#Kabru hates Laios ass

[kuzoowl]

One-sided hatred

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Laios's three Boy Best Friends. And yes, they hate him.

[busket]

I understand personal preference and that some people just don't like ships with men, and that's ok! but I'm annoyed at the implication from some fans that labru has less depth as a relationship than farcille or any other wlw ship in dungeon meshi, and the idea that people are only shipping it as a joke, or because they're horny, or because they're misogynistic and don't want to look at female characters, etc etc. I've seen people call it like, "bloodlust obsession that turns to horniness" and it made me realize that the people who don't ship labru don't understand their dynamic at all. labru shippers didn't just pull this out of our asses lol

a lot of the story around kabru involves how he and laios are perfect opposites of eachother. NARRATIVE FOILS, if you will. everywhere kabru thrives (social interaction, charisma, the surface) laios completely fails. and everywhere that laios is most successful (in the dungeon against monsters) kabru keeps getting killed. not only that but their desires are mirrors of each other too: laios grew up bullied by humans and wanted to become a monster, kabru grew up dehumanized by his villagers and then the elves, so he wants to affirm his identity as a human being.

despite how kabru should be repulsed by laios due to his hatred of monsters, he's drawn to him instead. kabru spends the entire story trying to get to laios to talk to him and to get to know him. firstly he knows laios is closest to defeating the dungeon lord and needs to sus out if he's a good person, but he admits that he really wants to be friends with laios too, not just to determine his virtue but to see what value laios sees in monsters. he wants laios to share his interest in people, he wants laios to be interested in him back. kabru never had any true bloodlust or desire to kill laios, he was prepared to go that far if laios wasn't a good person, but once finding out that he has good intentions kabru spends all his energy trying to help laios instead. and when you consider that kabru spent his childhood believing he was half monster because of how he was ostracized in utaya, his curiosity about how laios could possibly love monsters feels so much more personal.

and for laios, he's not used to anyone taking an interest in him. people are constantly telling him he's weird, and the person he believed to be his best friend told him he couldn't stand him. he misses falin so dearly because she thinks he's the coolest man on earth, so meeting someone and being told "I hate monsters but I still want to know YOU" would have an impact on him, I think. in postcanon they become good friends, kabru becomes laios' right hand man to help him with more of the dicey social aspects of being a leader. laios asks him to stay by his side and help him, and kabru says "yeah, that's what I've been doing this whole time"

I wouldn't claim that a romantic relationship between them is CANON, but I wouldn't even say that about farcille either tbh (and I love farcille just as much so don't come for me lol) this isn't a comedy crackship that yaoi fans just made up. laios and kabru are really multi dimensional characters and they're made to reflect eachother in every way, even down to their physical design. so it's not out of nowhere that people ship them

[highly-important]

Shîsâpento is such a good episode to introduce Kabru as a foil to Laios.

The fight with the fish-men reveals how closely Kabru understands his team member’s mannerisms. Kabru is genuinely interested in people and interpersonal relationships. Because of this, he’s damn good at fighting humans and outsmarts and overpowers the corpse retrievers. But, he gets his ass kicked by the sea serpent because he doesn’t understand monsters.

Kabru is also a much more typical hero, in contrast to Laios. He’s zealous about justice and convinced of his own exceptionalism. He’s the most competent in his team and the others trust him without hesitation.

When I first hit this part in the manga I think I hated him, and I wonder if anime only fans are feeling the same way. But I think he’s already such an amazingly well-rounded character, especially knowing how he develops.

I also love how Dungeon Meshi shows how different characters see the world and how that changes their approach to solving problems.

[loriache]

I was flicking through chapter 55 for my Thistle meta and I'm struck by how completely crazy this move of Kabru's is. He deliberately lets Thistle escape! If he'd let Mithrun kill him - that's it, the disaster of Utaya won't be repeated. (At least, not here).

Kabru-related rough thoughts below the cut.

Like Shuro says after this, if that's what he wanted, leaving things to the elves would be the fastest way. But Kabru won't be satisfied with that! He wants to understand what happened. He doesn't want to leave it in the hands of people who don't see him and those like him as full, adult people. He wants to understand what happened!

He's such a big-picture thinker... I know this is just, literal textual stuff, hardly analysis! But I'm talking it through to myself. At this point, he really isn't sure about Laois, but he is still willing to trust things to him and hope that Laois will listen to him.

