#not explicitly for sure

[evilmafuyu666]

[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.

[eyeofthebrainstorm]

@basimdasasonst tags made me think... I want to add a couple things

First, the way I got to this conclusion: O was listening to "I'm the X" from Subspace Rhapsody, as I do (everyday at least 5 times), and thought about how some of the lines could be easily applied to Spock's situation with Kirk.

"convinced myself we shared the same feelings, I won't make that mistake again"

from this one we can imagine Spock telling himself, even when he might think Kirk could be showing interest in him, that their feelings for each other would never really match.

"she's happy and carefree, the opposite of me, I can do the calculus/ for her I set aside my need to analyze"

This one could explain why Spock always put logic first with Kirk, not trying to adapt to his character like he did with Chapel.

Now of course this is just speculation, but one positive thing about musical episodes is that they provide a precious chance to spell things out pretty clearly, the whole song to me is a pretty clear statement about the new direction Spock is taking. That said we have two seasons to go at least, anything can happen.

And lastly I want to add that, while I'm not opposed to this interpretation of Spock's character and find it interesting enough, I don't know if it's the best possible way it could have been done. I mean, on one hand I am a sucker for "eternal devotion and loyalty that breaks the boundaries of conventional romance" on the other hand I think Spock can be officially queer in 2024, he waited long enough.

I think I've finally put 2 and 2 together: what SNW is trying to do with the whole Chapel thing is showing how Spok developed trust issues in indulging and manifesting feelings for humans. Deciding to hide him self away in logic and his Vulcan side.

So what could potentially happen is that it will be shown or said at some point that Spok has feelings for Kirk but decides to never act on them, because experience taught him that vulcans and humans can't make a relationship work and it would be illogical to persevere.

[violent138]

Clark Kent faces about a hundred ethical dilemmas a day, but the one he'll never get used to is accidentally finding out that someone-- sometimes random strangers, sometimes his close friends-- has a serious health condition with x-ray vision, smell, or his hearing and having to figure if he should tell them, and how.

[lotus-pear]

yeah sure therapy is nice but teen soukoku is faster and a lot cheaper

[egophiliac]

how are u on gavv so far? because i need to scream about how insane it has been (and that zakuzakuchips and fuwamallow have won special places in my heart)

can't believe his mom got flavor-blasted to death. 😔 RIP.

[mumblesplash]

part 2!!!! [read part one here]

transcript below the cut arranged into stanzas to help show where the rhymes are:

“that’s why they brought gem in? as a failsafe?” as a pawn. we were told to point her at whoever we need gone

“gem won’t hurt her allies. …yet.” the curse she carries will it’s had its eye on her since she lost the other eye she was specially selected for her hunting skill it’s quite the high honor. “wow. how generous.” we try

think about it: why does almost no one fight the curse? “given how fast scott killed skizz last season, i can guess.” [“any pain you spare your friends, you’ll have to suffer worse”?] it’s designed to shut down higher reasoning with stress

[songofsunset]

I am extremely into that one single panel of Shanks and all the heavy lifting it does to draw parallels between Zeff and Sanji and Shanks and Luffy and how elegantly it explains what Luffy is thinking and why he's so emphatic here!!! He decided to value Shank's choice for all it was worth by going for it all and damned if he'll let Sanji do any less!!!!!

[bixels]

vague-posting about this here cuz i don't feel comfortable yapping about my su takes on twitter, but after everything that's happened the most interesting thing about the su fandom to me is that so many are 100% there for applying the "everyone can change and deserves a second chance" message to everyone, even the diamonds. except for one ☝️ she doesn't count. cuz she's dead.

[lucabyte]

Hmmm just gonna spit this headcanon out in text post form since A. I don't think I could exposit it well enough in image form and B. It's not actually textually/thematically substantiated and I don't like actually staking my stuff on just vibes alone*

But anyway. I'd say it's pretty evident that all the islanders forgot their names, right? King obviously. Because why the hell else would he do that, but also Siffrin No Middle Names No Last Name.

They're 'pretty sure' they've 'always' been 'Just Siffrin' 'as long as they can remember'. It's a pretty cruel twist of the knife to say that they don't even get to keep their birth name as a memento, which is why I'm saying as such.

