Daydream Hour Page - How to make an Elven Communication Fairy (Homunculus)
I just did this using Google's machine translation tools, and I didn't clean it up, but you can get the gist of it. I saw Japanese fans on twitter going wild with this information the day the Daydream hour came out, so I already knew there was something about blood and semen, but it's so fun to get more information about how the fairies work!!!
Keep an eye on Savaralyn 's tumblr because I'm sure they'll post a better, cleaned up version of this soon, and reblog that one because it'll be easier to understand but... This is just so cool!
The fairies are homunculus, and so the reason they look like their owners is because they're literally made of their semen (reproductive fluids) and fed their blood. Blood and semen and other body fluids are frequently used in real world magic or religious rituals so it's really cool that Kui is being unflinching about using it here, even if it's "gross" to us modern people... I love seeing it acknowledged in a fictional work!
tl;dr alchemists used to believe that there was A Little Man inside the sperm but because the baby sometimes looks like the mother, they are absorbing traits from her through the Blood.... and so if they can make a baby Only With Sperm they can make a little man 100% in their own image.
But Dungeon Meshi and especially the elves don't seem to have the same sexism that we have in the real world... Real world alchemists wouldn't think about how women are supposed to do alchemy without semen, they just would exclude women I'm pretty sure, but elves don't seem to exclude female elves so, how are female elves getting their fairies?
Either:
- Only male elves can make a fairy and so they construct them for female elves.
- Female elves need to get semen from a male elf (or whoever, does it have to be elven semen?) to make their fairies.
- Female elves use female ejaculate (Ryoko Kui confirming female ejaculation real in Dungeon Meshi universe??? Joking)
- Female elves use menstrual fluid that has a shed egg in it instead of semen (equivalent reproductive fluid to male semen)
If you have to get someone else's semen for your fairy does it not look like you? Does it look like a mix because you use your blood and their semen? Does the blood need to be regularly given to power the fairy? What if someone doesn't have enough mana - can Tallmen make fairies? Would they be able to make a fairy if they had an extra mana source (like a dungeon, or an elf) to regularly feed the fairy blood?
This is just such a cool bit of worldbuilding in such an unlikely place!!! Everything in Dungeon Meshi is so fascinating. I can't wait to get my Daydream hour in the mail from Japan.
In case you haven't seen it, here's the other page we've gotten on the fairies:
As you can see, only Mithrun and the Queen's fairies look substantially different from them. Possibly the queen's bodily fluids are too sacred/precious to be used in this manner? What if somebody tries to usurp the throne or something (more problematic with a male ruler but still an issue if you have magic maybe...) and Mithrun... well, hard to get semen out of him. So his may be made by someone else but fed by him with his blood?
(Could have been grown from a donation by his brother? The hair color is right but not the eyes... but Mithrun's blood may be influencing the appearance?)
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"I've been waiting for ages for somebody to unmask them."
This moment tends to elicit negative reactions in a first read through, and I've got some opinions about why where Kabru is coming from here actually makes a lot of logical sense. So I thought I'd elaborate on that.
I think people hear this and go, "He thinks they must be hiding something because they gave money to someone? What a cynic." Or "he dislikes them because they did charity?? What's wrong with this guy!". And obviously, a lot, a lot is wrong with him. But I think this makes more sense than it seems at first glance! What people evaluating this judgement miss is why Kabru is paying attention to Laios and co to begin with.
Kabru knows of the Touden siblings because (he's a little bit of a stalker-) he is keeping an eye on all the relevant parties in events developing on the island, in order to be able to guide them to his preferred outcome. This includes adventurers because they are the ones actually exploring the dungeon! He's well aware that something as minor as internal tensions between party members could be key to the historical events that are developing. (He would love the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.)
His desired outcome is that whatever the rewards are of breaking the dungeon's curse, whether that's kingship or the ancient elven secrets of dungeons, are claimed by:
A) a short lived person
B) Someone who will be a good, effective leader and/or use those secrets and the power they carry wisely, with foresight, and to establish a political bloc for short lived people.
The person he can best trust to do this is, of course, himself. But due to his PTSD regarding dungeons and monsters, he's not able to develop the necessary skills to conquer the dungeon. Once he realises this, he starts looking for someone else who he can support to that end.
But most of the adventurers don't have any intentions of conquering the dungeon, don't have the skills, or are unsuitable in other ways. In fact, it seems like some potentially suitable people are the Toudens. There are a lot of good rumours about them going around - they actually seem to have a very positive reputation! That's what Kabru means when he says "unmask".
So when Kabru is observing something like them giving money to an old comrade from their gold-peeling days, he doesn't consider it a problem because "they're giving money to this person who doesn't actually need it" or because they must have some dark secret if they act superficially nice. I think he actually understands this situation and what it implies about Laios (in particular) perfectly well.
Laios and Falin gave money to an old comrade who got injured and couldn't work. That person then healed up but kept taking their money. Then he used the money to start smuggling illicit goods to the island.
The key is that for Kabru, the problem here is the same as with the corpse retrievers - people using the dungeon's resources to fuel dangerous, selfish, or violent pursuits cause problems for the island, attract more criminals and people with motives other than breaking the curse, and increase the chances of the whole situation ending in tragedy.
Kabru is willing to work with the Shadow Lord of the island if it gets him to his goal - he isn't scrupulous - but the criminal element of the island increasing is something he sees as a major issue.
Also, when you're evaluating someone as a candidate for power, riches, secrets, potentially kingship - then being curious about how the money you give to people is going to be used is kind of a relevant trait!
