#(the stuff about kui re: videogames is also fascinating. i've been thinking of it in terms of ttrpgs (i also literally just talk like that)

[yuri-puppies]

#wanted to reblog with these tags #good stuff ... #i think that dunmeshi has a lot of genre deconstruction hallmarks irt the questions it asks that other stories in the genre breeze past #literally from go! i recall that interview of kui's about videogames where she says that she isn't sure what kind of videogame #dunmeshi could be made into #because it's exactly about the moments that video games don't show #but kabru's attentiveness to the narrative as narrative helps attune the reader to the constructedness of much of what we are being told #about the world #which is great because a lot of information that does that is in the extras #which i love the extras but supplementary material is supplementary and should not be needed to understand canon #and it's not! because if you're reading attentively then kabru's approach (especially as we get closer into his internal landscape) #encourages an awareness of the different perspectives and motivations with which the stories about the world and the dungeon are constructed #as well as playing into a reading of the dungeon as a place of reifying and literalising fantasy and narratives (much like the prophecy #which is not exactly a “lie” because the winged lion makes it true. much like the “differences between the races” were made real #by the demon's power...) (via @loriache)

We really get to see Kabru exercise his social awareness and his story-crafting skills this episode, like how he tailors his backstory differently to Toshiro and Namari (and the Floke twins out of frame!) - framing the massacre of his people as a result of elven interventionism and focusing on his personal tragedy; contrasting his hardworking mother to the faceless, dispassionate elven forces

vs how he talks about Utaya with the elves, first by making them take him seriously pay proper attention to him, indirectly invoking Milsiril's social capital to create a nepo-baby persona* that paints Kabru as not-like-the-other-tallmen, why he's practically a Canary

*i said persona. if you call him a nepo baby in my notes i will send a squad of trained skunks to your house to eat your plants and spray your kitchen counters and also block you

(baffles me. BAFFLES ME that there are readers who fell for it. at least the Japanese VA did a great job of making it sound just fake enough for the audience to clock it as a successful deception check, so it should be clearer now)

Only then he appeals to their emotion, framing Utaya as being about the elves' misplaced best efforts and the losses they suffered, framing the death of imperial soldiers as equal to the brutal massacre of a large city's worth of people. That emotional appeal and successful positioning of himself as aligned with the Canaries is what allows him to ultimately propose his plan to evacuate the dungeon.