#gonna be rereading that for a WHILE

[keferon]

THE NEW CHAPTER OF MISTAKES ON MISTAKES UNTIL IS OUT AND YOU ALL KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS~~~~~~

Spoilers for ch 74 below >:)

Head in hands. And then they all happened to be self sacrificial idiots.

Infinitely delighted by the fact that Optimus automatically decided to catch whoever was falling and only look who that was afterwards. 100/10. Peak Optimus writing.

[benevolenterrancy]

(Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett) I think Shang Qinghua and Ponder Stibbons should have tea and compare notes about somehow accumulating so much behind-the-scenes power by doing menial jobs no one else wants that they could basically run the show if they wanted...

meanwhile we have Shen "meh good enough" Qingqiu

[someiicecube]

im normal about this IF game, i swear

[dunmeshistash]

Marvelous day to you, good sir/ma'am! I have a burning question in dire need of answering, and thus I have decided to turn to the one and only Monster Mashing Morbius Master John "Dunmeshi" Stash for help!

(Well, actually, I have multiple burning question but I'm saving those other questions for later since I'd like to do some research beforehand when I have the time before I resort to asking more questions.)

For a while now, I have been compiling my thoughts on all of Dungeon Meshi's characters and summing up different interpretations for myself, and this has been going swimmingly all things considered! However, one of these characters I have seen very little interpretations of aside from a handful of incredible fan fictions is the one and only "guy of all time"! Toshiro Nakamoto! Most people I talk to about the fella don't really have anything to say that I myself don't already think; that being that he's definitely the person of all time, a well-written character, understandably though no less dreadfully non-communicative, a poor team leader who could most definitely use some improvement, is complicit in Izutsumi's treatment—which, for the record, I think is good writing and makes sense, especially for the time, though that doesn't mean I won't hold it against him either way—and immensely patient for being able to put up with that little bell thing whatchamacallit. Overall he is just well-written, and his confrontation with Laios—not to mention the way Laios responds—is just... mwah! Chef's kiss! Both sides of that particular fight were also pretty relatable to me and taught me something valuable. It's just... a really good fight scene! Me likey! Life lessons with Dungeon Meshi, hahaha!

I get that there's likely not a whole lot else to go through since he doesn't appear all that often and really is just the person to ever exist, but before I wanted to move on to the next character, I decided to hop by and see if perhaps you'd be willing to share your opinion on him! Maybe you have something interesting I hadn't considered!

If you don't, though, that's perfectly understandable! Regardless, I hope you have a jolly good day! I hope this is not too silly of a question.

Hello! I'm happy to answer any questions so don't worry about sending them!

That said I'm maybe not the best person to ask opinions about Toshiro since I'm a known "not fan" of him, I have come to like him more compared to when I first finished dunmeshi but I probably still have some biases, I'll try not to lean too negative on this tho

With that in mind here's my thoughts

I think Toshiro is a great well written character too! His fight with Laios is amazing and I think on his side of the conflict is a culmination of his worst flaw: He's terrified of confrontation and just passively expects things to resolve themselves.

In the example of the Ogre extra he WANTS to do something about Tade being so thankfull to someone who enslaved her but he wont because he's afraid of challenging how things are/afraid of conflict/confrontation.

I don't think he's a bad person tho, I think he's just passively going thru the motions of life, Toshiro is constantly just thrown around by the people around him without resisting it, he didn't to go to the Island of his own accord: he's there because his father made him go, he didn't choose the retainers that went with him and he didn't even choose to join Laios' party, he just let it happen to him (which is also relatable unfortunately, get a grip man)

Even when having to speak up against Laios in their backstory comic Namari has to pull him to join them in the complaint, he wasn't gonna say anything even if it did bother him (unclear if it did)

Letting other people push and pull you around is also choice tho, he barely tries to resist them and never makes his boundaries clear. In a way him and Falin are similar actually, how both of them just go with what other people want instead of what they themselves want, their reasons are very different (Falin does it because it's what she thinks her loved ones want/need of her, Toshiro does it because he would rather not fight against it) but it is a harmful situation for both of them, you gotta live for yourselves guys.

The thing is that it's not like it doesn't bother him to be pushed around, in the Laios fight years of bottled up emotions finally burst out and he says everything he was holding in the worst way possible, instead of managing his frustrations and setting boundaries with Laios he held it all in until he couldn't anymore, my man is not good at communication or handling conflict.

