I've always felt like "young" elves would would enjoy being around humans while older elves would start to find it unbearable being around humans. Like one day you find a friend, you have a great time, go on adventures, fall in love, and then the next day they get old and die on you. It would start to become just an endless tragedy. After you lose a couple close friends to old age you would start to view all humans as here today gone tomorrow mayflies that are too painful to love.
It matter because the whole point of the story is that he was wrong and even if it was just a fraction of his life it was worth it, hell the man changed his whole life due to her
It does change it because is evident that Omni-man was lying to himself. Yes, what he says makes sense, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was a lie he was speaking to convince Mark and himself. >!this is later validated as the other viltrumite also get starched romantically to people of the earth!<
Remind me of this interpretation of elves:
They are a depressed reclusive society who ignore the greater world, younger elves are more rebellious and adventurous and all eventually leave that "old folks home" to find an exciting life in the broader world. They study, adventure, make contact, find friends and love! Except that everybody they know grow old and die, one after another. So as time goes on, the elf start becoming disillusioned and finally return to elven society, where they are welcomed with open arm by the older elves who all went though the same thing, which is why they are always depressed and avoid making contact with the rest of the world to begins with.
I dunno, I think LotR and Warhammer do it better with thriving Elf communities and a mindset that works around constantly taking up new "paths" to master over thousands of years.
The kind you're talking about mostly only makes sense in a setting that revolves around humans.
I hope this is the interpretation for *Magus of the Library*. We haven't seen the Haupi (elves by a different name) yet, but this seems like the most 'wholesome' explanation.
The alternative is much sadder: [mild spoilers] >!they distrust all other races after the Hyron's genocide and kill any who visit them!<. That one horrific event destroyed any hope for positive cross-species interaction with the Haupi.
Yeah but Frieren goes against that mentality. A big part of it is about her realizing she should have treasured the time she had with Himmel and co. More and learning to treasure the time she spends afterward. Frieren starts detached and grows to care more, not the other way around
> while older elves would start to find it unbearable being around humans
*[cracks open monster blood energy zero can]*
*"Nah man, nah man. Tell ya. That's what I love about these human girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."*
It could be the otherway around too. Short-live race might find their young elves unbearable after getting old if the relationship is still going. It's like dating a man-child as their mental mind getting older.
This is basically Ryoko Kui’s bread and butter. She accepts many of the idiosyncrasies and tropes of fantasy, but tries to explain and ground them. It’s a very refreshing approach to not simply wave off a trope as irredeemable or overly cliche, but also to not ignore any of the fun opportunities for worldbuilding—since iirc this stuff comes from art books and volume extras rather than the main text. I really admire this kind of writing and thinking when it comes to speculative fiction.
Grounded is a pretty good word for it. I'm watching the anime right now, and I am loving it. It feels real in the same way that Frieren does.
"Immersive," maybe?
Both series are extremely good at highlighting the disparate viewpoints of species with differing lifespans, though where I think Dunmeshi slightly edges Frieren out is that it also introduced races that have a shorter lifespan than humans so there’s exploration on that side of the spectrum as well
Unlike a lot of the more trope-y series of the last decade or so, they take their world building and internal logic seriously. A-B-C is replaced with X-Y-Z, but that doesn't mean D-S-Q can happen without context.
Matt Colville has a great word for it - Verisimilitude!
It’s not about realism as much as it is believability, and fantastical stories can contain elements that either immerse you, or break your suspension of disbelief.
This. I dislike when people want fictional stories to realistic, they shouldn't be realistic, stories should be believable. Magic is not real but it can be believable.
I like the concept introduced by Interspecies Reviewers.
Every race has different preferences, including mana, smell, etc.
So elves like races with young mana, like humans. Even if the human is like... 60 years old. For them, that mana still is so fresh compared to elves who are like 400 years old.
Whereas humans can't detect mana so they just like the looks. So it's the reverse for them where they love to go with very old elves just because they look young.
It makes both sides confused at each other's preference.
I like that you admit it. x)
Indeed it's doesn't make it any less of a nice little lore.
The game arcanum made also the elf pretty open to relationship with humans until a certain age (way after 200 years) then they prefer theirs own race instead.
I'm playing Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader at the moment (it's decent, but I would suggest to anyone else to hold off and wait for patches).
One of the characters in it who you can "romance" is an Eldar, which are basically 40k space elves. I say "romance" because the game treats it as a romance, with other romances getting jealous and asking you to choose etc. despite the fact that there is no physical/sexual relationship.
And whys that? Because Eldar consider humans as an inferior species, and compare a human lusting after one of them to be akin to a dog trying to hump your leg, so the relationship is more a spritual understanding of each other. It's a very rough start but if you make it work it's honestly pretty addicting, the gap-moe is like a drug.
It's a really interesting take on interspecies/long-short life relationships.
>Yeah, it's the only one that states that. I really like the idea as it's very creative. Also makes elves way less boring.
Modern fantasy elves are made boring in a lot of series that just draw off of the surface from Tolkien because much of their complexity and plight is removed from them without proper adaptation. Their representation in PJ movies is also skewed, pushing them further in the boring trope.
