#so when Laios leaves

[wow-an-unfunny-joke]

Okay I’m too lazy to check the actual timeline of things but wasn’t Falin like 9 when Laios left???? Am I making that number up???

Anyways Laios and Falin are the same flavor of weird but they do it differently- Laios doesn’t know when to shut up and Falin is generally more quiet, right?

Well when Laios talks about leaving he words it very “oh I abandoned my sister because people were treating her badly” which makes no sense right??? Why would he leave her behind if this is because of how people were treating her??? Well later with the Lion it shows little flashback things of Laios getting beat up- like my man was also being treated poorly which is probably why he left

Anyways my point is Laios didn’t get the same lesson beaten into him but Falin did

[brynalyn]

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Laios would do for a living in a modern day au - I’ve seen some theorizing about how his love of monsters/ecology/nature would make him a good biologist. Which is true! But I personally could see him being just Some Guy, maybe a college or even a highschool drop out, who joined and then left the army, working random odd jobs like dish washer/mover/warehouse worker. He visits his college going sibling falin who is so concerned she decides to dropout (even though she only has a bit of schooling left and coincidentally is working to become a biologist/career inspired by something laios suggested once) and get an apartment with him because he’s practically homeless and in a rough state. Then they both get a job at the same place, like for instance….. a card/game shop perhaps?? Or even something that sells funky pops and wall scrolls side by side you know! Maybe even ran by the short and super young looking chilchack whose “secretly” a good boss/cares about his employees?? 🤔🤔

Like I just think laios would be just some guy who ends up discovering a rich world outside of trying to pay rent in this world in creating his own characters and worlds in things like dnd and the furry fandom. He is a great artist although members of his tabletop group don’t always appreciate him making their characters or themselves fursonas …but drawing monstrously beautiful creatures representing someone’s self is practically a love language for him so they accept it however begrudgingly.

[xxsinisterxx]

[mori-no-majou]

so we’ve established by now that we’ve all acquired an inner Senshi that tells us to eat properly and an inner Chilchuck that tells us to be mindful of our rights in the workplace, but what about Laios and Marcille? their self-care schticks are a little bit more abstract than the other two, so I’m curious as to what everyone’s learning from them

[cinnamonsikwate]

watching the first 2 episodes of frieren last year shook me so bad i still can't get myself to continue it, but between what i remember of it and the nightmares episode of dungeon meshi i can't stop thinking about the ways laios would prepare marcille for his death. what would he leave behind to remind her that he (and by extension all the people she loved and who loved her) are still with her in spirit, even if not in body?

[cuntstable]

marcille IS dunmeshis deuteragonist along side laios though and it makes me smile so much bc their dynamic is just so good…… the leads of the story who start off as basically just Coworkers and through the story become ride or die besties over their shared love of and grief towards an ostensibly narratively ”dead” character. like i think a lot about how the most importany character bond in dunmeshi is between laios and falin, then followed by marcille and falin and then finally followed by laios and marcille. makes me smile

[malewifesband]

not that i havent made this exact post enough times but man does it drive me up the wall when ppl say laios doesnt care abt kabru bc he does!!! he just has autism so he shows it differently!!! he has a learning disability!!!!

[puppyeared]

who up seeing their disorder in a fictional character but feel like its not their place to put a name on it

[microfeelings]

I finished reading Dungeon Meshi in a week...

[franeridan]

I've been thinking this since I first got into dunmeshi but for being a fandom so full of people who dislike kabru for being a liar there's way too many of those same people who believe him at face value and get pissed at what he says without questioning his honesty at all

[waitineedaname]

What is dungeon meshi btw? It looks cool and I assume it's a manga but other than that I draw a blank

it is in fact a cool manga!! Dungeon Meshi (also translated as Delicious In Dungeon) is a high fantasy manga where the premise is that this party of adventurers is trying to rescue their partymember's sister from a dragon, but because they have limited money and supplies, they have to resort to eating monsters. The chapters are a wonderful blend of fantasy action and lovingly constructed recipes. Seriously, they'll go through each of the steps of a recipe, and then have beautiful meals at the end

I've never had a manga make me so hungry

The art is gorgeous, the characters are compelling (I adore every single main character), it genuinely has some of the most creative fantasy worldbuilding I've seen in a while, and also the plot gets fucking nuts. It's about the importance of taking care of your body and eating well and resting and supporting each other, and it's also about going absolutely insane, driven mad by your desires. It rocks. You can read it here.

