The Tinfoil Hat Crowd

Honestly Rose and Verona getting along is the straightforward choice, but I could see it going the other way and them getting off on the wrong foot just as easily. This is partially because of their two very different magic systems - Rose's magic is essentially bullshit and she knows it, while Verona is fully invested in working with the Practisce even as she expands its limits. Combine that with Act 5 era Rose's potential to be snarky and even rude running up against Verona's more fragile and realistic 13 year old emotions and they could become enemies in a rivals sort of way.

Which would let you do a reacharound and come at this from a Blackrom angle also.

(Also yeah I agree Chilkat is a better ship too, but [insert conversation we just had in dms because it happened while I was writing this lmao])

Full of Desires

Just some normal healing magic

yet another thing i really like about dungeon meshi:

a lot of ink has been spilled on this idea that "people dont have autism/ADHD the problem is actually capitalism". usually paired with the notion that in agrarian societies being neurodiverget was actually super useful and that neurodivergent people would have been content with menial tasks like sorting berries or watcing over cattle, instead of the modern fallen state in which we find ourselves where we have to go to 9 to 5 jobs and sit in boring offices all day or whatever.

i wont rehash all the reasons this is clearly nonesense, instead what i will do is point out how brilliant ryoko kui was, yet again, for finding the way of eating her cake and keeping it too. dungeon meshi is clearly this power fantasy consisting of "what if your hyperfixation was actually extremely useful and was the thing that allowed you to thrive in this niche field". so in this case laios autism actually works almost as a superpower for him.

but then every single detail we come to learn about his past shows us how incredibly maladapted he was to the life he was born in. he couldnt meet his parent's expectations or those of his town, he couldnt fit in the army as a soldier, living on his own at a caravan he was malnourished, dirty, dressed in tatters and covered in fleas. and even after he manages to establish himself as an adventurer he gets constantly taken advantage by other people.

a lot of the reason why he is thriving in the story is because he is a) in the very specific niche of circumstances where his peculiarities actually are incredibly useful, in a dungeon filled with monsters where he doesnt have to deal with other people and b) surrounded by people who are either just as weird as he is or care about him deeply (or are consumate professionals like chilchuck)

I haven't actually seen Dungeon Meshi, I watched the other popular elf fantasy anime that aired at the same time (Frieren) so it's like my hilarious genie curse that I am constantly surrounded by people talking about Dungeon Meshi instead, but this description reminds me of the core appeal behind isekai in general: A person maladapted to the real world whose specific hyperfixation (usually video games) turns into a superpower when they are sent to a different world. Outside isekai, it's the appeal of High School of the Dead, where a nerdy gun otaku becomes a zombie-slaying badass once the zombie apocalypse descends. It's the appeal of Stein's Gate, where a socially awkward misfit obsessed with time travel is put in a situation with time travel and becomes the hero who saves the day.

And it's the appeal of The Matrix, where a computer hacker learns the world is a computer and gets superpowers.

It's the lament of misfits everywhere. Compared to an otherworld story like, say, Harry Potter, where Harry has no skills at all and isn't even particularly smart but luck and other people and the circumstances of his birth allow him to be the hero, these stories are about (and for) people who DO have a skill, but feel like the current world doesn't properly appreciate that skill.

Attributing this problem to capitalism seems completely off base. We live in a world that encourages, rather than suppresses, hyperfixation and hyperspecialization, especially compared to a pre-industrial world where you were either a farmer (expected to do every possible task that can be done on a farm) or, if you were lucky, skilled labor, in which you did every possible task that can be done by a tailor or a smithy. Nowadays, your job can be a QA tester for a single software product created by a company that has 100 software products, this company being one of a million software products companies all creating different, hyperspecialized software products. Your job can be a doctor who only knows about diseases that specifically affect eyes. Your job can be a lawyer who only knows about the part of the law dealing with divorces. Your job can be a salesman who only sells used cars of a specific type of car brand.

