#heartless spoilers

[4tarosho]

chapters 36-38 of heartless

[patchworkofravens]

The thing is I knew MONTHS beforehand that the He dies I knew and yet

[theworldoffandoming]

I just finished reading Marissa Meyer's Heartless and I'm devastated. 😭😭😭😭 It was so good but so very, very sad, ugh.

[torpublishinggroup]

Murderbot is MurderBACK in the next installment of Martha Wells’s NYT bestselling Murderbot Diaries series System Collapse 🤖🚀

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Following the events of Network Effect, our favorite lethally cybernetic television fiend has done the previously unthinkable: agreed to accompany the sentient spaceship Perihelion (dubbed ART by Murderbot, short for Asshole Research Transport) and crew on its next mission. 

Unfortunately, they’re not going to get too far. 

Having failed to harvest dangerous artifacts from their target planet by way of Murderbot misadventure, the Barish-Estranza corporation is much angered and determined to recoup their considerable losses. And when you’re a lethally opportunistic space corp, blood and muscle are valuable currency. 

Murderbot, ART’s crew, and the Preservation humans have planetside work to do as Barish-Estranza seeks to claim the planet’s beleaguered colony as a conscripted workforce. 

But for Murderbot, the challenge is as internal as it is external. Something is deeply, deeply wrong with it. Normal operational parameters are unmet, but with the corp’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams en route, Murderbot needs to resolve its issues, and fast!

[why-i-love-comics]

Nightwing #114 - "Fallen Grayson" (2024)

written by Tom Taylor art by Bruno Redondo & Adriano Lucas

[bellara]

final fantasy vii rebirth ch. 14 — end of the world

[scarrletmoon]

you know if the writers actually didn’t care about izzy, they wouldn’t have had him talk to ricky and they would’ve shot him in the head without any chance to say his final words

but i guess if you think izzy is as, or more, important as the main characters despite all evidence to the contrary, this won’t make sense to you

he got more screen time in s2 not bc he was becoming a major character but bc he was getting a send off. the signs were there from the beginning. if you feel blindsided, it’s because you watched the show assuming izzy was going to be something more than a narrative foil and antagonist designed to be a source of conflict between the actual main characters

you can still love a narrative device like izzy, but he was never going to be more than that. sorry.

i should stop trying to explain this anyway because i’m talking to a comparatively small part of the fandom. they’re just loud. and at the end of the day, our love for the show should be louder

[lampochkaart]

You know, I think Maki actually does feel guilty about Kokichi's death.

Yes, by Ch.5 she absolutely hated him, but it was understandable. He declared himself the mastermind — person who supposedly kidnapped and forced everyone to kill each other. He took Kaito — the most important person for Maki in this game — hostage. He mocked Gonta after his death. He told everyone that he enjoyed their suffering, laughing like madman. Throughout all the game, he accused and insulted Maki of being an assassin. And finally, the last straw was the fake memories that he also helped Junko start wars and cause destruction. This all led to her snapping and trying to kill him.

And Maki never enjoyed killing. She was forced to become an assassin and only stayed for the safety and wellbeing of children in the orphanage she grew up in. She really wanted to prove to the group that she could be trusted. She even told this to Kokichi after the 3rd trial.

Yes, at the end of the fifth trial she told Kaito that he shouldn't have agreed to Kokichi's plan and it would have been better for Ouma to just die. But at that moment she was desperate, hurt and scared that Kaito would be executed. Naturally she would be mad at Kokichi.

But in Chapter 6, she was the one who volunteered to search Kokichi's room to find any clues that could help end the game. If she didn't care at all, she would not have offered to search there. I think part of her also wanted to find some kind of confirmation that he really was an asshole who absolutely deserved to die. Or, on the contrary, confirmation that he really did try to help them. Just anything to form her own final opinion about him.

