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tofixtheshadows · 27 days

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Hello, op! While I do find your reading of Kabru’s self sacrifice and how little he eats really good, im curious why you consider him the deuteragonist? He is a foil to the protagonist yes, but still a supporting character.

I think its pretty clear Marcille is the second most important character in DM, and her story has much more weight than Kabru’s.

Hello! I've mentioned this on my blog before, but I actually consider Marcille and Kabru to both be deuteragonists to Laios's protagonist. I just wasn't talking about Marcille in that post.

Technically this term is meant to be used in playwriting, and the Greek tradition at that, so I'm playing a little loosey goosey with semantics and my argument would sound different if I were writing an academic paper. But this is tumblr dot edu and I'm trying to get a point across on my little blog, and part of the idea of a deuteragonist is that they support the protagonist. "Secondary main character who has their own importance in the narrative while bolstering the protagonist" works well enough for my purposes.

I think Marcille and Kabru are both playing specific and complementary roles to Laios. Marcille is at his side, facilitating the A plot: namely, "save Falin", which requires Marcille's magic, and then Marcille's method of resurrection ropes Thistle in, so the continuation of "save Falin" necessitates confronting the Dungeon Lord and conquering the dungeon (the B plot).

Kabru only intersects with Laios, but he is tied from the beginning to the B plot- and with dragging basically everyone else into it. Actually, the fact that he brings in this extremely loaded B plot despite only having brief face time with the protagonist should be seen as significant. In a sense, Kabru represents the surface world and all its concerns.

Before I talk about that more, I want to continue with the complementary line of thinking and point out that Kabru and Marcille have very similar background motivations.

Laios wants to save his sister first and foremost, and it's only along the way that he starts to consider what he'd do with the responsibility of Dungeon Lord. Coming to the conclusion that he wants to create a home for disparate peoples to live in harmony has connective tissue to both Kabru and Marcille's desires.

Marcille is the only one in their party who starts out with a greater motivation other than saving Falin (Izutsumi is a special case, but she's ultimately along for the ride), one that she keeps hidden for a long time. Because she is a mage, and because she is driven by a very personal tragedy (my dad died; I am terrified of outliving everyone), she is looking for a miracle to bring the different races closer together.

Kabru comes from a background of personal tragedy as well, but it's also a far greater, more political tragedy than just the death of a parent. It is not a coincidence that Kabru is a brown boy from an exploited region that suffered despite and because of military intervention from a first-world power, nor that he was adopted by a white woman whose coddling/dehumanization of him represents the paternalistic oversight of these world powers.

Thus, Kabru's motivations are both personal and political: if they, the short-lived races, can finally access the secrets of the dungeons, then not only can they have agency in stopping tragedies like Utaya's, but it will also give them a greater power of self-determination.

Marcille and Kabru have both correctly identified and set themselves against a problem that is greater than saving the life of one girl, greater even than sealing this one dungeon.

Despite Marcille's hopes, there is no grand magic solution to this. Only small, slow, backbreaking, ordinary solutions, the kind you labor over in kitchens and bedrooms and throne rooms and meeting houses and hearths and negotiation tables. The kind you run a kingdom with.

There is a reason why Dungeon Meshi ends with Marcille and Kabru on either side of Laios's throne.

Okay: back to Kabru (under the cut).

I've talked about this a little before, but I'll reiterate here: I consider Kabru to be the counterweight to the back half of the story. In a very literal sense too, as he pulls the focus up from the depths to the surface not once, but twice. Dungeon Meshi builds itself on the premise that the traditional "dungeon" must function as an actual ecosystem, and the monsters in it are biological actors in that ecosystem and not merely magical obstacles independent of their environment. The first couple dozen chapters are focused on this. Like regular animals, monsters have needs and instincts and unique behaviors, and they can be killed and consumed as part of a food chain.

And then Kabru comes along and he reminds us that humans are also part of their own special ecosystem, with their own needs and instincts and unique behaviors, and that beyond the biological drive of the literal food chain there are also complex social issues influencing these behaviors (like capitalism). Tansu's visit with the governor introduced us to these ideas, but Kabru is the one who carries them.