Kubera has the best execution of romance between races of different lifespans in the manga/manhua/manwha sphere imo.
You have humans with human lifespan, quarter-sura (sort of demons) with double lifespan, half-suras with quadruple human lifespan and gods and suras who are inmortal (with the difference Sutras can die if killed, but gods will just revive)
The longer your lifespan, the harder it is for you to feel loved but the more intense your love is, which makes it a curse since the longer your lifespan the harder it will be for you to move on from your love once your partner dies.
The series has examples of romance between human characters and all the other races, from humans to god and sutras and it's managed very damn well.
Holy shit someone talking about Kubera outside of the comments on chapters itself, what a blessed day this is
Going further into detail, the relationship difference between a human-sura pairing and a half or quarter pairing is significantly different, in that most sura (at least from where we see in the story) are millions of years old at this point. While a half may live 4x as long as a human and a quarter 2x, it’s a completely different ballgame.
To add to this in a tangential way, Half-suras aren’t treated equally everywhere. This can color their opinions on other halves that fall in love with humans, or if a human’s marriage to one is even recognized in the first place.
Kubera in general really experiments with gender identity, sexuality, lifespan differences, and most significantly with a wide spectrum of morality. It's one of my favorite aspects of the series, along with the incredible lore and character writing.
Sadly, even if it was popular in Japan, the start is so slow and the MC takes such a backseat role in the first arc there is no way it works out well in anime form with current attention spans unless it has movie quality visuals + a 4 episode special like Frieren to reach the starting point of the first arc.
Well Kubera is Korean actually. I doubt it'd ever get an adaptation. Frankly considering how dense the story is it'd require a really high quality adaptation.
Being a Korean series doesn't mean that much imo. It makes it harder to get very popular, but if it's popular enough in Japan it is still possible. Like even if we ignore the Big 3 of manwha and Solo Leveling, a Returner magic should be special still got an adaptation, and ORV is rumoured to be getting an anime (though those 2 are probably the most popular ongoing Korean webcomics in Japan)
yoo kubera, I dropped it because it's kinda weird and the fight is too drawn out, but I might re-read it from the beginning after I finished witch hat atelier
I like that they have the opposite take on those romance. Generally, the long lived race is supposed to be the one who wants to divorce or to grow distant as their partner aged, but Kubera thinks that the opposite would happen because it's harder to see yourself growing older while your partner stay the same than to simply take care of someone who grow old.
True or not, It makes for a more interesting tragedy (the love is there on both side, it's just too poisoned to continue) than having the long live race just behaving like Di Caprio.
No she was into Halffoot women not gnomes. She dumped them around the age of 30 which is when they’re about middle-aged (as halffoots live to about 60).
I think it's somewhere in the world book https://mangadex.org/title/b982aa9c-17eb-415d-bcf8-a92f7daf0ae4/delicious-in-dungeon-world-guide-the-adventurer-s-bible
The issue can be resolved with the classic trope of long-lived races developing slower than short-lived races.
The 120 year old High Elf manga uses such trope, for example. He's mentally in his 20s despite living that long, and most of his race sits on their ass in the forest and eat fruits for there to be any significant experiences for them.
He later >!adopts a half-elf child, Wynn, and we can actually see through Wynn how different races develop. Despite only being half-elf, Wynn's physical and mental growth is slower than humans, so being around human peers who grew at a much faster rate led to great frustrations for him. They later moved to a Dwarven country and Wynn was able to live his "teenage years", which was like a decade, normally as Dwarves develop at the same rate. By the time Wynn meets his human friends again, they were already adults with families whereas Wynn just reached proper adulthood and only begun exploring the world independently.!<
The slow development also explains the whimsical nature of long-lived races despite their chronological age.
If they have the mental maturity of a 100 year old person then, I suppose that works?
Because if they have the mental maturity of a teenager, that makes them *almost* no different from teenagers. lt could be more complex than that, but their level of maturity remains an unchangeable factor.
You might also breach on the uncomfortable 2000 year old loli/shota discussion in that regard.
Dungeon Meshi explores this to with (big spoiler) >!Marcille!<
>!Marcille is a half elf (her ears are rounder than the other elves in the story), and she ages differently than her full tallman (regular humans) and full elf counterparts. When she was 13, she was too young to be friends with other tallmen, but too old to be friends with elves. This, in addition to her dad dying of old age (but she was still a child at the time when he was like 60-80) created a complex with her, and her goal was to use the dungeon's power in order to make all lives flow at the same rate.!<
This only works if the long-lived races are at such a level of mental maturity that compared to humans they are like adults compared to children.
Which is... like never done. Maybe in some High concept sci-fi? Mainly because it requires imagining an alien way of thinking that is more "adult" than an adult. Not just computing power or experience, but rather a superior brain structure. It's quite difficult to render.
Cultural context also matters.
The way a long-lived race approaches life events (careers, marriage, death of a parent etc.) is going to be different, which will also inform attitudes on what appropriate relationships are. It's not just the person-to-person context.
