#dungeon meshi theory

[laddess-865]

I feel like this line of dialogue implies that half foots are prey animals as Chilchuck's anxiety and reactiveness goes away. Most prey animals have some form of anxiety. Along with that, half foots also have heightened senses and seem to be hyperaware (like prey animals) compared to the other human species.

So what exactly made the half foots evolve like prey animals?

[iwriteandiamnosy]

Why Farcille isn't canon (and it is not a bad thing) part 1

CONTAINS SPOILER FROM THE MANGA AND ANIME

I love the ship so much, I want them to end up together ,but I don't think the ship is canon yet, at least in the main story that we see (is probably canon in the events post story). The lesbians have to work a lot before they can be together.

Let's start with Marcille; she is lovesick, we can see that she read a looong romance series, she is interested in Chilchuck's love life, but at the same time, she doesn't experience romance attraction.

What about her Succubus? I like to think that Succubus are likely to see not only sexual desires, but longing one (Itzusumi saw her mother).

Marcille saw a character from a story book, that she reminds her of herself, or maybe that's what she is aspiring to be, or it is just a silly teenage crush, and it's okay.

We can see that Chilchuck's Succubus kiss him on the lips (kids friendly, am I right?) but Marcille is kissed on the palm of her hand.

Yeah, romantic, but also kinda distant to Marcille, at least physically. I don't want bi erasure, but I don't think Marcille is attracted to him, but to the romantic idea of him, and what he represents. It is easier to be attracted to someone you never met, because you don't know their flaws, or what they are like truly (I also think that being attracted to fictional man is a very lesbian experience, but not my point). At the same time, it is okay to have a type but to be in love with a totally different kind of person :)

Her parents met and courted for 17 years, so she is in love with love, with a long courting and passion, she has a good example of it, but can't imagine herself in actual romance for her fear of death, and excapes in a fictional one because it meets her expectation (we can see how much she loves her dad and her mom, I think she loves their love too, their long story, and fiction meets Marcille's imagination).

At the same time, in 50 years she hasn't fall in love with anyone? We aren't mentioned a crush. I know that her life has been mostly a solitary one, because she is afraid of getting attached just to let go due the difference in lifespan, and because she has a growth spurt different from anyone. But in the last year before the events occur, she joins the party and has 0 attraction for anyone (at least that we are shown, and the Succubus confirm this). Why?

Because she can't let herself fall for anyone (at least consciously) because she is scared of eventually letting them go. It is easier to minding other business to something you can't have, and at the same time, longing for it, instead of working about your insecurities, and understanding that you have to let go at some point (I don't blame her, but she can't excape forever, if she wants to live a good life).

The offspring of mixed raced people, have a vital cicle completely different from one another, so Marcille doesn't know how many years she has, and it is scary for her. So she is not willing to let someone in, for many reasons, but her insecurity about her lifetime is one of them and the main one.

Now we pass to Marcille attraction to Falin (kinda gay).

First of all, we see how easily Marcille has let Falin in her inner circle, even if she is scared of intimacy (even a friendly one). In the academy, marcille is considered a prodigy, and left alone, admired but from far away (and this is Marcille's comfort zone, so she doesn't get attached). Falin enters in her life and gives her a new point of view, a refreshing one.

Marcille is so attracted and in love with Falin, but she doesn't recognize it. She "sees" or prefers to see Falin as a kid (and Falin is aware of this), because in that way you create distance between yourself and the person you love (self sabotaging at its peakest), and it is easier to rationalize her feelings. Notice how she belittles Falin's speech about her being a grown up, because in Marcille's mind, Falin being a kid is a comfort zone, she doesn't think of Falin as a grown up because she would be closer to death, and because she could be a person Marcille feels attraction to.

Also, noticed how Marcille says "You're still a little kid to me" and in the freaking next panel she looks at Falin as if she's the love of her life and they will grow old together.

