#<- he's not here though

[everythingwasalreadypicked]

Tw: mentions of past death and murder, suicidal ideation

Alabaster sighed, trying to ignore the gurgling of his stomach as he patrolled through Manhattan's desolate streets. It was empty, had been empty for one and a half years. The wreckage left from a long won war loomed over him like a phantom, the ghost city judging him with every step he took.

Abandoned buildings towered over the entire city, lifeless save for the occasional Monster Donut shop still crackling with vibrant lighting. The sweet smell was tempting, but no doubt an employee would report to Lord Kronos that he took a food break during his patrol.

Alabaster took a shaky breath, wedging his cane out of the crack on the asphalt it got stuck in.

His mother had finally gotten a throne. Nothing else mattered.

Maybe if he said it enough he'd start believing it.

The silence was deafening, with no signs of New York's infamous uproar.

He wondered whether Morpheus was pleased that he'd put down 'the city that never slept'.

Well. Almost put down.

Annabeth Chase, of all people, stood in front of him. Her hair done up under a scarf, her face scratched and scraped. Interestingly enough, she wore a Camp Half-Blood shirt. It seemed to barely hold itself together, with different coloured stitches and patches made of vastly different materials plastered on the fading fabric, but sentimentality and all, Alabaster supposed. Didn't matter it was small for her frame, not when it might as well be the only camp shirt left.

It looked more comfortable than the satin chaffing against his skin anyway.

"Torrington." She acknowledged, spinning her knife in her hand, eyes glaring daggers.

He really really didn't want a fight. Not only was he tired and hungry, but this was Annabeth. They knew eachother, once.

A traitorous part of him whispered; you knew Sherman too, didn’t stop you from driving your sword right into his heart, did it?

An acrid feeling stabbed the back of his throat.

"Are you mapping out where to stab me or just plain checking me out, Chase?" Alabaster forced out a cocky smile.

Her eyes flashed, "Why are you here? You're not welcome, General."

"Routine patrol." He shrugged. "I should ask you that question, technically."

"Not your business." Annabeth circled him, holding her dagger between them the whole time. Alabaster didn't attempt to move an inch, to draw his sword from where it hung on his back. "But someone needs to keep watch on Olympus."

Alabaster glanced to the side. Empire State Building stretched towards the skies, deader than Zeus’s chopped up pieces resting beneath the deepest part of Tartarus.

"You're wasting your time," he murmured, "you lost. Your gods abandoned you. They aren't coming back."

Annabeth growled behind him. She could very well strike and stab him in the back with their current positions, but Alabaster found he didn't really mind the possibility.

"Maybe try out the remains of Camp Half-Blood instead? I heard the weather is real nice there at this time of the year," he mused, shifting his weight onto his cane more, "I'm sure Grover will be fine. Never took you or Jackson as the gardening type, though."

It was quite hard to miss the giant tree growing out of an apartment fire escape. Even if it hadn't been an open secret that Perseus Jackson and Annabeth Chase took refugee in the former's home.

The truth was neither of them were worthy of being considered a threat by his lord anymore.

Or so Lord Kronos said and who was Alabaster to argue. Less work for him.

A whooshing sound... and a cold metal pressed against his throat while a body pressed against his own.

Annabeth hissed into his ear, "If you think you're scaring me—"

"I just hear what people say about me, that's all." It would be so easy to lean forward, to finally be able to sleep for more than four hours for once. To rest as his blood spilled all over the asphalt. The brand on his back flared up as if his Lord heard and disagreed with Alabaster from the throne he sat upon kilometres away. "Monster of Mount. Tam, was it?"

"You're no monster," Annabeth sneered, backing off and clearing her dagger with her shirt as if it touched something dirty, "You're a dog if anything. Wandered far away from your owner, did we? Lost your leash, Torrington?"

Alabaster flitted his gaze to the ground, shame curling inside his chest. Always trust Annabeth Chase to find the words that hurt the most. Hadn't changed a bit from when they were eight. "Go home, Chase. I do not want to fight you."

"You would lose," Annabeth slotted her dagger inside the hilt strapped to her belt. She declared, "I don't know you."

Fast, devoid of any attachment. Just like ripping off a bandaid.

"No," He agreed, a grim smile on his face as he pushed past her, "and for Titans's sake, don't get out of the house when my Lord knows I'm here."

"Coward," A scoff made him stop on his track yet again, "I hope you die in a ditch."