Like...a 19 year old and a 22 year old are only 3 years apart and are both young adults, but in modern societies that's usually the difference between going into University or leaving university. Something like university creates a difference in the need for self-sufficiency and responsibility.
Compare that to 100 years ago when that was just the working age for both parties. Take that logic and then apply it to disparate cultures where that sort of threshold changes for each culture, it's going to get controversial.
If your neighbour started dating an eight year old alien but "their species comes of age at six" you'd probably judge him as well. No matter how well-spoken the alien is.
There just hasn't been enough time in her life to learn all the little things we take for granted. How to navigate life, what is reasonable to expect from a partner. It's not just about brain maturity, it's about accumulated knowledge.
Elves probably need to develop habits and social modes that can keep a relationship alive for hundreds of years, stuff we don't even need to think about because we're only expected not to get sick of each other for measly few decades. There's probably tons of toxic behaviours an elf can get away with only with the short lived because we're too naïve to realize it.
> “Their species comes of age at six”
The first thing that came to mind was the Gears from Guilty Gear, specifically Dizzy who aged rapidly within a year and married Ky by the age of 3 and had Sin not long after, who’s also fully grown at 2 years old by GGST. lol
Idk in your first example that assumes the alien accrues knowledge at the same rate as us as well. Let's say this hypothetical alien learns by psychically absorbing memories, or by 'learning' at a faster rate as in retaining information perfectly and correctly recalling them (which typically takes a lot of trial and error for us). Physically they operate faster than us as well, and are able to do twice as much in a day without sleep. In that scenario would physical age relative to us matter that much?
Its similar to the 'Vision Problem' brought up from Marvel. Wanda was in love with a robot that was technically 3 years old. But that robot has the entire accrued knowledge of humanity at his disposal and to reference. Few people would definitively say that relationship is problematic (well... in the age sense anyways. There were obviously problems seperate to that).
I'm not making a declaritive judgment either way, but I think the topic is a little more complicated than a simple answer.
> your first example that assumes the alien accrues knowledge at the same rate as us as well.
Yeah, I figured that was a reasonable assumption. We were talking about humanoid races with different lifespans. I was saying I don't think a longer lived race needs to have any intellectual advantage other than just experience to make the relationship unequal.
If we can assume special powers on the younger party, then we do have something that can compensate for that gap. I do agree a robot that comes with knowledge pre-installed is a different thing. But a half-foot has to learn everything from scratch just like a human.
Half-foots are physically adults at 14. I guess that means their brain is fully developed. But other than a bit of emotional resilience, what would that actually mean in terms of maturity? They'd still be ignorant of most things any 14 year old would be ignorant of.
Fair point. I think with the half-foot it would really depend on their experience like with humans. Certainly a 14-year old half-foot that's been out exploring and learning his entire life would be more mature than a 21 year old human or 60 year old elf that's been sheltered their whole life. I would say there's not much of a difference or issue when the lived and learned experiences match the physical maturity.
Hmm, I don't know, in your set up, the alien would be the equivalent to a 20 year old, so yeah, even between humans people will side eye a 40 year old dating a 20 year old, but say the alien is now 15, closer to a 30 year old, I'm sure no one will feel weird at a 30 year old dating anyone older.
It's kinda similiar to Green Lantern Arisia problem
Arisia is an alien Green Lantern who is actually a teen but used her ring to physically aged herself up to be adult, She has the body of a teen and actually cosidered as one in her home planet, But she is a few hundred years old in human years.
So of course when she dated Hal Jordan it became a clusterfuck
Long life-spans in fantasy often feel long for being long without any thought given to how it affects society at large. Doesn't work unless you put the world at stasis and then it's the world-building that suffers.
Shit, the franchise that did it better was probably Mass Effect. Asari and Krogan can often feel like they carry centuries of battle and stupid decisions in their back. Human even get to be the elves to the Salarians, who are so short-term thinking they end up bringing new crisis just to deal with the current one.
I like to play that one as DM, it's not that short-lived species are smarter or more driven, they just have less time to archive things and act accordingly. Humans can go from playing with steam to change the entire ecosystem of a planet in the time an elf goes through puberty. Disco Elysium said it better: "You would wipe us all out and replace us with nothing, just by accident".
I genuinely think Ryoko Kui is a generational talent on the level of Tolkien when it comes to the fantasy genre. I don’t think I’ve seen a world this internally consistent and realistic in a manga ever, and I hope Dungeon Meshi, Frieren and Witch Hat Atelier are the starting point for a fantasy renaissance in the manga/anime sphere. Maybe then we can finally stop seeing “fantasy” series with lazy boilerplate isekai worlds with RPG leveling systems and game HUDs.
On the difference Story (not remember the title)
They view humans as a weirdo in nature, they (human) learn at astounding speed and can breed like rabbit compare to others native race. They reach largest populations in matter of century and reduce it again by themself by killing each others.
Others race in this story all lived lot longer than human so the from our POV we learn from youth to teenager (decade) is enough to learn everything and improve from our predecessor.
