#once I get around to it

[presidentstalkeyes]

Another one for the OC backlog! I uploaded two versions purely because Tumblr kept blowing up the first image and making it look all grainy and awful. :V

Growing up in a poor part of Vancouver, Gisu and Rody were best friends for as long as they could remember. They first met in preschool, after Rody's parents had another fight and she was hiding away from everyone, and Gisu cheered her up by tobogganing down the playground slide and trying (and failing) to front-roll off the end.

For years, they spent almost all of their free time together, whether that was climbing over increasingly piled-high objects, competing in mock-rap battles, making fun of Gisu's brother's boring-ass stories, or stealing the mean girls' fashion dolls and burning them with an industrial blowtorch. Their true ambition, though, was to make it big in the skateboarding world.

Rody was present for the night that Gisu discovered her psychic powers - out hours past bedtime, attempting to pull a sick gap at the docks, she choked after making the jump and would have smacked into a wall of water had she not stopped herself from colliding at the last second.

Rody was conflicted - she'd heard stories from her parents about psychics, especially her dad, who always seemed to have a different conspiracy theory every day ('psychics are being used by the CIA to spy on us!' 'Psychics run the CIA!' 'The Psychonauts run the world!' 'The Psychonauts are puppets of the Illuminati, who are also psychics!' Etc etc.). She knew of course that her dad was crazy, and Gisu was her friend, but still, psychics did have a lot of power, and surely not all of them would use it wisely, right?

Gisu's family seemed to be accepting, and over time she became more and more interested in learning about her powers. Rody tried to be supportive (and they did have fun at first, laughing at the dumb things her dad said about psychics), but she'd have been lying if she hadn't been annoyed at how much time Gisu spent at home or at the library, reading books about psychic mumbo-jumbo that she'd never understand in a million years, and she felt increasingly sidelined. It didn't help that her family situation had only gotten worse and she didn't really have any other friends besides Gisu.

Things reached a breaking point when, just weeks away from a big skating contest they had both been practising for, Gisu received a letter from the Psychonauts, accepting her to be fast-tracked into the Intern program (due to her age, she was ineligible to attend Whispering Rock, so she instead took a series of written and practical exams to demonstrate that she had the required understanding of psycho-safety). This was the first time Rody had heard about this. The two of them had a huge fight. Neither of them handled it particularly well. Rody accused Gisu of trying to ditch her because she didn't have any 'cool powers'. Gisu admitted she didn't tell Rody because she 'knew [she'd] be all weird about it' and accused her of being 'clingy' and having no life outside of their friendship.

They still entered the skating contest, and Gisu won first prize. Ordinarily Rody wouldn't have cared, but after their fight, it was the final straw. Wanting to hurt Gisu as much as she'd been hurt, she went up on stage and accused Gisu of cheating using her psychic powers, outing her as a psychic in front of over a hundred people. As psychics were forbidden from competing in the competition for this exact reason, she was disqualified. She ran home in tears.

Rody regretted it almost immediately, but it took her a whole week to work up the courage to try apologizing. But by then it was too late; Gisu had already left to join the Intern program. They haven't spoken to each other since.

Gisu still thinks about her old friend sometimes; sometimes she thinks she was to blame for what happened, other times she thinks Rody was a toxic influence all along and she made the right decision to cut her out of her life. Mostly she just tries not to think about her at all.

She'd be lying if she said Dion didn't bring back some unpleasant memories.

[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.

[thetransguard]

kabru is canonically too smart for miscommunication trope. if anything laios would flirt with him One Single Time and kabru catches on immediately and runs it through his mental processor (does laios not know what he's doing? -> no he does. is he doing this to practice?? -> laios would not lead me on like that -> is he aware of how i feel? -> am i aware of how i feel???) and then literally the next time laios is free he schedules a meeting they sit down at the table kabru leans across looks him dead in the eyes and says very calmly on a scale of im just playing to lets get married how serious are u about this

[venator-signum]

kamala khan would have the most horrendous ao3 author's notes known to man

"hey guys sorry the update is late i switched places with an avenger (ajdgrhsh literally crying) and a really cool space scientist lady and then got into a fight and some alien dudes wrecked my house and then I met Nick fury and I was literal space it was crazy and I had to help save the universe and saw said scientist lady give up her life to save all of us... anyways hope you like the new fic, branching out with an arranged marriage au for this one!!!"