The way he and his party break down Laios's party also serves an important function. I think most readers are so busy being shocked that Kabru is "so wrong" about our goofy boy Laios that they don't realize that he isn't actually wrong about anything (he's only missing the context of what drives Laios, which he admits to and is part of the reason why he pursues him). We've gotten only Laios's view of things so far, and Laios is pretty tunnel-visioned. The narrative, through Kabru, is telling the reader this is how our protagonist actually comes across to his community.

We like Laios because we are following his story from his inner circle. We know he's naive and struggles with people but that he has a good heart and is ultimately just a big silly guy who won't harm anybody if he can help it. But we only know that because we're seeing him with his inner circle, in his environment. Outside of the dungeon, Laios is anti-social to the point of rudeness; he misreads situations and misjudges people, he acts in ways that cause friction, and he accidentally aligns himself with people who make his whole enterprise look suspicious: a prominent half-foot community leader, a mysterious foreigner literally surrounded by spies, the disgraced daughter of a criminal who now has to shoulder the burden of her father's reputation, and an elf in a land where there are no elves. And they seem to be very good at what they're doing. Yet this whole time, Laios acts as if he doesn't care about profit or taking the kingdom, the only logical reasons why anyone on the Island would gather up such a party and throw themselves into this death pit day after day.

Yeah of course Kabru finds this suspicious and interesting. Of course people don't know what to make of Laios. This all reiterates the question that Zon the orc already raised: What will you do, Laios, if you defeat the Mad Mage? If you gain control of all of this? Can you be a leader? Laios himself doesn't know yet.

This is all necessary context for our protagonist and the journey he has to go on, and it's fittingly brought up by the most socially adept character, who is so concerned with human ecosystems and the bigger picture of the dungeon. There is a reason why Kabru, as a character, is connected to large webs of people as he moves throughout the narrative: his own party, Toshiro's party, the Canaries, the denizens of the first floor of the dungeon.

Kabru is responsible for bringing Toshiro down to Laios's party. Toshiro is not a big mover and shaker in the story itself, but his confrontation with Laios is a huge part of Laios's character arc. His detour down to the lower levels also allows Izutsumi to escape and join Laios's party later.

We also have this very important moment:

It shows the first inkling- to the audience, to Kabru, and to Laios himself- that Laios is willing to do a painful, necessary thing to protect other people, that he won't just allow them to become collateral for his sister/monsters. That he can listen, and that he can assess a situation beyond his personal feelings. Again, fittingly, big-picture-thinker Kabru is the catalyst for this.

And then, not content to leave him as merely a device for Laios's character growth, the focus slingshots back up to the surface, and we follow Kabru.

The Canaries were going to go into the dungeon soon anyway, and they were always going to stir up the crowd in order to lure Thistle to them. Unless Thistle had given up right then and managed to slip away, the story could have very easily ended here:

Falin, immobilized and surrounded by Canaries, would have certainly been killed, and there would have been no way to ever resurrect her. Thistle would have been neutralized. The dungeon would have been taken by the elves, and anyone they could get their hands on would have been imprisoned at best. And maybe the dungeon would have been managed safely ... or maybe something would have gone wrong, and more lives would have been lost. Remember: the Canaries arrived in Utaya one year before the tragedy.

This is a huge moment that changes Laios's life forever, and he doesn't even know it. Kabru single-handedly keeps the story on course by sabotaging the Canaries, and he does it not just for Laios's sake, but for everyone's sake. For his friends and companions in the dungeon and everyone else outside it. Laios is a part of his motivation, a key player in Kabru's hopes, but Kabru has his own desires, his own agenda. He's trying to change the world. In a way, he succeeds. And while the Canaries might wish it were otherwise, as an entity in the narrative they are always anchored to Kabru's character. The two forces collide because of Kabru. The unsealing of the Winged Lion and Marcille's emergency ascension to Dungeon Lord happen indirectly because of Kabru.

