Unexpected help

A little comm piece for @voidsiblings ✨

"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.

friend wanted to see my tumblr, and when i told him i can’t show it to him bc it’s basically my personal diary he went “oh so I can’t see it but a bunch of strangers on tumblr can??” he literally does not get me. no one will get me like the people in my phone get me

LITTLE COMIC based on how I made a friend at 1 am while crawling on the ground, picking up Maybugs to save them from getting squished by cars.

PRETTY SURE I must've looked like a strange little gremlin to any onlookers passing by. Also yes he held a bug like a CHAMP. He passed my test. We still hang out 😂

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[4.0 archon quest spoilers]

silly guys team meeting!!

I like imagine that Alex and Brain's friendship is one where they constantly tease each other HHHH

You’re making a lot of promises there Chara…

Part 24 || First || Previous || Next

—Full Series—

I enjoyed doing this little Flashback scene. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled freakout session soon. Having monochrome color is very nice.

Here is a gif of Chara spilling their water because YES. And I spent way too long on it :)

Wow technology is so cool.

while teen while goblin while aroace while injured while doing your best

that ivan loves till is the most obvious thing about them

but. does ivan know that…?

the ivan that regards his own feelings as shallow, the ivan that learned how emotions are expressed only from copying others… does he even know that the love he’s felt for so long is love? probably not. and part of the reason is the one he loves himself

because the easiest example he has of love is till's feelings to mizi. till outright calls it love, and ivan watches him so much he has to be aware of this and till’s love to mizi is totally unselfish, right. he doesn’t seem to actually want much from her—just that she's still there and still "mizi"

but ivan can't be satisfied with just watching he… wants. ivan wants till’s attention, till’s affection—

surely this selfish wanting can’t be love

...no wonder he was never able to express his feelings straightforwardly when he belittles them so much but he can’t stand not having anything either, so he does… whatever he does instead to get any scraps of attention he can, from someone he's convinced doesn't care about him at all only showing affection when till can't see it, right until he knows he's going to die

but ivan's feelings for till are all he still has of himself... to think of them as shallow...

I've seen this translated as "I should've been kinder" to him (till) or to her (sua)

but really, the one he should've been kinder to was himself

Pidgey with toast ko-fi doodle for @beingatoaster from @0nlyfiends!

I’m accepting pokemon ko-fi doodle requests here! ✨

thinking about how quill used music as his only reminder of his mother, to the point that he would risk his own life to save it and keep part of her alive, and how we're introduced to him as the one who dances while everyone around him rolls their eyes, and how he raises baby groot to be the first of the team to dance as openly and joyfully as him, and how this groot is the first one to dance during the last scene, and how rocket – who hums tunelessly while he works until he's building stereos to play tunes while fighting until his favorite song is "come and get your love" – joins him without any self-consciousness, and how quill left rocket his zune and team leadership but the first gift he ever gave him was a name for what he was: raccoon, and how drax overcomes his stubborn adherence to never dancing because what matters more to him than being a stoic destroyer is being a father, who makes the hundreds of children that look up to him laugh with delight, and who gets to watch mantis (whose innocence reminded him of his daughter) set off into the world with her own purpose the way his own child never got to, and how nebula dances along with them, no longer holding herself to the second-best status that thanos forced on her, instead at home as a leader who can fight with her family without having to compete with them, and how she stills talks to gamora, who is able to accept that she once meant the world to the guardians, once spoke their language and joined in their hugs and was part of their fun, but that she doesn't owe it to them to join in the dance and be that same person, and returns to the adoptive family that she feels at home with, and the lyric "leave all your love and your longing behind / you can't carry it with you if you want to survive," and how in order to go forward the guardians can't all stay together, but how that doesn't mean they aren't still a team and a family because how do you truly leave the people who have dragged you, doubting and kicking and screaming, toward comfort and security and happiness? for the hottest, slowest, laziest days to end, the ones where you lost best friends and spouses and children and siblings and years of your life and memories with someone, the ones where you run from your past and pretend you were never in pain, never loved anyone, you have to let that hope catch up with you (“happiness hit her / like a bullet in the back”). anyway i think this was a pretty good series like this post if you also had a laugh or two over cosmo the space dog's telekinetic hijinks!!

a human x gator hybrid isn't entirely warmblooded, so heat lamps (government subsidised) are a household standard for reptile-types. human hybrids are in an awkward spot, though, since they can still sweat and oftentimes will be by the time they're warmed up properly. thus heat-bathing in a swimsuit or nude is common, though some prefer to take a warm shower instead.

all this to say: if you're a warmblooded reptile lover, be prepared to be used as a heating pack all the time :)

Hello may 31th anon! Look at that, another year behind us and a new one to come. Have a nice day! ₍՞◌′ᵕ‵ू◌₎♡

Calculating probability of survival... It doesn't look good.

aquarium date

a bit late but happy anniversary!!