#fantasy notes

[monstermonger]

Now the ash dances with the snow....

Lil winter dragon stickers ♡

[blumineck]

All these bows have the same problem*

The Hollywood Wobbly String!

Patreon - Everything else

[setaflow]

The dichotomy of Brennan helping with ability score rolls for newer players:

Titan Takedown: Preps high-level base stats for the cast, with everyone having a 20 in their two most relevant ability scores and no one really having a genuine dump stat (no one's character has below a 14/+2 modifier in any ability), which allows the players to play to their class strengths and not have to worry about fucking up as much in a shorter, tighter campaign.

Fantasy High: Ally Beardsley rolls a 4 for Kristen's Dex and has to live with with the consequences of that for 6+ years

[alicentflorent]

I admire Ella Purnell’s commitment to taking time out of her busy schedule to make her regular guest appearances as a mean lesbian ghost on yellowjackets

[moonlightmagical]

“dnd exp leveling is dumb,” i say into the mic.

the crowd boos. i begin to walk off in shame, when a voice speaks and commands silence from the room.

"they’re right," it says. i look for the owner of the voice. there in the second row stands: brennan lee mulligan.

[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.

[a-cat-in-toffee]

expanding on my tags from this post

[doodleswithangie]

bff: the ball! r u busy??

My pinch hitter @d20exchange gift for arcanegoth on Twitter! Junior Year Riz has my whole heart (with a little Fabian cameo).

[Image Description: Fanart of a stressed out Riz Gukgak from Dimension 20's "Fantasy High: Junior Year." His arms are laden with color-coded folders, a binder for Kristen Applebees's campaign, an aviator's hat, a beekeeper's hood, and a spilling to-go coffee cup. The crystal in his pocket is pinging with a message from Fabian Seacaster. End ID]

[lovexazrael]

credit to @giganticbuddha for the original comic idea

[ribbittrobbit]

these kids are incredibly stressed out

[deconstructthesoup]

It's been over a year since Junior Year dropped, and I'm still impressed that Beardsley never once bumped up Kristen's dex. You get ability score increases at levels 4, 8, and 12, and none of those increases went into making that negative three dexterity modifier into a more reasonable negative two or one. And yet, despite being only slightly more dexterous than a gelatinous cube, Kristen is still one of the most insanely powerful and efficient PCs in the world of Spyre.

[quetzalpapalotl]

[ourslutfactory]

[xkaru-karux]

“i could be the light and pearl could be the darkness” - mythical j. sausage

[moonlightmagical]

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

[dreadark]

the difference between till at the start of round 6 and round 7

he doesn't seem like he's trying at all during round 6, having already fully given up living after losing mizi

but in round 7, even though he's lost even more, he's clearly putting all he has left into it

and the reason for that... has to be ivan, right?

he must have recognized ivan sacrificed himself for him, so for the sake of ivan's feelings till tries his absolute best to respond to them and perform that till sings at all here is for ivan

...but at the same time ivan is what haunts him

obviously, right? there's no way watching someone you were so close to you die like that right in front of you can give you actual "strength" (and this isn't even getting into the kiss...) contrary to ivan's (clearly wrong) conviction that till doesn't care enough for him to become a trauma to him, that's exactly what happens

this inextricable mix of love and hate, hurting and healing... this is the tragedy of their relationship to the end no matter how much ivan and till care for each other, they can't ever cure each other