#notice anything different?

[mellodazey]

teasing

now kiss :)

[freakova]

Hey guys

[artichow]

boo

[lucabyte]

"So what's the weirdest possible first (second) impression Loop could make on the party in postcanon?" "Yeah, that, probably."

+ Bonus

theyre just standing there in direct party order while this happens. normal tuesday.

[trans-androgyne]

Yes, trans men and mascs have historically been subjected to less public violence and ridicule than trans women and fems. Is having privilege really the only reason you can think of for that? Have you considered that they had less ability to be publicly visible in the first place? Please remember that the lack of autonomy women have historically been granted also applies to transmascs. They would have been considered the property of men. Spousal rape wasn't illegal everywhere in my country until 1993. How easy do you think it would be for forcibly impregnated transmascs to transition? For abused transmascs in general? Do you think they were all even allowed out of the house often without a man? There are so many stories of transmascs being forcibly institutionalized for being trans. Is that situation and otherwise being quietly abused and erased really so much better than hypervisibility?

[infiniteglitterfall]

I guess this might be why the UK seemed to go so antisemitic so quickly

I'm researching the 1947 pogroms in the UK. (Actually, I'm researching all the pogroms and massacres of Jews in the past 200 years. Which today led me to discover that there were pogroms in the UK in 1947.)

From an article on "The Postwar Revival of British Fascism," all emphasis mine:

Given the rising antisemitism and widespread ignorance about Zionism [in the UK in 1947], fascists were easily able to conflate Zionist paramilitary attacks with Judaism in their speeches, meaning British Jews came to be seen as complicit in violence in Palestine.

Bertrand Duke Pile, a key member of Hamm’s League, informed a cheering crowd that “the Jews have no right to Palestine and the Jews have no right to the power which they hold in this country of ours.” Denouncing Zionism as a way to introduce a wider domestic antisemitic stance was common to many speakers at fascist events and rallies. Fascists hid their ideology and ideological antisemitism behind the rhetorical facade of preaching against paramilitary violence in Palestine.

One of the league’s speakers called for retribution against “the Jews” for the death of British soldiers in Palestine. This was, he told his audience, hardly an antisemitic expression. “Is it antisemitism to denounce the murderers of your own flesh and blood in Palestine?” he asked his audience. Many audience members, fascist or not, may well have felt the speaker had a point. ...[The photo of two British sergeants hanged by the Irgun in retaliation for the Brits hanging three of their members] promptly made numerous appearances at fascist meetings, often attached to the speaker’s platform. In at least one meeting, several British soldiers on leave from serving in Palestine attended Hamm’s speech, giving further legitimacy to his remarks. And with soldiers and policemen in Palestine showing increasing signs of overt antisemitism as a result of their experiences, the director of public prosecutions warned that the fascists might receive a steady stream of new recruits.

MI5, the U.K. domestic security service, noted with some alarm that “as a general rule, the crowd is now sympathetic and even spontaneously enthusiastic.” Opposition, it was noted in the same Home Office Bulletin of 1947, “is only met when there is an organized group of Jews or Communists in the audience.”

The major opposition came from the 43 Group, formed by the British-Jewish ex-paratrooper Gerry Flamberg and his friends in September 1946 to fight the fascists using the only language they felt fascists understood — violence. The group disrupted fascist meetings for two purposes: to get them shut down by the police for disorder, and to discourage attendance in the future by doling out beatings with fists and blunt instruments. By the summer of 1947, the group had around 500 active members who took part in such activities. Among these was a young hairdresser by the name of Vidal Sassoon, who would often turn up armed with his hairdressing scissors.

