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cenvast · 4 months ago

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Kabru/Toshiro: A DunMeshi Ship Analysis

Kabshiro has been gaining more traction recently, so I'd like to dive into their canon dynamic and how a relationship between them could progress and benefit them both in the long run!

In my opinion, the main draws of this ship are:

Communication: Kabru's ability and willingness to identify and engage with Toshiro's true feelings and motives, Toshiro's consequential willingness to express himself to Kabru, and vice versa

Trust: The almost immediate trust they place in each other, despite their reservations

Canon Friendship: How naturally yet rapidly their canonical friendship develops, especially considering their characters (read as: their intimacy issues)

Growth: The potential for a) Toshiro to grow as a person by trying to be more expressive and caring towards someone who cares for him and b) Kabru to experience reciprocal effort and care from someone else when he's used to caring for everyone else

Bonus: I love to see queer men of color in love <3

1. Communication

Kabru is the character with the fastest and most accurate read on Toshiro's feelings and motives. This means little on its own, considering Kabru's skill is assessing people and giving them what they want as a means to his own ends. Initially, Kabru engages with Toshiro essentially to reach Laios. He hears Toshiro's retainers discuss Toshiro's love for "that girl from the North" and recognizes that if he offers to help Toshiro rescue Falin, he can get to Laios. As he does with most people, Kabru identifies Toshiro's goals and uses this knowledge to propel himself towards his own goals.

During Laios and Toshiro's conflict over ancient magic, Kabru again steps in. He de-escalates a situation where Toshiro quite literally has his tachi against Laios' neck by acknowledging Toshiro's concerns regarding ancient magic and reminding him of his actual priority: Falin. While his dialogue sounds harsh, Kabru still validates Toshiro's worries. His acknowledgement and engagement with Toshiro's actual feelings isn't something that Toshiro often experiences. In part, this is because Toshiro doesn't express himself, but we'll get into this more later.

From Kabru's perspective, reading and responding to Toshiro effectively is reflective of his usual habits and strengths. But their respective reactions to Kabru's de-escalation exchange remain notable. Toshiro tells Kabru to not finish his statement — the first glimmer we receive into Toshiro openly expressing himself to Kabru at a greater level than he does with other characters. Kabru immediately switches to looking relieved and sympathetic. He apologizes to and comforts Toshiro, establishing a foundation of genuine care and consideration between them.

2. Trust

After they leave the Dungeon following the first Faligon fight, Toshiro asks Kabru to go with him to the governor's house. Despite their only recent acquaintance, Toshiro expresses a need he has to Kabru, even if it's not a very personal one, and he trusts Kabru enough to rely on him in a high-stakes situation. (As a sidenote, Kabru telling Toshiro to "Please get some rest" is a sweet moment, considering both of their fraught relationships with self-care.)

Kabru trusts Toshiro in return. We as the readers don't learn about Kabru's backstory and how it drives his actions because he tells his own party or Laios. We learn about his past because he tells Toshiro.

Kabru addresses Toshiro by name before he recounts the death of his family and his haunting questions surrounding it. When he turns back to face Toshiro, he looks visibly determined and quietly enraged at the injustices he's experienced in his life for the first time during the narrative. Kabru does share his story to convince Toshiro of his position, but his straightforward, vulnerable delivery of his story and the emotions he has surrounding it speaks volumes towards the trust he has in Toshiro. He believes Toshiro will see him and stand by him.

Also, prior to Kabru sharing his backstory, Toshiro questions his motives multiple times. While Toshiro also questions Laios' actions, Toshiro feels comfortable enough to communicate with Kabru even when they might disagree and he isn't under duress.

Within the first few days of knowing each other, Kabru has witnessed Toshiro at some of his lowest points: passing out due to hunger and sleep deprivation and fighting Laios. Because Kabru has already seen him at his lowest and hasn't treated him worse because of it, Toshiro seems more comfortable engaging with Kabru than with many other characters. Toshiro's attempt to throw the companion bell away is a funny moment, but it also demonstrates how he's fine with acting impulsively in front of Kabru; he doesn't hold back as much as usual. He's likely also realized that Kabru can see past his reserved front.

After they speak to the Canaries, Kabru asks Toshiro to help him seal the Dungeon. Although Toshiro had originally planned to go back to Wa, he agrees to help Kabru. Compared to their initial meeting where Kabru was only using Toshiro to get to Laios, Kabru seems to genuinely want Toshiro and Namari on his side, telling them, "I'm counting on you." Both his request for Toshiro's help and his easy agreement demonstrate a surprising level of trust for how long they've known each other.