And also that moment during the Final Trial when Tsumugi, the real Mastermind, revealed that those memories that finally pushed her to try to kill him weren't real. Maki sounds shocked and horrified at that. Because those memories were the reason that pushed her to try to murder him. And if they were fake, that means she did all that for nothing. She broke her unspoken promise to Kaito, and that resulted in Momota and Ouma both dying. And all of it was because of a lie.

It feels to me that she does feel guilty for both Kaito's death and Kokichi's death, because it was her actions that partially led to everything ending that way. I think no matter how she feels about Kokichi, she regrets what she did.

[epickiya722]

Seeing Izuku not smiling this chapter makes sense and breaks my heart.

[beguilingcorpse]

alright not to get all kingdom hearts on your asses over here but i've had an alecto the ninth theory cooking for a while now. which is that the gideon that narrates the end of htn is almost entirely disconnected from the kiriona that we see in ntn.

obviously there are the distinct name and personality differences, but there's also the big implication that harrow took something from gideon via the lyctoral process - something she absorbed - that kiriona currently lacks. i've seen some people kick around the idea of this being kiriona's "heart" because of the chussy (and the romantic implications), and i think that's a good a thing to call it as any.

if you aren't familiar with kingdom hearts, there are two creatures that can come from the same person: a heartless, which is literally a person's corrupted or stolen heart, and a nobody, which is the body (still possessed by a soul) that a heartless leaves behind. nobodies are their own functioning person, but can go through physical and behavioral changes and are usually pretty emotionless or bitter.

i'm trying not to Kingdom Hearts Lore Dump, but this sounds a LOT like what's happening with our girl kiriona. and i'm just saying that there are a lot of parallels between gideon's heart being out of her body/with harrow, but kiriona continuing to "live" (heavy scare quotes) while maintaining most of her soul because of the lobotomy and stalling of the lyctoral process. i'm just SAYING that when you put it like that, it sounds an awful lot like kingdom hearts. I'M JUST SAYING

and do i have any direct evidence for this? not currently, no. but based on what i know about muir and her knowledge of early 00s fandom and pop culture, i'm more than willing to bet that a kingdom hearts reference would not be outside of her wheelhouse. weirder shit has been referenced in the locked tomb.

if i had to extrapolate further, this all seems to point to some kind of reunion of gideon's heart and kiriona's body. harrow and gideon('s body) are in the same place again for the first time in two books. it kind of seems to me that either gideon will get her heart back, or she really won't - i.e., gideon's heart is gone forever (absorbed too completely?) and kiriona must either continue to exist in a state of incomplete megadeadness or cease being. which creates its own separate set of problems that i'm personally choosing not to think about. we can burn that bridge when we get there.

[gorgynei]

kicking my feet. the raven queen telling her to leave with her son is an example of her fatal flaw being compassion. this person helped to make the factorum. letting her leave is letting the information about it leak, regardless of if she promises to never tell anyone. but the raven queen is offering her a chance to leave because she recognizes part of herself in there.

[clownjacket]

Spoilers for FHJY Episode 9 again:

Yes I am desperately clinging to the rat grinders being normal jackass teens and the dead god being an unnamed goddess/nightmare king situation more than an evil world destroying force, but what if WHAT IF part of the reason they’re trying to bring the god back is because of the trick it pulled with the anti-revive spell on Lucy’s ribs. Which must also be what stopped her from going to the afterlife of her Goddess. What IF the only way to break the anti-revive spell is to make the dead god’s name knowable to mortals again, which can only happen if the god is brought back. The god possessed Lucy, it didn’t work, so it possessed her friends to kill her and trap her ghost in purgatory with a curse, a curse that can only be broken if the god is brought back. Because the Ratgrinders ARE actually friends and DO want Lucy back, the god knew this would force their hand and make them bring it back. Arthur Augfort clearly has NO problem straight up murdering innocent good people and trapping them in hell for the sake of bringing students back (Gorgug), so The Ratgrinders are fully justified in believing they won’t get kicked out of school and still get good grades and escape jail even with the murders for Lucy if whatever god their reviving doesn’t destroy the world. And obviously this god being ‘brought back’ is tied to Cassandra being brought back, so of COURSE Kristen and The Bad Kids would be on their radar.

