#And this is just the *backstory*

[honestlyvan]

Babe, I'm so intrigued by the Crime Slime who would die before breaking character and the Furry Genius who is good at everything he does, tell me more about them

They make me SO UNWELL, BARBIE.

I'll try avoid turning this into an essay on both of them separately (I've done my due diligence introducing both of them over here), but I do need to discuss character and role a little bit, because the way Dendro is explicitly a roleplaying game contributes a lot to the relationship between Shu and Sechs.

Or, well, Dendro can be played as just an action dungeon crawler action game, and there are quite a few key cast members who are "ludo", but because of the intense fidelity of the world of Dendro, most people end up at least somewhat engaged with "the plot" ie. the politics of the world, even as just the backdrop for the game. Neither Shu nor Sechs are that hardcore, but both of their actions make more sense "in-character" than they do out of it. Shu Starling (as compared to Shuichi Mukudori) and Sechs Würfel (as compared to his unnamed player) are in conflict because of the context of the world surrounding them, and their roles in the story.

So, what are those roles? Shu, obviously, is one of the Big Three of Altar, one of their most powerful and decorated. All told, he seems like a bit of a wild card, genuinely just playing Dendro for fun, and emphasises the for-fun nature of his playing when discussing the game with other Masters. Altogether, Shu really seems to be playing Dendro as a form of light escapism, another go at a "normal" life -- he jokes about being shy, and before the beginning of the story, had in fact been extremely well hiding the identity of King of Destruction from the broader playerbase, not wanting to deal with the hassle of being chased around by challengers.

He's "a hero", yes, technically, but honestly it very much seems like Shu himself doesn't seem to really care for that designation, and is consistent about how he only really does things he wants to, and is largely unconcerned about what his reputation is like. And despite that, he's ended up involved in damn near every big incident in the kingdom since he began playing, being ultimately the kind of good-natured and kind person who doesn't like leaving people in a lurch if he can do something to help them.

Because despite being fate's favourite middle child, Shuichi Mukudori is... kind of just a dude? Like, he's a rich NEET who pretty much just exercises and plays video games and doesn't seem to have any greater aspirations than to have a good time -- frustrating his parents, sure, but not really causing trouble for anyone. At worst, Shu is a bit of a sneaky shithead, and seems to have some resistance towards being relied on by other people, but it never rises to the level of refusing to help out of spite, and his strong sense of ethics and general kindness are clearly very typical for him, as we see his little brother Reiji being largely unfazed by Shu's big-dealness, sort of shrugging and going "yeah, what I expected from you, bro"

In fact, I feel like Ray's generally high self-esteem further speaks well of Shu. He's attentive without ever being overprotective, and their shared disposition towards never allowing their doubts to stop them from trying being something Ray explicitly learned from Shu. Shu portrays himself as more avoidant and passive than he actually is, even his discomfort with people explicitly relying on him, to me, reads more as trying to avoid having a cooling effect on other people's efforts. He doesn't like complacency, in himself or in other people, and in general tends towards cultivating strong, positive relationships with everyone he interacts with. He is, for all he can be a bit opaque, generally in a good place in his life.

Sechs, in contrast, uh. Very much isn't. He is essentially a hostage of his own family -- adopted in to literally replace and take on the identity of their dead eldest son, and isolated from the outside world until he manages to either convincingly pass as that son, or maybe just until the family finds a wife for him to have an heir with. Even before going through a stranger literally dying to give him the life he's currently living, he didn't have many prospects, and as a result doesn't feel any greater attachment to his previous or his current identity, pretty much just seeing himself as a piece of meat for other people to use for their aspirations. It's very bleak, and it has understandably had a crushing effect on his sense of self-worth.

And while Sechs didn't really have a solid reason to roll a villain character, basically deciding on a whim to play one, his ability to choose and to pursue actions congruent with that choice is some of the only freedom he has had in his life. "Sechs Würfel" is the only identity he's ever had that is self-authored, the only thing he truly believes belongs to him. Problem is, he's so bad at figuring out what to actually do with the agency and freedom this new identity grants him that he hard-commits into the mechanical validation the game system gives him, so pretty much the only things that matter for Sechs are the "sins" he commits -- everything else, everything that demonstrates that he is, honestly, a bit sideways but ultimately good-natured, is relegated to non-actions that bear no relation to his "self".

Let me reiterate for clarity -- Sechs is neither a sadist nor a sociopath. My distinct impression is that just like Shu, he has a very strong innate sense of right and wrong, but any ability for him to express or act on that sense of right and wrong has been systematically abused out of him. In fact, it's a little unlucky how well "villainy" works out for Sechs -- he can make his decisions based, essentially, on inverse utilitarianism, looking to cause the maximum amount of harm to the maximum amount of people, and thus avoiding any cognitive dissonance between his moral intuition and his professed reasoning, letting him suspend the need to self-examine about why he's doing anything indefinitely.

