#and hes going to blame himself

[kuailphobe]

So is nobody gonna talk about the dying triton telling the CHAMPION OF THE UNDERSEA "you abandoned us" with his hands bound together in prayer impaled on a HOOK right before Gillion regresses to his soldier mindset???

[kaipassedgo]

every day i wake up and am mad at the end of steves storyline and the full and complete lack of people who GET IT

[akumamazoku]

birdcage

i do not think 1x would be happy getting sent to the banlands….

they’d just stare like this for the first couple of months

would any of you believe me if i said the funky extra i did took longer than the main drawing…

[starry-bi-sky]

im dedicating this to @detectivedarling. i felt inspired after seeing their little ficlet yesterday sadhjfl 🫶

-

Danny's grip on his cane tightens.

"What—"

His voice cracks. He stops, clears it, then tries again in spite of the nausea twisting in his gut. "What are — you, uh, watching, Bruce?" He sounds horribly far away.

Bruce doesn't look at him, his attention laser-focused on the screen. Which is— fine. It's usually not a problem, Bruce gets like that when he hyper-focuses on a case, and unless it's urgent — or he's been at it for hours — Danny sees no need to pull him away from it. He likes the quiet camaraderie they have, it's companionable and unique to the two of them.

He wishes he was right now though. Looking at him, that is.

That way he wasn't watching what was clearly one of Danny's ghost fights. One of the nastier ones, if the collateral damage and rubble on the street is of any indication.

Danny tries to remember which one that is. He shuffles a little closer to the desk, ignoring the rock in his stomach or the ugly weightlessness in his arms. It's not the blood blossoms, that much he knows. He just recently had an injection so it shouldn't be bothering him this soon—

So it's just nerves. Perfect.

Most footage of his fights are— messy, at best. Unusable at worst. Amity Park was obsessed with appearing 'normal' when they first started happening, and typical news stations censor the worst of the fights anyways for publishing, since they can get pretty gory at times. And ghosts move too fast to be caught on regular standard cameras, not including distance and light and—

That is to say— finding usable ghost fight videos is hard.

Danny wonders how Bruce got his hands on this one, and then stops wondering.

The audio is muted, which is - good. Good, because the fight is ugly and chaotic and clearly this was taken on someone's phone. Fuck, he can't remember if he ever saw that before — clearly not. They're hiding behind an overturned car, and Danny grits his teeth so he doesn't tell that idiot to run.

The camera turns up, and focuses on two figures in the air. It takes a few seconds, but when it does, Danny gets hit with a wave of vertigo. His grip tightens and he leans heavily on his cane, he waits for the black dots to disappear.

He- uh, he remembers this fight now. Uh, sort of.

He remembers being twelve at the time, and he remembers some of the injuries he got out of it. His eyelid spasms abruptly. This ghost wasn't one of his regulars, so he doesn't remember whatever name they had, barely remembered what they looked like up until- uh. Now.

Was he always that small? Well— Phantom's never been particularly big, perks of being a dead kid, but— it's - different. Seeing it from an outsider perspective. Was he that small? Or is it just because he's wearing a jumpsuit clearly too big for him that casts the illusion of being small?

Doesn't really - matter. Now. He can't access his ghost form, and he already knows the answers to his appearance.

Phantom is clearly bleeding, viscous and violently green like the bubbles of a lava lamp, clutching onto a limp shoulder that's missing an arm from the elbow down. Half his face is drenched in similar blood, the eye on the drenched side is closed — not because he can't see through the ectoplasm.

Danny's memories of that fight slowly come in a bit clearer. Right. He took a pole to the eye in that one. That had - hurt. A lot. Getting an eye gouged out usually does. It and the missing arm took hours to grow back.

He rubs his eye with his palm for no other reason than it itches.

The other ghost isn't untouched of any injury either, but he's not in a state of dismemberment like Phantom is.

Danny drops his gaze down at Bruce, whose sitting in his chair with his hands threaded together, looking so tense that Danny half expects to meet solid steel if he were to touch his back. His face is - blank. Terribly blank, with an intensity in his eyes that Danny doesn't see often.

He looks terribly distressed.

He opens his mouth, and finds that nothing comes out. His throat is thick with an ugly, tar-like feeling that makes his eyes sting. Kinda reminds him of when someone wraps their hands around your throat and presses. He closes his mouth, then tries again.

"B—" hhhhhh, "Buzz."