As a treat, here are some of my favorite panels

[mikkeneko]

That post about Marcille and Laios' relationship actually got me thinking about Chilchuck and Laios' relationship. Which is harder to see in some ways because it mostly consists of positive absences.

At first, viewers might be inclined to wonder why Chilchuck sticks with the party. He says it's because he took payment up front, but he could give back part of the deposit and leave. Two other party members left; Laios explicitly gave Marcille and Chilchuck a choice as to whether they would stay or go, and they both chose to stay.

We know why Marcille chose to stay; she wants to save Falin and she considers the other party members her friends. Why did Chilchuck stay?

Chilchuck actually respects Laios a lot -- food and monster weirdness aside -- and that mostly comes I think through the positive absences from above. The things that Laios does not do.

Laios doesn't deliberately expose Chilchuck to danger or regard him as expendable. When Chilchuck starts to get enthralled by the sirens' song, Laios immediately snaps him out of it. Contrast that to Chilchuck relating that other adventuring parties will sometimes bring half-foots along just to sacrifice them or use them as bait!

Laios doesn't insist that Chilchuck put himself in danger by getting into combat. Even in situations where they're in danger and could really use more combatants, he only ever asks Chilchuck to take on non-combat tasks such as creating distractions.

Laios doesn't get in the way when Chilchuck is working and follows his directives of what to do around traps. He respects Chilchuck's work so much that he will even hand over his sword without hesitation, even when doing such a thing causes it to be damaged!

Laios doesn't press Chilchuck to divulge private information. When Chilchuck says he doesn't mix his professional and private lives, Laios respects that and doesn't push.

All the other party members infringe on these boundaries in some way. Izutsumi tries to egg Chilchuck into combat; Marcille pries into his home life; Senshi deliberately provokes him when he's trying to work. Not Laios. Once Chilchuck sets a boundary, Laios does his best to always respect it. (And I think Laios appreciates having clearly defined Rules For Chilchuck.)

Laios is a good party leader and he takes care of his team. Maybe this is my age showing, but when you find yourself in a good work situation with a good boss, you stay in that job.

[mobgoblin]

sorry i’m about to vague over something silly but

in terms of how my neuroses translate to my online experience—i never block or even unfollow people really. i’ve been on this site for over a decade and have only unfollowed one account after an odd exchange. so when i first saw this person appear in the dungeon meshi tag sharing their…opinions presented as Character Analysis Law i was like “oh geez”

but sure let’s reduce Marcille to Horny Super Criminal who only cares about her big titty gf and her PhD in dark magic and explosions, why not.

[allegorism]

Yeah! Yeah! I've been feeling that way about the anime for a while, that meanwhile it understands the comedy of it which is quite important, it might have not gotten the emotional and serious details of it all which will end up fucking disastrous as the story stops structuring itself as a comedy cuz there's a point in the story when it truly stops

cactus, you're so right. i think they nailed the humour, the way they zoom in or zoom out in a scene, that pixelated image of marcille... they truly got the humour. however, i think the details are lacking. emotional moments are done well, but it's what they decided to not show what is important: they skipped namari's dialogue with kiki and kaka, also the scene in which marcille, MARCILLE, runs a bloody hand through her hair... the ambient in that scene is so gloomy and it should have been depicted like that. and maybe i AM being too picky, i've mentioned it quite a few times to some people, but the scene in which falin wakes up in the middle of the night and just leaves the room had such an eerie feel in the manga, almost like a scene from a horror movie. meanwhile in the anime everything happened so fast you almost don't get time to process what's happening.

about the tone shift... i'm not exactly worried because there's still some time left to get there and i'm not sure we will get there in this season. plus it isn't something subtle that they could leave out. it's mostly the details what i'm worried about.

[ambrosiagourmet]

I think one of the biggest tragedies of Laios & Falin and their relationship is how much his actions impact her life. But like. Specifically how much they WOULDN’T impact her life as much if they weren’t both stuck in such a shitty abusive situation.

This part of the Falin-tries-makeup daydream hour comic is what got me thinking about it again because truly it just... it seems like such a like an offhand comment that I'm sure Laios didn't mean to be cruel or anything. That's just like. A little kid not thinking about what they are saying. ESPECIALLY when the kid in question is Laios.

But man they depended on each other SO much as kids. Too much. It really feels like they didn't have any other source of positive reinforcement, or anyone else to share themselves with. So of course an offhand comment like that has a huge impact on Falin.

