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fumifooms · 3 days ago

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Marcille and Chilchuck’s interwoven character arcs: the fantasy of prince charming, idealization vs pessimism and loss

I’ve alluded to Marcille and Chilchuck being central to each other’s arcs so many times but the proper full analysis has been long overdue. I’ve made a post going into their differences and similarities and the many ways they’re foils for each other, but this is going to give more focus to a narrative rather than character angle this time around. We talk a lot about the importance of Marcille in Chilchuck’s arc, it's more obvious overall, but less so about Chilchuck’s importance in her own, so this is going to emphase on the latter. They have a lot of ridiculously unique conflict specific to their situation and world, and an intriguing dynamic. Relationships can be layered and subtext can imply quite a lot, the reality of things can be more complex than we'd like or hard to reconcile, and that's exactly what we're talking about today and how that is a lesson Marcille needed to learn. Give this a shot and look at the manga pages alongside my reading and decide for yourself wether I’ve got a point or I’m going overboard~!

So, Marcille and Chilchuck are character foils in many many ways, and I think a particularly brilliant part of their arc is how they balanced each other out on idealization. On one hand, idealizing things means only seeing what you want to see through rose-colored glasses, on the other, being completely opposed to it usually means denouncing any optimism at all, refusing to hold any good faith or hope. These stances reflect both their backgrounds, as Chilchuck has lived through being discriminated against and taken advantage of consistently, betrayed by employers and eventually the person supposed to be closest to him, his wife, meanwhile Marcille grew up more sheltered and lonely, and books were a big way through which she experienced social situations & the ways of the world in her rural home before going to the magic academy as a researcher and getting more actual life experience herself.

I think it’s especially interesting to analyze the trope of— the idealization of— the perfect chivalrous prince on a white horse who is pure hearted and will make you swoon, in the context of their relationship and their arcs! It’s a recurring motif- you’ll just have to trust me and read further~ Obviously this contains spoilers for the whole manga, so beware! It's very long because I'm trying to cover the topic fully from the ground up, my apologies.

Table of contents:

How they start out

The Daltian Clan and its importance

Prince Charming vs Chilchuck Tims

Ideals vs desires vs wants

Deconstructing realistic romance & compromising between romanticism and reality

Princess imagery in Marcille

Conclusion

Let’s start with the beginning:

How the characters start off:

Their relationship is both familiar and strained (extra reading: analysis of their relationship pre-canon and early canon), they bounce off each other with the ease of coworkers who’ve been working together for two years and who share similar common sense. Because yes they’re both generally grounded and rational, and generally they respect each other’s input and perspective, but, they both have blind spots…

The biggest hurdle is the way Chilchuck refuses to open up. Marcille has made efforts to befriend him, and though he was open to developing a better workplace dynamic and, say, helping her out with shopping for a pouch outside of work, even if it ended up being counterproductive he’d refuse to even just say his age, let alone share anything about his family situation. Knowing he had kids and a wife would have pretty efficiently fully shut down that he was a kid, and yet he valued being closed off more. Chilchuck is often shown being pessimistic, assuming the worst intentions out of people and being wary of anything good happening, being the last person to trust something or someone, etc. (Quick summary analysis of him I made if you want here, beyond the character foil analysis I linked at the beginning.) He prefers assuming that opening up will only bring him problems to assuming that it'd bring about positive things.

Meanwhile Marcille is very… Honestly she’s hard to classify strongly. Because I could say she’s very open to people, but honestly it’s conditional? She emotes intensely but she’s not quite a befriending machine either, especially when we recall the magic academy days as well, she’s not unused to keeping people at some level of distance, herself keeping a lot of secrets too. She was very wary of Laios at first because she had misconceptions, she holds grudges and isn’t personable with everyone like Namari or Toshiro, when she’s introduced to the party she seems serious and doesn’t smile. While I don’t fully agree, there’s a good analysis not by me here showcasing what I’m talking about. Marcille’s more serious academic side often gets undermined and I think it’s an important part of her, but then the difference between her and Chilchuck comes down to theory vs practice: knowledge vs experience. I think something more fitting to say would be that she’s idealistic and easily swayed, for example the way she lights up whenever she can put a story-like twist on things, her mood can go from dread to hype and reverse in one second, like with riding a kelpie or with the conflict between Chilchuck and his wife, or again with Namari, where it becomes a sort of hero vs antagonist dynamic for her where justice and righteous thoughts should override everything else like needing money to live. She's very stubborn, like he is, but it's easier for her to come around in dramatic ways, on things big and small, mentioning for another example thinking better of orcs suddenly because they can cook well.

So sure on first meeting she isn’t exactly eager, but then we do see her enthusiastically trying to befriend everyone! Becoming very friendly once she’s done assessing them. She is social, and fittingly she’s very curious about people. And that said, aesthetics do matter a lot to her, and I mean this beyond just enjoying vibes, for example- and follow along the lingo I'm setting up here- if something ‘breaks’ an aesthetic like Chilchuck or Falin not being a child she’ll willfully dismiss and ignore it, if she can spin something into a story like Chilchuck’s breakup she’ll get carried away, she can get the wrong impression, be gullible for the sake of believing a narrative, such and such. I’d say she’s guarded around people at first, but then with time becomes an open book emotions wise, how she’s always loudly and unapologetically talking about her feelings and emoting. She’s not reckless, rather she’s bold and often has to make decisions quickly, like when the plan unexpectedly changed during the red dragon fight, but things like using dark magic can feel like thoughtless decisions looking from the outside, like to Chilchuck, who as per his pessimism dictates he sees all of this in a negative light, assumes the worst: that she’s just ignorant, naive and reckless. She’s easily worried and discouraged but still always perseveres.

He's biased against mages and elves because of past experiences and he projects that onto Marcille. And it makes sense because good faith is dangerous to Chilchuck- for his feelings in relationships yes, but more concretely and important for his life at work, the way an old party of his was going to sacrifice him to succubi for easy money. Like the way he constantly puts his non-work values down to the group so they don’t have high expectations of him, having high expectations for someone else is vulnerability he doesn’t want to or cannot afford. The result however is that he, too, put people into boxes to avoid having his preconceived notions challenged. He's very judgemental, which we see with Laios as well, and even with Izutsumi in the ice golem chapter, but by then he's learned to self-reflect more and be honest with his feelings due to Leed, meaning his social conflicts get resolved more often and more quickly, again like with Izutsumi in the ice golem chapter.

So in the end, there are things that stand in the way of them having true, equal respect for one another. She sees him as a kid despite everything else (being capable and mature, etc etc), and he sees her as a ticking bomb of a naive elf mage who’s gonna get herself into legal trouble if she doesn’t get them killed first.

And it takes an arc spanning the whole manga for them to get there, to truly see each other on equal footing, culminating with the bicorn chapter.

I'm going to be mentioning them a lot so in my mind, the most important Marcille & Chilchuck arc defining scenes happen in: mandrake chapter, mimic chapter, shapeshifter chapter, hypogriff soup chapter, changelings, bicorn, succubus, and Marcille dungeon lord. We're talking mostly about Marcille's discrimination and their narrative about loss here, but on the end of Chilchuck's discrimination the dark magic plot is very central so honorable mention to the red dragon chapters, the harpies chapter and the cockatrice chapter, the latter where Chilchuck airs out his beef particularly directly.

Interestingly enough, the mandrake chapter which is in VERY early manga, where characters and dynamics are still being set up, Marcille gets Chilchuck to say that she isn't a burden and that he's glad they have her and her skillset with them, so the question of "does he respect her at all" was answered before the audience could even think to ask it, and Marcille also makes statements shortly after showing she respects him in turn- more on that later. This has for a result that we do know there's a foundation of respect here, even when as said it's not complete... yet.

So let’s get into it! Early on we already get a lot instances hinting at their opposed core values of optimism vs pessimism. It’s perfectly summarized in the two panel excerpts opening this post: "Sounds romantic!" "Sounds fishy.", hope vs wariness. "Meeting you was fate!" "… Which means it’s fate for you to eat these monsters, too!", if good things happening to you is fate then you must accept that all the bad things that happen to you are fate as well. It’s "Things will work out!" vs "Things will not work out".

The issue here seems rather evident, it’s a balancing game. Compromising, adapting your judgement to the situation. Yes Marcille romanticizes things too much and it can cause her trouble, and yes Chilchuck being so closed off on himself gets him into trouble as well.

(Not telling there was a mimic nearby being maybe the most straightforward example.)

His refusal to hope for anything good happening to him ever is at the core of him not having even tried reconciling with his wife (more on that later with the bicorn chapter). Through the manga, Chilchuck influences her to be more savvy and to respect boundaries more (with himself and Namari for example), while she influences him to become more open and give things a go. It’s no coincidence that it’s Marcille that pushes him to try reconciling with his wife and gives him hope that it just might work out- that that chance even on its own means it's worth giving it a shot.

The Daltian Clan & its importance

The importance of fiction in some people's lives and their specific psychological relationship to it is a very complex human brain topic with many many studies and an infinite amount of subtleties, I can't possibly do justice to this section at its full potential but I'll go over my major points. But the complex and layered nature of this relationship is why, for example, the interpretation that Marcille is a lesbian despite her likely attraction/love for male fictional characters (if not even just simping or stanning separate from those), has legs to stand on and is a compelling angle!

The Daltian Clan, often shortened as Dalclan, is Marcille's favorite book series and is very very personally important to her. In an extra we learn that part of it is that seeing a half-elf character personally reached out to her and meant a lot. She feels seen through it. Even if it's notable that the half-elf haracter isn't her favorite, general Hagreus, but the one with black hair. It's a Cinderella type of romance & convoluted political intrigue series full with a lot of drama, reminiscent of stuff like Romeo & Juliette or Richard III.

I believe that books were developmentally very important for her, similarly as to how cartoons are important to the education and development of toddlers and kids nowadays, or how oral stories like fairytales have always been important to teach lessons. Fiction engages readers and provides emotional stimulation, which can often be a flawed substitute for actual human contact- but nonetheless a big factor in socialization. For Marcille who lived in a rather rural region surrounded by books and chickens, who couldn't fit in with kids of any age around, books were a major part of teaching her how to socialize, how people and social groups worked. This is also part of why the autistic Marcille angle can be very compelling and plausible, though personally I don't see it that way.

So yes I think that sort of upbringing shaped her a lot, and I think it's part of why Marcille has trouble not putting people into boxes... Why even though Falin assured her it wasn't like that, Marcille had made this whole narrative in her mind painting Laios as a villain that stole Falin away against her will/for nefarious purposes. Why she has trouble not thinking of/treating Falin as a kid, unwilling to process how she has grown up. Why Chilchuck has to be very young in her mind, and it was very very hard for her to reconcile the fact that he wasn't. (It's actually interesting to note that Marcille treats Falin and Chilchuck similarly in a lot of ways, overstepping boundaries, being dimissive and touchy- There's a lot to say about how the party dynamic changed a lot with during canon it becoming just Laios, Marcille and Chilchuck at first and Laios' monster interest reveal, notably that in Falin's absence that she may have latched onto Chilchuck and treats him similarly to Falin may be her finding it omforting to fall into habits or filling a hole.) I think complexity in fictional characters gets her gears turning, but there's always a film of impersonality to it right, where it's not real, there's a safe distance, if you want to form romantic narratives about how things went down and a character's angst, you can, but someone who’s real… Things are often uglier or harder to grapple with. And she doesn’t want Falin to have grown up, for her to so quickly have aged. I think applying this sort of storybook veneer onto her real life connections, pushing people into boxes, is a way for her to make social relationships more digestible. And she's a big gossip enjoyer too! Engaging in shallow retellings of people's interpersonal drama, eating it up with enthusiasm and curiosity. Part of it, like with novels, is vicariously living through others I think, experiencing making connections where she hasn't or couldn't, the way her relationship with the other girls at the academy besides Falin stayed distant and shallow despite being friendly. Gossip, like stories, are safe, distant from your own life, they're easy to judge, not unlike the irl popular interest in following others’ online drama. You’re not involved yourself, so you don’t have as much chance of getting hurt. So yes, easier to digest. Less complex, less unpleasant things and less contradictions that are hard to process. Sort of like a defense mechanism to not have your worldview challenged, dodging having to recognize these things by assigning them tropes. And I think part of it too like I implied is: she can’t experience actual loss through books and gossip. They give her emotional social stimulation she doesn’t fully allow herself to have with actual humans for fear of getting invested in a way that’s very raw and personal. Again, like how she pushes Falin away to ignore the more nuanced facets to their relationship! The intensity of what I’m speculating on here in her character is debatable but I do think it’s present at least in some amount.

