#...for other people of course

[some-pers0n]

I hate how people will look at popular indie artists who had one or two songs go viral on TikTok and start making fun of anybody who listens to them. "Oh you listen to Lemon Demon, Will Wood, Jack Stauber, Glass Animals, and Mother Mother? Tsk, don't you know that is stupid TikTok neurodivergent white transmasc preteen music? It's so mid and bad you should listen to real music–" you are a pit of misery

[mythtakens]

“these characters should be mentally healthy before they get together 😌” ummm no I actually think we should smash their mental illnesses together like clumps of play-doh and see what colors it makes

[lgbtlunaverse]

I've seen a good number of people ask a question along the lines of "why do characters like Falin and hate Laios when they're so similar?" and i've also seen good analysis on the differences in how the touden siblings carry themselves that would, despite their shared traits, make a person gravitate to one more than the other.

But i feel like we've overseen one very central thing here.

People don't like Falin

Like... the average person in dungeon meshi doesn't like Falin. She was deeply ostrasized by her home village, in magic school she had zero friends before Marcille and the others generally saw her as strange and a bit offputting.

Characters like Namari and Chilchuck like her well enough but not necessarily more than any other member of their party, including Laios. Neither Kabru nor his party think much of her. The canaries don't give a fuck about her. Toshiro's retainers don't see her as anything else than the weird foreign girl their boss has a crush on.

The reason we think everyone loves Falin is because, despite all the indifferent side characters, the 2 most important and central characters of the story are Laios and Marcille. Who are NOT representative of the average attitudes to Falin! But necromancy georg number 1 and 2 are our main eyes into the story and they love Falin so much that it colours our perspective of the whole world.

The only side character who qualifies as liking Falin and not Laios is Toshiro (at least at first, as he ends the story on much better terms with Laios) and that says a lot about his character, with him drifting to the quiet Falin precisely because of her oddness but being both uncomfortable with and deeply jealous of Laios' much more open expression of that oddness. Because he's a repressed guy from a culture where etiquette is incredibly important.

But like I said, that's a specific aspect of him, not to the world at large.

Because there's also people that click more with laios than with Falin.

Kabru, for one, who is initially distrustful of laios but clearly also deeply fascinated by him and drawn to him.

Minor spoilers, and you don't have to read too deeply into this, because I don't think Kabru particularly dislikes Falin or anything. But it's interesting that when he talks about his distrust of the toudens in ch.32 he's talking about them both. But his big friendship declaration in chapter 76 is aimed squarely at Laios, he doesn't say "you and your sister" he says "you"

And Senshi!! He instantly clicks with Laios, well before he does so with anyone else in the party– who he also becomes friends with, it just takes a bit longer– specifically because they bond over their shared special interest in monsters!! Senshi is kind towards Falin and cares for her wellbeing, but he also... doesn't know her. The reason he is even here, helping to save her, is because he and Laios bonded over monsters and he wants to help his new friends out!

Of course, the theme of neurodivergent isolation is very present in Laios' story. I'm not denying that. He does turn people off, without meaning to and unable to fully understand why! But so does Falin. And just like there are people who like her despite of or even because of those traits, there are people who do the same with him.

In conclusion: "Average person loves Falin and hates Laios" factoid actually statistical error. Average person is neutral on both Falin and Laios. Georcille, Laiorg and Geoshiro, who live in the dungeon and think over 10,000 Falin-loving thoughts a day, are statistical outliers adn should not have been counted.

[woosh-floosh-art]

[random-cockroach]

SNOW BOTS ARE BACK BABE, IF IT WILL BE LIKE THAT EVERY YEAR I MIGHT DIE ONE DAY OF HAPPINESS WHEEEZE (I mean, drawing them like that is so much faster, plus colors, plus snow, plus they all are alive, COME ON IT'S A DREAM) Go smooch @keferon and everyone who makes "everyone is happy" content wheeeeeze

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

He gets it.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Charcuterie Board, as designed by your votes! Thank you to everyone who participated; this was a fun challenge!

[egophiliac]

Okay so another gavv ask shocking. But.

