#no clue what it looks like
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parts one and two to painting your own santa fe step one : blue (use sparingly) step two : pink (use lots of it, and make sure it goes over the blue bits, also make sure not to let the blue bit dry so that you can give the 3d illusion)
#santa fe painting from newsies#newsies#i'm trying so hard#ive got so many reference images#im also gonna paint the boot on the back#painting#art#but seriously im so scared its gonna be bad#but its fine#its my personal santa fe#i ain't even been to santa fe#no clue what it looks like#i know it's altitude tho
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alongside someone like you
#my art#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#yuji itadori#megumi fushiguro#itafushi#fushiita#fanart#jjk fanart#jujutsu kaisen fanart#jjk spoilers#jjk manga spoilers#jjk 266#jjk leaks#i feel like i say this after every piece at this point but iam once again. SO TIRED#collapses dead#cries i did it again i ws up all last night finishing the first 1.....tht one took *counts* 8 hours...#got 3 hrs sleep n picked up where i left off on th second one at 8 in the morning#2nd one absolutely ruined me n made the third one feel like a herculean task . even tho its literally just them on a bed#rooms....KITCHENS......beloathed!!!! public enemy no1 kill on sight!!!!!!#hell is real and they make u render different rooms of houses from scratch no perspective tool no clue what ur doing#n they see how long it takes u to completely lose it#clipped yuujis bangs back tho n i thought tht was cute . silver linings#1ST ONE WAS SO FUN ALSO idk if its bc outdoor environments r forgiving or bc i had more energy n was fresh faced n hopeful or what#but it is by far my favourite. once again pulled out nearly every nature brush in my arsenal#third one meh simple safe soft w/e i was just so exhausted after th kitchen tht working on it was such a slog#oh ya i added a bunch of scars 2 yuuji's arms n lobbed off his ring finger sighs the yuuji injury list (tm) grows every minute#also HINA USE YELLOW CHALLENGE CLEAR golden hour in2 sunset my beloved <333 easy warm light + safe homey Peaceful vibes...bless#cries eternally thinking abt them let us have this let THEM have this pls thank u#ok i need to not look at these anymore take them enjoy my contribution 2 the domestic itfs pile
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fire cannot kill a dragon BITCH
#a song of ice and fire#game of thrones#asoiaf#got#mine.png#i have no clue what dany era this is i just wanted to see if i could get down how i think book dany looks just like. in general#results are inconclusive#also ive been doing like exclusively multimedia w either sketching or doing full colored pencil first and then taking a picture#on portrait mode ☝🏻#and finishing the rest in procreate so if things look weird thats like#why#im figuring stuff out lmao#and like! where ae the highlights on her coming from?? idk but surely not that fire#daenerys targaryen#adding tags bc my tags are my safe space and if ur reading them then. ur in this with me i locked the door i secured the chains..#just realized that lowkey with how daenerys is described as being just like#ethereally pretty as per the targ pretty gene#i sort of picture her face as like#one of those insanely pretty girls u see on tiktok and they just like naturally have a disney princess face#no makeup bc their skin is perfect and their lashes are naturally super thick and long#thats dany to me#this face ate an entire raw horse heart <3
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Professor Volkarin
#Dragon Age#Dragon Age: the Veilguard#DAtV#Emmrich Volkarin#MSPaint Draw#Aaaaaaand Done!#vincent price lookin motherfucker#got absolutely no clue what the bottom of his coat looks like ahhhhh well#so excited for what the old man has in store for us 😊
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Olive Branch
Wrong Move
#bad touch... 2! anyway to save everyone from a novella in the tags i will be replying to this post afterward with some directors commentary#EDIT: go look in the replies for a link to my director's commentary with bonus thumbnails#this has been sat around for like 2-3 months unfinished for reasons i will expand upon there. lol#isat spoilers#isat#isat fanart#isat siffrin#isat loop#isat isabeau#isafrin#isiloop#sifloop#sloops#sloopis#in stars and time#in stars and time fanart#lucabyteart#emplore u to not look at the anatomy too hard here because i basically took the executive decision to IGNORE THAT SHIT to get this finished#so its absolutely scuffed as is the spacial reasoning of the whole thing. theyre just laid next to each other in a bed/on a bedroll#just bc i have no fucking clue how clear any of that is. like at all#also i do promise that most of the time when im bashing the dolls together in my head it is like 90% yay what if they healed and were happy#but like. im not drawing that. lol. everyone else can go do that. im here to articulate concepts rather than make nice emotions#so . priorities. anyway sorry isabeau being tied up in this unfinished larger comic meant i didnt draw u for ages elsewhere#theres enough isafrin out there i dont need to contribute
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Couldn’t stop thinking about Dust being able to pass as Classic. So I had an idea where Dust replaces Classic in a timeline and steals(?) his partner.
