#same thing here

[lillybearrie]

Me when this shot specifically

When Something Turns to Nothing

"Wait" Venear stops short and turns around "have we met before?"

A memory resurfaces having been clawing it's way out of the box Icarixis had shoved it into along with all the others like it this whole time

"I wish we could have been... something"

it recites like it did the last time Venear left them and before Icarixis could shove those thoughts back into the box they came from Ven shakes his head and apologizes to the ethereal entity before them "you just seem like the kinda person I'd wanna know" and gods above this was going to be so much harder than they thought

Ven has basically requested his own execution and Icarus was granting it because this was his choice not theirs

"been...something"

and they're supposed to be the quixis who doesn't interven not like Midas did but gods they can't stand to look at that friendly smile free of judgment and nothing short of genuine but lacking that spark of familiarity behind it

"something"

"Yeah..."

and suddenly everything is all to much and they turn around but once their back is to the portal they can't make themself turn back

they bite the inside of their lip and squeeze their eyes shut for a moment taking a breath because gods damn it they are not going to cry

"see you around"

and just like that Ven is gone again and Icarus let him go again because that's what he wanted again and they didn't have the strength to watch him leave... again

and if a few tears trail down the newest Quixis's face well there's not anyone here to say anything about it so maybe... just maybe they took a little while longer to start their usual rounds that day

[kit-teung]

don't mind me I'm just thinking about episode 3 and how they found the last twilight book, but the last page was missing, and a lot of us thought that meant open/ambiguous ending for the show and now I wish that were actually the case

[dreadfutures]

joking negativity is still putting negativity out into the world and chances are you're gonna hurt a friend's feelings by jokingly shitting on something they enjoy!

or you'll hurt your own by someone saying something unintentionally cruel about something you enjoy or believe

learn from toxic DA Twitter. when those posts go around, flame wars start 🙃 it's not a matter of growing up and taking a joke. it's a matter of not engaging with it in the first place y'all.

[persy-r-bozo]

I neeed to play LOOK OUTISDE somehow.

I need that shit somehow i will find a way beacuse it is everything i could want in an rpg.

Body horror, elderich horror, agnst and doom. But also. Kindness, you build your party and they become your found family.

Before all this insanity started it was "better" but in a wierd way you are happier now. Beacuse you are no longer alone

[review-anon]

hey mod you good?

//Yeah I'm fine I'm just redrawing my sprites.

//I've resized all the sprites from the various fangans and canon, but now its time to focus on my start, starting with Review Anon and well...she has a lot of sprites to put it midly and I'm drawing complete brand new ones for her as well.

//The good news is Review Anon has the most sprites of all the four characters I'm drawing so the others won't be nearly as bad as her.

//Will I get all done this month? I like to think so, heck I think I would be done next week and the arc can start then.

//You will know when a character is finished since I will be doing other stuff alongside it.

[geezmarty]

(bellara/taash) nerd/jocks lovers rise up

[crowkip]

yeehaw, baby!

[daughterofsarenrae]

If i missed any please let me know (yes i know sickness isnt on here, i had limited options)

[descendant-of-truth]

I think the other reason I don't really get into ships as portrayed by fandom culture is that it seems like the mindset is more like. "I want these characters to be in a Romantic Relationship(TM)" instead of "I want these characters' relationship to be romantic"

What I mean here is that, so often I see pairings enacting romance tropes to the point of heavily altering or downright replacing their original dynamic - as if the people behind it only understand romance as a series of checklists to tick off. Couples like to kiss and sleep in the same bed and flirt with each other, so it doesn't matter who the characters are, if they're a couple then naturally they'll do those things, right??

And that's where the whole thing starts to lose me, because I would assume that the appeal of shipping characters is, y'know... the characters? Rather than just, the idea of a couple? If I'm thinking about how it'd be cool for them to be in love, my first thought is always "so how would they show it," because just like everything else about a person, the answer is going to be different on a case-by-case basis.

Maybe the characters involved aren't really into kissing, but they like arranging date activities. Maybe they aren't committed to the structure of dating at all, and just want to be around each other whenever they can. And even if they are the types to like doing traditionally romantic things, that doesn't suddenly erase whatever else they had going on before they started adding that on top of it.

I'm not saying that the more typical romance tropes and activities are bad, just that they're applied kind of excessively, regardless of whether or not they actually work for the characters involved. I want to see my favorite characters having relationships that are true to who they are, not what the stock depiction of a couple says they should be.

[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.

[snapscube]

not since sonic forces released have exactly two lines of dialogue ever barraged me with this much grief over the sheer amount of wasted potential

[your-therian-parent-says]

Remember to take breaks.

Your paws are tired, little beast. Rest your legs.

Your claws have put in their work for today. Let them be idle if they must.

Your wings have carried you far, flying friend. They need to recharge.

Your teeth have brought you through tough times. Rest your jaws, as their job is never over.

Your eyes have shown you the world and beyond. Show them solace if just for a few minutes.

If not you, who will care for your body? And what of your soul? Your entire being needs its time. Don't deny it.

[suntails]

touch the spindle, touch it i say!

[cabbagege]

No even hi, how are you.

[epiaphany]

nomnomnomnomnomnomnom

i have no idea what this is please don't ask me about it