#OF FUCKING COURSE HES DOING THIS
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I don’t know if I got their designs quite right. It’s my first time drawing them :)
Monster hunter au lambo twins ehehe
#maccadam#transformers#monster hunter au#sideswipe#sunstreaker#lambo twins#I don’t actually know much about them#besides fics of course haha#Don’t know anything about Sideswipe#I remember seeing Sunstreaker for the first time in All Hail Megatron#I was like….wait….THIS GUY BASICALLY SOLD THE EARTH DO DECEPTICONS??#He. Who is the autobot. Sold the earth and all the humans…like…..literally doomed the whole planet….what the fuck?#And then I learned what exactly humans did to him#I discovered what humans turned him into#and you know what#yeah#There you go Sunny kill the humans who needs them anyway#I love seeing morally..grey? Morally complicated Autobots hehe
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Not Laszlos going outside drenched in guillermos sweat almost making me cry holy shit
like fuck me, this is the first time he´s ever seen his shawn in real sunlight! His best friend! His good time boy!! he´s so happy!
really i mean LOOK AT HIM!!!
imagine what it must feel like to be able to go to the beach on a sunny day for the first time in centuries *sobs*
i could watch him draw dicks in the sand, bully teenagers and catch fish he can´t even eat forever, he´s like a little kid its killing me
i. i just love him. he has done nothing wrong in his life ever and i want him to be the happiest little vampire in the world <3<3<3
#he is perfect ok#did i enjoy nandermos jealousy arc and guillermos first pride parade and the fucked up vampire orgy? yes. yes of course i did#but this right here hit me right in the heart#it was just so surprisingly sweet#wwdits#What We Do in the Shadows#wwdits spoilers#s5e3#laszlo cravensworth
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Supervillains for a community. (Well, except those jerks over in Gotham, insular lot, but they’re they’re one problem) Of course they do- supervillains are a group defined by strong opinions and a willingness to see them through, often with a healthy dash of societal failures and trauma as a catalyst.
The fentons, while not active even on the online message boards, are well known and explosive when they do show up, full of fascinating insights and hours long rants on mad science on hair pin turns courtesy of that ADHD attention span. Bit of the cryptids you feel honored to bump into kind of deal. Besides, like a good quarter of the community as it aged, they’d settled down and had kids (not necessarily in that order) and taken it very seriously! Out in the middle of nowhere, where even the most fearsome government outpost members, the local branch of the IRS, quake before them in fear. Out of the way.
Reveal gone okay-ish, Danny moves to Gotham still to get some air bc now things are Akward and he landed that engineering scholarship which is loads better than any other college would give him with his track record. So- the mysterious Fenton children are finally crawling out of hiding! Everyone is psyched! And roll in to Gotham en masse to witness the fireworks!
Except Danny is Determined To Be Normal. He’s had enough of the throwing himself into harms way shit for a lifetime- he wants to be free to peacefully built Rube Goldberg machines and unintentional increasingly complex bombs to his hearts content. JAZZ, on the other hand- the coveted token Normal One, has finally snapped! She’s watched her baby brother she practically raised throw himself into danger over and over and could do nothing, and now that she’s exposed to this whole network of superheroes outside of small town Amnity, some of those uglier emotions are coming out. And boy is she pissed! And can’t afford to show it much while filing the paperwork to have Arkham legally razed to the ground!
See I love this idea of like, niches in superhero society. A villain the heroes know they can plop their kiddo down with for an exciting afternoon brawl while they take care of a particularly grisly case and come back to a few hours later ranting about some new life lesson and a new move they really want to try. A villain who has a functioning moral compass despite their somewhat batshit long term goal and you can contact to fuck with another villains’s plan so they can laugh at them and you can have an easy afternoon. One who pries up hostile architecture and fills in pot holes, idk man. Get creative here, there’s such potential!
So Jazz becomes a Training villain- someone the heroes know their sidekicks will walk away from in a fight 100% of the time, usually with some new lesson to ponder and only a couple of bruises. Sometimes even snacks!
She also absolutely ambushes mentors to check that they’re worth the kiddo, which they appreciate once they get over being jumped in a dark alley by a 7 foot Amazon trained force of nature. They are not used to being on that side of the jumping, it’s a little unnerving.
(Yes, she low key adopts Shazam upon checking in with him on cursory ‘is the main hero of this city and asshole’ checkin. Yes, the super clones get yoinked out from under Superman’s negligent thumb to go have a blast with Ellie. What about it?)