He gets conflicted when he starts actually caring about you… But denial is an easy road to take when there’s seemingly no consequences to your actions.
The reveal i guess. Most normal reaction to learning your partners been replaced for god knows how long and you have no clue where he is.
Now that I think about it I might’ve gotten some inspiration from that one chapter of IJAG by @htsan (iykyk) only a lil bit tho
(Full rambling of the idea + extra sketch cuz i liked the expression) ↓↓
I originally wanted y/n to notice the differences instantly but i think it would be angstier if they didn’t and only noticed like months later >:3
#hoodies are hard#i need to practice more#hrmmm#also i guess the new sona is staying#lol#theres much more to this but basically dust gets attached#he was not prepared to get attached (dumbass lmao)#you may ask ‘oh he can just kill them why does he look so scared?’#hes scared of losing them#hes selfish#theres so much angst potential here hehehoo#the idea of sans just being trapped in a basement unable to teleport out for whatever reason… help him…#dust trying to get information out of him about y/n while taunting him about how easy he is to replace#but theres also a funny side to it cuz like. ‘hey whats your favorite movie again?’ ‘Very funny sans#You know what my favorite movie is…’#Dust who has no fucking clue: ‘ehehe yeah i know im just joking’ *hes actually freaking out a bit on the inside*#sans#dust sans#my beloved#my beloathed#sans x self insert#sans x reader#sans x you#undertale au#fic idea#prolly a oneshot#leafs art#replaced au
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Tom on more of Owen's s2 improv (x)
#tom hiddleston#owen wilson#mobius#loki#lokius#mcuedit#lokiedit#marveledit#never gonna be a biggest owen fan competition as long as tom's around but i'm not mad about it 😂💖#the way we keep getting confirmation every moment of the loki series i've loved heart and soul has just been owen in the moment#including the timeslipping effect!? which he visualized perfectly before anyone even had a clue what they wanted it to look like!?????#cool cool cool feeling totally normal about how powerful his mind is 🙃#(also for the record i called all these moments out the second i saw them lmao the man's humor is just too good)#'SKIN?' you'll always be famous#marvel#owenwilsonedit#dianagifs
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DP x DC Prompt
…
There are no more heroes.
Well, okay. Rewind a bit.
Danny has been doing the hero thing for a while now. He’s had a big reveal; everyone has accepted him (including his parents), the GIW disbanded, the Anti-Ecto acts repealed, and generally, everything is going great. Some of the A-Listers are even training as junior ghost hunters to help give him a break from his rogues! (Being Ghost King makes things hectic sometimes, and he just needs the extra help. Sue him!)
The point is, literally nothing is wrong with Danny Phantom’s afterlife.
And then Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress, disappears in front of his eyes.
Danny is baffled! She’s just…gone! Valerie just popped out of existence, like she was never there. But no matter how hard he searches in the Ghost Zone, he can’t find her soul anywhere. His core isn't broken in grief. So she’s not dead. Which is good. So then, where is she?
Some of the others come forward with ideas on how to find her. A few ghosts volunteer to go out into the mortal realm, an area Danny had declared off-limits, to see if she was out there. Danny approves it. He rounds up some of the friendlier (i.e., discreet) ghosts and Amity Parkers and demolishes the outside travel ban.
So everyone spreads out, looking for their dear frenemy and teammate. But it becomes apparent very quickly that something is wrong with the rest of the world.
There are no more heroes.
Every single living superhero on the face of the Earth has just…vanished. Villains are running amok; the countries are in chaos! Some aliens are invading Earth, mythical deities are trying to take over, and society is crumbling to the ground. Everything is on the brink of collapse.
Well, Danny was still there. And so were his people. They were pretty spread out, so could they just…take up the mantles? He also knew where to find the souls of dead heroes in the Zone; surely they wouldn't mind coming out of retirement for a little bit, especially if they couldn't die again. Oh! And that skeleton army leftover from Pariah Dark's reign might be useful in repelling those invading forces.
