#this just feels incomplete

[meep-meep-richie]

They say pictures don’t hurt but this one does; cause where the F is Owen😭😭😭

[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.

[yangjeongin]

HYUNJIN | "ATE" TRAILER MAKING FILM

[teshiee]

the !! them!!! and random serpentine that arent any existing one particular

[johnnyshrine]

★ 123 // “Take the next best step and pray.”

[psink]

Whilst overall I prefer the manga to the anime, there's one aspect that I think the anime does better - the very ending.

Compared to the manga's very compactly shown thoughts of the cast, the anime gives each of them a short scene.

But although that change already is great, what matters to me the most, is this added scene of Saiko.

Despite it being so short, it feels so fitting and important to Saiko's character, making its absence in the original seem wrong. (They also added Rifuta, though comparatively, her scene isn't so significant.)

[ghostbeam]

1.3k words Bakugou Katsuki x reader, aged up characters, Bakugou is an art student, a little angsty, he’s kind of a huge asshole in this at some point but he’s kind of just trying to get under reader’s skin, I’m so out of practice in writing him I hope it’s okay, set in the same universe as my charcoal artist!Dabi and oil painter!Tomura, sorry if this sucks and is pretentious

Bakugou’s studio is impeccable. 

Everything has a place. His tools are all lined up, hammers and chisels and rasps all hanging from nails stuck into a large board on a wall. Beneath them are three tool carts filled with various electric saws and files, all placed meticulously. Besides that is a hand truck, you assume for moving the bigger sculptures he works on. He has one corner of the room reserved for all of his statues and uncarved stones, the largest ones pushed towards the back. The smallest stones and sculptures sit on tables near by, all set—what you have to guess—an inch apart from one another. There’s a standing desk with shelves of art books and comics beneath it. The entire middle of the room is covered in a tarp that looks immaculate, like he’s never worked a day in his life on top of it, though you know that’s not true judging from the half finished giant stone sitting atop of the clean tarp, tools sitting on the last step of the stool he’s using to reach the top of the sculpture. It’s draws your eyes immediately upon walking in—the stone that looks as though something is crawling from inside of it. 

The last wall is covered in brown sketching paper, three rolls of it mounted on one side so that it can be stretched across the entirety of the wall. The paper is filled with a multitude of sketches and scribbles, notes scrawled across that you can barely read due to the obvious urgency they were written with. 

Being inside of his studio feels personal—intimate—like you’re taking a peak inside of his brain, but Bakugou doesn’t seem to mind. Tearing your eyes away from the giant in the middle of the room, you watch him bring an extra stool to the table he’s cleared for the two of you to work on. 

The project is simple. You’re both meant to agree on one artist with an emphasis on a single medium of theirs. Both a seven slide powerpoint and a six page essay are due about the topic. Bakugou was assigned to be you’re partner. Despite his obvious bad attitude and the constant frown he wears, he was surprisingly open to working with you. You let him pick the artist, but he wouldn’t let you leave without choosing the medium. So even though your interest in your major is slowly deteriorating, you chose the first one that came to mind. 

So now you sit in Bakugou’s studio (brain, heart, soul), listening to him as he explains the importance of your artist during their time period, eyes flickering between the text in your book and the stone in the middle of the room. 

“Stop.” Bakugou’s voice snaps you out of the trance you’re in, swiveling your stool between the textbook in front of you and the stone to your right. You feel his hand come down on your knee, pausing your movements so that you’re facing him. 

“Huh?” You ask, eyeing the size of his hand on your leg. 

“Moving back and forth like that. It’s distracting.” Distracting. If only he knew how distracting his giant stone with the person/monster/angel crawling up out of it has been for you. 

“What is it?” You ask him, spinning your stool again so that you’re facing the unfinished sculpture. His hand slips from your knee. 

He glances at it for a moment before shrugging, “I dunno yet.”

“What do you mean?” You ask him.

“Exactly what I said.” He sighs, already annoyed with the conversation. “I don’t know what it is yet. I have to keep going until I—”

“Free it.” You interrupt, eyes still on the stone. “Until you free whatever’s inside, right.”

He’s quiet for a moment, head turned towards you as you observe his statue. You see him nod out the corner of your eye. “Yeah. I have to free it.”

When you look back at him, there’s an unreadable expression on his face. Gone is the permanent frown across his lips, the harsh line between his eyebrows. You think maybe its curiosity, maybe suspicion. 