The 43 Group had considerable success with these actions, but public anger was spreading faster than they could counter the hate that accompanied it. The deaths of Martin and Paice had touched a nerve with the populace. On Aug. 1, 1947, the beginning of the bank holiday weekend and two days after the deaths of the sergeants, anti-Jewish rioting began in Liverpool. The violence lasted for five days. Across the country, the scene was repeated: London, Manchester, Hull, Brighton and Glasgow all saw widespread violence. Isolated instances were also recorded in Plymouth, Birmingham, Cardiff, Swansea, Newcastle and Davenport. Elsewhere, antisemitic graffiti and threatening phone calls to Jewish places of worship stood in for physical violence. Jewish-owned shops had their windows smashed, Jewish homes were targeted, an attempt was made to burn down Liverpool Crown Street Synagogue while a wooden synagogue in Glasgow was set alight. In a handful of cases, individuals were personally intimidated or assaulted. A Jewish man was threatened with a pistol in Northampton and an empty mine was placed in a Jewish-owned tailor shop in Davenport.

And an important addendum:

I've read a whole bunch of articles about the pogroms in Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Eccles, Glasgow, etc.

Not one of them has mentioned that the Irgun, though clearly a terrorist group, was formed in response to 18 years of openly antisemitic terrorism, including multiple incredibly violent massacres. Or that it consistently acted in response to the murders of Jewish civilians, not on the offensive. Or that at this point, militant Arab Nationalist groups with volunteers and arms from the Arab League countries had been attacking Jewish and mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhoods for months.

I just think the "Jewish militants had been attacking the British occupiers" angle is incredibly Anglocentric.

Yeah, they were attacking the British occupiers. But also, that's barely the tip of the iceberg.

Everyone involved hated the Brits at this point. If only al-Husseini and his ilk had hated the Brits more than they hated the Jews, Britain could at least have united them by giving them a common enemy.

[vigilskeep]

a quick guide to dog lords, telling your arls from your teyrns, and generally how ferelden works

okay, this isn't quite what anon asked for, by which i mean not at all, but unfortunately they activated my interest in some of my favourite lore. it should hopefully contain a lot of the relevant stuff and i’ll try to branch out to less fereldan specific information in other posts!

okay, let’s start with the hierarchy. there’s four kinds of noble in ferelden

royalty: you know who these guys are. except for during the orlesian occupation, ever since ferelden became one kingdom, it’s been ruled by the theirin family. which i think is for 388 years, i really hope that’s right, i got out a calculator

teyrns: these are super powerful lords, basically banns so powerful that other banns swear fealty to them. they’re second only to the king, who is essentially just the most powerful one of them. there used to be a lot of them, but with one dynasty in power for so long, that kind of opposition has been eroded away. there are only two remaining: the couslands of highever in the north, and the mac tirs of gwaren in the south

arls: these are extra special banns. they answer to a teyrn or king and hold a strategic fortress for them. we know of six—amaranthine, south reach, denerim, redcliffe, west hills, and edgehall—but i’m unsure if that’s because they are only six or because there are unnamed others

banns: these are your common or garden noble, the lowest ranking and most common. this is your local lord type. they seem to vary the most in power, though, with some banns having big speaking roles in the landsmeet

but i kind of should have written that list in the opposite direction. what do i mean by that? well, in your standard medieval hierarchy, and in a lot of the rest of thedas, power comes down from the king, who lets you hold the land. but in ferelden, most of the land is owned by freeholders: commoners, well-off enough to own their land but still not by any means nobles.

how does that work? well, let’s say i’m a freeholder.

i own my land, but thedas is a rough place. if i want to keep my land, i’d better swear fealty to a bann. i’ll pay him a portion of the goods produced on my land, and in return, he’ll protect my land from anyone wanting to beat me up and take all my goods... and also, you know, not beat me up himself, as he probably would if i didn’t have any bann looking after me. it kind of sounds like he has all the power, right? like a medieval protection racket? it’s certainly how he gets his power and wealth

so i, freeholder harker, have signed up with bann jeff. it makes sense, because he’s the closest to my freehold, and i want soldiers to actually get here in time if i’m in trouble. that’s why my family has been swearing fealty to his family for generations. it’s just how things are done