This however only encourages more assorted weirdos to crawl out of the woodwork. It’s not often one of their own forfeits their potential spot for the running of the coveted Most Normal I Swear prize, but when they do it’s bound to be good! But jazz is off hounding various heroes and punching the faces in of pedophiles and shit whenever there’s no cape within easy reach, and so is a mite bit harder to contact than Danny, who has innocently gotten an apprenticeship under a clockworker for access to their workshop and is gleefully going about doing nerdy shit with great abandon.
Plus this is Gotham. No one gives a shit if someone in the Mad Alchemist uniform and still smoking from their latest experiment pokes their head in a window to bother the local shrimp teen- none of the usual social rules apply, everyone’s crazy here! So everyone drops any and all attempts at masking and just acts their genuine unhinged selves, much to the alarm of the Bats and frustration of Danny.
Bc he cannot get these mfers to go. Away. Even liberal use of the creep stick has little effect when the interloper is calibrated for an opponent with super speed or laser vision or whatever, and he’s trying to maintain his guise as a Normal College Student Do No Investigate.
So he calls in the big guns. He’s not super active in the supervillain kids group chat ever since things in amnity calmed the fuck down post becoming King and then immediately using a loophole that says he will not take the throne until he is grown, as defined by finishing learning his trade a la the medieval standards Pariah set up. So he can just take his sweet ass time with his graduate degree and out of inter dimensional bull shit that much longer! Point is, he hasn’t taken the chance to rant over there in a while, so his Crazy friends are getting a lil worried.
The change to come over and shout at their batshit crazy but (mostly) well meaning parent AND see Danny? Score!
The bats, however, are getting awfully suspicious about this one kid that villains from all over the country are flocking to, especially young and upcoming ones as of recently! And he’s acting his engineering course- all the worst rogues are known to have flown through their PhD studies prior to Cracking. They seem to have a real problem on their hands with this Fenton guy.
#dp x dc#dc x dp#mad science#supervillain community#bonus points if you can pull out some super niche comic villain#justice for kite man#local child of a crazy chemist: so you know that trick you showed me with the soda and the reaction that could turn into just like all foam#Danny: yeah and also back the fuck up#lcoacc: so it’s been like my comfort food right but like I started wondering what you could do#danny: oh no (he says while making what amounts of an overachieving smoke bomb)#lcoacc: so I was like what if I add more of a base to it so it could be solid and then maybe just like a LIL acid to see what happens#Danny: oh ancients#lcoacc: but then the killjoy supes came in a ruined everything from where I was ruining lex Luther’s day#Danny:… did you get in on camera#lcoacc: OF COURSE. oh also like everyone ever if coming over for a sleepover lol#Danny: WHAT I CANT FEED YOU MONSTERS#lcoacc: no worrries we’ll rob a bulk store or something lol#Danny: nO
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i really like his timeskip design!!!
#my art#god usopp#usopp#one piece#usopp op#“i like his timeskip” of course i do. he has his muscles out. of course i fucking like it. im so predictable
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swipes everything else off of the table to yell about diasomnia flower bookmarks
(I gave Silver one too :D)
#art#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland spoilers#white rabbit festival#me: oh boy i wonder what excitement will happen in this new part#characters: now it is time to buy souvenirs :)#me: oh god#jk jk even when the filler is kind of painful i do enjoy the little character moments#like everyone screaming as loud as they can into silver's watch#deuce busting out his suzy izzard impression#SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER!#and of course silver assigning flowers to the other dias and getting all sappy over lilia. god. delicious.#you don't understand this ten second long scene is everything to me#though we all know the real highlight#the knowledge that 1) deuce used to have an extremely silly edgy badass nickname#2) he almost certainly gave it to himself#3) he harassed epel's extended family to the point that they told horror stories about him and he was briefly epel's personal idol#epel: i heard he once killed three men with but a look#deuce: what no i never...i mean...ha ha sounds weird nothing a model student like me would know about#also deuce: if you fuckers don't apologize to my mom right now i'll fucking kill all of you (sees dilla) uhhh i mean#deuce: i challenge you to a children's game#black bunnies leader: (strapping on his duel disk) i accept#meanwhile silver is running full speed at a group of children screaming to them about donuts#we aren't going to talk about what ortho did with that fantasy-gregg's sausage roll#so glad that we've reached the 'what the heck is even happening' portion of the event#anyway i completely screwed up the resolution of these so here's hoping they don't look terrible!#whoops!
