#bone analysis

[willnaib]

i keep seeing posts about how mithrun is some kind of yaoi bait and while i definitely understand how that could be true i feel like it's a disservice to mithrun (and to his relationship with kabru, and ryoko kui's writing, etc) to narrow his character down to that. like yes, he is an androgynous, small, pale, boyish male character with significant trauma and a caretaker relationship with another (brown, heroic, taller) man. but this is not "written as fandom bait" this is a severely depressed and disabled man who is written with a shocking amount of respect and subtlety, and kabru is not written exclusively as his caretaker who gets him to open up (if we're going to be technical about it, senshi is the one who actually "fixes" him at the end — loosely phrased because that's not what happens, but for the sake of the trope fill wherein the relationship/the presence of the other man fixes the trauma). mithrun's trauma is actually incredibly well-written, which isn't surprising since dungeon meshi handles its subject matter very well overall, but with how people discuss it in terms of prompt fills and trope checklists, i'm worried that there's going to be this intentional misinterpretation of the text where kabru is mithrun's caretaker in a more literal sense than the actual intention and desire to help out of his own good will (i.e. kabru is treated solely as "mithrun babysitter" as opposed to their actual canon mutual respect.) which is crazy because it is written well and i could write a whole lot about how mithrun's writing is one of if not the best examples i've seen of a well-written s/a victim/metaphor. it's just like. why are people who have read the manga and enjoyed it intentionally boiling a Good Character down to yaoi when they don't... want to.

[er-cryptid]

Os Calcis

-- the calcaneus

-- a tarsal bone

-- part of the ankle

-- forms the heel

-- looks like a joystick

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[willnaib]

i wasted the last 5 hours of my life watching heated rivalry.

i'll start with the good stuff. it had some decent moments. ilya was good. the sideplot with the gay captain and his barista boyfriend was good. shane was so fucking wooden. ilya should have bottomed at least once. I genuinely really liked ilya the performance was great the accent was great the emotional depth was great and the facial acting OUTCLASSED the FUCK out of whatever was going on with shane. I also really liked the depth from the captain and his gay-conflict actually felt Good.

I hated every moment shane was on screen except for the bit where he was high on pain meds and i was like "wait he actually can be emotive????" and i get the point where he's meant to be bland but he was bland to a point of oh my god this guy is genuinely taking me out of the moments and not just. boring. Like. I'm the guy who likes stoic characters who can't express their feelings well. Ilya and the captain hit those notes for me. Shane was just a rock. You could replace him with a lamp and he would be just as interesting.

Part of this (most of it apart from the performance) is because the narrative never... punishes him? He can't express anything for Ilya past physical relationships, but ilya still spends years chasing after him anyway. Once he realizes he actually does feel something, he buries it in trying to fuck discount jlaw (which shot me in the head 27 times when i realized "x squad" was xmen. also did they lift her name from rose byrne who was also in xmen. laughing) Anyway. Discount jlaw isn't mad at him for being gay and technically leading her on. She loves him. She creams her jeans when he says he's a bottom. It's fucking weird but again: he's not punished by the narrative for making mistakes, and nothing particularly interesting happens to him to give him any emotional depth until the very last episode where he has to confront his parents and even that is undercut by his mom making it about herself (which is hilariously realistic but also OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDD). The only time he was remotely interesting is again when he broke his collarbone and was high on pain meds but that lasted like 4 seconds.

The pacing was absolutely fucking abysmal why were the first two episodes just montages instead of building the chemistry between shane and ilya??? The gym scene at the start was good but then there was no more of that, just fucking. I don't care that they're having sex! I'm not even against gratuitous sex scenes but they were a dime a fucking dozen and they didn't mean anything, which was the point at first but when it starts to mean something and the sex is still completely fucking boring then what's the point? I liked that some of the first ones were awkwardly set up but the sex itself wasn't. I'm still mad about the weird cuck chair jerkoff scene where shane throws his boxers at ilya and ilya doesn't even pretend to consider the idea of hanging on to them or smelling them. Fake fucking perverts the lot of you. WHERE WAS THE LUBE???? Even the mildly hairier gays weren't hairy even if they actually did succeed imo in making the sex scenes build their character and convincingly pulling off the "closeted in public, uncomfortable, but way more enthusiastic in private" that they tried to do with shane but failed. miserably.

i'm also coming at this from a gay-man-watches-gay-media pov and not from a Yaoi Consumer pov, which... i am well aware this is functionally a mainstream BL show. It's not realistic. There's no lube. That's fine. The problem, and why i'm still considering it as a "gay media" show, is that it's gone so mainstream that people ARE considering it as a Gay Media show. It's not. It's PWP AO3-worthy fanfiction material, but it's not like. the adult coming of heartstopper. or maybe it is i never actually watched that but like. god. i hate everyone. i hate this show. i'd give it a solid 2.5/5 stars because i did genuinely enjoy it when i enjoyed it but the parts that i didn't enjoy i wanted to DIIIIEEEEEE. if ilya bottomed it would be 3 stars, but he didn't.

