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#my brain is doing things
aarafox · 11 months
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On Stolitz, Desire and Misunderstandings
I’ve thought about them so much for the past few days that I just have to put my thoughts somewhere. This might be far from structured/coherent but contains everything that has been running around in my brain lately. Feel free to interact with me about this because they’re driving me insane (in a positive way).
Quick disclaimer: I’ve watched everything in nearly one sitting a few days ago and am new to the fandom, so I might be unaware of commonly known info or things the creators have said or confirmed. If you come across any of my questions that have been answered already, please forgive me for not knowing and feel free to enlighten me! Let’s begin~
 The main thing that got me thinking about this so much is Blitz’s line in ep 7 when he brings Stolas home after their failed date: “Don’t act like what we have is anything but you wanting me to fuck you, okay? You make that really clear, all the time.”
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But the thing is, he is wrong. We as the viewer know this, how Stolas chokes on his food when he sees that Blitzy calls, how he lunges to pick up the phone and how his eyes turn into little hearts when he hears the question. If anything, Stolas is smitten with Blitz.
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He even calls Gabriella a “mood” when she asks Alejandro why he won’t love her. It’s indisputable that he’s thinking about Blitz here.
And how much he actually likes Blitz becomes even more clear to us at the start of season 2, when they’re kids. Stolas falls in love at first sight and blushes several times.
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And then, 25 years later, he is delighted to meet Blitz again. After the initial (joking?) assumption that Blitz has come here to “ravish him”, he tries to make gentle conversation and asks him how he’s been. Blitz is the one who decides to initiate sexual relations—that is, he pretends to start it, and decides to keep it up when he hears Stolas chirp about how happy he is that it’s his “first ever friend” who wants to do him. But Stolas, before this, was surprised by Blitz’s advances and unsure how to react. Stolas, if anything, has to believe that Blitz is very sexually attracted to him.
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That is why Blitz’s line in episode 7 fascinates me this much; one would think the reverse of what he says is true. Stolas has no reason whatsoever to believe that Blitz ever wanted more from him than sex/the grimoire, especially with how their relations began. So it strikes me that apparently, to Blitz, it hurts him to think that Stolas wants nothing else from him. He even begins to cry there in the van as he begins to reject the prince.
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See the tears in his eyes? Why is that? Is he embarrassed? Angry? Does he feel guilty for putting Stolas in a “disgraceful” picture? Is he thinking about entirely different things that happened to him in the past?
And Stolas cries when Blitz is gone, because, well, he does think of Blitz as more than a sex friend. He was so excited to be asked out by him, he made himself look pretty, tried his best to make conversation with him, thought Blitz was actually taking him on their first date ever! He thought Blitz had called him out because he wanted to spend time with him, so he did his best to make the date a success, but all he received from Blitz was, well, nothing… He even tried to end the night on a more positive note by asking Blitz to come inside for something other than sex, perhaps to drink some wine and talk about what happened (or watch a movie, or cuddle 🥺). But when he hears that his sentiment of just wanting to spend time together has never come across—not now, not ever before—and Blitz actually believes Stolas just wants to frolic, that’s when Stolas leaves it for what it is and ends up crying.
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(God I feel so bad for him, my heart)
And he spends a LONG time trying to show Blitz, via his texts, that sex is not the only thing that he’s after.
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But he only gets one-word responses from Blitz. Nothing, literally nothing to keep going on. It’s no wonder he loses faith in that whatever they had could ever be anything more. And Blitz probably has commitment issues or is afraid of things not working out and he ends up keeping Stolas at a distance—until it’s too late.
And it just kills me that he does care about Stolas but somehow won’t admit it, won’t show it. And yet he sounds so hurt there in that van, when he accuses Stolas of merely wanting to be his sex friend. And he actually cries. For that reason, and for many other reasons not all clearly laid out for us.
Meanwhile Stolas has been crushing on him for 25 years. It’s only natural for him to propose the deal they made: he wants Blitz to be close to him (and he assumes Blitz enjoyed sex with him that first time, since he slept there for the entire night while at first only claiming he could do it “real fast”) and Blitz wants his grimoire. This is the perfect way for Stolas to get Blitz to be with him, because, frankly, he doesn’t have many other reasons to meet up with him. So they make this deal: Stolas gets to be together with him for once a month, and Blitz gets the grimoire. Perfect right?
Except when Stolas discovers that Blitz doesn’t even begin to know how much Stolas actually cares. That’s why he keeps sending those long texts, he tries so hard to let Blitz know they could be doing anything else and he’d love that too. That night after the date he already begins with those attempts, by telling him he enjoyed spending time with Blitz and suggesting things to do inside which Blitz misunderstands for him trying to get him into his bed.
But damn, if that was all Stolas was after, he wouldn’t get so depressed that he’d drink until passing out. He is heartbroken. And somehow, for some reason, so is Blitz. The first thing he does when he gets home is opening his phone to a selfie he took of them while Stolas was asleep.
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And others have pointed this out as well, but Stolas doesn’t know about this picture and that Blitz smiled while he took it. On all the pictures Stolas has of Blitz, Blitz looks like he’s not enjoying himself at all.