but the thing is: i hate bann jeff. maybe he takes too much of my harvests, maybe he sides with a different freeholder when we go to him with a dispute, maybe his men don’t mind their pleases and thank yous when they come for my goods. i’m well within my rights to say fuck bann jeff and leave him. especially if there’s another bann nearby who would be perfectly happy to take my goods instead and treat me right. and the less freeholders bann jeff has, the less resources and men he has to make a fuss about it with. if bann jeff pisses off enough people, he might not have any freeholders left at all. and where will his wealth and power come from then? maybe soon he won’t be a bann at all

of course, bann jeff’s family might feud with the family of the bann that stole me away for a few hundred years. but that’s hardly my problem, is it? “courting” someone else’s vassals is apparently the biggest cause of conflict within the bannorn

anyway, this isn’t just how banns work; it’s how all power theoretically works in ferelden. there are no serfs/“unfree” men. every peasant has a right to go where he will and choose which freeholder he works for, just as every freeholder has the right to choose their bann, and banns who swear to teyrns can break away. (the latter is probably less common because a teyrn could fuck you up. i’m guessing you’d have to get the king’s backing about it to survive that.) and even the king answers to his lessers in the landsmeet, the super ancient gathering of nobles where law is made, which can override the king on any matter of law. (but they’re not going to do it if the king is really popular or powerful, because. you know. there’s a limit to all things called common sense and they would prefer not to get squashed about it.) but generally, everyone who holds power in ferelden has to curry favours with their so-called lessers in order to keep their goodwill.

everywhere else in thedas thinks this is weird as hell, by the way. having to court the approval of those beneath you? even the king having to do that? wtf? but the level of freedom means everything to fereldans. it’s their highest ideal and they’re really proud of it.

(the people who really don’t have a voice are what the ttrpg calls “low freemen”, which according to its handbook, consists of criminals, prostitutes, and elves. they still have the right to freedom of movement and to be paid for their work, but they’re not going to have freeholders and banns seeking their favour and speaking for them, and they typically have to resort to bribery for entrance to cities, their homes are bought and sold by others on a whim, things like that. ultimately it makes their position incredibly vulnerable to abuse, as we see in the games. i’m sure we’ve all played the tabris origin. there’s a reason the potential boon to get a bann for the alienage is so wild.)

so, let’s say you made it, everyone loves and/or tolerates you, and you’re a noble. what good does that do you and what can you do? firstly, you have a voice in the landsmeet, which is super important and means the king wants your goodwill and advice. more generally, you have three basic functions of a noble: raising taxes/tribute, commanding soldiers, and dispensing justice. nobles are expected to live off the wealth provided by their land and it would be hugely looked down on if they did work instead, with exceptions for, like, military careers and the chantry, which are respectable for their status. they raise militia from the commoners when necessary, and they also have trained soldiers or possibly knights (see postscript) in their service. that means you can protect your land and you can win glory and spoils when the kingdom goes to war, it also means you’ll be expected to provide those men when your liegelord calls for them. and lastly the law is their responsibility. remember how in the awakening dlc you had to make judgements as the arl of amaranthine? like that! the smaller scale you are, the smaller scale it’s going to be. in turn, if you want a dispute sorted by a higher power, you have to go up to your liegelord, maybe a teyrn or the king, or if you can’t get one of them, a more powerful bann or arl in the area. possibly the chantry would be an alternate option? if it’s just about finding someone you will both listen to, which is usually the main issue

some privileges other than the standard “power over those beneath you” that you can typically expect to belong to the noble class, even if it’s not specific to dragon age: the right to carry a sword, the right to have a coat of arms, the right to precedence on formal occasions and a special seat up front in your local chantry... sometimes niche ones, like fabrics and clothing that are only permissible to wear for people of a certain rank, so it distinguishes them. you can expect favours from/common class interests with your king, you would expect to be given a trial or treated chivalrously if things did not go your way, depending on era you might be captured for ransom in battle rather than killed outright, you probably have exemptions from certain royal taxation... etc. etc.