3. Canon Friendship

Neither Kabru nor Toshiro regularly open up to the people in their lives. We get the heart-to-heart between Toshiro and Laios after their fight, but other than that, Kabru and Toshiro are not very emotionally open even with people they've known since childhood like Rin and Hien. Kabru maintains his charismatic facade around Rin, and Toshiro has distanced himself from Hien in their adulthood. Because both of them struggle with being vulnerable, their friendship becomes close interestingly fast.

Beyond feeling comfortable around each other for the previously stated reasons, I'd suggest that the ease they feel around each other partially arises from their shared identity as Asian men and immigrants to the Island (Note: I read Kabru as South Asian). As a queer Asian man myself, there's sometimes an immediate sense of ease between people whose identities and experiences overlap.

Before they ever meet, Kabru explains Toshiro's background to his party. He opens with Toshiro's outsider status, drawing the reader's attention to the parallel between Toshiro being an outsider in his household and Kabru being an outsider as a tallman who was raised by elves. In this scene, Toshiro is also the only member of the Touden party whose motives Kabru ponders aloud. With Laios and Falin, Kabru simply declares them "not good people." Considering Kabru is intrigued by people he doesn't immediately understand, it's not difficult to assume that though Kabru approached Toshiro because of Laios, he was also interested in Toshiro as an individual.

After they join forces, Kabru and Toshiro frequently appear together in the story. The evolution of their dynamic can be seen through the mangacaps below. Initially, despite their trust in each other, they're still a little suspicious of each other. As time progresses, they develop a language of silent glances and casual touch. We often see them standing beside each other and exchanging looks after Laios speaks. Considering how Toshiro doesn't often voice his negative opinions and Kabru makes an effort to curtail his negative reactions around Laios, the fact that they've both taken to expressing silent concern for Laios to each other shows that they've reached a significant level of intimacy in just a week or two.

Since they're both men of color and Kabru is one of the only characters who doesn't call Toshiro "Shuro," they've likely discussed Laios' microaggressions towards Toshiro and bonded over how they find his sillier behavior of eating monsters disturbing. They also both care for him as a friend, so Laios remains another point of connection for them.

At the banquet, they sit beside each other, and when Falin revives, Kabru comforts Toshiro via a hand on his shoulder. The canonical affection between them is easy to track and consistent by the story's close.

4. Growth

As stated by @malaierba in their platonic kabshiro post, Kabru and Toshiro share narrative parallels like being raised by surrogate mothers, over-analyzing social situations, attempting to act in others' best interests at the cost of their own, and being terrible at basic self-care (I'm also realizing we both touched on the de-escalation and Kabru backstory scenes, lol). Both characters are actually extremely similar in the way they conceptualize themselves.

Kabru and Toshiro both avoid offending others by suppressing their discomfort. This behavior is deeply rooted in their backstories and their identities as people of color and immigrants. When you're the outsider, you don't have the luxury of acting as you please. Society expects you to keep your head down and not "cause a fuss."

They both fear selfishness. Kabru is the archetypal sacrificial hero; his goal is equality between the races and minimizing mass death no matter the personal cost to himself. On a much smaller scale, Toshiro tries not to burden others. They both forgo intimate relationships and falsify parts of themselves to accommodate others. Their willingness to minimize themselves for others' sake leads to them to not even canonically care for themselves and becomes a form of passive self-harm.

Toshiro doesn't eat or sleep during his rescue of Falin in what seems like a self-inflicted punishment for failing to protect her and save her. He seems to believe that he's only useful for what he can do and in particular, do for others. He seems to struggle to define himself outside of how he's overshadowed and overlooked by his charismatic father. Toshiro's arc is about learning to identify his own needs and wants, pursue those things, and express himself.

Because of how charismatic Kabru is, Kabru appears to have a secure sense of self, but I'd argue that he falls into the same trap as Toshiro. When Laios becomes the Dungeon Lord and seems to be ending the world, Kabru blames himself, saying, "What purpose does my surviving Utaya's tragedy have?" and "Please just kill me right now." Kabru hasn't ever established what he wants for himself outside of what he can do for others, just like Toshiro. While Kabru is far more active than Toshiro and his goals are more heroic, his arc is similarly about identifying his own needs and wants and expressing them as demonstrated by his confession that he wants to be Laios' friend.

Like Toshiro, Kabru is disconnected from his desires because he doesn't see himself as worth prioritizing over the greater good. He fails to regularly eat and clean his living space.

