#if it seems like i'm complaining it's because I am

[lananiscorner]

Can't speak for anybody else, but depending on where you went to school and who your teachers were, I'm afraid paying attention and giving a damn is only half the battle.

Personally (went to school in the 90s and 00s before AI was a thing), I had so. very. many. teachers. who just utterly FAILED at making us understand WHY and HOW the things they were teaching us were going to be important later. It was really more of a "this is on the curriculum, and it's my subject which is always awesome, how can you not see this is awesome and enjoy it just for its own sake?" vibes. And yeah, unless the student you are teaching is into the thing you are teaching, you are not going to get them to pay attention like that.

My most abysmal subject in school was history, primarily because most of my history teachers thought learning about history was inherently FUN and "why can't you guys see this is FUN? How are you not seeing the FUN in this? What's wrong with y'all? How do you not ENJOY learning all those dates and watching timeline grow long?" Meanwhile, me and most of the class were sitting there like "I will never be able to memorize all these dates and everyone involved has been dead for hundreds of years, society has marched on, why should I care?" All I can say is BLESS the two or three GOOD history teachers I had who actually made the jump to go "okay, so forget the dates for a moment, focus on the how and why and let's see how this is still relevant TODAY". If it hadn't been for those two/three teachers, I would have remembered fuck all and I would be entirely unprepared for the historical fuckery that is happening RIGHT NOW.

The same applied to German and English class (I am German, had English as a second language since grade 3). Our English classes were almost entirely about learning the rules of the language and basic geography/history of major English-speaking countries. Our German classes were almost entirely learning the rules of our own language and our Cultural Heritage™ and also, here are the most famous writers (almost all of whom were white, middle-aged upper class men who died hundreds of years ago and whose lived experience was so far removed from that of a teenager in the 90s/00s, it might as well have happened in a different dimension) and we gotta analyze why THEY were brilliant why THEIR WRITING was brilliant.

Like, I WISH we had actually taken apart some newspaper articles/podcasts and analyzed them for how to identify the proper information and spot misinformation/propaganda. I WISH our teachers had succeeded in demonstrating to us why we should care about media analysis, other than wanking about guys who wrote something decent 300 years ago, but most of them really didn't.

Then there is the cascading failure of teachers in later years assuming that you already learned to do something years ago, so clearly they don't need to teach you. They don't even need to ask if you know. Of course not.

I still remember vividly the one history teacher we had who gave us an assignment to make presentations on some very specific local Jewish businesses and institutions that were sacked during the 1930s. Most of us had utterly abysmal grades on that one, not because we didn't care about the subject, but because it was highly local history, so good luck finding anything about it in the local library or on the internet, both of which tended to take a "top to bottom" approach of there being lots of information on global or national events, but very little on local events.

Our teacher gave all of us mediocre grades (deserved, because our presentations were mediocre at best) and then went on to complain how disappointed she was that none of us seemed to have done any research in the city archives, to which almost every single one of us responded with: "wait, there are publicly accessible city archives that we can access for this kind of information? Even as underaged students?"

She had the GALL to be surprised by our reaction, and to complain about how we should know about this already... and then she didn't even bother to teach us how we would go about accessing this kind of information! She saw a leak, and instead of teaching us how to plug it, she just complained about the leak and moved on.

You know, this would have been a nice chance for a field trip? Take the class down to city hall? Let the archiving clerks explain to us how information is stored and sorted and what we can access and what not? I don't know what this woman was expecting from us, honestly, because if "archive research" had been on any of our history curricula before, our teachers clearly hadn't bothered with it, and we were students living in former soviet territories--our parents grew up in a communist dictatorship where asking the wrong questions landed you in prison getting interrogated and tortured. Just how nosy/curious exactly did this HISTORY teacher who clearly should have known about the HISTORICAL background of our area think we were going to be, and how did she not even THINK to ask us "so this next task is about highly local stuff--do all of y'all know what the city archives are and how to access them?"

Like, I'm not saying that none of this failure to do research and accurately interpret and formulate texts is down to student laziness, especially in the face of AI. All I'm saying is, the cards are already pretty stacked against a lot of kids to begin with.

I cannot stress the importance of paying attention in language classes in high school. Maybe the reason why your English teacher taught you about unreliable narrators is because a lot of the media around you is written by unreliable narrators posing as reliable. Maybe they gave you assignments on interpreting texts so you could draw your own conclusions about news articles. Some of you clearly thought English classes were useless in high school and now are unable to engage critically with media.

[felixcloud6288]

Dungeon Meshi Chapter 76

It's him! It's our boy!

