#dungeons in the real world

[baristabomb]

...weird amount of dunmeshi fans have been saying being a caretaker in a relationship is the worst thing ever..marcille must want to killl everyone soo bad because doing things for people suuuucks sooo muchh

it's an act of love, not just a job i promise. we all want someone who's willing to take care of us in some way, just like how senshi shows care for others by cooking for them :'|

[hobgobknowsbest]

[big-greer]

a BIG part of the lore of Dungeon Meshi is how ageism is bad. About how the long lived races treat the young lived races like children and thus infantilize them and do not show them the respect and understanding they deserve simply because of their looks or short life spans. Whether its because to them they look like children in their eyes (like half foots and gnomes) or because the adult ages of the younger lived races are still in the child ages for the longer lived ones and so they get treated/viewed as children (we see otta receive comments about getting with minors when in reality she dated adult half foot women. so we already see this view towards things like this are a thing in the lore) We see this with chilchuck, senshi, and marcille where the two later view chilchuck as a child and treat him like one even though he is a full grown man who drinks (and is supposed to have grey hairs) all because he looks young and in the newest episode its revealed he is 29 which is still young children to the two of them. We see how perspectives that characters are children because of their age being a childs age for a different race as opposed to their race or because they look like children is a completely infantilizing and disrespectful behavior that causes so many problems in the long run. a theme that is completely flying over the average tumblr users head.

ive seen people get furious at other people because they sexualize chilchuck and even marcille

“oh they look like kids so dont do that you freak”

you absolute fool you missed a major theme of the fucking story. But because they look young suddenly they are children? have you paid no attention to the story? did you just ignore how the ageisim and weird mindset about ages like that causes so many issues that could easily have been avoided. and as for the age one i see people getting furious at others for being into and sexualizing izutsumi even though she is a year past adult in tall man years, but because she isnt in the adult age range in real life (wild your applying real life society standards to a fictional medieval fantasy world). even though even in lore she would be well an adult able to get married and everything tumblr really does have the media literacy of a toddler.

[fatedtime]

I know there’s a lot of people talking about the culture conflict between Toshiro and Laios, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the class conflict between them too. Mayor’s child or not, Laios is still from the boonies, while Toshiro is waited on hand and foot by a flock of women his family employs to serve his needs. This has 100% stifled Toshiro’s ability to communicate with others, to the point where acknowledging his retainers and thanking them for their efforts is shown as a huge point of growth.

Meanwhile, Laios’s bumbling nature towards Toshiro’s boundaries is very much informed by his lack of knowledge of other people and places. He knows how much it hurt him to see his sister rejected by people whose insular attitudes made her powers frightening to them, so he tries to express overtures of friendship towards Toshiro by being so interested in him that it comes off as frightening instead. While he means well, his lack of knowledge on how to interact with people who are different from him puts Toshiro in a weird spot, and this lack of knowledge isn’t just the autism — it’s where he was born and raised. And it’s something real kids from rural areas go through when they enter more urban spaces. The sorts of social manners that are appropriate there aren’t appropriate elsewhere, and they get seen as… well. Inelegant. Pushy.

If Laios had gotten Hien’s name wrong, she would have decked him. But because it was Toshiro, whose upbringing didn’t give him any conflict resolution skills (because he’s around people who have to bend to his needs*) he doesn’t know how to sort things out with Laios, and grows to resent him. It’s not just the culture, it’s the place he occupies class-wise.

That’s part of why I love Toshiro’s arc — if this was just a culture conflict where Laios commits microagressions against him, as I’ve mostly seen it put, him ultimately learning a lesson would be pretty weird. But it’s not. His upbringing as a noble lord’s son in a BONKERS family has given him certain issues… and Laios helps him confront that, so he can live without regrets.

(*please note, this is a massive oversimplification of what the hell is going on with Toshiro Nakamoto. i just didn't want to write a book.)

[bored-guy-21]

Real

[yarrayora]

On Adulthood in Dungeon Meshi Universe

i've seen multiple people use math to convert the ages of fantasy races in dunmeshi into a Normal Human Age, or in this case, a tallman's, as a metric of adulthood

i feel like that's obviously an unreliable way to go about it, especially since a half-elf like marcille exists, her growth is far too slow compared to the short-lived races, and we still don't know how that compares to an actual elf. and that's when you only consider the physical aspects of it.

we have chilchuck who became a dad at age 13, a year before he could be considered of age in half-foot community. maybe with that we could assume 14 in half-foot is like 18 in tallman and do the math from there? except 16 is considered the age of maturity for tallmen in-universe. and we also have to consider whether the concept of legal age exists in dunmeshi universe, because the term of "age of maturity" used in adventurer's bible could very well refers to puberty and not what the society at large consider to be adulthood.

