i haven't, and I actually do find it interesting. >:0 the way op ties some of these elements don't quite match with my own thoughts in terms of execution but oohh they bring out some REALLY fun ideas. 👀

I've been more set now in the theory that one of you messengers previously shared that fumiko is likely a public safety mole/double agent (triple agent now, if we take in how she almost seems to interact directly with us readers at times), so i've been mulling over what her possible relationship with the church and kiga might offer here. how she collects denji's body parts is thematic, yes, but aaahh. if she were allied with the church, and there was a more precise purpose to the skin, hair and nails that she plucked from him, then you could work out a fair share of new possibilities from that action. a particular subplot about identity theft that would require wearing somebody else's skin, now imagine that huh. a subplot revolving around a copy, a reproduction, a mimic of you, something that would inherently entail needing some...... particular deeds to be done in service of a devil to successfully achieve.... like, say, the collection and analysis of dna evidence for future storage and use................. do you see where where i'm going with this? :)

now, with the part of the comic: raaahhh I still really want the devil hunter club girl to have some relevance to the story!!! you might not know this if you've only been around recently, but I've been clutching unto that idea since chapter 107 dropped and I convinced myself that she was foreshadowing for the whip hybrid lmao. imagine how i felt when miri reintroduced the concept of the weapon hybrids into the story, at this point it's about my pride!!! considering seigi is a character that a lot of people suspect to be the csm copycat + his presence within the devil hunter club, it would present some nice symmetry if the only other female character that we were introduced to alongside him in that chapter (the only other survivor of note too, no less) also took on the role of the famine devil's meatsuit. unfortunately this idea is also rank with the stench of copium so ur gonna have to take my present thoughts as the hopeless superstitions that they currently are lmao. thank you so much for the ask, I want to gnaw at fumiko now.

i'm never escaping the intimidating guy allegations aren't i. would usually throw a cheeky quip here but I wanna be genuine rn and say that this sentiment isn't gonna last, promise! people grow into themselves and their own styles of communicating their passion out to the world, and subsequently, in time, those around them grow less overwhelming to establish a conversation with. this isn't to force you to break into my every post's replies necessarily either, message people in whichever way you feel comfortable in haha, even if it's just though a silly anon inbox, this is just a comment to hopefully reassure you with. I know my ass is out here yapping for 30 pages long with unnecessary citations over shit that both excites me and pisses me off, so I don't blame anyone who thinks I'm a little too much to handle in any direct way lmao. this is a result of years spent slowly coming out of my shell and asserting myself though. in text chats, muted calls, really embarrassing roleplay replies, posting cringy twt threads about whatever and a bunch of other stuff, and I'm still horrid and claustrophobic with DMs and other types of 1-1 message chats lol. it's an ongoing process! so take it easy and go at your own pace anon, you'll grow around your worries in time. :]

you're fine dw, and you're not wrong either, i am aroace! its repercussions only apply to my direct reality, however. I find the suggestion of having sex with anybody repulsive, and I experience no attraction to real people. personally, I only enjoy eroticism and sex within the realm of far away concepts and ideas, in places that are very much not real, and only so long as these ideas are reasonably removed from my own life. i'm not an actor here, just the backstage director.

you also wouldn't be wrong or disrespectful to make the assumption that somebody who is ace might not have much interest and desire to interact with sexual topics much, be it irl or in fiction. until you're told otherwise by somebody you know who's ace, that should be the reflex! you shouldn't associate that with prudish mindsets, sex negativity and innocence, though: there's also a lot more nuance to the relationship that asexual people have with sex than you'd expect too. you'd be surprised at the number of people that are either ace and/or deeply sex-repulsed that find community in the offline bdsm kink scene, for exemple. pleasure can be sensual, psychologically erotic and not at all sexual, for a lot of people, it can be found in spaces completely divorced from reality, such as in my case, and there's little correlation between a person's sexuality and their fictional artistic preferences! :]