Here's some ideas I got based on the title image:

The Lugantes appear to be dwarfs. They have a connection to the gold peelers. Maybe they hire people to assist with mining operations.

One of the gold peelers is dead. He kind of looks like the corpse retriever from chapter 31 who cast that illusion on Kabru's party but I'm probably not right.

The half-foot next to the Shadow Lord looks like the one from the bar in chapter 9. If he is, then that bar was likely owned by the Shadow Lord. I wonder if the people the orcs killed were ever resurrected.

The Shadow Lord appears to have some connection to the corpse retrievers Kabru killed. If true, then the Shadow Lord may have been helping them track adventurers and cover up their actions for a cut of the profits. Maybe he even sent his own men to kill adventurers and sent the corpse retrievers to "discover" the bodies.

That informant isn't an elf, but they're wearing the same cloak the Canaries wear. The informant has a connection to Fionil so I double-checked her appearance and she's also wearing the same cloak the Canaries wear. Fionil and the informant might be working for the Canaries, but the informant might also be acting as a double agent by giving information to the Lugantes as well.

Had to review the last few chapters cause I wasn't sure why Lycion was okay and just chilling with Laios's party.

He wasn't able to help the other canaries last chapter cause he was busy restraining Izutsumi.

Enough time passed since the end of chapter 74 that Izutsumi was able to get dressed. I don't know if I'd rather take the reasonable assumption that Kabru convinced Lycion and Izutsumi to stop fighting and she got dressed after, or if I'd rather take the silly approach and say the two of them just decided to stop fighting on their own and were just sitting around eating the leftover bavarois until Kabru showed up.

Izutsumi's scarf is tied in a bow and I refuse to believe she would have done that, and I am therefore going to headcanon that Lycion tied her scarf into a bow.

Fleki isn't dead so the lion obeyed the letter of Marcille's command to not kill anyone but not the spirit.

Mithrun survived by teleporting into a giant spider. The thing that hit the wall last chapter was the spider's guts.

That's...really gross.

And the teddy bear spider had teeth.

Mithrun can't teleport when making a lot of contact? So this means a grappler opponent is a hard counter if they can manage to grab and pin him before Mithrun teleports them.

Did Kabru choke Mithrun out? And was Mithrun the one who made the cuffs?

The giant spiders having non-spider heads really does just make them creepier. Especially when their bodies get crushed. Spiders have a decentralized nervous system, so limbs can react independently even after the brain is destroyed. And the rabbit-head spider's ears can still move despite being dead.

Is there a name for the way Laios is carrying Cithis? The best comparison I found was the piggyback carry where the rider is supposed to wrap their arms around the carrier. But since she's unconscious, Laios is holding her arms criss-cross to secure her.

Don't ever think Laios is stupid. He had enough intuition to figure out what happened after Cithis hypnotized him.

I don't know why, but I feel like Lycion would get along great with Laios's party. If they didn't have opposing goals, he and Fleki would probably be best buds with the gang.

I keep forgetting that Lycion is a beastman. I jokingly said he was the Canary's Senshi (because of fanservice), but he's actually more like a reverse Izutsumi.

On that train of thought, I'm going to assign Mithrun as the anti-Senshi (Doesn't care about his health or well-being at all), Fleki as the anti-Chilchuck (She seems like a snarker who complains about everything), Pattadol as the anti-Marcille (both are really high-strung and by-the-books), and Cithis as the anti-Laios (She's just evil). I don't know where to fit Otta in this so I'm just going to call her the anti-Namari cause why not?

On a completely pointless note, we can say that Cithis and Pattadol are heavier than Otta because Izutsumi could carry Otta but Laios and Senshi had to carry Cithis and Pattadol.

This image is really disorienting.

The dungeon doesn't adhere to Euclidean space but this just lays bare how nonsense the layout was. In particular, we can see the entrance to the fourth level on the left center of the image. You have to exit out of the bottom of a tower with no other discernible entry points.

The secret town on the sixth floor is in the background and we can see the top layer of the dwarf city ruins under it.

Falin's body has been moved.

Several early chapters in the series brought up the ecologic balance of the dungeon. In particular, I remember Senshi explaining that the golems on the third floor serve as a deterrent to keep the stronger monsters from moving to higher levels.

With all the levels now on the same plane, we're seeing something like that scenario play out. The natural bottlenecks the old dungeon structure had are broken and flying monsters have immediately attempted to expand their territories.

Some monsters can't survive in the upper levels because the mana concentration is too thin. If monsters are managing to move across different environments, that could mean that the amount of mana in the air is increasing as well.