hell, do we even know if different cultures in different continents agree on what age is considered 'adult' even when they're of the same race? probably not! the cultures in dunmeshi universe are pretty clearly insular

for example, back in the touden siblings' hometown, being a gravekeeper is considered an ill-omen, but marcille talked about it as a respectable job falin could have taken if she didn't run off to go dungeon diving with laios

people at the island don't know that rice is a staple food in the eastern continent. and so on and so forth.

so how do we figure out whether someone is an adult or not in dungeon meshi? by figuring out their role in society

let's go back to chilchuck

it could be because adventuring is really dangerous that he retires early, but considering the reasoning provided was "in terms of age" it's more likely 26 is middle-aged or older for half-foots. although since we already find out that he's already a father of three grown adults, nobody would argue against this.

the most controversial topic regarding this whole subject seems to be marcille. was she a child when she was in magic school? was she an adult? surely because she's more of an elf than a human she's actually still a child at the age of 50! especially when an elf's age of maturity is at 80 years old!

we don't really see a lot of children getting their own roles in dungeon meshi universe, but what little we see in canon paints a picture of how children are treated there. let's focus on the orcs

orc is considered an adult at 14, Leed is 14 and she leads her own hunts. and despite their pride as a warrior race, just like every other community they don't make their young hunt for their own food.

so what we got from here is that despite only reaching adulthood recently, Zon considers his sister competent enough to be in charge.

if we use that as a metric of adulthood, then Marcille who was a teaching assistant at the magic school, has reached adulthood for quite a while now. especially when her main job involved researching illnesses, a responsibility you wouldn't hand over to a child

don't forget that a lot of those who came from long-lived races are biased against short-lived ones and dismissing their metric of adulthood

southern continent where the magic school is situated is mostly populated by gnomes and dwarves, so clearly even to them marcille is already considered an adult

even in the real world the concept of adulthood changes depending on the eras and the culture. there were times in history when it was common for 14 years old children to shoulder the responsibility of a working adult in 21st century, and that includes marriage. in japan the legal age used to be 20, and only recently changed to 18 during 2016. but that's not their age of consent either, that's their legal age for being eligible to vote

maybe centuries later when comfort and leisure become much more common in the dungeon meshi universe people will balk at the idea of a 14 years old orc being considered a full-pledged adult, but as of the standard of the year 514, marcille is an adult, and her role in society proves that

[craseycazy]

not to get sentimental over an anime i just got into but its genuinely so refreshing watching dunmesh. there's no incest, the underage characters aren't sexualized, and most if not all the fan service is of senshi and laios or even chilchuck. this is the bare minimum of making a good anime but it's got me really happy

[funnywormz]

imagining that whenever post-canon falin returns from an adventure in a dungeon, she brings back preserved monster specimens (and/or monster food) and notes on their behaviour for laios, and cool magical items and pretty trinkets for marcille (dw she checked to make sure they weren't cursed first)

i like to think that falin gets really into gift-giving as a way of expressing love after she's been mixed with the dragon. it's those Big Avian Beast urges. like how birds bring back food for their babies and put pretty objects on display for their mates. also she's still a very sweet and thoughtful person no matter what, and it makes her happy to feel like she's providing her loved ones with things that are useful or make them happy. she probably brings things for the others too but idk what

[possamble]

do you have any particular thoughts regarding marcille being a half-elf? its interesting to me considering the fact that she seems self-conscious about being a half-elf, but denies it when its brought up

i remember marcille looking visibly uncomfortable over laios simply asking her how old she is, which i think the only reason she might feel nervous about this is because it might reveal her as a half-elf to him.

she's never corrected anybody whose called her an elf either.

never mind the circumstances of the reveal, in which thistle goes on about how half-elves are inferior and accusing her of wanting to become full blooded elf, she seemed particularly upset like he struck a nerve-

i wish the half-elf thing was built upon more. also, underrated marcille line:

okay so i revisited this sequence just to make sure I could back myself up and it's just... man. there's a lot going on.

the first reaction we get from Marcille is this huge panel that takes up half of the page

she is viscerally affected. flushing to the tips of her ears with the intensity of it. and we see it again, a few pages later

so it might seem like she's embarrassed about it and lying to herself, but... I really think it's just that Thistle is accidentally hitting sore spots. If you really look at what he says to get these reactions

"you'll live out your entire life [...] and die that way too"

"a hundred years from now, nobody will be there"

Hear me out. I think, if he stuck to harping on about her inferiority without bringing up how terrifyingly long-lived she is, she wouldn't have been as bothered. But right now, Thistle is accidentally hitting all the marks on Marcille's deepest fears-- and this is after the Winged Lion promised her that her dreams could come true in an extremely vulnerable moment, so it also hits her slightly guilty conscience as well.

