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woobifykamukura · 3 days ago
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my pet theory is that any danganronpa media worth its salt has to be a little bit about a corrupt bullshit orginization and how much it sucks. the first 2 games are literally about how the punitive justice system sucks fucking shit. first game shows this by every blackened having a Reason for kilking outside of "murder yaaayyy," yes even celestia, her desire for money is explained in depth from her free time events and how she grew up, everyone had a Reason. sakura's suicide was the result of societal punitive justice instead of institutional and how people who think their moral outrage is good bc its aimed at the "correct targets" will just end up hurting people. second game takes this even furthur and goes "in the first game, punitive justice was bad because all these people were victims of circumstance. can you keep those same morals when the people being subject to punitive justice ARE actual criminals of their own free will?" with the added part about the nwp explicitly being a rehabilitative justice program. kamukura's inclusion and honestly dr:0 as a whole since the whole catalyst was kamukura is just a little bit about how any kind of exceptionally smart child is propped up as Something Amazing and is basically forced to use that talent for the greater good despite any feelings the child themself may have about it or how stuck they feel or how traumatized or tortured they become in the search for and nurturing of that talent, and any child thats not that is constantly told theyre inferior to the former and Why Cant They Be Like That and are seen as lesser-than by everyone around them. ultra despair girls is also kind of about that with the warriors of hope and their backstories. dr3 and v3 fall short because they are not about that at all. dr3's future arc is a bit stronger than despair because it actually is about an institution that sucks and despair's feels too much like an interpersonal thing and All Junko's Fault when the whole point was junko just took advantage of unrest that was already there. v3 is about an Institution That Sucks however the institution is "what if you loved a murder game so much you made it real" which doesnt fucking happen. you can make approximations like comparisons to true crime, reality tv, and for a more specific example that squid game reality show. but they didnt even kill people on that. v3 is critiquing something that does not measurably exist and also it doesnt connect to even a single theme from the rest of the series. my other pet theory is that kodaka is scared of the number 3 and thats why the ones with 3 in them are like that
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bubble-bobble · 11 months ago
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Well OOPS
this scribble got out of hand sorry Shin
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hinamie · 5 months ago
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truth is, I used to dream about boys like you
jjk atla!au with @philosophiums
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zadsterr · 2 months ago
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I should be able to growl and stand my ground when im angry, your invading my space.
Humans find so many ways to push boundaries
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splickedylit · 15 days ago
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@ USAmericans that are following me, if you (like me) get anxious you'll somehow have issues with a mail-in or drop-off ballot: I forgot that in a lot of places (here's a site to check!) early in-person voting is an option, so I figured maybe you did too!
Lines are MUCH shorter than election day,
which means it's quick and you have more time to look things up at the voting booth if necessary,
and you have a LOT more ability to find a time that works for you than if you just vote on Nov. 5th (which I would be have been almost completely unable to go out and vote on).
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Early voting y'all it kicks ass. A quick google of "early voting (my city/county" immediately brought up the exact address, days and hours of where it was available. Will definitely patronize the fine folks at my local polling center again in four years assuming that. Things go well. And we still have a democracy in four years. OTL
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martitheevans · 3 months ago
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This look legit to you guys?
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willthespy · 4 months ago
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Nico di Angelo ; Fallen Angel (ft. Will Solace)
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(sorry for being inactive. i promise I’ll still do the requests…one day (soon))
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medicalunprofessional · 6 months ago
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never change, man !
#phantom of the paradise#potp#swan potp#nightmaretheater#65 layers and about 24 hours . Eeeyyuppp#Look into my beautiful mind boy#Its a bit unusual to what i usually draw#but i had to push a specific look for this piece#hopefully you all are picking up on the corperate look . the advertisment look#Sneeze. Anyways my point is industry destroys creative people. This includes swan#I feel like phrases like these ; how he was put on a pedistal…. it lead him to be Like That#as awful as he is he desperately needed help#it might seem like vanity on the surface#but i think its… more than that#long story short: we need to destroy the beauty industry. the skincare industry. the anti-aging industry#It ruined his psyche forever and he cant let go of the ideal version of himself he will never truly be again#i dont think he can at this point. hes in too deep and hes suffering for it no matter how much he feels hes fixed his problems#he cant accept a version of himself that isnt that perfect young man. because he never confronted his problems. he just ran away#anyways . Hi swath *punches him**kicks him*#i dont care if nobody gets me lalalalla my truths and headcanons are awesome forever and i live in my own reality lallaallal#sorry i think im gonna be posting about swan alot for a few months hes making me sick#i wass gonna post this earlier but my internet was real bad#*lays down in my pile of pillows* eat up boys. haha#sidenote: drawing white blond people is horrifiying. Boy your skin and hair are the same color. Introduce some contrast to yourself. Please#adding on: its inportant to note this focuses on him looking st himself in the mirror alot on purpouse#to remind himself what he ‘’’’really’’’’ looks like#the 4 middle pannels all represent that too . u have to be in my brain ri get this#sorry for unleashijg another swan essay in my tags. will happen again lol
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heartorbit · 8 months ago
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revstar emu save me
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keferon · 3 months ago
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*clasps your shoulders gently and looks you straight in the eye*
Keferon. Please read Ninth by Kyn on AO3. I think you would love it very much. It has a large chapter count, but don't be intimidated, it's very easy to get into. It is currently unfinished, but is being updated regularly.
