#Like when having gloves affects how precise you can be with your fingers y’know

[fumifooms]

3 things: 1) i love the intensely deep posts you make about dungeon meshi, the characters, everything about it. thank you. 2) this means the wiki is immensely annoying to me because it isn't nearly as in-depth as your blog is. 3) i'm looking for visual reference of the black-haired male half-foot chilchuck is usually standing next to whenever he's at the guild. please help. is it the guy that shows up in chapter 95, with the freckles??

1) Thank you, that’s super nice to say and to hear 🥺 2) felt lol, the wiki is hm… Barebones and often off. I edited in the info about Chil being underweight because I crave everyone being painfully aware of it but otherwise fanwikis scare me I’m unlikely to touch it again— the gallery section saves my ass on the regular tho lol. As always with fandoms, community work makes the dream work!

That’s Dandan! He does even have a wiki page. He used to work in gold-stripping along with Laios and Falin, and then was a part of Laios’ party, and eventually introduced Chilchuck to the party(and the marriage seeker mage?)! He has connections alright, and he sure is in the half-foot guild. He is a very minor character so panels of him are limited… Luckily I have a buddy obsessed with him so I have them on hand, this might be literally all panels of him out there idk atp

I recommend reading the extra on Laios’ party formation if you haven’t already, and since it’s pre-canon it’s not spoilery for anime-onlies. There’s also speculation that he may be related to Chilchuck’s wife or Chilchuck himself because of the black curly hair like Fler, the freckles and his heavy lids (his design does differ from appearance to appearance lol but he does generally have noticeably deep-set eyes). Plus the panel below, which may imply he’s always been a family friend… Speculation though as I said, more on it here in the hair section if you’re interested. But if this is right then baby Dandan <3

Alright that’s it for today hope it helped, ta-ta, bweh

[thepelagoislands]

Secret Santa - For Ford!

(This is for Ford-mun! A sweet series of drabbles featuring Ford/Holly. I hope you enjoy!)

There is something chemical about Ford’s reaction to Holly that warms him every time he looks at her. He can’t logically pick apart why. Whether it’s the pheromones she gives off – affectionate and loyal and strong – or the basic primal reaction to a smile – like the one she never stops wearing – he can’t stop being so touched by her, no matter how hard he tries.

“Ford!” Holly bursts into the clinic in the middle of his musings. He looks up from his chemistry table, brow quirked, lips in a thin line. “C’mere! I’ve got something to show you!”

She always has something to show him, and, much as he always suspected it would be, it’s never been a waste of his time. “I…there is some experimentation I’ve been doing-”

“Please?” She pouts at him. Before her, he’d never seen that expression on anyone but a child. Maybe that is why he continues to have a positive reaction to it – because of his constant associations with paternal instinct, as all humans appear to have. “It’ll just take a second.”

There is no reason why he can’t stop what he’s doing at the moment. He’s mainly in the hypothesis-writing stages of his experimentation. There is nothing burning, nothing mixing, nothing he must attend: only the satisfaction of spreading ink over paper.

It’s inevitable. He adjusts his glasses and follows after her with a sigh.

The second he steps outside of the clinic, alarm explodes in his chest as something smacks the door frame. “Goddess!”

“Think fast!” Holly’s voice brims with giggles.

It was a ball of snow that struck the frame. Ford stares blankly at the uneven snow remnants on the ground; they ruin the perfect symmetry previously there. “Excuse me?”

Holly rears her arm back, and he sees another ball of snow in her hand. “Better run! I’m gonna getcha!”

How peculiar. “Are you…ah…” Ford frowns. “What are you doing?”

Holly stares for a long moment. She deflates. “Snowball fight!”

He blinks.

“It’s fun!”

Blinks again. “Fun. You strike people with…what did you call them, snowballs? And you find that amusing?”

Holly walks toward him, holding the ball of snow out to him. “Yeah, two people throw these at each other, and they run and hide for cover, and it’s…it’s a good time?”

Ford looks at her shrewdly. “You are aware that this is nearly a guaranteed way to catch hypothermia, correct? What if snow ended up sliding past my collar? Down my shirt or jacket? Two people fighting such a war here outside in a tremendously cold climate-”

“Ford.” Holly grins. “You’re thinking too hard. Just…here, just try it.”

She takes his hand. Neither of their hands are gloved any more than the thin fabric he always wears. The mere brush of her calloused fingers – hard from work – against the smoothness of the material is jarring. He’s still staring at her when she presses the freezing cold snowball into his hand.

Only when he realizes they’re still touching does he drop the ball. “I should get back to work. Try…perhaps one of the children for your little games.”

He tells himself not to notice the way her face falls right before he shuts the door behind him.

