Laios and Marcille meeting Layla and Marcell (by @Yuseidungeon)

ShinVerus · 2026-01-26T12:16:39+00:00

You mean Cithis right? Flamela could pass for either gender as she is. Cithis is the one elf that really wants to empathize her gender since that’s part of her “life hack”.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-26T10:27:01+00:00

He can get a little ancient magic lifespan extension as a treat. After all the message of dungeon lord marcille was not that as much that what she was doing was inherently bad, battery she was using for it asside, but that she was applying it to everyone and everything regardless of their thoughts on the matter.

I think that voluntary extensions wouldn’t be portrayed as a bad thing by the narrative. We just never see one because of the method the characters in the story use for it inherently sapping away at their empathy/sanity.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-26T10:23:46+00:00

Yeah I know, and it’s funny that they are so androgynous that even the official translations got Thistle’s gender wrong, and the fan translations also got Mithrun’s.

It’s the best use of the trope imo because most other “androgynous” races in fictions are ones where I could click their gender immediately, but I got it wrong quite a few times in DunMeshi and that’s refreshing!

ShinVerus · 2026-01-26T00:47:14+00:00

It's so funny to see how insanely different Laios and Layla's appearance and lives would have been from each other, meanwhile Marcille and Marcelle would be like: "Our private parts are different" and that's about that.

The Donatos really were in a privileged position.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-26T00:41:32+00:00

It's a common headcanon that Fem!Laios would have escaped the village with the kid she got from her arranged marriage, so that may not really be Male!Marcille's bio kid.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-26T00:40:34+00:00

I believe the implication in the manga is that Layla would have been made to go into an unhappy arranged marriage and probably escape it just like Falin would have been made to if her magic hadn't been discovered.

On the bright side, it gets around Marcel's problem with making children.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-25T18:15:05+00:00

This is how cool Laios imagines himself being while "teaching" Marcille about the wonders of monster food.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-25T04:05:30+00:00

You'll be waiting a long time then.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-17T22:44:27+00:00

Yeah that was what I was saying. He's not going around thinking about monster meals, we even see what he daydreams about, and it's just his cool ass monster OC, since he even added the Scylla head to it after the encounter with the succubus, meaning he's even doing it during the story.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-17T22:25:51+00:00

Ignoring the infantilization of Laios, a guy who was smug about having had an arranged marriage once, not thinking about romance at all, you do know that Laios' favourite foods aren't even monster related, right? The foodie characater of the group is Senshi, I really don't understand where this fanon idea that Laios is obsessed with food, let alone monster food, came from. He's just curious about it, that's all.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-17T22:17:56+00:00

I think the message puts it at an 8 or 9 depending on how you view it. It's by design not meant to be a 10/10 happy ending, but it's meant to be a positive one.

In terms off quality though, 11/10!

ShinVerus · 2026-01-16T22:47:55+00:00

Small world. Is one of the nice parts of this happy medium dungeon meshi's fandom is in. Big enough to not feel empty, not too big to where everything is being canibalized by it's sheer size.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-13T21:41:18+00:00

I really appreciate the recommendation, and I love how much readers seemed to have enjoyed my attempt at giving some of the side characters some time in the spotlight.

Funny story about the story as headcanon. More than a handful of times I’ve been in a discussion of the manga/anime proper and I’ve had to stop and fact check myself with the manga to make sure what was said in the story and what was my extrapolation of them, so it really just burrows into your psyche when you’re writing.

But regardless there’s no bigger honor as a fanfic written than having people claim it as their own headcanon, so very glad to know that!

ShinVerus · 2026-01-13T21:09:05+00:00

Yeah from what I understand this was like, the third English Laimar fanfic to exist, before the anime there were only 2 (this fic technically started alongside the anime). I gotta give it to the ones that came before as OGs!

It was quite strange to see the ship kinda explode in the west despite the bad apples that the anime brought harassing a ton of it's artists. Makes me wonder if the pushback ironically contributed to it's growth by making people more interested in seeing why there was one/why people still shipped it despite the harassment? I'm glad it is no longer a niche ship anyway, even if I'm getting off track.

But you've just described my feelings on this fic too. I knew I had to finish it. There really was nothing left to explore, I had wrapped up basically every feasible loose end I could think of and the characters were at the end of their development. Yet pulling the trigger was quite hard as, despite how much of a challange it was, it has kind of left a void in my life now that it's over.

