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Ryoko Kui Does Not Believe in Epiphanies (or: why Marcille and Mithrun's endings are great actually)

I have seen a couple of people who are upset about the way that Mithrun and Marcille's stories were resolved so I'm writing this to clear some things up. Ryoko Kui does not believe in epiphanies. An epiphany is a sudden and usually brief realization, an "aha" moment. Epiphanies are emotionally powerful moments. Both Marcille and Mithrun have powerful moments of realization, epiphanies.

Whether or not you like these resolutions, there's something you need to understand, Ryoko Kui does not put that much stock into these moments. Immediately after Marcille has her realization, Tansu responds like this:

While this is mostly his own opinion, what he is pointing out is that epiphanies are brief, they are singular moments that do not define a life. Life is long, and epiphanies do not sustain you. Marcille might feel like this now, but what about tomorrow? what about nex year? ten years, a hundred years, five hundred years from now? How often have you felt a sudden understanding? a burst of inspiration, or perhaps a realization that everything is pointless? It generally passes quickly, and you make dinner, and go to bed.

Think about the best meal you have ever had, it was probably a special occasion, maybe it felt like something magical, in the moment you might have felt like your life was changed. Then, in the morning you were hungry, so you ate breakfast. You cooked, you did the dishes, you went on with your life. What "meaning" did that meal have if you were hungry again the next day? Mithrun has to rebuild everything, every day he has to come up with new desires to do the very basics. None of it comes naturally, he has to find a reason to eat beyond being hungry, a reason to want to do anything when he doesn't want anything. Ryoko Kui tells us outright, that there is no magical solution:

The same thing applies to Ryoko Kui's representation of racism in dungeon meshi. Around when the orcs appeared in the anime I saw people gripeing about the way racism is treated. They seemed to think that Laios's party having dinner with the orcs was presented as them "solving" racism. Once again people misunderstand, they did not solve racism in a single moment. A few people, understood each other a little better, came to an arrangement and then parted. This was merely a moment in their lives. The characters continue to do micro-agressions, hold stereotypes, and have implicit biases. In dungeon meshi, characters don't suddenly stop being racist in the course of an evening. Life is a process, learning about others is a process, it's about the accumulation of experiences through the meat and potatoes of life, the daily activities that we actually fill our lives with, not the sudden realizations. Once you make learning about and living with other people into part of your routine, once it is embodied, then it is part of your life.

This is the real conclusion: life is not lived in a state of epiphany. Life is about chores, cooking, eating, shitting, working, and sleeping, it's everyday. Life is about doing simple things and doing them well. An epiphany is a useful tool for telling the reader that everything is going to be alright, we love to read epiphanies and be swept up in them. They can also be a breaking of a pattern, an escape from a spiral.

This is the other take away, it's about the people you do those things with, the way they rub off on you, the way they help you be human. For Mithrun and Marcille their paths would be impossible without other people pushing them back on the path as they stray. Mithrun literally would starve to death except for the thought that kabru and others don't want him to. Eating is a communal activity, so is living, you can have an epiphany on your own; you can't live on your own.

#dungeon meshi

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while you studied the blade

I studied the blade too we were classmates

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#i think furuba??? #NO WAIT. YUGIOH 5DS

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guy who yells out “IM GONNA FUCKING LOSE IT” before letting out the gentlest, smallest scream you’ve ever heard in your goddamn life

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[laying on the floor] you know like aira could have a good narrative about overcoming biases and the ongoing process of change since he's an everyday type of character very much ingrained into "normal" society who has never had to reexamine it while the rest of alkaloid have been shunned by the same society which leaves potential for him to start recognizing his own harmful beliefs through the ways they affect his friends but happy ele would never do that because they have no intention of addressing their own racism

#screaming and sobbing i could fix the alkakurei event #i did all of that when i was a teenager i can make aira do it too #dusk liveblogs #enstars lb #yeah guess i needed a day for the event to sink in

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A few transformations

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while you were studying girls i was kissing the blade

#dungeon meshi

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i find it incredibly cute that laios is a horrible liar

#dungeon meshi

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#animals

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Sometimes you wish a hot guy was a dyke and then she is. This is one of the many joys of transexual lesbianism

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obsessed with how in Danny Phantom

when the network (i presume) went to the show's writing staff and said, "love the show, but the kid's a superhero, give him a logo, we need a logo"

they clearly thought. but uhhh chief his super hero costume is the outfit he died in. we can't change it.

but they *had* to change it.

and instead of any half-dozen solutions i can think of off the top of my head (e.g. season 2 power up, take advantage of his already canonical light shapeshifting powers)

they went "okay so a ghost genie re-writes reality so he never met Sam and therefore neve rdied so Sam convinces him to die all over again but not before slapping her own home-made logo on his chest"

ridiculous. awful. love it.

#dp

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Happy

#animals

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#animals

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#animals