ilja

cosmic horror who my beloved

this is so real and never leaves me

i love the extras of dungeon meshi in how it fleshes out the world because they make it so much more evident how race affects every part of the story while avoiding the zootopia racism problem. like obv a main theme of the story is like, humanity and desire, 'to eat is to live', etc, but since the majority of it takes place in the dungeon isolated from society and thru the lens of laios, the racial aspects play out more like shadows on a wall for most of the story.

then in the extras we get comics like this

which at a glance fleshes out the racial aspects via a character explaining the racial rules of universe - humans have x amount of bones, while orcs and kobolds have more. however, if u take it less straightforwardly, it points out how the concept of 'human' is a constructed concept in the world. the fact that there are different categories of human in different parts of the world based off of what types of humanoids occur there is already a demonstration of this. in response, the bones explanation seems to kabru and the characters as an objective way of measuring humans vs nonhumans.

but obv, when the culture was deciding what humanoids were humans and nonhumans, they weren't blindly analyzing skeletons and then deciding. just visually, one can glean that orcs and kobolds look less like the ingroup of tallmen, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. the bones explanation appears as a justification for that immediate prejudice under a scientific guise - I'm sure that one could come up with the same number of physical differences between a gnome and an elf that they would find between a tallman and an orc. it sounds a lot better to say 'well, an orc has 230 bones while a human has 206' then 'well, an orc looks ewwww yucky yucky to me while a human looks normal'.

and what i like abt the comic is that the characters take the explanation at face value for the most part. when a contradiction is brought up in the oni, kabru can neatly slot them into the predetermined number of bones framework. bc that's kinda how it works irl - there r cultural prejudices that we can posthumously justify, and if we find something outside of it, we can twist it to fit into our predetermined binary. however, since the reader does not live in a world where there are orcs and kobolds to be prejudiced against, we can see that flaw in the cultural logic. when the party encounters the orcs, the number of bones has no bearing on their humanity. They r shown to be cliquish and distrusting of outsiders, but not any more than the elves are later in the story.

tldr dungeon meshi worldbuilding is so good

Chocolate chip pancake

thinking about scaramouche team dynamics ft kazuscara

DC X DP PROMPT #16

Mr. Lancer is the brother of Lex Luthor. He never really had an eye for business, or invention, or innovation. He just wanted to be a teacher, spread the good word on literature. Which is the whole reason he had changed his name and moved to the middle of nowhere.

He does not appreciate his brother delivering a package in his door. Not delivering it personally, not even sending a physical person to do a drop off. Just a measly note.

'hold onto this for me - L.L.'

What has Lex ever done for him? Nothing, that's what. So Mr. Lancer does the sensible thing. He opens the box to investigate to find - hardened ectoplasm?

Mr. Lancer knows about Danny and co. Au where Kryptonite is just hardened Ecto and is basically rock candy. Lex sends his brother a shit ton of kryptonite for safe keeping thinking 'he lives in the middle of nowhere what's he gonna do with it?' he feeds it to Danny :)

i heart these rivals so much. maybe they'll kill each other. maybe they'll kiss. maybe they'll make ou

I can feel my teeth falling out of my face right now!

yeah

lobo by alexis salgues

social faux pas: standing up from the dinner table to scream about dragon meat