#so no spoilers in the notes!!!

[rainofthetwilight]

blood moon, lloyd getting The Zane Treatment (aka visions), shatterspin, wolf warriors, new guy with smoke powers who uses shatterspin and smites kids, wyldfyre with a broken leg, euphrasia returning with a broken leg, arm and a crutch, arin getting slam dunked on the ground for the second time (all of this resulted from the said guy earlier), possible villian jay, cole properly returns, the finders along w/ geo and bonzle returning, actual talking dragons, whatever fang status is, rising dragon technique, sora and riyu learning spinjitzu, bonzle's creator, arin getting an arc, forbidden five, wyldfyre getting a boyfriend, and so much more

dragons rising season 2, w h a t

[hinamie]

mentor

[stevenrogered]

Sam Reid: I ate so many of those photos. They were made of rice paper, so they stuck to the roof of my mouth. There were a few where I just shoved the whole photo into my mouth, but that didn’t work, so I had to eat it. It was like eating a sweet cake. They were stuck to the roof of my mouth and I couldn’t keep talking.

They’re saying mean things about Louis’ photos, so he’s going, “Fuck you! You took a beautiful photograph. Don’t listen to that guy. I’ll eat it.”

Jacob Anderson: I loved it so much.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

GUYS… 💀

Skully J. “I greet you with a kiss” Graves

You wake up in his arms after blacking out

Calls you “my dear” and “lovely”/“wonderful” even though we literally just met

Comments that your names are beautiful

Offers to escort you (well, Trey technically) through the woods even though Skully has no idea where tf he’s going

Remarks that it would be nice to hold hands and stroll through the forest together

He tends to use the term "fated" to refer to things he has in common with others

Is the first character in all of Twst to have a BLUSHING face

He holds your hand and kisses you (on the back of it??) without even waiting or asking for your okay (avert your eyes, Grim…)????

HE ALSO KISSES GRIM AND ALL THE OTHER BOYS ON THE HAND

HE KISSES YUU MULTIPLE TIMES THROUGHOUT THIS EVENT

HE WALKED OUT OF a DAtinG SIM 😭

Other Skully facts:

He’s taller than Malleus (not including the horns, just judging by the models) and Sebek (stated explicitly in the dialogue)

He’s is a first year student

He’s 16, same age as the other first years (though Skully only recently turned 16)

Speaks very respectfully, even to fellow first years (Riddle remarks on Skully being very gentlemanly and even Vil calls Skully elegant)

He refers to himself using an archaic form of “I” (wagahai)

HE’S AN OTAKU FOR HALLOWEEN, he calls Jack Skellington “Jack Skellington-sama” and says Jack is the person he admires the most dbsksbsiqguzvs

Skully asks everyone else call him Jack-sama too

He comes from a small isolated fog-shrouded rural village; it is located at the bottom of a valley

His hometown considers Jack Skellington the founder of Halloween; Jack Skellington is not known outside of this village

The people in Skully’s hometown love Halloween and its founder, Jack

He seems to be sleep deprived???

Skully tries to tell others at his school about Halloween and Jack, but his peers don’t listen and get mad at him

Skully doesn’t like to talk about his school (and seems to actively dislike it, calling his classmates fools and asking to avoid the topic of school)

He self-admits to not having many people who understand him

Confirmed a mage (Leona says he has the same amount of magic as Epel), but he doesn’t have a magical pen/doesn't seem to know what they are???

He doesn't know Malleus either.

Skully claims he was also sucked into the book while attending the used book fair in Foothill Town

Chunibyo?? Like, he presents as mysterious initially but actually has very excitable reactions to things, lots of purple prose too

Leona calls him a BADGER

He calls his classmates “worthless” for not understanding/listening to him

He thinks lowly of those who disagree with his opinions on Halloween; there is a drastic shift in his personality when the NRC students express dissent

Skully’s ideal Halloween is solemn and desolate, involving: beating up all ghosts, painting rooms entirely black, no decorations, and no music

This is how his village spends Halloween, in solemn silence; Skully grew up thinking this is how it always is

He likes classical music and opera

He acts gentlemanly because he believes Jack is also a gentleman

He wants to learn piano someday

Skully believes that staying traditional and respecting and protecting the past is important

Details about his unique magic

(Side note: GRIM’S NEW oUTFIT 👌 He looks perfect in that suit!! LOOKS At HIS WIDDLE PAW gLOVES… And the chest fluff sticking out gives the illusion of a cravat! Aaaaaah, so cute 💕)

[pcktknife]

that damn chicken

[wolfythewitch]

Started malevolent, on episode 2

- we started not with a bang but with a whimper

- Arthur does not sound like a word anymore

- that demon in his brain needs to take a chill pill

- I need him tranquilized his shouting is scaring ME

[moonlightmagical]

AND ZAC OYAMA JOINS THE RANKS OF PLAYERS THAT READ THE FUCKING BOOK, BRENNAN

[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.

[brokenclockgears]

oooohhhh bright one...... you think your friends can't stand you don't you,,,, oooohhhh.... fucking idiot lmaoo ooooohhh....

[thebluemallet]

Portia may not have always been the best mother, but she was the only one who noticed and brought attention to the fact that Penelope wrote terrible things about herself in Whistledown once she learned the truth.

Someone should write a fic where that is brought to Colin and Eloise's attention by someone else and they both have that "oh shit!" moment.

[egophiliac]

tsum events really are just the best, huh

[thegurlwhoisntthere]

Okay, so this isn’t really related to the larger parts of the season, but-

Can I just say I absolutely love how they introduced Callum’s dad?

Like, there are so many theories about him, that he was an elf, that he was a warrior who died, that he just up and left them, but in actuality? He was a poet. He was a poet with a sickness from birth and he died from that when Callum was young. He was kind and Sarai loved him. Harrow even respected him and I genuinely love that.

It also makes more sense that it would’ve been harder for Callum to connect with Harrow in the face of that. His dad wasn’t some warrior who died before he knew him, he wasn’t some elf that he never knew, or some deadbeat who left his mom. He was a kind heart poet who was born with a sickness that couldn’t be cured.

That’s extraordinarily tragic, but I love it.

[hinamie]

I don't want to regret the way I lived

[dragon0va]

appreciation post for joel's editing in his most recent hermitcraft episode, i would like more of this please

[justarandombrit]

I don't know

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

wanted to share this

There was a short segment where we get to hear Skully J. Graves (like, with the in-game live-2D model) monologue about Halloween. After saying good evening, he opens by… GiIVING YOU a KISS????? He literally announces it: “I greet you with a kiss” or (more directly) “I give a kiss to this good/wonderful encounter”.

The Japanese transcription for the line is 「この良き出会いにキスを。」 and キス is kisu/kiss… LIKE. I know he most likely means just a brief platonic kiss to say hello (similar to the European style where your lips don’t really touch the other person and it’s more like pantomiming a kiss on each cheek)… Or maybe he means a metaphorical kiss, not a literal one??? BUT STILL THAT’S SO BOLD TO START WITH, ESPECIALLY WITH A STRANGER (<- my inner Rollo Flamme comin’ out)

Edit: Now that the event is actually out, we can confirm that he does, in fact, LITERALLY kiss you (on the back of the hand) 😭