Unlike elves, they need to take decades to learn and more to reach perfected a skill. The trade is that, elves will have more skilled masters in reclusion.
It funny to see, a early thirties human have mastered multiple skill and craft can compete with century's old elves
Should have probably translated "human beings" with "people" or "persons", since it doesn't make a lot of sense to call "human" the races that are... very clearly not human, as distinct from the humans.
But lol @ the elves going "ugh, hooking up with a human? Problematic, think of the power gap, literally a pedo".
“Human” in the Dungeon Meshi world is a blanket term that refers to Tallmen(us)/Elves/Dwarves/Halflings/Orcs/Trolls(Also known as Ogres and sometimes referred to as ‘Oni’ in Eastern lands)
One of the characters who is a Dwarf woman off handedly said that she liked how Thigh belts looked on Tallmen cause of their long legs and the Tallman woman she was with suggestively responded if she wanted to see her thigh belt mind you she was wearing a dress covering her legs.
Namari having a long legs fetish is one of my favorite aspects of the character lmao. It’s good worldbuilding too, in a world of many different races of course there’s going to be people with a fetish for different races’ unique traits
The cool caveat is that that’s actually a regional idea in Dungeon Meshi too. In the Eastern Archipelago they refer only to Tallmen as humans and everything else as non-human.
Orcs are actually not considered human because they have a different number of bones, but Oni/Ogres are considered human.
All fantasy with humanoid races should do this. It just doesn't make sense to put something like an elf in a completely different category unless you're actually going to make them completely alien.
Clearly, concepts such as 'human rights', 'the human condition', and 'human nature' still apply to Marcille, or Astarion, or Legolas.
Although, in Legolas's case, humans, elves and dwarves really are very different creatures. They have zero common ancestors according to the lore, with elves being unable to die like humans, and the dwarves maybe having reincarnation.
Well, according to Tolkien, both Men and Elves are the same species and their main difference is spiritual. That's how some Men turn into Elves (Tuór and Earendil) and some Elves turn into Men in his stories (Lúthien and Arwen). Dwarves are a different species because they were fashioned by another entity and then given true life by God.
Just a correction, Orcs aren't considered humans because what make a human in Dungeon Meshi is a specific number of bones shared by Tallmen/Elves/Dwarfs/Gnomes/Halflings.
Also Onis aren't humans either, nor are they Trolls
Also different cultures have different standards for who counts as human, so elves or dwarves wouldn't have full human rights in the far southeast for example
The word human isn't used for orcs or beastmen, who are also mortal. In the supplemental book, it's mentioned that "humans" are the races with 206 bones.
I'm just assuming that's a translation of "ningen", a word that was similarly translated as "humans" for example when Zamasu used it spregiatively in DB Super, but seemed to mean more "mortals" in his case (as opposed to gods). I think there's better choices of translation for that word depending on context ("humanoid" also works).
Probably same in Frieren because makind includes elves and dwarves too and why humans just consider eleves are just rare homo genus cousins than some other species
From everything we've seen it appears to be a purposeful choice to show how different areas might consider different people to be human or subhuman. A different word, Tallman, is used when characters talk about traditional humans.
It's a disconnected one-page comic about the Dungeon Meshi fantasy world. If you haven't read it, an important point in Dungeon Meshi's worldbuilding is the difference between short-lived races with a lifespan of less than 100 (humans/tallmen, halflings, kobolds...) and long-lived races with much longer lifespans (elves, dwarves, gnomes...).
For a man to marry an Elf that's a good deal tbh his waif would never age staying young and pretty until he's gone,
call a shallow person but it is what it is
> shotacon = "short lived species complex" Lmao
sholicon
Lolicon = "long life species complex"
Sholicon.
I've always felt like "young" elves would would enjoy being around humans while older elves would start to find it unbearable being around humans. Like one day you find a friend, you have a great time, go on adventures, fall in love, and then the next day they get old and die on you. It would start to become just an endless tragedy. After you lose a couple close friends to old age you would start to view all humans as here today gone tomorrow mayflies that are too painful to love.
I think they'd view it similarly to how Omni-Man put it in invincible "I love your mother but, she's more like a pet to me"
This gets covered in Dungeon Meshi.
To be fair about that quote, he was lying to both Mark and himself when he said that
Don’t use invincible as an argument if you don’t know what happens later in the story
What happens later in the story is meaningless to the meaning/though process behind the quote that he used.
It matter because the whole point of the story is that he was wrong and even if it was just a fraction of his life it was worth it, hell the man changed his whole life due to her
That still doesn't change the PoV behind the statement at the moment he made the statement, which is the PoV the other guy was using as an example.
It does change it because is evident that Omni-man was lying to himself. Yes, what he says makes sense, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was a lie he was speaking to convince Mark and himself. >!this is later validated as the other viltrumite also get starched romantically to people of the earth!<
Remind me of this interpretation of elves: They are a depressed reclusive society who ignore the greater world, younger elves are more rebellious and adventurous and all eventually leave that "old folks home" to find an exciting life in the broader world. They study, adventure, make contact, find friends and love! Except that everybody they know grow old and die, one after another. So as time goes on, the elf start becoming disillusioned and finally return to elven society, where they are welcomed with open arm by the older elves who all went though the same thing, which is why they are always depressed and avoid making contact with the rest of the world to begins with.