Or this little bit from one of the flashbacks:

This tears me apart. Do you think it tears him apart to think about? I think it does. I think Laios holds every small failure to care for Falin against himself.

And then there's the Bigger stuff. The way that him coping with his own trauma ended up impacting her.

Like his interest in monsters. Like him going to find a ghost, and accidentally revealing Falin's magic to the whole village in the process.

Like him needing to leave. And leaving her behind.

He shaped her life so much, and he carries so much guilt for it. And again, there should have been other people there to help. The same things that made Laios need to leave home are the things that made his leaving so hard on Falin. She ate alone after that. She shouldn't have had to eat alone just because Laios wasn't there.

She was 9 when he left for school, and he was 11.

Nine. And Laios feels like he failed her because he didn't stand by her through this better. As an eleven year old.

Both of these kids deserved so much better from the world.

[sabertoothwalrus]

do you think Falin's chimerism would affect her lifespan and behaviors? or just her body? maybe she can make more animalistic noises or has vague dragon-like instincts?

that’s a really good question! I think we could probably figure this out by taking a look at what we know about Falin, what we know about red dragons, whether these things would apply to Falin, and go from there.

The obvious external changes Falin has are: her eyes, her teeth, and her feathers.

It’s hard to pin down what Falin is like! Throughout the duration of the manga, she wasn’t really a character so much as a plot device. We have almost nothing told from her point of view, and the majority of her unbiased (as in, we’re seeing her through a neutral lens and not another character’s perception of her) characterization is from the post-canon omake.

Even Falin believes that her wanderlust might come from her dragon side, but she's not sure. Personally, I think it’d make a lot of sense if it kind of does, in the sense that she has 20/20 vision now, haha! For most of her life, she could probably only see clearly within a relatively small sphere surrounding her, and now she can see everything. She can look up and around freely in a way she couldn’t before. Fuck man, if I had magic lasik I’d probably go out more too.

Some other quirks that are really unclear whether it’s typical for Falin or chimera-influenced:

she enters rooms through windows, sometimes. And given the leaves in her hair, I think it’s reasonable to assume this is not the first floor 💀 But who knows! Maybe that’s not new for Falin.

She points out that Laios’s scent could deter monsters. Maybe she has enhanced smell. But again, it isn’t unreasonable to think this is something she would have said before. (I think even Chilchuck and Izutsumi, whose senses of smell are enhanced, can’t identify scents well. Kuro, however, can.)

VIOLENCE! But again, we’ve seen her beat shit with her staff before, and she also used to wield a flail. It IS a trait for red dragons to fight any large threat, so if anything, she’s got even better monster fighting instincts than before. I don't think this would carry over to people. Falin has always been better with people, and I'm personally not a fan of seeing her depicted as territorial or possessive. Marcille is already the possessive one, and didn't need dragon blood to be like that.

Ultimately, I don't think her dragon traits extend much farther beyond this. Especially when you consider How Little the dragon is represented as in her conscience.

it's not like it's a 50/50 split. She's like a person with a dragon ratatouille. I don't think she'd be able to make dragon noises. I don't think her body is built for that. I know there's like, a set list of tropey characteristics that are given to almost every non-human character in fiction. and sure that's FINE but they tend not to be especially personalized to the character, and tend to just be an excuse to write them OOC. Like, sure, dragons may have instincts regarding sleep habits, hunting, courting, raising young, etc etc, but so do humans! And we don't compulsively act on every instinctual whim we have. I don't see why it'd be any harder for her new dragon instincts.

If anything, I think she'd feel more affected by the fact that she has part of the demon in her.

I don't think Falin's in any sort of trouble. All the demon was was a way to communicate with people. Here, it's representing Falin's tether to the infinite realm, to mana itself. The winged lion no longer has the desire to consume anymore because, yknow, Laios has that now. This is very likely why she no longer needs to chant to cast magic.

But what else does this mean for her? She already had unusually high reserves of mana + an innate connection with spirits, but is her mana essentially limitless now? How would that affect her lifespan? I'm leaning towards, it wouldn't really?? But is she immune to mana sickness now? Is it more like her magic is just sort of amplified like it would be in a dungeon?

We can infer that having more mana doesn't increase your lifespan, because-- while elves and gnomes have both naturally high levels of mana and longer lifespans-- dwarves live longer but have lowest levels of mana of all.

So to answer your question! Maybe a little bit?? But I don't think she'd change a whole lot.