While I have talked so much already that I don't want to give a detailed breakdown of it, I do want to mention Kabru's unique interiority as a character. That is to say: we see the inside of Kabru's head more than anyone else. Every character in the main ensemble gets their own moments of inner monologues or fifteen minutes in the limelight, but for Kabru, it's constant. He's always thinking, talking, narrating. His POV chapters always stand out for how first-person they feel compared to most others.

Notably, the only other character I could compare that to is Marcille, specifically during the dungeon rabbit debacle and her ascension afterward, which is when she really takes center stage as a character.

I hope I've explained my reasoning without becoming too insufferable.

To cap off my thoughts with a nod to my original post, I cannot stress enough how significant it is, thematically, that Kabru's relationship with food is the inverse of Laios's. It isn't just that Laios is the main character in a story about cooking monsters and Kabru happens to be his monster-hating foil. The artistic choice to deny the reader the visual of this character ever enjoying food, and only ever putting it in his mouth in situations where it hurts him, in a manga that gives so much attention to eating and the pleasures of meals, cannot be understated.

#Dungeon Meshi #Marcille Donato #Kabru #Kabru of Utaya #Dungeon Meshi meta #Dungeon Meshi spoilers #I started answering this at 10:30 AM but took several detours #mostly I was at work. some people shitpost at work. god knows what I'm doing.#I am so fucking sorry I did not mean for it to be this long. I had to EDIT THIS DOWN #paging malewifesband I feel like this does the trick wrt: Kabru's function in the narrative #of course I have more to say about he and Laios specifically (she threatened)#musings with Dea #I think I'll go back and add image descriptions but it's been eight hours and I need dinner!#and also to play FFXIV #dungeonposting #Dea's anonymous friends

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bigshotautos · 4 months

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I really like your theory about Spamton basically haunting a mannequin after death. Have you ever touched upon the reaction from Jevil (or anyone, really) upon seeing the new Spamton? Especially considering Spamton isn't even aware he 'died'.

^ how i think jevil's first sight of Spamton would go. i love this ask. this is referring to some headcanons I made a while back, I'll link it here for the one post and the general ghost spamton theory is linked in that one as well. Going to elaborate on it more under the cut for those interested + more art.

In general I think that people from Spamton's past wouldn't really care if they notice at all, since he wasn't in the business of making close friends with anyone. With the Addisons, in my interpretation he had a "weird co-worker" relationship with them, and while Addisons in general treated each other like potential business competitors that they had to make-nice with, Spamton is especially easy to single out for being visibly and temperamentally different. His altered, current state is something they'd feel at least uncomfortable by, but many wouldn't have been too close with him to begin with for them to talk about it with him directly. Would get whispered about between each other for sure, like we saw with them talking about Spamton after the NEO fight. It moves him from the "disgraced guy I used to know" category to the "actually unpleasant to look at or think about" territory. This goes for Swatch, Queen, and Seam (less so), who seem to buy heavily into the Lightner and Darkner dynamic, with Spamton corrupting the Lightner's dream being a strong taboo against what it means to be a Darkner.

As for what Jevil thinks, Spamton during the NEO fight is both a beautiful and horrifying display. Jevil at this point hasn't seen him in years since his imprisonment, and in their time apart Jevil has grown to find novelty in the cage that everyone else besides him is in since he's created huge emotional distance between him and the reality he lives in. Seeing the fact that Spamton had corrupted an abandoned dream of a Lightner and was causing so much chaos to the established order of the world would be exhilarating, but at the same time seeing that Spamton had accomplished this and still had his strings visible (and changed to a marionette puppet with no symbolic agency), it'd be a painful confirmation of his worldview that even Spamton, who deep down he still cares for, could never have been free.

Jevil would think at first he'd just gone through some nebulous situation to change what he looks like, since ofc he himself has toy-like traits (arguable if that happened with Gasterfication or not), Seam is a plushie cat, and other Card Castle Darkners are based on toys, but feeling the lack of life combined with the symbolic body of Spamton would mean to him something bigger had went wrong. He wouldn't dare to bring it up in an empathetic way, stuck in his mindset that it doesn't matter, but it'd still hit a part of him he doesn't like to think still exists. It's something he gets over quickly, almost performatively going back to fucking with him and taking advantage of his fear for entertainment, but it didn't sit well at first.