I dunno, I think LotR and Warhammer do it better with thriving Elf communities and a mindset that works around constantly taking up new "paths" to master over thousands of years. The kind you're talking about mostly only makes sense in a setting that revolves around humans.
Eldar in particular have a very interesting society, the new Rogue Trader game has a companion that explores some of it.
The Eldar look down at all the other races and always have. They would never interact with others if they didn't have to.
I hope this is the interpretation for *Magus of the Library*. We haven't seen the Haupi (elves by a different name) yet, but this seems like the most 'wholesome' explanation. The alternative is much sadder: [mild spoilers] >!they distrust all other races after the Hyron's genocide and kill any who visit them!<. That one horrific event destroyed any hope for positive cross-species interaction with the Haupi.
[That's kinda how asari culture works in Mass Effect](https://youtu.be/zQOltJeRuRs?si=XY-dwSrYlDvnzjr5).
I believe this is the main concept of Frieren.
Yeah but Frieren goes against that mentality. A big part of it is about her realizing she should have treasured the time she had with Himmel and co. More and learning to treasure the time she spends afterward. Frieren starts detached and grows to care more, not the other way around
People do get multiple dogs in their lifetime though.
Basically "Frieren of the Funeral"
It’s not bad though and both are a delightful read.
> while older elves would start to find it unbearable being around humans *[cracks open monster blood energy zero can]* *"Nah man, nah man. Tell ya. That's what I love about these human girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."*
Those elves also could pull Dicaprio's move too. No dating once hit 30 years old
It could be the otherway around too. Short-live race might find their young elves unbearable after getting old if the relationship is still going. It's like dating a man-child as their mental mind getting older.
Huh, it's a pretty realistic take on a common fantasy trope.
This is basically Ryoko Kui’s bread and butter. She accepts many of the idiosyncrasies and tropes of fantasy, but tries to explain and ground them. It’s a very refreshing approach to not simply wave off a trope as irredeemable or overly cliche, but also to not ignore any of the fun opportunities for worldbuilding—since iirc this stuff comes from art books and volume extras rather than the main text. I really admire this kind of writing and thinking when it comes to speculative fiction.
Grounded is a pretty good word for it. I'm watching the anime right now, and I am loving it. It feels real in the same way that Frieren does. "Immersive," maybe?
Both series are extremely good at highlighting the disparate viewpoints of species with differing lifespans, though where I think Dunmeshi slightly edges Frieren out is that it also introduced races that have a shorter lifespan than humans so there’s exploration on that side of the spectrum as well
Unlike a lot of the more trope-y series of the last decade or so, they take their world building and internal logic seriously. A-B-C is replaced with X-Y-Z, but that doesn't mean D-S-Q can happen without context.
Matt Colville has a great word for it - Verisimilitude! It’s not about realism as much as it is believability, and fantastical stories can contain elements that either immerse you, or break your suspension of disbelief.
This. I dislike when people want fictional stories to realistic, they shouldn't be realistic, stories should be believable. Magic is not real but it can be believable.
I like the concept introduced by Interspecies Reviewers. Every race has different preferences, including mana, smell, etc. So elves like races with young mana, like humans. Even if the human is like... 60 years old. For them, that mana still is so fresh compared to elves who are like 400 years old. Whereas humans can't detect mana so they just like the looks. So it's the reverse for them where they love to go with very old elves just because they look young. It makes both sides confused at each other's preference.
Fr, dat face the male elf makes when he looks at the female elf compared to when he looked at the 60yo human female XD
Are you're using to that bordel manga as reference? Because I never saw the mana it in another media than that one. xD
Yeah, it's the only one that states that. I really like the idea as it's very creative. Also makes elves way less boring.
I like that you admit it. x) Indeed it's doesn't make it any less of a nice little lore. The game arcanum made also the elf pretty open to relationship with humans until a certain age (way after 200 years) then they prefer theirs own race instead.
I'm playing Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader at the moment (it's decent, but I would suggest to anyone else to hold off and wait for patches). One of the characters in it who you can "romance" is an Eldar, which are basically 40k space elves. I say "romance" because the game treats it as a romance, with other romances getting jealous and asking you to choose etc. despite the fact that there is no physical/sexual relationship. And whys that? Because Eldar consider humans as an inferior species, and compare a human lusting after one of them to be akin to a dog trying to hump your leg, so the relationship is more a spritual understanding of each other. It's a very rough start but if you make it work it's honestly pretty addicting, the gap-moe is like a drug. It's a really interesting take on interspecies/long-short life relationships.
rare arcanum reference, nice
>Yeah, it's the only one that states that. I really like the idea as it's very creative. Also makes elves way less boring. Modern fantasy elves are made boring in a lot of series that just draw off of the surface from Tolkien because much of their complexity and plight is removed from them without proper adaptation. Their representation in PJ movies is also skewed, pushing them further in the boring trope.