In a similar way to dogs being important to Laios’ social life (I made something of an analysis on that if you're interested, but this one's not relevant to what I'm talking about in this post) books are her comfort zone. If she can compare a real situation to a story it brightens everything and, well, it does make her assume things wrongly often but it also makes her able to analyze people deeply, like the roleplay-theory-speculation about Chilchuck's wife and the way she hit bullseye on how Chilchuck felt in the aftermath. But like how Marcille only agreed to wear the frog suit when the party told her it'd look cute on her, or how thinking about riding on kelpies made her excited for what previously she saw as a tedious and dreadful journey. Special interest power blast.

And this is where comes in her coworker, a disillusioned embittered man.

A guy who knows all about how messed up the world & people can be and isn't afraid to say it how it is, who in every sphere of life has field experience rather than fictional one- with romance, work, and having dreams & ambitions. Someone flawed and real, someone who won't let her interpret him however she wants without confronting her about it & challenging her to change her perspective.

It took a looot for Marcille to fully stop seeing him as a kid, and in a way I think it was necessary for the dissonance to be both this hard to reconcile and this impossible to ignore: that he truly is a middle-aged man down to his demeanor and family background but that he looks like a teen at most to her. That she literally has to look beyond aesthetics to be able to first fathom then accept and internalize that he's an adult despite his looks. That it was so ingrained and took so long, so much that even while she recognized and said "He's usually the most mature one of us", so much that even as it's implied that she knew logically he's an adult before the changelings, as pictured earlier she still couldn't conceive it. It's like with her calling Laios and Falin's parents kids in a post-canon extra, it's not that she doesn't know it's that it's hard to wrap her head around. Necessary and important because, if Chilchuck was any less loud about being a man she could have gone on unchallenged in her assumptions. If it was an easier to dismantle misconception, something easier to digest, then her arc of coming to see him as he is would have had less impact on her character, afterwards she could continue to run with her own interpretations of people like Falin and Namari without her confidence in being able to pin down people into simple roles being so fundamentally shaken. And it's notable too, that Namari's choice to leave the party to look out for herself situation was decidedly unheroic, but it was Chilchuck who spoke to Marcille about why her decision was both reasonable and had a lot of thought behind it, making her accept that it doesn't make Namari a bad person or even a bad coworker or friend.

Chilchuck is someone who knows that sometimes, bad things happen for no reason, and it's not meaningful or part of a grand narrative, it just sucks and you have to deal with it.

As the foil to her very emotional black and white interpretations of things, Chilchuck represents nuance, and he's impossible for her to ignore.

Prince Charming vs Chilchuck Tims

Chilchuck is so obviously not a prince charming. He doesn't have the looks, the attitude nor the lifestyle. Does he have the virtues for it? Well, no... But also, yes. More on that in a bit. It's also interesting to think of the status aspect to it, because being from an impoverished oppressed class/community is so central to Chilchuck's character, something usually far removed from prince charmings and white knights, and not only status wise but on the topic of virtues... It’s an interesting thread to explore, the way one may have the means to remain chivalrous rather than becoming distrustful and embittered: sometimes optimism is a sign of privilege, being able to be or remain optimistic through life. I'm sure Marcille would be the first to jump onto the aesthetic and narrative allure of a pauper in love with a princess, of a hero of the people à la Robin Hood, but it's still interesting to think of that as another facet of the contrast Chilchuck makes. Alright, tangent done.

But obviously, despite this all they have a great work dynamic and respect for each other's capabilities. It's not like Marcille is mean to people who don't fit these fairytale high standards, no that’s only when she feels wronged or if there's injustice, rather she becomes dismissive of people’s complexity, wether they become an angel like Falin or Marcille’s shapeshifter of Chilchuck or a villain like Namari and Toshiro or Laios when they met. But my point, my point: she actually thinks very highly of him!

"He’s usually the most mature one of us" "He’s dependable, we’re counting on him" "No, chilchuck is definitely virtuous."

And I think the ways in which that shows are very interesting.

^ Ok so this happens, in the Namari chapter I keep talking about. Look at his expression in this last panel. He's always teasing her, but doesn't this here feels a bit... Suggestive? Like he's implying things, not just talking about it in a work setting but also giving her general life advice. Maybe even making an innuendo for womanizers, gentlemen who flirt without meaning a thing and have some hidden agenda. Warning her about smooth talkers that seem too good to be true. It’s honestly a very easy to overlook but defining interaction for them. It’s a quote that’s on his Adventurer’s Bible plus his anime quote keychain merch!

I love his implication that "I say what I’m about straight up, money, so you can trust me"- and isn’t that just the exact thing… Because that is what this is, he’s pitting himself against these people who help without asking for anything and he's saying he’s more trustworthy and reliable than them, driving a wedge between him and those people to prop himself up by comparison. His words tie a lot here into his general worldview too, of course here he's ✨Imparting His Wisdom✨, but it also ties into his self-image issues I'd say, where he’s hard on himself and calls himself a coward etc: if no one has positive expectations for you on an interpersonal level, then you can’t disappoint them. It only goes up from here if you start at rock bottom, can't have unpleasant surprises.

But the meaningfulness of this moment doesn't start and end there: That moment happened in chapter 20, but then this happens in chapters 36-37...

I was always puzzled by the split second interaction between Marcille and Kabru. Marcille blushing is the point, it’s in the anime too and it’s the focus of the panel. That moment of hesitation before she goes back into business mode where she looks at him back, and blushes. And idk I always felt like it was weird timing, like it was a weird beat Kui chose to put emphasis on, why the story even had them make eye contact in the first place, what point it could be making besides "Kabru is handsome and charismatic" which was already made with Hien and Benichidori below, otherwise it's not even like Marcille and Kabru ever interact. Like, maybe it's for it to be a callback when she glances at him while the canaries interrogate her at Thistle's house? Regardless, she blushes, but her expression is more akin to a "Uuhh he smiled at me why’d he smile at me like that. Oh he’s kinda pretty. Well anyways-" rather than swooning or truly checking him out. She’s frowning, even. And like I said, being very naturally charming was a point already made previously.

But then… This repeated reminder that Kabru is a lady killer IS the point, Marcille reacting to him in that way IS the point. Kabru is the epitome of ‘will say they help you but has hidden motives and might betray your trust if it serves their interest’ (not a diss on him tbf he has understandable goals), he is the epitome of looking noble, welcoming and chivalrous but actually being dishonest and manipulative, and what’s important here is… Marcille turns away and sticks by Chilchuck. Of course this is logical, no one would expect her to go running to Kabru lol, but I implore you to think of the thematics of it all, a princely guy, the closest character of the cast in the flesh embodying the prince charming persona, is giving her some positive attention, and it does affect her a bit but nonetheless she turns away, and strategizes with Chilchuck instead of trusting or giving good faith or getting carried away. She chooses Chilchuck. Unlike so often, she doesn’t let aesthetics sway her here, get in the way of her better judgement, distract her from the point. She chooses not to give good faith, even if he seems charming and friendly and smiles. Marcille is serious when the situation requires it that's now new, but this is in line with the lesson he instilled earlier above. And if nothing else, Marcille has a good memory, exhibit B to come later. Here we see part of why Chilchuck was afraid of Laios or Senshi but not Marcille blurting out the wrong things with Toshiro and is party, when push comes to shove they're often on the same wavelength. Marcille and Chikchuck do strategize with specifically each other regularly, they do tend to pair up a lot after all, so this isn’t especially new, but it’s the first time there’s this sense of us vs them imo. Like how earlier Chilchuck was saying that he’s better than the smooth talker type, here we see Marcille implicitly agree.

She just has a passing glance & thought for Kabru but she knows her true allies and true values, and she wants to strategize with Chilchuck. What I am saying is that if she was given the choice to think through going with a guy that seems perfect and chivalrous like her succubus, if she was logical about it she’d pick Chilchuck over that guy actually, yeah. At the end of the day, no matter the pretty smiles, she knows who her actual friends are. Whiiich on that topic, next section!

Ideals vs desires vs wants

It's succubus analysis time

Her succubus is quite direcly a prince figure, a knight on a white horse who's come to whisk her away. He calls her princess, even! She's taken the role of Daltian Clan's protagonist, essentially. He kisses her hand, nothing short of the most classic courtly romance tropes. He's even drawn in a noticeably more shoujo style, not unlike the characters' faces in the aftermath of getting their energy sucked by succubi.

I made a whole analysis on specifically Laios’ succubus but it covers some stuff that could be interesting for this analysis as well, I’ll repeat the essential stuff tho: Their succubus all show what type of social connection they desire. Izutsumi’s is familial, Marcille wants someone she can emotionally connect with, seemingly romantic, Chilchuck wants something physical and sexual so he doesn’t have to think and worry about anything deeper (betrayal, insecurities, etc, the difficulting that come with a committed romantic relationship- also likely related to his senses & stress), and Laios wants people and friends who’ll accept him and his monster interest- platonic.

But more interesting for this analysis is how succubi work. The goal isn’t to beckon, but to incapacitate. The succubus doesn't work on the basis of rationality, it’s not a factor they go for and it’s not one they need to appeal to either, as we see. (Laios is a special case -gestures to the linked analysis- but the succubus doesn’t appeal to his rationality as much as it soothes his worries, his friends judging him etc etc, and the reason Izutsumi could remain unaffected is that there is always a half of her not enthralled by the succubus because she essentially has two souls.) Neither Marcille, Chilchuck or Izutsumi could realistically expect any of the people they saw to be real and not fake succubis. They KNOW that, they were actively preparing for the succubi to jump on them and fight back, rationally they know they're monsters! But how this monster works is that it targets deep desires within you that when face to face with it'll make you hesitate, make something in you unable to fight or flight and instead do the third instinctive option: freeze. Or especially in Laios’ case, the form gives the victim just enough confliction on the matter for them to want to believe it’s real. All they have to do is just not move, stay passive and accept the attention, so it’s not an issue of wether they reciprocate an action or run away. It's so that it shortcircuits you and leaves you open to pick like a fruit.

If this wasn’t the "reads your heart so deeply that it freezes you to the spot" monster, Chilchuck WOULDN’T be doing anything with these women. He’s been devoted to his wife even 4 years after separation on bad terms, you think he’d ever cheat on her? If this was a decision he were to make, instead of just freezing, he would reject it. In that similar way, Marcille’s succubus might not be what she’d rationally go for. You think if this was what Marcille had to choose, the person she wants most to see and at her side, her most alluring form wouldn't be Falin, alive and well? You think that wouldn't be the thing Laios truly wants most as well? And before people say that canon proved that the latter wasn't with the curse the winged lion put on him, THAT'S THE POINT!!!! You can irrationally desire things, you can desire things to degrees so deep you can’t change it even if you wish you could, but if it was truly a choice up to you, you'd choose otherwise. Laios decided to become king, even if that's a lifestyle so far from what he truly wanted, even if it is duty more than fun for him. Like how Chilchuck would choose faithfulness despite for sure having come into contact with many beauties through his four years of separation.