To me, the fact Spamton "died" isn't really a huge deal, kind of like with the ghosts in Undertale where no one really cares they're just ghosts. They're just doing their thing. To me it'd be fine if neither of them find out what happened for certain, but it's something that adds Flavor to his character.

#asks #deltarune #spamton #jevil #SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG TO ANSWER ANON LOL. its been a month or something #i asked tumblr user funnywormz for consulation on this for his thoughts as well since he's my accomplice in ghost spamton truthers #my art #ofc this is all just my internal worldview on the thing it's by no means definitive but its just for Fun!#btw as for queen im hardly even joking i think she would have deleted spamton from her memory banks because he was so sucks.#also in the image up top susie cant hear jevil saying this shit it definitely wouldnt have helped.#i think darkners can detect the itemized darkners but lightners cant like with tasque manager and spamneo noticing jevil

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chrissymunsons · 15 days

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PART III: THE PEACEKEEPER ; a summary 🪖

#please laugh this took so fucking long PLEASE LAUGH #hate those little dudes theyre so ugly but the memes are too funny #also coryo looks so damn ugly im sorry but how the hell was i supposed to draw a buzzcut #snowbaird #snowbaird edit #coryolucy #coriolanus snow x lucy gray baird #lucy gray baird x coriolanus snow #lucy gray x coriolanus #coryo x lucy gray #coriolanus x lucy gray #lucy gray #lucy gray baird #coriolanus snow #coryo #coryo snow #thg tbosas #tbosbas #tbosas #tbosbasedit #the hunger games the ballad of songbirds & snakes #the hunger games: the ballad of songbirds & snakes #the ballad of songbirds and snakes meme #the ballad of songbirds & snakes #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #does this count as art? will i be judged if i reblog it on my snowbaird blog and put it in the art tag? don’t answer that #tbosas memes #thg memes #the hunger games #thg

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trashyshrew · 1 year

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big admirer of your work! you asked for drawing suggestions–would love to see your take on lawlight snuggled up together relaxing in bed or something! absolutely starved for soft content of these two

#asks #death note #lawlight #light yagami #l lawliet #i am truly sorry i took so long to respond to this #i try to answer asks within 1-3 business days #but this week really got away from me #anyway thank you so much for this ask #it was fun trying something a little softer #maybe this is an au where they don't want to kill each other?#idk #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#also this post has been brought to you by gin & tonic #don't drink and draw

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tetrabriku · 15 days

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Iseya: I’m cold

Eiwajima: here you can have my haori

Izaya: I’m cold too

Shizuo: well dammit izaya I don’t control the fucking weather

It's them fr fr

I: The temperature has dropped lately-

E: Mh? Are you cold?

I: I'm not asking for your haori, keep your fleas away from me.

I: Are you ignoring me?- ...

E: *lil kissie*

Bonus izaya

#ur so right 😭🤲🤲#also sorry it took me so long to answer 😔 artblock got hands ✌️💀#kuramerukagari #eiwaseya #durarara #drrr #if the text It's weird thats because I don't know english 🫡

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arttsuka · 10 days

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Augustus: *throwing a tantrum* "DAD WHY AM I LIKE THIS"

Octavius: "Well, I didn't sculpt you but it seems they ran out of marble."

Augustus: "DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH IT STINKS HAVING NO HANDS"

Jed: "Or legs."

Octavius: "That's not helping."

Omg you can't just say that Jed!

#dialogue? I hardly know her #sometimes I wish I was doing digital art instead but then I remembered that I'd probably spend insane amounts of time to fix little mistake #like. pixel lever of mistakes #still. it'd be nice if I could have more detail on my drawings #it would also help if I drew these a little bigger #the whole thing is less than 10cm tall (in the first panel they're like 1cm tall. little guys)#anyway #natm #night at the museum #natm octavius #natm jedediah #jedediah smith #gaius octavius #augustus caesar #jedediah and octavius #jedtavius #fanart #art #traditional art #ask #anonymous #answered #sorry this took so long. i had trouble coming up with the panels #I'm not good at making comics #btw I don't think they'd actually allow him to have the roomba unsupervised by a normal sized person or exhibit #because he literally have no arms or legs. if he falls he breaks #and jed and oct can do nothing about it #sad

