#thank you thank you thank you my friend

[jamietarttsnorthernattitude]

You have accomplished so much and written so many words and put out such a variety of fics for the fandom this year that YOU should do an end of year wrap up!

How many stories did you post?

Which ones were your favorites?

Which one was the most satisfying to write?

The most difficult?

Rec something that you're proud of.

Wow us with whatever big thing you might want to work on next!

Show us that word count stat!

You should be very, very proud of you. I certainly am <3

Ahhhhh FRIEND you are so nice to me! Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Any excuse to talk about my fics :)))))))))))))

1. How many stories did you post? I posted 38 stories!

2. Which ones were your favorites? That's like picking a favorite child! But if I haddddddd to: no thing's so sure that i can't learn to doubt it (aka Jamie is hurt during the Zava period and hides it. It does not go well), in the morning i'm bulletproof (Rupert has Jamie taken out BEFORE the final match of the season) and The Inevitability of James Tartt (Man City introspective).

3. Which one was the most satisfying to write? I don't know if it's one specific story. It was extremely satisfying to write some of the conversations between Jamie and the coaching staff in no thing's so sure that i can't learn to doubt it. And I have a few different post Mom City convos between Jamie and Ted that were satisfying. Mostly I love writing anything where people tell Jamie he's a good lad (after I put him through the ringer).

4. The most difficult? when i told you i was fine you were lied to. Someone requested some Roy whump, so I tried to give him an appendicitis. I had a longer version, but then I was driving home from another state on Friday the 13th, and my brain latched onto the idea of writing something spooky, so I kind of combined that and the comfort at the end got changed. The final product is kind of all over the place. I'm not happy with the ultimate story, but I got caught up with posting each day with whumptober, and it being Friday the 13th. I just ran out of time. I also blame the fact that I was on day 2 of one of my top 5 worst hangovers, stressed about finishing whumptober and knew I had plans or work literally every day the rest of the month. Maybe someday I’ll rewrite it when I can give it my full attention.

5. Rec something that you're proud of. I'm proud of all the fics I managed for whumptober (24!). Even though I'm still working on the final two days, I'll have done at least a chapter for each prompt once I’m finished.

6. Wow us with whatever big thing you might want to work on next! I do have a bad things happen bingo board that I want to work on, plus all the WIPs I have filling my Google Docs folder.

7. Show us that word count stat! My word count is 275,415 (I delayed answering these until I posted two new chapters of not to me, not if it's you haha)! BUT, my third fic is an extended, canon-compliant version of my first fic. The first one was 22K words, so a lot of those were adjusted slightly for the third fic, so really, it's more like 253K.

AND because this was so fun! I think it should be a tag game. So I'm tagging you @jamiesfootball to answer the same questions, as well as @sighonaraa and @fanficfanattic and anyone else that wants to play but as usual zero pressure <3

[rainia]

Hi Rain, and happy birthday! You’re such wonderful person, an absolute delight to see on the dash. I’ve always admired your talent and passion, it shines through in everything you say and do. You are like a firework to me, lighting up whatever you touch. I’ll always be in debt to you for organizing such a wonderful dnd group, and I hope that for however long we play together, it is as wonderful and supportive as it is now. Sorry this is so long lol, I’m a sappy person (and just woke up lol good morning). Happy birthday again, hope the year brings you positive change and joy <3

DMMMMMM ;-; dude,,,,,, thank you so fucking much. I'm legit gonna treasure this ask,, you such an amazing friend and this made me emotional to read but in such a good way <33333

Dudeeee our dnd sessions are such a highlight to me and hearing all your wonderful voices absolutely kept me going through last year <333 you are so inspiring to me, and I'm so thankful to have crossed paths with you in this wacky internet way. :''))) to many many more adventures :DDDDDDDD

[collaredkittyboy]

[radiation]

[oatmilktruther]

🐱 🦐

omg boops you boops you boops you

tell me about a character or story that is giving you shrimp emotions right now: so ed is constantly and always the thing giving me shrimp emotions but the stories/fics that have been plaguing me right now (surprise everybody gasp!!!) center around consumption, so my own ED centric WIP and this brilliant cannibalism fic that has been all up in my mind

[puricodraws]

The template for the ideal D&D party! Who's up to play a game of "Caverns & Cheesecakes"?

Available as a print on my Etsy Shop!

[erabu-san]

I enjoyed every second of this quest

[This art has platonic intention. Thank you for not tag ship!]

[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.

[parisoonic]

two artists

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[courtesycalling]

[b1adie]

COULD VERITAS RATIO BE A WORM?

see the updated theory HERE

the answer 😏 may surprise you

ok listen to me. a long time ago aha made a worm really smart and tried to get it into the genius society. but even though that worm was smart as hell, nous did not give a fuck about it.

you know who else is smart as hell but nous doesnt give a fuck about?

heh. yeah. thats right. despite many people (including himself) feeling like nous should have recognized him a loooong time ago, that computer just doesn’t care.

now, we are left to wonder… why does nous refuse to acknowledge this man..?

i think it’s quite obvious.

my theory is that aha made a second worm really smart. and Then they made the worm into a sexy guy.

and now they’re outside nous’s window, giggling, as everyone in the universe ponders why veritas ratio is not permitted into the genius society.

“what’s wrong, nous? he’s a genius, isn’t he? let him in,” aha goads.

nous is glitching in frustration. “it’s the worm again. i know it’s the worm again.”

[birbs-in-space]

curious about what's in store for you for 2024? :D

Let AO3 decide!

(Updated from 2023: Up-to-date tag bank, opt-in tag categories, optional dark mode! As always: proceed with informed consent.)

[barghest-land]

drawings from paleo expedition to dagestan, done right on the trip. sometimes messy when it was cold and rainy, but i won't correct it. i think it's cool to leave it just the way it was done, and not retouch it after. there will be more drawings later, but those will be done from home

[haridraws]

The Great Library: illustration for Into the Tower (x)

[hysterixa]

hello tumblr spins around like a ballerina