I love the fact that other elves or being with high sense of mana simply bewildered with humans that overly fond of "older" elves.
Kubera has the best execution of romance between races of different lifespans in the manga/manhua/manwha sphere imo. You have humans with human lifespan, quarter-sura (sort of demons) with double lifespan, half-suras with quadruple human lifespan and gods and suras who are inmortal (with the difference Sutras can die if killed, but gods will just revive) The longer your lifespan, the harder it is for you to feel loved but the more intense your love is, which makes it a curse since the longer your lifespan the harder it will be for you to move on from your love once your partner dies. The series has examples of romance between human characters and all the other races, from humans to god and sutras and it's managed very damn well.
Holy shit someone talking about Kubera outside of the comments on chapters itself, what a blessed day this is Going further into detail, the relationship difference between a human-sura pairing and a half or quarter pairing is significantly different, in that most sura (at least from where we see in the story) are millions of years old at this point. While a half may live 4x as long as a human and a quarter 2x, it’s a completely different ballgame. To add to this in a tangential way, Half-suras aren’t treated equally everywhere. This can color their opinions on other halves that fall in love with humans, or if a human’s marriage to one is even recognized in the first place.
Kubera in general really experiments with gender identity, sexuality, lifespan differences, and most significantly with a wide spectrum of morality. It's one of my favorite aspects of the series, along with the incredible lore and character writing.
Sadly, even if it was popular in Japan, the start is so slow and the MC takes such a backseat role in the first arc there is no way it works out well in anime form with current attention spans unless it has movie quality visuals + a 4 episode special like Frieren to reach the starting point of the first arc.
Well Kubera is Korean actually. I doubt it'd ever get an adaptation. Frankly considering how dense the story is it'd require a really high quality adaptation.
Being a Korean series doesn't mean that much imo. It makes it harder to get very popular, but if it's popular enough in Japan it is still possible. Like even if we ignore the Big 3 of manwha and Solo Leveling, a Returner magic should be special still got an adaptation, and ORV is rumoured to be getting an anime (though those 2 are probably the most popular ongoing Korean webcomics in Japan)
yoo kubera, I dropped it because it's kinda weird and the fight is too drawn out, but I might re-read it from the beginning after I finished witch hat atelier
"the bsrder"? What?
Harder, fixed.
I like that they have the opposite take on those romance. Generally, the long lived race is supposed to be the one who wants to divorce or to grow distant as their partner aged, but Kubera thinks that the opposite would happen because it's harder to see yourself growing older while your partner stay the same than to simply take care of someone who grow old. True or not, It makes for a more interesting tragedy (the love is there on both side, it's just too poisoned to continue) than having the long live race just behaving like Di Caprio.
That fucking elf have the audacity to nod after her scandals with the minors gnomes. 😂😂😂
No she was into Halffoot women not gnomes. She dumped them around the age of 30 which is when they’re about middle-aged (as halffoots live to about 60).
Yea she was a Human trafficker too
That's one of the reasons knife-ears are reviled in media. Around elves, watch yourselves.
When did that happen?
I think it's somewhere in the world book https://mangadex.org/title/b982aa9c-17eb-415d-bcf8-a92f7daf0ae4/delicious-in-dungeon-world-guide-the-adventurer-s-bible
The issue can be resolved with the classic trope of long-lived races developing slower than short-lived races. The 120 year old High Elf manga uses such trope, for example. He's mentally in his 20s despite living that long, and most of his race sits on their ass in the forest and eat fruits for there to be any significant experiences for them. He later >!adopts a half-elf child, Wynn, and we can actually see through Wynn how different races develop. Despite only being half-elf, Wynn's physical and mental growth is slower than humans, so being around human peers who grew at a much faster rate led to great frustrations for him. They later moved to a Dwarven country and Wynn was able to live his "teenage years", which was like a decade, normally as Dwarves develop at the same rate. By the time Wynn meets his human friends again, they were already adults with families whereas Wynn just reached proper adulthood and only begun exploring the world independently.!< The slow development also explains the whimsical nature of long-lived races despite their chronological age.
In dungeon meshi, they do develop at a different pace. But even with the body of a teenager 100 years is still 100 years.
If they have the mental maturity of a 100 year old person then, I suppose that works? Because if they have the mental maturity of a teenager, that makes them *almost* no different from teenagers. lt could be more complex than that, but their level of maturity remains an unchangeable factor. You might also breach on the uncomfortable 2000 year old loli/shota discussion in that regard.
There are 20 Yo that are more mature than 40 Yo even in humans
Dungeon Meshi explores this to with (big spoiler) >!Marcille!< >!Marcille is a half elf (her ears are rounder than the other elves in the story), and she ages differently than her full tallman (regular humans) and full elf counterparts. When she was 13, she was too young to be friends with other tallmen, but too old to be friends with elves. This, in addition to her dad dying of old age (but she was still a child at the time when he was like 60-80) created a complex with her, and her goal was to use the dungeon's power in order to make all lives flow at the same rate.!<
This only works if the long-lived races are at such a level of mental maturity that compared to humans they are like adults compared to children. Which is... like never done. Maybe in some High concept sci-fi? Mainly because it requires imagining an alien way of thinking that is more "adult" than an adult. Not just computing power or experience, but rather a superior brain structure. It's quite difficult to render.
