Unexpectedly Marvelous

multifandom multishipper | fanfic writer, allegedly | ignoring canon since 2016 | nominally female | white | 20s | aroace | francophone | no queue | tags everything | AO3 | Referentia

[dunmeshistash]

One of the things I really appreciate about Dungeon Meshi is how the text is so clearly full of love for animals. Like the true kind of love Laios feels for the monster where he wants to know everything about them, but most of all he respects them and loves them as animals.

One of the chapters I can't stop thinking about is the one about Anne the Kelpie. It's kind of impressive how well it illustrates the different kind of love people have for animals. And how someone that loves an animal isn't necessarily an animal lover. If that makes sense.

When Senshi calls out Anne what he says is "Don't worry Anne's Harmless" but she isn't, she's a wild animal.

Marcille immediately reacts positively about it thinking it's cute she accepts the treat Senshi has for her. And hers and Chilchuck's reaction to Senshi wanting to cross the river on her back is more surprise while Laios immediately realizes how bad of an idea it is.

But Laios is the animal monster lover so how come when he finally is faced with a "docile" monster he doesn't react positively like the others? Marcille even calls him a monster. That's because Laios loves monsters, and Senshi loves Anne.

I've seen this attitude around me several times, where people love a specific animal but what they love is their idea of that animal, they don't really know them because they don't love the animal part of them.

It becomes a "this one is special because I love them" that can quickly become an issue for the animal as much as it is for the person. It's something unfortunate I see time and time again irl.

Anne wasn't wicked, Anne wasn't mean, Anne didn't trick him. Anne was a wild animal and Senshi loved her as Anne but not as a kelpie.

She acted on instinct, maybe she did love Senshi in the way kelpies can love, but animals are still animals and must be respected and treated as such. Climbing on top of Anne's back was the equivalent of putting your arm inside a alligator's mouth, the mouth is gonna close because that's what they're designed to do.

The real life equivalent I see the most of "I love this animal but I don't love the animal part of them" is with dogs. If you insist on loving an animal without acknowledging they ARE an animal they might hurt you, you might hurt them, it will only end in grief.

The best way you can love an animal is by understanding they're an animal.

That is all to say I don't mean that the love Senshi felt for Anne wasn't real or that it's all his fault. He couldn't have known with the information he had and unfortunately it came down to the worst outcome.

I just love dungeon meshi dearly.

[dunmeshistash]

One of the blu-ray bonus is an extra about Anne

Dungeon Meshi continues to be amazing "can you really provide for that animal" is something more people should ask themselves before getting a pet <3

[rayisnthere14]

Man, what a nerd!

[catmask]

i read the hobbit in 3rd grade and i thought it was really lame. however i liked bilbo baggins for some reason and i was fully convinced he was some sort of rabbit/mouse thing until i saw the lotr movies and was really, really confused

[catmask]

[mystery-ink]

forgot to say that, without Howl chasing girls and Sophie resenting him for it, the film completely erases part of the point of Sophie being old.  Wynne Jones is using an idea that Beauvoir talked about - that being an old woman is both tragic (as we lose male attention/attractiveness) and freeing (as we are freed from the male gaze).  the idea is that with being old comes liberation, and the true meaning of what it is to be a woman, as society no longer forces gender norms on us.

Sophie is free from Howl’s attentions and therefore safe from harm (a big part of the book is the fact that Sophie believes he eats women’s hearts, and him chasing girls proves this to her).  she takes solace in the fact that she’s old, and finds it freeing.  when she learns more about Howl (notably: that he doesn’t eat hearts and that he’s not evil), she starts to curse her age and resent him chasing girls.  BUT she remains old OF HER OWN VOLITION - Howl notes that she’s perpetuating the spell by wishing to remain “in disguise”.  there are SO many layers to this, and lots to do with gender politics - if she’s still old Sophie can’t get hurt, she likes the freedom, etc.  but of course on a personal level being old is her denying her feelings for Howl, and also a representation of her low self esteem - being old is a defence mechanism and protection, both on a gender level and a personal one.

and the film kinda… loses this?  the only thing that remains is being old = low self esteem.  which really sucks.  because there’s SO MUCH MORE to Sophie being old in the book (perspective I already mentioned), and a HUGE amount of this is gender politics.  that the film just erases.

