#Do peopel argue about whether or not it's cannibalism if a dwarf eats a tallman?

[chuthulhu-reads]

[ID: Two panels from Dungeon Meshi. The first scows Senshi clutching his face as tears start to spill out of his eyes, saying, "I've always... always wanted to have this soup one more time." He's not wearing his helmet in this panel, so his face is unusually visible, detailed and vulnerable. The second panel shows himself as a youngster, surrounded by his old mining team, all smiling at each other, one of them rubbing Senshi's head. Modern-day Senshi continues, "Thank you. All of you. Thank you." End ID.]

Holy shit. I anticipated some tragic backstory from the "I must feed the young ones" panels, but what I'd guessed was that Senshi might have become so devoted to cooking and eating literally whatever because he'd previously survived a famine and had seen children starve to death. I did not expect him to have been the child who was the sole survivor of a doomed travel party, one of whom was determined to feed Senshi first because he was the youngest, and that Senshi has lived with the fear of having inadvertently committed cannibalism by eating stew that he'd never quite known the contents of. I'm happy for him that Laios deduced and confirmed for him that it was griffin meat, that he was able to taste the meal that saved his life once more and remember the friends he lost. Seriously, I'm crying, and also earnestly relieved that while his backstory is pretty dark, it's not the type of fucked up I'd been preparing myself mentally for.

#Dungeon Meshi #Delicious in Dungeon #Dunmeshi #though it IS really worth exploring the ethics of cannibalism in survival situations #The podcast You're Wrong About has a really interesting pairing of episodes #in the Donner Party and Flight 571 Crash episodes #Both about disasters in which people wound up eating their dead to survive #and an interesting connection they drew was that it wasn't the cannibalism itself #that destroyed the lives of the Donner survivors #it was the horror and disgust and societal rejection they got for having eaten human flesh #even the children who had no idea what they were eating were treated with revulsion #and this is clearly the response Senshi feared facing if anybody knew what he'd eaten #But Flight 571 like a century later #the survivors were faced with a lot of understanding when rescued #relatively little condemnation and revulsion #by and large commentators acknowledged that they did what they had to do #and sympathized with how difficult and painful it must have been #which is what Senshi gets from his party #Laios wants to figure out the truth because he knows it's hurting Senshi not to know #But at one point Marcille straight up says that none of them would think less of Senshi if he did eat dwarf stew #Okay so this is Marcille 'ardent student of blood magic' Donato #but Chilchuck agrees #anyway I think that would be a particularly interesting conversation to have in a cooking manga #how do you safely eat a dead friend when that's all you have to survive on? #what are the nutritional benefits other than 'better than starving'? #what are the risks? There's prion diseases and all sorts you can get #they write it off as eating the dragon part but they DO spend seven days eating Falin at the end #ARE there any in/famous cannibalism cases in this world? #Do peopel argue about whether or not it's cannibalism if a dwarf eats a tallman? #enquiring minds (mine) want to know