The problem is that this modern world that expects hyperspecialization has, especially as leisure time and access to hyperspecialized information via the internet increases, a tendency to accidentally create people who are hyperspecialized in a way that society has little real use for. (Like people who are hyperspecialized to be good at video games.) A tiny part that doesn't fit in the machine. The dream of isekai is that the tiny part stays the same, but miraculously a machine exists where they are the most crucial component of all.

needed to draw more chimera yuri

Falin panics when her gf is sad

KBITTY!!!!

not to put too fine a point on it but like, isutzumi was fully 100% a slave of shuro's family

Eeeeh you just lost the lottery so we’re going to play “Cultures That Aren’t The Modern West Exist” and also basic critical thinking

Spoilers for the Adventurer’s Bible and Izutsumi’s actual backstory below, I’ll keep the dungeon stuff out of it

well thankfully i do live in a modern democracy so i can actually very comfortably say that tying minors to posts for trying to escape some guy that bought them, trying to train them as your servant and keeping them obedient through threats of demon curses is bad actually

You’re right! You should instead definitely let minors run off into the wilds to starve to death, or be trafficked (again, since that’s where you got them from), or killed and eaten by literal monsters!

And Izutsumi was clearly so very obedient, terrified to move or flinch against her wicked captors for fear of the terrifying demon curse, living in such horrors!

Oh but how could I forget, everything not completely perfect and ideal is Evil Actually, especially if it doesn’t happen to live up to your cultural standards

Cultural imperialism is just so brave

I hope one day you grow enough to realise how embarrassing you are

Fip I don't know how you have such a knack of finding weird people online like this, but "slavery is fine actually and if you're opposed to it you're racist, you're embarrassing yourself by being anti-slavery" is kind of a new peak. Especially as "slavery was good for the slaves, it kept them fed and with a roof over their heads and their masters gave them good things sometimes actually" isn't like, the apologist argument. What is this, the 1860s?

Yeah forcibly keeping someone captive and making them do work for you is still slavery even if it's not in the West, you absolute wet cucumber. Feudalism was and remains morally abhorrent, this isn't a matter of "respecting cultural differences", respecting someone's humanity and right to self-determination is a universal virtue. If you want to do right by a child slave you free them and maybe offer to look after them, you don't keep forcing them to do slave labour for you.

Man, I can't believe that this discussion is happening in the Dungeon Meshi fandom of all places because this is a legitimately concerning worldview! Stuff like this is still used to defend situations of modern slavery today!

You… free them… like buying them from the person keeping them in a cage? Look after them, like… training them to be a ninja? Not letting a 10yo run away to live on their own?

Chattel slavery was an entirely unique form of evil that was distinct from anything else that was practiced before or since for several reasons, not least of which that until that point, no one was ever born a slave. Babies were automatically free

There is no good form of slavery, but dismissing and ignoring the sheer difference in degree and insisting chattel slavery is equivalent to feudal service is an insult to every single person who died stacked like lumber in a hold

But heavens forbid we respect, understand, and acknowledge the real history of slavery when we can just use it as a club against a character we don’t like

Buddy you can backpedal all you want, but the distinctions you are arguing are not what anyone was talking about here. The point made was "Izutsumi was a slave", which is undeniably the case. Nobody was making a point about her being a US-style chattel slave, you just brought that up to justify your reflexive apologism.

It's not an insult to victims of chattel slavery to acknowledge that other forms of slavery are morally abhorrent. That's an absurd thing to say and if anything is insulting it's that you are invoking Atlantic Slave trade here to fuel your weird fictional character agenda

Because that's what this is about for you, isn't it? Nobody is "attacking your fave", nobody here is talking about this to use it as a "club" against Shuro or his family? I think the original point here was to put some context to where Izutsumi's coming from in the story, and you saw red so hard at the suggestion that maybe a fictional character isn't a great person that you have now written multiple pro-slavery screeds in response. Maybe learn to take the L before it's too late?

You can call it back pedalling all you want, but I’ve said the exact same thing every time and your desire to read it as a defence of slavery rather than an explanation of nuance and context is a you problem

OP put a very narrow, incorrect “context” on Izutsumi’s story, and I provided the rest with citations from the text and cultural explanations of why they were wrong

If you actually read the words I wrote, nowhere did I say that any form of slavery was good, and specifically stated that both it and the feudal system that is actually in place in the story are bad

I even said Izutsumi was right to want to leave her situation because she didn’t align with those values

I don’t even particularly like Shuro as a character, but the trend of demonising him in explicitly racist ways because he hurt Laios’ feelings (and don’t lie, that’s what this is about for most of you; another reason to declare Shuro’s definitely a super bad person because his family “own slaves” - read: participate in the feudal system that rules their country and employ people in service, who get things like rights that slaves don’t) is frankly embarrassing

I don’t care if you hate Shuro

I don’t care if you bash him for any number of things

But one of those things should not be “I refuse to understand that other cultures exist with different definitions of payment for labour than cash in hand”

Hell, I’ve provided lists of things to bash Shuro on before, and likely will again

That you can’t handle being told your smug little win button of “well I said it’s slavery so if you disagree you’re pro-slavery” is factually incorrect and not textually supported (unless you’ve got some screenshots I’ve missed) says far more about you than it does about anything else

Words have meaning, and cultural context matters

Sorry if this upsets you

I cannot stress how uninterested I am in dunking on Shuro or proving that he's "evil" or whatever the fuck you think this is about, what happened here is that my friend made a post that was like "wow, Izutsumi was totally a slave, huh," and then you totally flipped your lid.