Ideals vs reality are a big Dunmeshi theme in general, same as wants vs needs, and you can see Marcille’s daydreams and novel themes make it an especially relevant throughline and theme for her. Not unlike how in my opinion General Hareus and Mithrun intentionally look very alike to contrast reality vs fantasy!

Marcille never reacts any particular way to Mithrun’s appearance despite the blatant resemblance, so that makes me think the point/joke is meta rather than character focused. The romanticization of elves and their societal drama in their fiction contrasting heavily with a very real and imperfect product of their military system. The canaries certainly aren’t glamorous next to whatever military Hareus is the general of. There’s even the fun little details like Hagreus’ lips being drawn with extra details because they’re full and pretty while Mithrun’s lips are drawn with extra details because they’re chapped and dehydrated.

So yes, themes of what you actually want vs irrational cravings. Base desires vs actual wants. Needs are also separate, but not relevant for this discussion. To get to the specific definitions I’m using for the words in this section’s header, ideals vs wants vs desires: ideals are your ideal of something, the best degree to which a thing could be tailored to you, and it can be derived from both wants and desires, usually a mix of the two, but for example: I’d say the succubus is a type of ideal (the platonic ideal of allure to the victim) derived solely from desires, because a want is active rather than passive, acted upon rather than suffered, because a want unlike a desire involves thinking things through. So a want: something you want, you take actions towards getting or achieving it, it can be a very strong feeling but it’s something you pursue or wish to pursue. Finding a cure to death is a want, not wanting to be alone is a desire, see, I’m assigning desire this more primal or unchanging subconscious nature to it. On the flipside with Chilchuck, sex without ties, easy pleasure, is a desire, but the want is not having to think about his marriage situation because it’s painful, not wanting an emorional connection because it’s all the easier to be hurt with, just wanting to take his mind off of everything for a while.

Thus the succubus targets Marcille’s wish for a perfect knight who could cherish her forevermore, someone safe and known and fantastical, just hers in a way, free to see and construct however she wants because he’s a character to interpret, and it targets Chilchuck’s wish for pleasure that’ll whisk him away from the stress and pressure and reality of his life, something that’ll make him feel both good and desirable and emotionally uncompromised, not unlike what alcohol does, as he says he likes having his fine senses dulled in the changeling chapter. Idealization is twisting the image of something in your mind to be closer to what you want, but usually mostly desire on a more subconscious level, to be true, almost a wish, sometimes but not always hand in hand with idolization which is to put something on a pedestral. Idealizing things that are easier to reconcile with mostly, in Marcille’s case: it’s easier to believe that Chilchuck is very young and it’s easier to stomach that Falin hasn’t aged much, it's easier to believe Falin is an angel who can do no wrong and if she left with Laios it's not that she chose to leave Marcille, and it's easier to believe Chilchuck is just a moody closed off youngster than an embittered old man. It can be done to people as much as concepts, like the idea/plan to give everyone a 1000 years lifespan, surely that'd do really well and everyone would love it. Wants and desires are both very often about changing reality after all, wether it be your situation or an event in your past or a law of the world like death, but wants are mostly through actions and since desires are more subconscious it can lead to self-delusion easily. Like with succubi, wants engage with your rationality so they target desires instead. The demon's strategy isn't too ar off, either, feeding into both and using underlying desires to manipulate its victims. Dungeon Meshi is in part yes about resisting desires, the irrational cravings, mostly through the character of the demon. I mentioned needs earlier, and to ideals vs wants we also add vs needs, both emotional and physical, and needs alongside wants are what Dungeon Meshi wishes to promote for a healthier person, Dungeon Meshi which illustrates very well with the dungeon lords that you can be a slave to your desires.

The parallel between succubi and demons is intentional. The demon is in fact the origin of the succubus myth in-world. No wonder they operate similarly in many ways- the succubi are in a way a more simple straightforward version of the demon, with less convoluted strategies and less intricate manipulation.

Of course the succubus each character sees does say something about their characters, but what I’m saying is we shouldn’t assign choice or morality to it as if it wasn’t an ethereal monster whose whole biology is focused on being able to freeze people through appealing to desires, much like how we can’t fault people for falling for demons’ manipulations. Like that’s their WHOLE thing and they use mind control through enticement shenanigans. I know people sometimes fault Chil for his succubi and if you want here’s my stance.

Point of this whole thing is, people can rationally choose things that are different from their deeper desires, like in truth Falin’s safety being more important to Laios than becoming a monster. Like how Marcille stayed with Chilchuck to strategize instead of wanting to give good faith to Kabru. Yes, this is the main point I'm coming at with this section lol. Marcille idealizes and idolizes the figure of a perfect prince charming, undoubtedly! But when it comes to what she actually wants, not in some ideal fantay world but in reality, she knows Chilchuck and her imperfect friends are some of the best she could ask for. She's content with them as they are. She would choose a flawed reality over a perfect fantasy.

That's a big part of what her dungeon lord arc is about too, all her tendencies to ignore what others want for what she thinks is best for them or thinks is a perfect course of action: accepting that people are complex with different wants, and that something that's a no-brainer to her like wanting to live for a long long time is a solid no for many. And Laios and the party confront her about it, and Marcille, even under the influence of a demon, chooses to accept reality. Chooses to accept that there are some things that, even were she to be able to, she shouldn’t change after all (even for stuff that’s not forcing everyone to live for a millenium, like bringing Falin back from the dead is something that the party and Marcille had to come to terms with maybe not working and the way they went about it was self-centered). She chooses to come back to herself and the party, to accept the world as it is even if flawed and sometimes hurtful.

And hm, I wonder if Chilchuck had any role in the lead up to that particular decision... I wonder if Chilchuck was a major influence in teaching Marcille that the world isn't perfect and her internalizing things that were outside of her bubble!! I wonder if Chilchuck was directly what made Macille turn towards her party and thus start thinking of giving up on being dungeon lord!! Joking, joking, of course it does. To be continued, see you in the princess imagery section at the end of this essay.

Essentially, this section is to show that: 1) despite what her succubus may suggest, she has indeed grown by that point in the manga compared to pre-canon and her overly idealistic simple black and white vision of things, and it doesn't prove the ‘choosing her friends over a prince thing’ wrong, and 2) despite how deeply ingrained romanticism is in her and how it calls out to her, she still has chosen and continues to choose reality and her friends over it. How fantasy is important to her and how much she loves it, and her having the will not to mindlessly succumb to it coexist and it's that resistance against fantastical ideals that speaks of her as a character so much.

And what does that mean, for Chilchuck? For him and Marcille?

Deconstructing realistic romance AKA compromising between romanticism and reality AKA Chilchuck Tims vs Prince Charming part 2

So what we’ve covered so far is that 1: idealization is something that Marcille does a lot, including concerning Chilchuck, 2: the prince/knight figure is meaningful & important to her, 3: Marcille isn’t a lost cause on it, and for instance, much like how she stops harping on Namari after Chilchuck explains to her how professional reputations and networking work, he can change her mind on things.

Let’s get back to their prejudices of each other for a bit. You might have to zoom in for this one.

Her shapeshifters of both Chil and Laios are influenced a lot by looks and impressions. She’s very adamant about Laios and Falin not looking alike at all, for one. Marcille’s view of Chilchuck’s lockpicks are surprisingly accurate. Meanwhile, despite their first big relationship moment during canon being about how he’s glad to have her and her skills for the dungeon dive, he still ridiculizes her magic somewhat with the crude spellbook. She’s still silly and tease-worthy to him, even while he praises her like in the good medicine chapter with Leed he says it himself in the same breath. Silly, or "ridiculous" depending on the translation, is somewhat ambiguous, but I assign it the meaning of 'thoughtlessly reckless', like how again in the good medicine chapter when he's saying this he's referring to Marcille's future job prospects, because law and career are important to conform to for him. Despite this, their shapeshifters’ behaviors are accurate, although Marcille’s Chilchuck is nicer and less bitterly reclusive. Note how it's Marcille's chilchuck that makes it furthest and how why she thinks hers is the true one is that her Chilchuck "looks less mean"- this is what I mean when I say she idealizes him and sees him as a little angel, along with his fluffier hair it gives us the perspective of why she'd find him so hair-ruffable and why she likes sticking to him so much, I suppose.

Marcille's arc of not seeing Chilchuck for what he is has steps, it's not like Senshi who does an 180 seeing his changeling. There are a couple of important moments for it that tell us her progress and changes her perspective: Him telling his age -> the shapeshifters (our best look into an objective assessment of her perspective) -> reveal that he has a wife and kid(s) (fully shattering her denial) -> seeing him as a changeling (true reckoning. Putting the nail in the coffin of what reality is) -> bicorn chapter (acceptance. Internalization)

You might notice that the explanation for Marcille’s Chilchuck is "Even though she’s been told he’s an adult, deep in her heart she still doesn’t get it", and a fantranslation translates it as "Understands he’s supposed to be an adult, but hasn’t quite come to grips with the fact internally". This definitely implies her arc of growing to see him as an adult had already started by then. Especially if we compare it to Senshi’s more intense babyfied Chilchuck. This goes back to what I was saying about Marcille watering down people for the sake of aesthetics, some rational part of her knows he’s an adult, but it’s emotionally that she struggles to reconcile the fact with her perspective. It’s actually pretty ambiguous when she first starts considering he might be an adult. If by this point she was already digesting it, then I think it must’ve been when he told the party his age. It’s not unsimilar to rationally knowing Falin is an adult at 23 even if it doesn’t feel like it to her, or post-canon calling the Touden parents kids even though obviously she’d know they aren’t actually, it’s classic longlived race patronization. He’s older than Falin, by 6 whole years, and even Marcille isn’t that blind to what that'd mean. Wouldn't marcille also have a problem with child labor otherwise? There's also how Marcille pre-canon shortly speculated Chilchuck was in love with Namari in her Adventurer's Bible extra. She for sure has witnessed a lot of half-foots walking around, probably even drinking at taverns. She knows, on some level. Chilchuck even does a whole rant after they react going on "this is why long lived races are condescending assholes". So that’s my bet, "Is he an adult?" "Well yes but actually no" (Chilchuck), "I’m an adult now I’ve grown" "Awww you’ll always be like a kid to me!" (Falin) Depending on the dub and interpretation, I know for example that when I made my family watch the anime they thought Marcille "See? You're just a kid!" after he said he was 29 they saw it as teasing and playful, unserious, or even disappointed, implying she'd have thought he was older than 29. It's actually ironic how someone as developmentally atypical as Marcille, whose physical and mental growth was unpredictable, unsynchronized and messy, would judge others by appearance and age so much. But well imo appearances are important to her so in that way, she especially judges those because she had to live through being judged by those standards as well. She puts elven standards on everyone the same way she does with beauty standards, so age is included in that.

Marcille here is struggling with dissonance, it's why she "hasn't come to grips with the fact internally". And this all makes sense for the arc that sharing things about himself is what opened the gates of being understood better. Point is, her vision is influenced by her own feelings of how things should be like, veiling herself to the reality of things.

And notice the point that the problem her lack of rationale when it comes people- Chilchuck regularly makes her prioritize rationality over feelings, and well that’s somewhat his whole schtick when it comes to debating philosophy. With Namari and how her leaving the party and not returning is reasonable even if it feels wrong, just like the "don’t trust someone just because they seem well-meaning and generous, strategize instead of swooning", and ironically also the "it's important to take in mind how things like touch when healing can affect parties and create love triangles" lol, "don't be emotional, and also remember people being emotional will stirr up shit". Since she’s someone pretty swayed by feelings, it balances her out. Ultimately, if we consider the Dungeon Lord arc her culmination, it’s Chilchuck who ends her arc by meeting her halfway through appealing out to her feelings, but that’s the flipside of the coin of their arc, and it’s her willpower to face reality that saves them so I don’t think that contradicts that Marcille had to do her half of the journey & comprise.