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But do u understand????? Do u understand that logan has probably went over a decade without a touch in his life that wasn't centred around pain and violence????? And then Wade finds him and they save the world and Wade wakes him up every morning with soft little kisses and cuddles up to him all night and come up behind him while he's cooking to wrap his arms round his waist, prop his chin on his shoulder.
And Logan's uncomfortable with it at first. Not because it's Wade, because he's a bit in love with the idiot, but because it's so unfamiliar and how can he ever deserve to be touched and handled so gently???? And so he shys away, and Wade backs off thinking he doesn't like it, but when logan finally admits he just doesn't feel worthy of it Wade goes insane. Goes batshit crazy because wtf???? In his head logan is the best person to exist ever, and the absolute least he deserves is to be given physical affection!
So Wade dials it up to a hundred. He's never not touching him. He plays with his hair, holds his hand under the dinner table, gives him forehead kisses just because. Thanks him everytime too, a soft little 'thank you for letting me love you, peanut' which melts logans insides.
He still knows the violent touches, sometimes enjoys them just as much, but for the first time in his entire 200 year existence they are a tiny minority compared to gentle ones.
#i need people treating logan all soft#all that man knows is violence#and hes learnt to find comfort in that over the years sure#but only because theres never been an alternative#wade gives him that alternative#do they fuck nasty and covered in blood?#of fucking course#but simultaneously wade hands him his jet black coffee#and kisses his cheek while calling him angel#<333#deadclaws#deadpool and wolverine#poolverine
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I saw another post criticizing Bruce for having children fighting at his side, and I must say: tell me you don't know shit about the batkids' stories without telling me. Bruce fucking tried to stop those kids from being vigilantes, but they keep doing it behind his back, so he decided the best thing to do was to give them the proper training, an armor and to have them stick at his side so he can watch over them. You know, like a parent telling their underage children that they can drink alcohol but only at home where they can watch over them.
Dick became Robin because he wanted revenge over his parents' murder. He would run out in the street of Gotham as a 8 years old, all alone, to go fight Zucco. Bruce helping him make Robin was the compromise to keep Dick safe, because the child would not listen. (And yes, it wasn't the case in the very first canon, but it was like the 40s. Do you know how many kids fought against the Nazis in Europe at that time???)
Barbara Gordon is not his daughter and he has no authority on her being a vigilante. He cannot even ground her.
Jason became Robin after helping Bruce take down Ma Gunn's school. It is implied by Bruce, while talking to Dick, that he offered Robin to Jason as a way to gain a child because he missed having Dick around. He didn't need a Robin, he just missed having a kid. Bruce used the Robin mantle with Jason like people use churu to appease stray kitten. AND JASON'S DEATH, let's talk about it. Jason ran away, which leads to him being killed, after eavesdropping on Bruce and Alfred talking about Jason's mental health. Jason is benched as Robin, but not because Bruce thinks he killed someone like fandom says, but because Bruce knows it is not helping or healthy for Jason. They are talking about getting him help for his traumas and how violence is not helping Jason. And, when he is older and has healed, they can try again if he wants to. That's why Jason or people saying that Jason died because he was a soldier, or blaming Bruce for Robin's existence is false. When Jason died, Bruce was against Jason being Robin for his own health! And Jason knows that, he heard the discussion, he wasn't bench like how so many of his siblings are, with little to no honest explanation. Jason died in the Robin's costume because of his own stubbornness, not because of Bruce. (And that's not blaming Jason for his death. He is not to blame, but neither is Bruce. It's just about the Robin's colors. Jason would not have been wearing them at the time if he listened to Bruce.)
Tim Drake imposed himself as Robin. Bruce was against it, Tim literally went "Don't care, didn't ask". And Tim was already following them around before. Bruce already have Jason blaming him for making Tim Robin when he had no control over that.
Stephanie Brown became a vigilante before Batman knew her. He has tried SO MANY TIMES to make her stop, and so many fans hate that he did it. Make a choice, is it bad that he didn’t stop her more or that he didn’t let her more be a vigilante? He even got his kids to try to make her stop. AND SHE IS "KILLED" TO TEACH HIM THAT MAKING KIDS VIGILANTES IS BAD WHEN HE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE OF HER BECOMING ONE AND TRIED TO STOP HER! No shit the man blames himself for things that are not his fault, everyone does it.
