oc time again! + her town & culture (heavily inspired by pre-roman italic populations)
she is suri sauthon (later suri laran, after her marriage). her story is linked to my swtor imperial agent, but most of her life for like. the one year away where she meets him, is spent in a town in the mountains of mirial.
despite mirial being cold and desert, and many cities developing underground, her town flourishes thanks to a force nexus, venerated in the form of an ancient, sacred, alive crystal. the ecosystem of that mountain depended on what "the horned crystal" was capable of giving them, but mirialans couldn't live off of that alone, so they developed trade and some rudimental technology, even if oftentimes it was bought thanks to the highly profitable trade of a plant used to make medicines that slowed down aging and had overall healing properties.
note: everything that's generated by this nexus has these healing properties BUT they have to be processed, except for those who bathed in the waters of the cavity under the crystal - the "real" nexus, but not the worshipped one. the waters were sacred but they were not thought to be miraculous, unlike the crystal, who instead was thought of as the keystone of the ecosystem: without it, everything would fall apart (and that is partially true: the cavity was the "real" nexus but thanks to the crystal, also strong in the force, the properties were spread all over the mountains). those who bathed in the cavity's waters - so, all of the town, who had a sort of baptism there - could eat the plant, make whatever food with it, and not only that plant, but everything generated by the nexus, that, again, had similar properties. this allowed people to live up to normal life-spans without advanced medicines or, much, really. to those who didn't live there, though, after the processing, had incredible effects, slowing down aging - for those who took it regularly - and making people able to live up to half a century more than the average]
originally, there were four tribes of nomads that lived thanks to horned farm animals that decided to settle down into one bigger town and other smaller settlements, to live off of transhumance. this division of the tribes stayed into the political and social organization: every person belonged to one tribe specifically, and had slightly different rituals and culture. for examples, each tribe had their own priests and healers, with different techniques and traditions. the town, tho, was guided by a group of people in the high priesthood, a position you could reach only by having earned the trust of all tribes. those high priests had many roles: they guided the people into sacred processions common to all the tribes, they managed the trading with outsiders, they did the maintenance of the temple of the summit (the one that functioned as casket to the crystal) and created a special liquid to offer the crystal that helps it grow.
this particular temple was important because 1. it was very visible, from every angle of the town, and it became an important identity symbol; 2. it stored the venerated horned crystal; 3. it had the altar where sacrifices were made for the crystals. that altar had a hole connected to the cavity, that allowed the liquids to reach the underground; 4. it had various symbols: statues representing each tribe + the high priesthood, and typical mirialan tattoos carved into the wood of the trees that served as columns for the temple, symbolizing 8 values that who dared to enter HAD to have; 5. it was on the way to an important lake (called "mother lake" because the lake the town was built around to depended on the waters of that other lake) where they traveled to in important processions; 6. it was said that a the wizard who unified the tribes made it with its magic, making the plant grow to hold the temple's roof. this wizard was, actually, a force user, obv.
BACK TO HER THOUGH: she's daughter of one of the high priests, who was in charge of managing the trades with outsiders, and lives in a house on the mountains with her mother and him. her parents are from different tribes (that's one of the things that earned him trust from the 4 tribes): when a child is born from two different tribes, they don't pick one to allign to, but they're usually linked automatically to the one with more relatives in it (in her case, the father's tribe: she had many uncles and aunts on his side while her mom only had one sister).
later, though, she got quite tied to her mother's tribe due to a mysterious illness that only her mother's tribe healer was able to cure. she spent 4 years (from 10 to 14 years old) living with the healer and learned her secrets. to better study, she wrote them down. when she returned home, she studied to become a priestess with her father. at 22 (the average age: you can't become priest before your 20s), she was supposed to take a test and become a priestess, but the healer of her mother's tribe died and the tribe asked her to take her place. she couldn't technically do that, but both tribes estimated both her and her parents and she was allowed to become both. she then decided to try to become a high priestess, and became one at 25 (a quite young age). being part of the council, she tried to convince the various tribe healers to unite their knowledges and write them down, and eventually made it. healers still remained tribe based but they now had an "upper, inter-tribe level" similar to high priesthood.
years later, the sacred horned crystal is stolen from the temple by some Hutt mercenaries looking for a profit. given the trust she has earned from all the tribes and the fact that her father is the high priest that deals with outsiders (and she's been hearing stories and advice about it since she was little), she is the one tasked with getting it back. without the growing crystal, the keystone to their ecosystem, the village would have lasted only a few years. in hrr quest, she meets imperial intelligence agent tar'x laran and, as they "solve the mystery" and fight to have it back, they get closer. they'll get married and have a daughter, Vegoia (who's the only one who actually will get to the plot of my story. this was all background)
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Ok maybe kinda of a weird question you don't have to answer if you don't want to but I've seen some people saying that Chilchuck is canonically misogynistic so, as the Chilchuck especialist, do you have an opinion about that?
