Their first meeting was very brief 😔

Chosen of the Sun | | forest // ninety-five

END OF CHAPTER POLL | Vote for your favorite contestants, you may choose up to three. We’ve reached the end of chapter four. Since we’re well into the story now, please keep in mind, the results of this poll will have enormous impact on the story, so choose wisely. Entrants may vote for their own characters.  Vote now!

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HIGH PRIESTESS: Solana tells me the curse has been broken. How are you… feeling? KYRIE: I’m fine. What is this about? HIGH PRIESTESS: I told you afterwards we would find some way to proceed and I have done so. This is Elion Maharis. Formerly a member of the Elune Order. As of today, he’s been assigned to your personal guard. KYRIE: You’re hiring an assassin as my bodyguard? The irony is incredible. HIGH PRIESTESS: I hardly think anyone more suitable to protect you than someone with his skillset. KYRIE: I asked you not to do this. HIGH PRIESTESS: You asked for my trust. And then broke it. Again. That’s beside the point now. We must do this, for your safety. Please, Kyrie. Don’t fight me on this. KYRIE: Why do you keep saying “please”? You’ve never asked for my permission before. Why are you acting so strange? HIGH PRIESTESS: I— KYRIE: You know something, don’t you? This is about Al. Is she— HIGH PRIESTESS: Calm down. Alphanei is alive— KYRIE: Alive? How do you know? Have they found her? Where is she? HIGH PRIESTESS: Not here. I received a letter— KYRIE: A letter? From her? Can’t I read it— HIGH PRIESTESS: No! No. You need to focus on your duties, and improving your health. KYRIE: But why— HIGH PRIESTESS: Enough! You may go. Elion. ELION: Yes, My Lady. KYRIE: What an unfortunate change of pace for you. From special operations to babysitter. ELION: I’m more than happy with my position, Your Grace. Given you cooperate, the two of us could get on famously. KYRIE: I suppose that depends entirely on you. I don’t need Elora’s trained dog biting at my heels. ELION: I wouldn’t worry about that. Though, at the end of the day, it’s not really your choice, is it? You moon brats are a special breed of vulnerable. Though, you do have your... talents, don’t you, Your Grace? And even that has its drawbacks. I wonder, what will your darling mother think when she finds out you’ve been toying with the head cleric’s thoughts? KYRIE: How do you know about that? ELION: You’re my charge. It’s my job to know everything about you now. I could… intervene in that problem, if you’d like? Make it “go away”, so to speak. KYRIE: I’m not interested in violent solutions. ELION: Violence? Now, now. I’m a very diplomatic person. Don’t be quick to judge, my lord. KYRIE: And… what would you want in exchange for that service? ELION: I told you. Simply your cooperation. I’d appreciate you not making my job any harder than it need be. We’ll be spending a lot of time together from here on out. It’s best we build some trust, no? KYRIE: I suppose we should. ELION: Excellent. Then, by all means, lead the way, Your Grace. Consider me but a shadow. KYRIE: I doubt I’ll get used to that. ELION: Everything in due time, Dear Moon.

The chokehold this idea has in my head

It is done

It is finished

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.

Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.

Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.

Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.

I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.

He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).

First, we get this:

Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.

They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.

It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.

We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.

What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?

He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.

In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.

Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!

...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.

Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.

And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.

I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.

And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.

Meals are the privilege of the living.

Tape recorder click sound my beloved

#the Nowhere Man who waits and the God of Stories who watches

day 4 of painting a random s2 scene until good omens gets renewed for s3

they wanna hold hands so bad u guys

the thing about having been really broke. averaging $500 a month in a good year broke. using a gamestop credit card i shouldn't have qualified for to buy taco bell gift cards for food broke. is that i am SO bad with money. i have a degree in accounting and i am so bad with money. i do not think of myself as superstitious at all but money feels so cursed. not in a spiritual way, i mean literally. practically.

having 'too much' money feels so bad. money is a thing you spend as soon as you get it because it's so cursed. the more it is the more cursed it is. i save too much money and bad things will happen that cost all my money. money is a thing that summons expenses. if i have no money and the car breaks down i find a way to make it work. i scrounge and resell and pass the hat and talk to my mom's friend's friend who knows a guy and in the end i'm so relieved to be right back where i started. but if i were saving my money for a new computer and then the car broke down, the money is just gone. i spent the money i saved for a thing i wanted on a thing i needed instead and after all that hoping i'm right back where i started.

i get a windfall and i set the money aside because if i'm careful that's enough to pay for gas for months. but then i need to pay for heat and i apply for assistance and they look at my bank account and see i have money and now they won't help pay for heat. soon it's just a habit. i get the money and i spend the money. immediately, as soon as possible, get this money away from me. don't even save enough for cigarettes. i can find money for cigarettes, somehow i can always find money for cigarettes. cigarette money is a weird magical fake money i summon from dark corners whenever i run out of cigarettes. i don't know how it works either. i've tried to summon the cigarette money for things that aren't cigarettes and it never works. just get this out of my bank account. get it out of here before something notices there's money here.

anyway i'm working on it but god it's hard

kiss of the divine

in honor of the nimona movie (it’s so good i’m gonna scream and cry for the next million years) i must share my favorite nimona art ever

drawn by ND stevenson ofc and posted on twitter a few years ago i believe

do i even have to SAY anything? the shark, it’s not rocket surgery, baby nimona, the DOMESTICITY of it all im gonna explode

UPDATE!!!! GAY DADS AU THREAD https://twitter.com/gingerhazing/status/1676058949504892928?s=46

IT WAS ERIC AFTER ALL!!!! I'm so glad we got to meet him (before Vil snaps him away with those Infinity Gauntlets) (can't wait to see what happens when we get the matching Infinity Tiara to go with them, there will be no survivors)

(sorry to be so slow/rough lately, just got a lot of stuff on the ol' brain at the moment! alas, if only I could spend all my time drawing incredibly stupid characters I mean I do but)

together in death

the fox god.

a comic about a trickster.

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creative notes:

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all my other comics

store

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX3Z8qG7AKo

in honor of last season’s poem being called “”end poem”” (all quotes mandatory) this season i made one out of pieces of the actual end poem