I can't tell if the reason Laios is worried is because Marcille's actions will get people killed or because she's doing a bad job building the dungeon.

Fleki got brain damage when her familiar was killed, but Marcille wasn't affected by her familiars' deaths. It's probably because Marcille's familiars were constructs while Fleki's aren't.

Marcille's familiars were more like drones she was piloting remotely. When the first two were killed by the hippogriff, she had a stressed look to her eyes so the sudden disconnection might be mentally taxing, but it doesn't actually affect her.

Fleki's familiars are conjured by her. She has at least two familiars: the raven familiar she uses in battle and white dove familiars she uses for scouting. I want to guess that the white doves are more similar to Marcille's familiars; they're drones that let Fleki scout in wide areas and likely won't harm her if they get attacked.

Her raven familiar is definitely an extension of her. I mentioned in chapter 74 that she has a tattoo of some sort on her chest. That might be what lets her summon her raven. And she's able to control how much her soul exists in the raven. In chapter 73, she was unconscious until the raven flew back into her. But in chapter 74, she was just remote piloting it.

I realized while talking about Fleki that she wears a hawker's glove.

And again, the Canaries refuse to actually work with non-elves. It might be beneficial to work with Laios, but Lycion told him to not get involved. And as soon as Laios said no, Lycion immediately escalated to violence. Laios doesn't even know why the situation is worse than it seems.

Initially, Laios was in shock when Lycion showed off his power but then he was enthralled.

Kabru does not have a weapon. And I'd say he hasn't had a weapon since returning to the surface. He probably thought he wouldn't need one since he was just going to try negotiating with the Shadow Lord. And then everything happened.

Kensuke was all confuzzled and curious because someone else was holding it.

It's probably a mix of urgency and only recently meeting Kabru, but Laios got over Kabru lying to him really quickly. It's probably happened plenty of times where he met someone, thought they hit it off and quickly learned that wasn't the case. Shuro hurt far more because they'd been together for years. Laios had only known Kabru for about a month, so he could just brush it off as another failed interaction.

Kabru is a manipulator, and Laios is the one person he's never been able to successfully manipulate. He took an interest in Laios because Laios's party had been the most successful at navigating the dungeon, and Kabru wanted to know what might happen if he were to conquer the dungeon.

But at some point, that interest turned into an obsession, especially since he could never ensnare Laios with any of his usual methods. Kabru's conspiracy board shows how all the other figures, adventurers, and organizations tie together; but the Touden siblings sit in the middle of that board because Kabru can't figure out how they connect to anything.

His only avenue to getting close to Laios was by eating monsters, which he hated and it drove him so crazy that Kabru started picturing Laios as a deranged madman who is a threat to mankind.

And with the charade revealed, Laios is figuratively and literally slipping out of Kabru's grip.

Apologizing for his deception gave Kabru one chance to plead with Laios, but he had no idea what to say because none of his manipulations and honeyed words will work. He tried to explain the situation but he knows deep down that Laios doesn't care about the world or the greater good. Nothing Kabru says about the situation will convince Laios to leave a friend behind.

So Kabru decided to be genuine.

Laios's obliviousness to how others feel about him works in two ways. Not only was he clueless to Shuro not wanting to be Laios's friend, he was clueless to Kabru wanting to be his friend. Shuro dealt with a lot of grief because Laios thought they were friends the whole time. And Kabru suffered a lot in his efforts to become Laios's friends.

And they both did the same thing when they reached their tipping point.

And then he airs out all his grievances about Laios's obliviousness.

CANNONBALL BREAKER!!!

It's been a serious chapter and the tension got broken up by Kui reminding us that Izutsumi and Lycion were fighting each other right off-screen during this entire heart-to-heart.

Kabru didn't manage to stop Laios, but he managed to get his point across. While Laios is determined to save Marcille, he will not side with the lion. And when this is over, he and Kabru will sit down and get to know each other.

They all forgot that Thistle's house was converted into a floating island.

back

[upperranktwo]

God this website is so dead its shocking...

[crazysodomite]

every time i start spiraling and can't hold it in i feel like a stressed out animal locked in a concrete box just scratching and scratching at the walls until i understand that i can't get through the wall and get tired

[torchickentacos]

I'm reading poetry at 1 am and spiraling over like 45 emotions at once, which is how poetry was meant to be enjoyed, I think

[here-there-were-dragons]

i'm seeing three times as many people bitching in the tag about the very idea that someone might not like this breed than i see people actually expressing unambiguous dislike for this breed

[icewindandboringhorror]

Lineup of all of the characters that appear long enough to need a visual representation of them in the game lol

[featherymainffins]

Me when I have plans but my head looks like a trashcan on fire and like 3 separate "mes" are arguing with me about said plans

[moviesstoriesandbooks]

To people who don't know what happened :

Basically another chat got leaked between what seems to be Build and someone else , where he's seen asking for money multiple times , and cursing people who exposed his old problematic tweets on twitter , being homophobic (as a joke 🙁) and other things among many.