Honestly, there were more than enough hands to go around! And with the heroes gone, Danny didn't mind letting everyone out for a little break, as long as they followed his rules. They wouldn't stop the search for the other heroes, but hopefully, when they found them, the heroes wouldn't mind Danny's intervention too much. :)
In other words:
Someone fucks up, and all of Earth's living heroes are either wished out of existence or are whisked away to some far-off realm where Danny hasn't checked yet. In the attempt to figure out what's going on, Danny lets the dead run amok over the Earth as they search for clues. The skeleton army repels the invading armies, the souls of dead heroes deal with the world leaders, and his rogues and other Amity Parkers set up shop in place of famous heroes, trying to get the cities under control again.
Basically, they just do their best to keep everything from imploding until the Justice League and others are back.
(And why is it that Danny hasn't disappeared? Well, whatever caused everyone to go poof! only affected living heroes. Anyone heroes that were dead in the first place, or even just half-dead, stayed behind.)
#pondhead blurbs#danny phantom#dpxdc#reveal gone right au#ghost king au#for plot reasons#it doesn't count if the hero had died and then came back to life#lots of heroes would still be around then#but this is me pushing the halfa!jason todd narrative work with me here he deserves the fun#deadman is there too#and he's just thriving honestly. it's so nice to be around his own kind even if the world is ending#maybe ellie is whooshed away too cause she never technically died but she took up danny's moniker when he was crowned#vlad is ecstatic cause danny put him in charge of several states while they looked for clues including Wisconsin#skulker is replacing superman and just has a shitty S painted on his chest and just eats kryptonite like candy the first time he meets Lex#Kitty and Johnny take over in gotham and sam is now the new wonder woman#idk man just stupid stuff like this#the press is flabbergasted cause the fucking KING OF GHOSTS just showed up and he's 14 and just looking for some friends#Danny: hey guys sorry about the zombies and fire i'm just here to find my coworker and lil sister and maybe the other heroes#Danny: in the meantime i'll just let my army into the mortal realm to defend it while we figure out what's going on pls don't yell at us :)#the press: how do we explain this to the justice league when they come back. how do we explain that earth was saved by a 14 year old boy-#also idk which heroes are technically dead but are still kicking so if you feel like someone deserves liminal status slap it on them idc#some villains are trying for world dominance and some are just trying to find their buddies. their fight buds. where'd they go? :(#joker gets bitch slapped by a skeleton two days in and waylon becomes bffs with wulf#danny uses the watchtower as a base of operations and it's the only thing he doesn't want to give up when the heroes are back#i have no plot ideas beyond this#i just want everyone to be baffled that an army of the dead showed up while they were gone and just made sure everything stayed cool#later danny realizes he was technically the ruler of the world for a bit since his people were everywhere keeping the villains in check
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talking only me and you
#inspired by young folks by peter bjorn and john#despite being a barista i have no clue what a coffee cup lid is supposed to look like#dont look too closely at the hands they are wonky and i gave up#aftg#andreil#the foxhole court#all for the game#tfc#nora sakavic#andrew minyard#neil josten
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I love Bai Long Ma he truly don’t gaf
#man stayed present enough to get recruited into the story then peaced tf out for the rest of it ✌️#unbothered king#bai longma#ao lie#journey to the west fanart#journey to the west#jttw ao lie#my only knowledge of drawing horses come exclusively from mlp fanart that has crossed my path#shoulda given ao lie a cutie mark lmao#my favorite part of watching the 80s tv series is seeing them go what will we do now??! whenever they encounter a land obstacle#and look the solution to half their problems standing right next to them in the form of a horse that everyone keeps forgetting is a DRAGON#he truly could not be ASSED to help 😭#just like me fr#digital art#my art#jttw sun wukong#sun wukong#dude bajie and wujing had no fucking clue the horse was even a dragon there was one episode where the horse finally spoke to chew bajie out#and he went YOU CAN TALK?!! 😭😭😭#it’s such a pity too cuz I thought the human actor for ao lie was very handsome and he showed up like a total of three times or2#this design was actually very inspired by him#he wasn’t even in the ending scene they left his ass OUTSIDE!!!!#HE GOT A REWARD BUT HE WASNT EVEN IN THE HALL TO RECEIVE IT 💀💀💀💀#oh naaah they did my boy so dirty…#I don’t think he counts as a pilgrim I think they literally just wanted him to be the horse#otherwise he woulda technically been er shixiong?#right after wukong
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Generation Loss: Season 2: yaoi loss or smth like that.