In another example he gets pissed off at Maizuru for using the Hag to scare him as a kid but also decides not to say anything about it, his relationship with Maizuru is actually also based on repressed feelings that he would rather bottle up and not think about (maybe these too will burst out one day if he doesn't properly deal with it)

But the thing about Toshiro I like the most honestly it's his feelings towards Falin, I might have made fun of him for literally goin "I like her cause she's not like other girls" but honestly I get it, she's a mystery, someone who is always only doing things for other people, and he saw her showing genuine interest in something that wouldn't matter for most people, or most people would find disgusting, so he was interested in her.

People joke that Falin and Laios are the same so Toshiro should like Laios too but Falin isn't as open and bold as Laios, so I think Toshiro wants to actually get to know her, but as I understand for his culture being interested in a woman and wanting to be close to her means asking her in marriage? and so he did, and even then he was still not being clear about his feelings.

That's why I LOVE the extra where him and Falin are finally honest and direct to each other, they're both people who just accept what others push onto them, Falin herself never gave him a response for a year cause she similarly would rather avoid conflict, but here they finally start being honest and direct with each other. I'm pretty sure he knew what her response would be but he still clearly told her and accepted her answer, my man confronted something uncomfortable gracefully, good job.

I avoided speaking on the more negatives opinions I have cause I believe those are what most people talk about but even with the negatives I think Toshiro has room to grow and definitely seems to already be on that path, like Maizuru says he has potential to be a great leader, he just needs to finally take charge of his own life and not be afraid to disrupt how things are

Just as a final thought I wish (some) people realized he has power over his retainers and even Maizuru, who people think is the source of his trauma, is still just a subordinate that can't really do anything against him. The source of his trauma is his father who also has power over Maizuru and made her raise his son (while still having an affair with her) if you're gonna blame someone for how he is blame his father smh

[xxplastic-cubexx]

reminding his ass its PRIDE this month

[MARVEL Voices: Pride #1 (2021) - 'Early Thaw']

[casscainmainly]

Thoughts on Asian David Cain and New 52/Rebirth Cass

Nothing prompted this I just wanted to spew out my thoughts on the New 52 decision to make David Cain Chinese instead of White. And what else changed - suddenly David was not the main actor in Cass' life, but was a subordinate to Mother (a White woman). On the one hand I think they did this to make him not purely evil (I do see the effort, since they make David sacrifice himself for Cass at the end of B&R Eternal), but it's still worth noting that making him Asian correlated to kneecapping his agency.

Obviously I prefer David as a White man because I read Cass' story as about model minoritisation and the ways White people project onto/manipulate Asian people, but to be fair New 52 David and Cass is still fundamentally a story about a White person abusing and manipulating their Asian children. It's just that the Asian child now includes David, since he was manipulated by Mother alongside Cass. New 52 David is a Cass parallel, which wasn't as much of a thing in pre-52.

And this is actually (in a vacuum) interesting!! An AU with an Asian David who also suffered from racism could be really neat (and how it would complicate Cass' feelings even MORE than they are in canon). But obviously Asian David didn't work for several reasons. One, HE DIED. White!David got to live forever but the moment he becomes non-White he's wiped out :(. My hottest Cass take is potentially that I enjoy Cass taking David's name after his death 😭 Orphan is a silly name but this is something I think Cass WOULD do given David had just sacrificed himself for her. I read Orphan as a punitive identity Cass wore out of shame/guilt (the opposite of Batgirl), and ideally she would've let go of Orphan as she overcomes her guilt over the murder of Harper's mother and David's death. But Tynion never brings up David again so this is all nonexistent 😭😭

(Speaking of Harper Row - I don't hate the set-up of Cass having murdered someone she later meets the child of, but it puts an emphasis on Harper rather than Cass herself. Now her redemption is somewhat contingent on a White girl's forgiveness, another lessening of Cass' agency in her own healing).

Two, Asian!David contributes to the weird set-up where Bruce no longer parallels David, he instead is the opposite of him. The great thing about original Bruce-David were that they're both White men who use Cass, and Puckett (and Horrocks) never let you forget that Bruce is flawed in strikingly similar ways to David. But New 52 unfortunately veers into White saviour territory - with Bruce no longer paralleling David, he's unequivocally the 'White knight' to David's evil Asianness. Though as I stated above they try to offset this by having Mother be the big bad, N52 still definitively positions Bruce as Cass' saviour in a way the og run did not.

