#but rather the politics of it
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awildrobot Ā· 4 months ago
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@inception30daychallenge
Day 14: What skills would you bring to a dreamshare team?
Would dreamshare be in any need for data wranglers analysts? Like doing analytics for dreamshare lobbyists when they want to present their cases to the somnacin regulators, maybe?
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bedforddanes75 Ā· 4 months ago
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im not american but some of you guys are just fucking stupid ong what do you MEAN youre not gna vote because you disagree with like one part of what youre voting for. like okay me when im fucking thick
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poorly-drawn-mdzs Ā· 17 days ago
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Burning Rotten Bridges
[First]Ā PrevĀ <ā€“-> Next
#poorly drawn mdzs#mdzs#mianmian#nie mingjue#jin guangyao#JGY is nothing but outwardly calm and carrying on his duties as the chair for the meeting#but in that small pause after Nie Mingjue commemorates Mianmian for leaving...you can feel the tension.#Because Nie Mingjue comes from a place of privilege. He's always been in a position where his legitimacy and political standing-#-were never challenged. He didn't have to fight for respect. He was born into this world respected.#For people like Mianmian and JGY who clawed their way up from the bottom...this is a huge deal.#Truth be told I have a lot of things to say about what it means and feels to be in a position where leaving is messy.#There are times where the situation is bad but to leave means that those years of your life will have been for nothing.#That all the other suffering incurred will be fruitless. So you just *keep going*. Because it *has* to be worth it.#Because going back to what you were before is even more terrifying than the hell you are boiling in.#My concrete example for this is post-grad academia.#Because that cohort will have spent over a decade pursuing a goal and leaving means...well...it means throwing away those years.#It means losing (likely nearly all) your connections. It means going into debt you'll never pay off.#It means putting up with some pretty heinous abuse from your supervisor because what are you suppose to do? Leave?#Leaving is for those with the privilege to have options.#And even if you do have options...#Ultimately we would rather love the pain we know than risk the unknown. Hoping it's worth it one day.#With that mindset established; never say JGY should have just left like Mianmian. He couldn't. This was what he dedicated his life to.#He never had the option. Even if it seemed like he did - no he did not. He never conceived this ending ever happening for himself.
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determinate-negation Ā· 1 year ago
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kafka is interesting because i think from what ive read he had some connections with zionism especially through a few of his friends, and later rejected it and refused to move to palestine. he also said that a german language kabbalah could have been constructed if it wasnt for zionism. yet israel still tries to claim ownership of him.
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sergeantsporks Ā· 3 months ago
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Y'know, I don't think Zeus claimed Athena disrespected him just because she won the game. Like, he's definitely a big sore loser baby, but I'm preeeetty sure it's not that she won the game, it's because the WAY she won the game was by leveraging the fact that he constantly cheats on his wife to get Hera to vote free Odysseus. THAT'S where the "disrespect" comes in. Not by winning, but by winning via reminding Hera that he's a lying cheating scumbag, hitting his marriage and more importantly to him, his sex life (aka, hitting him where it'll actually make him hurt)
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everything-maxriemelt Ā· 9 months ago
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hyakunana Ā· 7 months ago
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POV: Even with advantage and buffs, your local folk hero just rolled 1 in Intimidation
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canisalbus Ā· 5 months ago
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Hmm yes it's definitely a dog...
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Ah! Vasco the dog!
Vasco the dog indeed ;o; I think that's a Segugio Italiano, one of the breeds he was inspired by! He could've been a proper segugio if they weren't just a little too small for it, also I tend to visualize Vasco with a slightly more rounded build.
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genericpuff Ā· 15 days ago
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I made this comic back in 2020. It is, unfortunately, even more relevant today than it was back then, and it's only been 4 years.
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lully-jo Ā· 3 months ago
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I wonder how many people really love and relate to Alisaie because they too were the girl who struggled to understand how folks around her could act like suffering and selfishness and hivemind behavior was normal and their softness was called a weakness and so they built up an abrasive exterior to force people to take them seriously and now they don't know how to be vulnerable without feeling embarrassed or cringe even though they still feel things so deeply it's almost suffocating...
