#he does care about you

[shhhhimwatchingthis]

My favourite underrated thing about Louis de Point du Lac is that he truly is the least curious vampire to ever be made and he does not give fuck about vampires despite being one.

Its Claudia who goes to libraries, reads the folklore, tries to learn as much as she can and pushes Lestat for answers about who made him and where the others are. Claudia says Vampire Pride and Louis says hmmm Vampire Tolerance.

And Louis...truly does not care about vampire history,law, culture. He's never even thought to ask. There are vampire laws?...ok...Lestat never cared about them and he's not going to either, lol. He's broken a few and he will continue to do so. Oh you have a coven? he's not gonna join it, he's gonna do his own thing. but good for you good for you.

the 500+ year old Coven Leader, he's gonna call Louis, Maitre, actually.

He has fire powers? thats kinda cool. he'll learn that but only cause it lets him vent his feelings about Lestat.

Lestat and Armand say the name of the vampire queen in front of him and Lestat straight up says, "Louis has no idea who that is" and do you think Louis cares, outside of the fact that for some reason it means he can't kill Lestat? No! Do you think in the 77 years he's been with Armand he ever took 5 minutes to ask a follow up question? No!

Do you think he will care about Akasha in season 3? Doubt it! Outside of her obsession with Lestat, who is the only person left on the planet he seems to be able to filter Caring About This Shit through

He blatantly breaks the 3rd law and publishes a book about being a vampire and when the other vampires get pissed not only does he not apologise he literally sends them his location and says 'you wanna fight? lmao don't miss'

I love him. Daniel Molloy is gonna need to bring his A game because Louis will not be solving a single mystery next season, nor would it even occur to him to try.

[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.

[ciderjacks]

dad issues

+

(I think they were all fundamentally affected by what they saw and just collectively decided not to share the upsetting details)

[likeithct]

I am not wearing five layers of clothes.' - Felix x Joshua

WINTER PROMPTS

"why are you trying to be such a spoiled brat?" the irishman let out a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. sometimes he felt like felix just liked to piss him off to see what kind of reaction josh would give him. "it was your idea to come here, if you freeze to death out there, i will leave you there." he threatened him, thrusting two articles of clothing towards the spoiled trust fund boy. "i'm not having you catch a cold on my watch. if you don't put that sweater and coat on, i will beat your ass. and not in the way you like."

[mearchy]

The best fics are the ones that recognize that although Luke Skywalker may APPEAR on the outside to be a normal friendly twink who happens to have cool powers, especially when contrasted with such ship partners as Boba or Din or even Han, he is arguably the scariest person alive in the galaxy around the prequel era. AND, crucially, he is also a fundamentally weird guy. This man was homeschooled on a rural farm his entire life and then apprenticed to a swamp gremlin who showed him how to tap into the cosmic power of the universe. He blew up the death star age 19, killing approx 2 million-ish Imperials. He is a vortex of Force power that can communicate with the ghosts of dead Jedi. He’s staring into the distance and mumbling to himself and doing Yoda aphorisms and casually pulling out the “yeah I could crush that guy into a paste with my mind (:” and nobody around him knows what to do with that. I think he is a character who has very little frame of reference for how a Jedi or a person in general is supposed to act and there is some thing about him that is by necessity really fucking weird and a little scary but he’s so nice that it can throw you off the scent a little bit. Thanks for coming to my TED talk

[empire-of-the-words]

so I read son of the demon straight through today (tbh maybe not my best idea I'm still sad 😓), and came to the realization that Bruce and Talia's marriage never actually ends. like, Talia just tells Bruce to leave and Ra's last line is literally calling Bruce his son. sure, it's implied, but, also. consider:

Random lawyer or finance guy or something: Have you ever been divorced or widowed? Bruce: Y- Bruce: Bruce: Bruce: actually I think I'm still married. Dick: I'm sorry, WHAT?

[cashmoneyyysstuff]

katsuki hides his face in your neck when he gets embarrassed. that’s it send tweet.

[s0fter-sin]

thinking about the way ghost doesn't hesitate to start killing shadows when graves betrays them but soap only takes one hostage

you can almost hear the voice in his head telling him it doesn't have to be this way; they can still talk it out

"i'm calling shepherd"

his first instinct when confronted with betrayal is to play it by the books: to go up the chain. that goes against everything we've seen him do. he bucks authority at every chance except for the one time he's confronted with the barrels of his allies' guns

he wants a peaceful resolution; for the first time we've ever seen, he doesn't want violence to be the answer. there has to be another fix, a solution that doesn't end with him killing the same men he's been working with; his friends

nothing's happened yet

it doesn't have to go this way

but ghost has been betrayed before. he knows the way this ends; either with him six feet under or his enemy

he doesn't hesitate

it's only when they knock alejandro out that soap shoots; when they spill the first blood and cross a line they can never come back from

only when ghost orders him to run and he has to cover his retreat

and somewhere along the line, between civilians’ screams and taunting voices, between his shaking breath and ghost steady in his ear, that naivety is stripped away; his trust turned to teeth that he uses to sink into throats of men he'd have given his life for

"be careful who you trust, sergeant; people you know can hurt you the most"

he's learned the price of trust

just like ghost did

but unlike ghost, he has someone to guide him through the aftermath

"good advice, It"

[afterthelambs]

In another (happier) world, I think Muhen would've been Akechi's Sojiro. Akechi would've lived above Jazz Jin just like how Joker lived above Leblanc. Muhen would've taught him how to make the drinks and close up at night. They would've bonded over music. And Akechi would finally have an adult looking after him. Because Muhen does care about him in-canon. He's the only character in the epilogue that mentions Akechi, he notices who Akechi spends time with, and he wishes to see him again.

