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prismatoxic · 3 months

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okay, shipping brainrot from my last post aside, i'm still thinking about the shapeshifter arc. the other sites i use don't have inline posting or do but it's clunky, so i guess i'm theorizing here. some of this may seem obvious; bear with me, i'm not trying to be patronizing, just working through things. this will probably be long.

(edit: i've since learned there's canon explanations for all of this. regrettably i don't like them. enjoy my ideas of what would be better maybe? but keep in mind i wrote this before i knew it had been explained anywhere else.)

(edit again: i've done a 180 and come fully around on the canon explanations! i have a lot of thoughts about them but this isn't the post for that. anyway i'm disabling reblogs, sorry. you can still look at this if you want)

laios reveals what he knows of shapeshifters, and that they function on memory:

no one ever really suggests in chapters 39 or 40 who thought of which fake except in the case of which ones laios must have thought of, but i want to posit who i think each one came from, and what it means narratively if i'm right. so, mostly a thought experiment/character study that i could be wrong about or that was never meant to be clearly defined in the first place. but maybe fun to think about? (i'm sure other people have done this before too, but i think it'll be fun to write up.)

from the outset, i think it's worth mentioning that chilchuck knows all three laios fakes are, in fact, fakes. two chilchucks say this, but the one on the right is the real one. senshi and marcille immediately corroborate this, though we can't tell which of them it is except that it's not any of the really obvious fakes.

what i think this suggests is that, brought to the surface, the warped perceptions of the rest of the party that chilchuck, senshi, and marcille have can be easily discerned when compared with the real thing. each of these laioses is from one of them, but they immediately figure out none of them are right with the real laios right there in the room. this is important.

as for who's who...

i think it's fair to assume that giant laios is from chilchuck. laios is the tallest member of their party, at six feet; while chilchuck sees marcille and senshi as their correct heights, laios is a giant to him, and his bulky armor doesn't help. that's why, even if this is his perception, it's glaringly obvious that it's wrong as soon as it's made physical. it's the only big one, and easily falls into the camp of "doesn't seem to know much about monsters" that the others also do.

stupid laios is, i think, from marcille. because the giant one is so likely chilchuck's and i don't think senshi sees laios as someone who stupidly wants to eat everything (even if senshi's opinion of him isn't stellar right now, "i have to eat it" wouldn't be paired with being an idiot to senshi), it tracks that marcille would be the one to remember him this way. to someone who doesn't appreciate their monster eating and otherwise thinks he's an idiot just as much as the others do, dumbly muttering about eating things seems like a reasonable portrayal of laios.

feminine laios, then, is from senshi. i think his physical perception of the other party members is the most off-base; this is likely because he's known them for the least amount of time, and his idea of what they look like is based more on their races than anything else. i think the resemblance to falin might not be intentional--someone suggested to me the other day that the dwarf perception of tall-men is probably more feminine in contrast to how Macho dwarfs are. i think that makes sense (if it ever comes up canonically, i haven't seen it yet). laios and falin do just... look like gender-swapped versions of each other, also. so if senshi sees laios as a feminine person, well... that just winds up looking like falin.

so this leaves us with only the real laios. confronted with their perceptions of him, his friends can immediately tell all three are incorrect.

moving on, we eliminate the three most obvious fakes from the rest of the party, starting with marcille:

if we take into account what i just said about senshi, i think this is his. racial stereotypes about elves being what they are, him not knowing the party as well as the other members do... she stands out, and that's why.

now this is where things start to get interesting.

the next two fakes to be eliminated aren't so blatantly incorrect that they can be struck right out at a glance, but it's not hard to notice the flaws when you look closer, and chilchucks A and B are the ones to point it out. chilchuck is naturally observant; most of his fakes seem to emulate this. (the one who addresses the fakes is A, the real one, but B is proving himself able to pick up on the things A notices. this is important.)

notably, chilchuck and senshi assume these must be laios's versions of them.

