#someone will see it though

[dipplinduo]

Dang, I missed the chaos poll. But at least everyone agrees that Poetry Kieran would be interesting. Now, will the poetry tug at our heartstrings, or will it be a classic "everything is meaningless" kind of thing?

(Context: Silly poll for The Dichotomy in Our Hearts )

It's an angsty poem about/privately dedicated to Juliana 😏 (although he'd never want her to actually see it)

[friendsinsolitude]

i’m coping really normal about not getting a movie code

[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.

[egophiliac]

So.... what are your thoughts on Ace's UM, if you haven't been asked this already?

sneaky magic for the sneakiest boy

no but really, I think it fits him really well! I had thought his UM would probably involve something kinda sleight-of-handy or pickpockety! and I looooved that it made such a nice loop-around back to episode 1. ❤️ I was. kind of half-expecting him to just run out and punch Riddle in the nose again. but instead this time 'twas he who offed the queen's head! it was great! and he did it while stone-cold terrified out of his mind! because Ace is the only remotely normal or well-adjusted person at NRC and therefore the only one who is like "we're going to literally die, this is super effed up". but he did it anyway!!!! I AM SO PROUD

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

For moment, you are home.

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[reallybadblackoutpoems]

murnau (1973) - lotte h eisner

"happy nosferatu day"

[salmonlyster]

...THEY CAME FROM OUTER JERSEY!

[mossymage]

sorry i can’t stop drawing them making out

[dreamyblanket]

Yearning from the nothing dimension [rambling in tags ^^]

[eddieblrs]

wait so apparently some people get mad if someone else writes fanfiction based on headcanons they shared on tumblr??? so now i got to ask

[pangur-and-grim]

grrr……I was only gone for one full day, but apparently Grim chose that day to pull a hunger strike.

the diabetes meds can have a side effect of lowering appetite, so I bought a medley of diabetes-friendly pate foods to get her eating again. she cherry picked the most expensive two and broke her strike with them, so good news, Grimble won’t starve, and bad news, my cats will continue to eat dollar bills.

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

[gonyadaldysgenesis]

i dont really understand why people are so against ridding of the concept of AGAB/ASAB altogether in the name of "well, how would we define being trans then?"

a woman is "someone who identities as a woman." there is no other definition that does not exclude people who are women.

why does it make people uncomfortable to define trans people as "someone who identifies as trans"? trying to force it into some other definition will always exclude or include someone who either does or does not identify with the label. even if we are defining transness using AGAB/ASAB to say "someone who is transitioning away from/does not identify with their AGAB/ASAB", this is already true; there are GNC binary men who were AMAB who identify as trans and bigender women who were AFAB who identify as cis.

we do not need to keep around an oppressive concept that harms thousands of people in systemic and medical fashions because it would be harder to define some words. words that are used for identification are already going to be nearly impossible to define due to the complexity of human identity.

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ghouls night out

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[t1atam3ra]

Look me in the eyes and say that Leo and Donnie's dynamic is more interesting than everyone elses

YOU CANT ( though i still do adore them so sooo much)

Leo and Raph: im sorry but the entire movie??? And still more disaster duo content...( keep up the work disaster duo is awesome though!!) Leo and raph literally have so much to work with from them talking about their sacrifices to silly arguments and comebacks and just bth of them resembling karai...

Leo and Mikey: IM SORRY YOUNGER BROTHER THAT LOOKS UP TO OLDER ONE ANDDD OLDER BROTHER THAT LOOKS UP TO YOUNGER ONE??? my heartttt auaghahehhh nooo them talking about mikeys scars from staten islanddd leo feeling guiltyyyy mikey knowing the cost of protecting loved ones....

Donnie and raph: uaaghah they are so different but soo sillyyy <33 Raph would 100% baby donnie and let him get away with pretty much anything but also stop him from stealing uranium donnie loving validation of a person older than him but not quite adult( A WHOLE OTHER CAN OF WORMSS)

Donnie an mikey: both of them being the youngest and most protected but taking turns protecting each other?? AAAAUAGHA donnie loving to impress mikeyy and all the glory of being looked up too and Mikey loving to actually be responsible instead of the other way around ( even if he would approve of microvaing a fork..)

im not saying the disaster duo is bad at all just that everyone else's (cough cough raph and Mikey.. ) interactions get pushed to the side for more content of them

which is fine!!! just a bit sad about most of the fandom doing it

(IF ANYONE IS SUPER PASSIONATE ABOUT ANY DUO OR EVEN TRIO (ESPECIALLY ONES WITH RAPH) YOURE FREE TO MESSAGE ME <33 I ADORE ALL THINSG ROTTMNT RELATED)