Notice how in the anime they look even MORE in love.... dungeon yuri, aaaah dungeon yuri

I am going to write a part 2 :) sorry for any errors, English is not my first language. The images are not my own and are taken online, they are from the manga/anime or official books :)

Part 2

(Part 3)

[xx-gothaggot-xx]

//cw: dungeon meshi spoilers, discussion and depiction of rape

Am i the only one who is perplexed by the way, in the dungeon meshi manga, the process of the demon eating his victim's desire seems to be recurringly drawn to resemble rape? At first i thought it was just me projecting that into it, but there are so many elements that make it feel intentional (especially in the scene in which mithrun's desire is eaten. Notice the setting of a bed, the demon holding his legs open, the licking)

It really makes me wonder if it's just me seeing things, because it seems so obviously textual, but also i can't find a thematic reason why it would be done this way, especially considering that when laios does it to the demon, this sexual subtext doesn't seem to be there anymore.

So, am I reading too much into things or is there some intentionality in this from ryoko kui's part?

[askhelki]

he has a bob.

[paintsplash1712]

Okay so I have not read the manga, I'm slowly catching up to the anime, and I have a theory!

I think Laios is going to snap and join the Dark Mage's side to stay with Falin.

I mean if you decided to go against the laws of nature to bring your loved one back, I don't think you'd just abandon them because they're part brainwashed dragon.

The dude would do anything for his baby sister!

[bluedelliquanti]

is this anything

[reloaderror]

on track to deliver on the biweekly thistle

[benjingler]

Do you guys think Thistle guesses age based on tall-men aging because of how he was raised? Do you think Kabru is the reverse? Rin too?

Thistle's like "That lady looks like, a hundred years old." not realizing he just said she looks really young.

Kabru, staring at a tall-man: "hmmm she looks about... 200? Wait. Divided by 5. 40. Yeah."

Rin meets someone new and they introduce themself as 20 and she thinks "wow that's baby age..."

I think it would be funny

Thistle would probably be the most reasonable one to think like that though. Kabru and Rin were older by the time the elves took them in (6 and however old Rin was, at least 7)

Edit: I drew something based on this

[serpent-triskelion]

[laddess-865]

Half Foot Prey Animal Theory Part 2

Since y'all really like my last theory (thanks for over 1,000 notes btw lol), have another one.

I think we've all seen that Izutsumi prefers to sleep with Chilchuck because he's very warm. A cat's body temperature is usually around 100 F, so it would make sense for her to keep herself warm with the warmest member. In the last panel, we can see that Chilchuck is uncomfortable warm from Izutsumi cuddling him, but why is that?

Well, smaller animals generally produce and expel more body heat than bigger animals. Most rodents like rats (99.85 F), rabbits (100-105 F), and squirrels (99-101 F) generally have a body temperature that's hotter than humans. All of these rodents are prey animals.

To go a long with that rodent comparison, I'd like to compare Chilchuck's ears to rodent ears. Chilchuck's ears are about 1/3 the size of his head, which is quite large. But the reasoning for his big ears (besides his good hearing) could be to release heat. Plenty of rodents and desert animals usually have big ears to release heat quicker so they can stay cool.

So why did the half foots evolve like rodents?

[room-surprise]

Evidence that Kabru from Delicious in Dungeon is Indian, a Masterpost

(EDIT: This post is an excerpt/remix of Kabru's section of my larger essay about the real world linguistic and cultural references Dungeon Meshi. You can read the essay on AO3 here. I also have another post about what part of South Asia I think Utaya is based on here.)

Since Kabru’s first appearance in the anime is upon us, I wanted to write something that compiles all the evidence we have that Kabru is meant to be a person of South or Central Asian ethnicity, or at least whatever the equivalent to that is in the Dungeon Meshi world. 