we can assume this is correct, if we want to. we can take the framing of this as being an intentional reflection of the truth.

or... or... we can look a little deeper. we can wonder if, perhaps, this isn't a reflection of laios, but a reflection of his friends and what they think of him. laios may not immediately notice the problems, but i don't think it's because he doesn't remember these details. i don't think laios sees much of anything in vague terms; he's observant in his own right, but in ways he doesn't really recognize, nor does anyone else. i think he was so focused on their faces and mannerisms that he didn't notice the bigger picture, glossing over something because so many other factors are at play.

senshi and chilchuck think laios doesn't take notice of things, but the vast majority of the shapeshifter arc is about them and marcille not trusting laios's judgement as it is, given how things went recently. is it possible there's more to their assumptions here than what the text explicitly says? i think so!

so then who do these two belong to? marcille, i think.

if we assume dumb laios is hers, then we can also assume her perceptions of the others are kind of broad and vague. she doesn't think poorly of them, necessarily (at least not in as obvious a way as she does with laios, who, i'll remind you, she's currently upset with), but she doesn't commit unimportant details to memory, like chilchuck's neck band or the damage to senshi's helmet.

we've got three more "obvious" fakes to get through, and laios offers another lore tidbit on how the shapeshifters work:

anyway, the first of the next round is marcille again, setting the stage for how these three next fakes are eliminated.

marcille changes her hairstyle all the time, so this isn't a surprise. the last one pictured here winds up being our next fake, as indicated by her grimoire:

so the fake marcille in this section is the one with the most visibly different hair texture (who even draws attention to this), and the spellbook that's woefully incompetent. i think she's from chilchuck.

he's observant, as i said before; even if he didn't commit her hair to memory, he did remember the stuff she's said about how important hair is to magic. maybe that's why the texture is so striking. more importantly, chilchuck isn't wary of magic quite the way senshi is, but he also doesn't understand it. the general tone of the low-quality grimoire also just... sounds like the way he'd frame something like that. (plus, the "how to turn back time" bit is a thing he specifically called her on when she suggested it a few chapters ago.)

so the next fake chilchuck and senshi are revealed via their tools:

i think the chubby-cheeked chilchuck with the simple lockpicks is from senshi, and i think the ordinary-looking senshi with the simple cookware is from chilchuck. the former speaks for itself--senshi sees chilchuck as a child, and knows absolutely nothing about picking locks. as for the fake senshi, chilchuck has a decent mental image of him but knows nothing about cookware.

so now we're down to the final three fakes, and there's only one person left who they could be from: laios. nobody thinks this, not even laios himself, but i want to explore the concept because i think it has extreme merit. the three remaining fakes have some key similarities between them, namely in that they're all close enough interpretations that making a distinction is difficult. they look a tiny bit different, but both the real people and their fakes make plausible cases for why they're the actual person. i want to talk about why i think laios is the one who made that so, and what that means about him.

chapter 39 ends with all his companions--real and fake--doubting his skills. seeing a pattern?

chapter 40 opens with laios determined to regain his friends' trust in him...

...while his friends (and their fakes) talk about how he's liable to like the fakes more, because they're monsters.

this is a needlessly cruel interpretation of laios, but after how things went post-falin-rescue, it's not a surprise. they see him as reckless and single-minded, more interested in the things he's weird about than in the people around him.

laios is really bad at talking about what he's thinking--not because he's hiding it, but because it doesn't occur to him that it's important. meeting the lunatic magician in the paintings is a prime example of this, but he does it a lot. they likely have no idea why he told toshiro about falin and the black magic; to them, laios was being flippant with sensitive information, not worrying about their safety. to laios? he was trying to get help. he trusted toshiro, and his perception of their friendship made him think the information would help them gain an ally who cared about falin as much as they do. he wasn't trying to put falin or marcille in danger--far from it, in fact. but he didn't tell his friends about his thought process. he didn't think it was important to share.

