What’s the difference between a dog and a wolf?
Oh, a thing about Izutsumi. Her selfishness is a very funny extended cat joke but also none of her behaviour was maladaptive to the context she was in before she skipped out on Toshiro's party. She was a slave. Inutade responded to being 'taken in' by Toshiro's household one way, by trying to make herself as useful as possible, but Izutsumi saw they were being taken advantage of from the start. Very sensibly, she chose to do the absolute bare minimum needed to stay alive and decided she didn't owe her captors shit. Her life from when she was bought to when she lost her collar was one long ca' canny. Her real arc is from one set of adaptive behaviours that got her through a horrible time to some that make more sense in a better situation. Like all cats, she has excellent boundaries.
It’s so sad to me that Izutsumi Dungeon Meshi’s mother wears something similar to Mongolian/Central Asian clothing, not Japanese clothing. That Izutsumi was probably dragged out of their native culture and doesn’t know it.
what if vampires are like mosquitoes and only the ladies drink blood
Do you guys think Izutsumi does teenager talk and chilchuck is the only one who can understand her? No? Aw man ☹️
Idk how to draw senshi if you can’t tell
There’s just something extremely touching about watching Izutsumi work through a wide range of emotions when she sees Marcille cry for the first time.
She’s sleeping on Marcille’s lap when it happens—something she hadn’t willingly done since her human consciousness was subdued in the Golden Country.
Izutsumi was initially very embarrassed when she remembered showing Marcille such unbridled affection when her monster (cat) side had full control in Melini. But now, shortly after, she did it again without any fuss, seemingly over this embarrassment.
But when she notices Marcille crying—not crying expressive tears over a situation with low stakes, but tears of real sorrow and loss—Izutsumi physically recoils.
She reacts with the childlike fear and panic that one feels when someone they heavily rely on and trust (like a parent or teacher) shows vulnerability, doubt, or weakness. She lashes out, trying to use words of reproach to get Marcille to stop crying. Or, in childlike terms, to try to force Marcille’s pain go away.
When that doesn’t work, we see her physically struggle as she tries to sit by and wait it out. But Izutsumi can’t do it.
Marcille’s pain causes her so much intense distress that Izutsumi immediately offers physical affection as a response—something she has not done for anyone up to this point.
When Senshi told the party about his traumatic backstory, Izutsumi did not touch him. She did support him, tried to offer words of comfort, but she did not embrace him like the others did. Maybe she didn’t know how; maybe she didn’t have a proper example on what comforting someone looked like. But she saw all three of them reach for Senshi, she saw them hold him in their arms, and anchor him as he cried.
This is the first time another party member has cried out of sadness since that moment. It’s possible that she saw how the others helped Senshi, and maybe, subconsciously, she saw that it worked. That it made him feel better.
She is clearly unused to it, and has her own rollercoaster of emotions as Marcille gratefully accepts the comfort Izutsumi is offering her. But it helps. It helps Marcille immediately, and Izutsumi knows this.
These acts of vulnerability are foreign to her, and thus make her feel uncomfortable, but she lets Marcille lean on her afterwards anyway. She wanted Marcille to be okay, wanted it so badly, that she accidentally overcame an emotional obstacle she never even knew she had.
20 | he/they/it | just thinking about a certain cat... could be transgender but who knows...
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