Ryoko Kui can and does draw people of many different ethnicities, and the way she draws Kabru matches the way she draws other Asian characters in Dungeon Meshi. He doesn’t look Black, or Hispanic, or any other ethnicity because he isn’t supposed to. He looks like a dark-skinned South or Central Asian person, because that’s what Ryoko Kui probably intends him to be.

So let’s go through the evidence! (There are no spoilers for the plot of Dungeon Meshi below, but there ARE spoilers for Kabru's backstory as explained in the manga, and in extra materials like the Daydream Hour and Adventurer's Guide book.)

KABRU’S NAME

The Dungeon Meshi Adventurer's Bible tells us Kabru’s real name is unknown. There are other characters whose real names are only told to us in the Adventurer's Bible and were never revealed in the manga, but then Kabru, Thistle and Izutsumi’s entries simply say their real names are unknown, and though Kui could tell us their true names, she doesn’t. I assume this means that the characters themselves don’t know what their real names are, and that the names they go by are not their birth names, but this is only a supposition on my part.

KABRU THE MOUNTAIN

Kabru (काब्रु) is the name of a mountain on the border of Nepal and India, and part of the Himalayan range. It’s the 65th tallest mountain in the world and it is very snowy and icy, with frequent avalanches. Because of this, even though it’s not the tallest mountain in the world, climbing it is challenging, and is not often attempted. Those few that have managed to climb it consider it a major achievement.

“This prohibitively fearful icefall… had thwarted numerous expeditions, perhaps even the 'thought' of attempting the mountain… Unstable seracs of the icefall, a complex maze of chasms, and delicate snow bridges spanning seemingly never ending, near bottomless crevasses… Each time the members stepped into the icefall, they stood a good chance of never returning.” (Kabru - Mountain of the Gods, Major A. Abbey, Himalayan Journal 52, 1996, editor Harish Kapadia)

WHAT DOES KABRU’S NAME MEAN?

Kabru is a character that is known for being very good at charming people, but who doesn’t express himself honestly, because he’s trying to manipulate the people and situations around him in order to maintain control at all times. I think nobody really knows who Kabru is deep inside, maybe not even Kabru himself, so a remote, hostile, icy mountain that’s hard to climb seems like an extremely appropriate name. 

Some of the oldest English sources I found regarding Kabru suggest that Kabru isn’t the correct local name for the mountain (a common problem in early Himalayan exploration by Europeans) and might just be a descriptor, or that it’s a misspelling. 

This makes the name seem even more appropriate, since Kui’s told us Kabru’s true name is unknown. It’s possible that Kabru was a place-name or a descriptor that Milsiril (Kabru’s elven foster mother) was given when she picked up a traumatized 7 year old Kabru, and she just started using it as his name, and that even he doesn’t remember his real name thanks to his severe trauma.

The fact that people in the real world can’t seem to agree on the mountain Kabru’s name, or what it means, reminds me of the running gag of Laios repeatedly getting Kabru’s name wrong in the manga.

"All the people near the Kabru massif call it 'Kaboor'." (The Alpine Journal, 1921-22 Volume 34, Edited by George Yeld and J. P. Farrar)  “It is also said that the name applies to a peak close to Kinchinjunga on the southeast, and not to the peak known to Europeans as Kabru… [The real name is] Pahung Ri [Pauhunri].” (Appendix I: Place Names in Darjeeling. The appendix says it was “compiled mainly from an article written by Colonel Waddell and published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Vol. LX, part I, 1891)”) “Kangchen is a Tibetan name… the Sikkhimese use it as the name for the peak called Kabru by Europeans.” (Charles Bell, Dyhrenfurth's Himalaya (Berlin, 1931)) “...Kyabru or the horn of protection. The name is… Kabur… possibly a corruption of Kangbur or the swelling of snow; it might also mean the white swelling (kar-bur).” (Appendix I: Place Names in Darjeeling.)  “Kabru literally means the 'White Avalanche' peak (Ka means 'white' and bru means 'avalanche').” (Kabru - Mountain of the Gods, Major A. Abbey, Himalayan Journal 52, 1996, editor Harish Kapadia)

I’ve seen one other mountaineering article cite the “white avalanche” meaning, and I think it’s plausible since the Appendix says it can mean “white swelling” or “swelling of snow”, which may very well be a literal translation for “white avalanche”. 