And it's really extremely poor taste of you to keep trying to turn the tables on people and cast them as racists for having an argument about the cultural context of feudal slavery that nobody was trying to have except for you. I don't have an instant win button, but it seems like you're very used to deploying yours.

Anyway, I'm going to stop responding to these now because you're throwing a strop, but please chill out and think for five seconds before your fandom causes you to become a slavery apologist.

(I'd also encourage you to do some reading on what "modern slavery" is because in your other post you seem to think that it's a novel term that I defined myself???)

not to put too fine a point on it but like, isutzumi was fully 100% a slave of shuro's family

Eeeeh you just lost the lottery so we’re going to play “Cultures That Aren’t The Modern West Exist” and also basic critical thinking

Spoilers for the Adventurer’s Bible and Izutsumi’s actual backstory below, I’ll keep the dungeon stuff out of it

well thankfully i do live in a modern democracy so i can actually very comfortably say that tying minors to posts for trying to escape some guy that bought them, trying to train them as your servant and keeping them obedient through threats of demon curses is bad actually

You’re right! You should instead definitely let minors run off into the wilds to starve to death, or be trafficked (again, since that’s where you got them from), or killed and eaten by literal monsters!

And Izutsumi was clearly so very obedient, terrified to move or flinch against her wicked captors for fear of the terrifying demon curse, living in such horrors!

Oh but how could I forget, everything not completely perfect and ideal is Evil Actually, especially if it doesn’t happen to live up to your cultural standards

Cultural imperialism is just so brave

I hope one day you grow enough to realise how embarrassing you are

Fip I don't know how you have such a knack of finding weird people online like this, but "slavery is fine actually and if you're opposed to it you're racist, you're embarrassing yourself by being anti-slavery" is kind of a new peak. Especially as "slavery was good for the slaves, it kept them fed and with a roof over their heads and their masters gave them good things sometimes actually" isn't like, the apologist argument. What is this, the 1860s?

Yeah forcibly keeping someone captive and making them do work for you is still slavery even if it's not in the West, you absolute wet cucumber. Feudalism was and remains morally abhorrent, this isn't a matter of "respecting cultural differences", respecting someone's humanity and right to self-determination is a universal virtue. If you want to do right by a child slave you free them and maybe offer to look after them, you don't keep forcing them to do slave labour for you.

Man, I can't believe that this discussion is happening in the Dungeon Meshi fandom of all places because this is a legitimately concerning worldview! Stuff like this is still used to defend situations of modern slavery today!

You… free them… like buying them from the person keeping them in a cage? Look after them, like… training them to be a ninja? Not letting a 10yo run away to live on their own?

Chattel slavery was an entirely unique form of evil that was distinct from anything else that was practiced before or since for several reasons, not least of which that until that point, no one was ever born a slave. Babies were automatically free

There is no good form of slavery, but dismissing and ignoring the sheer difference in degree and insisting chattel slavery is equivalent to feudal service is an insult to every single person who died stacked like lumber in a hold

But heavens forbid we respect, understand, and acknowledge the real history of slavery when we can just use it as a club against a character we don’t like

Buddy you can backpedal all you want, but the distinctions you are arguing are not what anyone was talking about here. The point made was "Izutsumi was a slave", which is undeniably the case. Nobody was making a point about her being a US-style chattel slave, you just brought that up to justify your reflexive apologism.

