#i just want someone to care

[tired-and-sickk]

most of the time I hide my scars and my ed because I don’t want anybody to stop me. but sometimes I really want someone to find out. I want someone to notice I don’t eat. notice the cuts. notice how sick I really am. I just want someone to care about me.

[crowfrombackdoor]

[universallymusicdefendor]

THE NEW EPISODE WAS SO FUCKING GOOD!!!! STOLAS'S SONG WAS SO MAGICAL IM CRYINGG!!!!!

[absolutelyzoned]

i fucking hate capitalism holy shit . i hate america i hate my family i hate it here 🔥🔥#freedom #imgonnakms

[duke-and-acceptance]

I dont think I'll ever be desired, at least not for who I really am.

[lenaetonien]

Trying to deal with a high-emotion day like a mature adult when all I want is for someone to come in and fix everything

[ahn-vents]

The fact that I actually want to kay ehm ess and the fact that there's literally nobody left to even give a fuck !!!!! Good job setting boundaries, now ur all alone bc nobody wants you if they can't use you !!!!!!!!! Stuck in a stupid, worthless failure of a body and nobody has any ounce of empathy for the constant pain im in because someone ALWAYS has it worse right ???? I don't need mobility aids or medical care, I'm just faking for attention right ??????????? Because I just totally fake a limp for funzies ???? Bc i just totally love being fucking bedbound ???? Because it's so great being in so much pain you can't get out of bed yet still having to force yourself to do so anyway because if u don't do all the household chores ur fully able bodied dad will blow up and throw a tantrum bc nobody did his dishes !!!!!

If i died literally all any of them would give a fuck about is not having anyone left to use and control.

[savage-scarcity]

Ahhhhh the distance I feel with people always seems so far and I don’t know how to cross it…..and when I do cross it because I went outside of my comfort zone it makes me feel even more distant from myself. I really feel like I’ve never had a comfort zone yet I’m somehow also never in it? Idk I just feel so frustrated and tired all the time and like while yes things make more sense I still feel like I’m not close enough. And even though I constantly feel alone I am also kinda scared how comfortable it is to feel alone……I just really feel like something’s wrong with me and when I try to explain it to people it makes me feel even more uncomfortable and farther away…..

[anthro-cat]

i never say i'm killing myself because i am a coward

[souraesthetics]

Loml’s and I also caved but self harm is something I find very hard to ignore and I know that he’s probably doing it to get my attention for sure but nobody else cares enough to go out their way while I’m ignoring them lmao I’ve been ignored now for 2 week’s completely ghosted and idk what to do rn I feel like I’m choosing violence

[xxplastic-cubexx]

obligatory beach divorce doodling

bonus rough cover redraw of x-men #41 (1995) But Beach Divorce below cut

[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.

[garbean]

I love dunmeshi for the like.. built in horror of consumption. Like they eat to survive, they eat to honor their prey, they eat to possibly mourn someone. Laios eats monsters because he wants to learn more about the things he loves, Senshi eats monsters to feel included in the ecosystem because he didn't fit in with the outside and with most creatures in general, Chilchuck DOESN'T eat as much as he could because eating too much could kill all the party members, Marcille eats monsters and hates it but she still does it because she'll die before she could save Falin.

[ciderjacks]

An old friend

[yardsards]

"i don't ship laios and marcille-" oh yeah same, their relationship is so much more compelling to me viewed through a platonic lens than a romantic one

"-like, marcille clearly hates laios" are we reading/watching the same series??? did you just stop after the first couple chapters??? look at their relationship development, that's her friend! her bestie, even!!!

[captainkirkk]

I want to see characters being taken care of in an explicit and worshipful way. Home-cooked meals. Hair brushed and braided by gentle hands. Little gifts just because.

I want to read about characters who are not used to kindness being bombarded by acts of service. This trope works romantically and platonically. Give me found family and acts of service - all the ways a character is wrapped up in wordless, explicit care after years of cruelty and having no idea how to handle. I need it.