#;;out of muses

[noodles-and-tea]

Little Stan getting manipulated by Bill has excellent angst potential but consider.

Stanley just, keeps tricking Bill. Because Bill would definitely massively underestimate Stanley and how far he’ll go to protect Ford (like in the actual show). We also know Stanley has the street smarts between the twins and could absolutely tell Bill is full of it.

And because Bill would absolutely loose his mind if he kept getting foiled by a snot nosed eight year old that isn’t even supposed to be here

I like to think that he doesn’t even try that hard he just does not even care about bill

[tofixtheshadows]

Sorry but Kabru is so fascinating to me as a character, in a pure mechanical sense, because of what Ryoko Kui does with him. Everything about him is a red herring. He's deliberately introduced as some kind of rival for Laios, a party leader who is hopeless against monsters but absolutely brilliant with people both in and out of combat, and who has good reason to oppose him.

By the end of chapter 31, you might even think Kabru's going to end up as some sort of anti-villain, an antagonist with the best of intentions who nevertheless tries to foil our hero's plans. He wants to defeat the Mad Mage himself, he suspects Laios of being too irresponsible to be trusted with control of the dungeon, and his crew even thinks that Laios's party stole from them (and they're kind of right!). All signs point towards an inevitable showdown.

And then ... none of that happens.

Confrontation over the stolen treasure? Kabru is literally too smart to fall for the classic miscommunication trope and correctly decides it's not worth making a big deal of.

Kabru's deadly PVP skills? Aside from trying to take down Falin, he never fights another human again.

Wanting to be the one who defeats the dungeon? Turns out he was only doing that because he didn't think any other adventurer would have people's best interests at heart, and he's more than willing to play a support role in the whole affair.

Thinking Laios is up to no good? He really did just want to get to know the guy more. He has his misgivings, but ultimately ends up trusting Laios with his life.

Is Kabru going to get some sort of comeuppance for hating monsters and not appreciating their ecosystem? Well no, he has good reasons for hating monsters. He ends up wanting to learn about them through Laios's eyes, but he's never forced into any "Wow, guess I was wrong about them!" revelation.

Hell, even his implied ladykiller ways, which might lead you to think he'll end up being the stock "chivalrous lech" type of character, don't really manifest. He has a lot of opportunities to act flirtatiously around women, but doesn't. He's just a guy whose natural charisma makes him into human catnip.

And that's all hysterical to me, to pull it off. It's a fascinating way to tell a story. To introduce a character explicitly as a rival, potentially even a villain, and instead make them a deuteragonist. It's like a magician making a coin disappear, then slowing down their trick to show you the misdirection. "Did you see what I did there?" they ask with a wink. "The coin was in my other hand the entire time."

[katy-l-wood]

On my hike today I ran into a field trip of middle schoolers and showed them the rock I found that was covered in caterpillars. This briefly made me their god. (The middle schoolers. Not the caterpillars. Caterpillars have no god.) They asked many questions until I managed to sneak away while they were distracted by the neat bugs. The next time they saw me I was fifty feet above them on an overlook and back lit by the sun. They screamed with glee. I waved and carried on with my hike. I did not see them again.

[thiscoldheart]

NICOLA COUGHLAN as Penelope Featherington

BRIDGERTON S3 TRAILER (2024)

[yuzuuu4]

jackpot

[bishicat]

miss harding...... 💍<33333

[wuntrum]

happy pride month!!!! lesbian vampire postcard to celebrate (join the postcard club here 🧛‍♀️)

[lleann-art]

yamaguchi doodles

[nordarknessdimsthesky]

the amount of sheer GENDER stored in these images should frankly be ILLEGAL

[swordatsunset]

Oddly enough one of the most meaningful/painful parts of I Saw the TV Glow was when Owen is sitting there, watching the old tapes, someone with a family and an adulthood (or so she tells us), however small and sad that life is, and she tells us how abjectly humiliated she is rewatching them. The cheesiness of the show, its stilted and childish plots, the bad acting and bad visuals and whatever else— Owen is humiliated to have been saved by this bad TV show. And regardless of the fact that I don’t think the Pink Opaque she watches is the actual Pink Opaque that saved her, it tunes into this fascinating and essential part of living dissociated from your actual life and restored/saved/rescued by media, which is the shame of living like this. Yes, this was the thing that helped me survive; it was awful and childish and embarrassing and I can’t believe I survived it, I can’t believe I got through this period with the help of this. It’s so easy, when your life is so small, to be ashamed of your lifelines: it’s so easy to survive and look back and be horrified at how pathetic (however untrue it may be) and pitiable you were, and then, in reaction to that blinding embarrassment, lash out at your former self, try to say how much you’ve moved on (because you’re better now, of course you’re better, you don’t need to be saved by anything, right?). You loved this? The reason you’re alive is because of this? How embarrassing. How sad.