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So what must he think when he sends Blitz his reply that he could be in the hospital for a while in case he wants to visit, and Blitz doesn’t answer?
Well, that Blitz doesn’t want to come. That he doesn’t care enough.
Indeed, if there’s anyone who hasn’t been showing his true feelings or intentions, it’s Blitz. Stolas compliments him, calls him darling and “his” Blitzy, makes himself pretty for their date, and (for instance in ep 2 of season 2) blushes big time multiple times.
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He’s had it bad for Blitz for ages, but he (correctly? incorrectly?) concludes that this is not mutual. And he has every reason to think so! Blitz treats their sexy adventures as a business transaction, is all serious and stoic to Stolas about it except for the rare occasion where he does show how much he likes it, like after Stolas rescues him from the demon hunters and he grins and seduces Stolas before kissing him.
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But the times when Blitz talks about them to others? Those are moments Stolas doesn’t know about and doesn’t get to see, like when Blitz talks to Striker and stutters like mad trying to explain what they are and aren’t. He never outright says that they’re not dating. He doesn’t even deny Millie’s words when she says they’re boyfriends.
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(M&M totally know I’m wheezing)
It just drives me insane how Blitz isn’t honest with his feelings, especially towards Stolas. He probably chooses to believe that Stolas only wants to have sex with him, because that’s more convenient and safer for him, and enables him to keep Stolas at a distance.
Perhaps that is why he never properly responds to Stolas’s texts, never jumps to the opportunity to agree to Stolas’s indirectly asked questions or suggestions. Getting closer might be a bad idea somehow—but after those texts he has to understand what the prince’s intentions are, right? They just don’t talk about it at all; we also aren’t told whether they still do it or not, or just exchange the book like Stolas’s texts suggest. This is striking compared to season 1, where we got scenes of them in bed or talking about their next meet up.
It isn’t until Stolas’s life is in actual danger when Blitz begins to realise how much he cares.
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“He can get hurt?” His eyes are trembling with disbelief. After that he finally sends Stolas a text first, and then begins typing again, and stops. I imagine he started typing a yes, but stops himself for some reason. I really hope they’ll show us what Blitz was thinking in that moment. Why would he not go to see Stolas? Because he feels guilty? Because he’s afraid he’ll start caring even more when he sees him wounded in that bed?
But again, for Stolas this just means that he doesn’t care, and the poor owl curls up and turns away from his phone.
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boppinbee · 1 month
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Crowley and Muriel next season
except for it’s the same dynamic as Eda and Luz
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constellama · 9 months
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Going absolutely insane over Ronan “Never Lies” Lynch and Kaz “Built on Lies” Brekker
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oakywriter · 3 months
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Me, 20k deep into my current WIP: this is going so well!
My brain: but 👀 what if 👀 there was an archeologist who's tent and supplies got washed away in a flood and he now has to share a tent with one of the big strapping diggers and *gasp* there was only one sleeping bag
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crow-feath3rs · 2 years
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this new hermitcraft season is making my little dnd brain do backflips
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doctor-fishbones · 2 years
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Spike is everything Angel tries to hide and vice versa
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eastgaysian · 8 months
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suiheisen · 5 months
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fascinated/horrified by this set of tweets…
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legionofpotatoes · 2 months
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Lead them to paradise.
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glorious-spoon · 8 months
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i'm very picky about tv shows, but my pickiness has only an incidental relationship to whether or not a show is "good". it needs to scratch a particular itch in my brain at the right moment. do i know what the right moment is? no. do i know what the itch is? also no. i can be relied upon to get instantly bored of 85% of tv shows and then turn the remaining 15% into a central facet of my personality for 3-5 business months and even i am incapable of predicting which one it'll be ahead of time.
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tsukiqumi · 6 months
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I swear to god I don't want him I sw
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imagine: you get your memories back after years of amnesia to find out your whole species is dead and earth doesn’t exist anymore. that the only thing left of your culture is your weird ex and his busted honda civic that barely even works that he stole from the government when he was 13. And he’s been taking members of an alien species for trips in his honda civic and they’re all like “woah it’s so cool” and you get upset because it’s NOT COOL it’s a honda civic, the turn signals don’t even work “wow it can go up hills” yeah OF COURSE IT CAN GO UP HILLS EVERY CAR COULD DO THAT. but they’ve never seen a car before so everything it does is the coolest thing ever. And your ex’s only tool is a fucking screwdriver which is somehow also cool to this dumbass alien species even though it’s a fucking screwdriver so you just look like an idiot screaming about how none of this is even cool it’s actually really shitty but your whole planet is gone so you can’t even prove it but also you’ve had a constant drumming sounding in your head since you were 10 slowly driving you insane. I would become evil too.
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shadowtraveled · 1 month
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"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.
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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…
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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artrealla · 1 month
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lazylittledragon · 2 months
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so how about that durge
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messrsbyler · 1 year
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you. yes you, person with rejection sensitive dysphoria. this message is for you. your friends DON'T hate you. they aren't mad at you. they aren't talking behind your back or wished to cut their friendship with you. they love you and treasure you and they are good people who wouldn't hurt you like that! ok, that's all. have a nice day.
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