#like its been 3 hours and i really really really dont like it so why should i continue putting myself through it

[definitelynotshouting]

context: ik most of my asks are pretty disorganized, stream of consciousness type of thing but GEEZ this got out of hand. you know that thing cats do when they bring you a dead mouse and *they're* super proud of it and you're just like dude.. why /lh

i usually put whatever my immediate thoughts are after reading the chapter and this time i thought it might be fun to write it out before. can you tell im running on five hours of sleep?? lmk if this made any coherent sense because even i dont understand it!!

so last chapter ripped my heartt out and stomped on it. i am LIVING for the way this whole thing was written, gorgeous prose as always <3. i was very curious as to wether Mumbo would question Grian but i think him NOT doing that was SO in character, and i adore it. I feel like w/ some fics (my own writing included) Scar is the ONLY one Grian relies on for support (in ANY area), and whenever Mumbo is even in the picture, he's just kinda "there", he doesn't check up on Grian or broach the topic of whatever is currently plaguing our little bird guy (basically, he's not involved in Grian's life despite being "his best friend"). And the way you characterized him was just So Real?? I would wager a guess (correct me if im wrong ofc) that part of it is that he just DOESNT know, (because Grian is oh so good at telling half truths and privately justifying his self sabotage) but a part of it is also him being lowkey willfully ignorant. he doesnt WANT Grian to be sick (mentally or otherwise) but definetly knows that SOMETHING is up. he really WANTS to help fix whatever is going on (evident by the gold farm) but he doesnt know what Grian needs or how to help him.

i have been OBSESSING over how Grian saying goodnight to Mumbo was ACTUALLY his goodbye to him but Mumbo DOESNT KNOW AND ITS EATING ME ALIVE. (also thought it was super interesting how Grian sort of took Mumbo leaving to sleep as "permission" to do the deed)

side ish note: how tf does Grian even plan to do that?? ik he's got the spider eyes and i *think* he's planning to turn the healing potions into weakness potions but like?? how is he going to do that??? i would assume that the gang would be watching the potions AS they were brewing, and even if they weren't, healing potions and weakness potions are.... vastly different colors. (unless im mixing them up with something else). also aren't they going to walk in on him prepping or already being in the middle of it and just save him like last time? the team as a whole has done a pretty good job on keeping an eye on Grian (from just a "this person can't walk" standpoint) so far. is he waiting for a chance when everyone is busy or does he plan to use MORE weakness potions to make it stronger or quicker?? im interested to see if he's even going to follow The Plan, because up until this point he's been pretty careful with trying to make plans and sneak around EXCEPT for the spider eyes basement adventure, which makes me wonder is he'll get more frantic/desperate as the appointed time draws closer.

Real talk though, Mumbo (and everyone else) is going to be beating himself up over not noticing when stuff goes down (which i would assume would be next chapter, but idk). Also, the fact that Grian asked him to stay means A LOT. To me (and idk if this is what you meant to convey) that signals that a part of him WANTS to stay. theres a part of him that wants to continue to experience the comfort and joy he gets from his friends, but he feels like he's only going to continue to hurt them, so to him this is the ONLY option to keep them safe. also the majority of his existence is just misery and pain so thats probably not helping. (PLUS the whole slew of mental health issues, this is not purely self sacrificial).

anyway, i LOVED this chapter as always, it was like chicken noodle soup for my overworked little soul and i savored every bit of it!! (also, no need to apologize for not having enough spoons!! i dont have any chronic illnesses but i know that shit sucks. this is a particularly long ask for me so dont feel compelled to answer everything in it, or answer right away. hope ur doing well <3)

-🐛

BUG ANONNNN THIS COMMENT IS SO SWEET AND I LOVED READING IT OMGGGG

you hit the nail exactly on the head for where im going with mumbo's characterization-- there is 100% a level of willful ignorance there. Ive always felt like mumbo is the kind of guy who has a thing about avoidance-- he feels very much like a character who will absolutely do his best to ignore things that hes decided arent his business (right up until he stops LMFAO) and part of that in hunger au is him being so anxious for grian to get better that he stops looking at the red flags grian is aggressively waving around. It'll work out!! He's sure of it!! Grian even directly said he's trying to get better!! And i think if he looked at that for longer than it takes for him to flinch away from the entire subject, he would see how much of a bald lie that is.

