(note: if you require alt-text, please view here at archive of our own where full alt text has been added to every section of this comic page hungry love page 01 )

Page 01 of the "Hungry Love" comic version finally finished! I was debating posting it now or waiting until it was finished, but it's probably better to post the pages as they are complete instead of waiting however long it takes to make them all... once it hits the point where things get too spicy for Tumblr I'll post previews here and link off-site to the uncensored full pages (likely to AO3) like I do with fic.

Anyway, hope y'all enjoy!

Falin?

(fanart for @mini-minish's paranormal au)

Uhhuhm. May I suggest: Roleswap au?

"How would we go about defeating a demon?"

"Any flesh that has been eaten and digested by other living things loses any of its individual identity. In this dungeon, where the line between life and death has been blurred... that seems to me to be the only clear and obvious rule."

what if you 🫵 wanted to take a nap 💤 but god said ☝️ asl dunmeshi au 💥

random cars au I made in a drawpile... ppl rlly liked the designs so I just kept doodling them LKSDFKJS

in order from left to right, top to bottom: marcille, laios, normal falin, mithrun, chimera falin

Thinking about a beast Laios AU, full ramblings under the cut.

I just love Laios's beast design and couldn't stop thinking about it which lead to this.

In this AU after Falin is eaten no one follows Laios back down into the dungeon so he goes alone. Not meeting Senshi or having the support of the party he barely makes it through, eating monsters just to get calories without Senshi there to show him the joys of cooking/eating.

In the end he defeats the red dragon but without Marcille there he's left bleeding out alone. And even if he wasn't injured, without Senshi's knife he wouldn't be able to cut out Falin or bring her back.

Now when Thistle arrives and re-makes the dragon Laios isn't enough dragon to become a chimera like Falin did, but with his blood mixing with the beast and the amount of raw dungeon he's eaten he ends up as a half monster.

Soon reports of this new creature on the lower levels make it back up to the surface and to Karbu. Who is surprised to hear what's come of the Touden siblings, nervous about what this means for the dungeon he goes to investigate. Karbu seeks out the old party members to get intel and when Chilchuck and Marcille hear what's happen they join too.

Along the way they meet Senshi, and the gang finds Laios in the deep levels still looking for his sister.

(I know for this to work it means a) Laios ends up being a little OP to make it that far without the party and b) characters are a little OOC like Marcille not going in with him after Falin.

In the end this is just a reason for me to draw beast Laios and have fun so don't take it to seriously. )

Dunmeshi Daemon AU thoughts BECAUSE I CAN

Laios: She isn’t actually settled, though they both pretend that she is. They never stopped enjoying the flexibility of her being able to change, but during Laios’ time in the military it became clear that it just gave people another excuse to bully him, so she “settled” as a white wolf.

Before the events of the story, only Falin knows that she still changes. Kabru, however, suspects. The rest of the party finds out not long after they set out to save Falin.

After Laios becomes king, she mainly stays in the form of either a lion, a hawk, or the white wolf.

Marcille: Neither Marcille nor her parents had any idea when he would settle, which was frustrating for her, and especially hard when her dad died before it happened.

He eventually settled into a nightingale, not long after she finished Ambrosia, much to her delight. She thought it was all very romantic and grand, even if he does like to mess up her hair.

He doesn’t sing much after the events of the story, but she still tells him he is quite noble and lovely.

Mithrun: Absolutely does not have one. They got ate. Before the dungeon, they were a dove.

Thistle: He took the form of a colorful songbird once Thistle started learning to play music, and would often accompany him. Sometime during Thistle’s thousand years as lord of the dungeon, he separated from Thistle. He wandered the dungeon, spending a lot of time around the town where the people of the Golden Kingdom live. They recognized him, even long after Thistle stopped visiting.

Sometimes he would report to Thistle. Sometimes they would go years without seeing each other.

He wasn’t there for the fight with Laios’ party. Yaad thinks he saw him briefly when Thistle woke up on the surface, but he’s not sure.

Kabru: He desperately wanted her to settle as a bird (which are quite popular with elves and also good at eavesdropping) (yes, the bird imagery of the canaries is very much Part Of Elf Culture in this AU). However, she is a bengal fox. Ah, well. It’s nice to have a piece of his home stuff with him. And she does give very good snuggles.

Falin: FALIN’S IS HARD… I think she might change after the chimera.

I like a beetle for her pre-resurrection. Maybe a ladybug? Or a jewel beetle, if a ladybug is too small.

After the story, she changes to a dragonfly. Everyone (expect Chilchuck) tries very hard not to make the obvious joke there. Chilchuck just makes the joke.

Chilchuck: With his canon weight management, Chilchuck is practical-minded enough to have his job influence his daemon’s form. I think she would be a rat or mouse - something small that can help him with traps, and can fit places where he can’t.