Finally Bruce looks at him, one hand slaps the space button on the keyboard, and the video pauses. His expression doesn't shift, but there's a weight in the lines of his face that reminds Danny of a set of weights sagging.

He looks quite like he's grieving something.

Bruce opens his mouth, his voice comes out terribly soft and heartbroken: "He looks like you."

Which is— a terrifying sentence in and of itself. One that makes Danny's legs shake and ignite his ragged, poison-chewed nerves alight with the need to run. An instinctive urge to deny, deny, deny.

How could he? He could say, that's a ghost, Bruce. I'm not a ghost. He could crack a joke, and ask, 'do I look dead to you?' or say something about how he knows that his parents studied ghosts, but that didn't make him one.

He could say that, and he could say it knowing full well that Bruce would see right through it. He'd probably let Danny too.

Danny closes his eyes. They sting, you see? So does his nose, right in the back like someone popped him in the face. And his throat is thick and gross and like someone stuck a spider, the big fat tarantula kind, right down into his esophagus.

He breathes in — through his mouth, because his nose stings and so it'd be best not to irritate it further with air — and it's terribly shaky and uneven. But it clears a pathway to his lungs big enough for him to say — whisper, really:

"You know, I think you're the first person to notice that."

[akkivee]

they've been potentially changing a lot with the shadow manga, but since maria's final words to shadow were how she loves him and amy's conversation with shadow in the joypolis collab was about how he is loved, i like to think sonic team is still hinting at amy's ability to touch his heart lol

[dailygihun]

day 6 || this era lasted like 2 minutes but i love it anyway

[lucabyte]

A belief in Nominative Determinsim

[lokiusmybeloveds]

Stone is probably drowning in guilt because he was the one who got the Doctor out of the crab. He could have just left the badnik thief alone and they could've gone on with their telenovelas and streaming but no, he wanted to bring the Doctor back to his old self and now he's dead.

[meagancandraw]

You ever think about how neither of them got to say goodbye?

[turtleblogatlast]

Every day I’m haunted by the fact the boys happily swim in sewer water

Even if it’s filtered somehow there’s no way it’s not still nasty 😭 Bet they can defeat any of their villains just by accidentally giving them diseases I swear

[zivazivc]

my brainrot about these two can be measured in liters

[an-urgent-appeal]

genuinely baffled by how some people see homura as evil. how on earth do you watch rebellion and come to that conclusion

[tfa-archived]

Still not used to this life or death situation stuff. That's good, 'cause I'm not either. You never get used to it.

[dollypopup]

no, but why didn't we get Colin's letters??????

words truly cannot convey what a missed opportunity glossing over the letters was. why didn't we get a voice over of Colin reading them? or see what Penelope did with them? he sent all these letters and Penelope didn't reply. He was clearly feeling that! He was carrying that around with him. It's why he tried out a new facade in the first place! You know what would have been such a damn good scene that would do SO much with building the narrative of how much Pen loves him? And how much Polin is about being mirrors to each other?

having her read his letters on screen

Sure, build up to it. Can't happen at the start. Not when she's trying to find a husband or after Colin apologized to her. It's not about the immediate satisfaction. It's about showing how Penelope changes and matures and grows as a character that she CAN revisit them, about who Colin is and what he sends, how he sounds, the cadence of his voice when he writes to someone he cares about, discussing subjects he's passionate for. About their connection itself getting stronger or repairing after being frazzled by the LW reveal and the ghosting and the lies and and and

You can't tell me that after they're married, she's not reading his letters. You CANNOT TELL ME that she's laying in that big bed all alone, feeling such distance from him, not recognizing that she had put him in a similar position over the off season. He said and did something that hurt her heart and she froze him out from her affections. SHE said and did something that hurt HIS heart and now he froze her out in turn. When Colin reads HER letters to feel close to her, it's such a beautiful moment of the audience seeing how much he cherishes her.

why don't we get a similar scene with her? because chat, I won't lie, it rubs me the wrong way. It rubs me the wrong way, chat. That he sat down and had a whirlwind of a travel adventure for his final year studying on his grand tour and wrote and wrote and wrote and had NO IDEA why no one was replying and felt that profound loneliness so close to his skin but turned around and blamed himself and we know it because we have THIS fragment of his journal

which in part reads:

After my travels last year when I wrote so much and received very few replies. I am trying out a new personality. A new way of seeing the world and interacting with others. I want to be less needy, less insecure, while still maintaining the core of my vulnerability that makes me who I am.

and chat, I do not understand. I do not get it, chat. Penelope, who criticized him for being fake, who canonically has read parts of his journal, coming across THIS entry? It would break her heart into pieces.