You are the seventh person that recommended this fic to me so ahahahaha yeah
I’m doing great Help I hate some parts of it but I love the other parts I’m spinning in the blender
…..I made the moodboard….
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#chapter 37#of 120 or something#I must be like 90k words in haha#large word count is not an intimidation. It’s an invitation haha#I love the fics that I can’t read in just one hour:)#I gotta say I don’t enjoy the concept of making robots into organic life#it’s just my preference#seeing them as humans or animals or whatever feels so fucking wrong#the concept itself drives me off#like. Strongly#But at the same time. This fic isn’t about them being ‘haha cute organics’#it’s ‘oh god. I was turned into something I’m not’#instead of teeheee they’re fluffy#it’s please free me from this fucking nightmare. please let me be myself again.#idk how to explain. I resonate I guess#it often feels very disturbing but the characters are also disturbed#So now I’m kind of stuck reading this fic because I just can’t stop lol#just politely skipping the parts that make me too uncomfortable#also#the body horror is….damn. Impressive. I didn’t expect to read about grotesque fleshy creature turning itself inside out#it’s not even aesthetic or symbolic#it literally looks like a fucking nightmare. Which is impressive also.#the flesh is g r o s s#the beginning got me struggling and skipping#but the intermission is currently ruining my sleep schedule#oh fuck….I usually send my posts to the authors of the fics I read…..but I feel like I might offend the author of Ninth if do this……..#there’s a tiny chance they’re following me….if it’s true then I wanna tell I’m sorry pls don’t take this seriously#your fic got me waay out of my comfort zone#huge points for writing Ratchet. Drift in this fic is…the grossest fucking thing I could probably imagine but Ratchet doesn’t even hesitate#he helps him and he cares for him. Which is…..imma be real my first instinct would be to set Drift on fire to end his misery
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bixels · 7 months ago
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This Twitter MLP human redesign drama is a mess, leave me the fuck out of it.
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woobifykamukura · 14 days ago
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izuru would be into house of leaves with an intensity described by most as "slightly more enthused than pure apathy" but he would very much vibe with the story and with the characters driving themselves to the point of ruin thru obsession but in like, more of an abstract way. as in he identifies with it but insofar as he identifies with being the product of said obsession, he sees the-person-formerly-known-as-hajime as like, johnny truant or zampanò and himself more like the navidson record or even house of leaves as a book itself.
and he would understand the book perfectly as is expected of a boy with so many talents and he wouldnt be able to gleam it for himself but once its pointed out to him, he is very much intrigued by the idea of house of leaves as a love story- this idea that you can be consumed by something horrible and yet someone can reach inside that coocoon of despair and pull you right back out again, because they love you.
he turns it around and then declares it boring, but really he means to say that he sees hajime as navidson and himself as the labyrinth
and then myhouse.wad comes out and he gives it a cursory lookthrough as something perhaps slightly entertaining in its connection to something else he finds "slightly entertaining" and the overt themes of grief present and its status explicitly as a tribute and explicitly about love and the house being portrayed as an entity that too is mourning a loss and the journals, the passage about a false beach and no joy or misery or sadness, just emptiness.
izuru declares it boring and never looks back
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dansevilpianotea · 18 days ago
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bc dan acts SOO different now compared to wad. sth mustve really clicked in him after doing a solo tour. go watch any video/stream now from that era (ideally not dd bc that was a hightly conceptual character apparently) and you can see that he was trying so hard to be seen as someone else. to get approval from the wrong crowd, as he recently talked about dont get me wrong, i love wad the show itself, but you have to admit that dan hadnt really decided who he wanted to be seen as yet (in a post-coming out, post-phouse univers) before he went on tour, so the person he was during that era reflected that.
