#i have rescued one today

[bao-dur]

i’ve got bees 🐝 in my window somebody help me😭😭

[chubbychiquita]

it's been about a year since i started fostering cats and as of today i have raised and adopted out 50 kittens on my own 🥹🥹🥹🥹

[tofixtheshadows]

hi!! so there are a lot of improbabilities that make this hypothetical unlikely but: if kabru had met toshiro first & recruited him (toshiro being so passive + not with a clear goal would have helped there & kabru is ptsd-driven but very noble in his goals which can be explained) AND they got all the way down to the bottom (idk if i believe in them...but hypothetically!) would the winged lion find either of them to be a good target for next dungeon lord? one over the other? im thinking kabru has the intensity and complexity of desire necessary but i can't imagine what it would look like if he became lord of the dungeon. do you have any thoughts?

Good morning. This is a very fun thought experiment!

(side note: I got a second anon this morning with a very similar request? not sure if related. I'm gonna let this answer speak for both of them)

Toshiro sure would have had a different time of it if Kabru had gotten to him first, huh? On the one hand, Toshiro seems to like Kabru; I think it's sweet that Kabru seems to gravitate towards hanging out with him when he isn't with the rest of the main cast. So they probably would've been good in a party together.

On the other hand, Toshiro never would have met Falin and fallen in love with her. Even if she didn't reciprocate in the end, I don't think he regrets anything that happened. Even his difficult friendship with Laios was ultimately positive (for both of them!).

They definitely would not have made it to the deeper floors, I think Senshi is crucial to achieving that ... but this is a hypothetical.

I'm puzzling over the question of Toshiro, because he is a secondary character and there's only so much we know about his motivations. His big one in canon is to save Falin, even if it means all he can do is put her to rest. Without that, without her, what sort of desires does he have?

Toshiro originally came to the Island because of a demand from his father: for one of his three sons to find "something interesting" enough on their travels to bring back home that would convince their capricious bastard father to make them his heir over the others. So they're all off on their separate training journeys with their respective retainers with the added caveat that they can't return without something to impress their father. It's implied that after falling in love with Falin, Toshiro had wanted to bring back home a wife.

Since he's said to inherit the family after he returns home without her anyway, I've been assuming that the "thing" Toshiro ended up bringing to Toshitsugu Nakamoto was the story of the dungeon, the demon, and his friend Laios, king of a risen country and Devourer of All Things Horrible.

Anyway, the things we know about Toshiro's home life are kind of fucked. It's amazing he turned out to be so nice. He's always been a shy, sensitive person, and he was sickly as a child; Maizuru cared for him despite her spymaster duties and ended up filling a motherly role for him, even though Toshiro's mother is still alive. Historically, it wasn't uncommon for noble children to be raised more closely by their governesses/household retainers than their parents, so perhaps something similar was happening here (disclaimer that I don't know much about feudal Japan specifically).

We know that Maizuru loves Toshiro and dotes on him, but she's also very strict and frankly terrifying; she used the same Hag summon that she was monitoring Izutsumi with on Toshiro as a child just to keep him from wandering off. We also know that when he found out that Maizuru was having an affair with his father, it put a distance between them. Whether this is because he felt betrayed on his mother's behalf or because he dislikes his father that much, or something else, is unclear.

Toshiro was childhood friends with Hien, but as they got older, she had to take his place as one of his retainers, which seems to have severed that closeness. Canonically, he isn't close to his two younger brothers either. Toshitsugu literally bought Inutade and Izustumi (the latter as a drunken "gift" for Maizuru!). We see that Toshiro is uncomfortable with this, but doesn't know how to approach the issue. He lets Izutsumi go the second she's out of sight for five minutes, which implies to me that he really wanted the excuse to do so. Inutade is harder, because she loves being with the Nakamoto family and hero-worships Toshiro's father.

...all this to say, Toshiro has complicated relationships with his family and household. There's love there, but also a lot of coldness enforced by the upper-class need for propriety. Toshiro falls in line and acts as the proper stoic samurai, but he chafes at this; he envies Laios's gift for feeling and expressing things openly and readily. I think that's what the Winged Lion would prey on, given the chance.