I do think Kabru's wrong about Laios at this point. He isn't just thinking about monsters, he does think about people and about bigger picture stuff too - not as much as Kabru, but then, who does! Like, take his succubus chapter dream with the winged lion, it's about people and monsters and the end of hunger. he doesn't just imagine a place where he can be accepted, he's thinking about what people need to live and about communities. But I don't think Kabru's totally wrong either. The little drawing with the stones weighing down Laois... he'd definitely struggle with a lot of those things when running Melini if he didn't have Kabru and Yaad and Marcille! And the soft skills he lacks are important to being a leader. So I understand Kabru's doubts. This is a manga about doubting and misunderstanding others, after all.

But despite being uncertain of Laios and the risk that Thistle getting away poses -

He tackles Mithrun into a pit!!!! (Lawful Neutral my ASS. Sorry. Sorry)

Rather than let the canaries take care of things, even if they were about to succeed, he'd rather take the risk of failure upon himself and find the truth out.

Even though the dungeon is scary and he hates it, and even though he nearly dies (and does die!) and even though he isn't sure about Laois, he's taking the risky bet on truth and agency over the safety and protection of someone who doesn't really understand or respect him

And because he took this risk and sabotaged the canaries, at this point and later, and shared the truth about the dungeon with Laios, and got the elves to cooperate - Laois understood what the demon was. Because Laois understood what the demon was, he was able to beat it. Kabru was right! The knowledge that he was after was important, and ultimately, seeking it out made him instrumental in preventing a tragedy like Utaya from ever happening again, possibly permanently.

[circuitcircus]

in defense of kabumisu……..

addressing things I see people say about why kabru being shipped w mithrun is ‘bad’ or why their canon relationship ‘doesn’t mean anything’ while also clearing up misconceptions of the characters some fans have

listen it keeps popping up and I just gotta do this or my brain will melt (if you don’t see it around then god I wish that were me) there’s an age gap!- erm there’s also an age gap in farcille (ily), the most popular ship in the series...also chilchuck looks like a kid but a lot of fans recognize him as a dilf because of his relative age, so there should be no age gap discourse among adult characters because it feels so conditional tbh

kabru taking care of mithrun is racist!- marcille likes to take care of others as well. is that sexist, or just an aspect of her character?

kabru isn’t treated like a servant, waiting on mithrun hand and foot…I mean he gives mithrun a foot massage but no one told him to do all that lmfao

he's also not the only one to care for mithrun. pattadol is shown to worry for him and milsril was the one to start taking care mithrun in the first place after he…...y’know. speaking of which-

they probably met when kabru was a kid!- neither of them showed signs of recognizing each other the entire time mithrun was introduced nor when they were together. and im pretty sure KABRU of all people would show some kind of recognition if they'd met before. it's kabru!!! the people person!!! mr. "i-noted-down-50+-characters-in-this-dude's-backstory-for-fun-and-actually-enjoy-social-gatherings"

you would think some kind of memory would come back to him especially after hearing mithrun’s backstory if milsril had even told kabru about him as a kid. but nope. it’s just fan speculation unless there's a side comic suggesting otherwise that i haven't seen

mithrun doesn't care about kabru, his shapeshift double looked like shit!- it's obviously because of mithrun's (then) lack of desires that it looked like that, but they really grow on each other

i think it's safe to assume it'd look more like kabru after they spent so much time together (also laios can barely even remember kabru's name..also saw his face multiple times and didn’t recognize him when they talked for the first time)

mithrun is racist!- he’s actually the least likely character to be racist since he lost his desires and that includes a desire for superiority over others. he even calls his past self out on that part of himself. the other elves in that side comic were being just as racist to shorter lived races but just didn’t use ‘outdated slurs’

(unfortunately literally every main character in dunmeshi is at least a lil prejudiced, but I believe it’s worldbuilding and a sign of the times rather than a reason ryoko kui is giving to hate each character)

taking care of others is a pain in the ass!- saying this as a reason kabru and mithrun shouldn't be together is basically saying disabled people shouldn't be allowed to have romantic relationships because they're a "burden"...if someone is actually willing to put in the work, then let them be.

that's not even all of their relationship, mithrun is the fighter of their duo and kabru would've been killed by the shapeshifter or something if he'd fallen down the hole on his own since he sucks at fighting monsters. mithrun helps collect ingredients for cooking every time, too (barometz fruits and griffin egg). he pulls his weight and then some!! i feel like people forget that part of mithrun a lot somehow.

+senshi literally cooks for everyone all time. it's kind of an important aspect of the narrative.

