#Loops Radio

[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.

[neon-wonderlands]

[jcwdrawskinda]

@rad-roche and @chadfallout76podcast gave me permission to animate her lovely art! This is for the upcoming VoiceAPalooza charity drive for the Alzheimer's Association, there will be a lot amazing voices, new and old, and I am personally hyped to sit down for another radio special!

I had a lot of time to theorize what this special might be about--I'm excited to see if I've hit the mark or strayed far from it ✪ ω ✪

A short breakdown of the process below~

Usually I would share a timelapse with y'all but I forgot to press record :'D

I went back and made some gifs though that hopefully show what I did! It's pretty simple! I took Rad's art and copy-pasted all the parts I wanted to move, then painted under to try and match what would be exposed under that movement. Following that, I had fun adding jolts, smoke, and a little tween! The hardest part for me was nailing down the timing of the gun; that took some tries to make it look natural.

[spicecabinetfullofbasil]

Something something has this been done before

[twigsyy]

[fernsproutxx]

decided to basically redraw this post because i knew i could do better anatomy wise, plus added some extras!

“my dad used to be a rockstar, but he retired to take care of me.” — gregory

i like to think that compared to other adult bears in the springdad au, freddy here simply has features that resemble more of a bear cub like evan hahah, i mean, have you seen henry¿ that is a proper bear head to toe, but on fred’s case… he just didn’t grow out of his baby face kekw

man i love drawing furries.

another small bonus:

(i imagine that alice would know of freddy since she too was in the performing scene once upon a time hah)

the springdad au is made by @skeletoninthemelonland! go check em out :D

[gravityriser]

hello oxenfree fandom. as summer approaches so too does my wistful sadness about alex in the loops anyways i love her and she is my favorite character of all time thank you for reading

inspired by “change in the weather” by the beths

[blueroyalgirl]

though they feel insurmountable, they are not.

I can do this.

I will be okay. ❤️‍🩹

[would-they-break-the-timeloop]

[radioroxx]

do you think if you held something close enough to loops head w. would it. orbit

[albino-parakeet]

Guess who finally got Wi-Fi again!!! Now I can make videos yay! Anyways this is based on Heidi’s stream when we were talking about Ben sleeping outside.

Song used: Andromeda by Weyes Blood

It was gonna be the whole song... but that song is 4 minutes long lol.

hope the sound mixing is okay.

[blurryhour]

i’ve been in and out of the kpop world for the past nine years, but that one clip of mark lee singing “miami” to random people (probably during a u.s. tour) has been haunting me since whenever that happened, and now that we’re in miami for the next grand prix, it’s going to continue to haunt me.

[pandacatdoodler]

Voxune miku(again) with cursed cat alastor

i also pasted in stuff from the rotten girl piece and some art I've done of Alastor..... i promis i can make normal art this is just really funny to me for some reason.

[allastoredeer]

The funny thing about how powerful Beyong the eight ball! Vox is is that Alastor is technically still way more powerful cause without radiowaves, none of his shit can work. I feel like if Alastor really wanted to he could shut down all of the city for a moment just to fuck with Vox's head more than he has already like, Meet your match Vox, meet your match

Vox definitely wasn't expecting to feel a signal as powerful as Alastor's. Just the fact that it was able to reach out and connect with his network came like an electric shock. Imagine someone reaching into your body and physically touching one of your nerves, out of nowhere, on a boring, random Tuesday, and then disappearing in thin air.

He is shook.

Vox's power is centered in electricity and technology, but he still relies on radiowaves for his content. Alastor's power is centered in the radiowaves themselves, but his power works through technology. No matter where these two go, or what universe they're in, they'll always be connected to each other on the basis that their powers are constantly feeding back into each other.

And that's the beauty of StaticRadio.

Fic Link -> "Beyond the Eight Ball"

[just-floetcoeur]

Little Voices, Buzzing Poison

I don’t know what I was going for for this drawing. Grian doesn’t looks like he knows either. This was my last drawing idea but I’m keeping WROYAM in mind.

Much like What Remains of Edith Finch, he is destined to die young. That’s what would happen if it was a horror game lol. Gotta break the loop or death will come! Which reminds me of a Warrior Cats animation (I know I’m going far with this.) ‘Twas about breaking the cycle of violence -quite literally-. JayFeather and Rock were the same person. JayFeather was friends with FallenLeaves and when she drowned, he tried to save her but Rock stopped him. In StarClan, future FallenLeaves was like “come, my child, to the evil forest where revenge awaits.” Then I think ghost FallenLeaves trapped JayFeather in the Hollygay cave where he died. That’s when he became a vengeful Rock and stopped JayFeather in the past from saving FallenLeaves. And so the cycle begins anew. Until Rock and FallenLeaves had a final showdown in the Dark Forest and Rock fell in a swamp. FallenLeaves hesitated but decided to save him, thus ending the cycle. I was gonna quote the song here with a few others that were inspiring to me but the post would get too long.

Also I don’t know much about the Life series. I only watched Third Life from Grian’s POV, Last Life from Grian and Lizzy’s POV and Double Life from Grian’s POV. But I’d like to know what happened to the other characters in this AU. And I wish to implement Lizzy’s storyline in Last Life ‘cause I find it quite interesting. But it’s just a thought.

As for the playlist, @morning-fragility I’d have to either dm it to you or list the songs down by name because tumblr isn’t letting me paste the link. Or maybe by searching “What remains of you and me…” in Spotify you’ll find it.

[ranticore]

what is the biggest type of dragon in your dragonrider setting? conversely, are there any that are too small to ride that might serve other purposes? i'm interested in the extremes.

also, how intelligent are they?

they get pretty big. i haven't fully ironed out the size classes but pictured here is a matriarch (gold dragon analogue) being escorted by a much smaller class (foreground) as they fly over a river valley. the matriarch acts as a mobile radio tower/traffic controller for her brood (as does the crew on-board). with extreme high aspect ratio wings and six jet runes her flight is almost effortless.

i haven't decided about the smallest ones just yet because i'll be so real i did not care for fire lizards in pern and preferred to think more about the dragon & rider dynamic. i'd say the smallest is like what you see pictured here in the fg.

they are extremely intelligent; the ability to harness electromagnetic waves and the jet runes themselves are all draconic in origin, and these technologies were shared with humans, who could replicate them using their own manufacturing expertise. i guess it might be easier to think of the humans as the dragons' kobolds lol - fun little guys who enrich the dragons' lives and contribute their own expertise (medical techniques, materials technology, agriculture and so on). it is a symbiotic relationship, the dragons are given equal representation in governing decisions etc