#if you care about reality

[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.

[andersunmenschlich]

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams

Updated for the Modern Reader

You said you wished I'd stay alive and healthy long enough to become a Calvinist, or at least praise Calvin's god; that wish would make me immortal.

See, Calvin didn't believe in any god. What he worshiped was obviously a demon.

You and me, we worship the creator of the universe—a good guy who does good things! Calvin's "god" is so disgusting that it would actually be better to be an atheist than to insult God by saying He's like that.

Actually, on the subject of making atheism seem attractive: I think the idea that it takes a supernatural revelation to prove that God exists encourages atheism. Every Christian sect believes that, and they shouldn't! These days, apparently only 1/6 of all the humans in the world is Christian. By standard Christian reasoning, that means the other five sixths (since they don't believe in the Jewish and Christian revelations) completely lack all knowledge of the existence of a god!

This pretty much hands the win to atheists.

Modern atheists (the disciples of Ocellus, Timaeus, Spinosa, Diderot and D’Holbach) have this one argument that they think can never be debunked:

Whenever you're trying to figure out how things started, you have to assume that something always existed, right? And if you're going to reason logically, you shouldn't say there are definitely two things when one is enough to explain everything.

Then they say that it's simpler to assume that physical reality has always existed, with all its processes and changes and reproductions, according to the physical laws we see going on around us today and which may continue going on forever, than it is to assume the eternal existence of an invisible, unknown, non-physical, incomprehensible Creator.

I disagree.

Without appealing to revelation, I hold that all we have to do in order to know that there's a creator is look at how complex and perfect all of physical reality is.

Look at how the stars and planets and moons etc. are held so exactly to their paths of movement by the perfect balance between the force that makes things spin and the force that pushes things out and away from the center of spinning things. Look at the construction of our own planet, and how much water we have vs. air and land. Look at the plants and animals, and how well they work! Look at bugs! They're so tiny, but their bodies are just as functional and well-organized as the bodies of humans and elephants! Look at all the minerals there are, and how useful they are to us!

It is impossible for a human mind to take all of that in and not believe it was created on purpose.

You have to believe that there is design there. Cause and effect, all the way up to an ultimate cause, someone or something that makes stuff out of matter and motion, that upkeeps things it's currently allowing to exist in their present forms, that regenerates them into new and other forms.

We know that there's some superintending power that keeps the universe running in order. We see proof of it all the time. Well-known stars have disappeared and new ones turned up instead; comets probably run into planets and stars and so on and have to be remade somehow; certain species of animals have become extinct, and if there were no restoring power, eventually every organized living being would be extinct and there'd be nothing left but a chaotic, unliving mess.

This is such strong evidence that, for all of human history, most people have found belief in an eternally pre-existing god much simpler than belief in a universe that just exists on its own.

Only one in a million people has ever been an atheist—maybe less.

Surely the fact that most people throughout history have believed in a creator makes a creator the simpler hypothesis!

Besides which, some early Christians did actually believe in both an eternal creator and an eternal creation, without being confused about which came first in that case. Cardinal Toleto tells us that's what St. Thomas believed:

"Deus ab æterno fuit jam omnipotens, sicut cum produxit mundum. ab æterno potuit producere mundum.—Si sol ab æterno esset, lumen an æterno esset; et si pes, similiter vestigium. At lumen et vestigium effectus sunt efficientis solis et pedis; potuit ergo cum causâ æterna effectus coæterna esse. Cujus sententiæ est S. Thomas Theologorum primus."

See?

Now, that's not enough to tell us anything about the nature of this creator and maintainer.

Jesus tells us that God is a spirit (John 4:24), but doesn't tell us what "spirit" is. We know that down to the third century it was still considered a physical thing, albeit lighter and more airy than our own physical bodies. According to Huet's commentary on Origen, "Deus igitur, cui anima similis est, juxta Originem, reapte corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum ratione corporum incorporeus," while Origen himself said "appellatio ασοματον apud nostros scriptores est inusitata et incognita."

Tertullian said the same: "Quis autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi deus spiritus? Spiritus etiam corporis sui generis, in suâ effigie." These two experts, Origen and Tertullian, lived in the third century. So that proves what was believed then.

John Calvin seems to have copied the Jews to get his god's character. But the whole point of Jesus was to fix the Jewish idea of God's character: when Jesus spoke to the Jews, his goal seemed to be to take those blasphemous attributes the Jews had put on God and replace them with more worthy ones, pure ones, sublime ones.

Jesus's ideas about cosmology are clearly laid out in the first three verses of John 1: "εν αρχη ην ὁ λογος, και ὁ λογος ην προς τον θεον και θεος ην ὁ λογος. οὑτος ην εν αρχη προς τον θεον. παντα δε αυτου εγενετο, και χωρις αυτου εγενετο ουδε ἑν ὁ γεγονεν." The true translation of these verses is, "In the beginning God existed, and reason [or mind] was with God, and that mind was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were created by it, and without it was made not one thing which was made."

Obviously what Jesus meant by this was that all of physical reality was created by one supreme, intelligent being.