I would argue there are many hints of Marcille knowing on some level he's an adult throughout early canon. Not just seriously calling him the most mature of the group, but her behavior at the Golden Kingdom's too for example. Would you act all shy asking a kid to sleep in his bed, especially one she's always felt so comfortable trampling the boundaries of and touching casually? Idk that's weird. She's asking to sleep in his bed because by her own admition it'd make her feel more comfortable. Chilchuck is safe to her and she feels shy implying it and asking for a favor like that. Shy that he'd find her silly for it, and/or shy that this might be inappropriate according to etiquette and in other contexts. To me this feels much closer to two peers, like how in the mandrake chapter she wanted validation from him too, and yes she still infantilizes him and emasculates him into someone who's harmless in her mind- not just someone who wouldn't hurt or take advantage of her, because she knows that, because Chilchuck does protect her (more on that later!!).

He's not heroic, but he's brave, when it matters. He's mean and rude, but also caring. He's responsible, even when it means going the unpleasant route. The aesthetic doesn’t fit the role, but the actions do.

He keeps claiming he’s a selfish coward who’ll be the first to dip in a fight, and yet he’s always, consistently pulling her out of danger, or specifically calling out to Marcille when danger strikes. And I think it’s because of the nugget of info we get in the adventurer’s bible that her stamina and athletics are bad, in canon he does call her clumsyhead like once but it never felt enough for me to deduce that on its own personally. So then the reason why he’s always targeting her, beyond the reasoning that she’s the healer thus the most important to keep alive (which he brings up in the rabbits chapter), he takes it upon himself to help her, save her and pull her away from danger because she’s clumsy. She’s not defenseless, she’s known to use explosions, and still he feels the need to save her and through the manga he’s even died trying to pull her to safety one and a half times: dungeon rabbits + the drowning- they didn’t die in the latter though it’d have gone that way if it weren’t for the water bursting out just after, and that situation was especially hopeless regarding Chikchuck being able to do anything to save her at all, yet he still tried.

A little knight in shining armor, a little noble hero, a little prince charming innit?

Chilchuck IS all show and no talk- and she knows the value of that!!! It's why despite all his sour demeanor she respects him both professionally and as a smart guy she can trust, why she feels safe with him and wants him by her side when strategizing or even sleeping. The aesthetic doesn’t fit the role, but the actions do. Fantasy vs reality!!! He teaches her how to face reality both with his words and actions, through the contradictions of him, his caring behavior and bitter words, his old manners and young looks!

And actually let's TALK about that drowning scene hello. There, in the collage above, in the bottom left. The context of that is: This is after the demon leaves when the dungeon collapses, the dungeon gets flooded by water and they go under, with no sense of where or how there could be an exit to this. 1: Since the dungeon is collapsing and reviving someone only works in dungeons, there is no guarantee that Marcille or anyone would be able to revive someone during or after this, NONE. 2: He is risking his life for her, he is STRAIGHT UP playing his life on this choice, action hits and shit gets more serious than it ever has, and he yet does it anyways. Perhaps it's the gravity of it that pushes him to make this choice, that this time if someone dies it's for real and he can't accept that, but either way his choice is made in a split second, he prefers dying trying to save her than living without saving her. He is fighting for scraps of hope, seconds more of holding onto life. Which, 3: This situation is HOPELESS. In the end yes they end up being spat out by some exit out the dungeon with the strenght of the flood, but there was no way to know this would happen, and like we see in the third panel Chilchuck and the others actually lose consciousness. That's for "a way out of this", but even moreso, what is he hoping to accomplish? He's small and weak like he always reminded the party in fights, he CANNOT PULL HER UP TO SAFETY, HE CANNOT PULL HER AT ALL, WE SEE HIM STRUGGLE TO AND FAIL. HE CAN'T DO ANYTHING BUT HE STILL TRIES DESPITE THE RISK. You might also say- haha!! You might also say that this is a show of optimism from him!! You could say that after Marcille changed him, pushed him to have more hope in him, he now has the strenght and will to hope that this might do anything, that this might save her! A little similar to the situation with his wife actually, the point is that the chance is worth taking even if it might not turn out like hoped for- the point is that it's always worth trying and keeping hope to fight on, there is risk in being vulnerable and reaching out to his wife yes, there is risk, as with jobs, as with finances, as with anything- It's not that you'll never fail, but you have to not give up when you do- there's a risk but you can't just shut yourself off to the world and to relationships, you can't suddenly care about nothing! That's Chilchuck's arc! And maybe it's because his arc of becoming more hopeful and open yourself to caring centers her that it's her he latches onto here and not Senshi and Izutsumi who are equally in trouble here, maybe it's because he knew her longest or because he still feels this sense he has to look out for her like always, or because he trusts her to breathe underwater least, I don't know, but it's what happens! And listen, by all intent and purposes it was a hopeless situation, they were on the verge of drowning but he still fights to save her, and everything looks lost for a sec, but then the water current miracurously spits them out of the crumbling dungeon. He gets up and he runs to marcille fearing she's hurt but no, they're saved, she's fine, they're all alive and out of danger. It worked out. Having hope was right.

They make me ill I tell you. Like what the HELL, am I supposed to NOT go crazy when this happens??! What if they were the meaning of life what if their arc was about cracking the balance of living and loving healthily and cracking the code of life. Okay. Okay okay okay so anyways so

He can be quite self-sacrificial and noble! Always looking out for others, and giving Marcille particular attention in that regard, likely in part due to her being clumsy in his eyes and her being the healer aka their token of safety.

Sit your ass back DOWN you are in no state sir. Despite her biases Marcille is still observant, she still loves dissecting people like in that pre-canon party relationships chart in her extra, she's still the one to say "Chilchuck is the most mature here". Marcille still notices things! She has an interest in people and Chilchuck is someone she especially likes to "study". She read him like a book in the bicorn chapter, and if she was able to it’s that she looked, she remembered, she saw. The way he doesn’t like waiting on people, that he’s very reserved with feelings, the way he often doesn't pick up on others' and even his own- It all comes through in her quote unquote analysis of him, what married life with him would be like and how he reacted to his wife leaving.

Point is, Chilchuck is very harsh on himself, but there are gems inside of him, there is gold hidden away if you dig at his heart. And besides, isn’t humility a mark of heroes?

Okay. Sooo there's not that much to say about the changeling scene actually, for both Senshi and Marcille, the chapter just previous where Chilchuck reveals he has a wife and kid is what fully reckons them with how Chilchuck is a fully fledged adult, and for both of them seeing Chilchuck as a tallman is the final nail in the coffin. With Senshi it's a rather fast 180, and he mourns the sweet kid image he had of him where he poked his cheek and ruffled his hair, but for Marcille it's just an extra "he's really really REALLY really not a kid. Really". It has a bit of a reversal of Marcille and Chilchuck's dynamic, since now he can manhandle her instead of her manhandling him. This is a rather pleasant experience for him from what we can tell, whereas Marcille is struggling to keep the party's walking pace and complains about the heat implying half-foots are more sensitive to temperatures, Chilchuck finds having his senses dulled relaxing, has no problem of the sort Marcille is having AND! And! He can pull her around. The fight with gargoyles happen and he's pulling her arms, picking her up, he even throws her both before it and during the fight, he has the physical power to push her away if he wants to and also to pull her out of danger- the way he later tries to in the rabbit chapters and with drowning, but also when the Faligon reveal happens. He still doesn't look like a knight in shining armor, and he still doesn't have the demeanor of one, but he has the most power to protect her than he ever has. Anyways so yes, further "oh Chilchuck is an adult. And he's kinda knightly and can protect me wow. And also ugly not at all like elven beauty ewwwwww. I won't be able to unsee it now if I try to ruffle his hair after this".

It’s always a question of seeing more facets to someone and slowly digesting them and internalizing them, like Kui puts it herself in the shapeshifter explanation for Marcille's Chilchuck. And this illustrates a bit what I was saying in the section about Dalclan and tropes and people being "digestible" to her. She has to get used to the idea first and it's a slow process.

And during the succubus chapter as well, right after the bicorn chapter where she fully accepted Chilchuck as an adult, Marcille doesn’t falter when she’s confronted with seeing Chilchuck as, for a lack of a better term, a sexual being. She even cracks a (albeit sfw) playful quip about it, about them being all blondes. I suppose with the crass jokes he made like during the frog comic that might have prepped her for it lol.

And on that topic... We're here guys. The holy grail of Marcille and Chilchuck.

🔥The bicorn chapter🔥

The chapter finishes both Marcille and Chilchuck's arcs about harmful idealization vs not being a doomer, so to speak. It's the culmination, the ultimate balance found, the moment where the lesson gets fully internalized on both sides at the same time. It is a MASTERCLASS in how to do relationships arcs and character studies.

Chilchuck starts the chapter being dismissive of Marcille and her interests again, it opens with a narrated bit about his bad experiences with romance in past parties and he admits he has contempt for people who find the topic of love fun. He sees her still a bit as both a fly circling around him and a venus fly trap waiting for the opportunity to pounce on him and not let go until he spills everything. He ends it though, willingly giving up information on him in conversation with her, opening up, and appreciating her perspective on his romantic troubles.

Marcille starts the chapter having mostly processed that he's an adult, asking him about his wife, but she's still Weird about him and his personal life- and okay, that doesn't quite change, but something does change- everything changes for a moment, in fact.

And what's the catalyst? The cataclysm, even? Chilchuck lies and says he cheated on his wife.

[Okay guys I am officially out of pic space, sorry but I'll have to start recurringly linking to images instead: page]

We get to see live Marcille's esteem for Chilchuck plummet and freefall to the ground. And Chilchuck often acts like hassling and teasing between them is onesided, that she's always the one harassing him, but since early manga Chilchuck has always liked to tease her every opportunity he gets, often initiating interaction just for it... During half of this chapter Marcille is giving him the cold shoulder and we get to see that he misses her, we get to see her fully shut down the (racist) joke he throws at her and see him be SHAKEN over it. He wasn't expecting his lie to tank his reputation and relationship with the party members this much, maybe because before whenever he called himself selfish and cowardly no one seemed to think less of him for it, and he's at a loss for what to do like we see here. He misses their friendship. He's always said he didn't care for having a friendship with them all and whatnot, but here we see him grapple of the aftermath, of knowing what it would be like without them as friends, without them at all.

[page 1, page 2.]

And like with his wife, he has a choice to make. Be passive and spiteful and do nothing, or be vulnerable and communicate to win them back over. And this time, after a manga's length of learning little by little to be more open (and literal coercive torture) he chooses to do it, to try and clear up the misunderstanding.

And listen, on Marcille's end this was NEEDED. He DROPS in her eyes to deserving no respect- but even in these times we see her be jealous of Chilchuck opening up to Senshi, implicitly still caring about what he thinks of her, and most importantly that she does still care about him himself when the bicorn breaks his arm and she runs to his side to heal him, worried. Why was this needed? Because Marcille was forced to have her full, complete vision of Chilchuck shattered. Not only is Chilchuck not little in her eyes anymore, but he's also no angel. He can MASSIVELY- borderline unforgivably- mess up. He is an adult who can royally fuck up, even be immoral. She calls him a depraved adult man.

It sounds negative, but what this does is actually strip him from any idealization and infantilization in her eyes. Is there something more adult than adultery? Is there something less honorable, less wholesome? In this chapter Marcille is forced to reconcile the Chilchuck she knows with this man who did something vile to his wife, even the mother of his child.

And then Chilchuck clears things up, he takes the risk of an argument and actual rejection and sacrifices the secrecy around his family situation to make up with her. And it works. Instantly.