It's so sad that Akechi assumes nobody cares about him or wants him around and yet this random jazz club owner does. Do you ever think about Muhen seeing Akechi at the Jazz Jin sometime in December, not knowing it would be the last time he ever would

[aunmenosheteroenespanol]

2.12 Chimney Begins - 2.09 Hen Begins - 2.16 Bobby Begins Again - 7.04 Buck, Bothered and Bewildered

Tommy's family arc

[potato-lord-but-not]

sorryyyy sorry sorry

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 331

Demon twins? Demon twins. 

Damian? Good at the assassin side of things, at least for a four year old, but Danyal? He’s okay, but he’s far better at things like poisons and bookkeeping. Which is honestly? Okay. They’re the League of Shadows, and sure a majority of the members are assassins, but it’s definitely not all there are. So? Danyal starts getting medical training. 

Not to say that either of the boys don’t know their fair share of violence and healing- it’s just better to let them play to their strengths. One doesn’t keep a league over centuries if they just have one type of warrior, or even just warriors. A variety is needed. 

So one gets trained more towards the business side of things. Damian may be better at wielding the weapons and killing- even if neither have had their first kill quite yet- but Danyal shows far more proficiency at acting, at masking who he is and gathering information. 

Damian, when he’s first sent to their Father, doesn’t mention his twin. Not because he’s jealous or hates him or anything like that. You just don’t talk about someone in an undercover mission in the League, and it’s not something he realizes isn’t a rule everywhere. 

Needless to say, the Bats have more than a mild freakout the first time Damian mentions a twin who will be coming to the manor now that his mission is over. 

[shiverhohojiro]

the slightly unsettling realization that your ex-boss is also a person with wants and desires, and that those wants and desires are closer to your own than you might previously have imagined. aka "why does DJ Octavio get to be at the Grand Festival can you imagine how the octolings must feel about this"

Bonus doodle:

[beansnpeets]

Thinking about human behaviour compared to animal behaviour again.

It's funny to hear people (the older gens) complaining that "kids these days are lazy, they don't wanna work, etc." What do we get for busting our asses? There is no reward. Many will never own homes. Many are unemployed, trying to find work, and nobody will hire them because they don't have a million years experience and a masters degree OR they want people to work for minimum wage??? People are giving up because there is no reward. Why would we do all this for nothing?

Same as a dog that won't recall when you haven't reinforced it with a reward. Your dog isn't going to do what you tell it to if there is no incentive. No, your dog SHOULDN'T listen just because you're boss and it should respect you. That isn't how it works. They don't think that way. And honestly neither do people.

When we went hiking Sprocket wasn't always taking treats gently from me when I recalled her or she checked in and I rewarded and my one friend told me to stop giving her treats. I told him I won't work for free so why should she. And he said "I do things for free all the time because I want to do them," and I didn't say it then, but I wish I had, but if you like doing it, that's the incentive. It's a self-rewarding behaviour. Just like anything else a dog does, like chasing a squirrel or sniffing things or getting into the trash. Heeling instead of going off to sniff stuff or recalling off of something they want to chase is something you have to reinforce. You have to give them something better so they make the choice you want them to make. They won't make it just because they *respect* you. They won't willingly recall off of exciting prey out of RESPECT. You need to give them a tangible reward for that. You cannot possibly expect your dog to listen just because and then punish them for disobeying you.

Yeah, Sprocket bit my fingers a couple times. The one time pretty hard. But she was excited. She knows how to take gently and I reminded her and she tried very hard to be gentle most of the time. I wasn't going to stop rewarding her for checking in with me and recalling while we were off leash hiking in the woods. I want her to know that coming back to me is good and in the event of an emergency I would like her to not blow me off.

[forget-me-ghost]

I rewatched epsiode 7 (I'm obsessed, sue me) and I noticed for the first time how sincerely Alastor is smiling with Rosie around.

Like, look at him. His eyes are smiling, he almost never does that, that's how we know his smile is fake most of the time.

Rosie actually manhandled Alastor, she dusted off his jacket and just grabbed him to move him around. Alastor didn't even bat an eye, he just let her do whatever she wanted. (There was also that honk sound and it was so cute)

I used this once in another post, but fuck it. Rosie knows that Al is asexual. Even Alastor doesn't know that he is, there wasn't a name for it in his times. They were spending time together and she was like "this man is asexual", I love it.

Alastor and Rosie's friendship is so special to me, I need more of them in next seasons. I bet my right hand that they have sleepovers and talk shit about other overlords.

[tubbytarchia]

I don't know what this is all I know is that LimL Joel makes me really emotional