Cassandra Cain was 17 when she becomes Batgirl, so I don't know if she counts. But when Bruce tries to make her stop for her own health, with the support of Barbara and Alfred, Cass is devastated and doesn't obey him. She puts on her costume and fights him physically.
Damian Wayne was trained as an assassin. In every version of him being introduced to Bruce, Bruce is against making him Robin and Damian keeps sneaking out. Damian wants to prove himself to his father so bad and refused to be kept away from the fight. In the comics, it's Dick, DICK, that makes him Robin when Bruce is gone, because Bruce was against letting Damian out at night.
Conclusion: Bruce is a tired father of a bunch of kids that cannot understand they should stay home at night and not be vigilantes.
#bruce wayne#batman#robin#dick grayson#jason todd#tim drake#stephanie brown#cassandra cain#damian wayne#barbara gordon#batgirl#dc comics#my ramblings#If I ever stop comparing Jason to a stray kitty then I'm either being mind-controlled or it's a fake#Bruce's kids sneak out behind his back all the fucking time he has no control over them sometimes#Steph's death is crazy to me like Bruce tried so hard to make her stop and he is punished for something he didn’t do#the only one who was really introduced to this life by Bruce is Jason and it's literally because empty nest syndrome took over#and Bruce NEEDED this kid to accept to come live with him. And how do you do that? By offering being Robin of course#but he realized his mistake and tried to fix it sadly Jason disagreed
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HE WAS SO MAD
#classic Kakashi DID disobey orders for his kids#It's insane when people say he'd never act rebellious against konoha when the evidence is there in the classic#or course things changed in shippuden#but in the classic? he went to the land of the waves mission without reporting the the classification was wrong#because he wanted to help tazuna properly#he allowed sasuke to fight in the preliminaries with the cursed mark and secretly sealed it went it was over#he hide the fact that a three men cell was needed for the chuning exams to give sakura the space to decide for herself what she wanted#he was all the time hiding information and acting on his own#even when he says later that he couldn't do much for them it's not because he didn't try#the village fucked him over they set him up for failure and in some sense he knew it#he accepted to be their sensei because he cared for them and he was on their side#I'm fully convinced that if shippuden had followed the classic as it was supposed to do kakashi would have rebelled in more than one way#but it didn't happen :( so#Kakashi Hatake#naruto#Tsunade Senju#Naruto Classic
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ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:
i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???
#ramble#sorry i'm currently in a phase of 'of course this happened' and 'oh i deserve this because i didn't give him what he wanted'#like he knew i was grey ace since the start. and he let it go on for SO long after i said i might be vaguely aro as well#if that's a dealbreaker for you bc of your love language then FINE but NIP IT IN THE BUD#he said he put it off because he didn't want to hurt my feelings but it only hurt me MORE#like you're an adult. grow the fuck up and communicate like one#holding your negative feelings in hoping somebody notices you're hiding them is what TEENAGERS do#and also i told him VERBATIM: i didn't think anyone would ever love me because i'm not comfortable with xyz. and he just confirmed that#idk i still feel like i'm being selfish because how could i expect someone to be in a relationship with me when i can't give them anything#also tmi but it's not like we did NOTHING. we still held hands/cuddled/were close. he just didn't have his tongue down my throat anymore#so obviously i'm assuming by 'missing affection' he just meant sex and as an ace person that just fucking sucks#also oh my god i HATED how much he would imply we were going to have sex. i would have to keep SAYING 'i don't like doing this'#he always spoke like it was inevitably going to happen and it didn't click how GROSS i felt about it until recently#also ALSO not to go there but i never told him WHY i struggle with it (it's sensory issues)#and like. what if something had happened to me that made it hard for me and i just wasn't ready to tell him. and then he did this#again sorry to overshare this is still just a lot for me and i have no idea if i'm being unreasonable#if you're ace and in a relationship please let me know bc i'm starting to think it'll end this way every single time
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inspired by this wonderful art made by @puppetmaster13u
So, Danny, cemented king and practically father of the Blob Ghosts and certified little shit.
Has found something new to play with.
For you see, despite his various kidnappings by the GIW Danny was never aware of there being a League of Earth's mightiest heroes at all. He off-handily mentioned them to Henry, who was now genuinely jobless because even though he never got told he knew he was jobless for helping Danny escape and Henry?
Henry did not want any part of this, he's just a civilian he doesn't want to meet the Justice League of all people!
Sadly, Danny did not care at all in the slightest.