I do truly believe that Marcille isn't bothered about being a half-elf the way that people assume she'd be bothered by it. To her, the biggest problem with being a half-elf is that it's isolating.

On one hand, it's not hard to imagine why she'd distance herself from elves in the west. A lot of them can clock her as a half-elf on sight, unlike other races, and therefore she's always branded with this weird stigma of being Othered -- I would even say that she considers herself lucky for being born outside of elven culture instead of having to grow up in it. I mean, just... look at the way elves talk about her.

Skipping past the uncomfortable implication of what 'not tolerating the existence' of half-elves would actually entail, this is incredibly fucking annoying. You can see why she wouldn't want to be around elves much. You see a lot of Marcille reacting badly here, but honestly, almost all of it can be attributed to her freaking out that her bluff completely failed. She's honestly more paying attention to Izutsumi's footsteps and trying to coordinate an opportunity to escape.

And in the end, you see her built-up frustration at being asked if she wants to be a full-blooded elf like 2-3 times in a row.

Yeah, yeah, "the lady doth protest too much," and all. But we know Marcille. We know that she's a lot more embarrassed and horrendously unconvincing when she's being prodded about something she's actually self-conscious about.

Moving onto the flipside of things, it might seem weird that she "pretends" to be a full elf around other races, but it's not really that strange if you think about it. Again, people are weird about her being infertile or whatever, and a lots of them don't even know much about what sets half-elves apart from everyone else. I mean, look at how uncomfortable Laios is just asking her about it

and look at how exasperated and resigned she looks

And like... she's right. Where would that come up in normal conversation? Why would she go out of her way to tell them? She's functionally a normal elf to other races anyway -- got the ears, the abnormally long "childhood", and the huge mana capacity. Unless it's directly relevant or important for people to know, I don't think it's all that strange or indicative of insecurity that she prefers not to bother with it.

(This combined with her sense of being an "outsider" to elf culture also explains why she thinks elf superiority is embarrassing. She sees the way elves treat short-lived races from the "outsider" perspective nonetheless, and thinks it's obnoxious; especially more so because she usually has to play the elf around short-lived races and deal with the reputation of arrogance that elves have built up.)

The sad thing is, this all means that... she doesn't actually fit in anywhere. She doesn't like going out West much because of how elves treat her. But she's also an outsider in the continents she was born in, treated like this exotic long-lived alien choosing to live among short-lived races for some reason. She is always an outsider, the Other, no matter where she goes. Add in the fact that she'll live longer than literally anyone she knows, and it's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

And I think that's the crux of it. Marcille really doesn't act like she's at all self-conscious about being a half-elf because of any feelings of inferiority or being half-made or whatever. She considers herself a perfectly legitimate being and might even, in some ways, consider herself superior to normal elves because she's not blind with elf supremacy or whatever. (And whatever "elven biases" she displays, all of them are born more out of the fact that she's kind of bad at conceptualizing how other races age and mature compared to herself, not that she actually considers herself better or more mature simply for being an elf.)

I think that whatever self-consciousness Marcille has about being a half-elf is, instead, related to terror and loneliness. The reminder that it ensures she'll never truly belong anywhere for the rest of her very long life. The reminder that, in truth, even she's not actually sure how old she is by other races' standards (hence the discomfort when asked how old she is). She doesn't want to not be a half elf, or be a full elf or full tall-man-- in her ideal world, she's still a half-elf. She just gets to live out her life at the same pace with the people she loves and doesn't have to say goodbye again and again and again until she dies.

and one last very important panel, right after Mithrun tells her that all her desires would be devoured

In her ideal world, she's still a half-elf and reality magically starts marching at her pace. But failing that, the second best thing is that she's still a half-elf-- but one who is able to accept reality and let go of her fear.

(But the rest of the story pans out the way it does because, to Marcille, taking reality apart and reshaping it was less scary than simply and fully reconciling with it.)

[specshroom]

What if someone got isekai'ed but instead of going into a normal fantasy world, they went into a fantasy porn world?

I think that would be cool cus the physics in Porn are obviously different from real life.

