#but kabru's attentiveness to the narrative as narrative helps attune the reader to the constructedness of much of what we are being told

[loriache]

tags from @yuri-puppies: #this is such a good addition prev!!!!#i hadn't noticed how kabru's laios infodump serves to get the readers to... basically take laios seriously#and to understand why he could be perceived as a threat#although we already know he's the protagonist so i'd say the trick is more in getting us to believe#that dunmeshi is the kind of fantasy story that has a destined hero of prophesy and make us forget that it's a genre deconstruction#i love love love the idea that kabru is almost aware that he's in a story#both as a ptsd survivor's guilt coping mechanism (“if not for this what was the point of me surviving”)#and because he LITERALLY is#(i'm always thinking of those xmas exchange extras kui did where everyone's talking about their gift#but kabru is freaking out about exactly what kind of au is this)#and it's not that he's wrong genre savvy - he's remarkably correct in his assessments relative to the amount of knowledge he has#it's just that laios is such a genre-busting powerhouse#*strayitaliangreyhound.mp3 playing in the distance*#(sorry the labru brainworms took over for a second. back to our regularly scheduled content.)#“and it's not Kabru's schemes and stories that allow him to help Laios” <- this so much#his attempt to strategize evacuating the dungeon fails but his impulse move to save a life succeeds#his attempts to narrativize mithrun's backstory are completely unfruitful from a plot perspective#and even though he ingratiates himself with the canaries and tries to guide laios through deceiving them he prevents no plot events#until it all unravels and he's forced to honesty (ch. 76 my beloved)#and even in the denouement he's still fretting; trying to rationalize and narrativize wtf just happened#hngggghgkdlgd i love him so much#dunmeshi#dungeon meshi#dungeon meshi manga spoilers

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.