WHAT ABOUT UTAYA? IS THAT INDIAN TOO?

Utaya means “raised” or “uplifted” in Hindi, but it’s also a real village and a Japanese boy’s name.

Utaya (ウタヤ) is the name of the village that Kabru was raised in before his mother died and he was adopted by the elf Milsiril. Utaya is located in the southeast of the Western Continent. It’s worth noting that Kabru probably wasn’t born in Utaya, since his mother had to flee from her home to keep Kabru alive, so Utaya may be some distance away from his birth place… Not so far that a woman with a newborn baby couldn’t survive the trip, but far enough that her husband’s family gave up on chasing her. So Kabru was probably born in a close-by area.

In the real world, Utaya (Yakut: Утайа) is in an extremely rural and isolated area with a population of less than a hundred people. It’s located in the Sakha Republic, which is in the Northeastern part of Asia in the Russian Federation. The Yakut/Sakha are a Siberian Turkic people.  

The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages. 

Early and medieval Turkic groups exhibited a wide range of both East Asian and West-Eurasian physical appearances and genetic origins, in part through long-term contact with neighboring peoples such as Iranian, Mongolic, Tocharian, Uralic/Yeniseian peoples, and others. Turkic peoples share, to varying degrees, non-linguistic characteristics like cultural traits, ancestry from a common gene pool, and historical experiences. 

JAPANESE MEANINGS FOR UTAYA

Utaya can be a Japanese boy’s name with several different meanings, depending on which kanji it’s spelled with. In most of the spellings: Poetry, sing a poem, singing, compose poetry

In many of the spellings: The place where the sun shines, it's been a long time, distant, big, to shoot with a bow, to swear, affirmation, question.

The Utaya disaster happened a long time ago.

If Utaya is up in the mountains above the clouds it’s a place where the sun shines brightly.

 Kabru has sworn to himself that he will prevent another Utaya tragedy from happening.

In only a few of the spellings: to mend, feathers, wings, a word for counting birds and rabbits, sort them out, washing with water to separate the good from the bad, roof, house with a roof, a world covered with a big sky, infinite space, song that praises the Buddha, Eight.

Counting birds and rabbits makes me think of divination and also that the people of Utaya were like little birds and rabbits (small prey animals) to the monsters that devoured them.

Separating the good and the bad could hint to the “judgment” of Utaya and the greed of its people that led to their downfall, also sorting through things to separate good and bad is something that’s done with food and other resources.

The Himalayan region is often referred to as the “roof of the world”, with a big open sky above it. 

The infinite could refer to the dimension the demon comes from, or to the sky above the mountains. 

Buddhism is a common religion in the Himalayan region, and eight has auspicious connotations in Buddhism. 

With all that in mind, Utaya as a name for Kabru’s home village is an interesting choice, and adds another layer to his origins, maybe suggesting not just North Indian/Himalayan, but Central or North Asian cultural influence as well. 

It is also possible that the name is just telling us that Utaya is “up” in the mountains, or that it was “uplifted” by the wealth of the dungeon, or even that Kabru was “raised” there… The Japanese name meanings are also extremely fascinating and hint at similar ideas, as well as the tragedy that happened to Utaya.

WHY ELSE DO YOU THINK KABRU AND UTAYA ARE HIMALAYAN?

In the real world, the Himalayan mountain range is an extremely popular tourist destination, and the amount of people who want to visit and attempt to climb the mountains far outpaces the local ability to support it. This makes me think of the dungeon of Utaya and how people overcrowded it in their desire to conquer and exploit it. 