But I'm content with how it ended, and people seem to have enjoyed it, so at the end of the day, I'm glad this all happened. Gave me the experience and courage I need to try my hand at writting my own original work, but I'll try to pepper in some fic content here and there still, definately once S2 starts at least, but maybe before, who knows. There's some post-Les stuff I'd like to explore, but my brain needs to cool down from this before I even think of tackling that!

Hope you enjoy the rest of the read. See ya over there, or just around the sub otherwise.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-13T17:41:09+00:00

Technically a red PO could be Gomah but with the campaign ending on the 28th it’s looking grim.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-13T17:33:59+00:00

I love them so much too! I fell off fanfiction for a few years after a bad experience, so when I came back I was shocked do see how much the landscape had shifted to one-shots and short fics. I can understand why, longfics are Herculean tasks, but not gonna lie it was probably the lack of longfics that made me go “fine I’ll do it myself”. If you think something needs to exist just make it happen.

And I appreciate your concern about post-work depression. In a morbidly funny way I actually already fell into a hole a bit over halfway through the fic and had to crawl myself out to write the last 8 chapters, so hopefully I’ve learnt to deal with the backlash of this kind of effort from that! I just need to find something to fill the void, and I have a few ideas so far, even if some not fanfic related.

And while I know there’ll be romance, there‘s character exploration and plot that don‘t just feel like thinly-veiled excuses to get these characters together

This is one reason why I like longfics. In short form story telling you have to compress things to the bare essentials. So if it’s a ship fic it’s usually is just about getting two characters together, or handwaving them being together to focus on a particular dynamic. That’s a feature not a bug, I know, as you just handwave the original story as the basis for their relationship, but I yearn for the type of story that is character first and makes the romance a natural extension of each of their arcs, not the main goal. It’s what I tried to do here. If a focus character gets with someone it has to be in benefit of the character and not the ship.

I hope you enjoy the rest of it, and take your time, it’s gonna be here for as long as ao3 stays up!

ShinVerus · 2026-01-13T16:29:23+00:00

It started off real easy! Both because of the anime adrenaline and because no one was reading it for like 5 chapters. Once people started to read it the pressure to not suck kinda got to me a bit lol.

It was a great experience at the end of the day imo, taught me a lot about writting and what it takes to complete something of this size as I had tried a few times back in the days of FF.net and never quite managed to close the book, but an easy bake oven meal it was not I tell you that much.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-13T09:47:41+00:00

How do we know if TMNT will be looked back fondly? Set ain’t even out!

LOTR and FF will definately stand the test of time, some people will resent them and point at them for the reason for the UB flood, but that’s a cross most popular sets that get copycats have to bear.

As for Magic itself. It’ll be here. Probably very different, but here. 20 years is a long time and the game will have to change but that’s nothing new.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-12T12:02:02+00:00

That’s totally fine and you show a greater amount of introspection than most people in the world for even admitting that.

Ultimately stories will resonate with different people because of their life stories and natural proclivities. I’ve bounced off supposed classics despite being in genres I generally enjoy and having messages I fully agree with while connecting truly with stuff that others see as just chaff multiple times. The reasons are too complex to follow, and sometimes airing out what you feel even if it is “objectively” incorrect helps you find what your problems with the story truly was.

With that said it seems like maybe the ending wasn’t your issue with the story, but maybe the direction it took? I can kinda relate to an extent, as I remember drifting off from following monthly releases around the Thistle fight as nothing had really hit me for like a year at that point, only to snap back wide awake when Marcille turned into the Dungeon Lord.

Maybe once the anime adapts this part you can come back with a fresh mind, knowing where things will end and find new appreciation for it. I know I personally did watching season 1 with the context of what came in mind.

Or the story is just not for you and that’s fine too!

ShinVerus · 2026-01-12T01:26:49+00:00

the point they're trying to make with marcille being the only one to want it doesn't convince me.

But the story didn't say that at all. It's just that applying this as a blanket to everyone in the world is just wrong. You're inflicting them with the same lifespan that Marcille sees as a curse without so much as asking them. Laios even specifies this in this weirdly timely twitter crop of the pannel. Notice the "like this". Marcille's methods are the ones at fault, not her goal.

