#god my tags are so long

[tofixtheshadows]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.

Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.

Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.

Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.

I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.

He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).

First, we get this:

Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.

They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.

It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.

We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.

What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?

He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.

In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.

Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!

...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.

Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.

And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.

I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.

And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.

Meals are the privilege of the living.

[me-beef]

@strangeravatar made a great point

i was gonna focus on the spike-hotboxing-celestia aspect but i got distracted somewhere along the way and i think i forgot what joke i was trying to make

but dont you think its interesting how many guards of the exact same color/body type she's managed to accrue?? i do

ooohh you want to go look at our stickers so bad

[bloominglegumes]

i love normal guys doomed by the narrative

[ink-the-artist]

The 7 Deadly Sins

bonus art: i felt like the gay wrath drawing looked a bit like an old gay liberation poster :)

[artrealla]

[crabussy]

TEN GAZILLION PONY ATTACK!!!!! this is a part 2 of my subtle animation-friendly redesigns!!! I only made changes that could have happened in the show. hair gradients can be seen in cadence, and white markings on sunburst, for example.

feel free to ask me questions about the design choices!! (just mentioning: I love the CMC's actual cutie marks, just wanted to try designing individual ones this time around!) Part 1 with the mane 6!

[scattered-winter]

finally made rwby meme slides. after like a literal fucking decade

[winkle-pickers]

Covenant

[kkoct-ik]

hermit+ pairing request doodle dump of varying quality

from top to bottom: grumbo, treebark, pearl/cleo, scardubs x3, mumbo/cub, (treebark)

[otiksimr]

Some Yveltal sketches (curated from my main blog, there's some lore in the tags if you're interested.)

[troutreznor]

text transcribed under readmore

SMALL DOG SYNDROME 

small dog you’re so funny when you snap small dog you’re so funny when you shake small dog you’re so bad when you bark small dog you never learned the rules

small dog lays flat on the floor  and sighs and whines  while it waits for you to come back from wherever you go  all day small dog doesn’t know if you’re coming home small dog hides under the bed to puke does it quiet eats its shame before you ever smell it  small dog’s bark is worse than its bite  small dog you are so funny when you bite  small dog it’s so funny when you’re mad  so by all means pick it up throw it around  lock it in a cage while you laugh small dog you are so funny when you cry

small dog can’t remember being a wolf  can’t remember being big  howling in harpstring harmony  like a plucked and quivering note in a catacomb  sleeping in a warm pile of bodies in a dry place that smells like family  the taste of fresh hot blood and wet bone iron fire honey salt 

small dog run free beneath the moon in your dreams

small dog is so happy you’re home!! small dog loves you!!!

JMGD

[heartorbit]

find another role, carry on the show

[wolfythewitch]

It's up wahhoo

[hinamie]

completely innocuous vash sheet :) fr practice

[samglyph]

Careful boys, you’ve got a tail.

Commissions and Tip Jar

[canine-economy]

Daisuke’s Death and the Invisible Abuse of “Privileged” Children

tw: extensive discussions of child emotional abuse

Another mouthwashing text analysis before I post any polished art? Shocker. But I really really appreciate the reception on my Swansea post, especially as a new account! This Daisuke-centric analysis is gonna be a quick one (< this was a lie. long read ahead!) but he is a character who resonates deeply personally with me as a victim of abuse that looked very much like his own. I do plan on doing a larger analysis of his character, but the abridged version necessary for this piece goes as follows:

Daisuke’s treatment in the narrative—both his implied home life and Jimmy’s taking advantage of him to go into the vent—is another one of this game’s excellent portrayals of normalized (and thus invisibilized) abuse. Children are often cited as one of the most vulnerable classes of people, if not the most vulnerable (I acknowledge that Daisuke is not a child, but Mouthwashing implies that this narrative of his inadequacy has persisted throughout his upbringing and, to this day, he is dictated tasks and lacks independence, treated like a dependent. His youth is also an undisputed feature of his character and, most importantly, the cast treats him like a kid). Children’s dependency on adults and our willingness as a society to accept that the adults in their lives provide the most objective perspective on these young people renders them particularly prone to abuse easily swept under the rug or “justified” by wardens who possess the power to dictate the narrative. Jimmy’s engagement with Daisuke is an extension of the latter’s vulnerability. The co-pilot’s assertion that “he’ll be fine (…) mommy and daddy have him covered” at the birthday party represents a deference to Daisuke’s parents as adequate caretakers who will ensure his longevity and comfort on the basis of their wealth. And we know that Daisuke’s parents think the same—the Q&As reveal that they believe they are doing the best to secure their son a good future. However, the same Q&As indicate that they don’t actually engage with or understand Daisuke’s interests and that their approach to parenting him is entirely understood through their personal beliefs, not those of their son. And Daisuke clearly carries that quite close to his heart. He seems to struggle with identity and acceptance, seeking validation in the form of praise. Daisuke is defined through what he can do for others and not what he independently brings to the table, because that has never mattered where he grew up. The consequences of his parents’ failure to meet his emotional needs ultimately conditioned Daisuke to be perfectly available to be taken advantage of in a corporate setting defined by capitalist attitudes and hierarchies.