Henry was then reminded of why Danny was valued by the GIW and why he also king class ghost entity (the only other known king class was the Ghost King who they barely have any information of). Because he easily, cleared the distance between Amity Park and Metropolis.
Henry, unfortunately, was not used to traveling at such speeds and was left hanging limply in Danny's arm as everything started spinning and thinking he might puke.
Danny, being the child that he is at heart, immediately starts calling out Superman's name. Superman, predictably and unsurprisingly, hears this and comes over questioning who was calling him.
Danny decides to be even more of a little shit by speaking in ghost speak even though just earlier he called out Superman's name in clear English. Henry, the de-facto translator, is out of commission right now so Superman is really just left guessing here.
Unless, you go with the fact that Kyrptonian is a dead language, and since Superman can speak and knows Kyrptonian, Danny's ghost speak is automatically translated to Kyrptonian.
Superman is, understandably, stumped by this occurrence and he may or may not form the idea that Danny might be a Kyrptonian.
Danny then gently places Henry down on the roof, pats him on the head, tells a few blob ghosts to keep an eye on their new littlest sibling while Dad has fun.
Then he turns to Superman, with the most feral, shit eating grin on his face. Cracks his knuckles, and then tells Superman that they're going to have a fight.
He wasn't asking, and before Superman could say anything he's already been punched through the air. Not that it hurt, really, mostly took him by surprise, but now Superman is now in a fight with what may or may not be a Kryptonian.
#dc x dp#dp x dc#dpxdc#dp x dc crossover#dcxdp#dc x dp crossover#dragon danny#blob dragon danny#blob ghosts#Danny's first thought when he heard about the Justice League was to fight them#Then he pulled up on Superman and did just that#The blob ghosts are being little cheerleaders on the sidelines of this fight#While Henry is being a worrywart because of what Danny is doing#Some blob ghosts of course start trying to reassure their new baby sibling because their dad can do basically anything#How did Henry go from a scientist who experimented on ghosts to being adopted by a king class entity?#He has no fucking clue.#Pariah and Danny are the only King class ghosts known to the GIW#They would classify Clockwork as a King class entity too if they knew of him#King is like the highest or whatever#But that's really just me bullshitting so NAYWAYS GOODBYE
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Day 6: Geralt + ocean Favourite 90's Anime
I switched the prompts around again today! The 90's anime prompt tickled my brain since I saw it, because while I didn't see it in the 90's, my favourite anime of that time period is Berserk, and doesn't Berserk live rentfree in my brain to this day-
#spielzeugkaiser does inktober#artists on tumblr#art#berserk#guts berserk#griffith#PLEASE DON'T BE FOOLED#that is a bastard man!!!!!#I love griffith as a character but don't I wanna see him die terribly even though I LOVE HIM in a 'he deserves to be strangled' way#listen to everyone who knows berserk and nows my AUs this must be. like the “ahhh” moment. because of course I love berserk#am I a firm believer that things would have gone better if they fucked? maybe.#I have Berserk on the same shelf in my brain as Banana Fish. the 'don't touch because it upsets you so much' shelf#I love it tho (both of them)#god I need to do one of the prompts with banana fish too#I also decided I'll switch the prompts when I feel like it because. I wanna have fun
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SO excited to see how Marceline is gonna react to Simon’s decision. Like. Simon is so deep in his own shit he has NO IDEA how angry she would be if she knew his plan. And there have been a lot of nods to this. I think it’s very intentional that we the audience saw little Frozen Marcy, but Simon didn’t. He’s not thinking about her right now. Her absence in these universes feels so pointed, ya know?
I mean think about Farm World. We know that in the Farm World universe Marcy guarded Simon’s body for a THOUSAND YEARS. She never left his side, lest the crown fall into someone else’s hands. She went mad with only the memory of his voice to keep her company… but he doesn’t know that. He doesn’t seem to fully understand what his transformation did to her.
It’s not super clear how much they’ve talked about it, but knowing both their characters I’m wondering how open Marceline was about her experience with the Ice King. How she could never get through to him even when she cried and pleaded. That she held onto Hambo for a thousand years. That she constantly watched him hurt the people she loved. That she was such a stranger to him that he tried to KISS HER??? Did they REALLY talk about it? Would he be throwing away his second chance if he knew how badly it would hurt her?
“All Simon ever wanted was to see Betty again”. And all Marceline ever wanted was to have Simon back. It’s what Betty wanted too.
I cannot WAIT for the reckoning.
