#my problems with the left

[bluemoonscape]

Big fan of characters who “kill” their younger selves. Characters who resent the past version of themselves for letting them get hurt, who look at that kid and feel revolted by the foreignness of it. Characters who feel they have to cut the child out of them like a tumor because it’s hurting them too much and if I don’t kill you you’ll kill me. Nearly nothing remaining of that past self but for the little connections and mannerisms they can’t kick, and when it shines through, it’s a terrible, tragic thing, because the child is still in there. It’s in there and it’s grotesque in its suffocation. But it’s there.

[clatterbane]

I forget exactly which recent video it was to link to it, but this reminds me of Justin Sledge recently talking a little bit about how much of modern leftism really does look like its own type of secularized apocalyptic movement--from Marx and Engels onward. (Which is also incidentally kinda touched on by his dissertation, I see now looking for anywhere else similar topics might have come up there.)

It really is a point.

For a certain type of online leftist, "the Revolution" is essentially a secular rapture: the Revolution is going to happen, we know not the day or date, and we don't need to do anything to make the Revolution happen, certainly not real-life activism, just believe the right things before it happens and fixes everything.

Just like how evangelicals oppose doing anything to improve the Earth before the rapture comes, these types believe half-measures are pointless. "We DON'T need [change that would benefit many people right now], we NEED a REVOLUTION!" We don't need gradual change; all at once or not at all, and in fact, it's suspect if you are working on those smaller-scale changes. But since all these people do is tweet and do podcasts they're uh, not exactly forcing the end anytime soon

[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.

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[skipppppy]

Oh fuck I uh I just realised that Everything Stays now also gets to be about Simon. He’s changed so much but he’s also exactly the same. The world he lives in is different, alien, isolating. He was a normal man, then he spent some 1000 years in a dreamlike state, and now he’s normal again but everything is different. He carries that trauma in everything he does even though he’s “better now.” He was waiting in the garden so long for someone to turn him around but the underside is lighter. Only he seems to notice that he’s faded. Ever so slightly. Daily and nightly. In little ways

[teaboot]

Sorry to bother you with this, but I just don't really know what to do and would like some advice.

I'm a teenager in high school and I've been reading more and more about politics and the world and it just leaves me feeling tired and hopeless.

I see violence against women every day and both political parties of my country encourage it. I feel scared and hopeless and I don't know what to do about it. I'm scared that I'll be attacked in one way or another.

Do you have any advice for this kind of thing?

Society is cyclical. One generation learns a lesson and teaches it to the children who take it to an extreme, then their children learn a lesson and teach it to their children who take it to an extreme. Like the width of your high-heeled shoes, or the height of your waistband or the size of your hair.

One thing we have seen over and over and over again is that things will swing to the furthest possible edge of a dichotomy, and when it it can go no further it swings back the other way.

It’s a scary time to be living, yes. The collapse of Rome was probably pretty scary too. The idea of big things changing like that is scary.

But also, we’re not nobility, we’re peasants, and those of us in North America are still very very blessed right now. As bad as things are, through all of (vague gesture upwards), we’re still going to have to work. We’re still going to go to school. We’re still going to wash the dishes and scoop cat litter. And through all that, we’re going to see our neighbours, and our teachers, and random kids on the street, and cashiers and homeless folks and middle-aged women named Nancy, every damn day of the week.

And while we can’t control our governments (apparently) or our economy or the fucking price of beef, we’re going to see each other far more than we’re going to see politicians and oil tycoons.

Civilizations collapse all the time. Governments fall apart all the time. The people don’t have to collapse with it.

So what you do is the best you can. You wash the dishes. You scoop the cat litter. You go to work and you go to school and keep doing all the boring and mundane and unglamorous things they don’t tell you about the end of the Roman Empire and you CARE ABOUT PEOPLE and be KIND to them, and then when you come across a clear and baldfaced injustice in front of you that you can DO something about you think to yourself, “I could help, but I don’t want to, because it’ll be hard and uncomfortable and awkward and I don’t know what I’m doing and I’ll hate it so much the entire time,” and then you do something anyway.

Because if you’re going to be scared no matter what, you might as well be scared making things better. You might as well be scared with a friend. You might as well be scared while you keep the world moving than scared in a hole in your yard, ‘cause without the bomb, the only real difference between a lone man in a bomb shelter and a dead body in a casket is a can of meat and an air filter.

Things could be worse. Things could GET worse. We’re not all going to be okay. That sucks. Now grab whoever’s on your left and hold on.

[kyoukorpse]

Here's a proper ref of my goat Jakub >:) still so grateful that the goat was added as a playable option its like he was made for me.

He's a scoundrel and acts before thinking 95% of the time. Let him come over to your side to do normal things like drive you up the wall in knucklebones by eating all ur die and running around your cult kissing your spouses.

His playlist <<

[fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma]

mai and zuko bestieism is so important to me

(ids in alt)

[randomtheidiot]

I wonder how many people saw Ash compete in the Masters 8 tournament and thought “hey look it’s that little guy from Kanto who helped me with my chores a couple months back… WAIT-”

[timbit-robin-art]

I call this collection “left-handed-coded characters.”

[royaltea000]

I love Bai Long Ma he truly don’t gaf

[pinkfestivalpeanuttree]

this really is the yuri update.

she says something more like, "my name is eternal sugar cookie, the other half of the soul jam of happiness, your other half." in korean

shadowsugar mention

it sounds like eternal sugar's asking hollyberry to elope

eternal sugar cookie? more like. escapism sugar cookie

TOXIC YURI!!

fellas what's gayer: being gay or locking the literal other half of your soul in your precious jewelry box so that they may be "happy" and "safe" in your twisted fucked up escapism paradise prison

[chickensauras]

Arm wrestling animatic thing- idk if ill do more with it or not so posting as a wip.

Started messing w it after this doodle and thorfinns clothes are from this panel again cause I like em ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[blended-ice]

Simple yuuri doodle

[buwheal]

Petition for the euthanization of Spamton G. Spamton please

[anthropoetics]

someone pushed my mom on the bus and she chipped her tooth on the bus handle. she went to the er and they basically sent her away with pain medication, telling her she had to see the dentist (that's a two month wait). she says she's in no pain, but her lips and mouth are contantly bleeding and everything she eats tastes like blood, so if you can help me, please. i've sent her everything i have saved (which is basically nothing given the fact that i just got a job), she's going to the dentist in two hours, but we still don't have enough to pay him (which he kindly agreed to do what's necessary even if we don't have the money now). if you can help us with anything, please.

my p*aypal is ianalsvn@gmail.com