AND it gets worse with evil Shiva. New 52 is a bizarro world where David is written more sympathetically than Shiva, like David gets to sacrifice himself dramatically for Cass and say "you deserved better than me" while Shiva gets beaten up by Cass and then shot by Ra's!!! I find the Cass-Shiva fight in #957 a little gratuitous tbh particularly in the violence against Shiva. Again there's an attempt - like with David - to make Shiva not fully evil by giving her motivations against Ra's, but it's evil Asians all the way down this time. And Shiva is portrayed to be the Bad Murderess to Batman's Good Upstanding Morals. The contrast between this and og Shiva is startling - BG 2000 Shiva helps Cass overcome her death wish, while New 52 Shiva is an obstacle Cass must punch in the face before she can accept herself.

Kind of strayed from the point but anyway Shiva dies too, and although she obviously gets resurrected it's just strange. New 52/Rebirth Cass has both parents (both ASIAN parents) die in front of her at the end of their arcs. It prevents either David or Shiva from reappearing in her narrative (at least, for Shiva, until later), which leaves the rest of 'Tec having Cass interacting with White people only basically (she doesn't even talk that much to Luke). It's not like BG 2000 was perfect - Cass rarely interacts with Asians (rip Tai'Darshan) and is also very much enclosed in Whiteness. But there is some great stuff in BG 2000 about being a model minority, being misunderstood as a woman of colour by White parental figures, finding solidarity and freedom with other POC etc etc. All that is missing from the New 52, in favour of a racist portrayal of David and a racist + misogynistic combo for Shiva.

So I'm really glad David is White again (never thought I'd say those words 😭) and that Shiva isn't like. as bad as she once was (though she could still be way better). Tbh their relationships to Cass were already ruined pre-52 - Shiva by the end of Batgirl (2000) and David by Batgirl (2008), so it's not like N52 was the main culprit here. But N52 really did erase a lot of the nuances in Cass' original story and somehow ended up way less progressive (at least in a racial lens) than her original inception.

But ANYWAY! Asian David does not work at all in canon, but an Asian David AU has tons of possibilities. Really exploring how he was victimised at the hands of Mother, and how him being a parallel to Cass would fundamentally change their relationship (but also how him being Asian does not erase the misogyny he directs towards Cass) could be sooo good. I think there are elements to the N52 origin that could work if the racial ramifications of their choices were actually delved into, but oh well. Definitely not in canon because Cass being biracial is imo important to her character and informed the way she was written in her solo run. ALL THAT TO SAY if anyone is curious why N52 origin is bad beyond the name 'Orphan' and it being different from the original, to me the way they handled Cass' Asian heritage + David and Shiva was the worst part.

[hummingjay]

Dying 101

A fair bit of yapping under the cut about what's kinda happening here. In short it's just yap about why kasuars are so weak physically but still won't die.

Something I always did wanna play with is that ÆON doesn't care at all about the kasuars. As in what they do, how they feel, and what they're made of, so long as they fight well. On one hand, that's great! They can comfortably degrade without being put down, they can express themselves without too much worry, and generally are under less watch than another replika type.

What's NOT great is that ÆON treats them horridly. Kasuars are built with cheap, recycled garbage. They're made of inferior components and structure and are physically weaker. The density of their flesh is actually less than that of another replika like Elsters. (they match strength by lessening the physical inhibitors of the body. More on that in a sec.) In fact, in their armor, they weigh about the same as a Eule. The only thing that isn't utterly weak is their outermost shells to prevent crushing. Enough blunt trauma and their inside will tear or liquify on the inside and literally leak out (notice there's no wound up there?)

Their only strength is in their head- they have intense pain tolerance and enough grit to survive almost a full 45 minutes past full organ failure, so long as their heart and lungs function. (if they don't, then Kasuars'll spend 15 minutes suffocating instead of around 5.) They also can push their limits more. You know how in fits of adrenaline, humans get insane strength but overexert themselves and get hurt? Kasuars always have that fun rush and will sometimes accidentally tear their arms off. Stronk. They may have less strength inhibitors but their nerves are in full function, so they feel whatever pain they go through, they just handle it extremely well.

That's why ÆON can afford to make them so cheaply. The nerual template gives them the survivability of a replika made of proper material. This is GREAT for ÆON but for the Kasuars it makes things much, much worse. Bullets do far more damage to weaker material so not only do they get hurt more, all the corpses are far, far more mutilated. Instead of the couple of bullet holes in your best friend her guts are spilling out, only the guts in question are now closer to a mulch.