Sechs even argues that being a villain makes it easier for him to be friends with "someone like" Shu, because it allows him to essentially reconfigure his morality on the fly to rules-lawyer opportunities for him to work with Shu towards a common goal. But deciding to live a life in Dendro where everything he does either takes things by force or cheat others out of them doesn't leave any space for him to just... have relationships, to be non-transactional or to show kindness back when its shown to him, without "breaking character", without wasting his opportunity for self-expression. It's the only language he speaks, so to speak.

(And incredibly luckily for Sechs, as far as the game is concerned, the only people he can "sin" against in a mechanically demonstrable way are tians -- because crimes against Masters don't count, he never has incentives to hurt any real people. After all, as far as anyone knows the tians are just extremely advanced AI NPCs... right? )

So, we have Shu who is characterised by his refusal to limit himself, using his personal freedom strictly within the limits of his own ethics, and we have Sechs who is almost entirely defined by his limitations, using other people's ethics as scaffolding to explore his personal freedom. It makes perfect sense for Sechs to literally never shut up about Shu, to be absolutely obsessed with a kind of wholeness of identity Sechs desperately desires for himself, too, to admire him and to feel envious and to be literally attracted to him like a wilting flower turning to the sun. Shu is the strongest possible scaffold for Sechs to measure his own actions against.

They really are well-matched... and they are diametrically opposed within the diegesis of the game world because of the roles their behaviour has created for them within the narrative of Dendro. Which, y'know, works great for Sechs who honestly probably needs to adhere to his prescribed identity, who is still just learning what to do with all of the freedom he's been denied all his life, and sucks for Shu, who really did not sign up to have a damn archenemy and really, truly, just wants to have fun.

And the situation is not helped by the fact that Sechs high-key doesn't know what the fuck he's feeling about Shu, either. The vibe is very "I don't know how to flirt with him, so he has to die". Sechs' concept of Shu as a person is an extension of the narrative role he has within their interactions with each other, as a challenge to be overcome, as the hero to strike down. And in the process, Sechs either loses sight or never realises in the first place that Shu just.... isn't playing a character and just is like that because he is like that.

Except... Shu is playing a character. Shu Starling is literally a character played by Shuichi Mukudori.

So, like. Shu clearly gets it, but he's not happy about it. I am extremely emotionally compromised about the circumstances around their duel in general, but one of the most striking things about it is how hurt Shu seems over the whole thing. Like, he's holding both of those feelings in his head at once, both embracing Sechs' telling of the story and his place in it (he literally calls the letter of challenge a "love letter") and also being frustrated because he thought he'd made it clear that whatever it is that is between them was something different.

Because the character he is playing, the level he is meeting Sechs at isn't Shu Starling, King of Destruction. It's also Shu Starling, ascended joke character, Shu Starling, excellent cook, Shu Starling, professional slacker. He's in a similar position as Sechs, he's performing an identity that he is not able to embody in real life where he's marked by his fame and talent. And at the time of their duel, Sechs clearly wasn't able to meet him on that level, as two people playing a game together, within a shared narrative, and Shu gets that and he's so annoyed by it, because he wants them to be friends.

Unlike Sechs, whose isolation is clear and unambigous in the text, Shu's isolation from having a normal life is more in the subtext. And unlike Sechs, who has to deal with his mental dissonance and whose struggle to live as a whole entire person within his assumed identity is front and center, Shu's needs are backgrounded, and he's not telling on himself.

It's so easy to read almost a tone of betrayal to the way their duel in volume 18 plays out, except Shu is explicit about the fact that he likes Sechs. You can practically feel the fond aggravation of Shu going "I'm right here, dummy, you can just ask" when Sechs is talking about struggling to understand him. Shu, truly, wants to see him again, and wants him to... get better. Become happier. Find himself, so he can actually meet Shu where he's at.

The chemistry these two have is frankly incredible. Sechs, already, is set up for an incredibly compelling journey of self-discovery through the power of having friends for once in his life, but I was a fan of Shu first, and thus I am completely weak in the face of someone seeing right through him, not understanding what they see, and Shu liking them enough to actually bother explaining himself.

I love a villain who is obsessed with their own villainy in contrast with the hero, I was pretty much always gonna be extremely unhinged about Sechs' very blatant crush on Shu, but the flavour is really contained in how flatly unintimidated by Sechs' obsession Shu is, how much he likes him despite that and even, maybe, because deep down Shu also just wants to be known and seen. Sometimes the stranger who only knows us through our roles knows us better than anyone else.

[ciderjacks]

contracts written in blood

+

[chloesimaginationthings]

Springtrap making friends in Dead by Daylight,,

[kumzorg]

ooooh how i adore 3d models on 2d pictures im transporting myself there mentally

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

"Why did I do that?"

close up

[wheatormeat]

Ms. Mia Fey

[mahgck]

blue lock objectively is insane and probably bad. but the thing about blue lock is that once you watch it youre like holy shit this is peak. its a disease.

other powerpoints ive made: chainsaw man, kagurabachi

[garbean]

I love dunmeshi for the like.. built in horror of consumption. Like they eat to survive, they eat to honor their prey, they eat to possibly mourn someone. Laios eats monsters because he wants to learn more about the things he loves, Senshi eats monsters to feel included in the ecosystem because he didn't fit in with the outside and with most creatures in general, Chilchuck DOESN'T eat as much as he could because eating too much could kill all the party members, Marcille eats monsters and hates it but she still does it because she'll die before she could save Falin.