A lot of half-foot adventurers end up with rodent daemons, actually, due to the nature of their usual work. This can be the subject of mockery from the same kinds of people who are happy to use a half-foot as monster bait (or worse). Because of this, Chilchuck doesn’t mind disparaging comments about her - they help him know who is and isn’t trustworthy. However, privately, he’s quite defensive of her.

Senshi: Though she wasn’t technically settled when he went into the dungeon with his mining group, she spent most of her time as something nocturnal and practical for their work. Maybe a badger.

By the time he finally made his way out, she had settled as a tortoise. Though he loves her, the tortoise form is harder to work around sometimes - she’s slow and she takes up a lot of space, and caring for a cold-blooded creature in the dungeon isn’t always easy.

It’s not until after he meets the party, when Laios remarks offhandedly that some tortoises can survive for months without food, that Senshi fully understands why she settled on that form.

Izutsumi: she doesn’t have a daemon. Throughout childhood, this only added to her fears about not being ‘really human,’ and exacerbated her feeling separate and Wrong.

During the encounter with the succubi, she realizes the truth - she is bound to her daemon. That’s where her beast form comes from.

Due to being bound together at a young age, they are unable to change form, and stuck as their favorite form to take at the time - a cat.

[metaphor for trauma forcing children to grow up far before they should too on the nose? No? Cool]

....God, now my brain is trying to spit out a DunMeshi Hollywood AU...

Laios is a former child actor whose career trajectory most closely resembles that of Macaulay Caulkin. His dad was his manager, and this went about as well as you'd expect. Laios dropped out of public life for a long, long time in his late teens- people say he was in rehab, though whether that's true is best left as an exercise for the reader- and, as an adult, his acting credits mostly consist of cameos as "Serial Killer" or "Drug Dealer 3" on crime shows. He's trying to become a director and keeps working on incredibly offputting Z-grade horror flicks that can't get seed money. on account of. well. laios. His friends are always welcome to take a role- as cast or crew- if they need something between gigs.

Falin is also a former child actor. Unlike Laios, she managed to get out of the biz with her sanity intact- she got accepted to a very prestigious STEM magnet high school, which is where she met Marcille, and went to med school after. She's wound up working as the set doctor for a couple movies you've heard of and a lot of movies you haven't; she's also been "the Chimera", a monster in several of Laios' horror flicks.

Marcille is in pyrotechnics. She seems mild mannered at first, but then you catch her on set up to her elbows in gasoline... well. She spends more time in the medical tent than anyone would like, especially Falin. She's got a YouTube channel as a side hustle where she blows things up in parking lots and freaks out at bad Italian cooking.

Speaking of, Marcille went to high school with Falin and fell for her pretty much instantly. They recently moved in together and are trying to navigate living together for the first time. It's not going as well as either of them would like, but they're getting there.

Senshi works catering. Was there ***any*** doubt about that? Everyone's excited to work on the same set as Senshi, because the food is actually good, regardless of whether you're filming in Monterrey, Marrakesh, or Mentor, Ohio. Senshi's pretty quiet about his personal life, but he'll occasionally whip out his phone and show off pictures of his stunning, xeriscaped garden. He loves working with Laios, even though the pay isn't great, because Laios WILL let him put squid and dragonfruit on the menu.

Chilchuck is a stuntman, and the de facto union rep on most sets. He can tell you, to the second, when the next mandated break is, when the kid on set needs to be done for the day, and when it's time to go home. I headcanon human!AU Chilchuck is a little person, so his proudest career accomplishment to date is probably standing in for Peter Dinklage in a film where he got to be the leading man; he's real fucking sick of being a bootleg hobbit. Somehow, he manages to spend LESS time in the medical tent than Marcille.

Itsuzumi ... God. Her background is so specific and doesn't translate well. My gut instinct is that she's a cat-themed idol who came to the US to be ~☆ a movie star ☆~ and got stuck in a shitty, exploitative contract. I'd love it if someone who knows the character better could give suggestions, though!

==== Spoilers for Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi! ====

Ok, so, I randomly saw a post by @corvidonia about Falin!Hypnos.

So, I thought to myself, y'know I just started watching too and this seems like a fun mini-project so I started it. Then I subsequently got way too into it and accidently made a whole rendered scene and au concept... welp! It's here now!

For this little crossover Au whatever you wanna call it I did this main drawing but also came up with a bit of background stuff.

In this Meg would be a tall-man paladin in a sort of Chilchuck situation where she's mostly here because it's her job (and bonus, Dusa's here) and she'd be a paladin. Paladin might be an odd choice (?) but I felt it made sense due to her dedication and none of the other martial classes really stuck out to me like paladin.