Then they don't get care. ÆON can't possibly be bothered to send enough repair supplies so kasuars are treated with whatever's on hand, usually by themselves or Ara units; they don't get much medics to do it. They'll literally take welding torches and use them to close the wounds. While not standard issue, It's hard to find a Kasuar without duct tape for medical emergencies. Older ones can cut their bodies open to remove and repair bones. (No, they don't have enough pain meds for that to not be insanity-inducing) They also don't get therapy. All those corpses? or more aptly all those piles of biomechanical mulch? All those scenes go unresolved. The closest they'll ever get is to talk to someone about it. Problem with that is they really really wanna be loved and a great way to scare potential friends away is to talk about how your friend was ruptured by a grenade.

All that tallies up since Kasuars are by default not all there. They're unstable from the moment they deploy, immediately sent to go die or watch others die in the most brutal fashions possible, and get no care whatsoever. If you haven't guessed KSAR suicide rates are high for those that live more than a week. Allegedly. ÆON doesn't document them.

[aroaessidhe]

2025 reads / storygraph

Pantomime

victorian-esque gaslamp fantasy, start of a trilogy

a young intersex person runs away from his family when he’s being pushed into conforming as a girl, and joins a waning circus as a boy, becoming an aerialist

as he grows closer to some of his co-stars and finds a home in the circus, his past life starts to catch up with him - and he seems to have a strange connection to the vestiges of ancient magic from legend

a rereleased rewritten version!

[wishchip106]

finally watched speak no evil 🤩🤩 i really enjoyed it despite being stressed out the whole time

anyway i looked back at my cherik pics after watching AND HOW IS THIS THE SAME MAN???

i get that it’s a 13 year difference but honestly the comparison always shocks me

James Mcavoy can shapeshift…. 🤯

[1-800-i-ship-it]

omg i just finished orv im going insane im im i can finally look at that doc of things i saved for after i finished orv and can look at spoilers...i can finally unblock that orv spoiler tag...im so normal about orv

[ceabu]

Isn't This Nice?

[crazyness-overpowers]

you’re telling me that immediately after she volunteered, as katniss was seconds away from crying, haymitch stood up onstage and caused a drunken scene, calling out the capitol on camera, and then fell off the stage, effectively shifting the attention off of katniss long enough for her to recover? and i’m just supposed to live with this fact post-sunrise?

[kandicon]

Okay I think I'm gonna write a bunch of outsider-pov flash fiction featuring the unicorn and the dragon featuring some of their various forms to get a better concept of them in my mind AND! if y'all promise to be really niceies and give me at least one (1) note per piece, I'll even post them on here

[winter-parrot]

I finally finished my Stormlight reread and I’m starting Wind and Truth now and

ooooooooooooooooooooooooh boy

[emily-mooon]

To make up for the fact that I didn’t do anything for them for Christmas, here’s another fake shoujo magazine chapter cover :]

pose ref ↓

HAHA ITS FROM ITAKISS!!!! Naoki and kotoko are nothing like the blorbs but I thought this pose worked for that scene (it’s apart of a much large page split into two images, but I decided to crop it cause the rest of it doesn’t matter tbh)

[fluffypotatey]

To be honest I am a huge Nalu shipper. But the thing is I want to know the difference between the way Natsu cares about his guildmates and Lucy. Like what is the obvious difference since that boy sees every as Nakama so how can we say that the wag he cares about Lucy is different?

Like even when Erza passed away? (All the way back in first season there was a segment where the guild was gathered at her grave and all) Natsu was still very reactive. Plus he was also said to be depressed even when Lisanna passed.

What's the difference between all of them and Lucy?

the fact that he stayed. the fact that before he met Lucy, Natsu wasn't one to stay in a group or even want to work with anyone besides Happy at the start of the story. hell, he was ready to just file Lucy down as "New Guildmate" once they reached Fairy Tail

but then, Lucy doesn't leave. she follows him on his mission to save Macao despite her not needing to or even really understanding everything about it. she stays and then fights with him and saves him. it's no secret that Natsu is strong and can take care of himself really well. he's been going on solo missions for years now, and no one has really stopped him, but that means he's been in a lot of sticky situations where he and Happy are on their own and have no backup. and yet, without asking, Lucy offers it

and i think this is the moment when Natsu considers that maybe it's okay to have someone there to have his back (sans Happy)

