"No, we can't have any more plot today, we need to spend more time with cooking." Thanks, author. I'm sure this will somehow end up plot critical because Van is incapable of failing but c'mon, man, there's like a thousand more interesting things we could be doing and you pick the food cart stuff?
Oh, it was fine in the last volume because it felt like it did serve as a reasonable way of introducing Van to the community and spreading Vida's religion and ghoul culture in a low key way. I just think that it's moved past it's usefulness at this point and is drifting into more of that mayonnaise and fish sauce bullshit from the early Talosheim days. I like this story quite a bit overall even if I think it's incredibly trashy, but I hate whenever it talks about food. Also this is going back into a conversation from wayyyy back and has nothing to do with anything going on right now, but it's indicated that unlike Pauvina, Juliana does seem to still be a monster race. Why that would be I don't know but I hope it's leading to introducing monster races to people as potentially being Also People. Because convincing people you can get along with orcs is a lot harder than convincing them you can get along octopus ladies who would really rather you just left them alone unless you want to have sex.
Everybody, even on TVtropes, gives Van grief because he hangs out with ghouls, who are known cannibals, and occasionally engages in cannibalism himself, like with Orbia and his two buddies, but here, in 256, we learn that criminal slaves are used as walking-talking rations, by the "civilized human" races. So if Van is "evil" for this, then everyone on Lambda is evil beyond measure, since the practice predates him and is considered "normal."
Pauvina was born from a human raped by a monster with very dominant genes, but Juliana was impregnated by a bunch of eggs that were 100% minotaur, I think it's weirder that she looks so much like herself.
Van has tentacles, technically van can become a male Scylla at will. Now we have a new living type of Van equipable DK familiar. Pedro is a literal monster in human skin, can't wait for his eventual comeuppance. Hopefully this jont won't lead to insane levels of destruction, remember folks Van is trying to improve his public image so he can circumvent some potential bravers hatred. I wonder how the wonder four are going to convince Van they mean no harm and represent converted gods? This single chapter has set up so many future scenarios I'm looking forward to it.
I find the food to be one of the least trashy parts of the book. Sure, I'd prefer proper food porn, but it's still better than a lot of the fraud material you'd see in some isekai novels. Well, yes everyone is evil. Think about it: it's legal (and expected!) to kill anyone who is a member of a monster race. This includes sentient beings who are capable of building peaceful civilizations. Nobody even cares that they're perfectly capable of coexisting peacefully. The Vida races are a bit better off than the human nations, but they still think nothing of eating their own citizens.
Okay. I can see where you're coming from, and Pedro using crime slaves to breed new monsters for tamer newbies to tame is sexual slavery, and even in-universe, that's almost universally frowned upon, but there's a brief line right after that where it says crime slaves are used as meat in times of war. As such, nobody has the right to condemn Van and his ghoul (or any Vida race allies for that matter) when they feed upon human armed invaders, especially the vampires that are biologically compelled to drink blood every so often, or they weaken and die. I wonder how the five condiments would respond to that. A-1 "THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY EAT HUMANS!!!!" Vandalieu: "Really? Does that mean that you, your party, and everything that lives in your cities are not people either? Since you all happily eat human crime slaves?" A-1: "T-that's ... DIFFERENT!" Van: "How?" A-1: "BECAUSE I SAY IT IS!!"
I'm confused. Why are you acting like I think it's okay that Lambda natives do bad things? Slavery is bad. Cannibalism is bad. Murder is bad. Torture is bad. Doesn't matter who's doing it or who is having it down to them. Yes, I also extend that to criminal slaves. If they're considered irredeemably bad by the law, just kill them and be done with it. Don't profit off of their suffering. I mean, it's probably a better argument to say "Why is it bad when ghouls eat people, yet it's totally okay that people eat orcs, kobolds, goblins and even scylla?" Which is commented on in their racial introduction entry. I don't remember offhand if other races of Vida are also eaten. But that's targeting the internal logic of the story where nobody seems to mind that of thing. Wait, I might have misunderstood your point. Are you just pointing out that characters in universe are being hypocritical and they are all indeed total assholes?
It's literal meat?? I thought that meant they use the criminal slaves as cannon fodder, as frontline soldiers
You are correct. They don't eat criminal slaves, the story meant they are used in times of war as meat shields for the actual soldiers.
Ya, the Ghouls might eat humans, but they were basically in in a hunter gatherer society, thanks to how humans treated them, with food shortages being to common and could not waste resources. However most did not actively hunt humans, like humans did ghouls, and would prefer other meats given the chance. Heck, I thought there was a line somewhere that human blood was not the tastiest, and Vamps need blood in general, not human specifically. But like almost everything else in Lambda the humans view on the situation is 100% hypocritical thanks to the screw ups of Alda, Bellwood and co. If they were anyway decent leaders, Lambda would not have slaves since Ballwoood and the other muscle-brains all have no excuse for not thinking it is EXTREMLY wrong and evil, and Bellwood campaigned against everything else he thought was evil.
That's how I remembered it too but I was too lazy to go back and check because I'm a bad person, so I just assumed I was misremembering. Honestly I find it kinda creepy that people eat orcs and stuff. They may not be super intelligent but they are self aware and capable of limited communication. Then you have noble orcs and (some) dragons and stuff that are known to have human intelligence, but they're still food. I wonder if Corpse Healing could be used to provide infinite food? Kill a cow, raise it as a zombie, cut off the meat, then use corpse healing to regenerate the damage that occurred after death.
Well, that's how Riley "The green spear" used them, yes, but this is Lambda, where humans, elves, and maybe dwarves, go raiding villages, gather up body-parts as proof and then return to a hero's welcome. We can;t be sure they don't serve Long-pork on long campaigns.