#checked back

[ebonydraygon]

So it's been a bit of a year... I'm fairly sure someone left a monkey's paw around somewhere, and I tripped over it by accident. That and getting a shiny new diagnosis of Crohn's Disease (does not make you an actual crone, that is a lifestyle choice, not an autoimmunity condition). As such I'm going to be very gentle to myself with these.

Creatively

Complete two writing projects

Technically? I finished the long form Gloryhammer fanfic I have been plugging away at for the last few nanos, as well as a few one-shots. I also did a bunch of writing work for larp but like my nano this year, it was hampered by my new health condition flaring up.

sew a piece of clothing for myself or Ben

Didn't manage this, though I did make a pretty hooded caplet for a friend! And have stuff together to make actual clothing things for people next year! Closest to a clothing piece I made would be a white plague doctor mask I made for Ben. It apparently needs more ventilation holes...

rework a cosplay

Not managed this year... though I suppose I am working on a new one, which is made via reworking an existing dress. Does that count?

Personally

eat more regularly/healthily

I'll just settle for actually eating at least once a day. Again, Crohn's is not a fun one when it comes to digestion and eating.

post progress pics more often

Semi managed! I managed to get into the habit of taking pictures of my work after each stream. Mostly at least. So my discord server has regular updates! Now for all my other media accounts...

support other crafters more

I like to think that I did actually do this. I certainly made a number of friends in the twitch crafting community, and I'm recognised by them in turn. I may also be very bad for throwing plushies at them, though that is mainly because I like giving people things...

General

Leave the house more

So funny story... at the start of the year, whilst I was in hospital, our washing machine broke. Thankfully, we have some really lovely friends who have a washing machine and a dryer. Which has meant we make weekly trips over the city with a bag or few of laundry and to hang out. Its leaving the house! It counts!

sort and clear spare room

Again, I've made progress, my fabric is all sorted, I've even started trying to remove the mould from the walls. Next steps are dismantling the old bed in there and giving it to our Pathfinder DM and then getting a new loft bed in there. Progress!

Get to the stage where we can get a cat!

One day!

This year has been a hard one. Most of it is finding a new balance with my diagnosis, as well as trying to get it under control. It has meant I have been more exhausted and it's let things slip. But over all, I am proud of what I have achieved despite it!

Highlights of the year include getting to stay in a castle for a week, discovering a new craft joy in cross stitch and medal making! Plus the joy when I made a bunch of medals for the local nanowrimo group and handed them out to people before November began. That joy is why I love crafting (and why I had to be bullied into actually selling them rather than just giving it away all the time). Plus getting to meet a bunch of my partner's online friends at last!

Tune back January 1st for the new resolution list and the thank you list for those that kept me going through the previous year.

[girldraki]

[yooo-lets-go]

Wish you were here

[buggachat]

Part 183 of my bakery “enemies” au!

I'M BACK AND READY FOR DAILY UPLOADS!!!

First / Prev / Next / All

Kofi

[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.

[melblancscream]

(x)

[whatdoesthequeersay]

ACE 👏 PEOPLE 👏 CAN 👏 MAKE 👏 DIRTY 👏 JOKES

Then again, if you’re an aphobe, your mom already made the dirtiest fucking joke of all time, so why should we bother?

[majunju]

stelle finally meets her match (in aesthetic taste)

[snakeoid]

thanks bro

[egophiliac]

tsum events continue to be just the best

[rubydubydoo122]

I saw someone say a while ago that Jason attacking Tim at Titans Tower was just Tim hallucinating bc he was feeling guilty about being Robin even though Jason's not dead. Which is great, amazing, I think the whole Titans Tower thing is Bonkers, but I think it would be so much funnier if Jason tried to Gaslight Tim into believing the Titans Tower incident never happened, not because he's like evil, he's just super embarassed about it. like Or Tim did actually hallucinate Jason at TT but thinks it was real, so when he tells Jason about it, Jason's so fucking confused, and Tim thinks Jason's Gaslighting him

Tim: Remember that time when you broke into Titans Tower and beat me half to death while wearing a Robin costume from party city

Jason: What? Tim, I know i'm crazy, but I'm not...Insane.

Tim, pulling down his collar: I literally have the scar to prove it

Jason: Bruce told me that was from Clayface pretending to be me, which, might I just say rude. Tim... are you ok? Did you hallucinate me attacking you? like, I know I've done that before, but...

Tim, frowning: I don't think I hallucinating. I was benched for a while after because I had to recover-

Jason: well, you were benched around the time I was dropping hints that I knew who Bruce was outside of Batman, he probably just benched you to keep you safe. You probably were working too many cases with too little sleep and your imagination started to run wild.

Tim: Are you gaslighting me?

Jason: Are you gaslighting me?

[pangur-and-grim]

this is fine

[thisnoah]

"You treat your mouth as if it's Heaven's gate"

[Too Sweet by Hozier]

[wordfather]

sorry i cant do that right now im having a year long moment

[beatriceportinari]

Toad, origami, one square sheet of paper

[dykepaldi]

homestuck was so perfect for autistic teenagers bc it took characters being sorted into categories and having Attributes to its absolute extreme. forget four hogwarts houses, every character has their associated colour their zodiac sign their associated animal their dream planet their god tier class and aspect their typing quirk their pesterchum handle their weapon their planet of x and y, as well as each of them having a handful of other very quantifiable Personality Traits and Interests (e.g. this one is a clown this one is angry this one likes fashion this one is just rufio from hook for some reason) and THEN they all also have their respective ancestors and dancestors(?)(plucked that word from my memory) who have all of those things as WELL

and god not to mention the fucking quadrant system

as a 13-15 year old autistic kid i didnt even need homestuck to have a plot i just happily made a big big spreadsheet of character attributes in my brain