#adventure time#fionna and cake#imagine what she would do if she went looking for Simon and he was gone#if she was forced to look into those unrecognizing eyes again#I just want her to slap him so fucking hard#I know he feels like nobody needs him but dammit OF COURSE marceline needs him#just because she’s busy with her girlfriend doesn’t mean she’s gonna be okay with Ice Kings return#uGH#marceline#ice king#simon petrikov#winter king#bubbline#petrigrof#this is my life
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Sol
#I’m just gonna put these here so I can rant about all the issues I see in the#so like I as an idiot was like let’s see if I can do a style study on qwille using my favorite boy right#but qwille a brain works in mysterious ways cause like I’m trying to hard to firgure out how they know where to put stuff#and of course the rendering is like that in between fully rendered and that more soft vague#which is gorge#but my brain when I do it is like you need to fix you need to fix this looks bad you suck blahblah#not to even mention the anatomy#which is completely fucked here#I can’t do shoulders to save my life#and he looks so dumb sitting on that box#like what’s wrong with his shoe#I know something’s wrong#I think I need to take a moment#I’m caught in one of those logic loops rn#blahhhhhh
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Yknow i get why scara is such a hater when it comes to childe because imagine you’re a 400+ year old puppet with your other immortal coworkers with their dark aesthetics and colors that all fit together in some way shape or form and then your boss decides to hire some 17 year old ginger kid just completely ruining the vibe. Like the color scheme isn’t actually that important i just think its funny but who is this cheerful human boy from a countryside village doing at our evil organisation meeting…. Shouldnt he be training with all the other grunts outside oorrr….
#childe is just a sopping wet doggy at the meeting full of people in business suits#he’s sitting in one of the spinny chairs too#as a kid i used to hate thag trope where the 7 year old was so fucking smart they would enter college at that age#like… go back to 3rd grade lil bro what are you doing here#still hate that trope#and in this specific scenario scara is one of the collage kids and childe is that smartass 7 year old#like ???? who is this kid sitting next to me in the advanced mathematics course…#i get the hater attitude towards him#scaramouche#tartaglia#childe#genshin impact#genshin
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Hello, op! While I do find your reading of Kabru’s self sacrifice and how little he eats really good, im curious why you consider him the deuteragonist? He is a foil to the protagonist yes, but still a supporting character.
I think its pretty clear Marcille is the second most important character in DM, and her story has much more weight than Kabru’s.
Hello! I've mentioned this on my blog before, but I actually consider Marcille and Kabru to both be deuteragonists to Laios's protagonist. I just wasn't talking about Marcille in that post.
Technically this term is meant to be used in playwriting, and the Greek tradition at that, so I'm playing a little loosey goosey with semantics and my argument would sound different if I were writing an academic paper. But this is tumblr dot edu and I'm trying to get a point across on my little blog, and part of the idea of a deuteragonist is that they support the protagonist. "Secondary main character who has their own importance in the narrative while bolstering the protagonist" works well enough for my purposes.
I think Marcille and Kabru are both playing specific and complementary roles to Laios. Marcille is at his side, facilitating the A plot: namely, "save Falin", which requires Marcille's magic, and then Marcille's method of resurrection ropes Thistle in, so the continuation of "save Falin" necessitates confronting the Dungeon Lord and conquering the dungeon (the B plot).
Kabru only intersects with Laios, but he is tied from the beginning to the B plot- and with dragging basically everyone else into it. Actually, the fact that he brings in this extremely loaded B plot despite only having brief face time with the protagonist should be seen as significant. In a sense, Kabru represents the surface world and all its concerns.
Before I talk about that more, I want to continue with the complementary line of thinking and point out that Kabru and Marcille have very similar background motivations.
Laios wants to save his sister first and foremost, and it's only along the way that he starts to consider what he'd do with the responsibility of Dungeon Lord. Coming to the conclusion that he wants to create a home for disparate peoples to live in harmony has connective tissue to both Kabru and Marcille's desires.
Marcille is the only one in their party who starts out with a greater motivation other than saving Falin (Izutsumi is a special case, but she's ultimately along for the ride), one that she keeps hidden for a long time. Because she is a mage, and because she is driven by a very personal tragedy (my dad died; I am terrified of outliving everyone), she is looking for a miracle to bring the different races closer together.
Kabru comes from a background of personal tragedy as well, but it's also a far greater, more political tragedy than just the death of a parent. It is not a coincidence that Kabru is a brown boy from an exploited region that suffered despite and because of military intervention from a first-world power, nor that he was adopted by a white woman whose coddling/dehumanization of him represents the paternalistic oversight of these world powers.