My utterly unsubstantiated claim is I think it'd be cute to say that Sisyphus *is* the name Siffrin initially picked, assuming the myth of King Sisyphus is recontextualised as idk, just a play or something in the setting. But I like the idea of Siffrin going 'oh shit 🫵 he's just like me fr' at a tortured fictional character long before the irony kicks in.

As for how Sisyphus -> Siffrin. I think that chronic mumbler and emotional doormat Sif just did not correct people who misheard the name during their time travelling, and went through enough places with incompatible phonologies (pronounceable sounds in the language) without ever really writing it down that it just got kinda. Changed until it was unrecognisable, and Siffrin just went with it until the earlier pronunciations slipped out of their swiss-cheese brain. And they just kinda don't remember any of that.

Also, something something the horrid realisation that Siffrin also named themselves after a King. Just not as blatantly.

*(though I think there's something here about Siffrin, a guy from a belief system that seems to thoroughly disincentivise autonomy and self-motivated choice continuously having their hand forced to make changes/choices they don't want but have no choice but to... It's not solid enough to really back this up tbh, but it informs it.)

Anyway.

[s-exy-sapphillean]

I don't think it's too much to ask of people to not take a character whose lack of attraction to people is an important aspect of their character and go "actually i think they're super attracted to A and B and C" or take sex repulsed characters and go "well in my fanon they fuck a lot"

[trlvsn]

too much "phoenix's long seven years of plotting", not nearly enough "mia's years of research on redd white and years of waiting for dahlia's downfall"

[ruporas]

special operatives (silly interaction beneath read more)

[ID: Digital Art in color of Trigun Maximum, characters included are Wolfwood, Elendira, and Legato in a casual meeting situation. The piece consists of orangey yellow lighting and purple shadows. Wolfwood sits on the left side, facing Elendira who’s on the right. He’s seated on a plain wooden chair with one knee up and he’s holding the strap to his Punisher in his left hand while his right sits against his thigh, He has an irritated expression as he speaks to Elendira. Elendira is sitting in a fancier seat, her right arm rests against Wolfwood’s propped up knee, her left hand holds her suitcase. She’s sitting cross legged with an amused expression. Legato can be seen in the back at the center of the image in his mobile body case, one of his eyes shown to be glaring at Wolfwood. End ID]

[ID: Sketch, uncolored comic. Elendira says to Wolfwood, “I’m not telling you to dedicate yourself to him, but just accept the situation at hand. We could get along better if we were on the same page.” Wolfwood responds, “Don’t peg me me for an optimist. I’m not dumb. But, I’m also not going to just live in resignation. Plus, I don’t have any interest in getting along with ya.” Elendira coos, “Aw, you sure? I have a wonderful shoulder to cry on when the weak people you’re trying to protect eventually dies in the coming months. Though, I guess it’s fine. Someone like you might just die before then anyway...” She snickers in her hand while Wolfwood is speechless and just glares. Legato is faintly drawn in the back, glaring at Wolfwood, muttering “worthless” repetitively. End ID]

[queruloustea]

waitwaitwait what do you mean by that

he's on maternity leave :]

[starrrrrrfaces]

did silco not pick up on the hallucinations jinx has been having in the 7 YEARS they’ve been living under the same roof? or he did and was just like “damn this child got some demons. anyway-”

[aroaceleovaldez]

having been in the fandom for awhile, one interesting shift I remember seeing was around when BoO came out and people realized solangelo was implied to be a future thing, people were kind of scrambling to remember literally anything about Will cause of how minor of a character he had been up until that point.

And one of the things they were looking at with Will was that previously to BoO, people thought Will was a lot older. Because he was a cabin counselor (and generally how he was usually interacting with characters like Percy, Annabeth, and Clarisse - all 16+ish, or Leo - 15/16), most people assumed he was closer to 16 at least, if not actually older than Percy. It wasn't uncommon to see HoO!Will being 17 or so (this is also why there's a decent amount of hcs of him being at CHB pre-BoTL despite not existing until TLO). After BoO happened, it wasn't uncommon to see Solangelo content with a significantly older Will.

Like, it has always been implied in the series that Will is on the younger side (since Michael Yew joined CHB in SoM and Will is younger than him/would have joined BoTL at the earliest) and it's just the entire Apollo cabin keeling over in TLO that made Will counselor. But I just think it's interesting to remember that for awhile Will was not confirmed to be 13 in HoO/14 in TOA when solangelo first became a thing/people started paying attention to Will, and the fandom very widely thought he was older.