#maybe it’s her loneliness :((

[tizeline]

Will the others (Raph Leo and Mikey) grow to view April as a sister like Donnie? Or does the viewing humans as a bad thing mess that up

Mmh there're never gonna be quite as close to April as Donnie is, but it's not because she's human (they get over that eventuality, even Mikey) but they didn't grow up with her the way Donnie did. They all become close friends eventually but I dunno for sure if they start viewing her as their sister? I mean they obviously view Donnie as their brother and recognize that April is basically his sister, so like..... step-sister maybe....? Then again I don't think their exact dynamic with April is something they've necesarily put a ton of concious thought into, they do view her as part of the greater Hamato-Draxum-O'Neil family so that's something.

[thoughtfulchaos773]

I just knew this scene looked familiar, so I watched Taxi Driver last night and did a deep dive. Did you know Martin Scorsese heavily influenced the editing style in the first season of The Bear?

Scorsese also narrates 3x09 Apologies at the beginning with a sequence of film and magic. The Bear is truly groundbreaking in making TV series look like cinema. There's also a scene similar to dissociation in Raging Bull as the main character is focused on his fist and the ice bucket. (Carmy stares at that ice bucket after the sauce.)

Both Taxi Driver and Raging Bull tell the story of the exercise of control (sublimation a fruedian concept). Pent-up emotions or desires are ideally transferred to a higher good like art. Or one can transfer such pent-up emotions into a more destructive act..

[mcytegg]

i change my mind abt wanting the sticklers involved in any lore relevant schemes can they just login together and have a fun even one singular time time . no war or betrayal just running around the tunnels full invis or skmething :')

[reborrowing]

Open House, Empty Nest

a lot of borrower ocs are on their own from adolescence huh

A mother has mixed feelings about the appearance of a real estate agent in the abandoned home her family lives beneath. An occupied house means danger, but also a full pantry and an opportunity to teach her children how to properly coexist around and borrow from humans. They were old enough now, they ought to learn.

But it doesn’t occur to her that she needed to warn her kids to listen for guests before leaving the walls, not until she wakes up to an empty bed and pushes out into an empty home as well. She swallows her fear for the moment, all too aware of the strangers thudding through the house overhead. She cooks breakfast as if nothing’s wrong, praying her kids were simply out chasing spiders through the crawl space.

The food goes cold as she waits for more mouths to feed.

She goes out to search. She scratches notes and glyphs, short and to the point: home, worried, please. Her children aren’t in the garden, not the backyard nor the front. The last human leaves, locking the door behind them, and the mother screams her children’s names. They echo through the empty, cavernous home.

She retreats into the walls, alone. Her children are gone.

She’s desperate enough that she thinks she could ask that real estate agent for help. Maybe they saw something. But as she gets close, it becomes too much. She gets their attention, but doesn’t reveal herself so all she gets for her trouble are now traps strewn about the house, waiting to kill her or perhaps her unsuspecting kids.

The house is sold and filled with a happy family. She can’t bring herself to leave, even if it means being alone, she cant bring herself to leave behind the echoes of her children. A favorite blanket, the green paint splashed along the rafter. How quickly would her memories fade if she were to tear herself away? Here, she can almost hear her babies laugh.

Above her, a set of strangers raise their children. She listens. She watches. The jealousy rots her heart. The years go by and these children become adults and then they, too, leave their parents’s sides. But they come back. They visit. They have their strange magic that lets them call out to each other from the void.

All she had was the empty hope that her children had found their own way and come of age without her.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

just saw there's going to be a magneto x rogue thing in savage lands and i'm ready to kms with that because wtf this shipp or whatever this is, it's gross af 😐

another reason why i have to throw hands with 97 thems the reason why people even remember this pairing

[springypaws]

I’ve been insanely busy with irl things and with cooking up that aerostatic drawing, but one day sometime I mentally blacked out and awoke to consciousness with this so uhm. Here ya go 👍

Don’t ask me what this formatting is cause I have not a clue

She is my beloved and so very underrated,,, my bb forever even if ur grumpy and sick take a platonic kiss on the cheek 💋

Also couldn’t get her face shape right for the life of me because I am cursed

[sideblogdotjpeg]

"ultrus is right, i am weak and pathetic" / "callie believes the way she loves is fundamentally repulsive" / "all i ever cared about was being useful someday" . things i think about a normal amount

[feroluce]

Thinking tonight about Caelus, and the nature of his loss and his grief after the Everything that went down in Penacony during 2.0.

