#dm text

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[inu-sunset]

if somebody requires that i communicate to them in A Certain Way, how am i supposed mindread my way into knowing that. unless they explicitly say, “hey, i need you to communicate with me like This because otherwise we might end up on different pages,” i’m probably going to default to whatever method of communication has caused the least amount of strife in my experience. i’m DEFINITELY not going to pick up on a need for communication style-change if the style in question is one i was explicitly raised to believe is rude, callous, disrespectful, inconsiderate, and aggressive. like how am i supposed to know. how can i know what a need is if the need was never communicated in the first place?

(by the way? this applies to both laios and toshiro. how was toshiro supposed to know laios needed direct communication. how was laios supposed to know toshiro’s responses carried context beyond the words themselves. “then say that!!!” applies to BOTH of them)

anyways the laios/toshiro slap-off wasn’t a “good guy/bad guy” “victim/bully” “uwu autistic/evil allistic” showdown. it was a nuanced exploration of how two flawed, compassionate, warm-hearted people might inadvertently hurt each other due to differences in culture, communication style, and communication need. it was two guys firmly planted in their own siloed cultural norms, with differences in their respective communication weak points (laios/receptive, toshiro/expressive), trying to bridge that gap and failing and hurting each other in the process. neither of them are cruel for cruelty’s sake - they’re just humans, making mistakes and navigating the consequences

(this post sponsored by the ethnocentric no-nuance takes some folks have been tossing out. free yourselves from white western christian “good vs evil” false dichotomies. enjoy the nuanced flavors that come with seasoning a dish with more than just salt and pepper)

[mynnthia]

cross-posting from twitter

meme referenced:

[mynnthia]

cross-posting from my twitter

[inu-sunset]

thinkin of a dunmeshi post!canon series of episodic oneshots written in the style of mushishi, featuring a world-traveling falin who exorcises spirits through a combination of Special Interest Spirit Facts, and hyperempathic compassion, offering solace, invitation, and patience in place of attack and banishment. she extends her services as final witness, historiographer, and psychopomp to all the souls tethered by the words they couldn't say - and in exchange collects the experiences, stories, and tidbits of knowledge that would've otherwise been lost

and then, she goes home to wife and gravekeeper marcille, who adds all the stories and soul-memories that falin collects to a growing library, a shrine of texts that marcille tends to, both as student and mourner. a post!canon marcille who - instead of fleeing death and its reminders - stands in it and with it, sentry to the many death cycles she knows she's going to weather over her lifespan. a reverent collector of stories and dutiful keeper of headstones, she honors the dead and grants them a beam of immortality through her care

[inu-sunset]

'kabru' sounding like 'cabrón' in spanish keeps me weeping, given who the fandom ships him with. cucked by that hyperfixation. and then to CHOOSE to became his royal advisor??????? that's his fucking KINK he's SELF AWARE

[dotwahv]