#all power to ppl seeing themselves in Laios tho

[elisabethdeep-blog]

Gotta make a post about my best DunMeshi neurospicy boi

Lotta content out there about Laios' autistic traits but where o where is the Senshi rep?

Senshi's dedication to Dungeon trophic systems makes Laios' special interest look like a well-thumbed pamphlet. (Granted Senshi has had significantly longer to cook; Laios is a baby).

Senshi's limited emoting is baked-in to his character model- that thousand yard stare, most of his face occluded by his habitual helmet (masked, even...... How many folks pine for covid masks obviating the need to manage their faces constantly?)

He overheard someone mention his special interest and Walked Right Up to a Group of Strangers to brazenly asplain them a thing. Marcille makes a bridge-mending bid regarding the mosses in the scorpion hotpot (after her previous truculent outbursts) and he totally deadpans her, because he didn't even notice.

He is VERY COMMITED to his ethical position on dungeon ecology. More than once he's disrupted Marcille Right at the point of release of a spell, after she's been chanting for like a paragraph, because she's going to contravene some principle of his.

Also

Speaking of Marcille, he demonstrates some pretty rigid, black-and-white thinking around magic, that doesn't seem internally consistent. He's repeatedly reanimating magical constructs (golems), an explicitly controlled magical act, but is Very Very reluctant to submit to being charmed with WaterWalk; his spoken reasoning about this just doesn't hold water.

Oh and he's totally neglected his personal hygiene for basically ever. He's averse to cleaning up for the sake of being bespelled, but other than magic, seems fine with getting the salon treatment. This isn't a Toph Beifong 'protective layer of earth', he's just forgotten to care about not being covered with monster gore.

PDA? The fellow has one (1) social skill, namely, he exercises any discretion on opening his mouth to argue. But that holds him back exactly NONE when he decides he's done listening. The first time we see this is gathering Mandrakes, when he doesn't SAY he's done with Marcille's opinions, but he Does just go ahead and exercise his damn autonomy. a MUCH stronger example is when Chilchuck is guiding them through the trap rooms. Senshi gets roundly (and rightly!) chewed out by Chilchuck, and his response isn't the sensible 'sorry Chilchuck, maybe I could walk more directly behind you so I can more closely match your steps', but to BRAZENLY DANCE ALL OVER THE TRAP FLOOR! the only reason that doesn't kill the whole party is The Plot. It's not even that he doesn't appreciate Chilchuck's skill- he just don't like getting chastised! Same with Anne the Kelpie! Senshi's gonna do what Senshi's gonna do! He WILL not be rushed, he WILL not be chastised, he WILL not be directed! How do we think he came to be living in a dungeon all by himself in the first place!!

AND THE BREAD!

THIS IS NOT THE DEMAND OF A NEUROTYPICAL DWARF

Look there's more. After Chilchuck's impassioned and heartfelt plea, Senshi suggests they should return to the surface because they're 'low on seasoning'.

He's a dwarf who turned his adamantium shield into a cookpot.

He can meticulously maintain his mithril cooking knife but not his axe.

He responds well to other characters meeting him halfway but initiates few (no?) such bids himself. There's rarely any guile in Senshi, and when he is being shifty, he's Bad At It- and again, usually its in service of demand avoidance, like when he capitalises on Marcille's toilet break to reanimate his golems.

Senshi is the monomaniac that society has spent Decades trying to iron out of my wrinkly brain.

I hope to see him also find a place in the neurosparkly constellations.

[alphaketoglutaricacid]

still think its extremely clever (despite my qualms bc im a professional hater) the ways the interactions the elves have w the rest of the world mirror the dynamics in the nakamoto household. Theres this fantasy element of the elves being more in touch w nature (and the plant motif the nakamotos got going on) long lived magical beings w spider armor who think they know better than everyone else so they treat others like children. N with the nakamoto house, everyones considered part of this family. W the idealization of the lord vassal relationship being one of informal mutual agreement (tho ofc the idea of it being entirely voluntary cannot be like. Materially true. But theres ways the relationship of a knight n his king, the king n his subjects r romanticized n theres elements of this in dm for sure so who knows where dm falls on this ) Which makes the head of the house a father of sort to everyone in the house (tho i imagine the exact distinction to like paternalism of a household and like being someones father in the modern sense is not completely translatable). Like the plot w the canaries is so long reaching, of this army sailing to the other side of the world to conquer this dungeon but their parallels w the nakamotos and the close, familial violence that is happening just in this snapshot of this rando house (tho part of its focus on just them is probs bc the japanese audience is more familiar w what ideas its drawing from. ) really shows like. The banal shittiness of it. The elves arent even exceptional in their brutality this is just what ppl w outsized power over others do.

+ in feudal japan everything is viewed as being collectively owned by the house itself rather than individuals + the individuals having to act for the good of the house rather than for themselves vis a vis how both nobles and prisoners are conscripted into the canaries for what is seen as for da good of the world. The connection of family n how degals father adopted thistle as his own son even tho he was taken from his home to be a servant (and at this point i can feel ms kui going dont think too hard abt the ethics of this. The love was real #feudalism). + the connection w the toudens (closest we get to like a “nuclear family “) and how their father could send falin away against the shock of every other member of the family (tho falin eventually understood i think..?) in the ways his flaws as a human being become bigger bc of the outsized amt of power he had in his own family. that his relatively banal flaw of not explaining himself could break the family apart. As an aside, do u think maybe laios was able to understand the actions of his father just a little more when seeing chilchucks relationship w his family? Probably not enough to forgive his own father. But maybe a first step to understanding it and also himself.

Just like how the entire fall of the golden kingdom rests upon the interpersonal failures between the melinis and the ways they viewed each other as family and held each other to it even as their roles changed. W the complications of falin n marcilles relationship as falin started to outrun her. Kabru n milsirils relationship as a smaller version of whats happening w the elves and the rest of the world.

Like the relationship of a parent and child n all it reflects w ppl w power and those who do not in dungeon meshis really interesting. That having power is a difficult thing interpersonally, which is why holding it requires extra sensitivity to others bc all ur flaws will get magnified in the harms it causes. Like i respect how the internal logic of it. checks out. i think dm has sufficiently justified its ending even tho im personally like after all that… u still think there should be a king…? Like i respect the scope of the work n what its trying to convey. tho more than that i respect the most how it conveys it (bc i dont think a lot of the themes themselves are particularly groundbreaking)