when it comes to the trope of incest, there are honestly a lot of reasons why somebody might enjoy it. heavily depends on the character dynamics imo. parent/child has a different weight to sibling incest, and gender often lends itself to specific kinks too. father/daughter is often illustrated with stepfordization, bimbofication and daddy kink overtones, for exemple, while father/son lends itself to military-esque degradation, sadistic discipline and prey/predator training, among other things. people love studying and messing around with the connection between familial abuse and its inherent ties with gender roles, whether it be through an intense 50k multichapter character study fic or a 5k pwp babytrap cumbrain fic lmao. tbh I actually tend to dislike parent/child incest in media, and I think makiden has been one of the few rare pairings that I've ever taken a liking to, when it comes to that dynamic. funny enough too that, beyond csm, I usually don't go for sibling incest for the trope in of itself either. most of the time, it's just that the sibling pairing that I love usually incorporates many of the concepts that I already enjoy beyond it: doomed loyalty, idealization and devotion, protective, posessive and/or obsessive behaviour, unique, intense and lifelong intimacy and understanding of the other à la "nobody gets or sees you the way I do/I am your one true equal/it's always been just us against the world", conflict around identity diverging, mirroring and/or merging, imbalanced relationships around envy and hatred/admiration and love of the other, codependency, forbidden love that transgresses upon what is virtuous, blood bindings, guilt and fear of what you love and the push and pull that it creates, etc. sibling relationships in fiction are usually written by their authors around narratives and conflicts that I'll love regardless of familial status, though sometimes I just think that their displays of intimacy are tooth-rottingly cute and tender too. I'm not always super picky lol.

I think my fixation on the trope of incest with csm in particular stems from makima's character and her unique execution of how family as a structure works? and how the characters that she imposes that structure on navigate it, whether they bend the knee to the power that it grants them or resist it for the freedom that they seek. the structure of family in a lot of artworks usually exists more as a backdrop for the actual story playing out, and I like how fujimoto works on it with awareness and intent. it makes for fun layers to mess around with!

hope these paragraphs of explanation weren't too confusing and gave you some answers to your questions. o7

hmmm. I don't go towards the whip hybrid as of currently, so I'm not sure that I have much to bring up here, unfortunately. she's very much a sadist though, and there's a lot to say about denji's masochism and desire for pain being within the same emotional proximity level as sex, in his mind. physical mutilation and pain drive a sense of being alive, for him. it hurts so much that it feels good. I can't add much for miri because my mind is infested with yoru as the main figure that looms over him lol, though if I pull at those thoughts, then I'd say that I enjoy his internal character conflict with his own nature as a hybrid. with the context of characters like nayuta, for exemple, there's a running thread of going against or leaning into + unraveling what you're made of that's present among many characters. I like that push and pull for him, and I like that he's surrounded by two hybrids that lean into this more inhuman, demonic side of them. if they pull at some parts of him that are less sweet, and more bitter, more demanding, more hungry and selfish, then that would be a fun look into his layers and themes. the opposite can also occur, and he keeps his moral ground but now must wrestle with the other two's actions and how to justify them. you can mess with this idea in a myriad of ways, both with him and denji. the lines of consent blur intensely with characters like these three pit against one another. as for the actual physical fucking..... well. sex can be many things. it doesn't have to be penetrative to count, and depending on the kind of starting dynamic you have in mind, you can set up a scenario that leads to some interesting visuals. maybe somebody's hoarding all the pleasure, or maybe it's fought on, or must be earned. or perhaps there's a voyeuristic/restraint aspect thrown into it and somebody (or people) is watching the other, or is being denied their own sexual fulfillment. for sure some poor victim is getting physically (and perhaps sexually, if the pain is located in these areas) hurt though, with the whip hybrid around. rip lmao.

love how i say i'm not sure if I can be relied on for ideas and then I type a whole paragraph lol. i hope this helps in some way, at least?

I do have a small, but sturdy collection of fanart that I can share with you! :] I'll also repost a piece that was deleted by an artist long ago underneath the retrospring twitter post, but please note that I'll time it and probably delete the reply after a day or so, out of respect to said artist. so you better get in here fast!!!

here are some links, with small additional comments:

• https://twitter.com/jubileeleep/status/1700454135412506732?s=21
• https://twitter.com/JubileeLeep/status/1748999498721087707?s=20

• note that yoshida is a third party here, and that the artist only draws miriden when it involves the three, if that's not your thing. still, im a fan of the facial subtleties that they manage to pull, miri's expression in particular are so unique! <33

• https://twitter.com/omega2d/status/1702988818306228353

• https://twitter.com/omega2d/status/1745757941696020566

• doujin comics by the infamous fujoshi artist circle omega 2d!!! it's surprisingly easy and cheap to order the booklet that features both, there's a tutorial on both toranoana and animate to help you sort things out. i can't remember if there are other languages set up for the tutorials aside from english though, so you'd have to verify that. very cute and tropey comics, they don't take themselves too seriously! I like how sentimental and romantic miri comes off against denji, it's almost accidental and it suits my personal preferences.

• https://twitter.com/msntjo/status/1734779201709027496

• so sweet that i feel sick, they're so small.......