(he's autistic but we all know this. moving on)

so, we have laios's plan: the pairs cook together, while he watches for behavioral differences to discern who's who. it doesn't occur to him, or anyone else, that the people he's watching for mistakes are his own perceptions of his friends. and now we get into the meat of why i wanted to write this post.

assuming i'm correct... let's talk about laios's view of his friends, and how he challenges those perceptions.

starting with my favorite, chilchuck:

chilchuck A, of course, is in fact the real one. this is a pretty significant character moment for him too, in my opinion; we know he has difficulty expressing his emotions, and that a lot of his conflicts so far have stemmed from that. the fact that "chilchuck B asked for help with a menial task" is a gotcha moment to him is... telling. not only because it's so obvious to him, but because it's not obvious to any of his companions. he thinks they know this about him, but he's never openly expressed anything to make them think this is an issue he'd have, in addition to having sought help in the past.

his "convictions and pride and all that" seems to them like someone trying to convince them of something, not someone reminding them of facts he assumes they know.

anyway, back to laios. if we accept that chilchuck B is made from his memories, this suggests several things. first of all, chilchuck B is, despite his softer eyes and willingness to ask for help, still a fairly accurate portrayal of chilchuck. he's easily annoyed and he's observant, two traits chilchuck is known for. i think the reason chilchuck B has the kinder eyes and the more gentle disposition is because to laios, those things are indicative of someone being a good person, and he very much thinks chilchuck is a good person.

we know laios isn't especially good at reading people in general. thus, his idea of who his friends are is skewed in broad strokes, but not in the ways they think. he knows who chilchuck is, but he also associates chilchuck with his own ideas of what makes someone "good", which results in a chilchuck who's less rough around the edges. confronted with this--the real chilchuck asking him if he can tell--laios compares the two and thinks, reasonably speaking, the nicer one who trusts him has to be the friend he respects so much.

senshi and marcille also want to accept this chilchuck, likely for similar reasons. they also respect and care for him; they've seen him go through a lot. laios's ideal of him is just that, ideal. in a roundabout way, it's only their deep fondness for who chilchuck really is that makes them want to see him this way.

next up, we have marcille.

the fake, marcille A, is a radical departure from what makes chilchuck B a fake. laios notes that the real marcille is exactly the same as she always is. the reason, then, that marcille A confuses him--and the others--is that after everything they've been through, their perception of her has changed radically.

if we look back to senshi and chilchuck's marcilles, it's readily apparent when they're eliminated that both interpretations hinge on the knowledge that she performs black magic. senshi's tries to use it to prove herself; chilchuck's has a grimoire loudly proclaiming it's what she does. contrast this to marcille A: she doesn't mention black magic at all, and her grimoire looks strikingly similar to the real one.

that's because laios doesn't think her performing black magic changes anything about who she is. her doing so proved her to be just as dedicated to falin as he himself is, and the knowledge that her goals involve it doesn't faze him. (additionally, marcille has been teaching him magic, and falin had tried in the past. though his image of a grimoire is flawed to someone experienced, to anyone else it looks fine.) thus, marcille A isn't a flagrant black magic wielder; she's someone who's been fundamentally changed by what they--and falin--went through.

let's go back to chapter 27:

chilchuck and senshi are appalled, and will continue to be. while they ultimately don't prevent marcille from doing this, and care enough about both her and laios (and in chilchuck's case, falin as well) to be in tentative support, this changes their view of her in a negative way. she's dangerous now, in a way she wasn't before, but she's still marcille--goofy and a little reckless. thus, their views of her, and the illusions that result.

laios's opinion of her changes for the better.

she is, all at once, both competent and loyally dedicated. she will stop at nothing to help falin. whatever goofiness she exhibited before now is gone, replaced by the cold demeanor of someone who is doing something extremely dangerous for reasons that are inherently selfish, but ultimately too important to reject.