Anon you are brave and I love you.
Listen if you, person reading this, get peeved or upset when people say Chilchuck might have had not insignificant flaws as a father and husband then probably stop reading here, we will be looking at Chilchuck like a petri dish and defile his pristine allure.
Tldr: yes but actually no but really both at the same time aka people & social dynamics are complex and please let your blorbos be flawed. With that said I will be pretty casual and playful if that wasn’t clear already, sorry.
"Aren’t you happy to be in a harem party" "No it’s soul-crushing save me". Toshiro has been drinking his fear women juice since he was young, surrounded by an assassin nanny and her fellow assassin girlies, meanwhile Chilchuck having flashbacks of getting wrung out by his 4 women household…
Waiting on people is something we see he hates doing a couple times throughout canon and extras, here and how he says "it’s not a date" -bless his summer child heart- he frames being slow to get ready as a gendered trait to have? But I can forgive him for this one because honestly the framing of the whole page leans into that, it’s kinda questionable if we’re being highly critical of anything misogynistic or regressive. But it itself is the classic subversive "Women are desirable wallflowers— Wrong! They are a monstrous ruthless force that wears on the mind, body and soul" trope. I don’t fault Kui though I got giggles from it, it makes sense for everyone’s characters, and Kui has never shied from gendered dynamics in her worldbuilding & characters so it’s not like she’ll write as if sex changes nothing and no one has opinions about it.
Alright alright let’s step back from analyzing this page specifically and get back to the question, is Chilchuck canonically misogynistic? It’s a complex question not because we don’t have hints but because it’s a very black and white answer to give and because misogynistic can be very wide or pretty narrow depending on how the term is applied.
What I would say? Yes, he is, in a realistic way that doesn’t automatically make him a piece of shit, though that doesn’t mean it isn’t uncomfortable or harmful.
On the spectrum of misogyny he classifies to me as "It’s in the normalized lighthearted way of being a horny uncle who’s a little too loose about it around the dinner table", he’s a solid "He wants to treat women as pieces of meat and jokes about it but in actuality he’s a gentleman and a family careerman who has a job so he don’t really care about that rn".
Going back to Toshiro’s party, Chilchuck being weird about it being full of women doesn’t even happen only once but TWICE.
I made a compilation of every time he’s crass, happens less than you might expect but the overall picture it gives throughout reading the manga is pretty straightforward. Repeatedly he’s shown to be dirty-minded and objectify & sexualize women lightheartedly unprompted. They’re a punchline and they’re eye candy and it’s "of COURSE my succubus would be young women, of COURSE women would desire a muscled statue’s [redacted], of COURSE women are sexual beings and of course I am attracted to them".
Dungeon Meshi doesn’t bring up sexuality much and gendered dynamics tend to be more subtle than you’d expect from media in general, so there’s that, but I honestly struggle to think of any character that acts less normal about women existing than him. Like yeah he’s joking but Hien, Benichidori, Inutade and Maizuru were just breathing and doing their jobs. Who else’s misogynistic uhh, that guy working for the shadow governor that licks Cithis’ ear when she’s bound in ropes? The sheer jump from ‘makes demeaning jokes about women’ to ‘assaulter’ between these two, god.
Honestly it does feel odd to me that he’d be kinda demeaning like that about women even in a workplace setting —Chilchuck the union man out of everyone?— but Kui has spoken man idk, think what you will don’t shoot the messenger. It’s not like he’s weird about Namari? I guess he respects her too much- Wait that sounded wrong. Maybe it’s literally just because she and the other women party members are his direct coworkers, in line with his rule and all? But yeah, even if he canonically had a thing for blondes and pretty young women he has managed to only tease Marcille ceaselessly for fun & entertainment and make her hair extra shiny as his shapeshifter, you get a good behavior star there Chilchuck.
He complains on waiting for Marcille to get ready in the barometz chapter but he also does with Laios when he’s late to meet up the party in extras. He constantly pulls on Marcille to get her to safety as if she can’t protect herself but she’s referred to as clumsy a lot so he has that justified reasoning. He constantly berates everyone so no point to make there. He undermines Marcille’s opinions often but it’s because he dislikes mages and elves and idealism. Clearly Chilchuck knows women can be capable and clearly he can have women coworkers (and friends! Again, Namari) without belittling or sexualizing them, clearly he can be normal about women and knows that some of his attitude can be inappropriate. It’s just harmless fun to him, that he keeps for occasional playful banter and taverns and the ‘right’ moods.
