#spoilers for maybe story

[egophiliac]

crossing my fingers and wishing upon every star that chapter 10 finally brings us the tweel cards 🤞🤞

[chaoflaka]

[saccharinerose]

Furina: Anyone I've ever worked with probably couldn't wait to get rid of me... Since I'm just an ordinary person now. They'll probably just laugh in my face if I go asking them for help... :(

Neuvillette, the second Furina asks him about booking the Opera Epiclese, the process for which is notably cumbersome and complex: Yes, I will take care of it immediately. Btw does this mean you will allow audiences (myself included) to enjoy your outstanding acting talents once more? 🥺

[purpleelephantsocks]

Oh god, oh fuck, oh no; the parallels between Jean at the beginning of tsc panicking and telling Wymack "I want to go home" and Jean at the end of tsc falling apart after finding out his baby sister has died, telling Neil the same thing.

"I want to go home."

He is only nineteen

[absolutechaosss]

Do you ever go insane thinking about how every member of Laios' party is extremely atypical for their species, but a lack of exposure and understanding smoothes out these differences and makes everyone think they're the "typical" representation.

Senshi is terrible with other dwarves since he has no practical interest in mining or weapons craft. We cannot know this until Namari and later, Senshi's backstory are introduced. When we see him interact with dwarves, it's awkward and clear there's a fundamental disconnect.

Chilchuck is incredibly tall for a half foot and as such has to manage his weight more than other half foot dungeoneers so he doesnt set off traps. The first detail takes the changlings to properly understand, the second is referenced in text but is fully explained in additional materials. It is plot relevant that people who don't have the exposure to half foots might not even realize they're their own species.

Marcille as a half elf is kind of obvious to many of the elves who encounter her and they're deeply cruel and assume she's driven by a desire to be able to have children but the party never notices and Senshi especially thinks of her as a typical elf even though in truth she's so outcast she could never dine with her mother at the queens table.

Laios and Falin are a bit more complicated, since we as the audience do have context for most of tallman culture, since it mirrors our own mostly, but both of them have magical aptitude that both people like Marcille, who has a lot of access to mana and people like Chilchuck, who has very little and no magical training, fail to understand how isolating it is to have that much potential and aptitude.

Arguably Toshiro and Namari fall into this as well. Toshiro looks like the embodiment of the silent but noble warrior, but his own party and extra material confirm that he's abnormally shy and introverted, something that makes it hard for him even in his own family. Meanwhile Namari is able to stand on her own as a weapons expert and "typical" dwarf, but total dwarves who are total strangers like Dya know who she is and resent her.

Arguably a lot of dungeon meshi is about peeling back layers and assumptions not working out, but it's so great that every member of the core party gets interpreted by others (and maybe the reader) as "typical", especially with the skills line up, as a human fighter, halfling rogue, and an elven mage are so basic a stereotype. But none of are able to achieve that standard. These assumptions and misunderstandings only thrive because each party member is so inexperienced with both the biology and culture of the others. The only way they gain context is either interacting with a wider pool of people or experiencing it for themself. Everything in this story is so layered and I love it.

[couldbebetterforsure]

I know people have all sorts of opinions on how Garp is handled in the live action but, for me, I just find him hilarious. Like, from the perspective of someone familiar with the show and knowing Luffy and Garp's relationship, Garp's expressions after learning what Luffy is up to in the early episodes are funny!

Garp, episode 1: *after being told a pirate with a straw hat robbed a marine base* There's more than one straw hat in the world, it doesn't HAVE to be Luffy.

Coby, episode 2: The pirate's name was Luffy 😔

Garp: *speedrunning the five stages of grief* Goddammit.

[theravenlyn-art]

she was like an angel to me

[riyo-soka]

Why tf were the dog and Crosshair consistently better at sensing incoming danger than the guy who was literally engineered in a lab to sense incoming danger. You’re telling me that when a brainwashed assassin ordered to capture Omega was literally in the same room as him, Hunter “overprotective father figure” badbatch couldn’t pick up on that but their new dog did?

[okartichoke]

at a concerrttt yyessss yessss

klapollo >:3

design notes

link to masterpost || some quick justifcations/explanations below cut!!:

Birds of paradise <333 Them being of the same bird family is important to me... (honorary mention to the snowy owl for Kristoph) (also honorable mention to the paradise crow) (but i like them having matching ribbons (and the two birds i went with are more closely related))

I originally tried giving Klav the whole fluffy back of yellow/white feathers, but (a) he looked SO over complicated (especially compared to everyone else) and (b) I realized that no other character has back feathers, anyways. so it would make sense he does not either.

The ribbon-tails are similar to Apollo and Trucy's hearts: they both inherit this feature from one of their parents. (One parent is a stephanie's astrapia, one is a lesser bird-of-paradise). (Also of note: the lesser bird-of-paradise also has two long wire plumes, if you look closely)

Tails: (Klav's is basically a ribbon-tailed astrapia's tail btw.) Because the tail is such a notable feature of these species, I'm including it, though they also come from the base of the wing (though I'll probably just draw them as essentially tails in the future), and are much shorter than they would be, were they proportional.

i got very lazy on the individual introduction sheets they're so bad 😭😭 specifically klavier pls just imagine he and his wings look better there 🙏🙏🙏 LOL i hope the other drawings make up for it !! >:3

FINALLY MY CAT!!!! it’s been a while,,, this is him everyday after taking his pills cuz he knows it’s milk time now (image from my dad) (also flat colors and zoom bc me likey this image)

[egophiliac]

Thank you for having bee obsessed with fellow and gidel at some point the art is wonderful the jokes are fun and it fuels my newfound love for the newly turned teacher wannabe and his brother

"at some point" heavens no, these idiots have been living rent-free (they would have it no other way) in my brain all year, and will continue at least until skeleton man shows up to steal christmas our hearts. and probably well past that. 👍 years from now I will continue to wake up to incredibly stupid doodles of them that I have no clear memory of drawing and have to debate whether or not they're fit for other people's consumption.