Zagreus would be the party's Laios of sorts and a fighter tall-man, I imagine that the reason why they went through all the trouble for Hypnos is 50% Zagreus being friends with him and 49% Than not wanting his brother dead and 1% pity. I don't know if there would still be the culinary focus in this Au, probably not, so maybe instead it'd be more about just general monster knowledge. Like Zag and the gang filling out the codex?

Dusa would be a Half-foot, probably the farthest from their Dungeon Meshi inspo character, Senshi, only really sharing the fact that they came into the party late. I imagine that she's kind of in an "I'm the only monster around that has any sentience or emotion??" type situation though I don't really have a worked out reason why. She's also friends with Meg prior to joining and comes because of her.

I translated Thanatos and Hypnos' godhood into having a particular magical ability as elves, so they're elf twins. Than being a sorcerer rouge mostly for the vibes but also because sorcerer powers are innate to their being. Instead of a wand/staff I think he'd just use his scythe as a casting focus. I figure he'd be sort of like a mix of Chilchuck and Marcille, not bound to the party by a job but still kind of obligated to help Hypnos since they're family and all. I don't think he'd be thrilled about having to risk his life to save Hypnos from another screw up though, but he would and I do think he'd be relieved to have him back after the ordeal. (does Falin ever actually 100% come back? I've only watched the anime so idk actually, I like to think Hypnos would here though because I like my happy endings)

Hypnos is obviously the sort of Falin stand-in, but in a very different way I think. I do think he'd be a sort of magic prodigy like Falin but in more of an intuitive way compared to Than/Marcille's book smarts. I definitely think that the connection to the strange would remain but instead of ghosts it'd be personified dreams in the form of something like the Oneiroi. In this Au the starting incident with the monster would be the same but it'd probably be some sort of big bird/sheep to explain the bird/sheep design I went with for the Chimera design and it'd be Than in place of Laios. I also think that he'd be a cleric type situation like Falin sort of is, I like to think he'd excel at healing magic. I do kind of like the idea of Hypnos not being really encouraged to partake in adventuring due to his lack of physical ability but he'd go against that to spend time with Than and try to look out for him. As for Chimeros (As I've been calling it) I think it'd be accompanied by fog from Lethe rather than the harpies in the original and it'd have a similarly blank personality like Faligon (which'd be especially off-putting from him). Added angst potential, I figure his powerset would be very different from Faligon's and revolve around putting everyone to sleep (go figure) and memory erasure, so maybe the main party wouldn't even remember their first encounter with them?

I do actually have ideas for the remaining party, I'll keep it to one bullet though. I think Achille's would be a paladin/fighter or something like that and would be similar to Namari as a weapons expert, probably leaving for a different reason though maybe to join Pat's party? I don't have a particular idea for Shuro's stand-in, maybe switch the Shuro Falin romance thing to Charon Hypnos brotherhood thing and it could work? Idk though.

I did also make a full design for Hypnos as an elf/not Chimeros and here that is. The staff is inspired by actual myth where Hypnos sometimes has a wand dipped in Lethe to induce sleep.

Ramble over!! Congrats if you were able to push through my incessant yapping to actually get here. First Tumblr post btw, who would've thunk it'd be for this. If anyone is interested in using these designs or ideas for art/writing feel free, I'm probably not going to do anything else with this idea but if you want to I'd be very interested in seeing/hearing it! Also, really sorry if this isn't properly spoilered?? I'm not exactly sure what the proper spoiler etiquette is so I tried.

Dungeon Meshi AU but it's basically Legend of Zelda -tears of the kingdom. Laios is trying to save his sister but he keeps following the side quests too much and too busy cooking up monsters. Falin is sent back in time to the Golden kingdom when the mad mage (I'm sorry I forgot his name) first desires for the people to live forever. She doesn't really turn into a chimera per say it's that her ancient dragon form has feather and red scales.

Like the Lion is basically Ganon, but also gave Laios a monster arm too. It makes sense cause he was trying to win him over/ manipulate him to "rule" over the kingdom (basically as a puppet for the lion).

It doesn't end like that of course and the two fight it out.

Some other random titbit

Kensuke is the master sword.

His friends could be his allies in battle.

The races are changed to reflect the ones in the series (like elves, dwarfs ect but still hold certain attributes of the original villagers)

Laios doesn't ride horses, he uses dire wolves for travel.

Laios makes the weirdest builds.

i'm probably putting way more thought into this than i need to but, alas, i am a character designer at heart. There's a variety of inconsistencies in the various designs of Laios' dumb ass Ultimate Monster so I just kind of took a lot of artistic liberties with how that would translate in some ways to Chim!Laios being half dumbass chimera monster.

Chimera!Laios AU design ref sheet Work in Progress. Lovely wide boy, soft and ready for huggin'. Perfect size for being a pillow for Kabru.

FINAL RESULTS ARE IN:

This showrunner's challenge will see me writing a 20k word Dungeon Meshi Mafia AU where Farcille are Fake Dating and Magic Is Still Real! The linked post explains a bit more about the challenge.

