#Friends Come Back

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

I think one of the kindest things you can do for people with various mental health struggles is just... let people back into your life after they've been absent for a while.

Making friends as an adult is so fucking hard already and isolating yourself from other people is a very common symptom of depression, anxiety, burnout, ocd, trauma, grief, etc. Which means that someone will do the hard work of recovery/healing and resurface back into a world where their previous friends have written them off because they stopped showing up.

So if you know someone where you're like "yeah we could have been better friends but they fell off the map a bit" and that person suddenly reaches out, or starts showing up to events even though you kind of forgot they were still in the group chat... well they may have been Going Through It and you don't actually have to punish them for their absence you can just be glad that they're back.

[bruhstation]

you’re just like the rest of them

[heilos]

I don't want you to feel like you're nothing

[malinaa]

if i think about the hunger games in peeta's perspective i WILL start sobbing

[the-vivi-section]

that one scene in farewell my turnabout

[radiance1]

Danny: Hey, I need you to be my boyfriend for a week.

Jason: What.

Danny: My parents are coming over and I've apparently accidentally talked about a partner more than once and only realized when they said they wanted to meet them.

Jason, currently still solidifying his power as a Crime Lord: Excuse me?

Danny: Let me get this out of the way, I do not consider you at all a person of romantical interest and a friend. But I need you to act as my partner for only a week until my parents go on their merry way over to my sister, okay?

Jason: Is there, quite literally, no one else to ask this?

Danny: You're my only friend who lives in Gotham, plus we share the same apartment.

Jason: That's almost sad.

Danny: You in?

Jason: Sure, why not.

===

Maddie: Danny, honey.

Danny: Yes mom?

Maddie: I don't mean to.... question, who you choose as your parent but. Well, me and your father was just wandering if he was a... [Maddie gestures with her hand] you know, one of those.

Danny, uncomprehendingly staring at his mother's hand: What.

Maddie: Oh dear, how do I bring this up. You know, one of those.

Danny: Mother I need more context.

Jack: If your boyfriend a crime lord!?

Maddie: Jack!

Jack: What? Beating around the bush wasn't helping!

Danny: Say WHAT?

===

Danny: Hey dude, thanks for helping with this even though you didn't need to!

Jason: No problem, I wasn't doing anything too [Crime Lord activities flash through his mind] important.

Danny: Can you believe my parents thought you were a crime lord though? Weird am I right?

Jason:

Danny: Jason. You are scaring me.

Jason: Haha, yea that's weird isn't it?

Danny: Jason.

Jason: Well, I have to leave now to attend to my totally real and totally not crime related job at the ice cream shop.

Danny: [Squints eyes]

Jason: [Internally sweating bullets]

Danny: Suuuuure, bring me back some ice cream though.

Jason: [Thumbs up and leaves]

[that-one-ao3-writer]

Basically what's happening, right?

[critterbitter]

Language divides and building bridges.

Elesa’s feeling homesick. Emmet, bless his heart, tries to help by infodumping while Ingo frantically runs off to find water (crying is a very dehydrating experience).

((Would you look at that! The kids are picking up kantonese and galarian from each other!))

BONUS:

Heh. Callback.

Want to see more? Here’s the masterpost for submas!

[dvcky-duck]

hi guys :3

ghudjk

[shepscapades]

Maybe now would be a good time to mention that Etho doesn’t technically join hermitcraft until after the start of Double Life… which means. Yeah dbhc Etho is still in reset-mode for the entirety of Double Life (this is about equally upsetting as it is genuinely hilarious)

(Despite being explicitly told not to force Etho to re-deviate by Xisuma and Doc, and after roughly a month of no luck, I’m sure you can imagine the impatience and desperation that went into Bdubs’ decision to sign Etho up for the next life series, considering the last one was the last time Bdubs really saw Etho. Or. As himself anyway.)

[itty-bitty-sunshine]

Fazbear Entertainment did not program him to deal with that

[tofixtheshadows]

Id love to hear ur interpretation and analysis on falin! She’s one of my favorite characters and and I was wondering what ur thoughts on her are

Man, I struggle to think of anything I could say about Falin that others have not already said. But she's one of my favorite things about Dungeon Meshi too.

So much of the story revolves around Falin, and she's not even there. Tumblr loves to talk about haunting the narrative, but Falin might be one of the best examples of it ever put to page. She's dead. She's alive. She's dead. She's alive. She's alive but she's missing, she's alive but she isn't herself. She's dead but she might wake. She's dead but she's frozen in ice. She's alive but she's sleepwalking. They chase her ghost and they chase her body all through the story.

I think what Kui does with her is fascinating. Not just as character with a personality we can analyze, but as an object in a narrative- that's why I say she's one of my favorite things about the story, because I also mean it in a mechanical sense. As a writer, Kui's really good at misdirection- that is, setting you up to believe or expect something about a character or a plot, and then turning that on its head. It's most apparent with Kabru, but it works really well with Falin too.

Because the precious little sister is a very well known character archetype, right? So is the gentle healer. The heart of the party. The white mage girl. The damsel in distress. The martyr.

And this isn't a Laura Palmer situation, where we find out that beneath her wholesome surface there's something dark and troubled. No, Falin truly is a kind and gentle person. That isn't where the misdirection leads (and that, too, I think, is another misdirection- it's not "Plot twist, she isn't as nice as you thought!", which would almost be too easy).

