#hope you're still around to like it

[technically-human]

Payneland² 

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji goes to Lotus Pier (No relation to the AU of the same name)

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[tofixtheshadows]

Id love to hear ur interpretation and analysis on falin! She’s one of my favorite characters and and I was wondering what ur thoughts on her are

Man, I struggle to think of anything I could say about Falin that others have not already said. But she's one of my favorite things about Dungeon Meshi too.

So much of the story revolves around Falin, and she's not even there. Tumblr loves to talk about haunting the narrative, but Falin might be one of the best examples of it ever put to page. She's dead. She's alive. She's dead. She's alive. She's alive but she's missing, she's alive but she isn't herself. She's dead but she might wake. She's dead but she's frozen in ice. She's alive but she's sleepwalking. They chase her ghost and they chase her body all through the story.

I think what Kui does with her is fascinating. Not just as character with a personality we can analyze, but as an object in a narrative- that's why I say she's one of my favorite things about the story, because I also mean it in a mechanical sense. As a writer, Kui's really good at misdirection- that is, setting you up to believe or expect something about a character or a plot, and then turning that on its head. It's most apparent with Kabru, but it works really well with Falin too.

Because the precious little sister is a very well known character archetype, right? So is the gentle healer. The heart of the party. The white mage girl. The damsel in distress. The martyr.

And this isn't a Laura Palmer situation, where we find out that beneath her wholesome surface there's something dark and troubled. No, Falin truly is a kind and gentle person. That isn't where the misdirection leads (and that, too, I think, is another misdirection- it's not "Plot twist, she isn't as nice as you thought!", which would almost be too easy).

The misdirection here is more about structure than about character (but also, yeah- a little about character).

What I mean is, with these archetypes firmly in mind, along with a whole other host of fantasy genre expectations, I think anyone who goes into Dungeon Meshi un-spoiled probably expects Falin's rescue to be an endgame event; at least on a subconscious level, where you're not really thinking about it but in the back of your head you're already stretching out the story to place Falin firmly in the distance. Fire breathing dragon at the bottom of the dungeon is perfect final boss material, right? Slay the dragon. Rescue the princess.

And Falin is the perfect prize in the traditional old school fantasy that the concept of the titular dungeon is a send-up to. Blonde (white), soft-spoken, sweet-natured, beloved by everyone. An angelic figure.

Maybe that's why Ryoko Kui gave her white wings.

It is sort of jarring when chapter 23 rolls around and it's already time to fight the red dragon. And it takes a few chapters, but they succeed. And then Falin's impossible resurrection succeeds. But by then you guess that this is not going to be the story you expected it to be.

I want to point out that Falin spends a lot of time getting, well, babied, post-resurrection. Marcille washes her in the bath, despite Falin stating that she's capable of washing herself. Marcille schools her about her mana use despite Falin demonstrating that she is not hurting for mana, and brushes aside Falin's explanations. Both Marcille and Laios refuse to actually tell her what happened. Laios scruffs up her hair like she's a little kid and scolds her for something she can't remember doing. Marcille explicitly calls her a little kid when Falin tries to talk about how much she's grown.

Of course I'm not saying that Laios was wrong to act like a big brother, or that Marcille shouldn't be worried about taking care of her shell-shocked friend in the bath. But the framing of it clearly shows a Falin who is struggling to be heard.

If you'd like to address the big gay elephant in the room while we're here, I want to state for the record that- whether you read her as gay or not -I think Marcille is completely oblivious during this. Because Falin is her little friend from school. Her best friend, yes, but also the young tallman student she, in her infinite elven wisdom, had to mentor and look after. Marcille has not yet accepted that Falin is an adult now, nor has she accepted that she, herself, is only barely past teenagerhood developmentally and is not nearly as mature as she believes. Of course she'd scrub Falin in the bath and fuss over her.

Falin, meanwhile, seems more than aware of her own adult body and the inappropriate way Marcille is treating it.

The mana-sharing scene is, I think, Falin trying to get a little of her own back. How do you like it, Marcille?

And she tries again in bed.

Maybe she's wondering if their relationship will change now that they're grown ups. If Marcille prefers her as a little girl, or at least as a woman who lets herself be guided like one; if Marcille will react badly if Falin keeps trying to assert herself. She also might be subtly trying to signal to Marcille that bed sharing, like bathing, carries a different weight to it when you do it as adults rather than as children.

