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this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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Dungeon Meshi is one of my favourite animes, but you're giving an in-universe explanation for a problem I have with the writing of the show. The demons are the way they are because they were written that way, not because of any in-universe lore.
Any in-universe lore is what it is because it was written that way though? I don't quite see your point there.
Anyway, I actually like the way the demons are written, the first thought that popped into my mind when Frieren explained that they are "evolved from creatures who cry help in the dark" (or something along those lines, I don't remember the exact quote) was of creatures from my own country's folklore, creatures who would lure you into the forest at night to drown you in ponds, others that would lure you deep into the mountains and trap you in them forever, stories like that that we grew up with as kids. So I suppose because of my own cultural context I like the idea of exploring how those kinds of beings might evolve?
The thing is usually folklore spirits behave that way because of something. It can be because they have unfinished business or they feed on fear or souls to become stronger. This gives them a pressure to evolve and become better at luring victims but I don't remember an explanation of what makes demons in Frieren kill humans apart from territorial disputes.
In my country's folklore they just do that shit because that's what they're here to do. The only thing you can do to save yourself is to outsmart them, they're not going to change no matter how much of an epic debatelord you are.
And I don't see why that is inherently "problematic", it's like a pack of wolves killing a deer. There's no human idea of "morality" or whatever involved in them doing so, it's just what they do.
I'm not talking about morality, wolves get hungry and kill deer for sustenance. A dragon scorches your village because someone stole some loot from their nest and the dragon followed the smell.
Some creatures of the night kidnap children to eat them for the same reason a pack of wolves eat deer. If the demons are intelligent enough to talk, I'm sure they can be domesticated like with wolves and dogs.
Just feed them food while breeding the ones that don't try to kill humans on sight. After multiple generations, you can artificially select the ones that tolerate humans around. And after more generations you get some that like humans.
This was done with foxes: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox]. With enough time and resources, demons can also be tamed.
The Thermian Argument is a favorite of people who don't want to confront the fact that a work of fiction they enjoy radiates hazardous levels of Hitler particles
I haven't watched the show, but couldn't the Demons evolve into not killing people and it could be what the story is trying to resolve in the end. I mean they could, it all depends on the author and what he is willing/able to write and share with us. Since the entire story is made up.
I could write a vampire story, for example, where the conclusion is that even though vampires evolved to survive on human blood and need it to survive, they resolve it by just not hunting humans, because the humans are like: "Okay we can just donate some blood to y'all? We know you need it to survive so we'll just give you some." But not all vampires are willing to let go of the hunt and not all humans are okay with their blood being donated to vampires and then it turns into another plot point where you have communist-vampire alliance vs fascist-vampire alliance and that's another story and then let's say the communists win in my story and we have total defeat of fascism, now this is the most annoying one to write because I don't know what would happen under actually existing communism, never been done before. What would be the new adversaries?
And so on.
The problem with vampires is that they are immortal, so in a capitalist society, the vampires and necromancers would eventually own all the property.
Yeah they could even make a like a VR chat sort of thing for people, that they use to pacify humans while syphoning off their blood. Meanwhile they are living in giant empty buildings, doing vampire infighting, to see who is the vampire with the biggest house.