+also, while it is a popular fan thing I see around that kabru handfeeds mithrun, he literally never does lol this is mithrun using his own hands to eat:

also here we have him washing his own body

just saying because people like to treat mithrun like a baby even though the narrative respects him as a capable adult who also has special needs because of an accident. he’s captain for a reason

kabru hates taking care of mithrun!- not exactly, he was initially surprised and put off but got used to it quickly. i’m sure he’s grateful for all the times mithrun saved him from a monster and teleported them out of danger as well

he even starts doing “unnecessary” things for mithrun’s comfort and safety like when mithrun pushes himself too hard fighting, even after his mission to take care of him was complete when the canaries came back

here is even kabru resting while mithrun keeps watch (mithrun let him sleep for 5 hours before waking him up from the nightmare earlier, too):

there's nothing more to their relationship!- they actually have had a very tight and consistent dynamic since they met and they incite the most change within each other by the end. kabru is the one who inspires mithrun to create new desires so he doesn't waste away, and mithrun is the first person we see kabru being genuine with and it leads him to be more honest with others by the end instead of tiptoeing around everyone all the time (that mask was also the reason some ppl initially disliked kabru…)

kabru’s relationship with mithrun is honestly so important for his character and vice versa, but it’s often disregarded because of one over exaggerated aspect of it (an aspect that isn’t even the first way they interact with each other) or because people want to just straight up ignore it for some reason 🥲🥲

kui dedicates many panels to them that don't particularly serve the narrative as a whole in order to demonstrate this and i think that's pretty significant

you're taking this too seriously!- as if i'm the first person in the world to be crazy about a ship or the characters 😭 i love analyzing text and it's upsetting to see them mischaracterized when kui lays out the characters so clearly and deliberately

also they end up touching each other like all the time and have the kind of canon validation most ppl can only dream of lol i feel so insane look at this:

and this is just when they're first getting to know each other cuz there's a fuckload more

kinda hard to explain how i don't actually need them to get married or whatever but i'd die on this hill for them and i enjoy their dynamic immensely

haha you thought you were reading ship discourse but it was actually a character analysis 🤪🤪🤪

also don’t somehow take this to mean I think anyone has to ship them, I just need everyone to understand these accusations kind of don’t make sense especially when they can also apply to other pairs or characters

bonus kabru just looking at mithrun:

[pollyanna-nana]

Thinking about Thistle’s potential character dynamics with the others.

He and Marcille have so much in common I bet after the initial awkwardness they’d have so much to talk about wrt feeling out of place and being scared of watching loved ones die before you.

I think he and Chilchuck would squabble a lot but in the “oh this is a punk ass teenager” kind of way. Ultimately though Chil’s a dad he can’t hold it against him.

I bet he’d be rly annoyed by Laios’ monster infodumping but secretly be fascinated and love listening to it. Probably gets called out for it at least once and is extremely embarrassed while Laios is oblivious (as always).

Senshi I actually think they’d get along well upon realizing that they both have a lot of experience thinking about and tending dungeon ecosystems but from different directions (as dungeon dweller and dungeon lord). Plus he would absolutely try to get Thistle to eat more.

Izutsumi I can see them clashing because their backstories actually have a lot of similarities except with very different reactions to the circumstances (Izutsumi hating her captors/the people who bought her and Thistle desperately wanting to please them) but in reality I think if they ever got over that they’d be terrifying together. Absolutely unhinged potential sibling energy if I’m being honest.

Falin would mother hen him into the ground but that’s a given. I can foresee him having to hide from the Falin-Senshi tag team “you need to take better care of yourself!” duo on a regular basis lol.

Mithrun. lol. Obviously Thistle hates his guts for (mostly) irrational reasons but I think hilariously Mithrun has a lot of respect for him. Bc like. He had a really good reason to become dungeon lord comparatively and we all know Mithrun’s favorite thing is talking about how much of a lil bitch he was prior to getting his desires eaten.

Kabru I’m not sure but I think there would be hostilities. Thistle I think would call him out for being fake immediately and with Kabru’s Elf Baggage™️ it might not go well at least at first.

Basically. Give him the found family he deserves.

[nhuquyen]

This scene suffered from the pace being rushed which makes it hard to understand what Kabru is going on about if you didn't piece together the story through his POV. This is unfortunate cuz this moment is so realistically messy yet is the satisfying moment when the leading and supporting characters finally come into an understanding.

