#so i think it can be an interesting topic to discuss

[sinofwriting]

Sex Positive - Charles Leclerc

Words: 2,470 Summary: Y/N goes on a podcast to talk about one thing and one thing only, sex. Note(s): NSFW just because this is just all sex talk, no actual sex, but it is the main topic of discussion. Part SMAU

Masterlist��| Support Me!

“Y/N Y/L/N”

She smiles at the sound of her name, adjusting her headphones a bit until they finally seem to sit snug on her head.

“Welcome to the sex positive podcast.”

“Thank you for having me!”

“Thank you for coming on!” Elaine says. “When I reached out, I had hoped you would come on, but was shocked when you said yes.”

“I had to come on. We’ve known each other now for like two years?” Elaine nods at her words. “And yet despite that and this podcast doing so well, which by the way congrats on the new milestone. 250k is insane, and your profession we’ve never once talked about sex.”

“We have not.” Elaine laughs. “Probably because we also run into each other at events and dinners. Not the best place for me to ask how you feel about sex.”

“Well, I should tell you, I am coming on here to actually talk about how much I hate sex.” She says, ending her sentence with an eye roll, as she adjusts how she’s sitting, not even noticing her cardigan slip.

“Oh, yeah.” Elaine nods. “You hate sex.” She then nods to her left shoulder and her eyes drop and she lets out a laugh, seeing the love bites now exposed from the cardigan slipping.

“Like I said, I hate it.” She laughs.

“How is your relationship with sex? I mean, what has your experience been with it?”

She considers for a moment, “I’d say I have a good relationship with sex. It was never a topic that was shied away from when I was younger. My parents both gave me the talk, they made sure that I felt safe and comfortable to talk to them about it. They also never shied away from talking about how they had sex before they were adults, so if I did, they understood. All they asked was that I was safe.”

“And you think that’s helped?”

“Of course.” She nods. “I mean, I was sixteen when I had sex for the first time. Which was before all my friends and after that I was the one my girl friends came to for condoms and advice.”

“Was it good?”

She makes a face, “I mean, I think it was as good as two sixteen-year-olds having sex for the first time can be. A little awkward, some fumbling, finishing so quick.”

Elaine laughs, “Y’know that probably is as good as it can get.”

“Yeah.” She laughs.

“Were you like okay, I had sex this first time, I’ve experienced it, I’m good, or was it like me where you wanted to explore more.”

“Oh, I wanted to explore more. I didn’t have sex again for, I think like another two years. But I did so much self exploring. Just trying to see what I liked, what I was interested in, what I wasn’t interested in.”

“Porn?”

“Yes, there was quite a large amount of porn being watched. I read a lot of adult novels, guides, blogs, really just anything I could get my hands on.”

Elaine nods, tucking a leg underneath herself as she adjusts the microphone to be a little closer. “And this is something I’m curious about, how do you feel about porn? It’s something a lot of people are divided on, a lot of women especially.”

“I like porn. I enjoy it. Either just watching for pleasure or for research.” And she puts the last word in air quotes. “And please people listening or watching, if you see something you like in porn or are interested in, and this applies if you are reading something as well, look it up, read some guides and blog posts about it before doing it yourself. Just be safe.”

“Oh, please be safe. We have our own blog where we talk about different kinks, positions, various things and I urge you, along with everyone else who works on this podcast, to be safe with yourself and others.” Elaine says, addressing the camera before looking back at her. “So, you like porn.”

“Yes. Obviously not all porn is good, there are bad studios, there are overdone tropes, issues with the industry itself with it continuing to promote certain things because it earns them so much money. But I do enjoy it. It’s an industry that is always going to get criticized and hated and it deserves some of those criticisms without a doubt.”

“As a sex therapist, I do try to veer my clients away from porn, most of the time. And that’s mainly due to the acting of it. But it has its place in helping you learn and educate yourself. My issue is when people only look at porn and don’t look into things further.”

“Yeah, a hundred percent. It’s so important to not just take away things from porn but to take things away and expand on what you saw.” She nods.