Because Acheron, Black Swan, and Misha kind of knew of Firefly, they at least met her, but they didn't like really know her, and Caelus never even got the chance to introduce her to the rest of the Astral Express Crew. The only person who would have talked to her much was Sparkle, who is. Probably not really someone Caelus is interested in grieving with skznmsks

Anyway, all this to say, I like thinking about how alone poor Caelus is in his grief, because he was the only one who knew Firefly. He's the only one really mourning her. There's no one to talk about her with. There's no stories to trade or memories to reminisce with anyone over. It's not as though he knew her for long, but still. No one else knew her at all.

And I love the thought of all of this coming bubbling up, hot and acidic and bitter, during a conversation with Sampo, who Caelus just so happens to run into in the Golden Hour. Poor Sampo is kinda blindsided, he knew shit was going down in Penacony, but yeesh. And he just. Isn't quite sure what to say about it all, because he's never really encountered this before. His feelings about the Masked Fools are...a mixed bag, but he's been a part of them for a very long time, and when you're with a close organization like that, it's hard to feel alone, in grief or otherwise.

So Sampo sits there on their little bench that the two of them have occupied, and he thinks of his old friend April, how she'd died in his arms cackling and spitting her own blood after a heist gone wrong, and how after he'd dragged himself back to the World's End Tavern they'd all held a Fool's Funeral- which is basically just a big party where everyone gets really really drunk and reminisces and toasts the dead and celebrates their life.

He still thinks about her a lot, and he remembers how the time he'd most keenly felt her absence was on Jarilo-VI, the one place where he couldn't talk about her because he couldn't say anything to give himself away as an alien. The Fools still tell stories about her every time he goes back to the Tavern. His first toast of the night is always in her name. Even now, all these years after she'd died, Sampo is still learning new things about her. He's never had to grieve her alone.

Caelus doesn't have any of that.

He might never have that. As they speak, Caelus has no proof that Firefly was even her real name, or if she dreamt with her true appearance. He might not ever find out who she even was.

And just imagining that kind of loneliness hollows out a strange little pit, right behind his sternum, deep between his ribs.

So Sampo claps Caelus' shoulder and offers him a deal. Come find him outside of the dream. He knows a guy who can get them a lot of beer for really cheap-

("Is that guy you and your five finger discounts?" "Whatever do you mean, dear friend, I don't even know the meaning of the phrase, hehee.")

-and they can hole up in a bar or a hotel room or something, and get completely shitcanned. Tell him all about Firefly, tell him everything, and he'll tell Caelus about April and everyone else he's ever lost. Sampo will carry Caelus' memories of Firefly with him, and at least this way, Caelus will be a little less alone in remembering her. And the next time they cross paths, Sampo will be the one to bring her up, and to tell her stories, and Caelus can get to be the one listening. He won't have to be the only person to talk about her anymore.

Caelus rolls his eyes when Sampo avoids another remark about sticky fingers, but...ok, yeah. That sounds good. Nice, even. Thank you. Caelus bumps his shoulder against Sampo's. Sampo bumps back.

(They find each other again the next day, and true to their word, get themselves completely and utterly shitcanned. Caelus talks more than Sampo has ever heard him; every minute detail, every word choice, Firefly's every odd little mannerism and habit. Because Caelus wants to make sure this will outlive him, that even if the Stellaron dwelling within him finally burns him to a crisp and he really does up and kick the bucket, or even, godforbid, if he forgets, he wants to make sure someone remembers her. She deserved that.)

((And it takes quite a while, after that. Caelus doesn't see Sampo again until after everything has settled down. On his last day in Penacony, he finds the guy slinking out of a seedy back alley and all but runs right into him. Sampo happily leads him to some dive bar in an even seedier back alley that Caelus has never even heard of, and Sampo raises his glass. "To Firefly! Who sounds like she probably would have hated me at first, but I would have liked to have met her anyway."

And Caelus stares at him, almost looking startled, long enough that Sampo worries that he's read him wrong and brought this up too soon. He's halfway into planning how to talk himself out of this situation when Caelus finally throws back his head back and laughs, tells him that yeah, Firefly would have politely called him out on every lie he told, and all their conversations would take twice as long with the way Sampo is so full of shit.

And he can see it, the same way he watches and sees through everyone, that Caelus' eyes have a tightness to them, his knuckles are nearly white around the handle of his mug. But he smiles. He hits his glass against Sampo's far too hard and throws it back and gets foam everywhere like he does every time they drink because the guy's about as elegant as a raging bull, but those things don't lessen the genuineness of his smile.

The grief is there, but so is the elation, and those emotions aren't a sliding scale between one or the other. It is all of both and both at once, and that's what contents Sampo enough to throw his own mug back when Caelus makes a toast of his own, "to April!!".))

[corpocyborg]

"I know all about you, Morinth. Why would you even try seducing me?"

[soubidou]

Me: Aw, Silver is turning out to be a sweet guy to and with Suvi and I hope we get to see more of hi-

Brennan: He's leaving for the front kudos see you next week 🫰🏻

[zer0-devoox]

𝓁𝑜𝓃𝑒𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑒𝓈𝓈 ...

