#anyway Laois is relatable

[frankenbuggee]

Lighting makes a difference…

I haven’t even been able to read this because Waterstones hasn’t delivered vol 1 yet! I have vol 3/4!

[rosenbergamot]

mister laios dungeon meshi…. as an autistic person, i dont think ive ever related more to a character before.

like laios being so disinterested by the human world around him, unable to understand it and growing bitter towards humans because of how much and how easily they hurt. with monsters theres a Reason for what they do — its all survival, and that makes sense. humans, however, hurt just to hurt. all the suffering that he and falin went through have been because of humans. why would he like them? why would he ever be interested in them? he and falin have Never been afforded being seen as humans.

i feel like, with laios, he likes who he likes, and he doesnt really think about people he doesnt like. sure they exist, and he knows and acknowledges this, but theyre not his. the only humans that really matter to him are the ones that hes grown attached to. hes very compassionate but thats because its in his nature. if he wasnt a kind person at heart, i dont think he’d bother with people at all. that kindness is such a core part of him.

if he were in the modern world i just KNOW that guy wouldnt care about a career or school or even all these supposedly human aspirations that people have-- these long term goals, these big lofty ideals. he would just care about the day to day. working to ensure theres a roof over his head and food on the table. reading about monsters. having dinner with his friends. making sure his loved ones are all doing okay. and i can just imagine people being like "but dont you want... more?" and laios being so confused. why WOULD you ever want more? why would he ever want to give himself to the rat race? be exhausted constantly? work towards a goal that only other people view as worthy? why, when what he has right here is exactly what he wanted!! laios doesnt have these "human" desires and thats a core part of why he feels so alienated from other people. so different. like a monster himself. and as someone who is autistic, let me just say.….. me too buddy.

[redrocketpanda]

I haven't felt the excitement to write for soooo long but I may be being slowlyyyyyy tipper over the edge by some dunmeshi thoughts as a result of talking to one of my besties and lamenting the lack of shippable characters in dunmeshi (outside of Farcille)

There's Labru, which I think I will end up in the camp for - mainly bc I find Kabru's intense preoccupation with autistic Monster Man who, in turn, shows zero awareness/attraction back deeply funny, and bc both of them are attractive in their own ways (pretty boy + handsome soft boy YES).

I don't fall for either of the Chilshi or Laichil, mainly bc I feel like Laois and Senshi are so disinterested. My bestie posited that out of all of Laois' party (outside of Farcille) Chilchuck seems the most likely candidate for having sexual/romantic feelings for his party members, but in ways that aren't reciprocated (see above)

And then I had a brainwave moment

What if Chilchuck and Kabru though... (hear me out)

I don't think they would necessarily be interested in each other but would spark off of their mutual attraction (& annoyance) of Laios. Chilchuck who respects and, begrudgingly, even finds Laois attractive but who is getting frustrated at the lack of reciprocity/options. And Kabru with all of his intense preoccupation and rapidly building resentment towards Laios

All of those frustrated, annoyed feelings gotta go somewhere. And I'm just sayin'...

What if Chilchuck and Kabru tho...

[hey-heigo]

saw ur vents abt dungeon meishi and while I haven’t read the series yet or watched the anime I have seen bits and pieces and already saw the blowup scene where Toshiro attacks Laois and like. even I with zero context didn’t totally hate him. It sucks majorly that it had to happen but like. Toshiro is going through his own shit and plenty of other characters ALSO don’t like Laois! I think people just see that scene and project the amount of times that’s happened to them with someone in real life, which like. I get it. I’m autistic and reading that scene hit like a gut punch bc it was something I had experienced directly in real life: trying to be friends with someone, thinking you are friends, only for them to reveal one day that they couldn’t stand you and hated your guts from day one. You wonder why the fuck they pretended and let you hurt even worse than outright initial rejection. You wonder why they’d put themselves through enduring you. It makes you feel like you can’t trust anyone, makes you feel like utter shit. I 100% get why it bothers people. But you can’t project real life people you experienced onto this character that does not align at all except for this one moment. Also knowing about the author, she probably put that in on purpose as commentary for how autistics in Japan generally have to go through shit like this bc of the way their social culture is. She’s made plenty of autistic commentaries before, I doubt she stuck that scene in there for no good reason. The fact that Toshiro kept quiet and didn’t say anything until he couldn’t take it anymore is VERY indicative to me of the ways Japan’s typical social system is a struggle on all sides. Not to say these are problems unique to Japan, but the nuance needs to be understood. Toshiro isn’t being a dick just for the sake of it. I want to read it sometime so I can better understand the guy, but I don’t want to hate him based on one scene where he was an asshole. Laois is an asshole plenty of times himself, being very overtly written as autistic doesn’t absolve him from the responsibilities of being an adult.

