#feelings are the worst

[thalialunacy]

[Written for the @calaisreno May Prompt Prom. We are in the homestretch, people. It's like… plot (?) from here on in.]

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In his memory, John's mum had had a thousand words for rain. In reality, it was probably more like… twelve, but he never bothered sorting them. Or learning more about them.

He squints up at the overcast sky while Sherlock locks the front door behind them. 'My mum would call this "cloudybright." The kind that makes you want sunglasses despite not being able to see even a sliver of the sun.'

Sherlock raises his arm for a cab. 'That's actually just because--'

'Nope,' John interrupts swiftly, shaking his head. 'Don't want to know.'

Sherlock stares at him.

'Sentiment,' he says with a shrug. Then he climbs into the cab.

---

He's been standing behind Sherlock, who is crouched down examining part of a body, when someone approaches on his left. 'Brolly?' a feminine voice says.

John glances at the umbrella, then at the admittedly curvy and bright uniformed offerer, then at the sky, which has indeed started emitting moisture. 'Huh, I hadn't noticed.'

She shrugs. 'To be fair, it's not actually raining.'

'No, sure, it's more like aggressively misting.'

She laughs, her nose wrinkling. 'That sounds unpleasant.'

'Yes, well, I have been told it ruins a person's hair,' he says with a grin, thinking of Sherlock whinging about the subject several weeks prior.

Then Sherlock stands abruptly. 'We're done here,' he says, not looking at John before stepping away.

John nods briefly at the umbrella-bearer. 'Thanks anyway.'

'Sure,' she says with a high-wattage smile. 

John catches up with Sherlock quickly. 'Cab?' 

'I'd rather walk,' Sherlock says shortly.

They walk for several blocks, Sherlock's temper darkening along with the skies. As the aggressive mist turns into actual sprinkles, John's heart twists a little as he clocks what's going on.

He girds his loins and dives in. 'We agreed that I'd never be able to have any secrets while being involved with the cleverest man in all of Britain, didn't we?'

Sherlock doesn't answer for a moment, and John tries not to let it frustrate him. When the detective does speak, his voice is quiet, with anger but also with what John can only identify as shame. 'We did.'

'Then what is it?'

'You barely noticed her interest.'

'I would think that'd be good?'

'If it weren't because it's so common of an occurrence that you're practically inured to it.'

'Am I?'

'She wrinkled her nose at you.'

'Huh. And?'

'And I've heard that's supposed to be appealing.'

John considers this. 'It's certainly cute when Rosie does it.'

'Don't be obtuse.''

'Sherlock.' John hooks three fingers into one of the Belstaff's pockets, thus arresting Sherlock's movement.

The sprinkling has become soft rain, tepid drops on John's forehead, but he ignores it. They're in the middle of a deserted footpath, so John steps closer and folds his left hand around Sherlock's right palm. He's honestly not sure what to say, and while he's considering his options, Sherlock speaks first.

'I do not enjoy this feeling, John.'

'I know.'

'I never have.'

'I know.'

'It's illogical and unreasonable, which is very annoying.'

John's lips twitch. 'Yeah, I know.'

'I expected it to lessen once I knew what it was, but it didn't. I expected it to lessen once you and I were--' He pauses. 'Once I was assured of your feelings for me.'

'And are you?'

'Am I assured?'

'Yes.'

A ghost of a smile tips one side of Sherlock's mouth up. 'Frequently and soundly, thus far.'

John huffs out a laugh, trying not to let himself feel relieved just yet. 'You can't be too cross with me if you're making rude jokes.'

'I'm not cross with you at all.'

John raises an eyebrow.

Sherlock sighs. 'Must I say it out loud?'

And John understands his reticence, very much so, but they've been intentional about eschewing the Keep Calm & Stuff Down All Emotions bit, despite it being exhausting and really sodding embarrassing. 'Either right now or in therapy next week, yeah. But I'd prefer right now.'

Sherlock scowls, but there's not much heat behind it. 'I take back what I said about not being cross with you.'

John tips up and presses their lips together briefly. 'No you don't.'

Sherlock's free hand touches John's jaw for a moment. 'No, I don't.' He makes a disgusted sound. 'I know it's not to do with you, really.'