“And of course I have to ask, what do you yourself like to watch in porn?”

“Hmm.” She thinks. “I think it depends on my mood. I think what I normally go for is something a little more rough. I’ve never really enjoyed watching people have like slow, gentle sex, not unless there’s something else there like overstimulation.”

“So, you like it rough?” Elaine asks.

She laughs, “Yes. It wasn’t something I had ever tried out before though until my current partner.”

“Really?”

She nods, “Really! I can admit that with my current partner, Charles, is where I’ve done a lot of exploring with someone else sexually. We’ve tried out many things.”

“Anything you guys didn’t like?”

“We don’t care for titles or honorifics.”

“You are crushing some dreams with that statement.”

“I know.” She laughs, well aware of the many tweets and things about wanting to call Charles daddy or sir. But it was just something that didn’t work for them in bed. The most was sometimes as a tease, she’d call him Mr. Leclerc and that was mainly to wind him up, not because the word itself was a turn on.

“What about things you’ve both enjoyed?”

“Oh, where to begin.” She teases, the both of them laughing. “Roleplay is one, bondage, edging, overstimulation. And I don’t consider this sex, but it is something we both enjoy a lot, cock warming.”

“That is quite the list.”

“Oh, just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Talk me through some of it. Bondage?”

“Yes. This was something we both had come into the relationship having never done before and wanting to do. We have the actual like rope you're supposed to use for when we do it, though sometimes we have used other things.”

Elaine shakes her head, grinning. “Of course you two have. I feel like if I see you two together, you’re always attached.”

“Pretty much. We both enjoy touch and Charles, despite all the interest in his personal life and how much already is exposed to the public, doesn't mind holding my hand or hugging or kissing me while in public.”

“Was that a worry of yours?” Elaine asks.

“Absolutely.” She nods, fingers interlacing. “I knew he’d at least, when I went to my first race, that he’d hold my hand, but I figured that might be it. And I didn’t want to bring it up since me going to Baku was so last minute for the both of us.”

“I’ve seen photos from that race and I would have never guessed that it was a last minute decision or that you two hadn’t talked about that yet.”

“Yeah, I got on a plane and was there by 11pm on Wednesday night, and the plane tickets had gotten bought maybe six hours before the plane took off. Charles had to send a photo of my ID to the front desk and had a spare key for me waiting since he had to be asleep already.”

“And then the next day, I mean you guys were very loved up.”

She grins, “we very much were. I think Charles knew I was nervous. We hadn’t officially been spotted together and he’s such a comforting person, very calming, so it was easy to not feel anxious with him holding me and pressing a kiss to my cheek every few minutes as y’know a bunch of people were taking photos of me and I’m being introduced to about a hundred people.”

“Which is overwhelming to say the least.”

“So overwhelming.” She nods.

“Though you might’ve liked that, since you’ve brought up overstimulation a few times.”

Her hands come up to hide her face, laughing into them, before they fall back into her lap. “I’d apologize, but I like what I like.”

“So it’s you being overstimulated.”

“Oh, absolutely. I find it very enjoyable.”

“I’ve never actually really talked about overstimulation, what is that you like about it? That you find to be enjoyable?”

“It’s the near constant feeling of too much, it’s so much pleasure just back to back, and everything depending on how you're doing it, can feel just like raw? And exposed? And you don’t think you can orgasm one more time, you just can’t again, but then you can and it feels at least in my experience just so good and then you do it again and again, and every time the pleasure of it just washing over you is even more and more and it’s the only thing you can focus on, everything else just fades away.”

“You make me want to try it.” Elaine laughs.

—

Charles’ head immediately perks up when he hears the hotel door open. “Chérie! How was the podcast?”

She smiles, setting her bag down, before moving over to the couch where Charles is sitting and happily sitting in his lap before Charles can pull her down. “It was good.” She finally says after kissing him.

He hums, “How good?”

She thinks, playfully humming as her fingers run through his hair. “Very good. I think your fans will want to kill me and so will Ferrari.”