"but Natsu only needed Lucy for the next quest because of the requirements," well, Natsu also wouldn't have taken or even considered that quest if it weren't for Lucy, yeah? he was not a team player (in the picking job's sense) or really wanted other people to help him on his quests sans Happy. and then he goes and picks a job that caters to their team whilst ensuring that Lucy can't say no

or maybe i'm reading too much into it 🤷🏻‍♀️

or maybe Natsu's got horrible abandonment issues that he will latch onto people so fast (Igneel & Lisanna) but also cause him to distance himself so far when left behind (his 1st time at the guild, Lisanna's death). Erza and Gray are Natsu's closest friends after Lisanna and yet they cannot reach him when he closes himself off. and then we have Lucy, who stuck by and had his back, so who is to say Natsu didn't make some contingencies to ensure whether or not she'd join him?

but maybe it's the rose, colored ship glasses i have on

because yeah, Natsu cares for all of his guildmates. the power of friendship is his biggest motivator. when we meet Natsu, our first introductions of him is defending his guild's reputation from Bora (who was using it as a guise for human trafficking) and saving Macao. and our 1st big arc (Galuna Island), where Natsu adamantly refuses to allow Gray to use Ice Shell and sacrifice himself despite how antagonistic they've been to each other. we get Natsu 100% at Erza's defense throughout the Tower of Heaven and he is even ready to defend Wendy though they only met hours ago

Natsu is a character with a bleeding heart and cannot help but wear it on his sleeve, but we don't really see him allow others to fight his battles or have his back until Lucy comes in. to be honest, i don't even think he had his heart on his sleeve until Lucy. he still has a bleeding heart (i don't think anything could stop that), but he was not ready to be open in receiving company because he was so used to it being ripped away from him

that being said: of all the characters he interacts with, he finds Lucy to be someone compatible enough for him to start going on team missions and inviting her on them (for example, his 1st S-class mission, which he stole, he went to her house to show it to her. the fact that part of the reward was a celestial key might be a coincidence, but i wouldn't doubt it as Natsu and Happy's trump card in case she refused)

but yeah, the difference is that he stayed and didn't push her away at the beginning, but instead continued to invite her along with him to the point that doing a mission without Lucy wasn't his regular anymore. compared to the rest of the guild, of whom he spent most of his childhood with, even if he spoke to no one, they would still be around and talk to him anyway. he might not invite them on job and only challenge them to fights, but the guild is his home and a constant in his life, a constant he needs (bc heavy abandonment issues).

"okay, but he still pushed her away after he watched Igneel die right in front of him. and he left the guild for a whole year, too. so what's the difference there?" you may ask.

so 1) Natsu never thought the guild would disband. he returns to Fiore after a year and is the last to know that they disbanded. he assumed, like all the other times before and while he and others were sealed for 7 years, that Fairy Tail would still be there when he returned. he assumed that his disappearance would not impact so hard because the guild would still be around and Lucy would have the others with her

which, did not happen :)

and like, so many guild members go off on jobs, quests, or even just leave for an indiscriminate amount of time (which i, personally, believe was his rationality for leaving), so him being gone for a year was nothing! right? no harm, eh? his plan was never to be gone forever :))))

2) he just watched his father die and lost any chance of having some semblance of a long term reunion with Igneel. he literally lost one of his main driving motivations for getting stronger and taking jobs. before Fairy Tail, before anyone, it was Igneel. and to learn that a) Igneel was always with him to begin with and b) he only got to see him for less than a day after 14 years of nothing......i would feel lost too ngl

man's needed space from everybody. and he also needed comfort, but Natsu has been shown not to really be the character who asks to receive comfort (and when he does receive it, it's usually when he's already emotionally compromised). he is in the habit of shutting people out after being abandoned or losing someone close to him, with his next rationale being to "get stronger" in order to prevent what happened in the past to ever happen in the future.

anyway

what makes this different? well for one, he sent the letter only to Lucy (or it's implied since no one else is shown getting one) because of how the two spend most of their time together. even the line that goes with the panel makes it sound like Natsu is unsure on how the note will be received (maybe even hesitant? but that could be my own hopes)

and one of the 1st people he reunites with after a year is Lucy and we get such a similar parallel to the first chapter of Fairy Tail between the two as if the narrative itself is slotting them together to say "ah yes, now everything is back to normal and new journeys can begin"

but yeah, this is just a long way of saying, that Natsu does love his friends and guildmates but even when he is close to them, he kept to himself (and Happy) and sort of stayed in their orbit but always with some emotional distance because of his fear of abandonment. and then you have Lucy where he will stay for and allow her to orbit around him and he will invite to new adventures no questions asked

that's the difference