#he's just here for the meme

[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.

[mxrtified777]

guess who just finished watching crystalized. totally unrelated question: guess whos deranged about oni lloyd

[pa-pa-plasma]

love fics where Danny ends up in the DC universe & every alarm goes off at once & the magic users are like "yeah that's the most powerful being in the universe & also possibly super evil we are FUCKED fucked" & the Justice League is freaking tf out trying to find this thing that casually tore a hole in reality & it just cuts to Danny (Fenton) standing in the background blissfully unaware & like "man my life sucks but at least i have this candy bar—" *drops it in a puddle*

[mjulmjul]

Katya / Goncharov

[hualianschild]

[divineandmajesticinone]

4 MINUTES (2024) I 1.03 "I didn't think you were like this. Like what? Like this..."

[brucie-baby]

bruce calls a press conference in which he tells the world he's batman. nobody says anything. it's silent. not a single flash of a camera. "no, seriously," he says, "i'm batman."

the press starts yelling and snapping photos and bruce is relieved because for a moment there it really seemed like they wouldn't believe—

"mr. wayne! mr. wayne, is this a publicity stunt?"

"mr. wayne, did you lose a bet again?"

"are you taking the fall for someone? is it your mystery partner?"

bruce just stands there. he tries to form a sentence until dick eventually comes up laughing. "are you still drunk from last night? jesus, bruce!"

•••

he tries again at a wayne enterprise meeting. he thinks that maybe starting smaller is the way to go.

"i'm batman."

"yeah, and i'm superman," someone says. the room laughs (even lucius, the traitor).

•••

he calls the chief of the gotham gazette, refusing to let it go through anybody else. "how about an exclusive interview? been a while since you've had one of those."

the chief says, "mr. wayne, would this exclusive interview have anything to do with batman?"

"...it might. you'll have to find out."

he sighs. "let's talk schedules."

finally, bruce thinks. somebody is taking me seriously.

the headline reads: "prince of gotham genuinely believes he's batman. covering for a special someone?"

•••

several articles follow, attempting to identify the mystery man that bruce has been spotted with prior to the press conference.

•••

he goes out for patrol without his cowl. it's a quiet night. a video goes viral on twitter, and it's of him tripping on his own cape. the caption reads: "he's really dedicated to this whole batman thing💀💀"

•••

his phone rings a few days later.

"this is bruce wayne."

"hi, bruce."

"clark? whose phone are you calling from?"

"police department. i've been arrested under suspicion of being batman."

[cobaltfluff]

rei papa...

[seamistgale]

Bernard was being haunted.

His sus-o-meter isn't up to 100%, but if he's being real, it never is. The downside of being into conspiracy theories was that you were only partially sure which one was more skewed than the other. One day he could be convinced Batman is more cryptid than man, and then he'd stumble on some fascinating witness accounts that make him rethink the Vampire hypothesis.

This time, however, he's fairly sure this sort of freaky shit only happens to people in those cookie-cutter horror movies.

… Except this particular ghost might be of midwestern decent, or something, because they sucked at properly haunting.

Example number one:

It was rare that Bernard had dishes piled up. He lived alone, and occasionally Tim would come to his apartment; with a couple of games, some takeout boxes, and a movie later, there would be way more things to clean up than a whole weekend on his own.

The last time Tim came over, Bernard didn't bother cleaning up for the night, and then the trash just…. Disappeared.

Not like 'a burglar broke in for some weird fetish reason, and my trash is now gone' gone, but more 'the trash is in bags, the dishes are clean, and I swear the air smells fresher' gone.

That was strike one.

He brushed it off because Tim had been there. It was unlikely he just went on a stress cleaning spree at Bernard's place but… Well, Bernard's caught him doing way weirder shit. It's fine.

(it's not fine. You just didn't move things around on someone else's turf.

"…Clean up?" Tim echoed back from the phone, sounding as confused as Bernard felt the following morning. "I-- no, of course not!" and then hurriedly continued to reassure Bernard he'd never do that. Because Tim was nice like that, even after Bernard low-key accused him of giving him the Gotham equivalent of pissing in someone else's yard.

So, that was strike one in the back of his hindbrain that something was up.)

Strike two and three came together.

See, in Gotham's economy, sometimes your employer doesn't have your paycheck the week it should be. Who cares if you need to pay rent through or your landlord will double your rent? Neither your boss nor the landlord in question, obviously. So what he usually did was have a nest egg the size of his rent just in case.

But this month Bernard had splurged a little too much, so he was short. It was nothing big, he was just five bucks short.

The issue was, that his landlord was paranoid and was already breathing down his neck for not paying the next month's rent the day before the new month started. Like clockwork, his landlord put a warning under his door, ready to evict him the same day the month started if Bernard didn't have the rent in cash the next morning.

He knew the eviction notice was at the door, but chose to ignore it because it didn't matter, he'd get those five one way or another by the end of the day.

By the time he came back, two things were out of place. The first was the eviction notice on his table. Again, no one moved someone else's shit around.

Strike three happened while counting his nest egg, and would you look at that! He had more money than he'd counted. Nothing ridiculous, just… He had those five bucks now.

All these little things were easy to miss, or misremember, but Bernard was not most people. But the catch here was… All these things were good things. Sort of.

So not only was this happening when he wasn't around, but they were happening to his… Advantage? He'd even call it good fortune if one was willing to ignore the lack of privacy… And maybe he would have, if this wasn't Gotham. Privacy was a mix between a luxury and a currency. Sometimes a kindness.

In some ways maybe it would have been an effective scare tactic, to mess someone's shit up, but this was not the way he'd personally go about it if he wanted someone to leave the building.

So here Bernard was, staring again at the dishes he had placed as bait, because he wasn't an idiot and tempting a ghost into anything remotely violent was stupid. The dishes were cleaned.

He squinted at the ceiling, then at the rest of his apartment, trying to gauge whether trying to make first contact was going to get him more haunted, killed, or turn him into a Saturday morning cartoon.

Finally, he picked up a cup. Not a glass cup, because why would he give the ghost any ammunition, but a couple of fairly clear plastic cups, a marker, two sticky notes, and filled both cups with tap water decently enough so a mild tremble would be noticeable.

The first sticky note said "Yes", and the second, predictably, said "No."

"So." Bernard sat in front of the cups, feeling halfway like a dumbass for doing this in the first place, and halfway like he's about to do the worst decision of his life because it might just work. "You from out of town, or are you just really shitty at this?"

[sarcastic-clapping]

i haven’t stopped thinking about the implications of daniel saying armand’s martinis were better than Real Rashid’s or the fact that he mentioned how good the martini was in season 1. why would a 500 year old vampire be so good at making a martini exactly how this old man likes???? i’m going insane

[ruthlesslistener]

really feelin' that characteristic finals crunch time experience rn

[rrredgi]

Your silly rabbit

[mossy-paws]

Clementine returns. (PHIGHTING!)

deciding to accumulate all of these into a singular post to make my life easier + so that I can have some more food for you all,,, anyways.

My. My son. Clementine my baby my sweet boy,,, Some of these ARE actually reposts but the first 2 are for sure not :3! (I think at least LMAO), enjoy this :3! I must go back to my hole /silly

(Also a bonus as well )

[sceebybeeby]

⚠️spoilers for the entire aj trilogy lol⚠️

is this even anything? don't answer if it isn't

[bunnysnared]

uhmm here are some unmasked boyfriendly ghost sketches +bonus headcanons i have 🫶🏻💌

[pls dont reupload bcos i didnt watermark them but i wanted to share;;] +ALT TEXT on my headcanon sheet in case u can't read my handwriting ♡