But he doesnt, because thats a LOT to deal with, and hes never really??? Seen this side of Grian before??? Not the way Pearl and Scar have. Theres a lot of intricacy there that i feel im skimming over but like Mumbo is very much keeping his own sanity in mind here too and thats another painful factor to the whole situation. Idk i have lots of thoughts about it and about the choice here to depict Mumbo giving in to that willful ignorance, and how its going to affect his and Grian's relationship in the future of the fic

(Quick tw for frank discussions of suicide below)

You've also completely nailed the subtext i was getting at with Grian asking Mumbo to stay-- smth ive always felt is a bit underrepresented in narratives like these are how at its most base core, suicide and suicidal ideation are often about needing something to fundamentally change in your life. It takes a LOT of both hopelessness and sheer willpower to actively try and overcome your body's instinctive will to survive. That instinct is baked into our very cells; when someone commits, it means their hopelessness for meaningful change to happen in their lives was so strong it overpowered everything else. And that is something deeply, deeply tragic, and also something i really wanted to respectfully highlight in this portrayal-- how bad things are when you spiral that far. Grian is starving to death. He wasnt lying about maybe having a week to live-- the intermittent feeding has kept him alive longer than anticipated, but its like trying to wall off an avalanche; theres only so much you can do in the face of all that :( and that hopelessness, in combination with how guilty he feels for what he did to his friends, has manifested in him feeling like his only recourse is to kill himself... but at the same time, that instinct to survive and KEEP SURVIVING is still blaring in his veins, and that manifests as him asking Mumbo to stay. Its a bit paradoxical, but its meant to really show how bad his mental state is, that he is willfully ignoring all the frantic signals his body is screaming at him to try and stay alive rn 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Also, with the potions-- without revealing too much about how this is going to happen, Grian is planning on making fermented spider eyes and using them to turn the healing potions into harming potions, which he'll then drink in the in-between to make sure he dies immediately. Now.. i know how this is gonna go, and i know the exact mechanics around how this is gonna shake out, but smth to keep in mind is hes not thinking logically anymore, he has FULLY capitulated to his own storm of emotional wreckage. So yes there are DEFINITELY some questions to be asked about how hes gonna try and get this done, but in all honesty they mostly boil down to "sheer opportunity" which you'll see a bit more of in the next chapter >:] but yeah its meant to be a bit illogical skdbwkdjskd since he just isnt thinking coherently anymore at this point :(

Bug anon thank u for my entire life this comment was so sweet and so wonderful to receive, i really love it when my writing is analyzed like this and seen and understood!!! Its amazing its such a wonderful feeling to have your work be seen like this and its something i very much do not take for granted :]]]❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ tysm for the ask i am seriously treasuring it SO MUCH rn (and also thank you for the well-wishes!! Im doing my best to stay silly out here HEHE)❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[arsenicflame]

Bonus round! Do you use a queue tag?

[skitskatdacat63]

"Non paeniteo potitus."

+ details & process

And, process !!

The jump btwn the second to last and last always surprise me whenever I make one of these because I always forget to take snapshots after I start painting. It's always like: oh yeah heres the lineart with some colors- BOOM fully finished✨️

What he's holding are the Austrian imperial scepter and orb, seen below:

I was going to draw the crown too but decided I don't hate myself that much(maybe some other day), and gave him a golden laurel crown, bcs I'm obsessed with that as a motif, and also its very remincient of the boy king statue that started this whole thing!

There's some symbolism of this, both intentionally but also just historically. I love that the orb represents that the monarch is holding the world in their hand, basically every old monarchy has one of those, and I think it's very cool for symbolism. But also bcs of that, I was forced to basically draw catholic fanart so, you win some you lose some. The star halo above him head is both to reference those religious statues with star crowns(I saw them a lot in Europe and they imprinted onto my brain), as well as: his four championships of course!