thus, we return to marcille A: cold, sharp, dedicated. not reckless or goofy, but methodical and haunted. she may have returned to "normal" since they left the castle town, but laios's opinion of her, and understanding of her love for falin, has been forever changed.

so faced with the real marcille--still silly, still whining, still frequently annoyed with him--he's confused, because that's deeply familiar, but it doesn't line up with what he knows about her now.

the truth, of course, is nuanced--these things are true about marcille, but only under duress; it's similar to how laios becomes a competent leader when the going gets tough. she has this within her, but it's not her default state of being. still, the shapeshifter picks up on the strongest memories laios has of her, this new interpretation of someone he thought he knew.

now then--onto senshi, the punchline of this particular joke about the differences between the copies. i still think it says a lot.

i think this one speaks for itself, though i find chilchuck's agreement interesting. senshi is the newest member of the team; little is known about him. laios happily notes that senshi "always looks cool" while chilchuck says he looks normal (and chilchuck B insults the real one). laios sees senshi this way because he thinks senshi is cool as hell, and this manifests in an idealized version of a face he's not as familiar with as he is with chilchuck and marcille.

this is clearly comedy, but it also speaks to the same desire to see the best in the rest of the party. marcille is the only one who notices likely because her opinion of senshi isn't so romanticized. chilchuck's senshi, of note, wasn't a perfect replica: we don't see much of him after the obvious fakes are hauled off, but he's a little squashed (he's the top one):

which indicates that chilchuck's visual memory of senshi is already flawed. if we compare this to giant laios and the marcille with the unique hair texture, it tells us chilchuck's attention to detail is more specific than the others'; he can remember the hole in the helmet, the importance of hair, but he doesn't quite see the bigger picture. giant laios is also surprisingly... rugged? which i imagine has to do with chilchuck's perception of him as a tall-man. (or maybe how he clearly has trouble seeing laios's face half the time, lmao...)

anyway. laios thinks senshi is super cool and chilchuck has an imperfect idea of what senshi look like as it is. (i wonder if chilchuck is some degree of faceblind? not enough to not recognize someone at all, but can't pinpoint specifics.)

and so, we arrive at the moment of truth.

so let's go over what i'm theorizing here... all the remaining fakes are illusions based on how laios sees his friends. the illusions manage to make mistakes that reveal the truth to him, but i think the reason for that harkens back to what laios said earlier... the illusions are being updated over time.

laios isn't considering any of the things that give the fakes away until this moment. if it had taken a little longer to resolve things, maybe they'd have started course-correcting, but they aren't given the chance. laios makes sure they aren't--he acts very quickly. even as he presents the three pairs with his findings, he's aware that everything will fall apart as soon as he does... and he's banking on that. while the shapeshifter illusions defend themselves from being killed, he gets right to the heart of the matter in the only way he knows how: confronting the actual monster involved.

when all's said and done, laios reveals how he figured it out:

potentially of note, all of these details happened before the red dragon fight. chilchuck fighting a mimic and revealing his history with them, senshi gushing about the dungeon's ecosystem, and marcille being attacked by the undine weren't super recent memories. when laios brought them forth in his mind, he had a delay before the shapeshifter updated its illusions.

well... except with marcille. marcille A actually didn't show her hand so easily; it was the real marcille's carelessness that proved her identity.

but what this suggests is that, when confronted with the realities of marcille versus his idealized version of her, laios had to make a choice: did it make more sense for her to have been radically changed by the revival and subsequent loss of falin, or was the presence of a marcille he knew so well proof of an illusion? she was the one who was the most different, and as such, the contrast was the same one that eliminated all three laioses at the start: with the real thing in the room, the fake became apparent.

so, to reach a conclusion: one again, laios has proven he's not as scatterbrained as his companions think, but this time he did so on a more personal level than usual. to them, he reveals that he knows their quirks enough to define them by such when they're otherwise faced with convincing copies. to us, the readers, if we accept what i've suggested here... he's revealed a lot more. he respects, admires, and idolizes his friends, all out of fondness: he wants to see them in an ideal way, whatever that means for each of them as individuals.