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kissatoru · 8 months

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hey… it’s the reiner anon teehee 🤭 love love LOVED the head drabble URGGDHDGSHDG he’s so baby girl !!!

now i can’t get popping virgin!reiner’s cherry out of my mind 😵‍💫 his poor cock just cumming and cumming all over again because u just feel so good

omg heyyyy, nice to have you backk!! i’m glad you liked it hehe<3

he would be so embarrassed and overwhelmed and cuuuute, precious boy wouldn’t know what to do with himself! i just have this picture of him clinging to you, all shivering and panting and groaning, unable to comprehend how it can feel this good. he’s honestly so emotional too, with unshed tears making his hazel eyes and sandy blond lashes all wet and droopy, because you just take care of him so well!! and show and do these wonderful things to him he’s never experienced before!! and he’s scared but he loves and trusts you, there’s no one else he’d rather do this with!! and at some point those tears can’t sit back any longer, they slip down his cheeks. he doesn’t cry often, not as much as he used to, but with you, it’s never felt safer to do so<3

#sorry for making it a little sad/angsty at the end #also i am SO SORRY it took this long to answer #it got lost in my drafts and i forgot about it:')#anyways #x reader #dom reader #sub character #sub reiner #reiner x reader #reiner smut #reiner thirst #sub aot #( ★ ) reiner thirsts.

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faceeeeee · 8 months

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Kori and Torothy hehehehehe

They're so skrunly and funky..... I'm gently holding them in the palm of my hand......

@teethzsharx

#the amazing digital circus #tadc #tadc oc #tadc dorothy #Dorothy would get so fkn flustered cuz she never had someone mess with her like that-#poor insecure lil bug #ALSO SORRY I TOOK SO LONG TO ANSWER #most of the time I'm either conjuring up a response or a doodle #so that goes for all of the asks #I'm not ignoring yall I'M JUST CALCULATING MY ANSWER #anyway #gay gay homosexual gay

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nouverx · 2 months

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just imagine charlie being the only other character in the hotel to understand Alastor's sayings and gripes about the modern world. She's even older than he is, those two could have so much to talk about. I'm still fairly young but I have plenty of gripes about the modern world, I just know those two old ladies could find something to share lol.

I adore Charlie and Alastor as characters, and I adore your art! All of your art is damn cute to me, it's great! I need more of charlie and alastor interacting and being silly in my life, romantic or platonic doesn't matter to me lmao.

You are just like me for real 😭 when the pilot came out I was so intrigued with Alastor and Charlie they immediately clicked for me and became my favourite pair of the show (tho now that the first season is out all of Alastor's other relationships stole my heart lmao but I still love them a lot) the "big bad villain who initially wanted to manipulate the sunshine character ends up accidently getting attached to them" trope is like one of my favourite tropes ever and they have the potential to become just that so I'm really invested in what their storyline will be I'M SO EXCITED

AND YEAH the fact that the hotel was already so has-been looking before Alastor showed up makes me think Charlie is similar to him, she's more up to date than him regarding new technologies ofc but I just know my girl loves vintage stuff ahah

(Also I want them to have a duo song in the next seasons SO BAD no offense to Heaven 2 Hell I love this song but I need something new it's been 4 years lol)

#ask #answered #hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #charlie morningstar #charlastor #<- as like the weird platonic thing they have going on #I could rant about them like a rabbid madman for hours idk if I'll ever make post about them but it's fascinating to me #LIKE they have a positive influence on each other while also being unhealthy because of Alastor's whole manipulation plan??#but they also get along well and trust each other a lot and believing in each other's potential but also there's something sinister going on #IT'S SO GOOD SO INTERESTING AAAAAHHH HELP ME #I'M SORRY FOR HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TOO ANSWER FORGIVE MEEEE #I originally wanted to draw smth for it but couldnt find the motivation and I felt bad about taking that long-#sorry for being so late with the asks in general ajajaj

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