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serpentface Ā· 4 months ago
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Faiza performing the Kagnoma Odo (pretty literally 'lion dance'), a weapons dance and one of the more important ritual duties of Odonii priestesses. A relatively new addition to this traditional dance involves the musket as the primary weapon, which is fired mid-twirl into the ground at the climax of the dance. Faiza is experiencing an 'oh fuck' moment because her shot is more than ideally diagonal, but sheā€™s being so cool with it.
This is a wholly ceremonial performance at the onset of the pilgrimage, performed in full regalia and lion skin (of the small, semi-domesticated strain) but no armor. Itā€™s also distinctly a display of political allegiance between the powerful and beloved Odonii priesthood (and its loyal military) with the increasingly reviled and destabilized imperial family, with Faiza prominently wearing a bracelet of the royal serpent, which was gifted (along with the musket) by the usoma Stavis Amanti himself (Usoma is the Wardi word for king, which has been retained in the context of emperors).
The Kagnoma Odo is the ultimate demonstration of the Odonii as an embodiment of the Lion Face of God and living vessel of military might and sovereignty, demonstrating her fitness and proficiency with weapons and as a spiritual unifier for soldiers. It is accompanied by drumming and occurs in stages, running through the three keymost weapons used in war- the spear, the sword, and the musket. The musket is of the most significance, given the weapon has developed a particular esteem as the ultimate embodiment of might and superiority. Assistants (almost always other priestesses, occasionally high ranking soldiers) load and prime the musket to be fired at the climax of the dance, where it is shot into the ground as the priestess leaps out of range of the shot. The firing signals the end of the dance and the rite itself.
While not the utmost exemplar of trigger discipline, only fully inducted and senior (and therefore very thoroughly trained) Odonii are permitted to perform the dance, and injuries during actual performances are quite rare (though are known to occur during training, more than a few Odonii have burns and wounds on their feet).
The most important renditions of this dance are performed upon declarations of war and before battles (in this case, generally done in full armor along with the lion pelt). It is also done during some trainings (while a dance, it is carefully choreographed to include naturalistic maneuvers of the weapons involved and helps soldiers limber up and learn to move their weapons). It is regarded as an impressive and motivating sight and a morale booster, and, seen at a distance, potentially intimidating to enemies.
A special variant of this dance is performed as means of fully incarnating the Odomache, which is done in full nudity with the body covered in the blood of the freshly sacrificed lion and cloaked in its raw pelt (the lion has become the corpse of Odomache in the moment of death, as part of its recreation of God's sacrifice). Her public, full nude appearance once (and only once) in this act is what allows the Lion Face of God to incarnate within her. Those in attendance see the spiritually vulnerable, naked human body obscured with the sanctified and deified blood and cloaked in the sanctified and deified skin. It is a merger of the contradictions of mortality and divinity, the boundaries between the two indistinct in flickering firelight and the flash of musketfire. She is witnessed by her people, dangling in between humanity and divinity and leading them in dance, and and is thus transformed.