Thus, Kabru's motivations are both personal and political: if they, the short-lived races, can finally access the secrets of the dungeons, then not only can they have agency in stopping tragedies like Utaya's, but it will also give them a greater power of self-determination.
Marcille and Kabru have both correctly identified and set themselves against a problem that is greater than saving the life of one girl, greater even than sealing this one dungeon.
Despite Marcille's hopes, there is no grand magic solution to this. Only small, slow, backbreaking, ordinary solutions, the kind you labor over in kitchens and bedrooms and throne rooms and meeting houses and hearths and negotiation tables. The kind you run a kingdom with.
There is a reason why Dungeon Meshi ends with Marcille and Kabru on either side of Laios's throne.
Okay: back to Kabru (under the cut).
I've talked about this a little before, but I'll reiterate here: I consider Kabru to be the counterweight to the back half of the story. In a very literal sense too, as he pulls the focus up from the depths to the surface not once, but twice. Dungeon Meshi builds itself on the premise that the traditional "dungeon" must function as an actual ecosystem, and the monsters in it are biological actors in that ecosystem and not merely magical obstacles independent of their environment. The first couple dozen chapters are focused on this. Like regular animals, monsters have needs and instincts and unique behaviors, and they can be killed and consumed as part of a food chain.
And then Kabru comes along and he reminds us that humans are also part of their own special ecosystem, with their own needs and instincts and unique behaviors, and that beyond the biological drive of the literal food chain there are also complex social issues influencing these behaviors (like capitalism). Tansu's visit with the governor introduced us to these ideas, but Kabru is the one who carries them.
The way he and his party break down Laios's party also serves an important function. I think most readers are so busy being shocked that Kabru is "so wrong" about our goofy boy Laios that they don't realize that he isn't actually wrong about anything (he's only missing the context of what drives Laios, which he admits to and is part of the reason why he pursues him). We've gotten only Laios's view of things so far, and Laios is pretty tunnel-visioned. The narrative, through Kabru, is telling the reader this is how our protagonist actually comes across to his community.
We like Laios because we are following his story from his inner circle. We know he's naive and struggles with people but that he has a good heart and is ultimately just a big silly guy who won't harm anybody if he can help it. But we only know that because we're seeing him with his inner circle, in his environment. Outside of the dungeon, Laios is anti-social to the point of rudeness; he misreads situations and misjudges people, he acts in ways that cause friction, and he accidentally aligns himself with people who make his whole enterprise look suspicious: a prominent half-foot community leader, a mysterious foreigner literally surrounded by spies, the disgraced daughter of a criminal who now has to shoulder the burden of her father's reputation, and an elf in a land where there are no elves. And they seem to be very good at what they're doing. Yet this whole time, Laios acts as if he doesn't care about profit or taking the kingdom, the only logical reasons why anyone on the Island would gather up such a party and throw themselves into this death pit day after day.
Yeah of course Kabru finds this suspicious and interesting. Of course people don't know what to make of Laios. This all reiterates the question that Zon the orc already raised: What will you do, Laios, if you defeat the Mad Mage? If you gain control of all of this? Can you be a leader? Laios himself doesn't know yet.
This is all necessary context for our protagonist and the journey he has to go on, and it's fittingly brought up by the most socially adept character, who is so concerned with human ecosystems and the bigger picture of the dungeon. There is a reason why Kabru, as a character, is connected to large webs of people as he moves throughout the narrative: his own party, Toshiro's party, the Canaries, the denizens of the first floor of the dungeon.
Kabru is responsible for bringing Toshiro down to Laios's party. Toshiro is not a big mover and shaker in the story itself, but his confrontation with Laios is a huge part of Laios's character arc. His detour down to the lower levels also allows Izutsumi to escape and join Laios's party later.
We also have this very important moment:
It shows the first inkling- to the audience, to Kabru, and to Laios himself- that Laios is willing to do a painful, necessary thing to protect other people, that he won't just allow them to become collateral for his sister/monsters. That he can listen, and that he can assess a situation beyond his personal feelings. Again, fittingly, big-picture-thinker Kabru is the catalyst for this.
And then, not content to leave him as merely a device for Laios's character growth, the focus slingshots back up to the surface, and we follow Kabru.