(also thank you! 🧡💜🧡)

[khattikeri]

one of my favorite things about mdzs is that for how heavily its plot involves politics of classism and misogyny... even the characters most directly impacted by it can't and don't free themselves from it. literally the closest exception is mianmian.

meng yao being the "son of a whore" wasn't some sort of commie awakening for him that led him to wanting everyone to be socially equal. he played the political game, climbed the ladders, sucked up to and backstabbed and murdered people, including other prostitutes who actually had nothing to do with how he and his mother were treated at the brothel he grew up in.

he put in so much extra excessive effort for even a fraction of the same respect that members of gentry cultivation clans got. and he did deserve to be treated more humanely! but he feeds into the exact same system that created him, leading to his own undoing.

his efforts were for a fragile upward mobility that was never going to hold up. he never surpassed his origins nor did he empower others in similar stations, because the society he lives in is not one that would accept that.

the second he got caught and all those crimes exposed, he was scapegoated to hell and back, replacing wei wuxian as society's terrible one-sidedly evil boogeyman overnight.

speaking of not-quite male gentry, i think it's interesting that wei wuxian explicitly doesn't try to climb the ladders in BOTH lives, knowing full well that anything he does will be punished just for the sheer fact that he is wei wuxian.

wei wuxian is scolded for giving intelligent and correct answers in school. lan wangji does the same and is praised.

wei wuxian occasionally lounges around with fellow disciples and is punished. jiang cheng does the same and mostly escapes.

wei wuxian refuses to carry his sword around in public (after losing his golden core, which nobody knows) and is scorned as an arrogant upstart. nie huaisang has been doing the EXACT SAME THING for YEARS and nobody bats an eye.

unlike jin guangyao, wei wuxian knew subconsciously from the start that his acceptance was superficial and that he could be cast out any time. when he was 10 and recently taken in by the jiangs, he canonically would not eat or use "too much" food and water because he thought they'd find him a nuisance for "wasting their things" and kick him back out.

now away from just the classism, yu ziyuan is a proud and strong noblewoman in a society that belittles and derides women for everything they do. her strong cultivation doesn't matter. she's victim to the vicious rumors of her husband loving another woman who is strong like her but apparently had a more likeable personality.

it doesn't matter even if jiang fengmian didn't cheat or that wei wuxian is wei changze's son with cangse sanren; yu ziyuan can't bear with the humiliation of herself (and by extension her children) not being "good enough". she's ridiculed for "failing" in that one duty as a wife, mother, and woman.

she lashes out and takes out that anger on everyone present for years, giving her children lasting trauma and also being a key element in how the jiang family and yunmeng jiang sect are effectively wiped out at the hands of the wen clan.

madam jin doesn't even have a name outside of the fact that she's married to jin guangshan. i don't even remember reading anything that indicates if she's a strong or weak cultivator, or what, which in itself proves that to most people, it doesn't matter. she's "just" a woman.

of course she's angry at her husband's affairs and all the bastard children they bring in. but she also can't do anything about them, so she lashes out at the few people she can: servants. non-cultivators, probably. those very same bastard children.

shoutout to meng yao getting shoved down a flight of stairs at age fourteen, because if madam jin tried that move against her husband instead, it would make her lose even more face, which as a noblewoman she'd never do.

and that's not getting into how jiang yanli is consistently sidelined for being physically weak.

that's not getting into how mianmian was actually a good cultivator, but was mocked by everyone around her for trying to stand up for wei wuxian when everyone was turning on him. how everyone scoffed at luo qingyang's words as "just some lovesick woman" who "obviously wants to marry or bed him since he saved her".

luo qingyang is the only one of these characters who HASN'T died. she didn't play society's games like jin guangyao. she didn't dig her heels in confidence of her own abilities like wei wuxian.

she didn't bitterly lash out like yu ziyuan and madam jin. she didn't gently accept it like jiang yanli.

she just LEFT.

she married an ordinary merchant and cultivates separately from mainstream cultivation society, and therein found her own peace and happiness.

mxtx doesn't bother with particularly class conscious or feminist vocabulary to hand-hold readers into understanding these disparities, but that choice highlights them & the deeply entrenched politics of their society even more. i really love it.

[adamant-hearts]

The chicken wing siblings live rent free in my head after 2.2 so I just HAD to draw this bittersweet scene 😭😭

[psychicwound]

alsoooo . 'he's not gone, he's just dead.' like jack harkness? like clara oswald? like owen harper? like bill potts & amy pond & rory williams & river song & sooo many companions? like them & their 'well that's alright then!' deaths?

[erinravenseeker]

Everyone who gets annoyed at Dokja being like “oh I see person = story so the person I love the most is the collection of all my friends” is forgetting that he’s a compulsive fucking liar, especially to himself, and his mother already pegged exactly who it would be because she KNOWS what his favourite story- and therefore who his favourite person- was.

[miabrown007]

Félix: kidnapping is a love language Kagami: you have no social skills, idiot

*two weeks later*

Félix: okay, so when Marinette's at her most vulnerable, I'll gaslight her into thinking I'm her boyfriend, so she'll follow me into an abandoned building where we can put her in an altered mental state and present to her my family's life story in the imaginable most cryptic play of theater she has ever seen, which will reveal to her our horrible secret and the fact that her abusive father-in-law is also her arch-nemesis Kagami: you're so big brained, bae 🥰

[horse-surgeon-barbie]

maybe we STOP playing house ,, we're not good at it