Dungeons as an unsustainable way for locals to make a living that leads to the destruction of their homes when the dungeon inevitably collapses is a major plot point in Dungeon Meshi, so I think the parallel is likely intentional. Characters often talk about someone “conquering” the dungeon, and “conquer” is also the terminology commonly used for climbing a mountain. This terminology obviously has a hostile, imperialist subtext in the real world, since it’s most commonly used by outsiders talking about proving their strength by climbing a mountain.

Also, there are local legends in the areas surrounding Mt. Kabru that there is a valley of immortality hidden on its slopes, which reminds me of the way that the dungeons can grant conditional immortality to the people inside of them.

This image of Utaya could be showing us a village built on a mountainside. The house shapes seem a bit more Middle Eastern than Nepali/Indian, but it’s not a detailed drawing and the roof styles are a mix of flat and peaked.

CULTURE

In the Daydream Hour sketchbook, Ryoko Kui included a small comic about characters sharing desserts from their home countries. A young Kabru is shown enthusiastically trying to share an unnamed sweet, and he is interrupted by his elven foster mother, who insists he present a type of elven cake instead. We know that Kabru hates this type of cake, and he seems disappointed to have to eat it and talk about it.

The white balls in Kabru’s dessert are very likely meant to be  an Indian sweet called rasgulla (literally "syrup filled ball"). Rasgulla are a dessert popular in the eastern part of South Asia, made from ball-shaped dumplings of chhena dough, cooked in light sugar syrup. While it is near-universally agreed upon that the dessert originated in the eastern Indian subcontinent, the exact origin is disputed. Rasgulla are as culturally important to the Bengal and Odisha regions of India as Parmesan cheese is to the region of Parma in Italy.  

Rasgulla are also popular in Nepal, where they are called rasbari. 

KABRU’S PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Kabru is one of several characters in Dungeon Meshi with clearly non-European features: he has brown skin and thick black/dark brown curly hair. He has almond-shaped eyes with long, dark lashes (fans like to joke that he’s wearing eyeliner). All of these are traits common to people from the Indian subcontinent. His blue eyes are not common for someone with his skin/hair color, but blue or green eyes are not unheard of in that region either. 

(Indian man with blue eyes)

Blue or light eyes are often a cause for discrimination, like what Kabru experienced as a child. More on this in a moment.

Kabru is 5’7” (170cm) tall, which is short for a Northern European man (180), tall for a Nepali man (162cm), but close to the average height of Indian men (177cm). He has a slender build, which is also common for Asian people in general, and South Asian men in particular.

Compared to the European-looking tall-men in Dungeon Meshi (such as Laios, Falin, Delgal, Marcille’s father), Kabru’s facial features look more like the other Asian characters, such as Toshiro and his party. 

CAN DARK-SKINNED PEOPLE HAVE BLUE EYES?

Yes. Light-colored eyes are very uncommon in parts of the world where most people have dark eyes, since dark eyes are a dominant trait in real-world human beings. That means that in order for two parents with dark eyes to have a child with light eyes, both parents need to have a recessive light-eyes gene (or for there to be an illness or genetic mutation), and that’s rare in populations that don’t have a lot of light-eyed people to begin with.   

THEN WHY DO SO MANY DARK-SKINNED CHARACTERS HAVE BLUE EYES?

Anime and manga often give characters with dark skin light colored eyes instead of allowing them to have brown or black eyes, which is much more common in real life. It’s a hurtful design trope that makes many readers feel that their natural dark eyes are somehow ugly or inferior to blue eyes.

This trope is used over and over again by authors who want their characters to look “cool” and “exotic”, and for their eyes to be high-contrast to make it easier to show their emotions.

I don’t think this is what Ryoko Kui is doing in Dungeon Meshi. 