It's not an insult to victims of chattel slavery to acknowledge that other forms of slavery are morally abhorrent. That's an absurd thing to say and if anything is insulting it's that you are invoking Atlantic Slave trade here to fuel your weird fictional character agenda

Because that's what this is about for you, isn't it? Nobody is "attacking your fave", nobody here is talking about this to use it as a "club" against Shuro or his family? I think the original point here was to put some context to where Izutsumi's coming from in the story, and you saw red so hard at the suggestion that maybe a fictional character isn't a great person that you have now written multiple pro-slavery screeds in response. Maybe learn to take the L before it's too late?

not to put too fine a point on it but like, isutzumi was fully 100% a slave of shuro's family

Eeeeh you just lost the lottery so we’re going to play “Cultures That Aren’t The Modern West Exist” and also basic critical thinking

Spoilers for the Adventurer’s Bible and Izutsumi’s actual backstory below, I’ll keep the dungeon stuff out of it

well thankfully i do live in a modern democracy so i can actually very comfortably say that tying minors to posts for trying to escape some guy that bought them, trying to train them as your servant and keeping them obedient through threats of demon curses is bad actually

You’re right! You should instead definitely let minors run off into the wilds to starve to death, or be trafficked (again, since that’s where you got them from), or killed and eaten by literal monsters!

And Izutsumi was clearly so very obedient, terrified to move or flinch against her wicked captors for fear of the terrifying demon curse, living in such horrors!

Oh but how could I forget, everything not completely perfect and ideal is Evil Actually, especially if it doesn’t happen to live up to your cultural standards

Cultural imperialism is just so brave

I hope one day you grow enough to realise how embarrassing you are

Hey I got your cultural imperialism right here bud:

By the way gang, when we say you can critique Shuro’s family without being racist? This is the racism we’re talking about

You know, the one where you assume all cultures must be identical to your own, all moral values must match yours exactly, and even the slightest indication that there’s more context to a situation than “bought people must be American slaver” is evil

Thanks for the perfect examples!

Nobody was specifying "American slaver", but is the implication here that you think slavery is alright actually when it's not chattel slavery after the American model?

The reason why slavery was abhorrent wasn't because the Americans were doing super special inhumane slavery (although you could maybe make an argument that they were), but because owning people in any capacity is abhorrent! This is why "modern slavery" is a term that applies to multiple forms of forced labour without adequate compensation, because slavery is in fact a concept that exists outside of the historical US context, and it remains evil in those other contexts! This seems... extremely obvious, but if you keep wanting to run defense for forced labour then... have fun alienating everyone you know, I guess?

There's a reason why certain things are bad, and they remain bad even if they're happening in another culture where they're normalized. Forced restriction of personal liberties is one of these things. I don't mean to spell this out like I'm talking to a child, but holy shit buddy

not to put too fine a point on it but like, isutzumi was fully 100% a slave of shuro's family

Eeeeh you just lost the lottery so we’re going to play “Cultures That Aren’t The Modern West Exist” and also basic critical thinking

Spoilers for the Adventurer’s Bible and Izutsumi’s actual backstory below, I’ll keep the dungeon stuff out of it

well thankfully i do live in a modern democracy so i can actually very comfortably say that tying minors to posts for trying to escape some guy that bought them, trying to train them as your servant and keeping them obedient through threats of demon curses is bad actually

You’re right! You should instead definitely let minors run off into the wilds to starve to death, or be trafficked (again, since that’s where you got them from), or killed and eaten by literal monsters!

And Izutsumi was clearly so very obedient, terrified to move or flinch against her wicked captors for fear of the terrifying demon curse, living in such horrors!

Oh but how could I forget, everything not completely perfect and ideal is Evil Actually, especially if it doesn’t happen to live up to your cultural standards

Cultural imperialism is just so brave

I hope one day you grow enough to realise how embarrassing you are

Fip I don't know how you have such a knack of finding weird people online like this, but "slavery is fine actually and if you're opposed to it you're racist, you're embarrassing yourself by being anti-slavery" is kind of a new peak. Especially as "slavery was good for the slaves, it kept them fed and with a roof over their heads and their masters gave them good things sometimes actually" isn't like, the apologist argument. What is this, the 1860s?

Yeah forcibly keeping someone captive and making them do work for you is still slavery even if it's not in the West, you absolute wet cucumber. Feudalism was and remains morally abhorrent, this isn't a matter of "respecting cultural differences", respecting someone's humanity and right to self-determination is a universal virtue. If you want to do right by a child slave you free them and maybe offer to look after them, you don't keep forcing them to do slave labour for you.

Man, I can't believe that this discussion is happening in the Dungeon Meshi fandom of all places because this is a legitimately concerning worldview! Stuff like this is still used to defend situations of modern slavery today!

something something dark magic

goodnight, darling...

My take on Farcille <3

(experimenting with my style too)