And as I mentioned earlier! Chilchuck is also pretty gentlemanly and protective. As always desires vs wants and instinct vs rationality show up as themes. Yes his succubus aka his ideal, the deepest allure he can imagine, is beautiful naked women, but a chapter just before that was the bicorn, all about how faithful and virtuous he is, how his heart’s in the right place. His brain is virtuous but his heart is monkey.
My point is that when it counts, aka 90% of the time and when things are serious, we don’t see signs of sexist bias and he treats women well. Often takes on a protector role or at the least takes them seriously, even Benichidori. He doesn’t want to hurt women or thinks they’re insignificant or anything. He’ll give a handkerchief to a woman in need with a slimy face.
Okay okay this is really entering speculation territory but in my own tally, the way he dismissed his wife’s ‘bad mood’ as some meaningless tantrum that he shouldn’t think any more deeply about, him starting out not reaching out to her as a resentful silent treatment, and her getting dissatisfied in the first place enough to leave makes me think he took her for granted and was kinda dismissive of her in general. Marcille’s theorical scenario is hypothetical and factually untrue at least in parts, but if we do follow it, him forgetting he’s out with his wife for once (in the precious counted time he’s home spending time with her) and not paying attention to her all outing, resulting in her being left out of conversations and just an ornament beside him the way she might have felt for a long time as his housewife waiting home for him to come back………
Half-foots seem to be patriarchal. The last section of this essay’s chapter (not by me!) + combing through the half-foot chapter should give you insight on that if you want. It’s in their patronymic, it’s in the way marriage seems very important especially for women, and it’s in the implied gender roles, being a housewife whose life revolves around raising her husband’s kids and taling care of the family home waiting for her husband who’s out working to come back.
I think Chilchuck is a bit a result of his environment and upbringing in that way, that most of the misogyny is internalized and subconscious and passive, it’s taking his wife for granted because not only does she trust her, his most precious person he’s known since he was a kid, but because she’s his wife, his woman, conceptually something that’s unwaveringly devoted, something that is very valued and enforced in half-foot communities. Here’s a short post on half-foot family bonds culturally + here’s a post on marriage and half-foots for more.
The community aspect of half-foots is very strong, which makes sense especially for how empoverished and discriminated against they are, which does come at the expense of not unlike dwarves (dwarves which half-foots idolize) having more pressure to fit in and have a good reputation to not be cast out and have no support lines. By being scared and needing stability people will often be more conservative, etc etc, though the reverse is also often true, like Chilchuck with his union. But yes Chilchuck seems to have many biases he clings onto, harsh on especially Marcille and Laios, Marcille for her idealism, race and magic meanwhile Laios for his lack of social skills and ‘reckless’ behavior.
He also does the classic "Don’t you dare date my daughter!!", though it’s a bit up in the air because he only gets agitated about coworkers being suitors, not nearly as hostile to the idea when it’s some nameless dwarf. But y’know when a guy assumes every men is as horny and sleazy as they are so they’re like "never trust men"… Chilchuck does embody a lot the tropes of just, the everyday flawed middle aged man. The absentee father and careerman husband who does care despite it all. Disillusioned grumpy old man. Old divorced drunkard joe with a thing for cute young blonde women, as a friend put it.
We know Kui subverses tropes a lot, I definitely think Kui leans into these if nothing else for the bit. He’s tropes of the strict family Father, man doing inappropriate jokes around a beer with his drinking buddies, working man exhausted and frustrated by his job, midlife crisis. Also because of how he acts with Marcille, I always say he’s the boy on the playground pulling on the pigtails of his girl friend bc he thinks it’s funny. Because he thinks she’s pretty.
So point blank, Chilchuck respects women as individuals but he can get a little lost in the sauce when thinking about women in general and jumps to sexualizing them in ways that can be objectifying and dismissive. Casual lowkey misogyny for the bit that may or may not slip into non-jokes as well sometimes when it comes to seeing women as something inherently to defend or take for granted, though he’s well-meaning. He engages in gender roles of "men should be strong and burly" and "daughters should listen to their fathers’ opinion before dating a guy". A guy engaging in patriarchy without thinking much of it y’know, more or less passive and unaware. He’s good in economic and human rights issues but would not win the political correctness medal (though he does care about optics and is very conscious of appearing as upstanding and innocent with the elves or Toshiro’s and Kabru’s parties to avoid getting thrown in jail. Overcompensating for half-foot criminal reputations etc etc. Post on that here).
Do I believe Chilchuck would march for women’s rights? Yes. Do I believe he would make ‘ye old ball and chain’ and ‘my wife’ and ‘ah women’ jokes? Yes. Do I believe he would punch anyone making one such jokes about his wife or daughters? Yes.
I was pretty flippant bc honestly Chilchuck the Sleazy Horny Old Man is hilarious to me but yes hopefully the post was decent. "How could I be sexist? I love bitches"
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