[gayfandomblog]

Aang is like “why are my friends dead 👶” and iroh is like well there are several schools of thought on this 🧐

[mishy-mashy]

Look at how Kudo fell once Yoichi died

Since he fell once Yoichi was shredded by the spatial Ability, it implies he was pulling him along really hard to get away. Once the object you're pulling breaks momentum, you usually fall over because of the displaced force, right?

Like when you pull on a rope and it snaps, so you fall over. Add in the sewer water they're wading through, with all the different motions from multiple people passing through and running, Kudo tripped up on both Yoichi's disappearance and on the heavy water

Well, the water is something I want to consider, but most of it goes toward Kudo pulling Yoichi who is. Suddenly Not There. And this makes him fall over from displaced force.

Bruce is tall, and we can see the water is almost as high as his knees. This is tall water, man. The water could've even stabilized Kudo's feet enough he could catch himself, but he still fell; man knew AFO was dangerous, what he did to Yoichi before, and Kudo wanted Yoichi to RUN

When Kudo fell, the only reason he didn't fall over onto his side was because Bruce happened to be there.

Bruce only noticed and turned around because Kudo happened to fall into his leg. That let Kudo at least sit up, and it's hidden by Kudo's body, but Bruce probably grabbed onto Kudo so he could get up

Look at how Bruce charged up Fa Jin immediately. While Kudo is in shock, Bruce is glaring. The way Bruce stands is different from when he was running earlier

Bruce was absolutely willing to fight AFO here. He realized Kudo fell, and put his foot forward with a charged Fa Jin, literally ready to protect Kudo and fight AFO if needed

(It's in his hand, so I assume that's his main way of using it, because the energy had to have charged beforehand; he had it ready to go. But the fact he charged it at all is what I'm focusing on here)

His foot is ahead of Kudo, he's looming over him to protect him, and his knees are bent to fight and grab onto Kudo; Bruce would've fought AFO for Kudo, even knowing he'd die.

Their first reactions to realizing the situation?

Kudo tears up. Bruce has a glare and is ready to fight.

They both registered the event differently. Kudo is first in shock, and immediately moved to tears, because the first thing he realizes is [Yoichi just died].

As for Bruce, the first thing he registers isn't that Yoichi is missing (he didn't see what Kudo saw; Kudo literally had Yoichi's blood splatter across his face, and Bruce just turns around after the fact), but [AFO is too close to us. This is dangerous.] and prepares to protect Kudo.

They both reacted accordingly to what they saw first. Kudo in shock, and Bruce ready to fight.

Bruce wasn't going to fight AFO until he realized Kudo was in danger when he fell over. He probably noticed Yoichi was missing and likely dead from all the flying blood, but he focused first on dealing with the situation.

Bruce knew Yoichi just died. But if they weren't careful, they'd be next. Kudo was almost next. Bruce didn't see the moment of Yoichi's death, but Kudo did; and Leader got stuck on that first.

***

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(Also, cutting this out because it's not good enough to make heads or tails of, but

I think Bruce's glare in the sewers is different from the glare he has later fighting AFO one-on-one and dying. My first assumption was it's because he knows Yoichi just died, and that's like enraging to him in the sewers

Although now I'm noticing Bruce is smiling in the second panel below and am now very curious about that. His eyes are just naturally sharp.

[honeylemonbutte]

I needed to draw young Joshua Wei & Jane Corvin (absolute need). I think from the time they were elementary school kids to age 15, they just constantly nerded out at each other.

They are assigning pokemon teams to the justice league! 😭😭😭

Joshua & J. Corvin from The Fernweh Saga (@lacunafiction)

[why-i-love-comics]

Nightwing #115 - "Fallen Grayson II" (2024)

written by Tom Taylor art by Bruno Redondo, Caio Filipe, & Adriano Lucas