Kabru's antagonism makes perfect sense only if the readers remove themselves from their favoritism to Laios.

I see some confusion over why he thinks Laios is an enemy of humanity. Firstly, Laios thinks the things that killed all of his family and community are cool. This alone to me is at least sympathetic enough to see why he harbors subconscious prejudice against Laios. It doesn't make him right, but it's logical enough.

Secondly, yeah he's in over his head with his own judgment and thinks too highly of his own motive*. Thirdly, he's bit of a dick to Laios I won't even lie here (I do blame stress for the punch) . But like everyone except Falin is a fucking dick to Laios when you think about it.

And to be completely fair, ever since he knew of Laios' interest till even here still Kabru's been flip-flopping between "This man might save us all" and "He would choose monsters over humanity, we are doomed if he got the power which he is very close to getting rn, let kill him". It's not like he went 100% antagonistic.

This is getting long so,,,My breakdown of Kabru's pov, which explains his actions regarding Laios, under the readmore.

Let see thru Kabru's pov in chronological order:

Taking it from the start, Kabru has a bit of a savior complex no doubt stems from his survival guilt. Being the sole survivor of a massacre by monsters it's understandable he feel that it's his duty to find out why it happened and prevent it from happening again. We saw him and his crew talking shit about how good he is at reading people, and he totally gonna topple the greedy governor and save this place. Then they continuously got their asses handed to them by monsters cuz while Kabru read people well, he can't handle monsters. So yeah he admitted deep down he's not making it to the deep.

So now Kabru wants to find someone he can trust to save the island. He got his eyes on Laios bc he can't read him. Laios is a damn good dungeon explorer and isn't motivated by greed while almost everyone is, so what gives?

Here we see Kabru reveals he had failed to get Laios attention while trying to get to know his mysterious party. This is my interpretation only but he was definitely pissed about it too. Kabru is a bit over his head about his own charm so Laios ignoring him probably stunk.

Even after knowing Laios' special interest he was like "huh so that's how he is" until the matter of dungeon master's power come up and it occurred to him "wait would this guy who loves monsters use the power to make the dungeon full of powerful monsters that will destroy people?" He definitely did not decide Laios was humanity emeny right there, it's a possibility. As much as Laios pulling through and save the island from becoming another Utaya tragedy is a possibility.

Here, we see him desperately clinging to the former possibility until the latter took over "It's too late to get through to him i have to kill him." But did it take over? In that panic, his true feeling comes out. He still wants to understand Laios as a person, he still wants to believe in Laios after all.

Wgile it's easy to get pissed at Kabru just as we did the the Shuro/Toshiro vs Laios fight scene. Fellow autistics know how much it fucking hurt to get your social ineptitude get dragged out like that. I do think Kabru's rant here is good for Laios. This is the first time somebody has admitted to want to get to know why he like monsters despite them hating the creatures. It's not the solidarity like what he and his sister has, but it's not total rejection. Again, his own party members who care about him want nothing to do with his interest (minus Senshi)

Tldr: Kabru's alright and his actions make complete sense even if it's flawed

[wolftattoo]

i also genuinely dont understand why ppl ship kabru and laios . kabru hates his ass lmao .

[lettucedloophole]

spoilers for the latest dungeon meshi ep but oh my GODDD i love marcille my pobrecita.. i think ryoko kui wrote sexism's effects on marcille really well, i think it's neat how she's a silly little guy and other people kind of underestimate her and it seems she is often down on herself about her failures or, "burdening" others in a way that feels very authentic to how it feels to be a woman and have that extra pressure of perfection to dispell suspicions of your inferiority. it's just very much the feeling i gather from it which makes marcille so relatable. and then to put another layer on it when it came out that she did black magic, she's literally A Bad Ass she is LITERALLY a Badass which makes her doubt of herself even more starkly inappropriate, and in this new episode despite the Fact that she is A Bad Ass when everyone's being a BIG MEANIE to her she's like a sad puppy when people don't let her help with revivals and like idk if i missed something but she doesn't even push back against them saying they're going to turn her in in like, a threatening way, she is just... scared. which hurt me i just wanted everyone stop being so MEAN TO HERRR my POBRECITAAAA. MY TINY LITTLE BABYY

i also laughed a lot and freaked out catching up on the two latest episodes today. DEVASTATING miscalculation on chilchuck's part to protect senshi when laois has No sense of Social cue. really happy to see laois and kabru meet, they're really funny together and i see why people like them so much as a ship now!! i am ECSTATIC that shuro is out of the game in terms of ehem. courting falin. bro COULDN'T HACK IT gEDDEM marcille. get that red dragon lady.. and omg it made me SOOOO MAD that they tried to blame marcille for that like how could that even b her fault!!! >:((( its obv the mad mage's doing. i dont get it they r just big meanies!!! stop shitting on my girl!!!