What it really is, though, is that Bakugou is suddenly struck with the feeling of being understood. And he didn’t have to tell you a thing. One look at his rocks and you saw it. He’s not sure how to feel.

“I used to feel like that.” You tell him. His frown returns. You recognize that feeling, like something deep inside is screaming to get out, that feeling that you have to set it free or it’ll die inside of you. You used to feel that way every time you pushed your brush into a blank canvas. 

“But you don’t anymore.” He gathers. There’s a harshness to his voice, almost angry, but not angry at you—angry for you. 

“I think I lost it. I think art school sucked the life out of me.” Whatever spark you had died inside of you like you always worried it would. 

“That’s bullshit.” He tells you. He stands from his stool and pulls you up with him. He drags you to the giant stone in the middle of the room, and up close you can see the cross hatching he’s done to it at the top where the limbs seem to start. “You can’t keep your eyes off of this. It’s making you feel something.”

“It doesn’t make me feel anything anymore. You’re just talented.” You shrug.

“I know I’m talented.” He scoffs. “That’s not what you care about. You care that she gets out. You care that I turn this cold, unforgiving piece of solid fucking rock into something beautiful.”

“Or horrifying.” 

“It’s not gonna be horrifying.” He speaks, his lips close to your ear as he keeps you turned toward the stone. 

“You said you don’t know until it’s done.” You shiver.

“No, you said that.”

“You didn’t disagree.”

“Stop fucking—” He sighs loudly from behind you. “Yes, freeing it is a part of it. But I already know what it becomes. I knew the moment I hauled that fucking stone into this room. And you know it too.”

You don’t think you do, but Bakugou says this to you with such conviction, you think you believe him. You turn around, breaking yourself from the hypnosis the rock has put you under. 

“I thought it was weird that you didn’t jump at the chance to choose our artist. I had to practically force you to choose the medium. Maybe art school sucked the life out of you, but you let it.” The truth is harsh, makes you flinch away from him, but his hand reaches out for your wrist to bring you back. 

“You don’t have to be so fucking mean.” You wrench your wrist from his grip. 

“You think this is mean?” He spits. “You paint, and you sketch, and if you fuck up, you paint over it or you erase it. If you fuck up with this—” his palm slams against the stone in a loud thud next to your head. “—that’s it. It doesn’t forgive you.”

“So what? I’m some kind of lesser artist cause I don’t chip off pieces of stone? Fuck you.” You push at his chest, but he doesn’t budge.

“No, you’re a lesser artist because you gave up.” He takes another step forward, his nose just inches from your own. “Whenever you wanna resurrect whatever the fuck died inside of you, you know where to find me.”

He’s off of you in a second, halfway across the room by the time you catch your breath. Squaring your shoulders, you march your way toward him. You hate that he’s right, even if only a little bit. His sculpture did make you feel something. They all did. You haven’t felt that excitement in such a long time, or that jealous pit in your stomach you used to get whenever someone was so good at something it made you want to be better. You envy him. How could a place that slowly ruined you build and mold a man like him?

“I didn’t give up.” You seethe. He turns towards you, towering over you with that same frown on his face, but his eyes have that familiar look in them from when you spoke about his giant.

“Prove it.”

[trh003]

Silly Decepticon, when will you learn my name?

[funishment-time]

this is 500000% conjecture but i wonder if the reason why V3 is so much more Bisexual than the other games (imo) is because there was apparently meant to be a Kaede version of the Dating Sim(tm) mode too* and they wanted to ensure every character made some sort of sense with both her and Shuichi at the helm in that extra mode

* don't quote me on this because i can't find the info suddenly but iirc, they just didn't have time/budget to write and implement it

[campbenji]

interesting that so far, in every season of jwct, the nublar five have been paired with a secondary character (mateo in s1, zayna in s2, possibly ben's girlfriend in s3)

[dashi-inu]

‧₊˚♪𝄞࿐₊˚⊹ soundwave from transformers ⋆｡₊˚♬ ﾟ.

i never thought in my life i would redesign a mecha of all beings, but my stupidity got me here ... not knowing when to quit. i drool over his canon design in prime (and all iterations for that matter) but i decided to alter it for 1. me to understand and 2. fanservice; i just really want to draw sexy things with a sexy character u /// u

transformers are very sexy play-doh's and i wanted to have fun making a headcanon-based iteration of soundwave so here's some story and details about my little music player 🎵

soundwave is a foreign transformer! not from cybertron, but from a distant land whose inhabitants value music and dance in their culture. unfortunately, his spark was stolen from birth from his native planet by a quintesson scientist who placed soundwave's spark in a preset protoform. (cyberverse's scientist character was SO obsessed with soundwave i thought was too hot and interesting to ignore)

soundwave's spark still took on its natural form it was intended from the start, but had a trait only seen in quintesson species, the tentacles.