that’s what i have! i hope these are some helpful fundamentals and that anyone who has more knowledge than me on any aspect feels welcome to contribute it

P.S. as an aside, i’m a little confused about the fereldan use of knights. they definitely exist as lesser nobility, but i don’t understand how they fit into the hierarchy. a real knight was typically a vassal who held land from his liegelord and fought for him in exchange. i... don’t know how that works in the context of land ownership mostly going upwards. they’re definitely around, anyone addressed as ser is a knight, you have the knights of redcliffe and people like ser jory and ser cauthrien. (someone in an order like the templars has the rank of knight and gets ser and everything, but is not a noble.) as a rule of thumb i think generally they’re probably just members of noble families with that dedicated military training and no greater title to lay claim to? i’m basing that on stuff like nathaniel howe being sent as a squire to his mother’s cousin, a chevalier; if he’d completed that he probably would have been a knight unless/until he inherited his father’s place? i don’t know. i’m making this up. and on the other hand, there’s very little distinction in fereldan between your regular noble and a some kind of warrior class, which is why i struggle to see the purpose. (there are also inexplicable career soldiers who are not knights. what the hell is funding that upkeep and armour, buddy. you and whose land ownership? this is why you were fighting the darkspawn with your whole arms out, aveline. stop trying to imply ferelden has a standing army you can go off and join. yes i see you carver lore. i will not buy it.) ANYWAY, because knights are more prevalent in certain areas, i do wonder if it’s an import from the long orlesian occuption, based on the knightly order of chevaliers? i don’t fucking know. worth chewing on

[luck-of-the-drawings]

[OLD ART ALERT] A COLLECTION OF SCENES FROM THE GILLIONS CATSCRATCH ARC THAT BROUGHT ME GREAT JOY. i love fishy chips especially when its just gillion being delirious and violent and hostile

[lilybug-02]

Artfight against @ejsuperstar ft. The Mad King and Chip. They're both so evil. I hope they have the most extravagant downfall of any onscreen villain.

This interaction is based on a little fic writing >:)

[izzyspussy]

the fact that they made it illegal to make ads louder than programs on tv in 2010 but haven't updated it to apply the same regulation to streaming. who do i have to call.

[samanthamulder]

THE X-FILES (1993-2018)

SEASON ONE — Now, when convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausability?

[fumifooms]

do you happen to have that page that talks about the beauty standards of each race?

Yeah sure. While scavenging pics for this I found this neat reddit compilation & chart & theory talk too. I had um, way more to say than I anticipated (I know you only wanted the one page. I have nothing to say for myself. Like most topics in Dunmeshi things snowball because they’re so interconnected. Mercy…) so, many races and observations are only mentioned near the bottom.

Beauty standards and race in Dungeon Meshi

Not pictured there’s also how elven society is harsh on visibly disabled people, and how the demon took away Mithrun’s silver eyes and ears to take away his pride. There’s also how Senshi might have fit in with the orcs more easily because of the dwarven wide body shape, and how they tend to have more body hair too I suppose. In the extra on orcs we see Senshi living with the orcs and he gets judged because of the hierarchy rather than his looks.

What is fashionable also differs from culture to culture, and there’s how tattoos only seem common with elves, though dwarves and others do also sometimes have some. They seem to not raise much brows, which makes sense since for many essentially they’re for professional (magical) purposes especially with elves. Gender roles also differ in type and importance, but generally they are similar to irl ones for the races we see. Elven society seems to be the least gendered, which would be an unsurprising logical outcome of having lesser sexual dimorphism aka they look more androgynous. Comparing fashions and gender roles and how they affect beauty standards would be a whole other compilation and conversation. Kui has great worldbuilding partially because she’s got such a good grasp on sociopolitics and geopolitics. History affects cultures and beauty standards greatly. Kui’s oneshot Distant Utopia was very eye opening on her way to worldbuild and the consideration she gives these things, I do really recommend reading it.