AND I NEED TO SEE IT.

I NEED to see that she cherishes him the way he cherishes her. That she didn't just cast his letters out into the fire in her frustration with him. That she didn't throw him away, even when she was upset. Because he doesn't throw her away when he's upset! And you know what? Even if she did, for us to see her have some remorse for it! She was so hungry to read his journal, and then got letter after letter from him? Of COURSE she's reading those letters! That journal is an insight into his thought process with himself, but the letters are insight into his thought process with her.

And you know what? I want to see her write him letters constantly in the next season. Like a regency equivalent of love letters on post-it notes plastered all up in their house. I want him to wake up to another letter from her even when she slept right beside him that night but had to wake up early for whatever reason so, here, have this letter hand-crafted with her heart in the quill just because. Just because she loves him.

Colin is so good at apologies, namely because they always have actions that follow up to show he's understood what harm he caused and how he's committed to fixing it. And yes, Penelope apologized, but it didn't have much action behind it. I think Penelope NEEDS to understand that part of Colin's insecurities come from her. Her actions. Her lies. Come from that off season where she did not answer him and gave no reason why. Come from saying he loved her and not having her say it back. Colin builds his bridge about her being LW and gets over it largely on his lonesome. We stan an emotionally mature and available man!

But. . .Penelope doesn't have much hand in that. Even when she tells him she wrote about him because she wanted the Colin she knew back. That was a lie. But she can have that Colin back! THROUGH HIS LETTERS!!! Which we should see her read!!!

Anywho, I like to believe that Penelope felt some remorse for their distance and once she knows just how much her not replying hurt him, perhaps via journal entry, one way for her to heal over that harm is to write to him. Why wouldn't she write to him even when they live together? They spent months not doing so. Surely she misses it. And it would be cute. A love language on her part to show him how much she cares. I need Colin to discover that oh she kept them, all those letters he sent. She didn't answer, but I want him to know she read them. I want him to know she likes them. Colin does so much processing on his own, and that's important. But it's okay for her to go 'this thing I did hurt you, and this is how I'll fix it'.

Because look: we all know that an enormous part of Colin's insecurities are because he has been rejected. By his family, by his society, by the one person he believed would never forsake him. He understands why she did, but she still did, and it would do a lot for him to know she didn't just discard him, even if his self esteem isn't great and he'd blame himself alone for the breakdown in communication. And it would do a lot for him to get letters from her again.

Do you KNOW how much shorter their freeze out post-wedding would have been if when he went to get a blanket, he found Penelope reading his letters from the last season? That she kept them? That she keeps them close? Do you KNOW how much that pours into the intimacy between the two of them? Just imagine it

"What are you doing?" "I should think it to be obvious." "Why read them, now?" ". . .because I miss you."

Imagine the parallels. Imagine her delivering 'I miss you' the same way he delivered it. Imagine how conflicted that would make him, pleased and in love but aching and sad all at once. The angst. The romance. The romangst. Think about all we could have!!!

[tae-shimura-is-my-wife]

Saying that Ichiruki doesn't parallel Isshin and Masaki is kinda funny because it's the opposite! Kubo copied himself the Ichiruki moments from the first two arcs and decided to put into Ichigo's parents relationship, he decided himself to use Ichigo and Rukia panels to make Isshin and Masaki romantic 🤷‍♀️

[asukiess]

I want Adrien and Marinette to break up but it’s while his head is on her chest, counting her inhales and exhales until she’s nearly asleep, and then he asks her if she thinks they’ll be together for a long time. You ask that a lot, and Adrien wants to shy away but Marinette never lets him. He’s just thinking of Emilie who left one day without a trace.

Again, over coffee at his place on a Saturday morning and he swallows a croissant and a “you would tell me if I upset you, right?” but there’s enough crumbs for her to pick up off his plate and she takes his hand and says yes, always, you can trust me. He’s just thinking of his father, who never did. I wouldn’t ever want to hurt you and he’s surprised at her teary-eyed of course, I know.

But she gets this look on her face sometimes when he talks about his father, his mother, his rings, a feeling that hasn’t left him, and he thinks he must be hurting her, must be making her uncomfortable. It’s not that he wants to break up, but he wishes he was better at all of this, better at being him, and there’s a longing to leave himself somehow.

They don’t break up but Adrien wonders still when it might happen because things that love you usually don’t stay forever.