i like how kabru is like laios if he had more social awareness and was a litle Conniving... and omfg i thought it was so funny and sweet how shuro and laios just fucking beat each other up 😭 shuro said i hate autistic ppl fr. no but im glad he showed up for laios & co. in the end.. sometimes you just gotta talk ur feelings out over a fistfight lol

it was soo so fun seeing everyone interact .. all these fun characters... i cant wait to see what happens next!!! i love this show literally one of my fav animes EVER now definitely its so good its SOOOOOO GOOOOOOOD!! im terrified not knowing when its gonna end and how im gonna cope when the season ends 🗿 methinks i will have to read the manga instantly after or i will go insane from dungeon meshi withdrawal..

[bi-hop]

7, 10, 14, 15, 16 for any fandom you like

hehe these are spicy...

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

so I tried to look back through my old messages to see if I could find examples of this. for the most part, characters I hate are ones I hate of my own volition and people being obnoxious about said character just solidifies my hate, which isn't precisely the same thing. yeah, I don't have an answer for this. I think the closest I've come in recent years is due to people being violently weird about Marcille on Twiter, but my conclusion was just "I'm a better fan of her than them" and then walking off into the sunset at peace so-

10. worst part of fanon

so, obviously, the racism. obviously. the way white background characters are elevated in certain fandoms to unquestionable beloved status while characters of color, especially Black characters and especially Black characters that are women, are scrutinized, demonized, ignored, or outright tokenized. but also just the racism towards creators of color??? I was looking back again for the sake of number 7 and got blindsided by this from an old server I was in

this was at a friend of mine but I also got treated like this by the same person once they knew I was Black ODAAJSODOJSDD

14. that one thing you see in fics all the time

weird ass gender essentialism. fics be so fine and then bam it's presenting this wildly inaccurate thesis on gender and gendered relations and what not. it's not just a fic problem, obviously, but the unrelenting cisnormativity of fandom that's expressed in fics pisses me off LMAOOOO like can we be normal. please.

15. that one thing you see in fanart all the time

WHITEWASHINGGGGG! every time Kabru is drawn with the same skin tone as my girlfriend, an angel dies screaming. heaven forbid they make him gray too. where is the lotion. I also hear people discuss Kabru being treated like the right image in certain ship content

and I'm just like... it's the racism... it's the hypermasculinization any popular brown man in fandom faces... they just can't do that delicate feminizing shit with Laios so-

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

dare I say the idea that Marcille despises Laios or merely tolerates him or doesn't care about him. like people take her moments of irritation or outright anger and put it as the whole of what their relationship is. and it annoys me bc they do like and trust each other. in general actually it's like people buy too heavily into the idea that the party despises Laios in a constant and genuine way and it's like... did we read the same manga? are we watching the same show?

and on another note, tired of the constant posts insisting Marcille's weirdness about gender and gendered presentation is just bc she doesn't want to look at a Falin that looks like Laios. Marcille can just be regressive. you don't have to jump through hoops to be like "well actually this is a woke Farcille moment" when it'd be even more good of her to accept how Falin likes to dress surely. the extremes of how she's flanderized, I suppose.

[loriache]

actually i kinda hc that the dwarves would have some nasty rumours about laios that theyre spreading after the story. cause obviously they Hate His Ass due to the whole kahka brud fiasco. and kabru says they won't respect him if he doesn't grow a beard, but he ain't gonna grow a beard because then he thinks he looks like his dad.

so i assume he's gonna get some of the dwarves in their, idk, steampunk coffee houses, talking about him not being a Real Man, of the type that's typical to ancient political slander - probably also linking to the idea he's Beaftly and Unnatural.

and basically. i think laios would love that shit.

i think it would unlock the Gender. cause i love laios gender i believe laios gender is real but i think in postcanon he's gonna be "I dont have time for that rn, i'm being king and its stressing me tf out". and so i think hearing "The king is No True Man but rather a Queen, like that elven bitch, or even Some Unnatural Creature" would give her just. such a rush of gender euphoria. like when she's really into people calling her "lord of the monsters/the dark lord". lmao