• https://twitter.com/uselessriven/status/1744526388068077993

• https://twitter.com/uselessriven/status/1745604816330461682

• https://twitter.com/uselessriven/status/1759355985892614612

• this is the artist that i've mentioned far above! they've deleted their main account recently, and this is their small side account. I really enjoy their interpretation of miriden, it's much closer to how I read their dynamic, and the specific deleted piece that I want to share has such a tender melancholy to it, it's a personal favourite of mine. qwq

• https://twitter.com/YeEt__1207/status/1692829585862496418

• https://twitter.com/YeEt__1207/status/1692072019834413293

• this artist LOVES dead dove and way darker characterizations, so watch out lmao. they're a yoshiden main too though, sorry. </3

• god i wish they'd draw more miriden it's been so long and there is no dead dove for them ANYWHERE RAAAHH

• https://twitter.com/ThiDoubleC/status/1757148631981797582

• one of my mutuals drew this in support of a theory of mine and it's still dear and near to me, reincarnated blood fiend!miri is so so very important to me and they've been drawn so prettily here.......

• https://twitter.com/artist4esim/status/1848801496596680861

• my pièce de résistance fr i am so happy with this being the result of my prompt for the artist that chose my request aaaahh. i want to commission more works for these two in the future, just so more people can understand my vision for them. claire is such a skilled artist!!! <33

now here's a rapid fire of links about miriden that either lean platonic or aren't exactly csm miriden per se (but you must see the vision):

• https://twitter.com/ryosuketarou/status/1691805037268177088

• https://twitter.com/Shuuu85372871/status/1689300024851890176

• https://twitter.com/Shuuu85372871/status/1689606822674780160

• https://twitter.com/Shuuu85372871/status/1693922597858394347

• shuu my beloved. i used to have some of the full size and uncropped miriden doodles that shuu drew then deleted from their account a while ago. my phone became no longer functional though so it's all gone now. there was some cute stuff there, rip. :/

• https://twitter.com/spoogyoogie/status/1811698048298549290

• miriden if you're delusional enough (or just miri in general)

• https://twitter.com/kakino_tane0141/status/1694270241709383747

• nsfw warning, but if you have the eyes to see...........

• https://twitter.com/lilyphase/status/1691587137282408635

• a funny shitpost

• https://twitter.com/popotarosanpo/status/1708119077947154897

• https://twitter.com/shkshnk/status/1696527501110165765

• miri-centric, so denji's presence is only restrained to the ending. it's still a personal favourite of mine though, the artist gives a glimpse into the sort of moral conflict that i want miri to be confronted by.

• here is the miriden japanese ship tag for ease of search: ミリデン

• first two characters are apart of miri's name, last two characters are from denji's. switch them if you like denmiri! the tag has been empty with dust bunnies for months, if not a full year now tbh, but if you scroll far down you can find older works set around the time of miri's reintroduction! not much, but it's better than nothing, and waayy more substential than the pixiv tag for them.

• another detail that can help: papago is an app that can translate images, I use it for japanese and korean ship artworks and it's served me well with getting to at least read some of the comics that I've shared here. if you're extra neurotic like me though, you can also copy paste the dialog that the app scans unto DeepL, which is a site with clearer language translation results than google, at times. korean is not available as a language currently though, so keep that in mind!

hope this quells some of the ache for content to last you some time! yoshida sure likes to insert himself into a bunch of these situations huh, damn lmao. I would have more to share but as I mentioned, my phone broke and there's some stuff that I couldn't back up in time unfortunately. that won't keep me from further digging though, you have my word on that. >:) thank you for the ask anon!

i'd say they have changed, yes, though i'd have to reread the entirety of part one to confirm so! she's definitely more fun to think about nowadays, in the context of her potential interactions with a variety of characters beyond denji. it really was the saccharine flavour of cishet romance, and the ways in which fanon took it for its own, that viscerally turned me off from her character. I want her facade to remain a facade, and she's more fun to me when that illusion is broken down or twisted in some shape or form. I have crow to thank for giving out such an interesting spin to her character arc and potential for part two! :] I really hope that her arc takes some distance from her original romance storyline in part one, there's more beyond that to expand on with her that I find interest in!

same here, personally! i'm actually kinda sad by how things have been executed because these two have so many fascinating parallels and as a result, you can draw out so many exciting new connections between the two. personally, I'm especially enthralled by the possibility of paralleling victimization being eventually established between denji and yoru: in the context of yoru as an aspect of asa inflicting possessive violence upon denji to reclaim power, in same the way that pochita as an aspect of denji violently tore yoru apart and cannibalized her in order to deny her existence from his world. I truly wish they were taken more seriously as characters and for the themes that they represent, instead of being played off by the story as constant laughing stocks with now stagnant narrative presence, it's so frustrating and tiring to watch.