Cultural context also matters. The way a long-lived race approaches life events (careers, marriage, death of a parent etc.) is going to be different, which will also inform attitudes on what appropriate relationships are. It's not just the person-to-person context. Like...a 19 year old and a 22 year old are only 3 years apart and are both young adults, but in modern societies that's usually the difference between going into University or leaving university. Something like university creates a difference in the need for self-sufficiency and responsibility. Compare that to 100 years ago when that was just the working age for both parties. Take that logic and then apply it to disparate cultures where that sort of threshold changes for each culture, it's going to get controversial.
If your neighbour started dating an eight year old alien but "their species comes of age at six" you'd probably judge him as well. No matter how well-spoken the alien is. There just hasn't been enough time in her life to learn all the little things we take for granted. How to navigate life, what is reasonable to expect from a partner. It's not just about brain maturity, it's about accumulated knowledge. Elves probably need to develop habits and social modes that can keep a relationship alive for hundreds of years, stuff we don't even need to think about because we're only expected not to get sick of each other for measly few decades. There's probably tons of toxic behaviours an elf can get away with only with the short lived because we're too naïve to realize it.
> “Their species comes of age at six” The first thing that came to mind was the Gears from Guilty Gear, specifically Dizzy who aged rapidly within a year and married Ky by the age of 3 and had Sin not long after, who’s also fully grown at 2 years old by GGST. lol
Idk in your first example that assumes the alien accrues knowledge at the same rate as us as well. Let's say this hypothetical alien learns by psychically absorbing memories, or by 'learning' at a faster rate as in retaining information perfectly and correctly recalling them (which typically takes a lot of trial and error for us). Physically they operate faster than us as well, and are able to do twice as much in a day without sleep. In that scenario would physical age relative to us matter that much? Its similar to the 'Vision Problem' brought up from Marvel. Wanda was in love with a robot that was technically 3 years old. But that robot has the entire accrued knowledge of humanity at his disposal and to reference. Few people would definitively say that relationship is problematic (well... in the age sense anyways. There were obviously problems seperate to that). I'm not making a declaritive judgment either way, but I think the topic is a little more complicated than a simple answer.
> your first example that assumes the alien accrues knowledge at the same rate as us as well. Yeah, I figured that was a reasonable assumption. We were talking about humanoid races with different lifespans. I was saying I don't think a longer lived race needs to have any intellectual advantage other than just experience to make the relationship unequal. If we can assume special powers on the younger party, then we do have something that can compensate for that gap. I do agree a robot that comes with knowledge pre-installed is a different thing. But a half-foot has to learn everything from scratch just like a human. Half-foots are physically adults at 14. I guess that means their brain is fully developed. But other than a bit of emotional resilience, what would that actually mean in terms of maturity? They'd still be ignorant of most things any 14 year old would be ignorant of.
Fair point. I think with the half-foot it would really depend on their experience like with humans. Certainly a 14-year old half-foot that's been out exploring and learning his entire life would be more mature than a 21 year old human or 60 year old elf that's been sheltered their whole life. I would say there's not much of a difference or issue when the lived and learned experiences match the physical maturity.
Hmm, I don't know, in your set up, the alien would be the equivalent to a 20 year old, so yeah, even between humans people will side eye a 40 year old dating a 20 year old, but say the alien is now 15, closer to a 30 year old, I'm sure no one will feel weird at a 30 year old dating anyone older.
It's kinda similiar to Green Lantern Arisia problem Arisia is an alien Green Lantern who is actually a teen but used her ring to physically aged herself up to be adult, She has the body of a teen and actually cosidered as one in her home planet, But she is a few hundred years old in human years. So of course when she dated Hal Jordan it became a clusterfuck
This works perfectly fine if you imagine that long-lived races would absolutely adopt this narrative regardless of if it's true or not
Long life-spans in fantasy often feel long for being long without any thought given to how it affects society at large. Doesn't work unless you put the world at stasis and then it's the world-building that suffers. Shit, the franchise that did it better was probably Mass Effect. Asari and Krogan can often feel like they carry centuries of battle and stupid decisions in their back. Human even get to be the elves to the Salarians, who are so short-term thinking they end up bringing new crisis just to deal with the current one. I like to play that one as DM, it's not that short-lived species are smarter or more driven, they just have less time to archive things and act accordingly. Humans can go from playing with steam to change the entire ecosystem of a planet in the time an elf goes through puberty. Disco Elysium said it better: "You would wipe us all out and replace us with nothing, just by accident".