TLDR: People tend to infantilize Laois and demonize Toshiro, which comes down to the prejudices preconceived for both of them: people see Laois, as an autistic man, as an innocent sweet guy who needs to be protected. They see Toshiro, as an Asian man, as someone who should be “polite and honorable” or whatever and are appalled when he acts like a fallible human being and not some appropriation of a fictional romanticized samurai. I understand feeling betrayed and angry seeing a character be a genuine asshole about something (social expectation does not completely absolve Toshiro of his own antagonizations however much of a reason he had) but when it’s so damn one sided, and especially in a series where almost NO one is without complete asshole qualities that round them out, I find it kind of gross that people hate on him for that. Anyway. Just wanted to send a message of support and understanding. Hopefully after I read more I can offer more analysis to corroborate with you on.

100% CORRECT thank you anon

i also understand the people who are sympathizing with laios bc that scene is very easy to relate to for many autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people (i also got a cold sweat when i was watching it bc. like. having someone you thought was a friend straight up tell you there are parts of your behavior that they can't stand is one of the worst things to experience of all time, ESPECIALLY if you were only showing that behavior around them bc you thought they were your friend and you trusted them) but it's so frustrating seeing so many people have such shallow opinions about toshiro bc of it. im on hands and knees begging people to consider the characters in three dimensions and/or develop better reading comprehension because like!! toshiro's official meeting with laios's new group literally leads with 'oh his name is actually toshiro and we never knew bc our leader had a misunderstanding and microaggressed him and he was too polite to correct him' laios is not an innocent party here!! he is not an innocent uwu autistic baby he's a grown adult man with responsibilities, in that whole time he was partied with toshiro he never learned his real name!! plus using toshiro's crush on falin as a reason to hate him, falin's adolescence was spent in a school and a social setting where she was expected to mask + her being a girl also means she is expected to mask by default -> she is better at masking than laios so why are people saying that toshiro hates laios for the same traits in falin bc clearly not?? also saw one person saying 'he only likes falin because she's hot' NO HE DOES NOT HE WOULD NOT RISK HIS LIFE HEALTH AND RETAINERS IN A DUNGEON ON A FOREIGN CONTINENT FOR THE SAKE OF A WOMAN HE ONLY THOUGHT WAS SEXY!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DUNMESHI FANS THINK WITH YOUR BRAAIN

the whole fight he had with laios where laios points out that their party is more serious about finding falin and resolving everything also drives me nuts because i've seen at least one take saying that toshiro doesn't care about falin as much as team laios because of this. which yes the fact that team laios understands the importance of health in pursuit of a goal is very very important but for many cases in east asian culture (and actually any culture with emphasis on capitalism and economic growth) productivity will get valued above all else which leads to neglect of personal health, i.e: what toshiro was doing. so this is just a clown take to begin with

also interesting to me that almost every character in dunmeshi thus far has demonstrated some kind of racial bias/misconceptions (i.e: chilchuck about elves, senshi about half-foots, etcetera etcetera) and laios and falin are no exception. race and racial differences and conflict and coexistence is also one of the underlying themes in dungeon meshi, with the elves of the west being considered a major issue to many dungeon-goers and the mayor hating dwarves and having to contend with those elves, and then marcille's motive for studying black magic and even thistle's motive for being the dungeon keeper. so it's real fucking ironic that the fans are really quick and happy to demote toshiro to 'asshole side character who is bullying our autistic rep' instead of, you know, using nuance and thinking about it

tldr; dungeon meshi has great commentary on what it's like as an autistic person in society. but dungeon meshi fans are too quick to write off toshiro as an asshole japanese guy who is ableist and getting in the way of their white woman yuri, therefore helping to promote this website's enduring legacy as the piss-poor reading comprehension website

[3dogbones]

NUH UH

WHY'RE YOU AWAKE (it's 30 past midnight for me)

SHOOT YOU CAUGHT ME- I mean uuhhhhh

“So you see” (-dhar man) I may or may not have to do stuff tomorrow BUT LIKE SSSSSHHHHHH I’M OBSESSING RN 🥺🥺🥺 lemme brain rot over a fictional character (cough cough laios has pretty eyes fight me cough cough dungeon meshi spoilers are killing me HALP)

also sleep, more like sLeep, because big L amirite?

