Things i learned as a child that probably no one intended to teach me
To grown-ups, being bad at stuff is a sin. Forgetting stuff is the worst sin of all, and also doesn’t exist - it is widely believed (and your behaviour will be interpreted thusly) that in some Freudian sense, it is impossible to forget things if you care about them or their consequences or the people who care about those things.
Your being happy and enjoying what you do doesn’t matter. All that matters is whether you are Fulfilling Your Potential.
Human beings do not require rest outside of sleep. Thinking that you do is called ‘being lazy’.
Who you show physical affection to is a matter of politeness and social protocol, and has nothing to do with your own desires
It is rude to inform people of your preferences, even if they seem to care about catering to them and therefore might find this useful information.
Etiquette centres around doing things in especially awkward, skilful and time-consuming ways in order to demonstrate superiority over people who aren’t able to keep up.
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I'm a week late to the discussion of the Shapeshifter episode but I wanna push back on some of the things I've seen, particularly the idea that Laios has a more accurate view of everyone else then they do of him.
While I think the other party members definitely underestimated Laios, I think narratively it would be weird to make the point that 'actually Laios is really good at understanding his friends, in fact better than anyone else!' right after everything that happened with Shuro. We know Laios isn't good at understanding people, it's a core character trait. So, why are his versions of the rest of the party so 'accurate'?
Well, first of all, because everyone is basing that assumption on the idea that the less visual distortion = more accurate. It's an understandable assumption given this is a visual medium, but I don't think it's actually accurate.
Secondly, while the Laios fakes have very accurate faces, they were caught out early specifically because Chilchuck noticed their equipment was off. Laios isn't usually good with those kind of details, especially in relation to faces. So what's up?
Well, there is one person who's equipment he got right-
-Marcille's spell book. when it comes to something he's actively studied, Laios's memory is more accurate.
And that's why I think his fake's faces are better. Laios is usually bad at recognizing people, and he knows it- so he's made the deliberate effort to memorize people's features. This also tracks with the fact that, despite having a fairly accurate visual of Senshi in his own head, he still defers to Chilchuck when it comes to 'handsome Senshi'.
Poor, faceblind king. He's trying his best.
Okay, now in terms of holistic accuracy, let's look at Laios's Marcille, because I would argue she's actually incredibly out of character.
She's very logical. She's willing to dispassionately swallow any amount of discomfort in order to save Fallin. Throughout most of the episode, she's fairly quite and has sort of a resting bitch face going on.
Basically, she's acting more like Laios.
This is, in fact, how Laios catches her out in the end. It is more in character for Marcille to be a hot mess given the current state of things, and he understands that intellectually. But in the same way Marcille has trouble internalizing Chilchuck as an adult, Laios is still struggling to internalize that other people don't react the way he does.
I think if we had a chance to see his versions of Senshi and Chilchuck we'd see this more clearly. Maybe his Chilchuck would have insisted on checking the crates for mimics instead of just avoiding them; maybe his Senshi would have gone on a long rant about harpy eggs and their reproduction cycle.
Furthermore, I wanna look a bit at the Laios's and what they say about the chracters respoonsible.
These guys are very obviously wrong. Despite what I've said above, I do think Chilchuck and Marcille have particularly skewed views of Laios, but i think the ways in which those present are really interesting.
It seems like every character has a theme in how their fakes are distorted. Senshi's are effected by racial bias; Marcille's is weighted towards her first impressions; and Chilchuck's is based on what he finds attractive.
Senshi's Laios is the least weird compared to his other fakes, which makes sense because in their short acquaintance all of them probably seem equally weird, especially given that Senshi is kind of a hermit. That also factors into the racial bias- we know Senshi is capable of working through racial prejudice given his relationship with the orcs, but he doesn't have a lot of experience with other humans. He's a very intuitive person, but has a problem challenging his assumptions until he's directly confronted with him.
We saw a lot of this in episode 7. Senshi has an intuitive sense of how the ecosystem works from observing it long term, but it took killing the kraken and nearly being eaten by Anne for him to understand he was a part of it. Additionally, he assumed that Marcille's magic was 'easy' until he saw how much work she puts into her practice. However, it's also clear that once he is confronted with it he can make adjustments!
Here he is, using a magic! Eventually he'll hopefully work on the race stuff too, lmao.
Okay, Marcille's Laios.
Marcille's fakes are deeply effected by her first impressions of people. As mentioned before, her Chilchuck is infantilized, her Senshi looks like he's been widened in photoshop, and her Laios exagerates features that differentiate him from Fallin.
One of the things I find notable though is the difference between her Chil and Senshi. Her Senshi is eliminated on account of his wok, but her Chilchuck gets to stay because she accurately remembers his tools. To me, that suggests Marcille's vision of people usually gets more accurate over time. So, what the FUCK is up with her Laios?
Well, future chapter spoilers, we do eventually get to see Laios and Marcille's first meeting. And despite being there to meet up with the Toudens and hearing that they looked alike, Marcille straight up did not clock Laios as the guy she was looking for.
I think this is part of why he is SO much more distorted than her other versions is specifically because she's still embarrassed about not recognizing him, so over time, as she's stewed about it and heard more people insist the Toudens look similar, the features that set them apart have become more and more prominent to this cartoonish degree.
Additionally, and kind of a side note, I think the reason he's so fucking tall is because she's not just mentally comparing him against Fallin, but her own first impression of Fallin, whom she met as a child. So even though Fallin has outshot her, she still thinks of her as smol, and thus Laios being nearly a head taller than her has gotten super emphasized.
Okay, now, circling back to Chilchuck's big bi divorcee energy- Chil is responsible for handsome Senshi, specifically because Half-foots find Dwarves very masculine, but something that doesn't come across very clearly in either the manga or anime is that Chilchuck exaggerates Marcille's hair...
... because he likes blondes. lmao.
So what this suggests to me is that he tends to remember things he finds aesthetically/sexually? attractive. So what's with his Laios?
the explanation given is that Chilchuck has 'known [Laios] for quite a while' and thus thinks he's a 'dangerous and unreasonable character'. However, it's notable that the way his Laios acts is specifically related to his monster eating special interest, a thing that the rest of the party only learned about recently. Thus, if we accept the idea that Chilchuck's view is skewed by what he finds attractive, the natural conclusion is that his Laios is Like That because Chil finds the monster thing a huge turn off.
lol even.
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