[kaahmbem]

legend has it that the young witch circe and the once beautiful nymph scylla shared a complicated past...

[ciderjacks]

dwarven brew

+

[escapistcatontheinternet]

i love the extras of dungeon meshi in how it fleshes out the world because they make it so much more evident how race affects every part of the story while avoiding the zootopia racism problem. like obv a main theme of the story is like, humanity and desire, 'to eat is to live', etc, but since the majority of it takes place in the dungeon isolated from society and thru the lens of laios, the racial aspects play out more like shadows on a wall for most of the story.

then in the extras we get comics like this

which at a glance fleshes out the racial aspects via a character explaining the racial rules of universe - humans have x amount of bones, while orcs and kobolds have more. however, if u take it less straightforwardly, it points out how the concept of 'human' is a constructed concept in the world. the fact that there are different categories of human in different parts of the world based off of what types of humanoids occur there is already a demonstration of this. in response, the bones explanation seems to kabru and the characters as an objective way of measuring humans vs nonhumans.

but obv, when the culture was deciding what humanoids were humans and nonhumans, they weren't blindly analyzing skeletons and then deciding. just visually, one can glean that orcs and kobolds look less like the ingroup of tallmen, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. the bones explanation appears as a justification for that immediate prejudice under a scientific guise - I'm sure that one could come up with the same number of physical differences between a gnome and an elf that they would find between a tallman and an orc. it sounds a lot better to say 'well, an orc has 230 bones while a human has 206' then 'well, an orc looks ewwww yucky yucky to me while a human looks normal'.

and what i like abt the comic is that the characters take the explanation at face value for the most part. when a contradiction is brought up in the oni, kabru can neatly slot them into the predetermined number of bones framework. bc that's kinda how it works irl - there r cultural prejudices that we can posthumously justify, and if we find something outside of it, we can twist it to fit into our predetermined binary. however, since the reader does not live in a world where there are orcs and kobolds to be prejudiced against, we can see that flaw in the cultural logic. when the party encounters the orcs, the number of bones has no bearing on their humanity. They r shown to be cliquish and distrusting of outsiders, but not any more than the elves are later in the story.

tldr dungeon meshi worldbuilding is so good

[silverhalla]

obsessed with how the other backgrounds are like “you had a little oopsie moment with your faction so you’re temporarily benched” and then mourn watch is like “what if this LITTLE ORPHANED BABY!!!! was left IN A TOMB!!!!! to be DISCOVERED BY UNDEAD???? and then RAISED (collectively??) BY NECROMANCERS!!!!!!, only to be taken down by THE NECROPOLIS’ SCARIEST DANGER: BUREAUCRACY”

normalest protagonist in all of thedas tbh

[bluegiragi]

limitations (part 3)

early access + nsfw on patreon

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC Al Ghul Twins, Only Not Really

I have this vague idea that I might or might not turn into a fic, but it's been in my head for weeks now.

So Bad Ending with Fentons happens, after which Danny is traumatized beyond repair. Sam and Tucker find him, and for the lack of any other possible solutions, yeet him in the Zone and destroy the portal. Clockwork finds him, and Danny, desperate for a safe place, time to rest and heal, and afraid of becoming Dan, asks him for help. Clockwork obliges and tells him he will take care of everything and for Danny to sleep and not worry about anything.

"It's going to be okay," Clockwork tells him, "You will wake up, and all this will feel like a distant dream."

So Danny sleeps. The trick is, he doesn't sleep for a day or two - Clockwork, together with Frostbite and Nocturn, put him into something equivalent to medical coma. And then, Clockwork finds a dimension where no one's ever heard of Danny, Amity Park, GIW, and everything else, and he hides Danny in there.

Danny sleeps for three centuries, in depth of the mountains where no one can find or bother him. Yet, his mere presence in the world causes some ectoplasm to start accumulating around him - he is the Ghost King, after all.

He sleeps under Nanda Parbat.

When he wakes, his past life with Fentons really does feel distant and foggy. He remembers it, but it's like a childhood memory: the details have faded away, the faces have become blurry, and it doesn't hurt anymore. He doesn't forget anything, but it becomes... less important. Less meaningful.

But the first thing he feels just a few minutes after he wakes is a soul. A soul of a child, crying in pain, and its lifeless body being submerged into Danny's ectoplasm (Lazarus Pits have all come from Danny's excess ecto over the years of his sleep, so he can feel them and he can control them to an extent, albeit Ra's has really badly polluted them over the years).

Danny is a hero, that didn't change even after his very long sleep. So he tries to help, but in the process, he accidentally gets roped into the Pit, since a) it's corrupted ecto, b) he has zero ide what he's doing, c) he is the Ghost King and he might put more power in it than he intended, d) he just woke up, cut him some slack.

Talia, who put Damian's body into the Pit, is very damn surprised when two Damians emerge, and that's putting it lightly.

At least they are both very much alive.

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

why did he do that to me? part 2 of this :3

[scogean]

I just think this is just like them fr