Shoooot accidentally made an epic quote raaahahhhhhh he would say that he’s literally me why does he have to be me like STOP BEING SO RELATABLE BRO. STOP IT, GET SOME HELP. HE WON’T LISTEN TO ME WHEN I SAY THAT BUT I WISH HE WOULD

anyways obligatory Laois gifs grabbing and shoving him in your face affectionately look at this new thing I like!!! wowza 😁😁😁😁

Conclusion: I’m not going to sleep and you should like totally watch dungeon meshi, or delicious in dungeon but I refuse to call it that

is this a disguised marketing campaign? Yesn’t and actually you🫵should be the one sleeping 😴 UNO REVERSE and apparently we’re literally time zone buddies 🤩 same time here mwahahaahah

EDIT: siggggggghhhhh I guess I’ll go to sleep now 🙄/ily goodnighty

Added the captions myself ur welcome. Time to dream now, not like the Minecraft YouTuber tho cuz BROTHA UGGHGHHHH

[catgirlwheels]

Dungeon Meshi characters' vibes delivered to me by exclusively tumblr posts:

Laios (Laois? I keep seeing both and it's confusing but I'm pretty sure I was told it's Laios). The only one here having a good time here (Senshi is also having a good time but he would be having a good time anywhere; Laios is having a good time here specifically). The embodiment of autism. Hungry and excited about being hungry.

Marcille. Kinda hates Laios but is madly in lesbians with his sister so she puts up with him (I did see a post saying this is not true at all but it's definitely how it came across to me until seeing that post). The party healer. Very competent and also neurotic. Her hair is very important for some reason.

Chilchuck. He is just kind of grumpy and mildly dislikes hates everyone but the party need a rogue and he's being paid to be here (I thought I read that Senshi was here because they were too broke to eat properly so I'm not sure how that works; at least one of these facts is probably made up). Will not do anything that wasn't in his contract. Family life is not going well.

Senshi just loves food. He saw some kids who weren't eating well enough, said "is anyone gonna feed them?", and didn't wait for an answer. No idea if he participates in the dungeoneering or if he just cooks. Knows how to cook monsters. Unclear if he wants the monsters specifically or he just knows how to cook anything and is following his new adopted kids around. Will live in your head and tell you to eat better if you read dungeon meshi.

Falin. She's dead. And then she's not. And then she's not human anymore in various ways. Unclear if those two things are related. Also resurrection is illegal? Anyway she's a cinnamon roll and also a gremlin just like her brother. Oh and they're both trans. Also very excited about eating weird things. She does magic also?

Izutsumi. Senshi's cat. I think she's a Pokemon. She always seems to be saying her name if she says anything? Does not want Laios to pet her.

I've seen a few other characters but I don't have names or any sense of them.

[the-key-of-destiny]

Laois From Dungeon Meshi Is Literally Me

And I Don't Mean Like "Oh He Is Autism Given Form Uwa, He Just Like Me" I Mean I'm Fascinated By The Biology Of Fantasy Creatures In The Same Way Laois Is, I Crave The Knowledge Others Find Off-Putting. I Find The Biology Of Fantasy Creatures So Unique and Interesting And Get SUPER Dissapointed When An Author Makes Their Fantasy Creature Like Just A Mammal. Not That There's Anything Wrong With Making Mammal Fantasy Creatures, I Mean More Like When Harpy-Esqe Creatures Reproduce In The Same Way Humans Do, Like PLEASE BE MORE INTERESTING, It'd Be WAY Cooler If They Layed Eggs Or Some Shit, Or Maybe Even Invent A New Birthing Method, And Then Theres Also Half Breeds Which Are Just Painted As Humans With A Tiny Bit Of Animal Parts, PLEASE Give Them More Interesting Features, Interesting Mutations That Mix The Two Species Together, Or Maybe Make Said Half-breeds Develop Features Neither Species Would Have Normally. I've Spent Hours Thinking About My Non-Human Oc's Biology And How They Tick, How Their Society Deals With Their Inhumanness, How Accessibility Would Work For Them Ect Ect. Anyway Getting Back On Topic, I Have Never Related To A Character Harder Than Laois Touden, I Love Him. He Scrathes That Itch That Most Authors Would Never Bother To.

[viridescent-vinca]

idk how i found this out orginially but i was super surprised to find out that laois's english VA is damian haas (notable for me bc i used to watch a lot of smosh and still think damian is cool for knowing german)

and now i found out that senshi's VA is sungwon cho?????? omg it's just so crazy, tho sungwon makes a lot more sense to me bc he only does voice acting and was in aggretsuko and some other anime related stuff that i don't remember

anyway i love how small the VA community can be