not watch the following material

[idontmindifuforgetme]

Reframing whenever someone decides to leave you out of something or walks out of your life or just all around neglects your presence not as your loss but as theirs…. like that could have been so much more fun w me in it but I wasn’t and that will forever be your loss

[dorindameddler]

wyllstarion. to me.

[gingermintpepper]

One of my biggest pet peeves is the assumption that something has to be sad for it to be tragic.

I've always been a big believer of the 'Apollo has an awful love life'/'Apollo is plain unlucky with love' line of thinking but it does bother me that the general reasoning for that statement is given to the concept of 'Apollo is somehow undesireable and thus rejected' (Cassandra/Daphne/Marpessa) or 'his lovers die young and thus their love is unfulfilled' (Cyparissus/Hyacinthus/Coronis). I personally think that's a very unfortunate way of looking at things - not only because it neglects the many perfectly cordial entanglements and affairs Apollo has had, both mortal and divine - but because it presents a very shallow interpretation of the concepts of love and loss and how loss affects people.

Apollo can still grieve lovers that have a long, healthy life. The inherent tragedy of an immortal who knows his lovers and children will die and cannot stop it does not stop being tragic simply because those lovers and children live long, fulfilled lives. The inherent tragedy of loss does not stop being tragic simply because someone knows better than to mourn something that was always going to end.

What is tragic is not that Apollo loves and loses but that loss itself follows him. Apollo does not love with the distance of an immortal, he does not have affairs and then leaves never to listen to their prayers again. He does not have offspring and then abandon them to their trials only to appear when it is time to lead them to their destinies. He raises his young, he protects the mothers of his children, he blesses the households that have his favour and multiplies their flocks that they may never go hungry. He educates his sons, he adorns his daughters and even in wrath he is quick to come to his senses and regret the punishments he doles out.

Apollo loves. And like mortals, there will always be some part of him that wishes to protect the objects of his affections. Apollo, however, is also an emissary of Fate. He knows that the fate of all mortal things is death. He knows that to love a mortal is to accept that eventually he will have to bury them. There is no illusion of forever, there is no fantasy where he fights against the nature of living things and shields his beloveds from death. Apollo loves and because of that love, he also accepts.

And that, while beautiful, is also tragic.

[feroluce]

NO OK BUT I'M STILL NOT OVER BOOTHILL AND DAN HENG AND THE JADE ABACUS IN ENA'S DREAM!!!!!

For some extra context, I have a whole henghill manifesto I wrote over here, but the tl;dr is that Dan Heng decides to use the Jade Abacus of Allying Oath to save the Express Crew the first time. Boothill urges him to think it over carefully, but he doesn't stop him. And then, the second time Dan Heng decides to use it, we get this instead:

And just! That's so!! so!!!

Because like. We see in the first battle against Sunday that that Jade Abacus is effective, like we really do just get an entire army lead by a whole-ass Emanator of The Hunt right to our location and ready to fuck shit up. It's important. It's incredibly valuable. That is a huge amount of power to hold in the palm of one's hand.

But Tiernan's relic works the same way.

Galaxy Rangers are terribly dangerous. Boothill comments on this when discussing Acheron's motives, because he can't believe anyone would be stupid enough to get The Hunt on their asses. They're considered to be on a level even above The Annihilation Gang.

And now, with the burial relic, he has a way to get thousands of them, almost immediately, and all in one place.

And you can't tell me that wouldn't be something extremely useful to Boothill, like literally life-saving. He's wanted by the IPC. He makes his living as a bounty hunter. His whole driving motivation in life right now is to do whatever he can, up to and including throwing away his own human body, to ruthlessly hunt down one man and kill him in revenge. Like that has to be dangerous, the IPC is a massive entity with far-reaching influence and money and power and weaponry. He surely must have already had some close calls.

Like can you imagine it? Galaxy Rangers are solitary creatures. If Boothill were to find himself near death, he would probably be all alone. Do you think he had regrets? Did he wonder if anyone would find his own burial relic? Did it feel the same way it did when they melted his flesh, replaced it with metal? Did he lay there with his vision slowly blacking out until he thought of home, and family, and the little daughter who he never even got to hear her first word, until he was so full of fury that he could prop himself up on his rage like a crutch and find help?

Tiernan's relic would have been like a get-out-of-jail-free card. Just for one time, no matter where Boothill was, someone would find him. The Galaxy Rangers aren't sociable or organized between themselves, but they help their own. Someone would save him.

He chooses to give all of that up to help Dan Heng.

And I just cannot get over it, especially the wording of it, the pause before he speaks, the gentle way he tells him to hold onto his once-in-a-lifetime treasure...!! He wants Dan Heng to leave this to him! He wants him to keep this precious item that will help him save his companions again in the future! And maybe it's just...wishful thinking, me reading too much into it? But I mean. Just the way he says it...

I really do think it comes from a place of deep kinship and respect. That there's a lot of thought and feeling behind that statement. Something from one Pathstrider of The Hunt to another. Boothill fought for his home and his family, he fought really really hard! But. Sometimes that just doesn't matter. And now he's watching Dan Heng fight for his, too.