And so he goes "Okay so one day she left me and I have no idea why, probably for no reason. The end. What a petty thing to do am I right. We'll probably never talk again." and she's like "Bet? Actually I have several ideas as to what could have happened and you WILL listen."

(For a Chil & Chilwife analysis go over here instead btw.)

She was always perceptive, but she always had a bias that made her vision of others flawed. Her lens of novel worlds and narratives. Remove, or at least shift that bias in a productive direction, and you get a strength rather than an hindrance. The skill of self-inserting (literally. The half-foot depicted as his wife is even literally Marcille a a half-foot, and his child looks just like him, to show just how good her imagination is lmaoo) Marcille is such the "If I wanna hit the ball… I must become the ball" type. As proven by how she controlled her familiars in the hypogriff chapter. "If I were your wife I’d be overjoyed to go out with you and would get myself prettied up while you complain about me taking a long time, your friends would tell me that I’m cute and nice and that’d make me happy, but I’d also be sad because you wouldn’t tell me that you love me enough. Then I'd leave to test your love, and you're failing that test rn but if you came back to me even after a long time I'd take you back for sure." And see these! See Chilchuck frowning there in how she thinks of him, how he gets peeved when she takes time to get ready.

No because, this means everything. Marcille started out the manga thinking he was just a kid with a party pooper attitude and even in the shapeshifter chapter where she’s more coming to terms with her having been wrong about him, her shapeshifter of him is sweet and cute and nicer like "No the REAL Chilchuck is much less nasty! ☺️". But in the bicorn chapter it all comes to a head!! Learning that "Chilchuck cheated on his wife" made her esteem of him tank to rock bottom almost, finally acknowledging that Chilchuck can both make adult mistakes and be significantly flawed. But then! The chapter ends by him opening up which in turn make her esteem of him comes back up, but things have changed, still. What she does with her "virtuous husband" bit might seem like idealization again, and she is being optimistic about the wife'smotives, but she’s not making him into something he’s not! She recognizes his flaws (embraces them even.) Like how as the wife she thinks of an angry/frowning chilchuck, how he complains about waiting on her, which he's also done to Marcille before...

Even the way she says "he wouldn't say that he loves me enough" IS DIRECTLY SOMETHING FROM HER OWN EXPERIENCE FROM THE MANDRAKE CHAPTER. Because then she wanted to hear from his mouth with his words that he does value her, that he does appreciate her, that she's not a burden to them! She knows how it can feel like he doesn't appreciate you even when he does, and how insecure it can make someone! Now when she flavors things, she takes the embellishments from her own experiences instead of from novels! Reality, too, can be romanticized without becoming pure fantasy. Fantasy doesn't have to be dry and bitter, it can be beautiful and fun, too. Her "if I was your wife, life would be something like this and I'd feel like this" is truly based on her own perspective and feelings- her empathy and interest in others is not a weakness like Chilchuck thought, it's borderline a superpower.

She doesn't just keep his flaws in mind, she also hypes up his qualities!! He is virtuous, bicorn approved, devoted even after separation!! And that hyping up, and optimism that things wouldn’t necessarily go bad if he tried to mend things with his wife, really gave him hope, and also finished up his arc about optimism not always being bad, sometimes even being necessary.

She inspires him to think that things can work out, that he can still be pleasantly surprised even with all his bitterness. After all, he opened up to Marcille and they talked just now, and she forgave him and they made up, didn't they?

And he must have never quite let go of all hope, must stil lhave some left in him hidden somewhere, because in all those four years of separation never has he stopped calling her his wife in present tense, because even after all of them he has stayed faithful and never moved on.

And all of this with the chapter ending with Chilchuck eating a sweet and savory sandwich, which he thought would be bad and inspired disgust in him at first, and being like "Huh, the sweetness actually complements the bitterness pretty well."

THE SANDWICH IS THEM. "Syrup in a sandwich? Sweetness has nothing to do in a meal." IT'S OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM COEXISTING. IT'S SWEETNESS AND BITTERNESS BOTH HAVING THEIR PLACE IN A DISH. IT'S MARCILLE AND CHILCHUCK COMING TOGETHER TO HAVE THE RIGHT BALANCE FOR HIM TO BE ABLE TO SAY "It might not go well like in stories, but I'll still try".

Remember what i said about compromises earlier, balance of optimism and pessimism? He tries it, and it works out despite having no faith that it’ll be good, and he’s pleasantly surprised. SURPRISES CAN BE PLEASANT! They're not just life-shattering, not just dangerous, it is possible to be pleasantly surprised! And this is why Kui is a goddess of telling stories through food.

He’s opening up to her, as he takes that last bite of the sandwich, he willingly and easily gives up an information about his family for the first time <3

Notice how she defends his virtues directly taking from Daltian Clan for her reasoning!

She’s such a wingwoman. Such a cheerleader. Couple therapist. Emotional support friend. 10/10.

Marcille: "he has a shitty personality sometimes but if he was my husband I’d still cherish him" Chilchuck: "damn I needed that" /hj

So this neatly ties the last bits of Chilchuck's reluctance to care about others and being cared about in turn, yes yes Marcille reads him like a book so well that he's left shaking, and this is it, really, their arc is about the balance in loving too much and loving too little, in stifling others with that love and care and interest the way Marcille does vs showing it so little that others don't even know if he cares at all, à la “if we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

Marcille has a whole theme with the prince charming trope, with her idealization and storybook motif and this is sort of the "Well someone perfect like that isn’t very realistic and romance is usually more complex- and that’s ok and good, and flawed people can still be ✨virtuous✨" conclusion. Again, fantasy doesn't have to be perfect to be worth it, to be valuable and lovable and great and precious.

He’s the devoted virtuous man that she wants not the storybook prince that’s unrealistic and could crumble like a script at any time. He’s the perfect example of a flawed realistic but virtuous and devoted and loving family man. Far, far from a prince charming, but not fully detached from it either. Something worth fighting for despite the flawed cracks.

Marcille has this grand fantasy, this ideal of prince charming, a chivalrous gentleman knight, but through canon especially with Chilchuck she learns to not idealize people so much. That acts are more important than aesthetics. The bicorn chapter is all about Chilchuck’s romance being realistic: flawed. And it’s no coincidence that this is what ties their interwoven arc closed, because they learn to compromise, his pessimism and her optimism. Marcille sees and recognizes a romance that is both flawed and beautiful and is able to balance the two decently, meanwhile she convinces Chilchuck that yes it is worth fighting for and having hope for. Repeating myself but it’s easy to think she’s still idealizing Chilchuck during the bicorn chapter, BUT it’s important to notice the differences with the shapeshifter chapter, where her shapeshifter of him was "cute/sweet" "not nasty", an angel who could do no wrong. In the bicorn chapter, not only does he fall from her esteem a lot because she believes he cheated for a good part of it, thus acknowledging that he can be flawed and adult enough to commit adultery, but also! When she roleplays as his wife, she doesn’t erase his flaws!! She knows he has a short fuse and isn’t always pleasant, but believes that he’s worth loving anyways…

And see this is the point!! She romanticizes his life, not idealizes it. The difference may be subtle, but it's there. In romanticization there's how Ghibli depicts mundane scenes of daily life, portrays doing chores like cleaning clothes as something that feels good, something worth doing that doesn't have to be miserable. In Chilchuck's life, in his flawed relationship with his wife, she sees the beauty and light and love to highlight so even if the lifestyle is humble and even if the relationship is tense it seems nice, it seems worth fighting for. She's using aesthetics again, but to inspire instead of stifle, the way she uses them to hype herself up sometimes too.

This is it this is the thing! Her worshipping and idealizing the image of perfect prince charming that will whisk you away on an ethereal romance becomes her romanticizing a realistic flawed middle aged dad with personality issues and a failing marriage, that he still is worthy of love and having his cute grand romance story and his happy ending!!

Marcille has a very hard time conceptualizing a point where love can’t conquer all, right. She’s optimistic and if there’s a will there’s a way etc etc etc. Notably when Marcille speculated about Chil’s wife, she centered around the theory that his wife wanted to "test" him by leaving, that she didn’t feel loved and left to see if he’d chase after her. She believes that his wife would be ecstatic to see him again and reaching out would make them reconcile and happily get back together, no problem. Chilchuck and his wife have been separated for 4 years. When Falin left the academy she and Marcille were separated for 4 years. Marcille has to believe Chil’s wife is waiting for him, that she hasn’t moved on, that she wants to be found. There's a different perspective on time, but there's also... Just parallels. Parallels everywhere. Miss coping, meet coping in an opposite way! And so she teaches Chilchuck to not assume everything is lost before havign even tried, and so he teaches Marcille to let go when it's needed.

She specifically loves characters who think they can’t be loved and pessimistic and dramatic… And story-fying him is literally what she does when she engages with the story of his breakup with his wife like it’s a story to decode, reinforcing the whole narrative about tropes and princes and how he comes to shape her view on them.

Even if the context here is explicitly that she relates! Which, she finds being able to relate to them comforting and a positive point so it being a "type" thing isn’t fully off- but this is what I mean when I say she always keeps a film of emotional distance from people, she wants to love and be loved and know people on the deepest level possible so bad but it’s something that scares her too so she prefers to chase after the safe: the unreachable- the fictional. Like Chilchuck. Bit of tangential speculation, but she wants to crack his shell and make him open up- but it’s also easier because he pulls away instead of pulling in/closer so the relationship is fully in her control in that way, if it weren’t for the teasing… Making her into someone silly in his mind is how he keeps himself from putting weight into her words, how he gets himself to automatically dismiss the wise lessons she tries to instill to him, nope sir he doesn't have anything left to learn, he's an old crouton who understands everything there is to know about this cruel cruel life yes sir. Because trying and being rejected hurts! Because if it wasn't fated to turn out wrong, then it means there was luck or choice, and that makes failures almost more painful! But people leave!! People leave and people come back and new meetings happen and choices are good, choices shouldn't be taken away! Not like how Marcille tries to forcefeed immortality to humanity, as a dungeon lord...

The chapter ends with a panel of Marcille and Chilchuck bantering again, with everyone else going about their business seeming nonplussed while the two are being very loud as if to say, ah, classic them. Return to normalcy, return to their usual closeness and shenanigans. All is well.

The Princess imagery

And now we’re falling into the rabbithole. Imagery doesn’t have to be anything more than imagery, but I discuss romantic connotations in this section (amongst the platonic reality of things ofc), you can skip to the conclusion if you’d rather but you will miss important analysis of the dungeon lord balcony scene, a big piece of the puzzle in wrapping it all up. I found the meaning of life & the world in marchil but it’s ok I get it if you wouldn’t... We're all built different ig. The character with princely chilvalrous knight parallels in the manga is moreso Laios, but Laios too breaks the trope a lot. Chilchuck gets prince and knight parallels but by contrast instead, in subtext more than any explicitly drawn. There's a lot to Marcille's princess imagery and though I've never fully covered it I try to somewhat tackle it here.

For as much as the bicorn chapter is what ends their arc about balancing pessimism and optimism and finding healthy compromises, the arc of their RELATIONSHIP is in the dungeon lord chapter where he fully opens up to her, inviting her to meet his family and all. AND MY GOD, the princess imagery!!

Listen I am trying so hard to keep this unromantic, and to be clear subtext is subtext for a reason, it doesn’t have to be concreticized or "acted upon" perse, but… I think it’s there in this scene, at least a bit. I’ve spent a long time trying to pin down what was so charged in it, besides both of them blushing, despite him offering for her to meet his family, despite it calling out to a genuine deep instilled desire in her heart enough for it to work- for it to make her turn towards them, despite the first thing she does after is shower him in romantic gifts, and it eventually struck me… It’s the parallels with other media, with tropes!! This is HIGHKEY Romeo and Juliet type shit!!! The stuff you see in every couple new kinda trashy romance kids movies! A lady, stashed away in a high tower by her lonesome, waiting for someone to call out to her from below… Romeo courting type shit with a heartfelt spiel implicit confession from underneath her balcony, offering him flowers because he succeeded in calling out to her heart…….. And they have to CLIMB to her.