anyway thanks for coming to my TED talk

#dungeon meshi #extensive spoilers for chapters 39 and 40 but also a little bit 27 too #I REALLY LIKE WRITING META SORRY. THIS IS LONG #tox.txt

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batneko · 2 months

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for the last couple days I've been thinking about a Dungeon Meshi AU with the girl version of Laios from the magic mirror bonus page. Like, let's say she got married at 16, and ten years and two kids later she's escorting her youngest to magic school and planning to visit with Falin for a couple days before heading home. She finds out Falin and Marcille (I can't decide if everybody should be gender-swapped or only Laios. If Falin is The Boy he'd probably be expected to become village chief despite having creepy ghost magic, but maybe Laios's husband turned out to be a good leader so there's an unspoken "if Falin doesn't come back would that really be so bad?" among the villagers. But if Falin and Marcille are still girls that could lead to some interesting Deconstructing Gender Norms stuff. I just don't know!) have been planning to go to The Island and study a real dungeon, and instantly flips from quiet and demure (masking HARD) to excited and full of energy, and Marcille asks why Laios doesn't just come along. It'll only be a few months, both kids are in boarding schools, won't her husband understand?

The answer to that is no, but Laios has been dreading going back home for exactly the reason that it'll just be her and her husband now, no more kids as a buffer. She'll have nothing to do but take care of the house and be a Good Wife. Her husband isn't a bad person, but he's never understood her and never bothered to try, he just gets frustrated that she can't remember their guests' names, that she only wants to talk about "weird" things, that she cares more about her letters from Falin than she does taking care of her appearance.

Laios lets just enough of this slip that Marcille misunderstands and thinks her husband is a brute, and Falin has always known that being a housewife didn't suit Laios at all, so neither of them argue when Laios decides to abandon her marriage with only a brief letter back home.

On the trip Laios starts to learn magic, but she turns out to take to combat even better. Her encyclopedic (literally, it all comes from encyclopedias) knowledge of monster anatomy means she'll have the best chance out of the three of them at physically fighting things off if they can't find a trustworthy fighter to hire. But overall she's responsible for organizing their supplies and planning the expeditions. Having experience running a household comes in handy!

Of course, the three of them are pretty naive, and they run through Marcille's savings faster than expected, but they're all so interested in the dungeon that they're willing to stick out the tough times. Laios is so happy to finally be able to Be Herself around people that she starts talking about cooking and eating monsters without realizing that's a step too far for most folks. Falin is, of course, completely supportive, but Marcille and Namari shut it down most of the time. (I'm not sure where Shuro is or if he should be gender-swapped as well. Chilchuck wouldn't join the party until they've become successful enough to pay his rates. If he's gender-swapped this is her way of dealing with an empty nest.) However one day Senshi happens to overhear Laois talking about it while they pass each other and they become fast friends. Marcille isn't sure if s/he wants Laios's obsession with monsters-as-food to continue, but can't resist encouraging this because forbidden love affairs are peak romance. But no they're genuinely just friends and the thought never crosses either of their minds.

Marcille has no idea Laios has actually already had a couple of extramaritals with orc men.

(that's all I got so far!)

#I'm not sure about Kabru either. should he be a man and try to flirt with Laios and be baffled when it sails over her head?#or a woman and try to initiate a Gal Pals relationship with Laios which ALSO sails over her head #at least until Kabru learns about the monster thing and expresses interest then ohhhh no you're stuck with her now Kabru what have you done #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dungeon meshi au #genderswap au #laios touden #falin touden #marcille donato

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rat-poison-condiment · 1 month

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I do see your point but tbh the issue with the "secretly old" anime girl trope is not primarily that they look like kids (if that were the rubric we'd have to forbid sex for all kinds of real life disabled adults) but that they act like kids and are infantilised by the narrative (rather than other characters who don't know better like in Chilchuck's case) and their chronological age is the one thing about them that makes them "okay to be into" in the eyes of creeps. While Chilchuck does experience others thinking he's a kid, we, the readers, are told pretty clearly that he isn't and he dislikes being seen as one, since he's literally an adult with three adult kids.