I don't think he would be prime dungeon lord material, but if it came to that, I could see the Lion tempting Toshiro with a kinder vision of his life, one where he and his little brothers weren't pitted against one another, where his family was warmer, where there weren't barriers of class between him and his retainers, where he was allowed to be more himself.

Now ... Kabru.

Kabru is interesting because, since his ultimate goal is to seal the dungeon and eradicate monsters, I imagine that meeting a demon would be like a guy who's given a genie and wants to wish for no more genies. And if said genie is trying to take over the world via wishes, the genie is a bit screwed. I really think that Kabru is the character who would stump the demon(s) the most, despite his complex desires, because they are antithetical to the demon. Laios also had complex desires, but the Winged Lion lured him and set him up as the hero of a fake prophecy because a lot of Laios's desires revolved around monsters, so his wants aligned perfectly with the demon's methods. Oh you want monsters? That's great, they're the things I use to solve most of my problems anyway.

Even in the absence of prior knowledge of demons, I think Kabru's back would be up as soon as the Winged Lion tried speaking to him. Kabru's insight is almost preternatural, and he's well-versed in persuasive speaking thanks to his own silver tongue. He would mistrust the Lion immediately, especially considering its monster-like form.

Giving the demons bestial appearances is an artistic choice on Kui's part, so I don't think there's any indication that the Winged Lion & co can't look human, but the Lion might have been constrained both by Thistle's seals on it and the need to maintain the lie that it's just the innocent guardian deity of the Golden Country. If it could, I think it would try to look less monstrous, with Kabru.

Still, the point of the demons, I see, is that anyone can be tempted, anyone can be manipulated, because we are all full of buried desires that can be unearthed, and wanting things and having to defend them make you susceptible to manipulation.

Consider what Mithrun told Kabru: they keep the knowledge of demons secret because knowing the truth would not stop people from trying to have their wishes granted. After all, Mithrun was a Canary, but he fell for its temptation anyway. I've seen people characterize this as a sort of rock bottom decision, and maybe that's true, but I also pin it on his toxic inferiority/superiority complex. That's exactly the kind of thing that makes you think you're built different.

Would Marcille have stopped before unsealing the Winged Lion if Mithrun(/Kabru) had actually gotten to sit down with her for five minutes and explain why becoming dungeon lord would be a very bad idea? Maybe. Or maybe her desperation, and her own pride, would have made her decide that she knew better, that she'd be careful, that she'd go in with a plan and definitely get what she wanted with no dire consequences.

I think Kabru could be desperate enough to make a similar decision, even if his desires were antithetical to the demon. And the demons have an advantage over the aforementioned genie simile: their ability to eat desires.

If the Winged Lion were smart, it wouldn't let Kabru seal it away like Thistle. Given the opportunity, its best chance for dealing with Kabru would have been to immediately eat his desire to stop another Utaya.

I'm gonna plug this wonderful and tragic little one-shot someone wrote recently about the dungeon lord Kabru hypothetical: This place is not a place of honor.

[nobodieshero-main]

thinking about how the makai taught the solari's how to wield magic, and in return to the solari's used that gift to betray them; and turned the heart of the continent into a prison

[curiosity-killed]

not included here is the part where our graphic designer asked for my feedback and then told me i have bad taste in design. so

ALT under cut

[ALT ID: A horizontal comic in 13 panels showing the progression of the artist's day. The first panel shows them in a blazer and smiling, thinking, "Yay, I'm going to have a nice lil' in-person work morning and then, be done with work, go to a cool show, and have all night free!" The next 4 panels show time progressing as the person goes through various video and in-person meetings, all labeled "Stressful meeting." The fifth panel shows them in a car while the driver looks back angrily and is labeled, "working in uber while driver gets mad that I changed the addressed (I did not)." Panels 6-8 show them in various positions working in a theatre lobby before the show, during the intermission, and during the show. Panels 9-12 are labeled 4:30 PM, 6 PM, and 7:30 PM and largely obscured by a final panel labeled 8 PM, in which the artist is sitting in front of multiple monitors and turning back with a frown to say "I was supposed to have the afternoon off."]