Remember her succubus' words? "Oh, princess... I can't believe you slipped away from the castle yet again... Honestly, what in the world shall we do with you...? Come, let us return." Again like with her succubus, she’s living through a storybook trope but with Chilchuck’s twist, more nuanced and realistic yet just as meaningful, even if it isn’t strictly OR at all romantic and if it’s more complicated and less glamorous. She’d have to peel the layers to get to the vulnerable truth of it, like anything else. I'm just gonna drop this here...

Doesn’t it sound like a proposal. One that’s both so storybook-like, and contrasted with such real yet unromantic and grounded words, all about the implications rather than in your face grand gestures "Don’t you want to meet my family?". They literally have an arc about the topic of romance and this is the climax/pinnacle of it like god?? I’m not saying this was all intentionally crafted to be romantic but it nonetheless exists in the subtext, ripe for analysis. Of course they talk about planning together his reconciliation wit hhis wife, but the same thing happens regardless, he fully lets her into his life.

And again there’s something to be said about how that is what makes her finally turn around! This is extremely meaningful not only to Chil but to Marcille, the enticing thing that finally hooks her, gets her to finally look down at them. An offer to meet a flawed man’s flawed family, to help him mend it and its issues. It isn’t through the filter of a book, or mere gossip to her, she knows this man and she wants to be involved in his life, to know him and his family herself, ready to meet them and form connections. The clumsy, imperfect reality of a friend telling her he’ll let her into the other spheres of his life even if that means she witnesses the embarrassing and the ugly. It’s vulnerability on both their ends, offered and received, a gambit that was worth taking, both in the moment to talk Marcille out of being dunlord and long term of letting her in to see the deeper sides of him, there are take backsies once someone knows something about you after all. SHE STOPS BEING A DUNGEON LORD IN GOOD PART BECAUSE HE TOLD HER HE'D LET HER INTO HIS LIFE. SAY IT WITH ME, A FLAWED REALITY IS WORTH IT MORE THAN STAYING IN FANTASY!!!! In denial of reality, both that Falin hasn't grown older, that everything can turn out perfectly, and that everything is lost and there's nothing Chilchuck can do to make his wife love him again or even make his party listen to him.

Chilchuck says this after he sees her materialize her parents as doppelgangers. And so he goes on to say- hey your family will never go back to how it was when you were young, my family will never be what it once was either, but we can both move on and make the best of what we have anyways, isn’t that what you taught me, there are more out there! I’m opening up myself to new relationships and friendships because of your pushes, and now I want you to do the same! Life goes on and there’s always more joy and connections to be had! Stop isolating yourself, dammit!

And the thing too with Marcille’s arc is that she can’t get what she wants. She can’t. She can’t get everyone to live forever if she doesn’t take others’ free will away, if she doesn’t make the world stop for her as she plays god with the laws of nature and the cycle of life. And everyone’s important to that arc obviously, Falin during the story is the main object of that fear, and it’s moreso her death that pushes her arc along but it’s still extremely influential, Laios is the main one who sees her insecurities and talks her down, Senshi’s always harping on ecosystems and laws of nature and how resurrections aren’t natural and is there to offer comfort and support, Izutsumi’s someone new Marcille gets to take care of and her farewell talk with her reveals a lot about how she’s grown, but seeing this it’s easy to see why Chilchuck is paired off so much with her on their respective arcs, right? The one who tells it harshly how it is even when the reality is unpleasant, who gives up quickly when it's about things turning good for him but who always pushes and fights on when it matters with the party, who challenges a rose tinted glasses perspective head on.

He looks nothing like a knight but he still acts like one. He’s nothing like a prince or a dashing romantic courting lover but still he gives her a novel worthy balcony heart to heart scene. He’s painfully real and raw but she does bring that twinkle of hope and romantization that makes the world feel more wonderful to him, but like she tells him, he’s virtuous and he should give things a shot because people see good in him too and not only the bad he always shittalks himself for, she’s not making it up, he always had that sparkle of knight and prince in him.

Like, giving someone a handkerchief is literally a romance trope associated with nobles and princes. And Chilchuck has offered Marcille his handkerchief at least twice! The second time in the cockatrice chapter as a bandage. He keeps it in his pouch, with his tools, like the most must-have to offer it Marcille at any moment, ha /j. Prince behavior <3 The cowl like a knight’s favour, a token from a loved one he cherishes above all and keeps on himself at all times. Story tropes shit.

He IS a prince figure instead that now it’s not about idealizing the grand and overt it’s about romanticizing the small things in real life!! About finding joy and beauty in things that seem normal or mundane and uplifting them to make the world feel kinder!!!!

And man this whole angle makes the "Don’t you want to meet my family?" "-gasp- I really do want to! -turns away from eldritch power and living in her demon-made dreamscape that can allow her to live in fantasy to instead go back to flawed reality with her friends-" all that more meaningful and striking. A fitting end to her arc, a fitting hook to get her to turn back towards her and tempt her to give up on being dungeon lord. It’s always been just asking things and anecdotes about him and his family, never talking about meeting them, but by having someone so "fated with doomed love" open up and reach out to her "fated to never love", she opens up too, is willing to take the risk that any relationship entails, the same one that he took by offering it, the same risk they’re both averse to and scared of, loss and rejection. By actually meeting his family she involves herself in the stories she creates. It makes them real. She’s finally involving herself intimately with others, despite the real threat of loss that she will have to experience, wether through time and death or rejection.

Marcille and Chil’s arc, man…….. See, this is why I’ve been tilling the fields of that analysis for months this is why I’m insane about them, not only is there so much to say but her relationship with Chil straight up deconstructs her perspective on the world as idealized and influenced by fiction and fantasy and optimism. Like, he’s at the core of that part of her arc and man!! Man.

And the way that this is the culmination of their arc together… Like the ‘Chil calling out to dunlord Marcille on the balcony has Romeo and Juliette romance novels imagery’ take is one thing but the ‘their arc is about growing to see beauty even in the non-idealized, in the flawed and in the real’... It makes it so so perfect if she were to lower her ideal from a perfect elven prince to a virtuous halfling man (which she does romanticize).

So she doesn’t want a prince, she doesn’t want a general, she just wants this guy she knows, this friend she trusts as reliable, who has good intentions even if wrapped in unpleasant demeanor, that’s all she needs to be content and well and feel safe. By the end, he might even have become something of a prince charming to her, won over with heroic acts and virtues.

After all- Remember when I said she wouldn't be able to be as touchy so lightheartedly as before with him? Well wrong, apparently! This parallel from chapter 23 just before the red dragon fight vs chapter 96 at the final feast confirms that her like of him and behavior with him was unconditional of him being a kid or an adult. Marcille is just Like That and that she just likes him. A good part of what reads as infantilization truly is just how she cares for people in general.

Conclusion

She’s afraid of change, so it's only fair that he would be perfect to teach her a thing or two. She had fantasies but he had experiences, both had bias.

Their arc says that love is a beautiful thing regardless of loss. Something both of them needed to remember. Life isn't like a novel. Sometimes an ending ISN'T satisfying, you don't get closure and it might not even be happy, but that doesn't mean nothing can end well, doesn't mean every farewell is bitter. Peace is worth both fighting for and making for yourself. You can't shut yourself off from the world because things sometimes hurt, there's more of life to live- won't you come meet my family? Won't you meet new people, won't I try to mend relationships that are dear to me? My family is flawed, but it's still worth meeting, still worth loving, still worth fighting for and keeping even with all its flaws, no? Elven storybooks don't feature half-foots, but they're worth spinning grand poetic and romantic tales for all the same. Life is bittersweet, and that's an acquired taste to have, but one good to be able to stomach as a whole.

There’s a lot of reasons why someone would love fictional characters but be afraid of love in reality, not unlike with Laios' and Chilchuck's own experiences love has a layer of danger and fear because it can hurt to love and it can hurt to be loved. People can leave you, and in Marcille that fear's mainly through death but for Chilchuck that’s through just… Leaving. Through giving Chilchuck optimism and hope, drive to keep going despite these realities, she’s also growing to be more comfortable with the thought of relationships ending and moving forward regardless. And I do think that was part of her arc of growing to accept that Falin might be dead dead, I think Chilchuck was a big part in that. Falin is the passive object of the arc but Chilchuck is the active actor pushing it along, in a way.

Because people can always leave, Falin will leave to travel the world, but she might come back- and that's okay. And that’s exactly the thing that the story wants Marcille to make peace with! Falin wants and needs to leave and Marcille needs to be content just taking what she can get, wether it be time with people or the boundaries they set with her. THE BOUNDARIES! THE BALANCING OF OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM! IT'S CHILCHUCK'S DOING!! "The world isn’t all good, but you should be able to see the bright side of what you do get" is what she and Chilchuck learn. To learn that she can still enjoy when she is there, and still reach out to her and keep in touch through letters- to do what you can and to get what you can and to accept that as enough, for it to bring you the joy and peace it can. Don't push your expectations onto others, wether that's being overly intimate or overly judgemental, don't be too pushy but also don't be too afraid and not do anything at all.

In many ways even before, even on the regular Marcille was his gateway into being more lighthearted, always exchanging playful jabs, laughing at her. Teasing her because she teases him, lowering himself to her level until he looks back and realizes he’s having fun with it instead of just throwing jabs bc he’s the master of sarcasm TM.

Chilchuck smiling casually and softly, genuinely, when saying that things don’t work out sometimes, is just so powerful. From the man who always assumed the worst of everything, who always spoke of life and the world bitterly... By the end, while saying these things he’s smiling openly rather than smirking smugly. Carrying on with his go getter attitude with a touch more optimism in his heart. Now he's made his peace with life and sees the good in it, still.

It's all about... How flawed relationships with flawed people can still be made into somehing good and healthy that make the world brighter… How flawed relationships are still worth remembering and cherishing. Except the winged lion, there to represent abusive relationships you need to fucking DITCH.

Marcille and Chilchuck’s arc is about how in life sometimes books do close and end, but other ones can open and start, and to never give up on that. People’s lives, relationships, these things are temporary and inevitably end, but there’s meaning and joy in having been there for them, and focusing on the end and the pain and being pessimistic in it doesn’t keep anyone safe, not meaningfully. "It’s not all nice like in the stories. Sometimes, a book just ends." "And another opens."

Dungeon meshi promotes the important of balance for both a healthy body and a healthy mind, and optimism vs pessimism is one such case <3

MAYBE IT'S ALL COMPROMISES MAYBE IT'S ALL SWEET INBETWEENS. Maybe we'll take our vision of what we thought we could be and make something new together! DRINK IN MODERATION!!!!!! SEE LIFE LIKE FAIRYTALES IN MODERATION!!!!!!! THE RIGHT ATTITUDE LIES BETWEEN IDEALIZATION AND PESSIMISM

Disclaimer:

This was pretty messy but thank you so much for reading!!

To be clear! Does this arc exist in the text, the whole tropes and idealism vs pessimism thing, do they have tangible impact on each other as both characters and narrative devices? Yes. Is Marcille and Chilchuck the central piece of the story? No. Is Dungeon Meshi about this and how it all culminated into a cool Romeo and Juliette scene? Lol no. Chilchuck isn't the most important person to Marcille and her story nor is Marcille the one most important to Chilchuck. Just like the other major characters in the story, their dynamic and progressing relationship is a plotline/subplot amongst others, and the level of layers and subtext it possibly has doesn't erase any other part or subtext of the story. Arcs can coexist. Multi-layered relationships can coexist. Just a reminder that this is my own analysis and interpretation of canon.