Like, yes this series plays with gender swapping gross tropes but it also deals with the worst things about them, eg Senshi's panty shots would still be less weird than most panty shots if he were female because he's not underage or barely legal as most usual panty shot victims are. So yes, I get where you're coming from, but if you take the time to consider it, I think you'll find it's not just a gender swap of a creepy trope, it also examines why the trope is bad

oh I don't disagree with any of that but like realistically I don't think a lot of people really make the distinction? like I don't think i've seen a character that looked child-like but was mentally an adult be called hot that casually and nobody bats an eye. I wasn't complaining about that part I just think it's funny but maybe dunmesh is just not popular enough to have breached containment yet lol

#we love a nuanced and rational take here on this youtube channel

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nychthemeron-rants · 2 months

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So a post made by @deszczowedni of Fem! Labru where they mention Fem! Laios being a single mom dungeoning and the canon genderbent Chilchuck from the magic mirror extra leaving the party for her family is giving me massive brain rot so have a quick summary of the resulting Single Moms AU that is rotting my brain.

Laios and Chilchuck are both dungeoning to support their families after their respective divorces.

Laios was put into an arranged marriage pretty much as soon as she was of marrying age thanks to her shitty father. While she and her husband were never in love, things were fine for a while and they were both at least mostly content… except Laios is still Laios. She still yearns for life outside the village, still nerds out over monsters, and still has the same social issues even if fem! Laios can mask just a teensy bit better. So, after several years (and the birth of their daughter) her husband’s resentment towards her comes to a head and he divorces Laios and abandons their young daughter looking for a fresh start. And despite knowing she should be more upset, Laios feels more relieved than anything. She saw this divorce as her chance to finally leave her village so despite her family’s wishes and advice she flees with her daughter. She rents a room in a town near the school she encouraged Falin to attend and tries to make things work as a single mother. However, money is tight. Very tight. And the odd jobs she picks up aren’t making ends meet anymore. So with Falin’s help she turns to dungeoning to make some more money for her and her daughter while a few helpful staff at the academy watch her daughter. Fast forward to current day and her daughter is finally old enough to actually attend the academy full time (between 8 and 10 years old since Marcille met Falin when she was 10) but that means money is even tighter as she has to scrounge up tuition but it also means she can spend more time in the dungeon at a time without worrying about her daughter’s safety.

For Chil, not that much changes. Chil is still a middle-aged, union-leading parent of 3 adult daughters. However, in this AU when Chil’s wife left, she didn’t go live with one of their daughters, she disappeared off the face of the earth. This causes their children to begin to worry like mad about her and about Chil as none of them know where the hell she went. As much as a part of Chil wants to go looking for her wife, another part of her is too emotionally constipated to face all of her feelings about her wife’s disappearance and chooses to instead focus on financially supporting her daughters who ARE busy looking for their mother. She feels a bit bad about disappearing into the dungeon when her kids are so emotionally distraught over one mother’s disappearance already so she makes a point to write all three whenever she’s on the surface with updates on where she is and where she will be. Chil still doesn’t tell her party shit except vague mentions of having to stay on top of family matters with no other context.

Laios is the only one that knows Chil has kids but assumes they are about the same age/ maturity as her daughter.

Senshi’s role doesn’t really change, she’s a kindly middle aged dwarven woman who lives in the dungeon eating monsters.

Falin and Marcille basically have the same general backstory too but are just men in this AU. Falin has been dungeoning to support his sister and niece and Marcille started tagging along for both research and Falin.

Izutsumi remains completely unchanged because I find that to be funnier. She’s not even genderbent. She’s just Izutsumi.

Pt. 2 (Name Guide)

Pt. 3 (Laios' timeline)

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