~~

Just the sound of her voice is enough to stir his heartrate – to make it beat just fast enough for him to acknowledge it. He’s dreamed of that voice before many times. Each time he consults his psychology textbooks, and each time he comes up confused and wanting. He’d dreamed of it just last night, in fact: the placation in her voice as she begged for him to fight her with snowballs.

He thinks of it still as he drinks tea that evening, staring into his fireplace.

Initially, when he hears the unmistakeable sound of her timbre, he thinks he must be hallucinating. He sniffs his tea – it’s entirely possible that he accidentally doctored it with a hallucinogenic sugar compound that he’s worked on to unlock repressed memories – but no, there is nothing about the aroma or the taste to suggest that her voice isn’t real.

It’s distant, though. Faint. And…lilting.

It takes Ford a long moment to realize that she’s singing.

He comes to his front door and touches his ear to the wood. Yes, she’s right outside, it seems. He opens it.

She’s dressed warmly, her hands shoved inside of a furry muff, beaming out at him from under a scarf and a hat and a thick wooly coat. At least she’s appropriately dressed for the season, even if she’s spending it singing outside in the darkness, barely lit by the lamps near his clinic.

He lets her finish the song, because it would be rude to do otherwise, and when she ends the verse, her eyes sparkling at him like snowflakes, he blinks. “Good evening.”

“Hey there, Ford.” She pulls her hand out of her muff to scratch her nose. “Did you like the song?”

It was something about bells ringing and snow falling. He hadn’t even been listening to the words – he’d been too focused on her tone. “…it was an adequate representation of the season.” He clears his throat. “Do you need medical attention? Is that why you’re here?”

Holly looks down, her boots nudging through the snow. “No, I, uh, I just…thought you might like to hear some carols. ‘Tis the season!”

“I see.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “I am aware of the caroling tradition, but I didn’t know people here took to it. I think it’s perfectly illogical. The human must strain for their voice to carry across the snow, especially if there are sharp winds – it’s too easy to do potential damage.” He shakes his head. Throughout his statement, Holly looks down more and more, until he can barely see her face at all under her hat’s brim. “Who else have you sung for?”

Silence. There’s silence as thick as the snow she stands on. “…no one. Just you.”

How odd. “I hope you’ll remember to go home soon before you catch too much cold. Perhaps you should come in for tea-”

“No!” Holly looks up at him and flashes a smile. “No, I-I’ll just go home, you’re right. I’m sorry I disturbed you!” She begins walking away without even a goodbye – rare for someone like her who seems to be particularly well socialized. He’s surprised enough by it to simply watch her go.

She stops, however, and turns around, her eyes sparkling again. “Maybe next time you’ll sing with me, huh?”

Ford frowns. “I do not have a very good voice, myself. I would ruin the appeal of yours.”

“You think I have a good voice?”

She’s breathless when she says it. The cold has gotten to her worse than he feared. He inclines his head. “You maintain a good tone. Minimal vibrato. Enough breath to finish the stanzas properly without having to breathe in the middle of the phrase. It is an adequate performance.”

Holly grins at him so widely that he swears he can see almost every one of her teeth – a pity that he isn’t a dentist. “Thank you, Ford.” She backs up two steps. “Have a good night, okay?”

“It seems likely that I will.”

He watches her go until she disappears from view. He isn’t sure why.

~~

Her laugh is the exact representation of what joy should be. If a scientist could draw a map and point at the frequency levels that one must react in order to have the perfect human laugh, Ford is certain that hers would touch every threshold.

He knows this, because as she laughs while she’s enjoying a lunch with him the next afternoon, his skin tingles pleasantly. The body understands the proper levels of Hertz. His is no exception.

“I simply cannot understand the song,” Ford is saying over her laugh. “It is a- please don’t lean back in your chair so far, Holly, you are going to fall.”

“I can’t help it!” Her cheeks are tinted pink. Perhaps he has the heater on a bit too warmly. “It’s just a song, Ford. He sees you when you’re sleeping! He-”

“That’s precisely what I mean!” He gestures with his fork as he talks, swept up in his own thoughts. “He cannot see me when I’m sleeping! My bedroom is on the second level. All of my curtains are drawn shut. My door is locked three times downstairs, and there is no other way inside.” He pauses. “Also, he isn’t real.”

“Ford!” Holly rests her elbows on the table, shining brighter than the single string of Christmas lights he allowed her to put up when she stopped by earlier, clearly exhausted from her farming work. “Songs don’t have to be logical, y’know.”

“…that’s…that’s absurd. Everything is rooted in logic.”

“Everything?” She tilts her head to the side.

“Everything!”

“What about…” Holly taps her bottom lip with her index finger – a nasty act, given how much bacteria could be on her hand, and that is the entire reason he can’t stop staring, he’s sure. “…matters of the heart?”