Dungeon Meshi is about food and how it ties us to a life that’s worth living, about unity and trying to understand that which you do not, to not demonize that which is different or unknown, to connect with others even if it’s hard, even if it’s in unusual or undescribable unlabelable ways, and Marcille and Chilchuck’s relationship is certainly a pawn in these themes like every other relationship.

I’m having fun, but I don’t want anyone getting lost in the sauce. It's unfortunate that to many, acknowledging there's any merit to analyzing this subtext is equal to supporting a ship they dislike, but this isn't ship propaganda, this is analysis of canon text where I happen to see a more niche angle. You can disagree with an interpretation without saying that it's nonsensical.

Like I don’t wanna say I’m a marchil truther but if you define it as believing canon does have genuine and credible basis for it then yeah I guess I am. I feel insane everyone acts like they have no chemistry and no material and??? We exist on different planets I think Like I know I implied some romantic undertone but in canon it totally can start and end at two coworkers bonding and getting to know each other better and see each other’s perspective and it influencing them both for the better. No buts, you can totally do that. Although this plus the crumbs it drives me up a wall when people say they have no chemistry or ‘how come people see anything in this pairing?’ They’re literally a comedic duo? A comedic duo that interacts so so much that gets paired off in scenes, a thematic duo which is even acknowledged and reflected in the anime’s opening. He teases her 24/7 canonically because he finds her reactions fun/cute, the only person he teases on the regular, and she’s obsessed with knowing more about him and loves being touchy on top of it, plus reads him like a book because she files away every little thing about him in her memory, like if that isn’t a strong basis for a ship I think the bar has gone too high. I’m derailing but yeah just. Do you see all of this? They drive me insane, I feel like I’m reading the necronomicon when analyzing them, picking up on subliminal messages, I keep always seeing new threads. And it’s been my otp for like 2 years now, idk when they’ll stop having a grip on me but????? There’s just so much to dig into with them. There will never be another pair like them. Do you hear me there’ll never be another duo that hits all of these like this, do you see this insanity? They are my lifeblood and if i’m eating up anything them-related it’s because they’ve earned it so hard tbh. So yeah if I’m ever dramatic about marchil it’s because I have this 100k words novel narrative in my head and marchil is the meaning of life to me hope this clears it up

Which on that note idk what or when my next Marcille & Chilchuck analysis will be. I might very well make a bite sized, summarized version of this analysis because asking people to read all of this is kind of insane of me... And full disclosure I’m also very likely to edit points in or tweak bits every so often in this analysis because idk if I’ll ever stop thinking about it, and phrasing can improved. This has been in my drafts and outlined more than a year and I’m literally still adding extra points save me. I might also do a different angle on their arc because here yeah I mostly just dug at the prince trope angle, at ONE of many angles... Like one interesting thread in the manga is Marcille emotionally maturing and becoming more like her mother, on top of her regularly being a mom type friend the way she looks after Izutsumi and Falin, which could be interesting to pair with the fatherhood of Chil. Hmm. Anyways

And obviously do whatever you want, but this analysis and all is why I personally can’t stand the fanon that Chilchuck and Marcille have a father-daughter undertone. It goes against their arc together, which is explicitly, literally about her acknowledging him as a man, an adult, about coming to see each other truly as peers and her coming to validate him as an adult, then a father and husband from an outside perspective and a friend, and inversely him coming to not belittle her profession and philosophy. Their whole arc is about learning to see each other as an equal and equally value each other’s perspective and opinion. You could argue it’s also the arc that happens with Izutsumi, but honestly with her it’s a lot about Izutsumi learning to compromise and others instilling lessons to her onesidedly while learning to respect her perspective and boundaries, it’s not nearly as much of a reciprocal thing. Izutsumi needs to be heard, but she also needs people teaching her and guiding her. Imo it cheapens the arc, the whole point is that they’re just two people who grow to see each other as equals, that the Laios party is coworkers turned friends. Marcille doesn't need a new parental figure, she needs friends who'll keep her in check the same way she does them.

I do love the way that the manga avoids romance. For every romantic undertone there’s a platonic explanation that is just as compelling and especially to this degree it’s both rare and wonderful. I think that a lot of people need to learn that sometimes ambiguity is the point instead of something that needs to have a specific objective answer. Sometimes the intent is for something to be able to be read in different ways in itself, or that the complexity of the relationship is canonically something that cannot be put into a neat box. Which! Next analysis I'm very intent on making is gonna be about unlabeled relationships in Dunmeshi and queerness, see you there!

Fast and dirty TLDR

Marcille’s personality is very serious and direct. Due to this, she frequently gets into arguments with the master of sarcasm, Chilchuck. Chilchuck views Marcille as “the friend who cannot shut up”. He is often the practical foil to her more imaginative or idealistic views.

She actually thinks very highly of him! "He’s usually the most mature one of us" "he’s dependable, we’re counting on him" "No chilchuck is definitely virtuous", and at first it’s also through this twisted lense that he’s a kid, like she has to put people into boxes so they’re more digestible, tropes, in line with aesthetic, and at this stage it’s hard for her to see Chilchuck as being even able of wrongdoing really. And gradually that gets challenged when she sees that yeah, he’s an adult, and then BAM bicorn chapter- Because by then ok fine he’s an adult, but it hasn’t quite fully settled yet as we see in the shapeshifter chapter and she still has a warped view of him a bit, she has an accurate grasp on his behavior yet still sees him as a little angel. And then she "learns" he committed adultery. Her esteem for him hits rock bottom and she spends the chapter cold to him, she still cares and comes running when he’s hurt, but she’s set on mean mugging him, until it’s revealed that- He didn’t actually. Oh, actually he just has family angst. And she starts roleplaying and having her novel vision again BUT THIS TIME HER MIND VISION OF CHILCHUCK IS OVERTLY FLAWED. He’s angry and his wife left him, he’s *flawed*, but he’s still worth hyping up, still worth having his own romance story, still has a shot of winning back his beloved. She sees him for what he is, human and real and not a carefully scripted character that fits an aesthetic, and she thinks it’s still worthy of love and admiration, worth fighting for.

The prince charming figure has importance in Marcille and Chilchuck’s arc, where she romanticizes things to a sometimes worrying degree or idealize people into something more poetic, easy and digestible (like Chil being a kid, and then him being a virtuous ✨✨✨husband), and where she needs to learn to value aesthetics less and actual acts and facts more, be more grounded (like seeing people for what they are flaws and all, but seeing their virtues too, like accepting that people need money and not pulling through on principles of honor or unity shouldn’t get Namari shamed) and a part of that is accepting that Chilchuck is BOTH flawed and virtuous, a loving husband that still has shitty moods and fumbled his marriage so bad etc etc. So it’s like, her image of perfect prince charming that will whisk you away on an ethereal romance -> realistic flawed middle aged dad with personality issues and a failing marriage but who still is worthy of love and having his cute grand romance story and his happy ending.

Their arc together is literally learning to 1) see each other for how they are and not undermining their qualities and capacities etc etc while still not leaving flaws unchecked either and 2) opening up to people. Marcille LITERALLY makes Chil open his heart up to hope like idk man. What do you want from me. He’s literally the guy helping her through deconstructing novels and fantasy and rose tinted glasses and like. Deconstructing the prince charming figure into something more real but still a virtuous husband like KUI KUI STOOOOP STOP I’M ALREADY HOOKED I’M ALREADY-

#Dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #analysis #character analysis #Meta #Marcille donato #chilchuck tims #dungeon meshi manga spoilers #spoilers #The day has finally come #Initially I just wanted to share the kabru bit but then I realized that you need so many building blocks to see my vision oogh #Marchil #Marchil bc the analysis is about their relationship in canon not bc this is a truthism post to be clear. Pls give this a chance #if i've ever managed to amass good faith with you and the topic interests you even just a bit please read this... Please maybe perhaps...#Y’all know me i analyze every second of chil’s life. Would I stab you in the back. Trust meeee #I’m here for a fun time pls pls no sending me hate just take the hot take or don’t #If you wanna know why i’m most brainrotted about marcille n chil in dunmeshi this is why!!! This!!#'what do marchilers see with their special eyes' GESTURES TO THIS!!! Welcome to the marchil necronomicon #started this analysis in january of 2024 send help #Flexing my literature analysis diploma… Insane overthinking shit layers deep like we did in college.#Dragging the subtext into the light-kicking screaming #this is so long and wordy sorry i'm attempting to communicate why their arc is so magical to me. Also I don't want my post to be misconstru #Fumi going deranged simulator descending into madness. This makes me ILL and TINFOIL HAT whenever I work on it like oh my god #RATTLING THE BARS OF MY CAGEEEE #it's all connected it's all So Much they make me want to BARF so much my mind expands. help #They were literally (narratively) made to complement each other and change each other for the better I'm so okay #fumi rambles #Man Marcille’s “from idealizing him to liking him even for all his flaws bc his personality is often kinda shitty” arc #and Chilchuck’s “prejudice against elves and mages into respect and trust” arc are everything to me #“Come back this instant *princess*!!! Smh smh what are we going to do with you” reenactment of the dunlord scene in spirit <3

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utilitycaster · 3 days ago

Note

I've seen some people compare Vax's resurrection in C3 to bringing back Molly (later revealed to be Kingsley) in C2E140. How do you think these two scenarios differ and why does one work and the other doesn't? Also, do you think C2 scenario would still work if Taliesin played it like it was in fact Molly that was brought back (as Mighty Nein originally believed) and not Kingsley?

Hi anon,

I mean, you kind of answer it here: Molly wasn't resurrected. Kingsley, a different aspect of the same fragmented soul within that body, was. This isn't bringing back someone who died; it's starting a new life from what was left. It's thematically coherent with the rest of the Nein's stories, both in terms of many of them coming together still getting over a devastating loss or change and becoming someone new in the ashes of that; and with the very specific endings of many of their stories: probably most obviously with Caleb, choosing to leave his parents to their rest and instead building his own life in the model of what he wanted before the Volstrucker training, but also with Beau embracing the Cobalt Soul, Yasha finding new love, Veth and her family restarting their lives in Nicodranas, Jester with a deeply altered but intact relationship with Artagan, Fjord with a new patron, and Caduceus with a renewed grove.

I admit in 2x140 I cheered that nat 1 on resurrection, and the success of the Divine Intervention gave me pause, particularly on the heels of such a fantastic moment between Essek and Fjord after it failed. I went into 2x141 with considerable trepidation, so Taliesin's choice to have Molly remain dead while still making the Divine Intervention mean something was an unexpected joy and some truly excellent storytelling. I do not think it would have worked well had he brought back Molly, though it wouldn't have been quite as egregious as Vax coming back, and I'll talk more about that at the end.

Vax coming back fails on every single level. On a basic level, there is really no mechanical or logical justification for it to happen. There is no attempt from Vox Machina to bring him back as a mortal. There is no reason for him to revert from celestial to mortal (and the fact that he'd already left at the top of the episode really underscores this; I'd still have my other complaints had he still been with Vox Machina at the time of Catatheosis but this really makes no sense); angels of the gods canonically remained such during the first time the gods became mortal. It is not something he asked for, nor Keyleth asked of the Matron. It simply occurs. Then, of course, there is what it means for the characters. What does it say that Keyleth never moved on? What does it say that Vax never gave her the space to do so and now she doesn't have to - particularly in the statements during 4SD that their actions both were somewhat unhealthy and that Vax's inability to let go is what enabled Ludinus's plan to succeed in the first place? What does it say, as this post points out, about Scanlan's choices?