Kabru and Toshiro's friendship challenges both their negative habits of self-perception. Unlike with Laios, Toshiro wasn't quite as pivotal to Kabru's goal, so their relationship develops without as much pressure. Because of the extreme circumstances of their first meeting and their compatibility, they express their true feelings towards each other nearly from the onset, and by the banquet, they seem to hang around each other just for the joy of the other's company. When their friendship extends into a romantic/sexual relationship, they get to knock down yet another barrier to pursuing what and who they want simply because they want to.

In addition, because Kabru is the first person to care about Toshiro in a way that doesn't infringe on his boundaries, Toshiro would hopefully be motivated to become an active participant in their relationship. His efforts to be more emotionally open in order to support and care for Kabru would help him overcome his fatal flaws of passivity, especially in interpersonal communication, and walling himself off from others. But most importantly, Kabru would receive the same amount of care he invests in learning about and accommodating other people from someone else.

Toshiro is also an observant person. He's good at mapping out social situations to avoid conflict, and he is empathetic. With a little encouragement, he could easily turn skills he's used to pouring into his defense mechanisms towards actually reading his loved ones and engaging with their emotions and needs. If Toshiro was consistently clocking Kabru's actual reactions to things and trying to address his desires, Kabru would realize that he doesn't have to play a part all the time. He would learn to be more authentic and vulnerable in his relationships.

Notably, Rin does support Kabru, but he doesn't really accept her love or act vulnerable around her for a multitude of reasons. This is probably a good time to note that Kabru and Toshiro are both sexist. I want to believe that a healthy relationship between them would encourage them to mature without demanding emotional labor from the women in their lives, and by proxy, improve their relationships with Rin, Hien, and the other female characters. Personally, I really enjoy the idea of Kabru, Toshiro, Rin, and Namari getting close and bonding over being Asian.

5. Bonus

Because their identities as Asian men and immigrants impact their characters, their relationship has a unique type of intimacy. On a societal level, there isn't a lot of media about two characters of color in love. It's even rarer to see two queer characters of color in love in Western media (or Asian media like DunMeshi with an ethnically diverse cast) as oftentimes, the West falsely equates queerness to whiteness. I consider Kabshiro to be my personal contribution to making queer Asian characters kiss and decentering that white man /hj. I'd love to see more Kabshiro content!

Overall, I just think it's beautiful that these two characters who've resigned themselves to loneliness in completely opposite ways can overcome their intimacy issues to trust and care about each other. I like that being together is easy for them in many ways, but unlearning their habits of constantly putting on a front and rejecting vulnerability or not putting effort into relationships out of preemptive fear of failure still takes work. I like that their relationship is an intentional one where love takes effort, but the effort is part of the love.

₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎ ₊˚⊹♡

If you read this entire meta, thank you so much, and please feel free to reblog and/or send me an ask with your Kabshiro thoughts! As a shameless plug, you might enjoy my canon-compliant Kabshiro fanfiction that spans from the banquet to a few months post-canon. There's both an explicit version and a version with fade-to-black sex scenes. You can expect:

Kabru and Toshiro's silly friends-with-benefits era

A resolution for Toshiro's feelings for Falin, lol

Toshiro's difficult relationship with food

Kabru trying to 5D-chess everything, and Toshiro overthinking and catastrophizing <3

Kabru, Toshiro, and Laios being friends! They are silly and well-meaning and do their best to support each other

Kabru and Toshiro unpacking Laios' racism

Extremely homosexual moments of tenderness

Kabru, Rin, and Toshiro trio and Namari and Toshiro duo friendship tidbits

Kabru and Marcille becoming friends and bonding over gossip

Angst with a happy ending and more!

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caulfect · 1 month ago

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max & amanda, an overview :

to put it simply, amanda is … perfect. she is someone who isn’t held together by strings of chewing gum or elmer’s glue, but rather this whole entity who has put the pieces back together ( who has completed that messy, blurred puzzle piece box of trauma ) and hasn’t cracked once since.