#faiza haidamane#Not really relevant to the core post itself but I don't have anywhere to put this#Faiza is a pretty extreme cultural rarity in that she's something along the lines of agnostic (regardless of her priestesshood)#It's a culturally specific form of agnosticism where the notion that God continues to exist and interact with the world in spirit form is#questioned. She personally gets the distinct vibe that God truly and wholly died in the act of creation and is no longer present#This isn't just a Her Thing it's a concept that comes up in some strains of religious philosophy but it's pretty rare#Orthopraxy is SIGNIFICANTLY more important to the faith of the seven faced god than orthodoxy so her merely thinking this isn't#a fundamental issue as long as she performs all expected rites and behaviors and etc (which she does quite devotedly) but it would#definitely not be socially accepted to openly proclaim (least of all from a senior priestess devoted to maintaining the connection of God's#spirit to Its lands and people) and she keeps it to herself.#She is the only main character who WHOLLY doesn't expect the pilgrimage and rites to end the drought. She doesn't fully DISbelieve#either (kind of like 'well maybe?') but for her this is all a very pragmatic political maneuver to stabilize the crumbling empire and#regain the people's faith in its leadership. It's not fully cynical like it means a lot to her but in a sense of very practically protectin#her beloved empire rather than a more spiritual sentiment.#It's very complicated for her like she takes her role very seriously and cares deeply for her faith while not actually believing#in it in any personal sense. More about what it represents to her than what it's supposed to literally be.#the white calf
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sweetteaanddragons Ā· 8 days ago
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Lauriel
When Lauriel is growing up, she knows her older sister is a better singer than her. This is not because she's heard her sister singing all that much; her sister is fully grown and moved halfway across Aman before Lauriel is even thought of. But it is a thing people tell her of, a little awkwardly, a little gently, whenever she mentions her ambition to be a bard. Her sister is a better singer than her, and her sister is a potter. Ergo . . .
Lauriel takes up the flute. Her sister did not play the flute as a child and her rare letters don't mention it now; her sister cannot be better than her at the flute.
Her mother tells her flatly that this does not mean her sister wouldn't have been better at it, had she ever tried.
"It takes a lot of dedication to your craft to be a bard," her father says, a little more gently. "It's a very competitive field."
Left unsaid, but very much heard, is that Lauriel, of course, is far too flighty to have that sort of dedication.
It is not the first time they have had this conversation.
It is the last, because Lauriel vows to all the Valar that she won't set foot on the farm again until she's the greatest bard the Noldor have ever seen.
It does not take her long at the university in Alqualonde to learn that she is almost certainly never going to be so much as one of the best ten bards the Noldor have ever seen. This does not, however, stop people from still enjoying her music - or, for that matter, from enjoying her dancing, her conversation, her skill at the competitions that are all the rage at parties, and so she never lacks invitations to just about any event in town.
She's friends with everyone, and she hasn't written a single letter back to the farm, and she tells herself she doesn't care that none have come from there for her.
She doesn't talk to any of her friends about that.
She does talk to the woman with the tense, tight shoulders at the current party, swooping in to rescue her from the circle of jabbing fools around her; she's not sure why the other woman needs rescuing from the discussion of the night's musical entertainment, but it doesn't matter; she doesn't need to understand to recruit her to make up the numbers at Lauriel's table for cards.
Aranel is laughing when Prince Makalaure, of all people, comes by their table, which is how Lauriel learns that the woman she rescued is Prince Makalaure's wife.
He sees her flute in its case beside her and asks to hear her play.
He compliments her when she's done. Invites her to another party the next week.
Lauriel, of course, says yes.
She's never political. She's never really bothered about any of it.
But she starts to fall into his circle; their music is so passionate, so innovative, and she likes the way they circle around each other. They're dedicated to each other in a way the endless sea of her other friends aren't.
So when she hears someone being rude about his father, of course she speaks up; for all she knows Prince Feanaro is crazy, but that doesn't give anyone the right to be cruel about it.
She gets offered a job at the university in Tirion, and she thinks Makalaure recommended her for it; she finds out later he praised her skill with people as well as her music when asked for his opinion on the posting.
She finds other people start assuming she's political, even though she still doesn't much care whether they're allowed to sail back to Beleriand or not. She does care, though, about people being rude to her friends, and apparently that is political now, so political she is.
One of her friends is shocked that she's gone this long without hearing Prince Feanaro speak, so even though she still doesn't really care, she laughs and lets them drag her along to his next one.
She gets it now.
Why half of Tirion follows him and why half of Tirion thinks he's crazy.
She still doesn't really care. Even after the Incident - well, that was wrong, of course, but she doesn't see why people have to be rude to Makalaure and Aranel about it.
When the darkness comes, she goes with Feanaro's camp, of course. Almost all of Makalaure's circle does.
Partially because at least Prince Feanaro has a plan. Partially because everyone else is doing it.