So basically, on Monday the 6th, I'll start writing the actual fic as though I'm a showrunner. Over the next few days (and all throughout the challenge tbh), I'll be taking anons with random challenges that will change How I write the fic, ie what you see in the below poll:

Every 2k words, I'll use one of those anons to affect the production of the fic which I then have to write around. No Matter The Consequences...

thinking about reverse dungeon meshi au in which laios was the one eaten instead of falin (from this thought provoking reddit thread). shuro would probably stay at falin's request and they might get his retainers, but probably no senshi. they'll brute force through the dungeon with the power of shuro's money and purchased food. i think marcille would probably resurrect laios because of falin and thistle shows up and woooo everything turns to shit. chimera laios would be so much more terrifying than chimera falin.

and i think this is when it truly diverges from canon because laios' monster knowledge and senshi's culinary skills are critical for their survival especially if they get attacked by chimera laios and lose supplies. shuro might be horrified by the ancient magic and leave and it depends on how much he still loves falin. marcille might still become lord and tbh it would be fun if chimera laios is under her control and she's like falinnnn i'll bring him back for you and falin's like nooo not like this and breaks her free from evil.

anyways love how dunmeshi characters are that way in order to convey the core themes of the plot <3

*AU where Laios and Falin swap roles*

Thistle: Hey dragon. That form must be inconvenient for you. I’ll provide you with a new one *turns him into the chimera*

Laios, well known and world renowned monster enthusiast:

ive thought a little more about devils nest dungeon meshi au (demons nest?) and here is the idea i was bouncing around in my head. id love for some kind of lore compliance check because i havent really gone back over the manga since i finished it, or sought out any kind of supplemental material, and i like the challenge of fitting these kinds of things into the boundaries of the source (once again DUNGEON MESHI SPOILERS. for people who havent read the manga at all)

so you have this demon (in a dungeon) (granting desires and eating them) (getting stronger) (hoping someday he can get out of the dungeon). and hes been in there a while and boy does he love watching humans get their greatest wishes granted, but the part where they gradually go mad with power or get disenchanted with the results and also he has to eat their desires anyway eventually kind of blows. he wishes he could only have the good part where he gets to make people happy forever is that too much to ask. maybe when he gets out of the dungeon he can do something about that. love to get out of the dungeon

anyway fast forward a while and this guy comes in. some teenage prince from a tallman country thats wracked with internal conflict and what HE wants is to become immortal, because that way when he takes the throne his reign will be eternal and the different clans will stop fighting over the right of succession. thats so specific. the demon loves it. he can just give him a peaceful united empire here, in the dungeon, which he can rule eternally-- no he wants the one at home. well. the problem with that is that the demon is here, in the dungeon, and not out there.

HELP WANTED NOTICE: i dont remember what the exact plan was vis a vis the winged lion getting up to the surface in the manga and i know it Had to be simpler than "just walk out of there" because why would it have had to steal laios' body about it. WOULD a sufficiently dedicated dungeon lord be able to get back up to the surface with their respective demon in tow.

ADDITIONAL HELP WANTED NOTICE: if a demon WAS freed from the dungeon without being powerful enough to get out under its own strength, how much magic would it be able to perform out there? would it be able to make somebody immortal without the big magic-insulation box. i feel like this changes a lot if greed Can grant ling immortality vs if now that hes out of the dungeon he cant really do shit.

either way now that hes out he does not technically need to eat this kids desires specifically anymore. if the immortality thing is a bust, maybe hes shaken by the experience of not being able to fulfill somebodys wish for the first time. but HIS wish has been fulfilled instead? complicated! maybe ling drags him back to his kingdom to help him gain the throne, or maybe he gets mad and leaves and greed never finds out what happens to him, but whatever goes down it changes his worldview and hes starting to develop a sense of personhood separate from the rest of the Demon Conglomerate, and also desires that are unique to Him

but he still wants to help people realize their own desires and maybe thats even strengthened by the fact that now he personally knows how much it owns (funny) to want something so bad and finally get it. so im thinking eventually he goes back to his old dungeon, now way smaller, and he sets up shop, and just waits for people to come by so he can help them in a less exploitative way. like he graduates from Addiction Metaphor to Healthy Coping Mechanism Metaphor. and the chimeras all find their way there eventually and he wins their trust one at a time until they are forced to admit this weird overly genuine dungeon guy kind of rules. his personality is laios basically he has the exact same type of autistic swag

but. if the elves heard about a demon who was just fucking going up to people floor 1 like hi im a demon welcome to my dungeon. they would shit bricks. so the raid also has to happen at some point. and i Am putting ling in there albeit as backstory so im open to suggestions as to how the rest of the cast of fma can fit into this (father and the homunculi as other more typical demons obviously) (no clue about anybody else) (come and play toys with me)