[todayisafridaynight]

rgg reddit's good sometimes, actually

[be-good-to-bugs]

you would think considering how much it loves sleeping that my body would, yknow, sleep when i ask it to. or even just when it has barely slept in days and im trying so hard to sleep

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[atinyladybug-daydreams]

Advice from experience: Be VERY careful on spending money on games, especially if what you're spending money on is like, limited events and shit.

Once you're in, you're IN and it's very, very hard to get out of mostly because of guilt and not wanting to put down stuff you've spent hours grinding for.

[cowboypossume]

:o

[bmpmp3]

it is interesting how different stories about showbiz try to depict a character as having star power like a common method in audio-visual mediums is music and lighting to try to make a fictional actor's performance in a fictional movie look transcendent (like in Babylon 2022 which I watched the other day) while mediums that don't have the benefit of audio or the moving picture like most comics will have something like a bunch of sparkly screentones all over the place or glitter in their eyes that kinda thing (like too many manga about the entertainment industry to name) but i still have a soft spot for Penguin Revolution's method of just hallucinating wings on everyone

[perilegs]

just started fear & hunger, met d'arce, she talked about jesus 2.0, called me a peasant, and overall just seemed very nasty. as you may have guessed, im obsessed

[shinraapologist]

light novel reread, vol. 1 ch. 11

i have a LOT to say here. this is the last actual chapter of volume one, before the epilogue and next prologue.

the next line uses "joked" as the verb. i feel like kadota and izaya respect each other (at least at this point in the series). i wish their relationship (and shizuo and shinra's with kadota as well) was elaborated on more. i know theyve fought at LEAST once, i just know it. would do anything for a raijin era kadota and izaya fight scene. from the lens of celty being the main character, izaya is such a great (read: horrible) antagonist; he's the personification of her insecurities and the poster child for the subset of humanity that will always see her and treat her as a monster. (izaya is a great antagonist in general. i hate him. i love him.)

I LOVE HIM! i say this often but the first novel comes in strong with establishing izaya- we know from the beginning how wickedly smart he is and how unbelievably unstable he is.

i just really like this scene; i like the imagery in the second passage a lot. in another light it could be romantic, if it hadn't taken place right after the first passage. and if you had no context.

celty: man this guys vibes are RANCID. whats with him celty (very opinionated and constantly thinking about morals): oh my god... i have morals.... opinions even......

(standing on my shinra soapbox) shinra was "raised" being shown that lying and manipulating to get things your way isnt just acceptable but ideal. hes a male manipulator and a little dirtbag and at this point in the narrative he's totally okay with that. coming up in the next few novels we're going to start seeing him internally questioning that and trying (and usually failing) to work on it.

the face of a man who knows hes in deep shit

i need you all to know im obsessed with this freak. i know you all know that already. i wanna study him under a microscope. i wanna put him in a jar and shake him. i wanna [redacted].

these two are horrible for each other <3

these two are perfect for each other <3

IZAYA AGAIN.... i hate him this time. the duality of man or whatever

ok i love him again its ok.

[blessedshortcake]

Pants update

[meringuejellyfish]

:-p animal crossing is making me wanna draw nice things

[ethicstownpod]

This has a point - bear with me! I turned twenty-two a non-specified number of days ago. I was at work. My colleagues, upon learning this, got me a card and a cake and threw me a party before our DnD game. They put all this together in the span of my right hour shift; I've only worked there six months. My colleagues are some of my favourite people in the whole world.

My flatmate loves tiktok, an app I despise. But every day she saves rat videos, and then shows them to me when I get home from work/class. My other flatmate once hand-drew me wrapping paper of a hideous little cartoon man because he knew it would make me laugh.

My cousin, who’s eight, always asks everyone else if they want to play with his X-box before he does. There’s a girl in my class who always stops people on the way out to tell them she really liked the points they were making in discussions that day. Every discord server I’ve ever been in has a channel for sharing pictures of your pet. I’ve never met a person who doesn’t want to brag about their friends. I love when you make a baby laugh on the bus, so they try to make you laugh in return.

And now the point! The point is that I think people are so good. So unbelievably, fundamentally good. And I want to write people like that. Even when they’re not being actively good, there’s So Much Good inside of them. There are so many wonderful people in my life, I feel I would be doing them a disservice by not portraying just how amazing people can be.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[coridallasmultipass]

.