soundwave came to life beside another, the triple changer named blitzwing under the same scientist. (tfa blitzwing had multiple faces that made him quintesson-coded to me and my sibling @crow-cello)

though blitzwing was made to protect the judge, the innocent mistake of soundwave being the first entity he sees with his very eyes made blitzwing feel beholden to protect this mechanical beauty. it was love at first sight, but this part of the story does not end in happily ever after.

soundwave is then rescued by his native species, from who he was stolen from, no longer belonging to the scientist, yet, separated from blitzwing. while heartbroken that they are kept apart, soundwave got in touch with his roots, being taught that love comes back to someone through song.

indulging in his birthright as a music player, soundwave did not suspect that he was a rarity across this universe. he was seen as an exotic treasure to higher beings, sentinel prime's high council in cybertronian. the idea of owning a music box of their own was too tantalizing to resist.

soundwave felt like a prisoner in his own life, being kidnapped but never belonging for too long. when he was stolen by cybertronian soldiers for their high council, soundwave endured their perversion, becoming their indulgence than his own being as he was what they wanted him to be, their little music player.

until one sacred day, he saw a certain gladiator in the arena and was saved by his words ... d-16 was an underdog fighter, prized by the high council for his victories and in the same leaf, despised for his active voice against oppression. soundwave would sneak out of the confines of his many masters to learn and experience life with d-16. when he promised soundwave for a better world for robots like them, soundwave gained the strength and courage to dismantle the ones who only saw him as a trophy.

without d-16, he wouldn't have gained his freedom. soundwave believed that all those days singing his lovesong brought d-16 to him. thereafter, soundwave vowed to be megatron's most loyal right-hand, indebted to only serve him. what he did not imagine was that megatron would save blitzwing too.

now for some quick facts:

soundwave is a music box! 🎶 his heart-shaped plate is where he keeps his Cassetticons. (his babies)

stands on his tip-toes to portray his dancer side~ 🩰 very swift, flowy, and agile in dance. moves gracefully in battle.

as a mecha character, soundwave is comfortable in his nudity. (save for intimate parts.) heart-shaped plate is see-through and his glowing wires are the equivalent of body art/tattoos ❤️ canonly wears the least amount of armor in prime and showcases the most mesh. i believe as a stylistic choice-

[zigfield-station]

I hc mephone4 is very insecure about his higher emotional drive compared to mepad. The fact that the one he saved ends up taking care of him daily is an ego hit, and causes old wounds to open up.

[windcarvedlyre]

I've been following @druidposting's DR2 playthrough on discord and we just had a really good discussion about DR's Closing Arguments. Specifically the way the murderer is depicted as grey and featureless, which until now I found a bit annoying.

In Danganronpa it's repeatedly the case that we don't have the full picture until the talking actually stops- which always goes beyond the end of the trial. We generally vote first and come to understand what the murderer's actual motive was, sometimes filling in important pieces of the timeline in the process, afterwards.

But none of that matters for the killing game because characters' emotions aren't directly relevant to who was the 'blackened'- the only thing that matters to Monokuma- so it comes out afterwards and does nothing to change their execution. It doesn't matter how sympathetic they are (basically everyone) or whether other people share responsibility for the situation (eg. Hanamura, Pekoyama, Momota) or whether they intended to murder at all (Nanami). They objectively pulled the trigger and nothing else matters. Nothing about them as a person matters.

The Closing Argument mechanic might illustrate that problem- literally. They're a dramatic, conclusive summary of the entire case... constructed before the vote even happens, before we know if we're actually right, and they're missing something really important:

The actual perpetrator.

We quite literally don't even begin to see the real person behind the crime, any real exploration of their mental state, anything besides the cold, hard facts of the murder that are necessary to convict them, until the comic finishes and the protagonist makes their final accusation- replacing the grey figure with their real appearance in a shot that's often intensely emotional.

And these comics lack crucial parts of the case's timeline and sometimes important parts of the very scenes they depict that we only find out about afterwards. And those are what we know; characters may die with some pieces of the truth and prevent us from ever learning them. These aren't objective depictions of the murder, they're the protagonist's subjective attempt to connect the facts they have. A join-the-dots portrait of someone with missing dots and no colour.