[sylvester-malone]

Also there’s the subversion of that in the book. Sophie’s belief that she’s safe from Howl, isn’t quite true because he fell in love with her while she was under the spell (and in the book, there’s no switching between looking young and old. Sophie is looking ninety the entire time, and Howl falls in love anyway.)

Also, her belief that being old means she can’t go to her stepmother or her sisters, that they’d fail to recognize her or reject her, is also unfounded. Fanny almost immediately recognizes her at the end of the book, and hugs her and cries over her and asks why Sophie disappeared. Sophie’s belief that the love of her family, friends and even her romantic interests is somehow conditional on her appearance is shown to be completely false at the end, which I think is absolutely beautiful.

Like, there’s definitely gender politics and commentary going on about beauty and youth and age and the male gaze and male violence going on, but there’s also this message about how love, real love, transcends all of that.

[ellorgast]

I actually adore the movie on its own merits, but I think it absolutely did a disservice to Sophie as a character. When I was doing a reread last month, what hit me was that Sophie is every bit as much of a volatile emotional disaster as Howl is, and that’s pretty heckin’ great. 

Howl is a pissy, dramatic asshole even when he’s at his best. He dissolves into green slime when his hair looks wrong. He deals with his problems by getting falling-over drunk and makes the walls shake every time he sneezes just so everyone will take pity on him. He’s a self-proclaimed coward who has to trick himself into taking responsibility for anything.

Movie Sophie deals with this as well as she can. She learns to look past his drama and sees his tender heart and noble intentions. She becomes the mature one in the castle, fixing everyone’s problems, essentially taking up a motherly role to all the other characters.

Book Sophie does the same… but she does it while dealing out as good as she takes. Howl is chasing after every woman except Sophie? Sophie meticulously cuts up his suit into triangles. Howl floods the room with green slime? Sophie hate-magics weed killer strong enough to melt concrete, and chucks it at Howl’s head. Howl can’t stop avoiding his problems? Meet the queen of avoidance, who clung to her curse to avoid confronting her feelings for Howl. Howl has to basically trick himself into taking action? I would like you to meet Sophie, who was too scared to leave her home her whole life, but the moment she’s under a curse is like “WELP, GUESS I’D BETTER LEAVE HOME RIGHT THIS MOMENT AND NEVER COME BACK.”

The moment of Howl and Sophie getting together in the book isn’t “Sophie fixes everything through her inherent goodness.” It’s “Sophie realizes that Howl has been secretly scheming to fix all her problems exactly the same way that she has been secretly scheming to fix all his problems because neither of them is a normal functioning adult, and they both look forward to yelling at each other for the rest of their wonderful lives.” And losing that, losing all of Sophie’s flaws and ridiculous moments as well as Howl’s efforts to fix her life as much as she’s trying to fix his, means that we’re left with a typical romance trope of a woman having to fix all of a man’s problems and be the perfect, mature one in the relationship, while he can coast purely on charm. The revelation that half of Howl’s antics were actually schemes to break Sophie’s curse or even just make her happy is important because for once it goes both ways. Not just “woman fixes man with her love,” but “people fix each other with their love, sort of, except for all the parts that will never change and that’s okay because flaws can be just as attractive as virtues, and if he laughs when you throw weed killer at him then he might be the one.”

[airplanecrashingtowardstheground]

the only jason resurrection story i accept is superboy prime punching a hole in the universe wherein jason is forced to wake up and then dig himself out of his own grave because its both funny (universe punch) and tragic (grave crawl) and I think thats the kind of life jason should be living

[cheetahleopard]

Tags by @themandylion so true

[sevicia]

I agree with this for sure

[ghosty1kitty]

Bruce Wayne in an interview after being asked about if he hates lex luthor cuz he’s the baby daddy of Superman : “I don’t hate gay people but I hate that gay person.” “ and for the record i can be so much better then him, hit me up supes”

[gamergirl-lumine]

Frodo: *speaks Elvish*

Legolas: The heck was that?

Aragorn: He said good morning.

Legolas: He did?

Frodo: I thought you would… understand that?

Legolas: I’ve never heard someone speak like that before…it was strange, and stilted, and you used full words the whole time.