Like Imagine having hentai jiggle physics LMAO. You would also be able to take fuckass huge dick that you physically shouldn't be able to but it's porn so you can. And you could go for more rounds than you physically should, you could take more loads than possible, not to even mention the magic/fantasy aspect.

It would also be pretty funny cus every character that interacts with you would want to fuck, right?

Lots of potential for funny and smutty hijinks.

LMAO wait imagine you think you got isekaid into a porno fantasy world but it's actually just a normal fantasy world.

So you find the nearest orc camp and walk in like:

"oh no~ I sure hope no big strong orcs take advantage of me😳🤭"

And the orcs are just like: 🗿😐

[melonthesprigatito]

I don't know what rock these people are living under but Pokémon spinoffs definitely haven't gone anywhere

This post is an appreciation post for all the good recent spinoff games that don't get attention <3

[loriache]

The world's major cities

So, Kabru copes with stress by reciting important world cities. That's very cute. Let's move on from that character beat, though, and get weird about Lore.

Cities!!

Kahka Brud and Izganda we know - Kahka Brud is the city nearest to the Island, the dwarvern port with a large population of Half-foots. It's also partially built into the ruins of a dungeon, the Brud Dungeon Cluster. That's really neat!

Senshi is from Izganda; it had mines and a large dwarvern community.

Sadena is where Daya is from - it had a dungeon. Her family were dungeon-keepers.

Dozahk is where one of Senshi's previous comrades was from; he's a "city dwarf", the son of metropolitan merchants, and so I assume it's a pretty big city.

They're all on the Eastern Continent.

Kabru doesn't list Bonnario, which is also written on the World Map, on the Eastern Continent, so I guess maybe it's not that important of a city? I don't know if it comes up anywhere in the story or extras, but I'd expect it to if it's on the map. I didn't notice anyone's bio saying they are from there, but I could have missed it.

Merini is the city on the Island, arguably also on the Eastern Continent. And, eventually the name of the country too. ...I know continents are established by agreement and not landmass, but despite what that line from the manga's ending says, I seriously doubt it will get considered a separate continent. It's big but it just doesn't seem that big... it's only my subjective & half assed calculations (in this post) that puts it about the size of Aotearoa or the UK, but I genuinely can't imagine it being so much bigger that it warrants being considered a continent as just one country that's already attached to the Eastern Continent.

Anyway based on grouping all the Eastern continent cities in here:

....I'm going to go ahead and assume this bubble is just cities from the Eastern Continent.

Then, the cities in these bubbles could be from two other continents:

Though I don't know which. He doesn't include Wa, so I'll assume not the Eastern Archipelago. If he's going by proximity, the nearest places to the Eastern Continent are the Northern Continent (where Laios, Falin, and Marcille are from) and the Southern Continent. We don't get any city names for those AFAIK, though.

If anyone has any speculations, I'd be quite curious; I can't really tell what the vibe is of these names, they mostly just sound "fantasy-like" to me. Since this panel is a throwaway joke, the ones that don't come up elsewhere were probably just transliterated literally however, so if they're supposed to sound reminscent of something it would be easy to miss.

Utaya isn't here (not surprising, if I was Kabru and trying to keep myself calm) so it's possible that he isn't listing cities on the Western Continent.

He could also have just started listing with the continent he's on, and the separate bubbles don't mean anything, but A) less fun as speculation-fodder that way; and B) he definitely switched continents at some point or it wouldn't be labelled as "the world's major cities" but rather "the Eastern Continent's major cities" or just "names of cities".

[rebe-draws]

"He does have a kind of ... hungry, sallow look ..." "A magic many mortal men hunger for ... and the hunger hollows them out from within ..." The hedgemage Scrap - Wild Magic Sorcerer. Vessel for raw magic and he is HUNGRY. More art of my World's Beyond Number fan-character. He's just so fun to draw! The quotes here are directly from Brennan about the first Hedgemage we meet in episode 1, it's stuck with me since I first heard it, it painted such a visual.

[confusedmothboy]

me when i remember i have free will and can make a dungeon meshi oc

never let me cook again

[vegetable-lamb]

love to think about the winged lion being an allusion to capitalism, in the way it plays off of internal, basal desires and fucks up the integrity of the food chain in doing so. consumption to fill an ever-expanding void, desires being subsumed to feed something borne of never-ending increase. how so many turn to the dungeon out of desperation, pulling gold off the castles of a long-past empire. how so many things only seem "possible" due to the magic of the dungeon. etc etc ...

[tinypuffballofanger]

man you gotta love how people will shout from the rooftops how autistic laois is and then in the next breath call him a little freak that no one can possibly understand the perspective of