[catsharky]

Presenting: King Sidon, his wife Queen Yona and his boyfriend Link.

Yona is very supportive of everything except Sidon forgetting his ceremony cues.

(I had an atrocious week and TotK has been coming in clutch for keeping me sane.)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

All he knows is flirt with men and lie.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[sinestrosmind]

more shenanigans w/@tinyghostotus lmaoooo

please don't actually eat rocks or slime Leo and Donnie are profesional dumbasses

also don't tell Raph

[uncharted-constellations]

The entire ALBW team

Links about to become Lorules #1 hytopian fabric exporter

[tundratic]

having a normal one tonight

[egophiliac]

SHE'S DONE! after a thousand years, she's finally done! ...or at least I'm done with her! (tumblr please don't absolutely destroy my gifs, I am begging you)

(this is not an edit, I drew her from scratch! please do not tag or treat as an edit!)

now you know the real reason I haven't been obsessively drawing Meleanor, which is that I was in fact obsessively drawing Meleanor but in secret. plus a little background just for fun!

I am. not super happy with her rig; parts of her proved way more difficult than I expected and I very quickly hit the point of "okay, this is a silly fan project and not something that I'm being paid for or has to be really functional, time to MANUALLY KEY ALL THE VERTICES FOREVER". I think the end result came out pretty okay though! just...don't look too close. :')

I recorded some of the drawing part, so I might put that up later! in the meantime I am going to make her do stupid poses for my own enjoyment!

[ping-ski]

shrödinger's plex fic (they are real to me)

EBY eclipse and y/n ref here!! :3

[mikimeiko]

Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998)

[sharkylad]

Thinking about the fact that Mabel and Dipper didn't know they had two great uncles.

Yeah they are 12 and at 12 I had a shotty understanding of my family tree- But really? Nobody brought up their great uncle? Stanley? Especially since they'll be staying with his twin brother, Stanford?

Shermie never went to Stan's fake funeral, which to me means the twos relationship was strained on some level. If Shermie is older that means his view of Stan was poisoned in some way, that even as kids they weren't close. If the Shermie is younger then he never even got to meet Stan and all he knew about him was how he failed his family. Hell, people probably barely mentioned Stanley TO Shermie.

The fact that Stan had become a black stain upon the Pines family name makes me so vividly upset. Stanley faked his death and the family just- seemingly decided to strike him from the record. To pretend he didn't existed to spare themselves the sadness and shame.

Stanford and Shermie Pines. The only children worth mentioning of Filbrick and Caryn Pines.

It was never Stanford that was lost to the world. It was Stanley, ever since he had to leave New Jersy- it was always him that had to be struck from the record. Change his name, change his state, change his affiliations, destroy the remains of ghost that was Stanley Pines. Kill him so the family doesn't bring him up, doesn't ask questions, stops asking "Stanford" about his twin.

I just keep thinking about the fact that since the day he made one single mistake all the way up until Ford walks out of that machine- Stanley Pines was killed and did not exist. And Stan himself had no one to blame, he had to play the part in his own demise- He is the only one who ever knew Stanley was alive and has been for decades.

He lives in the multitudes of every personality he's ever taken, all in the hope that he himself can stop being Stanley Pines.

[merlins-strawberriesandroses]

POV you’ve informed the Queen and the Court’s Sorcerer of something and they very clearly know something that they’re not letting on

[hinamie]

god, i wish i knew you back when i was a kid / but when you stare into me now, it feels like i did

[teethlordd]

Just thinkin about if they made a deal to get his rythem back