#Dungeons and Memories

[sabertoothwalrus]

kui is literally so brilliant at well-thought-out anatomy and character design I could just study it all day

[ciderjacks]

dad issues

+

(I think they were all fundamentally affected by what they saw and just collectively decided not to share the upsetting details)

[cabinette]

redraw 🌻

[orbees]

this gif [source] has absolutely been killing me. stomps on you to death. breasts boobily

[bikwin5]

"DUNGEON MASHY" comic

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Alas, this beautiful dream could not last.

[dunmesh]

i was genuinely killed by the fact kabru's real name being "unknown" is due to him not being able to remember how his mother used to call him. and now i can't stop thinking about this child trying so hard to remember his loved ones only to have the most grotesque images come to mind. as we read the manga the only glimpses of his life in utaya we get to see are those tragic moments when he lost everything, and i find it interesting that the first time us readers get to know of his past at all is through him being triggered by food.

but then we get to chapters 61-62 and for the first time during the story, he mentions the memory of something other than the horrors- and in direct parallel to earlier in the manga, it's a dish his mother used to cook. the guy who is shown to have a hard time taking care of himself in his pursuit of his goals is forced to focus on someone else's wellbeing which also results in him making more effort for his own sake as well, and so in an attempt to care for and comfort someone else he ends up trying to recreate one of the few fond memories he has left. and it's so simple; the memory of a child and mother sharing a meal together. it's so incredibly sad but also comforting, hopeful in a way- her voice, her touch, her face, they're all out of reach now. he may never remember his mother lovingly calling his name. but there is one thing he can surely still feel even all these years later: the taste of the food she worked so hard to make and put on the table. and it's not just him. through senshi and marcille as well as other characters, we see it time and time again. how among many other things, food is also a way to preserve your home. to preserve your love.

[ruby-cloud]

boss makes a dollar i make a dime draw Marcille on company time

[noodles-and-tea]

Let’s do our best today!

[pigeon-princess]

A few locations in Barovia Valley that our party has seen so far

[lokh]

guess who got into dungeon meshi a literal week before it ended

[fumifooms]

I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after

The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually

Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-

He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.

And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he gets across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt and be on your guard and shit and.

When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings

"Man they really know what you hate huh". Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.

It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmares, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)

"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species

[elodieunderglass]

I haven’t watched Dungeon Meshi, but I always enjoy the dashboard osmosis experience and have a peculiar visual memory. Here is what I believe Dungeon Meshi to be mostly about. No complicating experiences with the text, or indeed character references, fed into this extremely clear vision, which I believe I torrented directly from the astral plane at the same time as the creator was logged on

[dunmeshistash]

do u.... have a collection of half-foot hearing stuff... even just little moments withing the manga like when they cover their ears or when they push them forward (i.e. chil covering his ears for izutsumis eating sounds and half-foot marcille pushing forward her ears to hear the gargoyles)? im doing some headcanons for em :D also i wanna be 100% sure that nothing i say contradicts anything AHEHFFAHHAH thanks so much !!!

There's this extra about ears

I can't really remember which parts they use their hands on their ears cause I never paid attention to it, I can put the ones you mentioned here plus the ones where I remember hearing was relevant.

Chilchuck hearing the mermaids

Marcille Hearing the Gargoyles

Chilchuck covering his ears cause of the eating (I didn't even notice he did that)

Another interesting thing is that is not only their hearing that's above average, Chilchuck can feel changes in the air current

[erros429]

this is the sexiest frame in dungeon meshi. sorry tits out falin, you’re a close second

[ruikasas]

marcille icons