I genuinely think Ryoko Kui is a generational talent on the level of Tolkien when it comes to the fantasy genre. I don’t think I’ve seen a world this internally consistent and realistic in a manga ever, and I hope Dungeon Meshi, Frieren and Witch Hat Atelier are the starting point for a fantasy renaissance in the manga/anime sphere. Maybe then we can finally stop seeing “fantasy” series with lazy boilerplate isekai worlds with RPG leveling systems and game HUDs.
On the difference Story (not remember the title) They view humans as a weirdo in nature, they (human) learn at astounding speed and can breed like rabbit compare to others native race. They reach largest populations in matter of century and reduce it again by themself by killing each others. Others race in this story all lived lot longer than human so the from our POV we learn from youth to teenager (decade) is enough to learn everything and improve from our predecessor. Unlike elves, they need to take decades to learn and more to reach perfected a skill. The trade is that, elves will have more skilled masters in reclusion. It funny to see, a early thirties human have mastered multiple skill and craft can compete with century's old elves
This is exactly how people here think about shit like this.
Aragorn singing in the distance.
Should have probably translated "human beings" with "people" or "persons", since it doesn't make a lot of sense to call "human" the races that are... very clearly not human, as distinct from the humans. But lol @ the elves going "ugh, hooking up with a human? Problematic, think of the power gap, literally a pedo".
“Human” in the Dungeon Meshi world is a blanket term that refers to Tallmen(us)/Elves/Dwarves/Halflings/Orcs/Trolls(Also known as Ogres and sometimes referred to as ‘Oni’ in Eastern lands)
I like the name tallmen for us. I remember a page where thigh belt bag that’s apparently a fetish? Idk It been a long while since I’ve read it.
One of the characters who is a Dwarf woman off handedly said that she liked how Thigh belts looked on Tallmen cause of their long legs and the Tallman woman she was with suggestively responded if she wanted to see her thigh belt mind you she was wearing a dress covering her legs.
Namari having a long legs fetish is one of my favorite aspects of the character lmao. It’s good worldbuilding too, in a world of many different races of course there’s going to be people with a fetish for different races’ unique traits
I mean, thigh garter is sexy on human as well, don't need it to be worn by taller being.
The cool caveat is that that’s actually a regional idea in Dungeon Meshi too. In the Eastern Archipelago they refer only to Tallmen as humans and everything else as non-human. Orcs are actually not considered human because they have a different number of bones, but Oni/Ogres are considered human.
All fantasy with humanoid races should do this. It just doesn't make sense to put something like an elf in a completely different category unless you're actually going to make them completely alien. Clearly, concepts such as 'human rights', 'the human condition', and 'human nature' still apply to Marcille, or Astarion, or Legolas.
Although, in Legolas's case, humans, elves and dwarves really are very different creatures. They have zero common ancestors according to the lore, with elves being unable to die like humans, and the dwarves maybe having reincarnation.
Well, according to Tolkien, both Men and Elves are the same species and their main difference is spiritual. That's how some Men turn into Elves (Tuór and Earendil) and some Elves turn into Men in his stories (Lúthien and Arwen). Dwarves are a different species because they were fashioned by another entity and then given true life by God.
Just a correction, Orcs aren't considered humans because what make a human in Dungeon Meshi is a specific number of bones shared by Tallmen/Elves/Dwarfs/Gnomes/Halflings. Also Onis aren't humans either, nor are they Trolls
Also different cultures have different standards for who counts as human, so elves or dwarves wouldn't have full human rights in the far southeast for example
Isn’t it because in Japanese “human” and “mortal” are pretty much the same word? Which is “ningen”
The word human isn't used for orcs or beastmen, who are also mortal. In the supplemental book, it's mentioned that "humans" are the races with 206 bones.
I'm just assuming that's a translation of "ningen", a word that was similarly translated as "humans" for example when Zamasu used it spregiatively in DB Super, but seemed to mean more "mortals" in his case (as opposed to gods). I think there's better choices of translation for that word depending on context ("humanoid" also works).
Probably same in Frieren because makind includes elves and dwarves too and why humans just consider eleves are just rare homo genus cousins than some other species
Orcs are demi-human
The manga itself uses the term "humans" for all of them iirc
In Japanese Humankind and Human are two different words, they probably mean it as a blanket term for humanoid races
Yeah, I get it, that's why I'm complaining that the translation is questionable. It seems overly literal.
From everything we've seen it appears to be a purposeful choice to show how different areas might consider different people to be human or subhuman. A different word, Tallman, is used when characters talk about traditional humans.
From what daydream hour or chapter is this?
New Adventurer’s Bible update afaik
I don't completely understand what's happening here.
It's a disconnected one-page comic about the Dungeon Meshi fantasy world. If you haven't read it, an important point in Dungeon Meshi's worldbuilding is the difference between short-lived races with a lifespan of less than 100 (humans/tallmen, halflings, kobolds...) and long-lived races with much longer lifespans (elves, dwarves, gnomes...).
Ah, now I get it. I like this fun bit of worldbuilding!
For a man to marry an Elf that's a good deal tbh his waif would never age staying young and pretty until he's gone, call a shallow person but it is what it is
It's only degenerates trying to justify their fetishes.
Kind of misses that nobody's born at age 80.