there are other things -- like how amanda isn’t boring despite the healing, how she remains spunky, sassy, still brimming with a rockstar pull that max has always been so brittle against, and she’s an activist, and kind, and … she’s still everything interesting, she just happens to be more confident in herself than most. more knowing. some part of max envies that, this sense of pure unfiltered self, of understanding the vast canvas you hone inside your body, your fucked up mind, and being able to chart the crevices as you go ; unafraid and undeterred, facing flaws and unhealthy habits with empathy, with compassion, and running your fingers along those wounds like a best friend to kiss them better, to say we’ll spruce you right up, you’ll see. max doesn’t think she could ever be so comfortable inside herself, that she’s capable of such self-examination. she’s aware of her problems but only in the way that one tucks dirty laundry under the bed when guests come over, nervous and hiding, disapproving of the mess her needy, ruinous body leaves and the filth her haunted mind stews in, but unable to do anything else except stuff it into corners, baskets, hide between furniture, hoping and praying to beach gods that nobody will see even a hair of max caulfield’s stormy disarray. aware, always so aware, but never brave enough to venture -- eternally afraid of touching, prodding, because there is more piles to tend to and washing one means washing them all, and sometimes there’s too many old, ratty memories you need to avoid.

max is hesitant about amanda for an odd month or two, subconsciously aware of the girl’s attention ; breathless and awkward beneath it, those prying questions, that particular dance of queer women with crushes who are more than intimidated by one another, swept up in clueless, innane attraction. it almost seems … too good to be true? that sounds dramatic, emo levels of loathing which make her cringe ( 2013 much, max? ), but after spending years dodging intimacy that doesn’t involve sheets or alleyways or the squashed corner of dimly lit bars that smell so, so shitty, crushing and being crushed on seems childish, alien, something everyone else is allowed to do but her. feeling barred from entry amongst lovers and their sickly sighs is one thing, it’s another thing entirely to have an invitation and still abstain. it’d be easier if max didn’t want to, if that old section of her heart was broken beyond repair and ghastly, widowed to blue hair and potty mouth without any hope of whirring up again ; sworn bruised-skin on dirty, stained bathroom tile floor and never destined to get up again, devoted to the kneeling, that heartache, hands too young fisted into those dirty clothes she keeps hiding, slipping from cloth when they tremble, shake, like someone else’s hands. like his. but life is never so kind and max sees amanda in all her space bun glory, with her hands perched on one hip at an angle like a total mom, and something soft stirs somewhere. if max had to pick a partner after years of nothing, she’d like for amanda to be who leads her. she would be kind about it, max knows, or thinks she knows, but that inclination feels true so she sticks to her guns. amanda is beyond sweet -- always asks max how she’s doing, places her order before her as if it’s precious china rather than standard all-american glasses, jokes for ages with pupils that light and expand, and she’s curious but never dares prying. sees her flimsy, fragile boundaries that max can’t word because having them is weird and respects them without being told to. she’d be perfect, the right choice, the only one.

( and, uh, her hands are soft and super nice … which might be some secret of the universe, some ancient divine tell that max has stumbled upon, wobbly and uncertain. once upon a time they both reached for her glass -- max, hastily trying to help, and amanda, just doing her job … hands brushed, the tender side of them, a clumsy bump of knuckles and nails and amanda’s were cut short and so was max’s, which, yeah, she noticed! and her face did that rashy, bashful thing around women so out of her league but all she could think was a jerky chorus of : wow, that’s soft. it felt like bumping into a pillow on a lazy, dreary morning when you’re kicking restless limbs and seeking comfort. it felt like a tender pastry that’s more artsy than tasty, and while amanda bustled away there was a distinct raised brow and puckered lip look from safi which read her to filth. gay, was the unspoken joke between them. it is pure irony amanda would say the same thing later, baffled but preening, a little flustered by max’s weird comment instead of freaking )