Even characters' expressions may not match how they truly feel, with the grey placeholder potentially looking way more confident and sinister than they were in reality. Pasting Falter's commentary here since they put it well.

For obvious reasons this could especially be a problem for characters that die before the trial- the ones we never get a post-vote testimony from. DR1 chapter 4 really highlighted that in the way Asahina's huge misinterpretation of Oogami's feelings took up a lot of the post-trial discussion, only for Monokuma to reveal Oogami's real suicide note and recontextualise everything.

It might really be a problem for how Komaeda's depicted in DR2 chapter 5. While he isn't greyed out, we get panel after panel where he's either level-headed or maniacally evil, and even the depictions of his self-torture and death don't humanise him:

But we know that his real feelings were more complicated than that. We have his actual corpse to compare the last page to.

He died afraid.

If we approach the comic as Hinata's mental image of him instead of reality, he died without anyone truly understanding him. He was alarming, very hard to relate to, actively fought against people doing so, ensured even the killer didn't watch him die, and the survivors couldn't begin to understand his motive until a chapter later. The Closing Argument reflects that.

Early in DR1 Togami calls out the rest of his class for judging others by their own standards. However, he, too, is doing this, maybe more so than many other characters; his inability to view other people through anything but the cold, brutal logic of the killing game bites him in the ass in chapter 4. In DR2 chapter 2 voting without a good understanding of Pekoyama's motive or Kuzuryuu's involvement nearly got everyone killed. Komaeda's a walking embodiment of the problems with flattening people into caricatures and not empathising with them, suffered from people doing that back to him, and his case- the Closing Argument for which turned everyone else into grey placeholders- was impossible to solve with objective facts. It was only survivable because the survivors cooperated and one person tried to analyse things the way he would.

The games have always been a critique of the justice system and Japanese society and push us to care about others as individuals, not reduce them to- and judge their right to exist by- something they've done or their net impact on society. There are always consequences when someone neglects to do that, and the above might be yet another way the games explore that theme.

[biblically-accurate-dca]

rejoice! fish 🐟

[crickit-song]

I've figured out why Natlan's stories feel so weak to me:

First off, this is the first time there's been NO human vs human conflict in a archon quest AT ALL. Liyue had the us on the lam, Inazuma had its civil war, Sumeru's got the akademiya sage scheme, Fontaine's quest was half a legal battle, and even Mondstadt's simple "beat the dragon" quest involved us stealing the lyre. Additionally, The Fatui have been a constant battle since the beginning, and even when we were working together, there were still plots and at least a little nefariousness going on where we couldn't see. The Fatui have always been a big part of the worry throughout the story. However, in Natlan, at literally no point was the Captain any kind of threat. The mystery stuff at the beginning excluded, Capitano was just giving us a thumbs up the whole time.

Two, for a plot about collecting a group of people to save the world, this story was not at all about the people in Natlan. This story was focused 100% on the Abyss the entire time. I like Natlan's characters because they're fun to play, but none of them have any meaningful internal conflict brought about through the stories in Natlan. The only thing that happened for them was "hey traveler, You can do it, I promise. The abyss is here and bad." Kinich had no conflict, just annoyed by ajaw. Mualani was literally just confident the whole time. Xilonen was offscreen 90% of the time. The list goes on. I have no reason to care about what's going on for them. They're cute and all but they seem shallow and flat, like they have one character trait and that's it. Additionally, none of their personal stories or traits contributed to the archon quest. The side quests were just "hey forget about the abyss for a hot sec, I have this completely unrelated thing going on." Same for the world quests. Il Capitano's fight with Death was boring bc there was NO build up for it. "Oh, he hates death, oh he beat her with a loophole right now he didn't introduce until a second ago. Cool i guess"

Natlan was advertised as a Nation of War, and i was excited to see war. I was hoping for different tribes fighting against each other, needing to be united against an evil, perhaps by a new archon (to draw in the purpose of the archon system). I would have even had the fatui join them after a bit. However, the was no interesting emotional conflict at all. The bad guys were completely unfeeling and definitely in the wrong, which makes for boring story.

[siiiopao]

i dont rlly like this bc it feels incomplete BUT WHO GAF (i do)

anywyassss the flowers on the bg are dama de noches which i think r associated w death !!!! so ill probably be drawing w those more LAMODHSJ