While it’s not concrete to say that Daisuke grew up in an emotionally abusive household, it is most important that we cannot dismiss the possibility and that his behavior as the outcome of some obvious degree of neglect is well-aligned with this theory. Moreover, the young man who comes out of that household is easily targeted by Jimmy’s abusive tendencies as a direct result of what he internalizes growing up. Daisuke is apparently financially well-off (contextually we can’t be sure if Daisuke’s family is upper class, middle class, or somewhere in between), and with that comes privilege. Even the way he packs—multiple personalized outfits, entertainment devices, etc—reveal that he’s used to certain comforts and hasn’t yet acclimated to the harsh expectations of companies like the Pony Express. But, especially where young people are concerned, it is all too easy to allow this privilege to act as a curtain between abuse and the outside world. We can acknowledge the privilege and also recognize that it benefits his parents much more than it benefits him as a young person.

Emotional abuse is complex and extremely damaging and Daisuke *does* show symptoms of at least being constantly verbally accosted and emotionally neglected by his parents to the point of permanently warping his sense of self. It also generated his overreliance on authority figures to tell him how to keep himself safe in their world. His mother apparently insulted him to his face (“such a slacker, she said”, and being reprimanded for being too talkative [from the Daisuke teaser]), and a lot of his negative self talk (“total screw-up”, “fuck up”, etc) is reminiscent of how people define themselves by parroting what they are called after internalizing consistent externally-imposed definitions of their identity. While these are not surefire indicators of abuse and I am not willing to diagnose a situation as abusive purely predicated on these factors, the behaviors Daisuke exhibits as a result share many commonalities with those of victims of childhood abuse. In fact, just about every time Daisuke speaks about himself in Mouthwashing, he mentions his failures and his work. It’s not lost on me that the teaser for the whole character is him pondering his mother and how she might not recognize him if he isn’t noisy and obnoxious. He personally puts a lot of stock in their assessment of him as lazy and annoying, but nevertheless tries to accomplish learning through the internship. Furthermore, Daisuke takes on a lot of his mother’s pain, hoping she doesn’t blame herself for the negative things that happen to him (even though in the same scene he reveals that she’s the reason he’s on the stranded Tulpar at all), indicating that he has taken responsibility for the feelings of people in his life even when those people are not his to care for and even bear responsibility for his pain.

Now in young adulthood, Daisuke rarely seems to have any sense of self beyond his parents and his work aside from one-off quips about baseball and babes. It suggests that he has always had to prioritize his parents’ desires growing up to avoid being treated unfairly and even cruelly, stunting his self-discovery. In abusive situations, your understanding of safety and your pursuit thereof are radically impacted and we see this manifest in Daisuke’s continuing willingness to accept those in command as the pinnacle of safety over what one might consider logical, personal acts of self-preservation. He equates safety with obedience, and I contend that that equivalence suggests a lot about how his parents reprimanded deviance from their plans. And not to be that guy, but it is kind of outright cruel to dump your utterly inexperienced teenager-to-early-20-something on a 1 year, no contact, unsafe space voyage in a failing industry knowing that he doesn’t have the necessary skillset yet. That’s what his parents do when they aren’t satisfied with his progress, and it’s intense and disproportionate and alarming! Especially for the dependent! They toss him into the deep end of the corporate machine and insist he learns to swim in such an oppressive, stifling atmosphere. It’s no surprise that he drowns, especially when he himself can’t recognize this as an unrealistic expectation and tackles it with everything he’s got because his parents are theoretically always right about what he needs. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that normalized emotional abuse from the home and how it maps onto a victim’s adult life is a topic Mouthwashing would endeavor to touch on, because visibilizing invisible abuses of power in heteropatriarchal capitalist schemes is arguably the central undertaking of the game.

I don’t think Daisuke has evil parents or anything, rather that what we accept as “good parenting” and “good mentorship” is often negligent with regard to emotional needs and can easily become a source of heavy trauma for the children and mentees if that emotional aspect is stretched too thin in the pursuit of success. Not all abuse is intentional, and the dev Q&As imply that Daisuke’s parents thought they were sincerely investing in his future. They cared, just not in the best way for his wellbeing. Because capitalism emphasizes the individualistic pursuit of success above all else, it’s no wonder that a parent would think that the best thing they can give their kid is an avenue to prosper financially. But in doing so, Daisuke’s parents deny him the opportunity to define himself, to experience agency, and to build up confidence. Effectively, they create a young man so vulnerable to abuse by higher-ups (a manifestation of abuse that is often intentional at the systemic level) that he decides to climb into that vent at Jimmy’s discretion under the pretense that he will make somebody proud. Because that’s how Daisuke has been raised to understand himself and his place—the presumed screw-up boy as a default, making you proud by doing the right thing, who has learned to pursue that achievement to avoid the condescension and disproportionate backlash (e.g. the internship itself) that comes with failure. Everything circles back to his parents’ expectations that he makes for a good worker. When the cocktail knocks Swansea out, Daisuke makes an offhand comment about getting a bad reference—even in the most dire of circumstances, he can’t stop thinking about their capitalistic expectations for his “good” future.