UNREALISTIC HAIR AND EYE COLOR COMBOS IN ANIME

In a lot of anime/manga, blue eyes (regardless of skin color) don’t actually mean anything in the narrative, in the same way characters having green or pink hair doesn’t mean anything, the colors are non-diegetic, they don’t actually exist in the world, like the music that plays in the background without an on-screen source. 

It’s an artistic shorthand to make characters visually stand out, instead of giving them all black hair and eyes like most real-life Japanese people… Which is what most anime/manga characters are meant to be: Japanese people. 

Dungeon Meshi has a large cast of characters that are explicitly meant to be non-Japanese. We know this because there’s a group of characters that are Japanese, and they’re drawn differently from everyone else, they wear ethnically Japanese clothing, and have ethnically Japanese names. 

Unlike other series, where eye and hair color don’t mean anything, Dungeon Meshi has no unrealistic skin, hair, or eye color combinations. 

(Except for the elves, who seem to have different genetics than real world-humans. I’ll get into that another time.)

Ryoko Kui must be aware of the dark skin, blue-eyes design trope, because if she gave Kabru blue eyes just because she thought it looked good, surely she would have made some of the other Asian or dark-skinned characters have light eyes. Out of 9 Asian or dark-skinned tall-man characters, Kabru is the only one with blue eyes.

Kabru having light-colored eyes is central to his story, and Kui talks about it.

KABRU’S STORY AND WHY HIS BLUE EYES MATTER

Kabru’s father and his family tried to kill Kabru when he was born because he had blue eyes. Kabru’s mother ran away, and ended up raising Kabru by herself in Utaya. She didn’t try to return home to her own birth family, but instead struggled to raise a child completely on her own with no money or support, which implies she had no other options, due to the fear people of their region have for people with blue eyes.

This is a real thing that used to happen frequently in areas where most of the population has dark eyes, and it still happens to this day.

In a realistic story, this is logically what would happen to a character with dark skin born with blue eyes in a place like the Utaya region. It’s rare for manga or anime to show dark-skinned blue-eyed characters facing this. 

WHAT IS THE “EVIL EYE”?

The “evil eye” is a supernatural belief in a curse brought about by a person looking at you. The belief in the evil eye has existed since prehistory, as long as 5,000 years ago. It is estimated that around 40% of the modern world's population believes in the evil eye. This concept is most common across the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia, areas where light-colored eyes are uncommon. 

In areas where light-colored eyes are rare, people with green eyes, and especially blue eyes, are thought to bestow the curse, intentionally or unintentionally. Just one look from a blue-eyed person is often considered enough to inflict a curse.

One of the most famous and widespread talismans against the evil eye is the nazar, a glass amulet featuring concentric circles in dark blue, white, light blue and black. It’s supposed to “bounce” the curse away from the wearer. 

HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO KABRU?

Imagine Kabru growing up in a village surrounded by people wearing and hanging talismans that look like his eyes, because the people around him think blue eyes are evil. They call his mother a witch for birthing him, and a whore because she doesn’t have a husband. Imagine parents forbidding their children from playing with or even talking to Kabru. People crossing the street to get away from him, or chasing him away by throwing rocks.

I think the reason young Kabru was able to learn how to speak some kobold is likely because he was so heavily ostracized by the other tall-men around him, the only children he could occasionally interact with in Utaya were kobolds, who might not share the same cultural superstitions that the tall-man do. 

This childhood trauma, combined with Kabru’s experience of the dungeon collapse in Utaya, and being raised by an elf that treated him more like a pet than a human being, set Kabru up as a character who has never had a home where he belongs. He has been an outsider from the instant he was born, and every place he has lived treats him as an “other.”

To his father’s family, he was a curse. To his mother, although she loved him, he was a burden. To the people of Utaya, he was a monster. To the elves, he’s a tall-man baby (no matter how old he gets) with funny looking eyes, to the people on Merini Island, he’s a foreigner from the West with elven ways and education. 