Alabaster stared at the hand he was clutching his cane's handle with. It was harder to see under the black nail polish, but the dried blood was there, sitting atop his nail beds and laughing at him. Just like the green magic staining around his veins in splotches, just like the feeling of never being able to wash away the blood on his hands. Just like the screams and pleas for mercy plaguing his nightmares.

"You and me both, Chase. You and me both."

[pbnmj]

THE NOIR-HOBIE INTERACTIONS THAT I MADE UP IN MY MIND ARE VERY REAL TO ME. SONY PLEASE PICK UP WHAT I’M PUTTING DOWN!!!

[tossawary]

This is petty fandom salt, BUT... I've been chewing on this phenomenon that I've been calling "Fandom's Darling". It is related to things like "Author's Darling" and "Mary Sue / Gary Stu" and "Protagonist Halo" and all that jazz, where one character gains a peculiar narrative weight in a story.

"Author's Darling" is when a writer has a favorite character, and the world and all other characters sort of get... warped to put the Darling in the spotlight. It's most noticeable in TV shows with multiple writers, when a character you personally like suddenly has their previous characterization destroyed to make another character look good somehow. Every other character might become weirdly incompetent. The Darling's feelings are treated as The Most Important Feelings in any given situation. The logic of the fictional world seems broken past suspension of disbelief in order to validate this one character's beliefs or skillset or some other fantasy. And so on.

"Fandom's Darling" is what I've been calling the pattern where a fandom essentially crowns a New Protagonist for their fanfiction stories (it's often a side character rather than the original protagonist, but it can also happen to protagonists). This character becomes the self-insert for all sorts of indulgent fantasies, gaining special powers or backstories, and/or becoming the focus of extreme whump, and/or hooking up with all the various hotties, starring in all sorts of tropey AUs, and so on. They're not always an obvious Mary Sue version of themselves, but the character's original personality and interpersonal relationships tend to get warped or dropped completely, and other characters tend to become a little flat around them. I call it "Fandom's Darling" because it's not just one self-indulgent fantasy fic (you do you! Have fun!) with characterization choices that I don't vibe with (I have neither the time nor the desire nor the authority to police anything, I am just venting), but rather a prolific mini-fandom of sorts revolving around this empty doll / fanon version of the chosen vessel character, so it becomes a little unavoidable.

I am salty about this (mildly frustrated) (imagine a soft sigh of disappointment before I just go do something else) because you are FUCKED if you actually liked the canonical version of this character and their interpersonal relationships. It's almost worse than liking an obscure character that no one cares about. There's about a thousand fics starring your fave, but maybe only about a dozen of them are actually rooted in any kind of recognisable canon.

[anna-scribbles]

emma dupain cheng on the brain😽🎀

more:

[egophiliac]

buckle up lads we're going BACK INTO THE BOOK

[shadowtraveled]

"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.

[knockknockwhosthereartistism]

AU where the Axolotl sends Bill to the mystery shack for rehabilitation after spending some time in the Theraprism

(OG AU is by waty_mot on Twitter)

[squidsmeister]

dungeon meshi is my favorite road-trip comedy film

[magpiedraws]

Jon he's really trying here cut him a break

(tumblr crunched the resolution of this comic a lot rip)

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF Michael refuses to be gaslit on “THE BITE OF 83”

[cwispihae]

Had to take a swing at this insane Usopp fit GOOD LORD

[noodles-and-tea]

For the twins in time AU, I genuinely wonder what kind of people the young twins grow up into because of Stan’s/Ford’s influence. Especially if it takes years for the portal to get fixed.

(Sorry if it seems like I already sent this question, I don’t know if it got sent the first time I asked)

I haven’t fully fleshed out how Ford grows up in the past but I do have thoughts on Stan presently

[remxedmoon]

something about touch…

(greyscale below!)

[thankstothe]

this show rewires you fundamentally in 60 seconds and then just goes on to have more seasons. audacity

[abd-illustrates]

💜 Doppel & Glass 💜

Finally got round to doodling some of the Heartless crew again - been juggling some very intensive work and life stuff lately so it was therapeutic to get lost for a lil' while drawing this one. (Thanks again to everybody who voted in those polls a bit ago - The results were very interesting so I'm looking forward to drawing more of the most-voted characters sometime soon)

[DO NOT EDIT OR REPOST TO OTHER SITES / ACCOUNTS] ♻️reblogs are lovely tho!♻️

[egophiliac]

was this anyone else's first thought, or