Out of the big 5, we know the least about gnomes, but their sheet does say both culture and region are similar to dwarves’ and they end up being confused together often, so we can imagine the beauty standards are similar to dwarves’ as well.

I wanted to touch on this in a post eventually, but how one daydream hour page said half-foots tended to be curvaceous like in the artwork below puzzled me for a long time, all the half-foot characters we see during canon are rather slender and lanky after all, Chil’s succubi also being more curvy than plump. Economics are for sure a factor in that I imagine, the half-foots characters we see are all implied to be some flavor of poor or malnourished, as are half-foots depicted as empoverished oppressed minorities in general. Even comparing the artwork with the half-foot sheet’s depicted average half-foot, the ones on the left seem bigger. Wouldn’t it make sense though, if unlike dwarves half-foots don’t have similar naturally wide bodies, yet due to idolizing dwarves they work towards having a similar body shape/type to emulate them?

It’s said half-foots tend to stick to pretty ethnically homogeneous regions (aka half-foots-only communities) unless they move to the big city with ambition to try and make it big (like Chilchuck and his wife & kids did), and that’s interesting imo because then that would mean that in a ton of half-foot communities, they rarely see or interact with dwarves whom they try to emulate. Of course, one thing about beauty standards is that when they get adopted, at one point it stops being "this is how dwarves look and so this is how half-foots should look" and just becomes "this is how half-foots should look", most people feel as though beauty standards aren’t learned but innate, so I figure the half-foots wouldn’t have any problem still seeking dwarvish traits when there are no dwarves around.

There’s also stuff you can glean here and there if you want to extrapolate more. Like how in the race swap artworks, Mickbell is only smiling in the dwarf portrait, and Rin’s elven portrait looks very close to her elven one- Rin who is stated to be beautiful in her profile blurb. Benichidori’s extra does teach us tallmen can definitely have harsh beauty standards, but also since the text portrays her as very dysmorphic that’s likely reflected in her thoughts to a much more intense degree than is common, not an accurate strict baseline to go off. Ah, Kabru’s blue eyes are also why he and his mother lived a rough life in Kabru’s hometown, but that seems to be regional. Good post here on the topic of Kabru’s blue eyes and ties to irl history. There’s a lot to be said about Kabru being a man that in many ways is close to elven beauty standards, and how that might have affected or been affected by his upbringing with elves + his persona as someone that can effortlessly charm most people. Marcille’s section here in this essay also goes into Marcille’s struggles to fit in with the ideal image of an elf.

Looking human

Also notable are beastkins and demihumans: Demihumans are all dehumanized which makes people treat them worse. So if you differ from the visual idea of "human" (an in-world subjective categorizatiom just as much as demihuman is) most people do judge you negatively. Elves and dwarves get to fight about which type of human is considered the prettiest, but demihumans are below tallmen and half-foots, they are considered as simply below the beauty contest, incompatible with it.

Onis are perhaps the demihuman people we know of with the least cultural influence on the dunmeshi world, and with less intensely different appearances than other demihumans, but even them are treated as lesser than human, treated as beasts to slain for reputation points or useful strength to have around and command. It’s said their "magnificient horns" and fangs are often shaven off when the oni lives in tallman towns, so you could easily make the argument that onis are denied the right to have their own beauty standards, having to conform to other people’s and going through mutilation to take away features they might otherwise have taken pride in. Inutade was bought by the Nakamotos from a dangerous sumo fighting ring that got one of Inutade’s tooth broken on her first and only fight. Remember when I said different fashions existed in dunmeshi and how those could also affect beauty standatds? Like the elves, if you look at the portraits pages that include a lot of characters that aren’t in the story you can see distinct cultures within the same races, for example one young elf is bald which is in sharp contrast with usual elven long luscious hairstyles, and that’s especially true for onis I think. Maybe not only from different regions but different eras as well… They have a bit of population in the very north of the western continent, so I like to think some of the ogres live in very cold, maybe even subarctic conditions. The point I’m getting at here is that within a race, culture/ethnicity like with Kabru as well will also influence them, different communities will have differing beauty standards. The oni history blurb and third row first collumn portrait remind me of Mongolia (which historically was a lot of different nomadic communities with different cultural identities as well. Something something, the oni empire experienced a decline and then tallmen overpowered them, and now they’re governed and split apart by stronger social classes & slavers and the richness of culture was hurt for it), but obviously many of them are dressed and look rather japanese, makes sense considering living in/close to Wa, and first row second collumn portrait reminds me of ainus which again would be logical considering geographical placement, though I’m far from an expert. Interestingly, ainus are indigenous people both in Japan and Russia- Perhaps the northern western continent ogres are meant to be closer to Russia than Canada like I imagined? Ok tangent over.