CONCLUSION

I wanted to write this because I know some people will see Kabru in the anime for the first time today and think "Oh, another dark skinned blue eyed character! This is a bad character design that is evidence that the author is racist at worst or ignorant at best.” And I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of Ryoko Kui’s work in Dungeon Meshi.

This isn’t to say that Ryoko Kui has never done anything wrong, or that her work couldn’t be more inclusive, or that there’s no way in which she could improve. 

But there are pages and pages of artwork she’s done that shows she cares about these issues, and I think it’s worth celebrating when someone makes that kind of effort with their artwork.

ANYWAY…

If you’ve read this far, you’re very strong hahaha. I hope you enjoyed this essay. I’ll be publishing more soon when I finish my Dungeon Meshi research on the names and cultures of all the characters. Wish me luck!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dungeon Meshi: The RPG

[fumifooms]

Rin, smiling, and nagging

Rinsha Fana’s character is summarized in a couple facts thrown here and there. Because she worries for him, she follows Kabru to help his cause and protect him, and to nag him. She’s a grumpy angry tsundere, but it seems not only rooted in her attitude but on a deep rooted physical level, to the point where any intense emotion she feels will make her frown and scowl even if it’s genuine joy. Her childhood was half spent ostracized in the tallman community her family lived in and half with the elves, where she’s said to have been treated like an animal.

We don’t know how she was raised exactly or who it even was, but knowing she was "treated like an animal" by the elves taking care of her…

Elves are shown to have a highly hierarchical society, not only with their concern with status such as nobility and the purity of bloodlines but also reflected by its social culture imo. They have high society and etiquette, upmost devotion to the queen, very role-oriented, like cogs in a machine, and as such, it’s a bit skewed since most of what we see of the elves is in a military context with military people but they seem to value having emotions under lock and key to be efficient and not bring dishonor, Flamela is an interesting character on this. Don’t be a bother and do your job until you’re called on, fulfill your role, everything else is extra at best inconvenient at worst.

Personally I do think the canaries kept Rin, it’d make sense that whichever canaries got stuck with the job at the headquarters would be barebones with her and treat her like an ‘impounded article’, they couldn’t find another place for her and this way they can get her report on the events whenever she can speak again in however many years, and this way it makes sense that she could keep in touch with Kabru too. They’re used to prisoners, not kids. Being raised in a military context rather than at some orphanage would shape her further.

All of this to say…

She’d already seen the world’s harshness to those who don’t conform in her hometown, but with the elves? Her disdain for those who had formal education at a magic school?

Wouldn’t she become very concerned with proving she is not an animal, proving that she’s smart and skilled in her own right on her own merit, even without schooling. And to do this she nitpicks and nitpicks, because even being pristine isn’t enough to be respected, but at least it’s not giving others reasons to disrespect and dehumanize her. Learning to school her emotions, to scowl as a defense mechanism because anything else makes her vulnerable, because they don’t care about her as a person with feelings, because showing other expressions was dangerous or punished in some way: because it was fit in or don’t fit in and that’s the difference between having your house burnt down and being tolerated, between getting her food or having her questions answered and being yelled at to shut up… Because all her life she’s been surviving in hostile social environments and at the mercy of others, but unlike Kabru she doesn’t become a people pleaser but becomes very self-reliant and wary of socializing.

So she nitpicks and nitpicks and nags, because she’s worried. Because flaws are dangerous. So she has a hard time smiling and laughing, because it’s dangerous to allow yourself to feel safe in being authentic.

It would be nice…

Is my red, red enough? I'm waiting for your teeth at my throat. It’s only good manners. -Stephanie Valente 

[loriache]

Falin's Nightmare

[mapletine]

some sketches bc i’ve been too tired to finish anything properly

i thought it might be fun if the winged lion was sealed in something other than a book

also i like when little characters sling around disproportionately large weapons

+ rather miserable looking thistles under the cut

[pandamito]

i saw those ryoko kui's sketches and i had to draw laios and kabru