[quaranmine]

Your word-of-god on my theory is driving me UP THE WALL!

Ok, so let me make a timeline here, let me know if I'm wrong at any point.

He leaves his campsite on the 12th for a day hike, taking minimal supplies with him. He gets hopelessly lost and takes temporary shelter under some low-hanging tree limbs for the night.

He finds the mountainside where he fell early on the 13th and, with a pair of binoculars, can see the creek in the distance. Let's say the rangers and medical examiner were correct, and he was heading to the creek because, at this point, he's probably in the early stages of dehydration (his presumed cause of death)

He tries to climb down safely, and we all know how that went. He makes it as far as he can on a broken leg and possibly numerous superficial injuries that wouldn't have been evident a year later for obvious reasons. He takes shelter under the overhang and... never leaves.

Grian reports Mumbo missing on the 16th when he misses checking in.

Grian leaves Colorado and subsequently arrives in Cody, WY to join the search on the 17th and is immediately forcibly subjected to a nap.

At this point, Mumbo has been under that overhang for the better part of five days. If he was already dehydrated, even mildly, before he even fell, and especially if he lost a medically significant amount of blood from any abrasions or lacerations suffered during the fall...

There is a significant probability that Mumbo was already dead by the time Grian joined the search.

Grian never had a chance of finding him alive, did he?

Damn...

OOOO

Okay so your timeline is a bit different than mine. But I'd like to note—my idea of what happened to Mumbo in general is actually pretty vague. It was one of those things where it didn't actually matter much to the plot since it would never fully be known. Also it made me sad to think about LMAO (imagine that.) Actually though? I had a draft of chapter 11 where when Grian was unknowingly retracing Mumbo's steps, it would be intercut with italics/otherwise clearly formatted Mumbo moments. So that you could see both of their stories converge. I scrapped it because I disliked the ~3 paragraphs I'd written for Mumbo and never came back to it.

So, the dates for this can be whatever you want (12th or 13th) since the specifics don't matter much. I think the main difference is that I didn't have Mumbo getting lost as the first step, I had it as the second. This means that I had Mumbo leaving the trail intentionally to get water, and getting lost on the way. In my scenario yes, the rangers were right about him heading to the creek.

I mainly had this idea because of my experiences with backpacking in Big Bend. Namely, it's just....very, very, very hard to bring enough water on a trip like that. So people bring water filters. When hiking the South Rim in Big Bend, you can refill your bottles at Boot Spring (though you shouldn't rely on it having water since it's the desert.) I have done this before. (Pictured: my dad lol)

I figured that Mumbo probably needed to refill his water (Grian stated he left no bottles at camp, not just that they were empty, so he would've brought comparatively a lot for a day hike. So maybe he planned on refilling them later in the day.) I figured that maybe he just....didn't want to completely overshoot his camp to go back to the creek he crossed a day or two before. Maybe he thought his off-trail route was shorter. Maybe he was confident he could find the trail again. It doesn't matter, all that matters is it brought him to the place where he fell. Or maybe, related to what you said—maybe he made this somewhat silly decision because he was already dehydrated.

From that point on, I think the rest of your timeline matches with mine. You are right that they wouldn't be able to tell any other superficial injuries a year later. Actually, I've got no idea if they would be able to tell it was dehyrdation that did it after that long. That's MY idea of what happened. But probably it would have been more accurate for the rangers to file it under a general blanket of exposure/infection from injuries/dehydration.

I can't say if Mumbo was dead or not by the time Grian joined the search. You're 100% correct that it's very possible. The only reason I don't confirm is that I don't know the timeline myself, nor does the timeline really matter that much, since even if he was alive when the search started, it would've only taken a day or two more before he wasn't. And since he wasn't in the search radius....You are right that Grian never had a chance.

But I think it's less sad that way, honestly. Devastating still of course. I just think it's worse to linger for weeks when nobody is looking in the right place.

[todayisafridaynight]

ichinyan still likes dragon quest. by the way.

