Kabru is such a brilliantly written character, one of the best in Dungeon Meshi (which is a high bar as it is, most of the main cast are similarly genius).
His thing is that he is very friendly and nice confident and maxed out his charisma stat, but is also kinda ambitious and manipulative. But not in an overtly malicious way. Which kinda scares me.
The most impressive thing about him, writing wise, is that it’s all show-don’t-tell. He very frequently uses his charm and empathy and understanding of how people think in really clever ways. We’re often walked through his thought process of how he does these social deductions. We’re never told he’s scarily charismatic, besides other characters reacting to him being scarily charismatic.
Kabru is a natural-born leader and social engineer with superlative skills in both, which makes him the perfect foil for Laios, who’s too autistic and unambitious that he’s not even the de facto leader of his own party that he’s the official leader of. He’s so bad at leadership that his party just, sort of, doesn’t have a leader. They just kinda argue and do stuff.
What’s also neat, and perfectly inline with Meshi’s general theme of clever and logical subversions of fantasy tropes, is that Kabru’s character design in no way clues us in on this fundamental character trait of his.
He’s sort of a human fighter / knight archetype, which in the language of fantasy RPGs is a class most would associate with being a white bread jock, chivalrousness optional. (Laios subverts the same trope in the same way. It’s really funny that the walking exposition dump of the group looks like the character creator default preset spec’d as the most generic class available.)
If Kabru was a bard or noble and Laios a wizard, their character traits would be far less interesting
Even better is that we would expect someone who looks like Laios to have Kabru’s personality, and vice versa. Their character designs are flipped; the confident super charismatic leader is a short wide-eyed twink, while the slightly naive and very autistic monster enthusiast is a tall conventionally attractive Aryan lookin’ mf. (see what I mean by Kabru being such a good foil for Laios?? No wonder everyone ships them, they’re perfect for each other!)
Yet, their designs also work for them. Kabru just has a face that’s easy to talk to, his piercing blue eyes and curly hair gives him a false sense of naïveté, while his iconic 👁️👁️ expression hints that there’s actually quite a bit going on inside his head. Meanwhile, Laios believably looks like someone who doesn’t know what hair conditioner is. His armor’s collar gorget thing is also pretty dorky.
You can’t trust people like that (I mean overly charismatic people with a manipulative streak, not blue-eyed twinks) because you can’t know what their real motives are. You can’t know they aren’t pretending, you can’t know they aren’t trying to or haven’t already manipulated you. How could you? When he has so much more social intelligence than you do, average socially awkward Tumblr user? He’s touched all the grass!
In episode 16 (spoilers, btw) Kabru finally meets Laios’s party, who he’s been trying to find and fight for the better part of the season, and he just decides that no confrontation is necessary. Like, immediately upon meeting the guy. Just from how Laios looked at him. He figures that since Laios didn’t seem to recognize him, they either have never met meaning he has the wrong guy, or Laios forgot meaning he didn’t think it’d be a big deal, meaning the treasure was a trap or something. Which is pretty in line with Kabru’s established ability to always roll nat 20s for every charisma and deductive reasoning check, so cool.
But he doesn’t even seem curious about which of those cases is true. (He might be interested to find out some of the treasure wasn’t dangerous, but accidentally got thrown off a bridge). Much to Rin’s dismay, he’d rather just not bring it up because that could upset the leader of the party he might be working with for the foreseeable future.
Actions speak louder than words. So, all we really learn in this scene is that Kabru’s goals and M.O. can change on a dime, and that he values reputation and political capital more than money and vengeance. More than his own party’s desire for those things. Not only is he someone with a silver tongue, but he knows its value and is determined to use it at every opportunity.
Kabru and his party might not be very good at fighting or surviving in the dungeon, in fact their frequent TPKs are a running gag. But, he also doesn’t need to be when he can just manipulate Laios’ and Shuro’s much more proficient parties into helping him.
So far, Kabru seems like the most likely one to become king of the dungeon or whatever the mcguffin is. He is the only protagonist so far who has said that’s an actual goal of his. He’s said that he doesn’t think someone like Laios who isn’t a born leader should get it.
In fact, Kabru seems to have very strong opinions on what kinds of people should be allowed to adventure in the dungeon, evidenced by the fact that he murdered an entire party over it, justified or not. Kabru seems to think that Kabru is such a leader, and he’s probably right about that, but what kind of leader?
What would Kabru do with that kind of power if he gets it? Because I’m not sure. All I know is that he is the kind of person with the ability to use real political power to its full potential. For good, or for very, very bad.
