i think part of what makes so many people just flock to dungeon meshi as well is that it's also a story involving an autistic main character, who actually IS the main character
Because many stories will have an autistic character in them and then the story is more about how all the neurotypical people AROUND the autistic character deal with the characters autism, and the autistic character ends up as a side-character in a story that's supposed to be ABOUT them.
But in dungeon meshi, Laios especially is so much the main character!
And i know he's not the only one, and not the only autistic character obv, and i know the story isn't about just him alone OR his autism...
But we get Laios' perspective. On just about everything.
The story is, in the roughest terms, about the party venturing into the dungeon in order to save Falin, who got eaten by the red dragon. They're on a time constraint and have no money or equipment except what they literally have on their backs. That's the story.
Another author, a worse author, probably wouldn't have made Laios the party leader. A worse author would've relegated Laios to the "weird, awkward newbie who's excited about monsters but doesn't have the slightest clue or experience with them" who's job would've been to cite fun facts about whatever monster they encounter from some book he carries around, and the main interactions between him and the party would've been them yelling at him or calling him weird, to the point where you're wondering what this characters purpose even is in the story beyond comic relief.
And I'm so glad we didn't get this.
Instead of a story that emphasizes how "weird and unlikable" this weird character is, we get Laios being the partys leader, who, yes, is weird, but also competent and knowledgable and skilled and also is still a full character, with thoughts and feelings of his own, who actually speaks his mind and interacts with others on equal footing, who defends himself when he KNOWS he isn't in the wrong.
Laios and Shuros confrontation is both shocking, and also a huge breath of fresh air.
(Also, i know that "Shuro" isn't his real name but i can't remember his real name and I can't be bothered to look it up rn)
Shuro tells Laios to learn to read the room. A worse author would've had Laios apologize to Shuro for his own incompetence, but instead of meekly accepting that accusation, Laios throws it back in Shuros own face. That Shuro should've just been direct and honest with Laios when he KNEW that Laios wasn't getting it, instead of just playing along and letting that resentment fester.
And Laios is not only shouting it out, speaking his mind, and refusing to be treated as lesser than anyone else just because he can't "read the room", but he's also portrayed as RIGHT!
Shuro would've have had to put up with Laios, whom he didn't like, but whom he let believe that they were friends, if he had just TOLD Laios he didn't like him DIRECTLY.
and look, i know that there's some hints or pages or whatever you wanna call them, that Shuro is also autistic, but comes with a different background, which basically just makes him and Laios incompatible in a certain sense.
But even with all that, Shuro still had no right to fault Laios for his shortcomings, when his own shortcomings played just as much of a role in their eventual confrontation.
And the difference? Shuro KNEW how he himself AND Laios felt, but Laios only knew how he himself felt. Shuro was at an advantage in their situation, and he still faulted Laios and made him out to be this villain, who was purposely trying to make Shuro miserable, when Shuro himself NEVER opened his mouth to correct Laios!
And the thing is, Shuro isn't in the wrong for not liking Laios. Shuro is in the wrong for blowing up at Laios without EVER even giving him the chance to correct his behaviour!
And Laios KNOWS this, and he REFUSES to just apologize for something that wasn't even his fault! How could he possibly have known Shuro didn't like him, when Shuro never gave him any kind of indication of that fact?
And that's just it, isn't it?
Because I know I've experienced this kind of situation, even if exact memories don't come to mind, and I know other autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people have experienced this kind of thing. Of someone whom they were just having a normal conversation with or whom they considered a friend, just randomly blowing up at them for no conceivable reason.
From our perspective, the other person just randomly decided they didn't like us anymore, didn't care about us anymore and wanted to be rid of us, or decided we were suddenly just evil, and they got mad at us, yelled at us, called us names, and then just left.
And we're left confused and sad and, having no other information to go off of, because none was given to us, are bound to come to the conclusion that there's something wrong with us. We're just not likeable and any kindness from other people coming our way is just them being too polite to say anything until they've decided they had enough of us and abandon us. Because they never liked us. They were just too polite to say anything until they couldn't take us anymore.
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More selkieverse worldbuilding time. Fun fact: all selkies are bound to one of the four classical elements (fire, earth, air, water). The specific element varies by individual, but it tends to run in families - due, largely, to the fact that the creature that your pelt belongs to tends to heavily affect how inclined members of a strain may be to being a given element. The best-known, of course, are pinnipeds, who are almost always Water aligned, but marsupial selkies are known for frequently being aligned to Earth, and nearly every single avian strain out there will trend strongly towards Air. Fire tends to be rarest, with no consistent lines, turning up only occasionally in individual selkies.
When aligned to an element, a selkie will naturally be drawn to that thing - Water often produces an impossibly strong draw to water, both the sea and any other bodies of water that may be available to a selkie. Earth might be drawn underground, spelunking or tunneling and going ever deeper until some Earth selkies may wind up not seeing the sun for weeks or months at a time. Air, of course, produces a longing for the air and for flight - and Fire, a draw towards heat and flame which has been well-known to lead to disaster.
Beyond the longing for the elemend one is bound to, one's alignment also tends to offer resistance to one's element - Earth, for example, tends to make a selkie far more resilient against blunt force than other members of its species and offer a strong resistance to the psychological impact of darkness and claustrophobia, and Water selkies are often heavily resistant to both water pressure and any form of drowning.
With most forms of selkie, a strong presence of their aligned element will also tend to make them a bit more difficult to harm - while not offering an offensive advantage, a seal in water tends to simply be harder to hit, a bird in the air will find more ways to dodge you in the air than you knew existed, and trying to chase a weasel into a set of tunnels will have it finding more exits than you ever knew existed.
The final thing that an element affects generally isn't evident until a selkie dies. Upon a selkie's death, the bug body will generally decompose into its associated element within less than a day - though the dead sealskin will remain, the resultant body is rarely stable enough to be formally recognized as a body if you don't know precisely what to look for. Though the exact material varies, it is always tied to their core element - seafoam, lake water, and pond scum have all been recorded from pinnipeds of various forms, cinder and ash is common from Fire, Earth has been known to crumble to sand and leave bug-shaped stone formations in equal part, and Air has the disquieting tendancy to not leave any sign of a body at all.
Though there have been a multitude of rumors and myths suggesting that some selkies may gain the ability to fully control and manipulate their element, when sufficiently attuned to it, there is no concrete evidence to suggest it - historically, all signs have pointed to this being folklore, not fact. Primarily, this seems to stem from a quirk of selkie psychology - something similar to the call of the void.
Occasionally, particularly when near the ends of their lives (either by old age or should they have the time to feel it after being dealt a mortal wound), selkies are known to seek out any font of their element that they can. Though poorly researched, there are enough anecdotes to construct an idea of the phenomenon. Selkies affected by this will commonly claim that the thing they're seeking out is "calling to them" - an intensification of the pull that element normally has on a given selkie, and an urge to follow it deeper - the bottom of the ocean, the centre of the earth, the very highest part of the sky, the burning heart of a flame.
Should they listen, and follow the call, they rarely come back - losing themselves to the pull of their own essence's wish to join with the greater body of its element. Unlike other methods of death, this does not generally leave a pelt behind, as most selkies will want to bring their skin with them to seek out whatever lies at the other end of this call, and thus the pelt will also be recombined into the core of whatever force of nature they've gone to seek.
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