I find that Daisuke really is such a good subtle portrayal of how parents with resources can get away with emotionally stunting their children because we perceive their ability to put a roof over their heads, food on their plate, etc as adequate parenting and even a privilege for the child when it should be the bare minimum. Jimmy certainly buys into it, and even some of the fandom parrots that, really and truly believing Daisuke is some good-for-nothing kid who doesn’t try hard when all we see is him working, including climbing into the vents to try and help despite not being assigned the work (foam scene, not his death). I find this reception shows how inclined we are to accept those narratives of the privileged child’s inadequacy before we address the parent for not fulfilling a child’s emotional needs, which are just as important if not more than the material.

To wrap this up with a quick discussion of the symbolism of his death in the context of the emotional abuse of children (which is the reason I made this whole post but I can’t talk about this guy without going off): Daisuke getting so badly injured trying to do what’s right is a very physical manifestation of the suffering he was already going through. It is the pain of constantly people-pleasing and of holding it all in when he’s lashed out at. He gets injured at all in the pursuit of appeasing Jimmy and (theoretically) Swansea, both of whom he blindly trusts despite how they treat him because he has always been expected to just adhere to the adults with authority in his life. Being talked down to by them is not new and has never been a reason to question their judgement. Daisuke sees this as a product of his own inadequacy as implied by other people, and not of external cruelty. He was raised not to question the system for fear of repercussions.

Jimmy is perfectly situated to coerce him into a dangerous situation because Daisuke has never been taught to say no. The safest option for a scared child is to trust their mentors, and an adult Daisuke does just that. Even Swansea’s teachings of safety are dismantled by Jimmy’s tactical use of captainhood to break the camel’s back. Authority. Daisuke must always listen to authority. Jimmy knows the vent isn’t safe. Swansea tells him directly and he observes the foam incident (if from a distance). For as much as he acts like he cares about taking responsibility for Daisuke’s safety, his individualistic pursuit of “fixing” things manifests in Jimmy again taking advantage of a vulnerable person on the ship. Jimmy doesn’t reconcile Daisuke’s eagerness to help with lessons on safety like Swansea does, but rather uses it only when it benefits him. Daisuke is taught by his upbringing to accept this kind of treatment—for safety, defer to the leader in the room even if it hurts and you don’t want to do it (just like he didn’t want to be on the Tulpar in the first place).

Then, once the intern is out of the vent and mortally wounded, Jimmy applies the mouthwash (a product to be sold, hauled in the interest of the corporation) to “help” sanitize the wounds. But the sugar content negates medical utility and only worsens the pain. We can interpret this as the application of material privilege, “sweetness”, that wasn’t actually any help at all to solve the deep wounds left by emotional pains. Mouthwash rids you of the bad taste but doesn’t kill all the underlying germs. One could argue further that in this scene, the mouthwash is specifically representative of the Pony Express internship: a rare stepping stone in the corporate hustle gained through privilege and presented as a boon. Like the mouthwash, the internship is imposed on Daisuke to try and “help” him succeed and be better, but it only elevates the pain by irritating the wounds and ends in his agonizing demise. However, this fine-tuned comparison isn’t necessary to my point. I find the broad implications of the mouthwash as an antiseptic immensely representative of parents and caretakers who don’t seem abusive to the outside world but who are actually subversively hurting their children and ultimately conditioning them to be victimized by capitalist attitudes. Our deference to material comforts and corporate opportunities as indicators of wellness renders us blind to where caretakers fail to address the emotional needs of young people. At the end of the day, Daisuke is still killed by the values his parents have instilled in him. It’s always the “captain’s” (literal or figurative) orders that seal the deal and cut off any of his autonomous doubt or dictation (for example, his desire to listen to Swansea and not go in the vent). His parents’ symbolic and saccharine gestures mean very little in the scheme of creating a person who can survive the pressures of the “real world” when malicious actors (JIMMY.) and the capitalist enterprise as a whole bear down on the cracks of an emotionally taxing youth.

A/N: Maybe I’m thinking about all of this too hard, but the beauty of Mouthwashing is that I’m never quite sure that’s the case as this game feels so deliberate. Anyway, as somebody who has clinically diagnosed PTSD stemming from childhood, this has always been a really important analysis to posit and I finally found the time to put it into words. I feel like Daisuke as a symbol is often overlooked by the fandom. He’s enjoyed, yes, but not really broken down like the others are. That diminishing of his importance and his feelings about the situation also feels like a symptom of his age. But that’s neither here nor there—like I said, I believe I could do a much more in-depth analysis of Daisuke as a victim of subtle abuse but this will have to do for now. A lot of my major points have been made, anyway! Perhaps video format would be best for something longer-form. 🌺