PHM Sideblog

I see a zine

Of many

Shapes of

Adrian.

Tall and taller

Colored blue

And Orange.

Sometimes

Human too.

In my dreams

I see a zine

Of fandom

Love and

Passion.

Then I

Wake and

'Member:

No such

Zine's there.

Though the

Hope for

One is

I would love to see Grace try to explain what evolution is and that all of the human races (the humanoid peoples of dunmeshi) in their world all likely have a common ancestor simply because they're all too similar biologically and in too close proximity for that to not be the case.

They'd deny that I think, given their knowledgeways are just too different from their universe, but Grace would explain how he and Rocky most definitely originate from the same extremely distant common ancestor, give the complex low down on that, and then redirect it to the Dungeon Meshi cast and say "now look at you all. If me and Rocky can be genetically related despite being so different, then you guys with your bipedalism, color vision, and shared biological functions and diets most certainly are, and certainly not as long ago as us two."

I do think they'd feel psychologically disturbed by the idea of space travel or of aliens, Marcille especially.

Grace and Marcille would be a fascinating duo I think. Both have wonky relationships to age, and I think with Marcille's fear of death and Grace's whole everything, he'd kinda be like an older family figure to her, despite them sort of being close in age technically sorta. I think he'd rope her into talking about the logistics of magic and she'd get really passionate about it, and he's a scientist so of course he was going to sit back and learn!

In the group, Rocky would be the oldest still at 300+ post-canon. Despite this I think he and Chilchuck would get along the best. Both are handy and take pride in their work, and both get misunderstood as more humourous than they really are due to how they come off to other species.

Senshi and Grace would be an interesting match up too. Eating taumeoba would intrigue him, but eating his own cloned flesh would fucking appall him oh my god. But otherwise I think they'd be the most mature and adulty humanoid members of the cast, and bond over wanting to help take care of the group.

But. I really like they/them for Adrian.

To not contradict one but still maintain an Eridian equivilence for the other, I have some ideas.

The status-based binary pronoun system developed as only a feature of some language families on Erid, including Rocky's native tongue (native hum?).

Which means that there's room for Eridian languages that have only one pronoun, or more than two, or zero! And perhaps Adrian's native hum is one of those languages, and their pronoun is just borrowed into Rocky's hum to accommodate for cultural preference.

Alternatively, Adrian's native hum is the same as Rocky, but they're an anarchist type who disagrees with distinguishing people by status, and thus uses a neopronoun that does anyway with communicating status.

Or maybe Adrian's native hum is still different, but their contrasting pronoun systems make a them even more motivated against status-based pronouns.

If you take in James Ortiz's personal headcanon that Rocky and Adrian were matchmade together in an arranged marriage, maybe it was across ethnolinguistic lines? Fun to think about those worldbuilding implications.

Also it would be interesting if Rocky's Eridian language also had different first person pronouns that communicated status as well. It could be similar to modern Japanese, or historical Chinese's honorifcs.

In Japanese, 私 (watashi) is the default polite, gender neutral first person pronoun, but also women tend to use it in broader casual contexts than men; it also has an alternative pronunciation (watakushi) written identically that is even more polite; a derived form, あたし (atashi) is casual and feminine sounding in modern day. 僕 (boku) is the boyish, not polite but not rude pronoun that gives a masculine, soft and youthful sound. Compare that to 俺 (ore) which is also masculine but overtly crass and casual, usually used by men in casual settings among other men.

In Chinese (using Mandarin pronunciation) the default first person pronoun is 我 (wǒ) and it is totally gender neutral. However historical (and somewhat into present) Chinese has used various honorifics as a first person pronoun depending on their status.

在下 (zàixià) is a masculine honorific used in first person, but literally means "existing beneath (you)", which elevates who is being spoken to.

本人 (běnrén) is a gender neutral first person honorific literally meaning "this person" or "my own person". It's not particularly a humbling honorific, but is considered more formal that 我.

孤王 (gūwáng) is a masculine royal first person honorific meaning "lone king" or "the orphaned king" in deference to the ruling king's father who is deceased. This was only used by a king in that context.

哀家 (āijiā) is a feminine royal first person honorific meaning "(this) sad house" and was used by the emperor's mother out of respect for her late husband, the former emperor.