the amount of fanfic potential with mary's funeral is-

"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.

Well, I guess you didn't have much of a choice either

hurt my heart why dontcha.

Not to be all "I have a degree and I know more than you" but it really bothers me how the people on tumblr who are against the word transandrophobia being coined talk about feminism because they're all just like. So wrong. It's like half the time they're doing 1970s radical feminism and half the time they're just making shit up. Like jfc read a book watch a YouTube video feminism isn't what it's your heart it refers to several theories you have to LEARN ABOUT if you've never read or listened to anything about feminism then this is what you get. People who think the patriarchy doesn't harm men, and people who think "system of oppression" just means "people in power doing things to people without power" etc. Like words have meanings. You have to learn those meanings. You aren't engaging with feminist theory, you're just making shit up. If you don't know what Foucaultian discourse is, which is part of THE basic theories of contemporary feminism, if you don't know what performativity is (no, it's not performance), then you need to learn those before you engage with the theories. Like, fuck, man, I totally get being too tired from work or too disabled or whatever to engage with learning theory, but if that's the case then you should just say "I don't know much about the theory" instead of "I know that 'intersectionality' means people have more than 1 marginalised identity because my heart says it's true". Like, we aren't just saying random shit here, established theories arise from meaningful conversation and engagement with philosophy, lived experience, and research. You can at least put a video about feminism on in the background while you fucking video game.

Some interesting similarities between the forms of Falling Devil and Darkness Devil.

There’s the use of multiple bodies to create a singular form, the angular shapes, the mantis-leg-like appendages, the sheer height.

These two also share very strong hand motifs, which makes sense for both of them: when it’s dark, you have to feel your way around, usually with your hands; when you’re falling, you try to grab onto something with your hands.

I’m curious to see if the other Primals look anything like these two.

councilor 3D model

i learnt 3d modelling from the ground up to bring him to life. he's yours now. do whatever you want with him

[link]

please credit me if you make something using the model (or even ping/link me to it, i would love to see what you made!)

currently available as a .blend, .fbx and an SFM port.

Barnaby from last stream! he's. Yeah <3

percy repeating that he can be good over and over again to himself while covered in the blood after an overwhelming unleash of volatile rage that destroyed all that threatened his loved ones while grover holds his face and steadily grounds him back to reality

("i'm safe, we're safe, it's safe, just breathe")

first kiss aftermath!

Dcxdp idea: Ra’s try’s to offer a 6y/o Damian to Danny in exchange for immortality and Danny is just like:

“um, no? I’m the ghost king? Why would I give out immortality? Also this is a fucking child!”

So ra’s gets told to fuck himself and Danny takes Damian anyway as his child.

Sam and Tucker don’t question why he has a random child now, they just go with it because why not. He’s done weirder.

Years later Bruce finds out about his son and is in a costody battle with the fucking ghost king, a plant goddess and a pharaoh.

Or, alternatively: co-parenting.

Rahul Kohli + meeting Hayden Christensen

if i see one more person try to claim aziraphale doesn’t love crowley as much as crowley loves aziraphale i will throw hands.

say it with me: just because they show & express their love for each other differently doesn’t mean one of them loves the other more

like the important thing you must keep in mind about ten when you see him do literally anything is that he's soooooooooo so so so bad at actually isolating himself from other people. so TERMINALLY bad at it. he thinks to himself "i don't need human connection because everything i do causes pain and destruction to those around me :(" but then he experiences a crumb of human connection and his heart starts to spill out of his chest

Something about the fact that these shots are all grouped together, one after another, visually giving them equal weight just gets me. The narrative knows what's going to happen between JGY and Huaisang at this point, knows how it's going to treat JGY at the end of everything. And it still takes time to show Meng Yao instinctively and immediately going in front of Huaisang and Huaisang instinctively and immediately hiding behind him. It takes the time--literally, showed it in the background and focused on it with the same general amount of time as the other shots--to show that this act of protection and trust are just as real and true as Jiang Cheng defending his sister, as Wen Qing defending her younger brother.

Like, I dunno! There are other Nie juniors there! They have swords and shit! Huaisang could have gone and hid behind the wall, but he hid behind Meng Yao! And Meng Yao could have moved back with Huaisang, but he steps directly in front of him!

There's a lot CQL did to JGY's character and narrative that I don't like and that flatten or just straight up erase his full complexity. But I really appreciate the lengths that it went to in Episode 4 to explicitly tell us that he does not hesitate to protect Huaisang, even though at this point he does not have a sword and definitely does not have anywhere near the same cultivation power (if any) as any of the rest of the people in the room.

Right now, after being publicly humiliated, unarmed and definitely outclassed, he is brave. Along with the rest of the characters, he's allowed to be uncomplicatedly young and loyal and just as innocent as any of the other students there.

ok everybody saying dan fucks is conrad’s dad you do you but for ME personally the fix will always be conrad’s dad because dan gives cool uncle vibes 1000000% percent more than the fix ever will. but we will both live our truth and we will both be happy 🤝