#MY FUCKING HEART THOUGH

[cozylittleartblog]

nobody can stop me from chewing on concept art like a wild animal

[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.

[fantasykiri5]

Ticklish

[gunsatthaphan]

mr. thanawat, I can't help you anymore 😔

[grimfantas]

upon the second visit to halloween town...

[tworealms]

what if world was made of pudding

LONGER

[stark-lord]

Side A

[elodieunderglass]

[foxstens]

never not thinking about how kevin day is david wymack's son

imagine you're kevin, practically born with a racquet in your hand, you grow up with your mother for a while and maybe you ask about your father and she tells you not to worry about it, or maybe you just never ask because she doesn't mention it and you don't know how important it is, yet. then she dies, you're moved to evermore, it's so different from what you've seen previously but you have no choice so you just bow your head and do your best to survive, clinging onto your mother's sport, clinging onto the idea that you'll become a star.

you're there for so long you eventually forget you've ever been outside of it, but you see how desperate riko is for his father's attention so you start wondering, however briefly, about the concept of a father.

then you're in high school, you find the letter and suddenly it's not just a vague concept you have to wonder about, suddenly it's something real and tangible. you've heard of david wymack, it would've been impossible not to since he was a friend of your mother's and considering the kind of team he's taken up to creating, maybe you've even met him extremely briefly at some point. you know enough about the industry to think his team isn't just a publicity stunt, and somehow you know that if he finds out he'll do everything in his power to get you out.

you're not stupid enough to tell riko this, but you do tell jean and he laughs at you. of course he does. but you've been there for too long, you've seen too much, and you're old enough to understand what the master would do if he deemed david wymack to be a threat. you can't leave riko's side therefore you can't tell him any time soon, possibly ever, so you resolve to reading the letter over and over instead. (riko reads it almost as often as you)

then you're 19 and the erc thinks riko is holding you back. you're 19 and you're watching riko stomp on everything you've built up through the years. you're 19 and the letter is the only reason you have the strength to leave.

you tell wymack and the team as much as you dare because they deserve to know the risks of having you here, and wymack takes it in stride, he puts himself and his team at risk and even takes out loans to keep you here, like you knew he would. he signs you and he deserves to know about the letter, the more time passes the worse it'll be when you do tell him, but you can't yet because it's too soon and you don't trust yourself to tell riko no when the time comes.

then neil is asking for your help

now imagine you're wymack. your childhood was shit and you didn't have the support you needed at the time, but you believe you can be better than the hands that shaped you. kayleigh taught you everything you know about exy, and you loved her so it stung when she died and you couldn't be there for her only son. but, no matter what you might think of tetsuji moriyama, you don't think kayleigh would send her son to an unsafe place. you just go on with your days, maybe tune in on the news to see that kevin's doing well. you have no reason to think otherwise.

when you have the opportunity to start an exy team from scratch, you dedicate it to the kids that need another chance, the kids the world has given up on. you'll never give up on them.

then, what feels like a lifetime later, kevin day is standing in front of your hotel room and asking you for help. he's saying his 'beloved brother' broke his hand, he's saying the moriyamas are part of the yakuza, he's saying they'll kill him if they find him. throughout the year you get to know him better, you see that he's grown up to be a caged and abused wreck, you see he was raised to care about nothing but exy, you see him having a panic attack at the mere mention of having to face his former team, you see him drinking himself to oblivion to cope. you can't undo the past so you do your best to support him now, but damn if you don't wish you could've been there for him.

then he's telling you he's your son

[ruporas]

i’ll find you again in every universe. let us be a little more honest, let us have a little more time.

[s3rrrpentine]

ghost!ghost wip

[front-facing-pokemon]

[frogs-in3-hills]

fma 03 bad ending 👍

[boytransmission]

does anyone remember a post that described a fantasy along the lines of “my dom/me put on an excruciatingly terrifying and brutal horror movie, forced me to watch the screen the entire time, and only touched me during the most grotesque parts” because i think about that A Lot.

[galactaknightyaoi]

☀️ IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!! 🌙

This is my gift to myself :) I drew my favorite guys ever.

For a while I've been itching to draw the wedding outfits from this post again. I made them up on the fly as I was drawing, but I actually really like how they ended up turning out. They're super cute!! (though, yet again, you can't see almost any part of Dedede's outfit... 💔)

But then I couldn't get it out of my head to make a companion piece for it, with their mirror versions. And so. I did. What they have going on is a little bit messy, though...

Marriage or divorce!! Take your pick.

[mossy-paws]

Get in the fucking biograft, Shuriken. (EVANGELION/PHIGHTING!)

(og screenshot’s/cover under text!) Why hello there to my tumblr followers, it’s been a awhile /silly

ANYWAYS!!! Guess who recently finished the EVA franchise minus the rebuilds and has been in a horrible chokehold over it, this anime ruined my life but hey at least its intro theme is nice……

Well, I wanted to draw some stuff for it! All together these pieces took exactly 48 hours and 20 minutes… with the cover-piece taking ~35(?) of those hours. These were… very, VERY time costly safe to say LOL,,, I am super, SUPER proud of how the cover came out though, everything on it was drawn, colored, rendered, edited, whatever, BY HAND stroke by stroke (as you can see below)

The text, the lineart, the shadows, the colors, the snowflakes on the bio and Shuri, EVERYTHING was done by hand, it was horribly time costly but it did come out very, VERY well in the end I would say (fun fact! I also didn’t originally have the textless version of the cover, and I had to trace all of the lineart for bio’s tophalf by just guessing what line when where and what the hell was going on /silly)

this was a very, very hard project to do all together, but it was also a really nice learning experience too, I’m happy i did it that’s for sure :3!

(og screenies + cover)