'Maybe that's why all the advice is to look inward, instead of trying to find a problem within the relationship.'

'"Look inward"? Have you been dipping into the self-help books?'

John shrugs. 'Maybe. Maybe I want to fix this so you don't feel like hell every time a woman smiles at me.'

'Annoyed?'

'A little.'

'I see.'

'Annoyed mostly that you don't even notice when people smile at you.' 

'That's because I'm not interested.'

'Neither,' John says firmly, gripping Sherlock's hand and looking him hard in the eye, 'am I.'

'I know that. But--' Sherlock makes a frustrated noise and tugs on his wet hair. 'Sentiment.'

The rain has started coming down in earnest. John doesn't care. 'Alright, then,' he says brusquely. 'Worst case scenario, please.'

Sherlock stares at him. A drop of rainwater wanders off the tip of his nose. 'Are you quite serious?'

'Yep,' John answers, popping his P on purpose. 'Worst case scenario, go.'

'That you'll do something idiotic, like find a woman you think better suits, and leave.'

John nods, feeling the rain sneak under his collar. 'And to be fair, I have done.'

'Yes,' Sherlock grinds between his teeth. 'I am aware.'

'So your instinct to fight or flee is rooted in reality.'

'Are you trying to make this worse?'

'No, because I'm not a dick.'

'You're certainly acting like one.'

'So are you! Can't you ever just bloody listen for once?'

'If you were saying something worthwhile.'

'Oh, we've reached that point in the row, have we?'

Sherlock's mobile rings.

He retrieves it and answers it on speakerphone without looking away from John. His lashes are spiked together with raindrops. 'What.' It's definitely not a question. 

Lestrade skips the pleasantries as well. 'We've got a live one.'

Sherlock's head snaps up quickly enough to shake some droplets into John's face. 'Beg pardon?'

'Your suspect just showed up half-dead,' the DI explains. 'And I think you'd agree that he's not clever enough to be faking a broken jaw.'

'It's unlikely. We'll be there as soon as we can.'

Sherlock hangs up and strides away, somehow making puddle-splashing look good.

'We are not done with this conversation,' John calls as he starts after him.

'Yes, we are,' Sherlock says carelessly over his shoulder.

John is glad for the rain cooling his face, which he's sure is red with anger. He sucks in several deep breaths, unclenches his fists, and goes to catch up with his detective.

[ <3 ]

[42ds-too]

Already me.

[markwateneymemorialcrater]

Please note. The orange one is not included because A. He isn’t a billionaire. And B. Calling him obnoxious is too kind for him.

[jack-owo-valentine]

.

[stil-lindigo]

lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)

if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.

--

no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.

I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.

I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.

If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.

[bereft-of-frogs]

There’s that post that’s like ‘everyone should get into a tiny niche fandom at least once’ fully agree, that was really fun -- but I would like to add that everyone should get into a fandom where their opinions run counter to major fanon because it really teaches you about sticking to your guns and trusting your interpretation of the text without having to rely on peer validation

because WHAT are people talking about sometimes

[scarymosscryptid]

You know that giddy feeling you get after you've hung out with someone you have a crush on? I fucking love this feeling. This is so cringe what is my life.

[refugeed-kim]

YES YES I NEED THIS SIGN IN EVERY SINGLE PARK PLEASE

This is my daily struggle, I had so many arguments with people with off-leash dogs (in a mandatory leash area!!!). Thanks to this behavior I'm struggling with Kim being anxious/aggressive with other females as she often gets involved in unpleased interactions with free females while on leash. And every single time that I ask for the dog to be at least recalled, I'm being called names and insulted of course.

Also 9 out of 10 their dog isn't really that friendly at all.

[starspilli]

dc cowboy doodles & wips !

[oars]

[chloesimaginationthings]

Vanessa suffered more than Michael in FNAF

[rabid-transcendentalist]

[puncertainty]

real

[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.

[sqrkyclean]

being vulnerable for a second to use my pooltoy furry oc to convey what recovering from contamination ocd has been like while undergoing hrt.

[nick-nellson]

#job interviews be like NEW GIRL | 1.04 Naked