With all this in mind, the decision to turn Falin from the precious prize they rescued into to the vicious dragon they have to slay, hits a lot harder.

Falin with a powerful, monstrous, destructive body. Falin, who couldn't even stand to cause people pain from using healing spells, slaughtering half a dozen people in brutal ways. And that's not her, she's being mind-controlled, but as an object in the story she has completely flipped. From damsel to threat.

And I love that she carries a little bit of that with her when she's resurrected again.

Because she's no longer the girl who's going to let herself be stifled by her brother's and her best friend's co-dependency, no matter how much she loves them. She's different now: stronger, eyes open, forging her own path instead of following in their wake. Falin is still going to come back to them again, but this time it won't be because they chased her. It'll be because they let her go.

[myrkulitescourge]

oh to live in a world where astarion had made it all the way through development as a tiefling

(gorg tieflingstarion head by @astarionposting!)

[front-facing-pokemon]

[noxious-fennec]

Hands are too shaky these days

[deep-dark-fears]

You can be smoothie. A fear submitted by Felix to Deep Dark Fears - thanks! You can find original art in my store over HERE!

[manglam-marfach]

dyke!Chilaios has me understanding breeding kink all of a sudden

[silusvesuius]

this tree from my new drawing looking goated afffffff 👑👑

[anglerflsh]

Are you. Are you planning to kill modern hambsburgs?

and you AREN'T?

[t-u-i-t-c]

make me choose

touma kamiyama or rintaro shindo → touma kamiyama

[w1tchybusiness]

i could write a 100 page essay about what a fucking masterpiece warframe is. i will write many words in the tags. please readem if you want my 'tism.

[eijiroukiriot]

a flavor of krbk that i always love is them just kinda clicking with each other and fitting together in their own special way in the non-romantic moments!! especially with the undertone of "whatever it is krbk has going on, their friends have resigned themselves to the fact that they'll probably never understand it." it's been a sec since i've done a translation but here's a comic that embodies that really, really well - the title is "mountains, krbk, and weeds" !

~IN THE MOUNTAINS!~

kirishima: ohhhh, bakugou!! there's some mountain flowers or something blooming over here! you think they're rare ones?

bakugou: ...ah, those are weeds

k (tiny): oh

k: bakugou, what's this one?

b: hah?? ah, that weed is sort of rare

k: what about these?

b: huh? that's an endangered weed, on the red list

k: ...

b: what

k, internal: what even is a weed...?

b: oi, kirishima

k (spaced out): yea?

b: this is a special weed that only grows around this mountain

k: .... (sfx: KYUN)

k: man, you're kind of a weirdo, aren't you (but my heart got all squeezy over it...)

b: HAH?? the hell do you think you're saying? you wanna go??

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

I need you to know how much I'm literally bouncing off the walls because of your writing!!!!! Every time you post a snippet my brain is recalibrated and I only think about it for the next few hours IT'S SOOO GOOD🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

If it's okay to know, is the cult mentioned in the recent fantasy au snippet an actual cult unlike in the modern au, and are they connected to Wally or warlocks in some way?

I hope you're having a good day/night whenever and wherever you are 🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽

!!!! Yippee!!!! Thank You!

no no this is an actual cult lol - there's a whole plot in my mind of them going after Home and successfully separating them from Wally. they're a big problem! i guess they're not connected except in the fact that they want to have a demon at their command, and demons in this universe are very rare / hard to find. Home seemed like easy pickings! and it kinda was! the cult's plan would have gone off without a hitch, except for two things

one, this particular demon is unusually attached to its host. two, there is a group of ragtag maniacs hellbent on hunting them down and reversing what they've done <3

[snurtle]

actually come to think of it

Did the origins gang have a decontamination regimen after dealing with darkspawn? Alistair and the Warden might be immune to the taint, but the rest of their entourage sure as hell is not.

I know they weren't traipsing into camp leaking who knows what kind of cursed bile/ichor everywhere. Surely. Surely they cover that in Grey Warden basic. ....

..

right.

right?

[wanderer-clarisse]

For some reason, the ask has completely vanished. swallowed whole by the depths of tumblr. But someone requested an elfling playing with a swan, so here is my (rather boring) interpretation of it! personal headcanon: this is Elwing and her weird fascination with birds at a young age.