[dbphantom]

that's it that's the entirety of OP H2O au. snork mimimimimimimi...

bonus doodles:

[faithfulcat111]

No Stonathan Sunday today. I got some really sad news and I can't write anymore today.

[rhys-ravenfeather]

80s/90s kids' cartoons be like:

-The Leader

-The Jokester

-The Muscle

-The Brains

-And The Girl

[warningstandbygo]

The great thing about being an Adult is that if you randomly get Extremely Overwhelmed by Existence, no one can stop you from going into your closet in your bedroom with your laptop, changing into a onesie, and sitting in the dark quiet enclosed space all by yourself (even though you're the only one here because your spouse isn't home from work yet).

[vaugarde]

Lone wolf turned pack wolf, but is still the only one remembered in history.

Name: Damon

He/Him

Species: Lucario

-Lived in the 5th century. During his lifetime, he witnessed not only the birth of mystery dungeons, but Dark Matter’s first onslaught to the Pokemon World.

-He was a Lucario that lived on the Air Continent. He grew up mostly in solitude, as was customary for Riolu and Lucario at the time.

-He was rather stoic. It was hard to get a read on him and most Pokemon initially thought of him as cold before getting to know him. He deeply valued the Pokemon around him.

-He was the first Pokemon ever documented to have cleared a mystery dungeon. He had seen a Caterpie wander into a forming dungeon and ran into the dungeon to save it. He decided that as long as these dungeons were infecting the land, he would diligently save each Pokemon that had found themselves trapped in the dungeon. He would use his aura to track the Pokemon and determine the floor they were on.

-Due to the scale of his task, he would enlist other Pokemon to help him. He would form groups of four to go into the dungeons, and send other Pokemon he trusted into the dungeons he couldn’t access.

-He became an inspiration to the still-budding Pokemon society. Other Pokemon decided to form their own teams to help Pokemon lost in the dungeons.

-He was not the founder of the rescue team federation. However, it was formed in his honor, and he did help with some of the structure. He was kind of flustered about the “Lucario Rank”.

-Damon was close to the Human and Mew. He was one of the few Pokemon that had avoided turning to stone and had assisted them in the battle against Dark Matter by using his aura. He served as a confidant to the pair. Mew was especially close to him, and when it was time to reincarnate, set his future form as a Riolu in his honor.

-His story is heavily dramatized in books and legends in the present day. In Rescue Team’s time, he had been dead for 100 years and was regarded as an important historical figure

[prozach27]

.

[tiny-feisty-gay]

jobs will say they're disability friendly until you actually need them to be friendly about your disabilities

jobs will say they're mental health friendly until you actually have to miss work for it

jobs will say they support you taking time off until you actually do it

capitalism is a sham and employers do not and will not ever care about you, and if you're chronically ill, sucks to suck

i have an average of 1.5 absences a month and i'm tardy an average of twice a month, and somehow that's still too much.

18 absences in a year if i go at the current rate. 18. out of the 208 days total that i work (4 on, 3 off, with a 3 hour commute each direction.) 18. days. of absences. and that's too many.

and god forbid i be more than 15 minutes late.

[dany36]

omg??? apparently this is what happens to daphne if you don't save sebastian on his trip to melve. insane! after finishing her quest for the first time (with saving sebastian), i was bummed i couldn't like, help daphne's situation further, she just goes back to her usual life at the slums. which i mean yeah i guess that's how real life is, things just don't change for the better in an instant. but now i'm glad things stayed that way because her staying in the manor and having to continue pretending that she's her brother hints at daphne leading a worse life in the future than if she had stay at the slums 😦

[roboromantic]

idk how prevalent this is in other parts of the US, much less the world so for context: There's usually a couple tables set up at the local Walmarts for Spectrum representatives to try and get you to sign up for for their internet service.

I've never really seen them move all that far from the tables but for whatever reason, today one of them decided to come all the way to the other end of the aisle to ask me who my ISP was. Normally I just say Spectrum and they're like "Cool! bye"

But this guy followed it up with "How's it been going for you?" and. *stares directly into the camera, which then cuts to a montage of my internet being Really slow and constantly cutting out for the past fucking week* "Bad"