He frowns, arms tightening around her. “Ferrari knows that you are allowed to do as you’d like. It is not like with,” He stops himself.

“I know, Charles.” She soothes. “But, they will be upset with me considering me talking about my sex life is talking about your sex life.”

He huffs, obviously not liking it, but he hopes that the podcast will do well, be received well, so at least Ferrari will be forced to accept it because fans like it.

“Did you mention me?”

Her eyebrow raises, “No. I want on a podcast to talk about my sex life so you obviously didn’t come up.”

He pouts at the tease and she can’t resist pressing a kiss to his pouty lips.

“Yes, I mentioned you. Multiple times and by name.”

He hums, moving his hands under her cardigan and top. “What did you say?”

“That we’ve done a lot of things together. That we like certain things.”

When she had accepted the invite it was only after a long talk with Charles, one she had to force, to go over what she could and couldn’t mention. Charles had been fine with her mentioning whatever she wanted. Uncaring that it would be out for the world to see, his colleagues, friends, and even family if for some reason they decided to click on it. He had stuck by that after their talk, though had asked her to keep most of the details of their roleplay and their love of rough sex to a minimum.

And it had been easy to not talk about what kind of roleplay they did and while rough sex had been mentioned twice, they were brief, just establishing her love of it.

“It did make me want to roleplay our favorite thing again.”

His eyes light up at her words.

It wasn’t often something they did, their favorite roleplay scenario, not when it required her to be in a certain headspace to really work, but she wants and craves it so much.

“You want to be my innocent little girl?” His voice has a bit of rasp, his fingers resting on her back, stretching out.

“Yes.” She breathes.

He leans forward, giving her a hungry kiss, his and her last chance to lose control, before pulling away. “Go get ready for me, bébé. I’ll find a place to have dinner.”

---

[slowlystupendousdelusion]

Okay so in an attempt to focus on the positives, here are some bullet points of what I remember from the Greg Doran & David Tennant Shakespeare talk the other week.

Touchstone was DT's first Shakespeare part and As You Like It was the Shakespeare play he first remembers being interested in as there was a tour of it that went to his school.

A licence was needed to be able to use André Tchaikowsky's skull for Hamlet as he had died within the last 100 years old. DT dropped it during dress rehearsal the first time they used it and a bit broke off. Luckily they were able to fix it as it was a cheek(?) bit that had fallen out and could be put back in.

DT did a fair impression of both Sir Ian McKellen and (I think?) Al Pacino (I think this was in reference to 'Looking for Richard'??)

DT felt a lot of pressure in relation to Hamlet to the point that he was curled up in the foetal position before going on and had to be talked out of it by the speech assistant

They hold 'gyms' during the rehearsal period where they go through the play line by line to make sure everyone understands what they're saying. They might have discussions about it if there's not consensus.

GD thinks Love's Labour's Won (the lost play) is Much Ado About Nothing. DT countered this (to much laughter) with the plot of DW S3 Ep2. There was clearly a large Whovian contingent in attendance.

I've mentioned this elsewhere but they talked about other productions of Macbeth and GD mentioned one he'd seen with the following joke in the Porter scene: "Knock knock" "Who's there?" "Tom" "Tom who?" "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" DT said he wouldn't tell Jatinder or he'd use it that evening

DT's least favourite Shakespeare is The Taming of the Shrew, I think GD demurred on this. Both said favourite is always the one you're currently working on. So Macbeth atm.

The talked about intervals and how Shakespeare didn't really have them - the crowd would be standing and some scenes were built in as a break. Some plays lose momentum if an interval is place in (Macbeth was cited). It can be a bit of a challenge choosing where to place one and they mentioned how in their Vers of Hamlet they put the interval mid-line to shake up expectations etc.

They talked a bit about iambic pentameter and how it's not as important as purists might have you believe. Shakespeare started having thoughts cross lines as he got older - perhaps to help the actors?

They talked about the challenges of such well-known plays and creating suspense etc. Some of the lines are problematic and how as a director, you're not an academic so if it doesn't work you can cut them!