Mostly because she hears Makalaure swear the Oath, and -
And her oath is not so burdensome a thing. She cannot go back to the farm; she has accepted she will never be able to go back to the farm. But she could still see her parents if they would come to her, if they would meet her elsewhere, if either she or they would ever just send a letter.
She feels it, though. Always, she feels it.
She wishes she had told him. She hadn't, ever; she hadn't known how to look at the actual greatest bard the Noldor have ever produced and admit to her adolescent ambition. But if she had swallowed her pride and told him - if he'd been warned -
She follows him.
(It is four ages later that she tells him at last; when he asks her, as they prepare to sail with Elrond, what she thinks of at last returning home.
"Oh, home's not really a place," she says in surprise. Home has been people for the past four ages of the world, and she has no intention of leaving those people now. "I suppose I'll have to wait and see if my parents choose to visit; I can't go to them unless they've moved."
This catches his attention. "Whyever not?"
"Well," she says, studiously not looking at him. "I swore an oath.")
(It is midnight when Elrond finds a furious Maglor correcting a beleaguered Lauriel's pitch in the garden.
"Are you planning on making our plea to the Valar for your brothers in the form of a concert?" he asks in bemusement. There is precedent, he supposes, with Luthien, but he would have thought Lauriel would have had more patience with the fevered practice if it were the case.
"It is no true teacher who cannot guide a student to surpassing himself," Maglor says grimly. "And it is no true prince who does not return loyalty. Lauriel will be the greatest bard the Noldor have ever produced."
"I don't want to be," she says in some desperation. "I really don't. I don't care if I can't go back to the farm."
"You should have the option," Maglor says firmly. "Now try again.")
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fumifooms Ā· 3 months ago
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do you happen to have that page that talks about the beauty standards of each race?
Yeah sure. While scavenging pics for this I found this neat reddit compilation & chart & theory talk too. I had um, way more to say than I anticipated (I know you only wanted the one page. I have nothing to say for myself. Like most topics in Dunmeshi things snowball because theyā€™re so interconnected. Mercyā€¦) so, many races and observations are only mentioned near the bottom.
Beauty standards and race in Dungeon Meshi
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Not pictured thereā€™s also how elven society is harsh on visibly disabled people, and how the demon took away Mithrunā€™s silver eyes and ears to take away his pride. Thereā€™s also how Senshi might have fit in with the orcs more easily because of the dwarven wide body shape, and how they tend to have more body hair too I suppose. In the extra on orcs we see Senshi living with the orcs and he gets judged because of the hierarchy rather than his looks.
What is fashionable also differs from culture to culture, and thereā€™s how tattoos only seem common with elves, though dwarves and others do also sometimes have some. They seem to not raise much brows, which makes sense since for many essentially theyā€™re for professional (magical) purposes especially with elves. Gender roles also differ in type and importance, but generally they are similar to irl ones for the races we see. Elven society seems to be the least gendered, which would be an unsurprising logical outcome of having lesser sexual dimorphism aka they look more androgynous. Comparing fashions and gender roles and how they affect beauty standards would be a whole other compilation and conversation. Kui has great worldbuilding partially because sheā€™s got such a good grasp on sociopolitics and geopolitics. History affects cultures and beauty standards greatly. Kuiā€™s oneshot Distant Utopia was very eye opening on her way to worldbuild and the consideration she gives these things, I do really recommend reading it.
Out of the big 5, we know the least about gnomes, but their sheet does say both culture and region are similar to dwarvesā€™ and they end up being confused together often, so we can imagine the beauty standards are similar to dwarvesā€™ as well.
I wanted to touch on this in a post eventually, but how one daydream hour page said half-foots tended to be curvaceous like in the artwork below puzzled me for a long time, all the half-foot characters we see during canon are rather slender and lanky after all, Chilā€™s succubi also being more curvy than plump. Economics are for sure a factor in that I imagine, the half-foots characters we see are all implied to be some flavor of poor or malnourished, as are half-foots depicted as empoverished oppressed minorities in general. Even comparing the artwork with the half-foot sheetā€™s depicted average half-foot, the ones on the left seem bigger. Wouldnā€™t it make sense though, if unlike dwarves half-foots donā€™t have similar naturally wide bodies, yet due to idolizing dwarves they work towards having a similar body shape/type to emulate them?