But modern Christians have taken this verse and twisted it to support their idea of three gods in one! They mistranslate 'λογος.' Sure, it can mean 'a word', but that's clearly not what it means here, because that's gibberish!

A word, an action or articulation of the voice and organs of speech, creating something? Don't be ridiculous! It obviously ought to be translated 'reason'. Translated that way—which is a perfectly legitimate way of translating it—the verse explains how God existed before everything else and created everything. Modern Christians insist it be translated as 'word' because they know that's gibberish, and the only way to make it even approach sense is to turn the 'word' into a whole other preexisting being and attribute the creation of everything to him instead of to God.

This allows the atheist to point and laugh at a god so useless that a vibration in the air does more creating than it, and to hold up the idea of a preexisting physical universe as infinitely more likely.

The truth is that the greatest enemies to the teachings of Jesus are those who claim to be explaining them. They have perverted the doctrines of Jesus to build the structure of an utterly incomprehensible imaginary castle that they like better than truth, a castle with no foundation whatsoever in Jesus's actual words.

Someday, the idea that Jesus was mystically generated in the womb of a virgin with the supreme being as his father will be filed right alongside the myth of Athena being mystically generated in the mind of her father Zeus, and I hope that that dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will not only do away with all this artificial scaffolding, but also restore to us the genuine teachings of Jesus, who was a most venerated reformer of human errors (like the Jews'—and Calvin's—idea of God's character).

So much for your quotation of Calvin's "Mon dieu! Jusqu’a quand."

When addressed to the god Jesus worshiped, the god you and I worship, yes! I join you in that wholeheartedly. May we both end up in heaven whenever God wills it, us and all our ancient colleagues, and together hear God telling us, "Well done, my good and faithful servants."

[aziraphalalala]

I am not entirely certain what will happen once the actors & writers strike ends, but I'm pretty sure Michael Sheen will break the sound barrier with how fast he will go feral on the internets about how Aziraphale wants to eat Crowley's ox rib

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bonus 8: How met your mother (CSSR design by @qourmet!)

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[umblrspectrum]

getting in that spooky spirit

[medicalunprofessional]

never change, man !

[bumblydumbly]

i think that if kabru saw that “laios meeting falin for the first time” strip he’d be sobbing uncontrollably

[jichanxo]

okay i know they went to university basically never because plot, but i'm forever amused by the idea of strangers seeing these two together and being baffled/wildly wrong about them

[octavianacidicbreastmilk]

i constantly see posts on here discussing issues that, if they even exist and are not the fruit of a civilisation is slowly decaying type of panic, are pretty much localised in the usa and posit it as the ultimate center of cultural influence&reality, and then are treated as if they are already widespread or locked-in to become universal for the rest of the world.

and like, free yourself from the impulse of having to center that country's experience as overlapping with your own ever when the socio-cultural factors to take into account are still quite different

[julijbee]

girlbossing too close to the sun.

[sandflakedraws]

The way I describe Branch to people who haven't seen these movies is "the only troll openly cognizant of his role as a prey animal"

DKJGH GOD UR RIGHT THO!!!

THE WORLD OF TROLLS IS SO INCREDIBLY HOSTILE TO THESE LITTLE GUYS IT BOGGLES MY MIND.

LIKE THIS IS JUST FILM ONE. ITS JUST TUESDAY I GUESS !!!

[nexadarling]

Idk it's just that why aren't more of you screaming about Wolfwood wearing Vash's glasses in Badlands Rumble to go kill the fucker that was reasonable for Vash being not so dead???

Like where's the hype for that? I need it

Look at him!!!!

Motherfucker thought the glasses were all he had left of Vash and wore them in his memory

Here's him figuring out that Vash is not, in fact, particularly dead

*giggles like a school girl* idk i just think he's neat

[tempestmothstorm]

[it’s not right to care about things that don’t exist.]

quick sketch I made. She’s fine dw

[bamsara]

So is the reason for Tyren getting more unhinged the side effects of the devotion necklace, or was this a downward spiral he would have gone done regardless of the necklace? I remember you talking about how the necklaces have consequences, and I'm curious if this is one of them.

Yeah!

Tyren would have been an already overly-doting and even jealous character on his own without the loyalty necklace, (and had been due to his crush on the Lamb even before recieving it, and what happens when you reject followers in-game) but his spiral into a unhealthy obsession and idolization was aided by the loyalty necklace.

If it was given to perhaps a regular, less devoted follower, the effects maybe wouldn't have had such severity. But Lamb got the materials/necklace from the mystic seller and isn't fully aware of the effects it might have on their followers yet.

So, dog is unhinged a bit on his own, but amplified by the necklace. He's originally friendly, caring and sweet. But you take good traits, too much of a good thing, and they can turn bad

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

WAKE UP!

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[yuridovewing]

i really hate how the fandom’s excuse for jayfeather’s shitty behavior (and outright medical malpractice in certain cases. looking at the time he refused to help squilf in labour bc he couldnt be bothered and later blamed her for how bad it was) is “well the clan was ableist to him growing up, so fuck them!” ok how does that excuse him screaming at and berating the cats that didnt do any of that. or the babies.