I’m not saying that Kabru is evil or that he’s secretly gonna be the surprise villain. I dunno, I haven’t read the manga. He could just be a nice guy that’s just, like, is like that. Everything he’s done could be justified by the explanations he’s given. He actually reminds me a lot of one of my IRL friends, and I’d trust him with my life.
But, I can’t help but feel a distinct sense of unease whenever he’s on-screen. I try not to trust confident natural-born leaders like him right out of the gate. I don’t like that our instinct as humans is to blindly follow them without thinking about it.
Tyrants and psychopaths also use confidence and charm and a friendly demeanor to make people think they’re a good guy, while manipulating everyone into thinking their self-serving actions are altruistic. Benevolent, confident, skilled leaders do exist. But there exists many more snakes wearing their skin. Wolves rarely bother with sheep’s clothing, they dress as shepherds and sheepdogs.
Anyway, my point is that I think it’s kinda neat that it’s possible to overthink this much about a character whose probably just a nice guy that is the mirror opposite of an autistic person. Writing that kind of ambiguity is hard, and employing it in this way is inspired.
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not to be messy but how do you feel about people stealing other peoples viral posts on tumblr and reposting it on twitter like it’s theirs. (she’s on here by guttergirl-444) & she has stolen many more lol
at first glance it’s like shock and amazement more than anything because i never thought this would happen to me, but when i actually stop to think about it, it actually is very frustrating and invasive. i know it happens all the time and i can’t really stop it, plus my posts have no copyright or anything but it is true, when i make posts that aren’t haha funny laugh a lot play a lot, they kind of are little extensions of my artwork. like drafts and ideas that often get elaborated on if they seem to connect with people.
i don’t really want to dunk on other artists because it feels mean spirited, but i just want to point out this one instance that shows how writing anything on tumblr is “just a tumblr post” and people often don’t consider that there’s a person behind it. it’s almost like a popular tumblr post becomes fair use. This artist here took my words directly from my post (and even used the same iconography of a beach??) and when you click on the link in the description, it takes you to their instagram account with 142k followers. not even a single nod to me, who wrote the actual words. as an extra little punch, they call themself a poet in their bio.
sure my post was a bottom text top text “meme image” but there was a lot behind it—in both thought and time. the exact same ideas and photos made their way into a book i made just a couple months later. i think i sold umm one copy?
all in all, im not complaining about lacking “popularity” because that’s utterly stupid. but there’s something moderately soul-crushing about making a tumblr post and having it ripped to shreds by all walks of life online. It literally feels like i’ve placed something beautiful in the world out of my own kindness, then walked away, and when i come back everyone has defaced and damaged and killed it. it’s kind of invasive but I know it’s the way things go.
i love the anonymity of tumblr but sometimes I wish it we were all a little more open. Maybe people could remember that behind every blog is another person with ideas, cares, opinions, annoyances, and loves. I’m sure this one twitter account isn’t really doing much damage—honestly I haven’t even gone to look at it to see how people are replying—but it’s rough out there on this beautiful social media we call tumblrposts.
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my sticksamy fankid
(aged characters like 24 or somth)
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Name: Astrid
Info about how she came to be:
Amy always wanted to have a kid with Sticks and she liked that idea but how were they going to do that? So she went to Sonic and Tails for ideas and Tails had an idea
Tails made the idea to mix the DNA of Amy and Sticks to have both of them in their kid
Sonic helped so they could have a kid with a donation (you know what kind of donation but i aint going to name that in tumblr) because he knows how much you love a kid (my sonadilver fankid)
Amy decided to be the one to be pregnant and 9 months later she had a little girl
General info:
sexuality: bisexual (but girls are mostly her preference)
extrovert
some personality traits: energetic, fearless, free spirit, short temper, she has a kind heart and never gives up (amy), loves to protect nature and people and friends, more acting before thinking clearly about it
huge empathy but don't know how to help them (which is one of her internal struggles)
funny character traits: generally/naturally funny, loves sweet food, easy flustered in romance (that's why gina loves to flirt with her)
her powers: can terraform land (not water) and is extremely strong
small note: even if Gina is attracted to her that doesn't mean it's weird
because even if sonic is technically the father Astrid doesn't see him like that its just a donation for one of his best friends so there is no other relation between those two than a cool uncle vibe or somth like that
and if ya got a problem with it discuss it somewhere else <3
@sci-twi eyy i made another one :D
@emthimofnight thanks for inspo <3 (btw she would love to meet Camellia)
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