still. she is cautious in the face of peer pressure … fumbles through an uncertain rejection when safi pushes ( “not my type,” a lie, kind of, though massive crush is too strong for her taste, embarrassing, sends her skittering back into deep woods ) but knows it wouldn’t hurt to befriend amanda more seriously. gives it a go and when faced with a question so bold she freezes all doe-eyed in headlights, there is little else max can do but go all in. yes, she says, she wants this to be a date thing. yes, she quietly admits without moving twisting lips, caledon’s resident hermit and big time mystery would like giving this a go. they make idle plans for concerts, they flirt, it’s so terrifyingly mundane and natural -- the certified human experience. things play out as they do in-game after that … max is a bundle of excited nerves that are raw things, exposed writhering innards she’s stuffing back inside herself, fascinated by how fast she’ll check her phone and how the disappointment is a swift blow when it isn’t amanda’s name or her absolutely adorable comedy account. all so new and old, like she’s reaching deep inside herself to find a light switch, to see those old parts of her that ogled at boys with hoodies or flushed beneath girls who were too pretty for her. but then … safi … she’s gone, and max naively thinks she can still keep amanda, that she’s allowed that right, but instead the holy gates of the friendzone greet her and it suddenly feels cold and uncomfortable. her protests mean nothing to amanda and they’re put on ice and -- what an apt term for it, she guesses. it sure feels that way. there is a tiring mantra of she’s right and but i need her … some part of max was expectant, hopeful, that there would be somewhere she could cling. that there would be a person she’d love above all at the end of this endless grieving cycle. some sort of love, the kind one can drown in, abuse, until every other matter seems trivial against such profound connection. she was still excited about harmless dates and silly wooing in her foreseeable future, and amanda didn’t take that from her completely to be fair, the door remained ajar and welcoming, a ‘next time!’ printed on the matt, but it still felt final. maybe she’s being dramatic … yet there’s a pinprick of something weird against her clammy skin when they decide to take a break. it’s an omen, a prophecy, another doe blessed vision of storms and tumbling towers : amanda is perfect and healthy, has a nine to five and extends an ear to wayward travelers and goes to therapy each month, visits family, and ( most importantly ) she’s too good for max caulfield. too perched up high to make a descent down, unless she’s looking to tumble thirty something steps. it hurts more than it should, flares like chronic pain down her right wrist, that dejection, that unwantedness, but max is busy with timelines and safi and amanda begins paling in comparison, thankfully.

they don’t talk and they don’t see each other. max flutters between a never ending rotation of lucas, gwen, vinh, and finds herself a bit enamored by the latter. she’ll kiss him later before a fake date with amanda and when she closes painted eyes and exposes her mouth, max ( who wanted this more than anything previously, who missed it, mourned it ) will falter before declining -- a babbling mess of excuses, of half-truths, lips still oddly warm from vinh and she feels his mouth with every word she utters. she can be healthy too, can decide that kissing amanda after she poured her heart out about anxious attachments isn’t right or fair when she was locking lips with someone else earlier, in front of her, or some version of her. they part ways and max shows her remorse in soft looks and pitying ‘sorry’s … it’s only a ‘maybe later’ and the door is still cracked when max checks, so she tries not feeling too bad about it. by the time safi’s gone in a flurry of snow and owl wings, after max withdraws to let the ruination of the storm settle … things are still confused and clouded, though her heart is a bit clear despite the growing pains of ache. they do not work out in the end. max falters beneath the very stability she was attracted to like a ship towards light. it goes from safety to lesser, she is lesser than, not good enough, too broken and scary for someone like amanda. and max always feels that way to some degree, inferior to her lovers, her crushes, someone too tacky and untalented for the likes of people so endearing … but it’s different here, feels more true and less like an insecurity, feels believed. max, burned by the experience, by amanda’s relief that things didn’t work out, doesn’t attempt something between them again. she is hurt. almost weakly offended. knows amanda’s right but is still too sensitive, too weathered and full of loss, to do anything except bruise under such harsh verdict. her crush fades into something small and insignificant, some shameful thing she kicks under the bed and gets over with time. she still seeks friendship with amanda after, in the midst of their awkward but not quite ‘didn’t work out’ flame, although things are rather conflicted on both their ends for a while. amanda thinks they’re better off that way, and after some time ( when she’s shallowed her weight in regretful bile, has put together her own pieces a bit ) max agrees.

tldr : max has attachment issues and, while genuinely being into amanda, she almost definitely was also attempting to use her as a means of feeling stable and normal. similarly, amanda has her own unresolved issues and has a tendency to prioritize herself to an extreme that inherently blames max for things she cannot help nor control … they are extremely incompatible at this point in time despite an attempt being made, and i have many, many thoughts on the matter but this will do for now.

* this meta follows the choices of : telling safi that amanda isn’t your type, clarifying to amanda that you’d like for your hangout to be a date thing, and kissing vinh only to then reject amanda’s kiss in spin.

#ii. meta. ￫「 𐂂 」 ╱ digging like you can bury something that cannot die. )#hi. so i have a LOT of feelings and thoughts about this relationship!!! which means i had to write about it at some point … whoops #enjoy seeing some of the choices i made in de canon too! it sure was a ride lol #anyway i don’t have much to say? i find amanda very interesting but her relationship with max never felt particularly ‘good’ to me?#there is a lot of flaws in their relationship that both amanda and max seem unable to work through #or just. against the idea of it. very interesting to read into!!#this isn’t me saying i wouldn’t ship with an amanda or anything!!! or that vinh is a better love interest #it’s merely me musing on max’s feelings within their relationship and my view of it all somewhat #but i digress. hopefully this was enjoyable! if you read this you get a gold star <3 ily

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