The misdirection here is more about structure than about character (but also, yeah- a little about character).

What I mean is, with these archetypes firmly in mind, along with a whole other host of fantasy genre expectations, I think anyone who goes into Dungeon Meshi un-spoiled probably expects Falin's rescue to be an endgame event; at least on a subconscious level, where you're not really thinking about it but in the back of your head you're already stretching out the story to place Falin firmly in the distance. Fire breathing dragon at the bottom of the dungeon is perfect final boss material, right? Slay the dragon. Rescue the princess.

And Falin is the perfect prize in the traditional old school fantasy that the concept of the titular dungeon is a send-up to. Blonde (white), soft-spoken, sweet-natured, beloved by everyone. An angelic figure.

Maybe that's why Ryoko Kui gave her white wings.

It is sort of jarring when chapter 23 rolls around and it's already time to fight the red dragon. And it takes a few chapters, but they succeed. And then Falin's impossible resurrection succeeds. But by then you guess that this is not going to be the story you expected it to be.

I want to point out that Falin spends a lot of time getting, well, babied, post-resurrection. Marcille washes her in the bath, despite Falin stating that she's capable of washing herself. Marcille schools her about her mana use despite Falin demonstrating that she is not hurting for mana, and brushes aside Falin's explanations. Both Marcille and Laios refuse to actually tell her what happened. Laios scruffs up her hair like she's a little kid and scolds her for something she can't remember doing. Marcille explicitly calls her a little kid when Falin tries to talk about how much she's grown.

Of course I'm not saying that Laios was wrong to act like a big brother, or that Marcille shouldn't be worried about taking care of her shell-shocked friend in the bath. But the framing of it clearly shows a Falin who is struggling to be heard.

If you'd like to address the big gay elephant in the room while we're here, I want to state for the record that- whether you read her as gay or not -I think Marcille is completely oblivious during this. Because Falin is her little friend from school. Her best friend, yes, but also the young tallman student she, in her infinite elven wisdom, had to mentor and look after. Marcille has not yet accepted that Falin is an adult now, nor has she accepted that she, herself, is only barely past teenagerhood developmentally and is not nearly as mature as she believes. Of course she'd scrub Falin in the bath and fuss over her.

Falin, meanwhile, seems more than aware of her own adult body and the inappropriate way Marcille is treating it.

The mana-sharing scene is, I think, Falin trying to get a little of her own back. How do you like it, Marcille?

And she tries again in bed.

Maybe she's wondering if their relationship will change now that they're grown ups. If Marcille prefers her as a little girl, or at least as a woman who lets herself be guided like one; if Marcille will react badly if Falin keeps trying to assert herself. She also might be subtly trying to signal to Marcille that bed sharing, like bathing, carries a different weight to it when you do it as adults rather than as children.

With all this in mind, the decision to turn Falin from the precious prize they rescued into to the vicious dragon they have to slay, hits a lot harder.

Falin with a powerful, monstrous, destructive body. Falin, who couldn't even stand to cause people pain from using healing spells, slaughtering half a dozen people in brutal ways. And that's not her, she's being mind-controlled, but as an object in the story she has completely flipped. From damsel to threat.

And I love that she carries a little bit of that with her when she's resurrected again.

Because she's no longer the girl who's going to let herself be stifled by her brother's and her best friend's co-dependency, no matter how much she loves them. She's different now: stronger, eyes open, forging her own path instead of following in their wake. Falin is still going to come back to them again, but this time it won't be because they chased her. It'll be because they let her go.

[nenyunavi]

so uh sonadow generations am I right

[mikami1992]

Supernatural Cops

The fandom has come to the conclusion that all kinds of supernatural or unusual things happen in Amity Park and people take it like any other Tuesday.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised if this place is the only place in the country (not to say the world) that has a police division in charge of handling Cults…

Yes, in Amity Park there is a group of police (not to say half of all the police in the city) that are dedicated to controlling cults and their peculiarities, because we must remember that, despite the reputation of being a tourist trap, this town in the middle of nowhere has the reputation of being the most haunted place in the country (or the world), so it wouldn't be crazy to say that on certain dates of the year many "tourists" (cough cultists cough) arrive who come in order to do "events" (cough rites cough), so whether they want it or not, someone has to control that the limits on how they are "celebrating" are not broken… and to top it off, the limits of what the city considers acceptable is a greater margin than other places, so it has become common for some groups to come back later.

So yes, Amity Park has one of the most effective police departments in dealing with cults and supernatural beliefs, not only are they effective in identifying participants, most of the time they know what kind of cultist they are dealing with, whether they are just playing a game or are the real magic business and how dangerous/troublesome they will be in the end.

What's more, this group is so good at what they do, that many times the inhabitants of Amity Park prefer to call them instead of the GIW (they are too destructive and there is still no 100% reliable insurance that will pay for the damages they cause), when it comes to a problem with a ghost and the ghost child is not around.

and that competition is more noticeable when other cities in the country begin to ask for help with some unknown cults that are appearing rap

[the--nightcrawler]

On shore leave ✶⋆.˚ Part 1 ♡ Part 2, Part 3