[kimeoshi]

[canisalbus]

Ok ok hear me out: it could end in tragedy,, AND have a happy ending. The attempt(s) on Machete’s life force him to flee, he doesn’t even have the chance to find Vasco. Cue gay longing for at least a few years while Machete despairs over the loss of his love, his life, his status. He and Vasco only reunite (again) in their later years. Their relationship is forever flavored with loss and loneliness, but that only means they savor every moment that much more

I also I would like to see them as old men. Vasco would be so droopy :)

You gave me such old dog brainworms.

[tofixtheshadows]

You guys really need to stop and consider the ways you're talking about Kabru I am dead fucking serious. Like I know that flattening characters is just what fandom does to a certain extent, but Kabru's actual personality is getting lost to the fandom hivemind insisting that he's aggressive/cruel/sociopathic/hateful, and these are particularly concerning takes to see leveled at the only brown character in the main cast day after day. "My poor sweet golden child Laios needs to be protected from this scary brown man" is not a good look! Like, it's very telling that the bulk of the hate and bad faith readings are reserved for Toshiro and Kabru. Everyone else's flaws get to be discussed and validated and forgiven (or erased), meanwhile people are straight making up things to be mad about with Toshiro and Kabru but patting themselves on the back for being smart.

The worst part is how undeserved it all is. I'm trying to lay off anime-onlys because we're still kind of in the red herring stage of getting to know Kabru, but I would still like to gently suggest that even if you think Kabru is up to something, you don't gave to get in the tags of every fan creator's post and bring up how you hate him or You Can Tell he's totally evil. Sometimes I think Kabru's blue eyes give people license to say things about his appearance that they know would sound completely racist otherwise, but referring to his blue eyes acts as a get-out-of-racism free card. The jokes about the dog with brown contacts are getting old, by the way.

For people who have read the manga, it's disappointing. Kabru is one of the most complex and important characters in the story, and if you base your interpretation of him and all your fandom interactions on shallow first impressions you are completely missing out.

I know part of this is because Dungeon Meshi is a comedy, but the story also wants to be taken seriously. For example, it's admittedly really funny when Chilchuck calls Laios "sick in the head", but that doesn't change the fact that the way Chilchuck casually belittles Laios caused him to hide the fact that he was "hallucinating" from his friends for weeks. Those feelings matter.

Like, this

is funny.

But this?

Is not. This is just a very clear example of a brown boy with PTSD. As someone else with PTSD, just looking at this fucking sucks, man.

The only reason why Kabru thinks about killing Laios is because he is in the middle of a flashback. He's struggling through a panic attack. If he truly wanted to kill Laios because he's violent or because he finds Laios inherently annoying, he wouldn't otherwise talk with Laios normally. Notice how he doesn't act this way at any other point in the story- it's just because he's triggered by monsters. Even when he's thinking about his plans to "deal with" Laios later, he's reluctant to actually kill him and only considers it to prevent another tragedy. Despite his deadly skills, Kabru relies far more on "soft" power- insight, persuasion, diplomacy. He's a rare example of a character who absolutely is, or at least can be, manipulative, but seems to use his abilities for good. He's not a pathological liar, he isn't looking down on everyone behind a smile. He's someone who is extremely emotionally intelligent, and he's willing to put aside all his own basic wants and needs to stop the cycle of dungeons devouring humans.

I'm going to cut a potential thesis on his character short and just give some examples of things that fandom should consider about his personality more:

Racism in fandom isn't just about whitewashing in fan art, or using racial slurs. The insidiousness of bad faith readings, reductions to racist tropes, lack of fan content for characters of color, and dismissal of a character's complexity are far more common. You can believe yourself to be completely neutral or even positive about a character and still churn out low-grade bile about them into fandom's collective unconscious. Fandom reflects real life.

And I have been around fandom long enough to see how these behaviors (mostly from my fellow white fans) affect fans of color, how it makes a fandom feel hostile and unwelcome to them. It's fun to make jokes and memes, I'm absolutely not saying that everything needs to be a deeply nuanced take, but we need to be careful that it doesn't veer into toxicity. Please think about how our contributions to fandom come across, and what sort of vibes they cultivate in this communal space.

[the-upper-shelf]

"The intruder"

[moonlight-prose]

maybe it's my period, maybe it's maybelline. but old man logan would eat pussy from the back like it's a fucking reward, after he's finished filling it so much you're leaking.

[yunogf]

she's sweet like watermelon i love the way you taste