#post: musing

[majkemaniiia]

A Letter to Poe de Spell, hidden in a desk drawer for a good 15 years.

Brother,

I sang a mourning song today without even knowing it. You'd call it a slow and steady dirge, any mourning song is to you, but you couldn't be more wrong. It sped through my mind quickly, every note known despite my lack of talent for musical notation.

Brother, it sounded like that melody mum would hum if we ever passed the ocean. If we ever sped down the coast, watching the sea crash against the cliffs.

You called it an unsettling show of power, the slow erosion of the cliff face year over year.

I called it a beautiful show of change.

Perhaps we were both right.

Lena's well, as I'm sure you guessed. Or perhaps you're still skeptical, seeing as you demanded to speak with her last we phoned.

We're settled in a seaside town again. I think the air is good for her.

Brother, she looks so much like you. There is no denying it.

For her sake, visit soon? You and Minerva are welcome to stay. I miss my sister-in-law, and I miss you, too.

I've decided not to send this letter, I'll write you another account of Lena telling you what she's eaten, what friends she's made, her entirely acceptable bed times.

But that song by the seaside is mine. And I'm just now realizing how much we've lost.

— Majke.

[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.

[menodoramoon]

🌘 ----- Musing: Menodora & Stella (+ Hands) ----- 🌖

The idea of Moon having a hard time bringing herself to hold Stella when she's first born. Moon, tired and exhausted from childbirth, hesitating when offered the chance to hold Star. She hasn't renewed her spells. She feels a near-Macbeth need to rub her hands clean of metaphorical blood and literal forbidden magic. How could she be allowed to hold or have this most perfect girl that the world could never even hope to deserve?

River might take Star instead and hold her out, just to alleviate the poor nurse who's offered Star to her mother. Moon knows it's silly, but she wants her first touch to be gentle and delicate and worthy of Star.

Her hand would have hovered there forever, a moment's peace from her daughter and on the precipice of one action or another, if Moon's nerves had been the determining factor.

They were not.

It just so happens that Star's just-born hand, aimless, drifts to brush against Moon's first. It's not deliberate. It's not intentional. Star doesn't even know what she's doing, she's a baby. But it breaks the ice enough for Moon to trust herself to hold Star and hug her close.

She may not be worthy of Star, but she could do everything in her power to try to be as close as she could be.

TLDR: Moon's terribly self-conscious of her hands and when she sees Star for the first time, she has a hard time convincing herself that she's worthy enough to be a mother, let alone even hold her.

[lipikkawrites]

A lot will go wrong before everything goes right.

Keep moving forward.

-@lipikkawrites

[werewolfbarista]

one of my shift leads was like "aelyis i have something so funny to tell u" and when she got over to me she was like. we got a review that said "the barista was wearing a dog collar. don't know how appropriate that is" and when i tell u i laughed so hard i CRUMPLED

[blood-starved-beast]

love how all the Nyx kids we know are losers. They're all some flavor of dork and all are vaguely pathetic.

Except for Charon. Dude is living the High life swimming in dough and even got a boyfriend locked in. So much rizz that even Aphrodite is noticing. King shit.

[butcharium]

Never once have I thought that a butch looks less masculine for visibly having boobs

[iamnmbr3]

7 most unhinged canon drarry moments

Harry calling Draco his arch nemesis just a few months after Lord Voldemort tried to murder him for the second time but also immediately thinking that he kinda misses him

Harry getting hit in the head by a piece of luggage because he got so distracted by the sight of Draco changing that he didn’t notice someone swinging a large object at his face

Harry lying to the Order and Magical Law Enforcement to obfuscate Draco’s crimes at the end of sixth year

Voldemort immediately assuming Draco has gone looking for Harry when he goes missing during the Battle of Hogwarts…and being right

Narcissa assuming Harry will know where Draco is and if he’s still alive…and being right

Lucius getting mad at Draco in book 2 because he has spent the entire summer talking nonstop about Harry Potter

Harry forgetting about the time Voldemort possessed and nearly murdered Ginny but remembering every item he saw Draco look at in Borgin and Burkes 4 years previously

[pinkravat-art]

messy gomen

[taweetie]

[lyricsxmusings]

Send ♡ to see what my muse thinks of yours

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[ruporas]

it's time to go, my love (ID in alt)

[s0fthunny]

[swordatsunset]

Oddly enough one of the most meaningful/painful parts of I Saw the TV Glow was when Owen is sitting there, watching the old tapes, someone with a family and an adulthood (or so she tells us), however small and sad that life is, and she tells us how abjectly humiliated she is rewatching them. The cheesiness of the show, its stilted and childish plots, the bad acting and bad visuals and whatever else— Owen is humiliated to have been saved by this bad TV show. And regardless of the fact that I don’t think the Pink Opaque she watches is the actual Pink Opaque that saved her, it tunes into this fascinating and essential part of living dissociated from your actual life and restored/saved/rescued by media, which is the shame of living like this. Yes, this was the thing that helped me survive; it was awful and childish and embarrassing and I can’t believe I survived it, I can’t believe I got through this period with the help of this. It’s so easy, when your life is so small, to be ashamed of your lifelines: it’s so easy to survive and look back and be horrified at how pathetic (however untrue it may be) and pitiable you were, and then, in reaction to that blinding embarrassment, lash out at your former self, try to say how much you’ve moved on (because you’re better now, of course you’re better, you don’t need to be saved by anything, right?). You loved this? The reason you’re alive is because of this? How embarrassing. How sad.

[lipikkawrites]

-@lipikkawrites

[tofixtheshadows]

This is one of my favorite minor details in Dungeon Meshi, firstly because what in the femme fatale, but also because it's one of those little things that raises so many questions about worldbuilding.

The Occam's Razor defense attorney in me says that Ryoko Kui gave Kabru a boot knife because she wanted him to escape from his bonds here. And Kabru is a very competent swordsman, why wouldn't he have a boot knife, sure. He's already got a dagger, he can have this too.

And yet: the implications. Kabru, why do you have that? That is not remotely something that could be easily accessed or used in combat. Nobody is pulling out a pen knife from the heel of their boot during a fight with a monster. It's useless in the dungeon ... unless you're the type of person who isn't just worried about monsters.

I've mentioned this before, but I consider one of Kabru's functions in the narrative as being the character who fully brings the idea of human ecosystems into the story. There's a reason why he's always connected to large groups of people (Toshiro's party, the Canaries). He (along with Mr. Tansu, briefly) introduces the reader to the social and political forces working on the dungeon, showing us that none of this is happening in a monster-filled vacuum. His confrontation with the corpse retrievers, who very nearly kill Kabru's party permanently with their reckless murder-for-money scheme, reminds us that monsters are not the only things that prey on humans. Kabru understands the ways the dungeon causes people to put profit over human lives.

We only get hints of it in the story, but like any gold-rush-style economic boom, it's implied that there is a lot of crime and corruption surrounding the dungeon.

So yeah, it really makes me wonder why Kabru keeps a tiny knife in his boot, meant to be carried on him even in situations where he would otherwise be unarmed. Stored exactly in the place where it's easy to reach, even if, for some reason, your hands are tied behind your back.