DT mentioned Iago (among others) as a character he still wanted to play [🙏🙏🙏pls & ty]

One of the questions was about how his Shakespeare performances informed his part in Rivals. The response was that Jilly Cooper and Shakespeare actually have a lot in common in that they understand how humans act and wouldn't shy away from bawdiness etc.

They did mention Richard III a fair amount but the specifics aren't coming to mind

They talked about reviews and how you can dismiss the bad ones but if you do that then you can't really take only the good ones to heart. My friend noted that this topic was the only time GD looked slightly uncomfortable during the talk but I can't say I noticed that.

I didn't actually write notes at the time so I'm sure I missed a bunch, but my other take away from this was how charismatic and naturally funny DT came across.

[simpforsolas]

some more ramblings

Topics: Soft reboot vs sequel discussion, and why Veilguard companions fall flat

One of the biggest issues that I think Veilguard suffered from was that it felt like BioWare couldn't decide if they wanted to make a sequel or soft reboot. The story was a direct sequel to Inquisition, but everything else felt like a reboot. The cameos were so shallow and dissatisfying, and the fact that we couldn't carry over basically any choices made it so it didn't even feel like our own world. It also felt like the parts that were integral to Dragon Age's world in previous games weren't even present. Religion, race relations, issues regarding magic, none of these issues were there. It was like they didn't want to bog the game and story down with lore for new players which I can understand, but then we were left with something that barely felt like Dragon Age at all. What do you mean there was barely any distinction between city elves and Dalish elves? What do you mean a new player could play as mage Rook and not realize that in the majority of the continent they would be hated and feared? But then, the main story directly continues Solas's story in DAI, and they brought the inquisitor back. But at the same time, they didn't want the inquisitor to have too big of a role because new players wouldn't care about them and it might be confusing. But then that left returning players like me honestly, very dissatisfied, because I wanted more solavellan, and I wanted Lavellan to have a bigger role in Solas's final outcome.

With regards to companions, none of them had interesting character arcs or opinions relating to this broken world they lived in. I mean, they couldn't, because BioWare simplified the world so much that these complex issues can't shape anyone. What made Vivienne so interesting was the way the world shaped her as a character. Same with Solas, Fenris, Anders, Alistair, Cassandra, Wynne: all of these are characters whose personality, flaws, and beliefs are shaped by their background, which meant that if you threw them in a room together, you inevitably got fascinating banter because the characters had such strong identities and beliefs that you could tell who would clash and who wouldn't. To me... the new companions in Veilguard didn't really feel like their personality and stories were inexorably tied to the world. You could pluck Taash's story from Veilguard and set it in a completely different world, swap out a few things, and it would be the same. But for Anders' story to work, it requires meticulous worldbuilding and understanding of Thedas. It is, to its core, tied to the world of Thedas. Yes, you can of course find parallels to the real world with Anders' story, but it still requires to be told in the world of Thedas for it to truly make sense. That's not to say the Veilguard companions are necessarily bad, but it was disappointing to me that none of them had the same spice as the previous games' companions, and I really think it comes down to the fact that their arcs focused more on broad human experience and didn't tie into the world that created those stories.

[fumifooms]

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 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.

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.

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 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.

[fromtheseventhhell]

I love how people are only ever interested in defending Arya's right to be weird-looking. It's never defending her intelligence from people who claim she's incapable of thinking for herself, highlighting her importance to the plot and refusing to see her as just a prop, acknowledging how much of her story gets stolen and given to other characters, talking about her trauma or how often it gets erased and overlooked, seeing her as more than just an attack dog/bodyguard, etc. Nope. It's just a "why can't people let Arya be ugly/unconventional looking? :(" post every other week because people are, for whatever reason, obsessed with how Arya is visually perceived. One of the most misinterpreted characters yet the issue is only ever with her being portrayed as "too pretty" or the wrong "type" of pretty. This fandom will entirely rewrite a character's motivations, values, and role in the story to the point that they consider references to canon "hate" but! The true injustice to canon is we acknowledge that she is described as pretty several times. Arya simply existing as her pretty, important, and non-conforming self is too complex and confusing for people to comprehend 😔.