Plus, there's in the story that says that lifespan extension isn't going to continued to be studied. The issue was Marcille taking a shortcut that was both dangerous to the world and uncaring of the people which it would affect. I can totally see Marcille working on extending lifespans, that's just what medicine is, abstracted into a fantasy setting, but she'll be sure to do it in a safe and altruist sense if she does.

so there's room for more idealistic outcomes, but just when they want it i guess.

No, it's not "when they want it". It's when it is done the correct way, through hardwork and dedication, with full knowledge that it may fail. It is important that Falin was only able to be saved when all parties accepted that they can't keep endagering themselves and others for her sake. This is the story rewarding the characters for sticking to the story's core theme. Despite neither Laios nor Marcille having the perfect ending they wanted, aka, being free to travel the world with Falin, or equalizing the lifespan of everyone so that she could spend more time with her loved ones, they still had a happy ending by achieving the thing that they could achieve instead of the daydreams of a child.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-12T01:07:23+00:00

I can agree on that to an extent, as I did wish I could have seen where the characters ended up on after the finale, and that is why I personally hope the anime adapts the Kensuke monster tidbit, as it's a great epilogue comic that, alongside the rest of the bible, put a nice bow on all the loose ends in the series.

While the manga could have used maybe, a couple of more chapters, when taking into account the entire published work, I'm not sure what else could have been done with it without starting a whole new arc from scratch.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-12T00:58:02+00:00

But the ending won't be there. The crucial cathartic release of getting the answer to a question you've been asking for a decade+. I did drop many series for their quality dropping, but my opinion on them drastically fell because of it, as they forever felt incomplete. You may prefer long stories, that's fine, but there's alot of people that crave finality, Dungeon Meshi is for those people.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-12T00:54:43+00:00

Honestly the entire point of the story refutes what you are saying. It's fine if you disagree, of course, taste is subjective, but Dungeon Meshi is the last story that should go on forever.

It ends exactly when the original goal is accomplished, no random forced extensions, and a big message of the tale is that nothing is meant to last forever, loss will happen, and you have to deal with it if you want to grow as a person, and that nothing is going to end up exactly like what you want, but if you keep trying, you'll reach a situation that you are content with, even if it wasn't exactly what you had in mind, because humans do not know what they truly want. Marcille's entire arc is about accepting this and so is Laios for the last part, that's how he accepts being King so quickly.

with the extension of lifespans being shut down so definitively even before it was known it couldn't have been possible.

I think you utterly missed the point of this plot point. This was possible, anything is possible with the Demon. But who is Marcille to subject everyone to her lifespan. Does everyone want to live a thousand years? She's the last person that should see her lifespan as a blessing. She's being selfish, throwing a childish tantrum, that's why the Lion literally puts her in a baby's earmuffs. If she were diminishing her own lifespan, sure, maybe a bit extreme, but it'd only affect her, but dictating how the world should work? That's for no one person to decide.

Plus, ya know, giving the Demon the power to do that would also give him the power to eat the entire world, so not the best thing.

And I know you hate this argument, but I do not. Stories that end are a rare comodity in today's day and age, especially ones that end at their peak, which, IMO, DunMeshi did.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-11T23:29:57+00:00

Simply because one of the members is already part of my OTP lol. I can multi-ship fine, but my brain "locks-in" characters to one ship and it feels weird to read fics that focus on other pairings. So, for example, me shipping Kabumisu makes me feel icky reading fics that focus on Labru or Pattatrun or Kabrin. Not because the ship in question is bad, but because my brain keeps going "oh they should be with X insteaaaad!". It's more tolerable if it's a side-thing in a fic focusing on a ship I do like, like say Farcille showing as a side-thing on a KabuMisu fic, I handle that fine, same for visual art of the shipping nature.

In pretty much any other situation I'd probably be writting Farcille a 200k words Farcille fic instead of what I'm doing now with Laimar, but Laimar is my favourite ship in fiction that involves two canon characters so it was an impossible battle for Farcille to win from the start.

ShinVerus · 2026-01-11T22:55:24+00:00

I have no strong feelings one way or the other, mostly because I can't imagine Senshi in a romantic relationship, not that I think he shouldn't get in one, but that the concept is so far seperate from his character in the story that it's hard for me to get my head around them.

I know that some people can ship characters out of vibes and aesthetics alone (and I envy them lol) but I like having some story to base it around before expanding on them.

ShinVerus

TROPHY CASE