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Itā€™s said half-foots tend to stick to pretty ethnically homogeneous regions (aka half-foots-only communities) unless they move to the big city with ambition to try and make it big (like Chilchuck and his wife & kids did), and thatā€™s interesting imo because then that would mean that in a ton of half-foot communities, they rarely see or interact with dwarves whom they try to emulate. Of course, one thing about beauty standards is that when they get adopted, at one point it stops being "this is how dwarves look and so this is how half-foots should look" and just becomes "this is how half-foots should look", most people feel as though beauty standards arenā€™t learned but innate, so I figure the half-foots wouldnā€™t have any problem still seeking dwarvish traits when there are no dwarves around.
Thereā€™s also stuff you can glean here and there if you want to extrapolate more. Like how in the race swap artworks, Mickbell is only smiling in the dwarf portrait, and Rinā€™s elven portrait looks very close to her elven one- Rin who is stated to be beautiful in her profile blurb. Benichidoriā€™s extra does teach us tallmen can definitely have harsh beauty standards, but also since the text portrays her as very dysmorphic thatā€™s likely reflected in her thoughts to a much more intense degree than is common, not an accurate strict baseline to go off. Ah, Kabruā€™s blue eyes are also why he and his mother lived a rough life in Kabruā€™s hometown, but that seems to be regional. Good post here on the topic of Kabruā€™s blue eyes and ties to irl history. Thereā€™s a lot to be said about Kabru being a man that in many ways is close to elven beauty standards, and how that might have affected or been affected by his upbringing with elves + his persona as someone that can effortlessly charm most people. Marcilleā€™s section here in this essay also goes into Marcilleā€™s struggles to fit in with the ideal image of an elf.
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Looking human
Also notable are beastkins and demihumans: Demihumans are all dehumanized which makes people treat them worse. So if you differ from the visual idea of "human" (an in-world subjective categorization just as much as demihuman is) most people do judge you negatively. Elves and dwarves get to fight about which type of human is considered the prettiest, but demihumans are below tallmen and half-foots, they are considered as simply below the beauty contest, incompatible with it.
Onis are perhaps the demihuman people we know of with the least cultural influence on the dunmeshi world, and with the least intensely different appearance than other demihumansā€”they seem to be technically categorized as human to people not from the eastern archipelago?ā€” but even them are treated as lesser than human, treated as beasts to slain for reputation points or useful strength to have around and command. Itā€™s said their "magnificient horns" and fangs are often shaven off when the oni lives in tallman towns, so you could easily make the argument that onis are denied the right to have their own beauty standards, having to conform to other peopleā€™s and going through mutilation to take away features they might otherwise have taken pride in. Inutade was bought by the Nakamotos from a dangerous sumo fighting ring that got one of Inutadeā€™s tooth broken on her first and only fight, and kept as a low ranking servant ever since. Remember when I said different fashions existed in dunmeshi and how those could also affect beauty standards? Like the elves, if you look at the portraits pages which include a lot of characters that arenā€™t in the story you can see distinct cultures within the same races, for example one young elf is bald which is in sharp contrast with the usual elven long luscious hairstyles, and thatā€™s especially true for onis I think. Maybe not only from different regions but different eras as wellā€¦ They have a bit of population in the very north of the western continent, so I like to think some of the ogres live in very cold, maybe even subarctic or arctic conditions. The point Iā€™m getting at here is that within a race, culture/ethnicity like with Kabru will also influence them it isnā€™t just tallmen as a whole, different communities will have differing beauty standards. The oni history blurb and third row first collumn portrait remind me of Mongolia (which historically was a lot of different nomadic communities with different cultural identities as well. Something something, the oni empire experienced a decline and then tallmen overpowered them, and now theyā€™re governed and split apart by stronger social classes & slavers and the richness of culture was hurt for it especially if they have no real community left of their own), but obviously many of them are dressed and look rather japanese, makes sense considering living in/close to Wa, and first row second collumn portrait reminds me of ainus which again would be logical considering geographical placement, though Iā€™m far from an expert. Interestingly, ainus are indigenous people both in Japan and Russia- Perhaps the northern western continent ogres are meant to be closer to Russia than Canada like I imagined? Ok tangent over.