Aragorn: Elves may sound fancy to us, Frodo, but they speak slang, and almost exclusively in metaphors.

Frodo: Oh.

Legolas: Aragorn has described it as ‘a monstrosity of a language’.

Gimli: Dwarves have a better language.

Legolas: You do.

Gimli: Ha! You admit- wait, you admit it?

Legolas: Elves curse by using the names of trees. Tree names! You have actually cusses. Do you know what I would give to cuss, just once in my life, Gimli? Do you know what I would give to tell someone to f- f- f- I can’t even say it.

Gimli: You can’t say fuck?

Legolas: …I have an idea.

-

Legolas: The-

Gimli: Fuck.

Legolas: -are you talking about?

Boromir: Why did we let the dwarf start swearing for the elf?

Aragorn: Because I can’t wait to see Thranduil’s face when he finds out.

[nomanitas]

We agreed we all change. Better or worse, we change together.

[solidjellyfish]

Back when I drew my husband

[bonjaminfranklin]

Anyways everyone should watch The Good Place

[alegitsalvage]

Child suffers from OCD, particularly moral scrupulosity OCD and existential OCD and his intellectualization and rigidity are both manifestations of covert mental compulsions.

[cozyindungeon]

the way aragorn runs is so chaotic

[jesterbells]

@tathrin's tags have been vetted and approved

#that is a man who A: has tripped over his sword before and been laughed at by EVERY ELF IN RIVENDELL and is NOT going to do it again#and B: knows that he has more leg than anyone else in the room and is GOING TO USE IT BY GODS#he is COVERING GROUND with every step#he got that moniker of strider through HARD HONEST WORK (and very very big steps)#aragorn#lotr movies#viggo mortensen

[floating-in-the-blue]

#So basically. He runs like an actual real person would over uneven ground 😂#The Hollywood Run is pretty to watch sure but also takes place on a paved surface usually#There is no way to look dignified whilst running across lumpy bumpy ground down across a hill. Unless one is an actual gazelle#thankyou Mr. Viggo for that Real Human rep (saving @jonairadreaming's excellent tags because everyone who has ever tried running down an incline over uneven, possibly shifting, ground knows you try to get down there as fast as possible with the least amount of time of foot actually touching the ground and constantly being prepared to shift your weight to keep your balance. By the time the stones actually shift from your weight you already want to be two steps away)

[elodieunderglass]

He’s so leg

[greseadraws]

dungeon meshi but they end up in the back rooms, a cursed idea that was eating away at my brain

[nitewrighter]

Peer-reviewing @monikoishi's tags because they're banger.

[menacingangel]

a little guy

[elinex]

mithrun rediscovers the joy of ragebaiting

[genderkoolaid]

maybe im crazy but there's something i've noticed with how like. both zuko atla and hamlet (hamlet) are male characters whose stories heavily center on their struggles with trauma and guilt, who are shown to be emotional, and who i see running jokes about them being whiny bitchboys whose trauma is something to be mocked, who should've just manned up and quit whining etc etc. do you see what i'm getting at here. like. idk i've just never found it comfortable how people will make a big joke out of zuko's "obsession with honor" when it is, textually and explicitly, about him being literally exiled by his abusive father after being violently hurt by him in public and sent on a suicide mission that represents just how much his father hates him and sees him as a failure.

and people are SO eager to blame hamlet for everything in the play (which is a tragedy, thinks are kind of required to go wrong) meanwhile Claudius, the guy who murdered his brother and basically tells his grieving nephewson that its gay and stupid for him to be mourning his dead father a month after he died because its now his unclefather and motheraunt's wedding, somehow gets off scott free despite being the actual reason for the entire play's plot. you see what i'm getting at here?????

i don't want these male characters to be like, woobified and for people to pretend they've done nothing wrong, to be clear. to do that would be a disservice to these stories which put effort into making them nuanced, rich, and flawed people. but like hmmmm why are people so quick to mock traumatized emotional men for being traumatized and emotional, and specifically insinuate that they would be better people if they stopped being so emotional and affected by the objectively insane shit they are going through.

[genderkoolaid]

^^^^^

[lornaka]

I like how this wip looks at this stage, so I thought I'd just post it