#were you even here

[lavendermoonlitskies]

We had this conversation in 2016

Why does it seem like the majority of the population learned nothing

[egophiliac]

don't think I'm not still obsessing over 7-12

[mochasucculent]

Was looking at refs and since Viktor has two different leg braces I was wondering, do we think he wears them simultaneously?? The refs don't perfectly line up perspective-wise so it's hard to tell but parts of the one he wears during the Hexcore scenes look like they could maybe line up with the brace that he wears over his clothes, but also some parts really don't and look like they'd be super uncomfy. Also HOW does he take these on and off. Experts weigh in

[reasonsforhope]

Sometimes you just have one of those moments where the progress we've made as a culture get thrown into stark relief. You look at something and go "Holy shit, that would never have happened when I was a kid."

Today, I had one of those moments when I realized that the teenage boys I'm working with are just. genuinely, openly enthusiastic about going to Build-a-Bear for their outing.

These are sixteen and seventeen year old boys! They just had a whole conversation about what to name their "cute", mostly new squishmallows! They're genuinely excited that they're going to Build-a-Bear this weekend and asking other kids to pick up specific accessories for them!!

Holy shit, that never would've happened when I was 16. None of the boys would have dared to be visibly interested - and neither would most of the girls! There would have been a million gay jokes and "Haha, you're a girl" jokes and "What are you, a baby?" jokes. Teenagers weren't even supposed to care about anything back then!

Less than 15 years later, and I'm watching three 17 year old boys treat all that as not even worthy of comment.

So let's call that a reason for hope. Even when the kids aren't alright, in some ways apparently they are alright. Go Gen Z, honestly. It's so lovely to watch you guys just openly doing and saying stuff that, when I was a teen, would've been a social death sentence.

[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.

[akanemnon]

THAT'S A LOTTA DAMAGE (emotional damage that is)

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[inkskinned]

idaho is already moving to repeal same-sex marriage. they say it's an overreach of the governmental power, and that the law should be determined by "state's rights".

trump is expected to sign an executive order banning trans women in women's sports. in the article i've linked there, he notes that the "biggest hand" (most applause) he gets is when he attacks trans women. isn't that interesting.

i know my own father voted for him. my own father, radicalized by podcasts and bad youtube, voted for this; felt smug about it. he genuinely believes the dems want to "put christians in camps." as if the dems could ever get off their silken asscheeks and actually do anything. i wish they had strong enough messaging to be misattributed like this.

my girlfriend and i worked the polls on election day, counting ballots. my father was eating noisily beside us. "see? you're freaked out about nothing." after all, i live in massachusetts: beautiful, expensive, no-working-transportation MA. the only state to go all-blue.

"if it's state's rights, you'll be fine," he said. i'd been sworn at a few days before this. a year ago almost to the day, i got hit in the head with an empty beer bottle. he said i was being dramatic. after all, first-adopter "the gay state" Massachusetts would rather explode than get rid of same-sex marriage. so what should i care, after all.

this man is a deacon. i guess he expects me not to get out of the car in any red state. i guess he thinks my relationship dissolves across certain borders. he doesn't see why it's concerning that i can't leave, because why would i want to. who wants to go to idaho? who cares about the real, living, breathing people in idaho.

(but then again: who cares about the real, living, breathing humans on deportation planes. they're not us. after all, my father came here legally. i am an american citizen because of birthright citizenship. i am even debating this because he immigrated.)

i texted my mom about it. i feel sick. no matter how much activism and research and outreach i do: it's always shocking to see a room full of people who hate you so much that they take legal action against you. on my small ex-work-laptop, i watch the shaking hands of people in idaho begging their representatives to reconsider. the fear in their voice is palpable. no person should have their relationship threatened this way. the motion still passes, 46-24.

it's all just happening so fast. i feel i am pushing my hands through glass pieces, watching the cuts before i feel them.

people often reference "first they came for..." when stuff like this happens, and while that's fair - there's a very quiet part of me that always says they're already at your door, you complete idiot. the same force that governs trans women's bodies will also be used against cis women. the censorship about supposed "DEI terms" will also be used to stifle science in general.

it won't just be idaho.

[wiki-but-made-them-up]

[espeonkin]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

For moment, you are home.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[opikiquu]

iknow my comics are ugly please just hear me out

[captainkirkk]

Love spotting an author I know and love in the kudos or comments section of a totally separate fic. It's like looking behind you in the movie theatre and seeing a local celebrity munching on popcorn right there with you.

[ctrlzxoo]

what if Ivan took the tape off of Till during Top 3?

(aka. the ANAKT kids learned what kisses meant to humans)

[soldierboys]

THE BOYS 4.08 Assassination Run

[silversoulsociety]

“I love you. I love you. I love you”

[thevioletcaptain]

y'know, the different factions of spn fandom on tumblr do fundamentally and vehemently disagree with each other about a lot of things, and many of the factions actively hate one another, but i just want to say for the record that i appreciate the fact that this site is not overrun with painfully hetero facebook fans. i just saw someone over there saying with their whole chest that they fully expected the finale to have dean meeting jo harvelle in heaven and them getting afterlife married, and someone else angrily responded that this was obviously never going to happen because clearly dean was still in love with lisa braeden who would therefore be his finale bride (i guess this person expected her to die in the finale somehow?), and then someone ELSE responded that they wouldn't want to see either of those things happen because they like to pretend dean is their boyfriend and it would feel like cheating(!!!!) if he ended up with one of them and they'd never be able to fantasize about him anymore. and all of these comments had over a dozen people agreeing with them.