As any sane person would think , i also had doubts about the authenticity of the texts and all , but then everyone basically unfollowed him on Instagram and build also tweeted an apology.

Apology confirms that those are genuine right??

He genuinely badmouthed his costars who were there working their asses off for a show that got cancelled once and had to begin production again.

Like , he does not seem like a good coworker , all things considered. And he's so much trouble to the company as a whole , which has pretty ungrateful fans following it's artists.

(idk some tweets just make me go , it's a tough industry . They're atleast still getting work from a show that's been done airing for a year and with no hope of season 2 . They can't create work , but they're still doing very well for a smallass company)

I initially read his fans' responses which were along the lines of "if your texts with your bestie leaks then will you be safe?"

And although that's a very .... Erm ... creative way to view things , I don't think that's barely enough here.

He was badmouthing basically apo , jeff and barcode, and nodt and mile(?) I'm unclear on the details. I get that you may be angry at your coworkers , there may be squabbles but that's not what this was about?? Jeffbarcode were accused of being boc's favourites (??????) and had more pictures taken than everyone else(??????????????) They had like 15 mins of screentime. What is this man on about?

I just straight up don't trust this man anymore.

I don't care about his story. He's so much trouble than he's worth and every day there's something up with him.

[natelia-aldelliz]

Guys... Listen I know I said I'd draw something for valentine's day but I had a bit of a rough week sooooo I'm just going to write it out instead, maybe I'll finish drawing it some day, maybe not. It's behind a show more because it's long.

(also there's talks about having sex but no actual sex, and like, general warnings about Ghost's backstory but it's very vague here).

Soap was hanging around outside, trying to bring himself to do something, anything. But the weather was nice for a February day, and the sun was out, and it was making him feel like a cat basking in the heat.

An arm wrapped itself around his shoulders, a huge body suddenly weighing on him. Ghost.

Soap hummed comfortably. This day was getting better by the minute. Any chill he might have felt from being outside in a tank top out of pure Scottish spite was instantly soothed.

Simon often times saw himself as a cold man, freezing to the touch, hidden behind a layer of ice. A proper little Elsa, Soap almost snorted out loud. The truth was that while yes, his fingers and toes' temperature was sometimes abysmal, especially in bed, the rest of him was the warmest place Johnny had ever been.

"I've got something for you in our room," Ghost whispered against his throat, making Soap shiver.

Simon had begun calling Soap's room theirs a few weeks ago and Johnny couldn't have enough of it. He was so in love it genuinely hurt sometimes to restrain himself from squeezing him to death.

"Is that so?" he purrs, knowing how Ghost likes that. If this day didn't end in sex he'd be very surprised. He'd long learned to recognize when Simon wanted sex and when he didn't, and the way he squeezed his pec in response to his voice was a very easy tell.

But then again Simon was way less subtle than he thought he was.

They made their way back to their room, and there it was, a repurposed shoebox, badly wrapped with cheap wrapping paper. Johnny couldn't be more excited, he had never received any gift from a significant other. To be fair he adored gifting but always felt awkward receiving.

But this was Simon. Something that Simon had chosen to give him.

He sat on the bed, leaving enough space behind him for Ghost to sit there so he could use him as a very comfortable backrest. When he did, he grabbed the gift and began opening it.

He knew that Ghost liked to tear the wrapping paper, liked the sound of it and liked tearing it into the smallest pieces possible after, but he himself loved carefully unwrapping it and folding it flat so he could later maybe do an origami with it or put a piece in his journal. Probably both.

This one was full of tape but he still very much enjoyed himself, considered it a challenge. He enjoyed the chase, wanted to drag it on. Ghost huffed impatiently behind him, a bit tense, probably nervous.

Inside the box was a weird old fashioned clunky thing. It was bright red, looked slightly like binoculars, definitely from the 70's, with a wheel of tiny pictures wedged in the top of it. Memories hit him all at once.

"Oh my god ah remember, my Ma had one of these when ah was a child! My sister and I loved it, it had pretty landscapes in!"

He put it against his eyes, excited to see what this one came with. At his biggest surprise, it was a picture of them. Simon had customised it.