#genloss ranboo#shitpost#generation loss#genloss#genloss meme#I knew I wanted to do it between these two but i didn’t know what ranboo would say in response so I just er did this.#(I traced one of the poses blehhhhhhh)#genloss hetch#I’ve never drawn hetch before so he looks like an abomination so I’m sorry hetch fans I did him so dirty sobbing😭#Ok hear me out: lineless pixel art style to add to my collection#Yes I know Ranboo’s hair is inconsistent between frames.#I have no clue what I’m doing rn.#God I dont know anything rn my seven braincells are on vacation
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Prompt 274
You know what is fun? Baby Ghost Jason. You know what could be even more fun? Ghosts are Dragons.
Jason? Aware of none of this.
He was on comms, y’know listening and rolling his eyes at Dickwing, who used his real name, really Dick, he mocks. It’s just a stakeout, nothing new there, honestly boring when he could be blowing something up instead. It should have just been a stakeout.
Yet there’s something suddenly there, something behind him. Something that causes his hair to stand on end and his comms to spark into static like some sort of horror movie. Something, something with clawed hands with corpse-pale skin tipped in black, stained or dead or something else, tilting his head up and up and up as he’s frozen.
“A child, out here? Alone?” a voice crackles, hisses, hums, and purrs, somehow all at once, unnatural in its tone. He can’t move, he needs to move, he has to move, but it’s like the space around him has gone cold and dead, like he’s stuck in the Pits once more as claws hold his head and his vision blurs. “Sleep, child. Rest- we’ll be home soon.”
#DCxDP#DPxDC#Prompts#Ghosts are Dragons#Halfa Jason#Not Ghost King Danny#Ancient of Space Danny#Jason: If I just got kidnapped by fae because Dick said my name I’m going to riot#Halfas have human-ish forms#Danny has four arms like Pandora & floating horns like Frostbite & same scale patterns as Clockwork#He’s cooing over the little Star Core Jason#Jordan & Ellie: Oh a new sibling? You give us sibling to tease? Yessss gooood#Pariah looking down at this scrap of a teen now forced into dragon form for his health: Ah yes another grandson#Jason has no clue what’s going on he’s very overwhelmed right now#Danny was not the one to nab Jason but it’s his child now look how cute#sun core dan#moon core ellie#space core danny#star core jason#a lil celestial body flock of dragons <3#Jason is like a chonky amphiptere-esque dragon#long serpentine with feathered wings but also has legs#six chubby catterpillar-esque ones and long curved talons
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doodle because i was thinking about how dumb he'd look
#dungeon meshi spoilers#dungeon meshi#laios touden#my art#also because i see people draw his neck feathers white and stuff#which is probably not what they'd look like#NO clue what his face will actually look like though#probably more monster-y but i didn't know what.... sigh....
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my current state
#i cant wait#both bad boy and the new black butler season is out in april#levi ackerman#captain levi#levi aot#shingeki no kyojin#aot#attack on titan#levi bad boy#aot bad boy#will admit- i have no clue what the tag for this upcoming manga is#it does look like im just using it to describe levi- which I'm gonna roll with
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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 they’re so interconnected. Mercy…) so, many races and observations are only mentioned near the bottom.
Beauty standards and race in Dungeon Meshi
Not pictured there’s also how elven society is harsh on visibly disabled people, and how the demon took away Mithrun’s silver eyes and ears to take away his pride. There’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 there’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 they’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 she’s got such a good grasp on sociopolitics and geopolitics. History affects cultures and beauty standards greatly. Kui’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 dwarves’ and they end up being confused together often, so we can imagine the beauty standards are similar to dwarves’ 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, Chil’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 sheet’s depicted average half-foot, the ones on the left seem bigger. Wouldn’t it make sense though, if unlike dwarves half-foots don’t have similar naturally wide bodies, yet due to idolizing dwarves they work towards having a similar body shape/type to emulate them?
It’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 that’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 aren’t learned but innate, so I figure the half-foots wouldn’t have any problem still seeking dwarvish traits when there are no dwarves around.
There’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 Rin’s elven portrait looks very close to her elven one- Rin who is stated to be beautiful in her profile blurb. Benichidori’s extra does teach us tallmen can definitely have harsh beauty standards, but also since the text portrays her as very dysmorphic that’s likely reflected in her thoughts to a much more intense degree than is common, not an accurate strict baseline to go off. Ah, Kabru’s blue eyes are also why he and his mother lived a rough life in Kabru’s hometown, but that seems to be regional. Good post here on the topic of Kabru’s blue eyes and ties to irl history. There’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. Marcille’s section here in this essay also goes into Marcille’s struggles to fit in with the ideal image of an elf.