The kobold sheet says they’re especially sought after as slaves because they’re "adorable", but locally in the western continent they’re repeatedly said to be seen more as ferocious and dangerous. The dehumanization is most apparent in the first comic below. The language barrier and conflicts no doubt worsen this by a lot, but I think it’d be hard to deny that their canine appearance makes the dehumanization worse. "They’re ferocious beasts, they’re demihumans, they can’t be communicated with". Most characters in Dungeon Meshi’s world are desensitized to slavery and most characters are prejudiced one way or another. Point being, kobolds are fully removed from human beauty standards, but no doubt for kobolds, other kobolds are more beautiful than humans are. They’re assumed to be an uncivilized bunch, but just like any other people they like to aforn themselves with nice clothes and jewelry and keep themselves clean and groomed; they too take care of their appearance and take pride in it.

And the orcs! This one we have the most contact with in canon, with not only there being foreigner characters from the ethnicity or hearsay of their homelands and culture but full on contact with a community. We get to see up close what they’re like and what they think, and of course in turn they’re our introduction to how demihumans are harshly looked down upon and seen as inferior, less human and thus less worth valuing and less dignified. It’s text that orcs are ugly to most humans and humans are ugly to most orcs. Since I judged they didn’t need accompanying explanation the pictures showing this are in the pictures dump at the top.

God forbid you sell vegetables to orcs my god- but then again they do basically mandate adventurers to kill any orcs they come across so yeah the world isn’t above that even a bit.

So yes, my main point here is simply that orcs are yet another evidence of the physical ideal of "human" being an important beauty standard for human societies globally.

Izutsumi is our glimpse at how beastkins are treated in the world, and in Wa at least that’s ending up being caged and mistreated as part of a freak show. Izutsumi hates her appearance and wishes she could leave the feline part of herself behind to only be human. Interestingly, not that we have a lot of info on them so this is very much a take with a grain of salt situation, but there seems to be less stigma around artificial beastmen, those who can shapeshift at will. The main difference is of course appearance, that most of the time they simply look like average tattooed humans. Artificially creating humans is an illegal practice, and no doubt it’s not well regarded, but being able to hide that makes them less likely to be discriminated at any moment, or even just discriminated less intensely. Again, looking human is important, not only for belonging but for safety’s sake. Beauty standards rule the world with harsh hands.

Mermaids and fishmen

Ok we’re done now right? Right-! But wait… Wait…! Mermaids and fishmen are said to be demihumans too, special separate cases to the main three demihuman species however, which is also represented by how mermaids and fishmen both are in the Adventurer’s Bible chapter Monsters meanwhile ogres, kobolds and orcs are in the chapter World. They’re an interesting topic because they directly tackle this topic, not only in a meta way for the readers but also making characters themselves struggle to quantify their humanity with the goal of knowing wether they should be eaten or not, especially Chilchuck. Chilchuck’s "is it really just a matter of feelings?" mini arc.