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The kobold sheet says theyā€™re especially sought after as slaves because theyā€™re "adorable", but locally in the western continent theyā€™re repeatedly said to be seen more as ferocious and dangerous. The dehumanization is most apparent in the first comic below. The language barrier and conflicts no doubt worsen this by a lot, but I think itā€™d be hard to deny that their canine appearance makes the dehumanization worse. "Theyā€™re ferocious beasts, theyā€™re demihumans, they canā€™t be communicated with". Most characters in Dungeon Meshiā€™s world are desensitized to slavery and most characters are prejudiced one way or another. Point being, kobolds are fully removed from human beauty standards, but no doubt for kobolds, other kobolds are more beautiful than humans are. Theyā€™re assumed to be an uncivilized bunch, but just like any other people they like to adorn themselves with nice clothes and jewelry and keep themselves clean and groomed; they too take care of their appearance and take pride in it.
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And the orcs! This one we have the most contact with in canon, with not only there being foreigner characters from the ethnicity or hearsay of their homelands and culture but full on contact with a community. We get to see up close what theyā€™re like and what they think, and of course in turn theyā€™re our introduction to how demihumans are harshly looked down upon and seen as inferior, less human and thus less worth valuing and less dignified. Itā€™s text that orcs are ugly to most humans and humans are ugly to most orcs. Since I judged they didnā€™t need accompanying explanation the pictures showing this are in the pictures dump at the top.
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God forbid you sell vegetables to orcs my god- but then again they do basically mandate adventurers to kill any orcs they come across so yeah the world isnā€™t above that even a little bit.
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So yes, my main point here is simply that orcs are yet another evidence of the physical ideal of "human" being an important beauty standard for human societies globally.
Izutsumi is our glimpse at how beastkins are treated in the world, and in Wa at least thatā€™s ending up being caged and mistreated as part of a freak show. Izutsumi hates her appearance and wishes she could leave the feline part of herself behind to only be human. Interestingly, not that we have a lot of info on them so this is very much a take with a grain of salt situation, but there seems to be less stigma around artificial beastmen, those who can shapeshift at will. The main difference is of course appearance, that most of the time they simply look like average tattooed humans. Artificially creating humans is an illegal practice, and no doubt itā€™s not well regarded, but being able to hide that makes them less likely to be discriminated at any moment, or even just discriminated less intensely. Again, looking human is important, not only for belonging but for safetyā€™s sake. Beauty standards rule the world with harsh hands.
Mermaids and fishmen
Ok weā€™re done now right? Right-! But waitā€¦ Waitā€¦! Mermaids and fishmen are said to be demihumans too, special separate cases to the main three demihuman species however, which is also represented by how mermaids and fishmen both are in the Adventurerā€™s Bible chapter Monsters meanwhile ogres, kobolds and orcs are in the chapter World. Theyā€™re an interesting topic because they directly tackle this topic, not only in a meta way for the readers but also making characters themselves struggle to quantify their humanity with the goal of knowing wether they should be eaten or not, especially Chilchuck. Chilchuckā€™s "is it really just a matter of feelings?" mini arc.