Ford considers his own heart. “The heart operates under logical circumstances. Medical professionals already understand the way the valves work.”

“No!” She laughs again, and his heart rate rises. “I mean, like, crushes! Love! Affection!”

The way she stares at him gives him pause. She blinks rapidly, long eyelashes dark against her skin. She bites her bottom lip.

While he’s watching, she sucks it into her mouth, and he immediately looks back down at his food, trying to remember what they had been talking about. “…well. I don’t see what any of that has to do with this harmful myth of Santa Claus.”

Holly chuckles again – but it’s warmer this time, and lower, like melting sugar – and though it isn’t the perfect example of a laugh that he heard before, he still finds himself fixated. Strange.

~~

Her name melts on his tongue sweetly every time that he says it. As strict of a regimented diet as Ford follows, he rarely lets himself indulge with more than a spoonful of sugar in tea. Her name gives him the same sensation – as if he should say it as little as possible, lest it fill him up until he bursts.

“Holly,” he murmurs, shaking his head. “I already have a calendar for December. You didn’t need to-”

“No, this one’s special!” Holly lays it on the table. “See! It has little presents on every day of December, and they’re all…” She fiddles with one of the boxes on the calendar until a piece of chocolate pops out. “…holding sweets.”

“Sweets.” Ford crosses his arms over his chest. “Ah.”

“They’re good! Have one.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ford!” She drops her arms to her side, and yes, there’s the pout again – he was waiting for it. “Please? For me?”

“I don’t like sweets.” He lifts his chin, looking down his nose at her. “They rot the teeth. Too many calories.”

“But this one is dark chocolate.”

He quirks a brow.

“It’s…good for you.” Holly holds it out. “And it’s not as sweet. Bitter. Bitter as dirt.”

“Why would I want to eat dirt?”

Holly laughs and approaches him, as slowly as if she was a predator coming close to something she did not wish to harm. His skin tingles the closer that she gets, goosebumps dusting over his flesh. And when she holds the chocolate out, coming up on her tiptoes, letting her fingers hover just in front of his lips, he feels the irresistible urge to eat it from her hand.

And then he remembers precisely how many germs are on her hands. Warmth kisses his cheeks as he takes the chocolate from her, inspects it, and then heaves a sigh as he tastes it.

He stares at her excited face as he chews, considering, then swallows. “…I suppose dark chocolate in moderation can have certain health benefits.”

“Yay!” She claps her hands together, hopping up and down, then hurries back to the calendar. “That’s great that you said that, because we’re twenty days behind! We’ve got a lot to eat.”

“What part of moderation don’t you understand?”

She peeks over her shoulder and winks, and his cheeks go even hotter. Flushed. Perhaps he has a cold.

~~

Winter has never been so warm without her before. He doubts it will ever be the same again if she leaves. Though Ford does not consider himself a selfish man, knowing that she is near – that she will stop by two or three times a week – has given him a sense of routine that he rarely used to have before, something that he would never wish to change again if he could help it. And seeing her – every bit of her, from head to toe, dressed in her warmest garb – fills him with more heat than a fire ever could.

Not even the fireplace at Brad and Carrie’s Christmas party.

She lingers in a doorway as he approaches, smiling at him. He has no words to say to her. He has no concept of why he even comes closer. But he hasn’t spoken to her the entire evening, and that seems cruel.

Even if she DIDN’T have this maddening magnetism that he can’t repel, he still wouldn’t be able to tear himself away.

“You look well,” he said as he pauses across from her. “Healthy.”

Holly beams at him. She looks upward. So does he.

There is a sprig of a plant hanging there, one that he recognizes immediately, and his eyes widen in shock. “Why on earth are they displaying a poisonous herb here?” Would it be easy to remove it before it fell and caused anyone harm? What if a child somehow got a hold of it? He touches his chest, hands gloved and ready for removing the mistletoe overhead.

Holly touches his chest too.

Ford looks down, eyes widening, as she comes up on her tiptoes and gently tugs him down a few inches with her hands in his lapel. She kisses him, as vibrantly warm as the air around her.

Chaste as it is, his heart pounds through his ribs, and he pulls back to take a breath. “What…what was that?”

“Mistletoe,” she murmurs back, smiling so widely that the edges of her eyes crinkle. “Why? Do you not like kissing me, Ford?”

He stammers, opening and closing his mouth like a fish. “W-well, I would say that the, ah, the endorphins from such a kiss are…are positive examples of-”

She shakes her head with a laugh as she guides him back down.

When he touches her cheek with his trembling hand, tilting his head to deepen the kiss, she floods him with a fervent heat that wraps right around his heart.

He’ll never know the cold again.