The picture showed the back of himself a bit further away from the camera, pointing at something while in full gear, in a dilapidated town, Ghost's face in the foreground looking at the camera. It looked like Soap was talking to someone, but that person was cut by the framing.

"Wait, ah remember that mission, it's when ah saved Gaz from a landmine just to be shot seconds later," he laughed. "ah spent two fucking weeks in the hospital, ah was miserable. Ye kept joking ah should hiv left Gaz explode while staring at him, he was convinced ye actually wanted him dead!"

Then the next picture was indeed him in his hospital bed, unconscious but the state of his injuries told him he was probably just sleeping at least a few days after his admission, his life no longer in danger. In this one, Ghost was sleeping too, head in his elbow near Soap's head and his other hand holding Soap's hand.

"Who took this one?" Soap asked, moved by the tenderness of Ghost's hold on him in the picture. It would have been right after Johnny had admitted to maybe liking him more than friends, before they were officially dating.

"The hospital one?"

Soap hummed.

"Price did. Said it was for blackmail. Should have seen him, he looked like his child had just married the person of their dreams and had ridden off into a rainbow on a unicorn or some shit. Old man's sentimental as fuck, but I didn't call him on his bullshit, he's already old, that's punishment enough."

Soap giggled in response. The next few pictures were all of them together but each time he was either turning his back or asleep.

"Why the fuck am ah never looking at the camera?" he whined. He wanted some cute couple pictures, dammit!

"Couldn't have you suspecting what I was planning," Simon said, kissing his shoulder soothingly. Only then Soap noticed that he had taken his mask off at some point and turned to ask for a proper kiss, which he immediately got.

"Keep going, there's more pictures," Simon whispered against his lips when he tried to turn around to kiss him some more. His pouting only got him a smirk in response, so he got comfortable again and brought the slide viewer back against his eyes.

He was happy he did. The next picture waiting for him was just Simon in the mirror, almost in full gear, but with one gloveless hand dragging his trousers down so the camera could see the bottom of his stomach, follow along his happy trail and reaching the very top of his pubic hair. The picture cut of his head, but he could see that his mouth was uncovered and he was holding the glove with his teeth.

Soap groaned. "Steaming Jesus, love, you're so hot."

He felt Simon hide his face in the back of his neck, warmer than usual, and chuckled a bit. He loved him so fucking much.

There were four more pictures of Simon, in various suggestive poses and states of undress, some almost showing his cock but never quite committing, making Johnny feel like he was being teased.

He was getting hard though and so ready to be done with the pictures and access the real thing. But Simon was still tense behind him. In fact, he had only gotten tenser and tenser with each click.

Soap was unsure why. They never had a problem with their sexual life, Simon had already changed his mind about having sex after starting and Soap had absolutely no problem with that, was glad to hug him instead and reassure him when he had tried to apologize.

Simon knew that there was no pressure, ever, to have sex. Hell, Johnny would still be happy even if Simon decided that he never wanted to have sex again, and he had made sure to make Simon understand that.

Then he got to the last picture and immediately understood.

It wasn't a picture of either of them, just a little bit of paper, with a few words written in Ghost's awful handwriting.

Just a few words that made Johnny drop the viewer on the covers and turn around to grab Simon's face, worriedly looking in his eyes.

"Are you sure?" he asked, looking for any trace of Simon forcing himself. "Baby, ah'm happy to bottom for the rest of mah life, there's no pressure, okay?"

Simon looked at him with warmth in his eyes and his cheeks completely red, a wrapping bow added on top of his head. "I know," he said simply. "I just want to. I don't want to be haunted by memories anymore. I used to like it, and I want to like it again. With you. Just.... Be gentle, okay?"

Johnny kissed his forehead. "Ah dinnae think ah ken how no tae be gentle with ye, love."

[dracimexidae]

Jasmine in the draw with Aryna, Elena and Qinwen 💀

[thediktatortot]

.

[ahollowgrave]

We are entering that weird part of the year where my work is slow af until there is An Issue and then I am sooooo busy until the Issue is Fixed and then I'm back to being bored again

[hoziersong]

ugh. once again. shut the fuck up

[whattheskyknows]

Oh yeah just a quick update - I have temporarily made 13 Students private on ao3, meaning you will need an account to read it. This is only temporary. I should be making it public again soon!!!

[musical-chick-13]

Cannot BELIEVE I had to have a conversation with someone where, after I complained about people Not Wanting To Write About Women, I then had to explain that yes, I DO write about men sometimes, actually; no I don't hate men; yes I write from the POV of the men in numerous cases and also analyze them.