#and that's part of the problem

[forgotn1]

I know it's the years of bullying, rejection, and loneliness that cause it and I'm going to keep doing my best to push through and be more open with what I feel and what may come my way, but it's still incredibly difficult for me to imagine a world where someone is actually interested in me romantically. There's always that voice in the back of my head telling me there's better options out there. That people don't want that from me and I'm going to die alone. It's very hard not to listen to, especially as the years go on and I'm still alone. But I also know I can't get anywhere if I listen to it, so I just have to try and ignore it as best as I can.

[unforth]

Y'all have got to stop virulently hating men. Like, I'm sorry, I fucking hate the patriarchy too, but the patriarchy isn't just men and saying it is just exculpates complicit women. I am the mother of a young boy, and I look at this precious, empathetic 8 year old boy I'm raising and I don't know where online is safe for him. Places like this will say he's evil just for his gender, and other places will say "we'll be your friend if you hate with us," and still others will radicalize him in other ways. Where is he supposed to go? Why are we saying the radicalization is the fault of the kids just trying to find a place to hang?

Like this is seriously getting urgent. You have got to fucking stop conflating the patriarchy and men. 53% percent of white women voted for Trump. Men aren't the problem. White supremacy and Christian patriarchal structures are two examples of patriarchy-reinforcing structures that aren't solely couched in maleness. Men aren't the problem, and pretending they are drives more men into more welcoming extremist spaces and also ignores all the parts of this that are forwarded by people who aren't men.

What I see happening all over is scared, depressed, lonely people looking for someone they're allowed to hate automatically, unquestioningly - someone they're allowed to place all the blame on. Fascism says people of color, non-Christian people, queer people, etc., are the ones they're allowed to hate.

And way too many of yall answer that no, it's leftist to hate men instead. You are doing *the exact same thing they are.*

Fucking knock it off.

The answer is we're not supposed to hate anyone automatically based on their immutable personal characteristics. Hate the specific people who've hurt you. Hate the self-reinforcing systems that let them get away with hurting you. Hate the strangers who prop up those systems. Hate the fascists. Hell knows I hate Donald Trump, but it's not because he's a man, it's because he's a piece of shit.

Hate the pieces of shit, not the gender.

But don't hate men just because they're men. That's unhelpful, stupid, insane, and entirely counterproductive. Fucking. Stop.

[mooreaux]

Love Undying

[colors-of-my-heart]

unfortunately, the final Epic livestream getting cancelled because the cast decided to go to Ithaca together only to face nonstop disasters including a crazy bad storm is the funniest possible way this could have ended

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[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.

[xiaq]

Your first pride story was touching and all but you still married a man.

Yeah, bisexuals do that sometimes.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael and Vanny had wild teen years in FNAF

[rystiel]

i keep seeing people say the doctor shouldn’t have feelings for rogue because he’s married to river…? river song… who has also married multiple people… one of the most polyamorous characters in the show…?

[luckylsoer]

“Much more efficient than dragging my eyes down there” — Senna

Also, Happy New Year y’all :D

[egophiliac]

queen of diamonds, upright + reversed 💎

I've redone this like eighty times, I have to just be done with it now and stop staring at all my mistakes oh no 🫠

[sunnysunsins]

[rabnerd28]

Venom 3: 0/10, Eddie Brock did not get pregnant

[zebulontheplanet]

People take the word ambulatory wheelchair user, and say it means exclusively part time wheelchair users and run with it.

I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user. But I’m not a part time wheelchair user. I use my wheelchair EVERY SINGLE day. That means that I’m not a part time wheelchair user, because I use it more than part time. A lot more than part time.

There seems to be this new rhetoric, that ambulatory = part time. And for most, this isn’t the case. Ambulatory does not mean part time, it simply means that you can walk.

I can walk around my room unassisted by any mobility aids. I cannot walk to the lunch room which is literally up the hall without a mobility aid. I’m almost a full time crutch user, and I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user.

I am not a part time mobility aid user, and I hate that people have come to the “agreement” that ambulatory means part time, when that is quite literally, not true.

[toki-ni-ai-wa]

Vassago vs Asmodeus

The most egregious thing about Asmodeus in Mastermind isn't his lack of action. It's how he participates in and upholds corrupt systems of power. When Satan asserts the he is the law, all of the Sins rise from their seats to sing backup for Satan. "He is the law".

You know who doesn't participate? Vassago.

On top of being the only Goetia to question the trial, he was also the only one who didn't harmonize along with Satan when he was asserting his absolute power and authority. Vassago, having no context or prior knowledge, only having the information that was fed to him, could sense that something was wrong and refused to participate in it. Asmodeus, knowing more about the situation than anyone else in the room, knowing the true nature of Stolas' and Blitz' relationship, remained quiet. He only spoke up once, and only after Bee spoke first. He raised his hand in wanting a more complete trial, but he stood behind Satan all the same. He upheld the corruption and abuse of power, knowing fully well that Satan was in the wrong. Refusing to participate in corrupt power structures is already something we've seen in the Hellaverse with Vaggie and Emily. And yes, Vaggie and Emily also faced consequences for refusing to participate. And no, their individual actions weren't enough to change anything either. So what? Vaggie, Emily, and Vassago stood by their morals. They did what was right. They saw corruption and abuse, and spoke out and refused to participate. Even if your actions and words have no sway or power, you're supposed to do what's right, and refuse to participate in what's wrong. It's probably true that even if Asmodeus had spoken out, the outcome wouldn't have changed. And while not speaking out, and hiding the truth he was sitting on is a big issue, that's not the point I'm trying to make here. Asmodeus saw corruption and abuse, and willingly participated in it and upheld it. Asmodeus has proven that he will protect the hierarchy of Hell above what is right, that he will protect and uphold it even when he knows that what it's doing is wrong. And that he will even uphold it over Fizz and to Fizz's detriment. Vassago didn't participate. Emily and Vaggie didn't participate. Asmodeus did.

[secretly-a-trekkie]

pov you finally watch season 3 and then black out and draw this