#do snakes

[william-snekspeare]

hater of socks

[mergimergi]

She's stimming I'm not polishing this catgle any more i have assignments on track waiting to stab me in the back.

[hinamie]

subject, specimen, spectacle;

should i say that you're dead?

[lenaellsi]

mwah

[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.

[egophiliac]

he did it! 🐍 and it only took...uhhh...well, there probably could've been less punches, but why hold back!

PUNCHES FOR EVERYONE

[chm18]

GeGeGek

[muisley]

[lazylittledragon]

modern au gale+cyra/dadkarios for soul healing <33

cyra should not have a phone her internet history would have her on a watchlist

[river-of-wine]

Katniss: my name is Katniss Everdeen

President Coriolanus Snow remembering his two month long situationship from 64 years ago who told him about a plant called katniss not long before she disappeared and has been driving him mad ever since: yooo

[c0smicdisaster]

After 6 espressos does one contain enough cafeine to be concidered a coffee?

[fictionadventurer]

Personally, it's always a bit wild to me to see commentators interact with the Hunger Games franchise as if Collins were writing science fiction stories instead of essays with faces. She's just not that interested in fleshing out side characters or digging into the details of the worldbuilding. These characters are concepts and symbols before they're people. There's an almost mathematical precision to who and what she explores and how deeply she does it. This is a step or two away from pure allegory. If she were writing a couple of centuries ago, she'd have named her characters things like Innocence and Anger and Watch-Carefully-Your-Soul-Lest-Ye-Be-Damned, but since she's writing for modern audiences, she has to settle for puns and allusions. If she has another essay to write, she'll assign some faces to it; she's not going to look into backstories or other eras just for the sake of storytelling, and it's not a failing as a writer that she doesn't.

[teaboot]

Acab applies to security guards too.

Okay, so there's two basic kinds of security: public and private

Public security is for government employees like police

Private security is stuff like security guards, bodyguards, and bouncers

As a security guard, you need to pass different licensing exams for different privileges. Someone who might handcuff people needs a license to carry handcuffs- someone who might need to carry a weapon needs a license for that weapon.

I passed my BST exam something like five years ago and stopped there, so I am allowed to carry: A radio

And as private security, again, there are two basic kinds: in-house and contract

Contract security means a company or a person or a location like a park can pay my boss' boss money to send powerless scarecrows in uniforms to walk around and provide what is called "visible presence"

which is, essentially, a life-size cardboard cutout of a guy wearing the classic Spirit Halloween costume, "Black Slacks Law Professional" in size L

So if the entire chain of authority, from a toddler at the mall food court all the way up to whoever happens to have access to the majority of the planet's nukes at this time, you should know that someone like me currently ranks somewhere very slightly above Janitor, but still definitely below Cinnabon Assistant Manager

Which means that if I chose to go rogue and use my powers for evil TOMORROW, I would maybe manage to punch a Cinnabon employee and shoplift half a dozen chocolate bars from the gift shop before I am fired and in jail being sued off my ass with my licenses revoked for life, unable to leave the country or apply for a job at Walmart with my new shiny criminal record

Security guards and mall cops ain't police. We're dressed like police so you don't try and do something illegal in the area, but the vast majority of us can't actually do anything.

Calm down

[benevolenterrancy]

"If the original novel had given this thing more than ten words of description, there was no way he wouldn’t have remembered!"

[tagerrkix]

Eden was their ✨disney princess era✨

[pupkinpumpkin]

After the Regret Prison

Crow Rook: Hey guys, how long was I gone for?

Companions: Oh ☺️ don't worry about that 🩷 All that matters is that you're here 🥰

-Later-

Crow Rook: Oh hey Viago! I missed y-

Viago: *decks them in the face, on the verge of tears* YOU IDIOT, YOU HAD ME- I mean TEIA WORRIED YOU WERE NEVER GOING TO GET OUT. EMIL MISSED YOU