The party asking themselves "Should we eat this?" is very common, and often they end up playing a little loose on morality, like eating the red dragon’s meat despite it having digested Falin. Not unsimilarly Marcille freaks out a little over the vegetables they harvested having been grown with fertilizer, aka largely human poo. Half of the motivation of "should we eat this perhaps sentient creature" is out of consideration and compassion, but more strongly and more often, the characters struggle with a sense of taboo at eating something too closely related to humans. Even, feel uncomfortable because of the deepseated impression that eating it would dirty them in some way. Cannibalism is an interesting and relevant topic in many ways, but what I want to mention is how there’s the more or less universal belief that committing cannibalism inherently taints you as a person and turns you more monstrous, morally but also literally depending on some myths such as w*ndigos and onis in some cases, like in Touge Oni. Marcille and Izutsumi both express a fear of eating monsters turning them monstrous. Maybe this is part of what Laios was hoping for, honestly. There are two fears here, if eating a demihuman monster constitutes as cannibalism or not, and so, will eating it taint you because it’s a human, or will eating it taint you because it’s a monster? You are what you eat, until it’s a little too literal. You morally are the means by which you get your food, and you physically are the result of your nutrition. Dungeon meshi manages to mix an exploration of humanity with the theme of food because our relationship to food is very deep and complex, psychological as much as physiological.

In the end, the characters sort of shrug and accept that they’ll never quite understand the world of mermaids and fishmen and how they operate, and what that means about them. Laios is the one always challenging these notions other characters take for granted, it’s not obvious to Laios why people are softer on mammals than other animals and plants, it’s not obvious to Laios why people would be afraid of eating a monster just because it’s a monster, it’s not obvious to Laios why some food is gross to Marcille but not fish testicles, it’s not obvious to Laios why you should immediately regard orcs and kobolds badly.

"Cows are probably closer to humans [aka closer to being human] than fishmen, though they’re clearly intelligent", dehumanization to lessen empathy towards them to be able to eat them. Meanwhile, mermaids seemingly have a less noticeable "civilization" or intelligence, they hunt in groups like fishmen, but they don’t use tools and such, they feel more primal and similarly instinct driven, and yet… Do they attract sympathy more? Mammals, humans, is it because of their nature or because of their appearance?

Both the nature and appearance of fish are ones people don’t typically sympathize with. "Fish don’t feel pain", "goldfish only have 5 seconds of memory", "it’s okay to keep in bowls too small and empty for them until they die", so many lies and misconceptions exist that make people less considerate of them. The average lifespan of a goldfish is 10-15 years, the record is 43, but they’re not seen as lives that really matter, so a lot of goldfish die in a few weeks of bad aquarium conditions. There’s a lot of research on animals evolving to look cute and appealing to make some predators want to kill them less and parents want to care for them more, including humans. First good google research result gave me this credible short article on the topic. In Chilchuck’s weighing wether a fishman is far enough from being human or not, "face is 100% fish" is his biggest argument for it being more acceptable. The face, the most important thing for empathy and recognition. The face, the decapitated fishman one that falls into his hands next chapter.

To quote @room-surprise: "Chilchuck can't explain why it's wrong to eat the merpeople, even though it's NOT complicated. But the problem is Chilchuck would have to accept and acknowledge that the merpeople might be people? And that's outside of the worldview he passively believes, so he can't just say that, because he doesn't think that's true. But that IS why he "feels" it's wrong. And it's all you'd need to say for Laios to understand! But it would require acknowledging that maybe the way they're treating and talking about the merpeople is wrong."

The idea of Chil not being able to grapple with how maybe some monsters are more humans than they seem, him who had been an advocate of half-foots rights, half-foots who get undermined and treated as inconsequential sacrifices… Grappling with how he could relate to the merpeople’s situation almost, and pulling away because it’s so existentially horrifying. I do not want to see myself into an hostile fish-faced warrior I can’t communicate with. In a way this also relates to Chilchuck being the only party member who doesn’t see Izutsumi as a cat in the relationshio chart, the only one to treat her with full human dignity. He knows the struggle to be taken seriously, he knows being infantilized and he knows what it’s like to be treated as less than human.