Interpersonally, Kabru's actually very easygoing - I mean, Mickbell isn't exactly an upstanding guy, is he! But Kabru likes him and they get along well. These traits wouldn't be a problem at all in a friend, or a comrade, or someone Kabru was confident he could use. But he can't get a handle on Laios, and Laios is someone who has the potential to be a major player!
On Laios' end, this is the same as with the marriage seeker who joined their party. She kept asking for things and he gave them to her, because he tries to be nice to others. He even gives her money! It's the exact same thing.
That's fine, but it became a problem because he basically wasn't interested in her motives, didn't notice she was trying to manipulate him, and it also didn't occur to him that the other party members would notice or be affected. We can assume the situation with the gold peeler is the same. When Kabru says that "It's not that they're bad people, they just aren't interested in humans," he isn't wrong.
The extent to which this is true of Laios is linked to his autism imo, (because it isn't just disinterest - he genuinely isn't able to notice nonverbal cues that people are lying to him or have ulterior motives) but to a greater or lesser extent I think it's a very common trait. Most people aren't actually that interested in other people who aren't close to them. Kabru is the weird one here. It isn't an issue except as a leader - which is why we see an immediate comparison to the Island's Lord, because that's how Kabru is evaluating them.
And disinterest in/lack of ability with people to the extent Laios exhibits it, it does, actually, make him a worse leader... it's just that as we see in the story, people can help him out. The rest of the party tell him the marriage seeker is taking advantage of him so he tells her he can't give her special treatment anymore. They're pissed and it's a crisis point - he couldn't have recovered their trust without Marcille and Falin - but that's exactly the point. With Marcille and Falin, he was able to recover their trust.
And he has other good traits that make up for it, such as his intelligence, strategic knowledge, open-mindedness and sense of fairplay.
Kabru doesn't disqualify Laios as a candidate based on what he sees about him from afar, though - he still tries very hard to get close to him, obviously hoping that if he manages he can steer Laios to defeat the dungeon and make up for his lack of people-skills in the aftermath. (Which... he does eventually achieve that goal!) He completely fails until the events of the story, so... definitely I think "They just aren't interested in humans" could also partially be a stung reaction to Laios' complete disinterest in him.
Anyway, that's my read on what exactly Kabru's "issue" with Laios is. Obviously, once he does find out what Laios' true nature is like - about his love for monsters - he develops an entirely new set of fears about Laios' priorities. But since Laios kept that a secret until the start of the story, he has no idea of that yet.
Given all that, I think it's interesting that he says that he doesn't think that the Toudens are suitable to defeat the dungeon, and that he's hoping they'll turn out to be the thieves. As some of his few potential candidates, people who he thinks may play a big role in the island's future, you'd think he'd hope they would be good people!
I suppose it's better, in his eyes, because it means that he's involved in something "interesting". They haven't just had their stuff stolen by regular criminals (boring, puts them further away from his goal) - they've been caught up in the beginning stages of "a historic event". The desperate and dwindling group forgetting morals in their quest to retrieve their lost comrade probably appeals to his sense of melodrama. Because he also just... loves drama.
Despite it being "uglier than anything he was expecting", he still pursues Laios as the person he wants to conquer the dungeon pretty much as soon as it becomes clear that he won't be able to do it himself and they are out of time. That's because... well, to be fair, there aren't any other options. And he fits standard A: he's short-lived!
and Kabru still hopes he can fit standard B, too, and be persuaded to use the power he wins for good. No matter how many nightmares he has about Laios, or whether he thinks about killing him. He doubts him, but ultimately he puts his faith in him and seems happy after the manga's ending that he made the right decision.
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New Canary Lore (Preview image from Complete Adventure Guide)
With bad translation by me.
This is really cool info!!!!!!!! And confirms a bunch of stuff we didn't know for sure.
PARTIAL TRANSLATION:
The Canary Squad is a group that adventurers on the island fear. We have published materials that give a glimpse of this.
Canary Corps Organization Chart
The Canary Squad is made up of prisoners and the guards who manage them. This document reveals information about the members of Team 2, led by Deputy Commander Flamela.
Hard to get much from this unfortunately, but seems like there's a group of commanders above the Canaries but below the Queen that call the shots (makes sense), and also a side group for Canaries that aren't good at going into Dungeons (also makes sense).
So now we know Helki was pardoned/finished his sentence and works for Milsiril as some kind of servant (light labor, probably a house servant).
We also know that a Canary prisoner can theoretically be pardoned and become a guard, like what happened with Flamela's assistant. That's probably why she's always wearing a hood, doesn't want people to see her ear notches and get confused about the chain of command.
(You guys have GOT to find a better way to indicate rank than just ear notches 😂 Give the officers different colored capes or something...)
Flamela's under Mithrun and a "deputy chief" or "deputy commander" I'm sure it's vague in the Japanese and that's why there's wildly different translations. Now it makes sense why Mithrun was able to tell her to "shut up" without getting in trouble, and why all the Canaries had to go along with Mithrun's promise at the end of the manga, he's the highest ranking guy there.
Flamela IS related to the queen, but distantly. Also they both have relatives that seem light-skinned, which makes sense since the elves clearly have a lot of skin color diversity throughout the population.
And now we also know the genders of the various background canaries! I'm so happy there's more men and they aren't just all girls 😂 I had a gut feeling that long hair freckles, bottom left corner, was a boy.
Still no names for them though 😂 but that's ok, Larry, Moe and Curly my beloved.
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