The party asking themselves "Should we eat this?" is very common, and often they end up playing a little loose on morality, like eating the red dragonā€™s meat despite it having digested Falin. Not unsimilarly Marcille freaks out a little over the vegetables they harvested having been grown with fertilizer, aka largely human poo. Half of the motivation of "should we eat this perhaps sentient creature" is out of consideration and compassion, but more strongly and more often, the characters struggle with a sense of taboo at eating something too closely related to humans. Even, feel uncomfortable because of the deepseated impression that eating it would dirty them in some way. Cannibalism is an interesting and relevant topic in many ways, but what I want to mention is how thereā€™s the more or less universal belief that committing cannibalism inherently taints you as a person and turns you more monstrous, morally but also literally depending on some myths such as w*ndigos and onis in some cases, like in Touge Oni. Marcille and Izutsumi both express a fear of eating monsters turning them monstrous. Maybe this is part of what Laios was hoping for, honestly. There are two fears here, if eating a demihuman monster constitutes as cannibalism or not, and so, will eating it taint you because itā€™s a human, or will eating it taint you because itā€™s a monster? You are what you eat, until itā€™s a little too literal. You morally are the means by which you get your food, and you physically are the result of your nutrition. Dungeon meshi manages to mix an exploration of humanity with the theme of food because our relationship to food is very deep and complex, psychological as much as physiological.
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In the end, the characters sort of shrug and accept that theyā€™ll never quite understand the world of mermaids and fishmen and how they operate, and what that means about them. Laios is the one always challenging these notions other characters take for granted, itā€™s not obvious to Laios why people are softer on mammals than other animals and plants, itā€™s not obvious to Laios why people would be afraid of eating a monster just because itā€™s a monster, itā€™s not obvious to Laios why some food is gross to Marcille but not fish testicles, itā€™s not obvious to Laios why you should immediately regard orcs and kobolds badly.
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"Cows are probably closer to humans [aka closer to being human] than fishmen, though theyā€™re clearly intelligent", dehumanization to lessen empathy towards them to be able to eat them. Meanwhile, mermaids seemingly have a less noticeable "civilization" or intelligence, they hunt in groups like fishmen, but they donā€™t use tools and such, they feel more primal and similarly instinct driven, and yetā€¦ Do they attract sympathy more? Mammals, humans, is it because of their nature or because of their appearance?
Both the nature and appearance of fish are ones people donā€™t typically sympathize with. "Fish donā€™t feel pain", "goldfish only have 5 seconds of memory", "itā€™s okay to keep fish in completely empty bowls too small for them until they die from it", so many lies and misconceptions exist that make people less considerate of them. The average lifespan of a goldfish isĀ 10-15 years, the record is 43, but theyā€™re not seen as lives that really matter, so a lot of goldfish die in a few weeks of bad aquarium conditions. Thereā€™s a lot of research on animals evolving to look cute and appealing to make some predators want to kill them less and parents want to care for them more, including humans. First good google research result gave me this credible short article on the topic. In Chilchuckā€™s weighing wether a fishman is far enough from being human or not to eat, "face is 100% fish" is his biggest argument for it being more acceptable. The face, the most important thing for empathy and recognition. The face, the decapitated fishman one that falls into his hands next chapter.
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To quote @room-surprise: "Chilchuck can't explain why it's wrong to eat the merpeople, even though it's NOT complicated. But the problem is Chilchuck would have to accept and acknowledge that the merpeople might be people? And that's outside of the worldview he passively believes, so he can't just say that, because he doesn't think that's true. But that IS why he "feels" it's wrong. And it's all you'd need to say for Laios to understand! But it would require acknowledging that maybe the way they're treating and talking about the merpeople is wrong."
The idea of Chil not being able to grapple with how maybe some monsters are more humans than they seem, him who had been an advocate of half-foots rights, half-foots who get undermined and treated as inconsequential sacrificesā€¦ Grappling with how he could relate to the merpeopleā€™s situation almost, and pulling away because itā€™s so existentially horrifying. I do not want to see myself into an hostile fish-faced warrior I canā€™t communicate with. In a way this also relates to Chilchuck being the only party member who doesnā€™t see Izutsumi as a cat in the relationship chart, the only one to treat her with full human dignity. He knows the struggle to be taken seriously, he knows being infantilized and he knows what itā€™s like to be treated as less than human.