When he made that decision the first time, Dan Heng was in the parlor car of the Astral Express. He was completely removed from any danger. He could have chosen to get the hell out of Dodge and not look back. Obviously we know he would never even consider such a thing, but it was technically an option, and Boothill watched him decide to go back into the proverbial lion's den for his friends anyway. And I'm sure that was part of what sealed his decision, to later use Tiernan's relic instead of the Jade Abacus to summon enough people to disrupt Ena's Dream. Because he greatly values ideas like righteousness and justice and saving people, and Dan Heng so beautifully embodies all of that and then some.

Boothill doesn't have people to protect anymore, only ghosts to avenge.

And there is just something so endlessly endearing about him wanting to help Dan Heng, to make sure his friend doesn't go through that the way he did.

[ivysos2001]

Marvel will never convince me that Steve and Natasha weren’t in constant contact during the blip years bc (besides the fact that they’ve been partners for the better part of a decade prior to this including those *two years* on the run together) people who haven’t seen each other in five years don’t operate like they did the rest of that movie (joined at the hip, communicating constantly across the room with looks and nods, taking on every situation as a unit)

It seems to me that they just had Steve leave her/the compound bc they didn’t like the implications of ‘Steve and Natasha have been living in the avengers compound alone together for the past five years’ and came up with a reason for him to leave her so we’d believe he was suddenly into Peggy again

[phalangemedes]

I kept this in my drafts cause I was gunna expand on it, but I dunno if I need to. Either way, I thought it was interesting that the refugee trio from Canaan are all just different aspects of Grief represented through the kaleidoscope of their personhood. Because mourning is a spectrum, no more or less vivid for the death being metaphorical or literal, and there’s been some weird hot takes that more or less emotive grieving is ‘strange’ or whatever, so, onward!

Judith is unable to feel her own emotions (or at least with any depth) because she's made herself an emotional void, due to training (Cohort AND Second expectations), repression and losing Marta. She was already constipated and that tipped her over to cutting her own throat so she’d emotionally starve.

The last emotive thing she had was oh captain my captain levels of obsession for the woman that rejected her romantically, DUTY, and with equal verve the self loathing for wanting that.

(Also she was being medically maltreated by BoE and then used as a Duracell so y'know, you can not like the woman for being an unsympathetic hypocrite but also, rough ol' time for Jodypops)

Corona has used the flamboyance of her emotions as a manipulation tactic since she was like.. 5 and oops it suddenly stopped working! The tits, the smiles and the twinkly eyes have no effect in camo land, if anything, they are tired of her shit and only “warm up” to her when she starts submitting to them in ways they understand (Re: BoE are a hierarchy and she is Not the top rung). She's also grieving Ianthe not wanting her (worse, choosing BABS) and failing to throw her Pretty Girl weight around as much as she used to, whilst cosplaying a Cav to feel worth something (habitual, comforting).

On top of that, she’s bouncing from pillar to post in an attempt to be desired because her worth is locked up in other’s perception of her. (She fails so hard to connect with anyone she starts chatting up G2deon's corpse like.. It's SAD even if she's Tridentarii heinous (affectionate insult))

And Camilla is forcing herself not to feel because she doesn't have time for a breakdown. She's tick listing how to “make things right” through torture (shock bracelet) being used as a means of coercion for Judith (also torture) having what was left of Pal taken away from her (I mean this literally and figuratively, because his skull, then hand, are hope AND HIM) ((likewise the BETRAYAL from a necro and a cav about it)) and being denied doing GOOD (denial of treatment of Judith). I think honestly she reacts the most MUNDANELY, by just... powering through, keeping busy, not thinking about it because then it'll be real.

And she doesn't let herself break until Paul, because she’s still trying to fix everything until the very moment it’s un-fixable. (And in some ways Palamedes takes the burden of it for her, by giving her the choice, the "it's okay, now, you can feel". All that time, bottling the HURT because she has to be useful because if she's not useful what's left? It's the vice of grief as you excuse yourself from the young woman you're caring for, it's locking the bathroom door, sitting in the bath and your body betraying you with the mother and fucker of a panic attacks. It's getting punched in the solar plexus because you turned around to make a comment and not only is that person gone, but they aren’t coming back.

None of them are any more or less tragic, but they are all acceptable and staggeringly normal forms of grieving.

[crystal-verse]

god i want. an au where it dosn't work. where it's just arr g'raha who's woken up, and he doesn't have all these memories and all these people keep looking at him like they're mourning someone. the world has changed and time has changed and all the people he knows have changed, but he hasn't changed, he was just sleeping, just sleeping, and the world nearly ended several times and apparently he helped prevent yet another end but he has no memory of this. they want him to join the scions. he does not know these people. (he barely knows the warrior of light, now, but did he ever truly know them in the first place?) his little sister is alive and well. she looks at him like a ghost. she's changed, and she's older than him now. he acts bratty and loud and brash to cover up the fact that he does not know anything it seems, and he is tired but he was sleeping for so long, so how could he be tired?

he doesn't know these people. they seem to know him. he wonders if he'd killed someone, when it was him and not that exarch who woke up. he wonders if it should have been him who was "killed" in that way, if it is him that lives and not that man who had known and become friends with all these figures from legend. he wonders if he'll always be fated to be a historian one step back from everything, because he simply cannot be a hero.