EDIT: Oomf just told me it's possible heated rivalry is reskinned stucky fanfiction which would genuinely make everything make so much more sense and answers a lot of the characterization questions i had. Laughing. That's kind of incredible

[willnaib]

having a lot of thoughts about weeping scope and what the design means for levi’s character. more under the cut because it gets LONG. brief cw for a levi-typical drug reference in the second bullet point

two major things i’m focusing on here which are the fact that weeping scope is entirely nude and the obvious giant gun growth. which are kind of the only two things he has, so it’s the only two things to focus on. anyway.

naked

i wouldn’t really point this out since funger is funger but most of the other moonscorched forms do have some form of clothes. weeping scope is ass naked though. he’s completely exposed and has nowhere to hide.

- someone else pointed out in a fic that his jumpsuit covers everything except for what really matters (the track marks on his arms) and while obviously that’s not entirely relevant to weeping scope it’s still. that theme of exposure

- additionally the lack of genitalia/hardened over area where genitals would be — again considering how funger loves gratuitous nudity, big thing here that levi Doesn’t have anything there. (you could take this as trans coding but i feel like they would’ve been more obvious about it considering marina, but regardless) there’s a lot of conclusions to be drawn from that but i think the most noticeable is how the game does go out of its way to hammer in that he’s still a kid. he’s hit puberty (mostly) he’s 18 but he’s still a scared child. underdeveloped. etc

his head exploded and now there’s a gun

something i noticed when going through the enemy list (confession: i haven’t played funger yet because i do not have the right computer. sad.) is that it resembles the platoon enemy in structure and texture which is actually pretty interesting considering the platoon’s nature as a not-very-sentient weapon despite the fact that it is specifically described as a moonscorched human. that’s slightly off topic but i don’t think the texture resemblance between weeping scope’s gun and the platoon body is a coincidence

- what i’m literally thinking about irt the gun being Fucking Huge is the fact that it’s oversized and how that relates to being a child soldier. his main gun itself (rifle) is also very very long. too long for his tiny malnourished ass. it’s huge and unwieldy and

- takes over the entirety of where his head used to be. he literally has no way to think anymore. it’s just gun. no head. no thoughts. just gun and obviously fear and sobbing because even when less than human he’s reverted to extensions of both sides of himself: the terrified child and the mindless soldier. all he can do is cry and shoot. all he can do even as levi is cry and shoot (it’s all he’s good for, it’s all he’s meant for — while it’s a funny interaction, i do think about the segment in prhvl bop where he plays the piano and says it’s too late for his life to change trajectory [how old are you?] 18) — but it’s. so much more obvious and inescapable as weeping scope

[er-cryptid]

Vagus Nerve

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[er-cryptid]

Siding the Femur

Head is proximal

Head faces medially

Lesser trochanter is posterior

Linea aspera is posterior

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[willnaib]

If Richard Doesn't Get A Cuckoo Motif S Tier We Riot. I'm so serious. i've been sitting here PLAGUED with the potential bird imagery and twisted orpheus parallel that richard can create since last night — because seriously, they're the same character gone horribly wrong, especially with AoM in play. Orpheus inserted himself into the story, made himself a Deross by blood, positions himself as the older brother — and yeah, he was adopted, but he doesn't remember that at this point. he's fully gone after the delusion that he is Orpheus Deross. alice, too, is the same — searching for the last remaining "member" of her family in him, even if he isn't truly part of them to begin with, the kind of care that richard would only hope his "sister" felt in return to him. richard is a twisted mirror-image of everything orpheus fears he can become. i hope he shoots richard in the face emil-style. i love when idv has these twisted-sibling-twins storylines, even if it's a significant portion of the cast — it's just so fun to play with thematically. i can't properly word my thoughts but i'm plagued. i'm telling you.

[er-cryptid]

Proximal Radius Shaft [Diagram]

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