#oh yeah and Falin

[dragonpyre]

I love the realism to the Dungeon Meshi characters.

You’ve got Laios. A hardworking normal guy. He’s literally just so basic. But also he’s got raging autism, as one does

Marcille, a top of her class mage who is understandably just a little insane and hubristic.

Senshi, who’s passion for food and cooking could honestly land him as a private chef for someone.

And Chilchuck, the union rep.

[fumifooms]

I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after

The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually

Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-

He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.

And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he gets across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt and be on your guard and shit and.

When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings

"Man they really know what you hate huh". Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.

It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmares, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)

"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species

[orchiro]

you bewitched me.

[denjidenjiji]

I’ve been thinking about women from different medias lately.

i just got out of an artblock…. Coloring is hard guys :(((

[dunmeshistash]

Is there any info about the main party's love lives/sexuality? More to the point, is Laios asexual? The way he wasn't initially affected by the succubus when they were super effective against eyery one else, and hasn't shown any sexual/romantic interest in anyone (except possibly orcs) makes me think he is.

Well, he did kinda fall for the charms of one of their past teammates seduction.

But this might just be because he's a pushover, he did similar stuff for the gold stripping teammates.

The other argument I can see it's here where he says he'd marry Shuro if he was Falin. But this also could just be Laios simping for his bestie

The succubus probably didn't work right away cause Laios had a more complex fantasy to be fulfilled, but you can argue she picked Marcille's appearance instead of one of the guys for a reason. Also Senshi aparently also saw his mother or someone from his past too even tho he's an adult

And Marcille's showed up as a character from her favorite novel

I think the succubus becomes whatever is more likely to convince the person to let them feed and Marcille is the one he's the closest with from the group

That is all to say! I think there's a good argument for ace Laios, there's not much romance in Dungeon Meshi but Laios seems especially uninterested in the subject. The orc thing might have been just aesthetic since he likes demi-humans and the times he seems embarrassed near Marcille (like when he touches her ear and today when he apologized for touching senshi's thigh thinking it was Marcille) is probably more cause of awareness that's not socially acceptable.

For the others I think Chilchuck could bi cause he thinks senshi is hot, Marcille is probably a closeted lesbian, Senshi has to a job (feeding the kids) so he cant think about that right now and I think Izutsumi is Izutsumi

And just to be clear with this I just meant to point out what could possibly deny an ace Laios interpretation and how else you could see those scenes to argue for ace Laios. Headcanons are fun tho so I'd just say run with it even if there's no proof! Dungeon Meshi not giving us much canon about relationships is a treat for the imagination.

[thereallycoolmonsterithoughtup]

marcille overcomes her internalized homophobia with the power of friendship

[sleepyminty]

An observation with this genre of ‘little sister’

[mychemicalbrromance]

Delicious in turf war ahh au

[bi-focal12]

I devoured the very thing that longed to destroy me

-laios, probably, in a speech edited by kabru

[possamble]

realizing im kind of a weirdo about laios and marcille

[crystallinerage]

falin in this frame specifically <33333

[cushfuddled]

there's a BamBI SEQUEL BoOK

[ladsofsorrow24]

i think some of you are too used to genre conventions, you guys forgot to question the worldbuilding that many authors painstakingly made to question the subject of death and life in a more nuanced manner than just "wow resurrection is so romantic!"

[lesbiansanemi]

Just saw a post of someone complaining that falin was fridged…. Man you people really will just say things huh

[eternal-moss]

GUYSSSS

HE’S BACK. KBRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[gothiethefairy]

ppl can make video analysis and character study posts about toshiro (shuro) and i'll still be like,

"cool. i still don't like him."