Below, you will see Chilchuck draws the line of where they become not okay to eat as when "they already look like mermaids". Above, there’s speculation that the algae hair is partly to mimic "the mermaids’ beautiful female form". Is it because mermaids are their enemies and the ambiguity might give them extra seconds to attack or flee? Is it to trick adventurers instead? It’s striking to me that this is what works, with the adventurers. Sure the fishmen are intelligent, but explicitly here, what makes them no longer acceptable prey to Chilchuck is that they look close enough to a mermaid, close enough to human. Mermaids who of course themselves have this form to entice and seduce and charm the adventurers they prey on. Chilchuck considers the intelligence due to the tridents, but most of his internal debate centers around their appearance, and the image of a fishman skewered sickens him. The power of mimicry… Mimic being a beautiful human woman. Mimic being cute, babies being wired to make us feel protective and softened. Half-foots, sometimes pretending to be children for scams or help or avoiding trouble.

The mermaids are only concerned by their differences and not their similarities, and have no trouble treating the fishmen as food rather than peers. To an outside perspective like us, the audience, all these categorization of "more human" and "less human" between onis and orcs and elves and tallmen etc seem stupid and unfounded, but to the people living in Dungeon Meshi’s world, elves may as well be mermaids while onis are fishmen, not alike at all, unworthy of empathy and thus fine to eat.

Ultimately, Dungeon Meshi promotes unity. It’s about seeking to understand the unknown and the misunderstood, the dehumanized and the inhuman. It shows the good that comes from seeking to understand what you do not, even when that’s one another.

[mementoasts]

feels like somebody is looking in...

[keep-ur-head-low]

All Hadestown West End lyric changes (as of Feb 15 2024)

Many thanks to @ghostlypawn for posting their audio of Hadestown on the West End :) Keep in mind these are from a preview performance and the production wasn't finalized until Feb 21st, so things may have been altered further since then.

Lines in bold indicate changed lyric

Road To Hell

New Hermes line: "You can tip your hats and your wallets / With your pennies and your pearls / To the hardest working chorus / In the gods' almighty world"

Original Bway line: "Brothers and sisters, boys and girls"

If It's True

New Orpheus final verse: "Brother, look around today / Is this how the world was made? / There must be another way / Is it true? Is it true what they say?"

Original Bway verse: "If it's true what they say / I'll be on my way / Tell me what to do / Is it true? Is it true what they say?"

(Note: In the Hadestown development book Working On a Song written in 2016, Anais Mitchell said she felt If It's True as written on Broadway needed to end on more of a political mic drop and commented she may change it someday. Nice to see she got the opportunity.)

Epic III

New Orpheus section: "I know how it is because he is like me / I know how it is to be left all alone / There's a hole in his arms where the world used to be / When Persephone's gone / His work never done, his war never won / Will go on forever whatever the cost / 'Cause the thing that he's building his wall around / Is already lost / Where is the treasure inside of your chest?..."

Original Bway/NYTW section: "What has become of the heart of that man?" up to "What he doesn't know is that what he's defending / Is already gone"

(Note: I think whether you like this change is entirely dependent on your feelings on Broadway's changes to Epic III. In Working On a Song, an early draft of this new verse can be found with Anais' commentary that her intent was to simplify the Epic so that it became a simple gift of empathy as opposed to the intricate poetry and lyricism of NYTW's Epic, something she couldn't quite finish in time for Broadway's opening. It seems like she and Orpheus might have finally finished their song.)

Miscellaneous

All references to Hermes as "mister" or "missus" are altered (ex: "a god with feathers on her feet... Yes it's Hermes, that's me", "excuse me Hermes" from Orpheus instead of "Mister/Missus Hermes")

(Note: May or may not be specific to Melanie La Barrie's portrayal)

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[levemetal]

Day 2: Timeloop / Xiao Qi and Jiu Ge

I am cringe and I am not even free

Feel free to reuse this idea but 24 hours are not enough for me to finish an entire comic. I could have taken the simpler prompt but nOOOOOO timeloop is too tempting. Past me why are we like this