[nellasbookplanet]

Having finally read the Nimona comic (it’s very good, everyone please go read it) I can’t help but find describing it as being about the power of incredible violence to defeat an authoritarian state, as I've seen done, to be both kind of misleading and ultimately reductive to the story as a whole.

Yes there is incredible violence in the comic and it was in the end what tore down the corrupt system, but it was also Nimona's downfall, destroyed her relationship with her only friend (and led to her (temporary) death by his very hand as he could no longer stand by her and her actions, even as he never judged her, recognized her role as a victim and tried to save her until the end), put countless civilians in danger, and ultimately did little to nothing to address how to actually fix the problems of the system to keep them from returning. In fact, Nimona as a character shows little interest in fixing anything. She suggests killing the king and having Ballister take his place, despite Ballister neither wanting this nor having the experience to pull it off (and would, in fact, only result in replacing one king with another rather than lead to an entirely new system, as is often the case with bloody uprisings). When people start dying from the illness they spread, Ballister wants to immediately stop it; Nimona suggests they let more people die to further rile up hatred and anger against the institution. Nimona isn't a good guy looking to save people; she's an angry, hurt girl looking to hurt those who hurt her and those who have the potential to hurt her in the future (even when Ballister is one of those people). She is the villain the state turned her into.

And that is kind of the point I see the story making. Not 'you need incredible violence to tear down an authoritarian state' as something good and celebratory, but rather 'an authoritarian state will ultimately lead to its own downfall by creating monsters of its own making, and while said downfall is needed the fact that it has to happen at all is deeply tragic because there are no winners here'. Nimona isn't a villain-villain (the true antagonist is obviously still the Institution), but she isn't a hero either. She's a tragic figure with a tragic end that the state brought upon itself by mistreating its people. She doesn't stick around to help rebuild and heal, and she doesn't (to our knowledge) get to see her home become a better place. It's a bittersweet end where the very person who tore down the oppressors is too broken to enjoy the end result. It isn't a story about rebellion, it's a story about the inherent and justified self-destruction of authoritarian systems.

(Writing it out like this, I realize that, thematically, it’s very similar to n.k. jemisin's broken earth trilogy, which you should all also read because it is incredible and not very friendly to authoritarian states.)

[xxplastic-cubexx]

magneto tiddies in the preview for rogue the savage land #2 (and confirmation that there won't be any rogue/magneto romance thank god) 😌 https://aiptcomics.com/2025/01/20/x-men-monday-282-tim-seeley-rogue-savage/

ON MY LIFE YOU SWEAR ?? PROMISE ??????

Full Article

[neurotonic]

Do you think Prism after IEYTD3 would do anything to honor the rest of her robots who didn't escape the factory explosion

Oh absolutely. She loved those silly little guys! She dedicated so much work, time and effort to make them real and they were there with her and she loved every single one of them. She didn't have to get attached, after all they were just another project, but she chose to love and appreciate them as they were. She was probably under the assumption that they'd outlive her, being robots and all, but that explosion definitely crushed her heart. I don't know if she could find it in her to make another robot after that.

I think if she finds time to slow down after the third game's end, she'd let herself properly grieve her loss and honor their memory. Probably something that involves a spare part that she brought with her, a core, a bit of kinesium...but yeah.

[everysongineverykey]

and for my next trick i present... my Grand Tv People Freakout Extravaganza!!! *falls to the floor weeping violently*

[reflectionsofgalaxies]

this is my little girl 💖

she’s running low on time with us, and my dad has been saying things along the lines of ‘this is why I don’t like pets’, because he finds the grieving process so hard.

I don’t fault him for that, he just feels loss deeply and deals with it differently.

sometimes I even find myself falling briefly into the same thinking. ‘what if making a different choice all those years ago saved me and my family from this grief and this pain?’

but I also know there’s no way I would make a different decision. no amount of grief could outweigh the joy she’s brought us over these last fifteen years. the laughter, the comfort, the connection.

I think about hikes with my dad when she was tiny and able bodied and would race up ahead of us on the trails and then race back to check on us. I think about the first time she saw snow and she instantly turned into a tiny fluffy bunny rabbit, hopping through drifts that were ankle deep for us but nearly buried her, and the matted snowballs she came away with, looking like a tiny curly haired yeti.

I think of her interrupting GrammE and John’s wedding along with Sagie, confusion turning into laughter as they sped after each other across the backyard ceremony. I think of my mom, lonely on the island and isolated during covid, telling me that Ginger was her saving grace.

and these don’t even scratch the surface. fifteen years of love she’s given us.

so yeah. losing her is going to damn near break me and I know that. but I wouldn’t change it for the world.