[poor-ciceros-voring-again]

I really need some gravity falls friends I think :(

[juniperhillpatient]

as soon as a horror essayist starts talking about how depicting some horrific topics is just “in poor taste” or “offends people’s sensibilities too much” & thus specific horrific themes of any given nature shouldn’t be addressed in horror well. I lose all interest anyway even if the rest of what the person was saying was interesting

[ineffablefool]

The lil corner of the Good Omens fandom that I generally see is getting more and more into publicly declaring that That Theory I Dislike Is Bad And People Who Ascribe To It Should Feel Bad, and I don't know if it's really new, or if I was just lucky enough to generally be missed with that shit the last four years.

Different people's brains work differently, which means they will notice things, form interpretations, maybe come to extremely firm conclusions, all different from each others'. Different from mine, different from yours.

I get that some people think that they have the brain which produces the Objectively Superior theories (and/or which can easily determine which other people's theories are the Objectively Inferior ones). I just really missed the memo where Your Interpretation Is Not My Interpretation (And That's Okay) was dragged out back and fucking shot.

Anyway this blog is an "I may not agree with your theory but you may trust that I won't publicly heap scorn upon the very idea of having it" zone if anyone was wondering.

[commsroom]

one of the first things we hear from hera (via eiffel, before she even speaks) is that she finds human bodies to be "uncomfortably liquid".

that was the moment I knew I'm going to project my whole ND ass at her forever. same, girl. big, big same.

real. she's soo neurodivergent. and also. okay. that's such an interesting line as part of a larger pattern, because the way she talks about eiffel's body (and it's almost always eiffel who gets these comments from her) feels like a direct response to the way he talks about her, um... lack of body. "three pound glob of meat" is a direct response to "your iron giant processor" etc.

even in the framing of that first script, he's complaining about her talking about his "fragile, carbon-based, uncomfortably liquid body" right after a comment about something hera wouldn't understand "as an artificial intelligence"... a real breakthrough for human-AI relations, was it? i think there's a way hera plays with the assumptions people have about her as an AI, that's part of her sense of humor (post about that here), but it also comes from a place of real hurt and constantly being othered. and i think the way she navigates that also definitely resonates from a ND perspective. eiffel doesn't even recognize the equivalence or significance of her comments, because he's privileged in a way that her jokes about him are just jokes. "what if i just went around blaming every stupid decision you made on 'biology'?" and it still takes him so long to really get it.

[chuchayucca]

Discussions of implied fictional CSA & SA

I recently been wondering if there’s a chance Richard thinks Roy’s aggressive and distant behavior is normal and not a sign of CSA because he acted similarly to Roy when he was younger

Reasonings in the tags

[irisbaggins]

...oh no. Neverafter is, genuinely, a perfect angle for a Master thesis, especially with the two ideas I currently have in mind. I have a deep love for fairy tales, and this campaign is very intriguing to me (just started it, no I'm not procrastinating an exam what-). I'm still going to angle my first idea around Burrow's End (it's quite literally the best thing ever), I'm looking at Neverafter, believe you me.

Anyway. Off I go watching more Neverafter instead of doing my Middle English exam. Oh well.

[bmpmp3]

(falls to the floor holding my head in my hands) i can't keep making all my ocs the same vaguely eastern european vaguely indo carribean mixed race guy i cant keep doing this

(looks up. eyes glowing red. levitating with unknown power) or can i..................................................

[musical-chick-13]

Very, very tempted to just release this idea out into the ether and go, "I do not have the time to write this, but if anyone wants to claim it, feel free," but I would NOT trust the average person to handle this well.

[seddair]

-

[sanasanakun]

I really shouldn’t have tried to explain the dynamic relationship between ethics and consumerism under capitalism while crossfaded…..and using such a volatile subject as my example ….ugh lmao