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Below, you will see Chilchuck draws the line of where they become not okay to eat as when "they already look like mermaids". Above, thereā€™s speculation that the algae hair is partly to mimic "the mermaidsā€™ beautiful female form". Is it because mermaids are their enemies and the ambiguity might give them extra seconds to attack or flee? Is it to trick adventurers instead? Itā€™s striking to me that this is what works, with the adventurers. Sure the fishmen are intelligent, but explicitly here, what makes them no longer acceptable prey to Chilchuck is that they look close enough to a mermaid, close enough to human. Mermaids who of course themselves have this form to entice and seduce and charm the adventurers they prey on. Chilchuck considers the intelligence due to the tridents, but most of his internal debate centers around their appearance, and the image of a fishman skewered sickens him. The power of mimicryā€¦ Mimic being a beautiful human woman. Mimic being cute, babies being wired to make us feel protective and softened. Half-foots, sometimes pretending to be children for scams or help or avoiding trouble.
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The mermaids are only concerned by their differences and not their similarities, and have no trouble treating the fishmen as food rather than peers. To an outside perspective like us, the audience, all these categorization of "more human" and "less human" between onis and orcs and elves and tallmen etc seem stupid and unfounded, but to the people living in Dungeon Meshiā€™s world, elves may as well be mermaids while onis are fishmen, not alike at all, unworthy of empathy and thus fine to eat.
Ultimately, Dungeon Meshi promotes unity. Itā€™s about seeking to understand the unknown and the misunderstood, the dehumanized and the inhuman. It shows the good that comes from seeking to understand what you do not, even when thatā€™s one another.
#Dungeon meshi#dunmeshi lore#Compilation#Okā€¦ I think I didnā€™t forget anything. Feel free to point things out or discuss in comments and tags though#Delicious in dungeon#Ik i strayed a bit from the central topic but who knew beauty standards and discrimination went hand in hand /s#Ask me about my dunmeshi kobold ocā€¦ā€¦ā€¦.. ask me about my dunmeshi ocsā€¦ā€¦..#Can we give body neutrality an amen#Tw racism#cw racism#The ā€œwhat are you talking about Marcille. Senshi is handsomeā€ gag has 2 layers then doesnā€™t it#Like obvi Marcille is noticing the difference between shapeshifter and og senshi rather than making a judgement#But the elf being *the* one to notice and say ā€œSenshi looks more handsome than usual thatā€™s weird??ā€ may very well be an effect of living#with elven beauty standards yeah#Meta#I wanted to make a post on the half-foots body type thing and the oni mongolian coding and the chilchuck merman thing so#Three in one šŸŽµ why take the initiative when you can just wait for the tiniest opportunity#Chilchuck tims#Analysis#dunmeshi fishmen#Itā€™s very interesting to think of how there being so many people *that* physically different affects politics and beauty standards#Mimicsā€¦. Pacing my room. Pondering. Mimicsā€¦ā€¦ā€¦#The burnout is over yippee#Ok but for reals though race is largely a social construct. Critical race theory good. Go read Distant Utopia by Ryoko Kui#ā€˜Yeah sure.ā€™ < person who thought sheā€™d just be grabbing like 3 pics and had no clue sheā€™d become hyperfocused for hours#The classic societal obsession for classifying and exaggerating physical traits into boxes of innate goodness vs evilā€¦
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idekwtf-is-happening Ā· 20 days ago
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So long as the other option is a woman, America has no problem voting a felon into office
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hometownrockstar Ā· 11 months ago
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I hate the argument abt when you say customizable games should have fat people and people say "well it would be harder to model or scale clothes to fit" cause like i guess youre technically right, but why then are fat people not seen as worth the effort to actually code and model these things? Someone else said this abt baldur's gate but they said "in an RPG like that game shouldn't the priority be on allowing people to express themselves as much as possible with designing their character?" Also like fat people aren't a rarity or minority, even if all media ever wants to give people the impression that the world is 99% skinny people with maybe one or two fat villains or sidekick friends.
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kitties
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