Do you think lakia thinks shomas gavv is super fucking weird since it's BRIGHT RED and sticking outwards from his stomach like some damn muzzle (also it has a face?!?!)

option #1:

option #2:

[hotvintagepoll]

I make these posts every once in a while but I think it's worth mentioning again that if you're interested in trying out old movies, a good option is to always see if your library includes any streaming service options you can access using your library account. Using library-supported streaming services is great because 1) supporting the library's programs means the library keeps getting funded 2) it's literally as easy as any paid-for streaming service 3) old movies are fun. I have access to Kanopy and Hoopla through my library, and here's a small sampling of what's available on them right now to stream for free:

Kanopy

Seven Samurai (Toshiro Mifune)

Body and Soul (Paul Robeson)

My Man Godfrey (Carole Lombard, William Powell)

Barbarella (Jane Fonda)

Tokyo Story (Setsuko Hara)

Nosferatu (Max Schreck)

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Conrad Veidt)

Charade (Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn)

The Apartment (Jack Lemmon, Shirley Maclaine)

Wuthering Heights (Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon)

Rashomon (Toshiro Mifune again)

Metropolis (Brigitte Helm)

Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Catherine Deneuve)

Hoopla

The Court Jester (Danny Kaye, Glynis Johns, Basil Rathbone, Angela Lansbury)

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes)

Sunset Boulevard (Gloria Swanson)

A Place in the Sun (Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor)

Moby Dick (Gregory Peck)

Hud (Paul Newman)

War and Peace (Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda)

Wings (Clara Bow)

I haven't seen all of these movies, so don't consider these recs, but this is a great cross section of genres, hotties, and well-known films if you're looking for a place to start. Use your library! It's fucking free!

[teophan]

a fantastic commission from @themetalhiro of my Dungeons & Devil Fruits 5e Sniper Marksman, Vinsmoke “Starfall Gunner” Beretta!

it was an absolute treat to work with you, looking forward to the next opportunity to do so!

[madamemiz]

sad: falling out of a hyperfixation

tragic: watching your beloved friends and mutuals fall out of the hyperfixation while you're still in it

[arcticclimes]

Something something Fitzjames and Hodgson are two of the most dandy-ish characters in The Terror but they're also two of the most dangerous; they've both been to war, both do the greatest damage to Tuunbaq using the weaponry they were trained in by the navy (Hodgson with the cannon and Fitzjames with the congreves), and Hodgson is also the one to kill the Inuit family, directly connecting the violence of imperialism with the gentlemanly facade it likes to use.

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Occasionally I find it mildly annoying when Palpatine is posited as the one Anakin had always trusted the most, tbh. There's a noticeable shift in how he interacts with Obi Wan and Palpatine in between aotc and rots, and there's an obvious reason why: the events of aotc themselves. He and Obi Wan had plenty of friction, but they were still close, and Anakin did in fact confide in him in his grumpy teenager way. About his feelings for Padme, about his worries for his mother. It's after his trip to Tatooine that he turns to Palpatine instead.

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[p4nishers]

god. GOD. the underlying anger in everything terry writes really IS apparent in hogfather bc fuck u mean this is how things should be? no the fuck it shouldn't. poor people shouldn't have to be satisfied with what they get, that's just fucking capitalism. i REALLY like that terry decided to use death as projection for what he thinks bc death doesn't know anything and it has to be explained to him and by it being explained to him it shows how fucking stupid those things are. bc ok here's this world where an equivalent of santa ACTUALLY exists and, because it mirrors our world, it's still unjust. santa actually fucking exists in this world and he could give ANYONE ANYTHING bc he's essentially a god and people gave him that power by making him up, BUT because ppl imagined him in a way that poor people don't get shit (like they usually do) and rich people get EVERYTHING they want, he exists like that. whereas death has seen the absolutely WORST of humanity and he STILL thinks that's bullshit and it's not how it should be, it's just how it goes. bc capitalism is always capitalism where there's money and the world will always be fucked up as long as there are oppressor to hold it up. like i just.

[demaparbat-hp]

Izumi (steambaby) sketches.