it was very hard for me to distinguish the dystopia daily persona to his usual online character because he hadnt really shown enough of that (at the time, post-coming out, mid-hiatus) to be distinguishable from his pre-pandemic, pre-ywgttn depressed lol xd dan character. he just wasnt around a lot. [i think thats what he got wrong with dd. he thought we knew him better than we did at the time but he also wanted to establish his independence from the dnp branding which unfortunately expressed himself as a form of resentment against people who still associated him with that (us phannies). this is why it felt regressive and made me sad, because the dd character seemed like an old, unhappier version of the same dan.]
but now.. look at how happy he is. he is smiling. dan is shining like the sun on a beautiful summer day and is fully embracing his past and his audience.
he doesn't feel the need to crack jokes about whoring it up all over america because he doesnt like commitment or making jabs at his audience for falling for clickbaity 'we are in a relationship'-type titles. he is not resentful anymore. he's not just laughing with us but he is IN on the joke now. he thinks we are funny! and in fact admitted that he doesn't really care about flirting with strangers and is oblivious to being flirted with because he doesnt have any need to.
it seems like he has healed a lot of old wounds regarding his audience. during wad he saw with his own eyes that we arent out to get him but in fact will support him in whatever he's doing. and now this new tour is the victory lap. he's taking phil with him. he is proud to be down bad for his man. 'no fucks left to give' for dan means not putting up the wall anymore protecting his inner child from what it fears are the bullies. he's doing it for himself now, for phil. for them. not for the attention of the wrong people. not for the approval of straight men like those who bullied him. he's doing it for his community of queer people. he knows he's safe here. he trusts us. 'we know you know'. i'm proud of both our community and proud of dnp for that. we really made ourselves get here despite how draining and back-and-forth the hiatus was. maybe the real phan really were the phriends we made along the way <3.
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kailysander · 9 months ago
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omenics · 1 year ago
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Hello! I think your Carmilla writing was really nice and was wondering if you could do a request for Alucard, where the reader was also there to help beat his father but stayed behind with him for support etc., a soft romantic relationship would be lovely.
Thank you and don't feel pressured to write this.
𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐔𝐃𝐄.
› ..tender moments with your beloved. — sorry this took so long! but here it is. written with fem reader in mind, but written as gn. lmk if i missed anything/used gendered terms for reader!
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“It’s late.”
“Vampires don’t need to sleep.” His voice was quiet. Soft. The fire roared beside him, but your night clothes were thin, and even with the flames you shivered.
“You are not a full vampire,” you stated. “You can enjoy the simple luxuries that sleep offers. Come to bed.”
Your final words came close to a plea, a beg, to which he sighed at. He could not refuse such a simple offer, especially not from you as you stood in the doorway, arms crossed as you watched him carefully. He would not hurt you, you knew this, but you watched him. You watched his slight movements and twitches, watched his chest rise and fall with shallow breaths. God, he was perfect. Even in the tranquil time of twelve o’clock with dishevelled hair and tired eyes, he was perfect.
He was silent for a while, wood crackling to fill the void.
“Okay,” he said, and he stood. The book in his pale hands shut, and his gaze lingered on the fireplace before he turned to you. His frame was illuminated in an orange light, twinkled with gold that pronounced his blond hair, and his features.
A smile played at your lips, corners twitching up as you moved towards him, taking his pale hands in yours. They were cold, or colder than most. But they were still steady, and you held them with a familiar touch. Your thumbs swiped across the back of his hands, caressing the pale skin as your eyes darted up to his. “Good.” You said, smiling. “Come, the bed had gotten cold. I will need someone to warm me,” you joked, and he let out a breath. A soft smile, different to your coy grin made its way to his face before he shook his head at you.
“Ah, I see.” Adrian mused. “You only wish for me to be a bedwarmer. How hurt am I.” You chuckled at his words, laugh quiet. Your shoulders shook slightly, and your grin grew.
“Precisely. Now come, my love. Join me.” And he did, leaving the hearth of the fire and into a cold, cold bed waiting minute by minute to be warmed by two lovesick idiots.
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fumifooms · 2 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 they’re so interconnected. Mercy…) so, many races and observations are only mentioned near the bottom.
Beauty standards and race in Dungeon Meshi
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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?
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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.
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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 categorizatiom 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 less intensely different appearances than other demihumans, 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. Remember when I said different fashions existed in dunmeshi and how those could also affect beauty standatds? Like the elves, if you look at the portraits pages that 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 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 conditions. The point I’m getting at here is that within a race, culture/ethnicity like with Kabru as well will also influence them, 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), 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.
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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 aforn 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 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.
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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 isn’t above that even a 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 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.
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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.
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"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.
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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 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.
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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, 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.
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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 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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