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 demihumans—they seem to be technically categorized as human to people not from the eastern archipelago?— 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. It’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 people’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 Inutade’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 aren’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 that’s especially true for onis I think. Maybe not only from different regions but different eras as well… 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 I’m getting at here is that within a race, culture/ethnicity like with Kabru will also influence them it isn’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 they’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 I’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.
The kobold sheet says they’re especially sought after as slaves because they’re "adorable", but locally in the western continent they’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 it’d be hard to deny that their canine appearance makes the dehumanization worse. "They’re ferocious beasts, they’re demihumans, they can’t be communicated with". Most characters in Dungeon Meshi’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. They’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.
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 they’re like and what they think, and of course in turn they’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. It’s text that orcs are ugly to most humans and humans are ugly to most orcs. Since I judged they didn’t need accompanying explanation the pictures showing this are in the pictures dump at the top.
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 isn’t above that even a little bit.
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 that’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 it’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 safety’s sake. Beauty standards rule the world with harsh hands.
Mermaids and fishmen
Ok we’re done now right? Right-! But wait… Wait…! 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 Adventurer’s Bible chapter Monsters meanwhile ogres, kobolds and orcs are in the chapter World. They’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. Chilchuck’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 dragon’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 there’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 it’s a human, or will eating it taint you because it’s a monster? You are what you eat, until it’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.
In the end, the characters sort of shrug and accept that they’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, it’s not obvious to Laios why people are softer on mammals than other animals and plants, it’s not obvious to Laios why people would be afraid of eating a monster just because it’s a monster, it’s not obvious to Laios why some food is gross to Marcille but not fish testicles, it’s not obvious to Laios why you should immediately regard orcs and kobolds badly.
"Cows are probably closer to humans [aka closer to being human] than fishmen, though they’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 don’t use tools and such, they feel more primal and similarly instinct driven, and yet… 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 don’t typically sympathize with. "Fish don’t feel pain", "goldfish only have 5 seconds of memory", "it’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 is 10-15 years, the record is 43, but they’re not seen as lives that really matter, so a lot of goldfish die in a few weeks of bad aquarium conditions. There’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 Chilchuck’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.
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 sacrifices… Grappling with how he could relate to the merpeople’s situation almost, and pulling away because it’s so existentially horrifying. I do not want to see myself into an hostile fish-faced warrior I can’t communicate with. In a way this also relates to Chilchuck being the only party member who doesn’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 it’s like to be treated as less than human.
Below, you will see Chilchuck draws the line of where they become not okay to eat as when "they already look like mermaids". Above, there’s speculation that the algae hair is partly to mimic "the mermaids’ 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? It’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 mimicry… 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.
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 Meshi’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. It’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 that’s one another.
#Dungeon meshi#dunmeshi lore#Compilation#Ok… I think I didn’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 oc……….. ask me about my dunmeshi ocs……..#Can we give body neutrality an amen#Tw racism#cw racism#The “what are you talking about Marcille. Senshi is handsome” gag has 2 layers then doesn’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 “Senshi looks more handsome than usual that’s weird??” 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 🎵 why take the initiative when you can just wait for the tiniest opportunity#Chilchuck tims#Analysis#dunmeshi fishmen#It’s very interesting to think of how there being so many people *that* physically different affects politics and beauty standards#Mimics…. Pacing my room. Pondering. Mimics………#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#‘Yeah sure.’ < person who thought she’d just be grabbing like 3 pics and had no clue she’d become hyperfocused for hours#The classic societal obsession for classifying and exaggerating physical traits into boxes of innate goodness vs evil…
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tired: ace is set for execution at marineford
wired: luffy is set for execution at marineford
inspired: sabo is set for execution at marineford
#like are you seeing what im seeing????#sabo gets set for execution and he doesn't think anyone will come#mainly bc he told them not to but then these two random pirates crash it and scream that he's their brrother????#the one with a whitebeard pirate is sobbing and strawhat luffy wailing#and there's no time to unpack this bc well the marines are after them and if he squints he can see koala on the horizon#and he wasnt expecting a second chance at life but every rev knows that you cant help the cause dead#also the sheer angst of ace a luffy finding out sabo is alive but only when he's set for execution#the race against time and when they do get there sabo looks at them like he has no clue who they are#portgas d ace#monkey d luffy#sabo#one piece#asl brothers
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