The Canaries were going to go into the dungeon soon anyway, and they were always going to stir up the crowd in order to lure Thistle to them. Unless Thistle had given up right then and managed to slip away, the story could have very easily ended here:
Falin, immobilized and surrounded by Canaries, would have certainly been killed, and there would have been no way to ever resurrect her. Thistle would have been neutralized. The dungeon would have been taken by the elves, and anyone they could get their hands on would have been imprisoned at best. And maybe the dungeon would have been managed safely ... or maybe something would have gone wrong, and more lives would have been lost. Remember: the Canaries arrived in Utaya one year before the tragedy.
This is a huge moment that changes Laios's life forever, and he doesn't even know it. Kabru single-handedly keeps the story on course by sabotaging the Canaries, and he does it not just for Laios's sake, but for everyone's sake. For his friends and companions in the dungeon and everyone else outside it. Laios is a part of his motivation, a key player in Kabru's hopes, but Kabru has his own desires, his own agenda. He's trying to change the world. In a way, he succeeds. And while the Canaries might wish it were otherwise, as an entity in the narrative they are always anchored to Kabru's character. The two forces collide because of Kabru. The unsealing of the Winged Lion and Marcille's emergency ascension to Dungeon Lord happen indirectly because of Kabru.
While I have talked so much already that I don't want to give a detailed breakdown of it, I do want to mention Kabru's unique interiority as a character. That is to say: we see the inside of Kabru's head more than anyone else. Every character in the main ensemble gets their own moments of inner monologues or fifteen minutes in the limelight, but for Kabru, it's constant. He's always thinking, talking, narrating. His POV chapters always stand out for how first-person they feel compared to most others.
Notably, the only other character I could compare that to is Marcille, specifically during the dungeon rabbit debacle and her ascension afterward, which is when she really takes center stage as a character.
I hope I've explained my reasoning without becoming too insufferable.
To cap off my thoughts with a nod to my original post, I cannot stress enough how significant it is, thematically, that Kabru's relationship with food is the inverse of Laios's. It isn't just that Laios is the main character in a story about cooking monsters and Kabru happens to be his monster-hating foil. The artistic choice to deny the reader the visual of this character ever enjoying food, and only ever putting it in his mouth in situations where it hurts him, in a manga that gives so much attention to eating and the pleasures of meals, cannot be understated.
#Dungeon Meshi#Marcille Donato#Kabru#Kabru of Utaya#Dungeon Meshi meta#Dungeon Meshi spoilers#I started answering this at 10:30 AM but took several detours#mostly I was at work. some people shitpost at work. god knows what I'm doing.#I am so fucking sorry I did not mean for it to be this long. I had to EDIT THIS DOWN#paging malewifesband I feel like this does the trick wrt: Kabru's function in the narrative#of course I have more to say about he and Laios specifically (she threatened)#musings with Dea#I think I'll go back and add image descriptions but it's been eight hours and I need dinner!#and also to play FFXIV#dungeonposting#Dea's anonymous friends
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insecure soap whose insecurities don't stem from a place of inadequacy
he knows how talented he is, how hard he’s worked to get where he is; that he didn’t land a spot on an exclusive highly skilled taskforce for no reason. he's confident about his skills; doesn't brag or show off, doesn't need to because he knows he'll always live up to and surpass expectations the second someone doubts him
but he also knows he can always be better
there's records left unbroken, mental walls he can shatter; if he just keeps pushing, keeps training he'll be more. he's always trying to beat himself, not in search of validation or outward assurance but because he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that his yesterday self was lesser
slower
weaker
every muscle that burns and tears heals stronger so he dedicates himself to ripping them apart. scarred skin doesn't flinch from heat so he welcomes the burns. he’s strict with his diet and stricter with his schedule, he spends hours in the gym and longer at the range and not a minute of rest goes by without him thinking it’s time wasted when he could be improving, always improving
soap knows he's good
because he knows he can be great
and he won't stop until he is, no matter how many times he needs to break himself to get there
#this episode brought to you by captain mactavish’s obsessive need for improvement#seriously have you read that thing#its like a good 40% the source of my love for soap#theres a page of mactavish running the cqc course and his timings bc hes obsessed with trying to beat gazs record#he runs the thing 10 times#and only once is his time slower than the one before it#what the fuck#that need for improvement is so tasty and i am shamelessly dropping it on 22 soaps head have fun babygirl#coming out of my cage and ive been doing just fine.txt#we’re a team. ghost team#soapghost#soap cod#john soap mactavish#ghoap#ghostsoap
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