And then there's what it says thematically across the entire decade of storytelling: What does it say about such stories as Orym's or Yasha's, about finding new love after loss? In a narrative where the party was faced with an incredibly difficult choice with far reaching effects (whether or not that narrative was well done, it was a story of choices) what does it say that Vax's conscious choice to become a revenant and have a few more days with the people he loved rather than remain dead was ultimately simply a long inconvenience?

And finally, what does it say about the casts' past statements? I was struck with the grace with which the cast handled the backlash from Molly's death. Liam spoke of the meaning of death in narratives; Ashly Burch shared an incredibly moving essay on the death of her partner at a young age; and the conversation on Talks in which Matt talked about the importance of death was one that at the time I dearly loved. In it, Taliesin pointed out the ephemeral and physical nature of Molly and the concept of that character, and how there was no way to bring back Molly without destroying the entire premise. The reason Molly wouldn't be as much of a failure is because at least it would have been driven by the actions and choices of the Mighty Nein, and that we did not have insight into how Molly felt about his demise.

Because that is the other thing. We've seen Vax multiple times since his death, at Vex and Percy's wedding and at the Malleus Key, and both times he was greatly changed and did not agree to stay. He didn't change his mind; it was changed for him. And in the casts' past statements, Liam has been an advocate (as he was in Molly's death) for the importance of death and tragedy. How does that square with all of what they said then?

It's damning that the only defenses of this decision have been entirely Doylist (when I have both Watsonian and Doylist critiques) - that Happy Endings Are Good. The thing is, Keyleth's story could have been a happy ending, as the Mighty Nein's was despite their loss. It was a choice to have Keyleth never get over it. That is, ultimately, the only choice that was honored. I do understand a desire for a happy ending, but I find this desire for not just a happy ending but a vanishingly narrow and particular one to be childish, self-indulgent, and destabilizing of previous storytelling integrity. The song Tokyo Sunrise always was in a major key, after all.

One thing that came to mind while I wrote this up was something a few people have pointed out about Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which is that it consistently has a message that prioritizing immediate catharsis often feels hollow in the end, and cuts off opportunities for growth and redemption, and the gameplay is consistent with that narrative. It can feel good to punch the First Warden, or to leave the mayor of D'Meta's Crossing to his fate, or imprison Illario, in the moment; but these all ultimately serve as a detriment to your goals. Even fighting or tricking Solas rather than giving him an ending on his own terms, the last choice you can make in a game that ends immediately after, is something many players have reported as feeling unrewarding after a day or two. I do wonder whether this decision, to bring back Vax, felt good in the moment, but will similarly sour and curdle in time.

#cr discourse #critical role #long post

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thistleation · 9 hours ago

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I feel like there's some form of misunderstanding happening here, either on what the Hays code was, what OP was talking about, or likely both, but also potentially on the nature of art criticism.

So like, first off, the Hays code was largely self-censorship by the film industry, because actual government censorship (which was looming on the horizon) would've been even worse.

But probably more importantly, there is the fact that the Hays code reduced complex engagement with art down to blunt rules that can be used for making things palatable but cannot meaningfully engage with either art or ethics.

So like, to take an example and make this more concrete, we could take a hypothetical hays code-like rule that says "fascism in stories should always be punished."

Now, with an individual work, you can criticize it along the lines of "I think this story glorifies fascism and it's trash," and that can be a perfectly valid take. But if you ban all stories where fascists don't get punished, you immediately also remove the opportunity to tell the very real historical stories about fascism that didn't see an immediate repercussion for the perpetrators, and so you destroy a lot of the ability for art to have a meaningful role in the conversation about it.

And it might not be censorship since you yourself aren't the government, but if you're saying "depicting [X] in art without the perpetrator being punished for it is always morally objectionable and therefore wrong," you are kind of saying "if the government banned instances of these, I would like that," and while you're not doing censorship, you are kinda arguing in favor of it.

Circling back to my example, again, on individual work, you can (and often should) absolutely criticize. You also need to be prepared for your criticism to not always be 100% correct. You might for example argue "this work glorifies fascism," while someone else goes "no it doesn't, it reads more like a dark satire to me, and any supposed 'rewards' for fascism in the narrative are hollow and horrifying," and then you might counter "well, if that was the work's intention, then I feel it's poorly executed." And then you can both go more deeply into the nitty and gritty of it, and maybe you never fully resolve it, but you both staunchly agree that fascism is wrong and this entire exercise only affirms that, and with any luck you both only deepened your understanding of the subject matter by going into detail and hearing contrasting viewpoints.

That's how art engages with the larger social and ethical conversation, even when the work in question might not be that good and have deep flaws to it.

And again, all that kind of critique and dissection is totally fair game.

No one said you had to condone everything every artist ever wrote, I'm not sure where you'd have gotten that, but it's definitely not what OP was talking about.

So again, "I have serious issues with how this work handles [X]" is perfectly reasonable, but "I think depicting [X] in fiction is always morally wrong," is arguing for the side that will try to censor or otherwise silence artistic expression.

now say it with me: authors/artists dont owe you moral purity. an author/artist job is not to hold you by the hand & tell you exactly what is Good™ & what is Bad™. you should be able to think for yourself

#long post #discourse

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prettyboykatsuki · 2 days ago

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idk how but i saw your caleb fic on ao3 and your note about caleb and incest and… i have some mixed feelings.

dumbing caleb’s character down to him just being in an incest trope is kinda wild? he’s definitely more than that. and as a black reader it would be hard to imagine that we would be blood relatives. your whole note just comes off very close minded and exclusionary in that regard.

this isn’t at all to knock incest at all btw but yeah

💀💀💀 i don’t think this is bait so im going to try to answer this in good faith but im also not sure what to say to this ask

“dumbing down caleb’s character to an incest trope,” i don’t think you are correctly identifying what the trope in caleb’s romance is but it’s not incest itself. incest is a theme in caleb’s romance, that has narrative purpose. the familial relationship is integral to caleb’s character and his view of mc. caleb experiences cultural values of being the oldest son in his sense of duty and responsibility towards mc - and this, externally, conflicts with his romantic affection and desire for her.

their relationship exists primarily as brother and sister. but the romantic and sexual aspect is also there, which would make it incestuous. this to me, is not up for discussion. i’m assuming you did not read the fic, merely looked at the tags and presence of sexually explicitly content and assumed what is actually being discussed in the text without actually reading it

additionally, i put in the tags and also in writing that caleb and mc are adoptive siblings. which would negate mcs race being relevant in the first place ? they are also, again, canonly adoptive siblings in the game - stated in every language except en localization which deliberately scrubs the evidence of this. i state in my authors note i base my caleb on the cn translations

all of my mcs are race neutral because i am not white but south asian. describing my work as exclusionary when i explicitly write to make sure my readers don’t include any number of visual descriptiors is insulting.

i think it would be more honest if you did just say you did not like incest and did not want to read it. that’s your prerogative. it’s not responsibility to monitor what you do or don’t read though

#return to sender #incest cw #diss course

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wardensantoineandevka · 2 days ago

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genuinely, I'm tired of trying to talk about C3 being narratively unsatisfying because it doesn't feel like the characters haven't been given neither the full space to breathe but also I feel that the narrative didn't follow through on any consequences or set-ups, and then just being met with the thickest wall of "you're just an edgy hater for saying Bells Hells doesn't deserve their ending, they DO deserve to be happy because they suffered their entire lives and struggles and they don't deserve a bad ending"

like, that's the entire issue, isn't it. people keep thinking about "deserve", people keep treating Bells Hells like they're real, living, breathing people instead of narrative objects and elements of a story

that's been the issue from the start of the campaign, and this is all the same exact conversation we're having. at least, i've been saying this from the start, that a lot of narrative analysis or commentary on characters that is anything less than fawning is contentious because people who are reacting to those commentaries are approaching Bells Hells as if they're real people and keep conceptualizing what they "deserve" in terms of how a real person would be treated. and it's tedious.

you're all free to find me, and others of similar mind, pretentious or edgy or boring or snooty, but so long as the counterarguments rest on the idea of "what they deserve", it is kindergarten

#I remember writing this about Laudna in the Whitestone trip #and again when I said it'd be interesting if Imogen continued to run into people who weren't willing to be endlessly patient with her #and her telepathy and continued to chafe against her and people threw TANTRUMS #and now #like... maybe I don't care about “deserve” when it comes to discussing narrative structure bc they're not people. they're pretend.#they're narrative objects who are vehicles to explore and convey a story and that includes in AP.#and some of you are very very bad at understanding that and respond personally to people critiquing them bc you act like they're real #that or some of you are overidentifying with them so that's why you're taking it all personally. but then that's only very few.#Critical Role things

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m1ckeyb3rry · 2 days ago

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Synopsis: Sunday is your mirror, as you are his — or, how meeting him spells your doom, just like losing you spells his.

HSR Masterlist

Pairing: Sunday x Reader

Word Count: 7.2k

Content Warnings: female reader, second person in some parts and third person sunday pov in others, religious themes because…it’s sunday…, not canon compliant because idk wtf happened in penacony and i don’t feel like figuring it out, not lore compliant either because i’m #toocool for that, ooc because i wanted to make sunday a freak, major character death but not really on screen just mentioned/implied, unreliable narrators, halovians are Very Different (both from their canon depictions and from humans in general), robin mentioned but she’s also probs ooc idfk i’ve never written for honkai star rail and i’ve played for like a month tops, sunday is a d1 piner, sunday loses it, sunday crashes out, weird narrative structure, very nonsensical, in terms of endings we have no endings (it’s like open to interpretation ig), m1ckeyb3rry’s monthly drop of MID

A/N: i wrote this really quickly for my beloved illu’s birthday!! unfortunately i didn’t get the idea until like two days after the date itself so it’s a bit late LMAOO also it sucks but. it has SUNDAY !! my first foray into the hsr verse…hehe…anyways illu i could go on about how much i appreciate you and how glad i am that we’re friends but for the sake of conciseness i shall leave it at HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY GOAT @milksnake-tea I LOOK FORWARD TO ANOTHER YEAR OF CRASHING OUT TOGETHER 🙂‍↕️💖 LOVE AND KISSES I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS A BIT!!!

There is a ghost waiting for him in the confessional booth. Velvet curtains cover the latticed wood, obscuring its contents from his view, but the effect comes to nothing. He knows she’s there, he always does, he can feel her presence. It’s a chill seeping into his bones as he kneels — he doesn’t need to kneel, of course he doesn’t need to, but it’s a habit he’s yet unwilling to break — and clasps his hands together. It’s a supplication for something, but it isn’t until his mouth is opening of its own volition, his wings fluttering in alarm and his eyes widening as the words are wrenched from his lips, that he realizes what he’s begging for.

“Please,” he whispers. His voice echoes in the empty room, mocking him, teasing him. Please. Please. What right does he have to ask her anything? He’s sure that’s what she’s thinking. He’s sure she’s laughing in that odd way of hers, and his throat constricts at the image. “Please—”

Forgive me? It reverberates in his mind, that fragment of a thought, jagged at the edges, sharp like a blade and twice as cruel. Isn’t that it? Forgive me. Forgive me. Please, forgive me.

“Condemn me,” he says instead, and then he’s struck by a burst of anger, hot and unyielding and entirely at odds with the weight of his tongue in his mouth, which is all leaden and unwieldy and clumsy and despicable. “Condemn me or forgive me or what have you!”

He waits, as he always does. One, two, three. He counts on his fingers, an invisible metronome ticking in his mind, mechanical and perfect in rhythm, keeping time for his vigil. Four, five, six. The curtain flutters in a phantom breeze, and for a second he can pretend that he sees a flash of bright in the darkness of the booth, a dancing shade like a glittering iris peering back at him. Seven, eight, nine. He doesn’t care what she says. He doesn’t care about any of it. As long as she says something, it’s fine. Condemn me. Forgive me. He’s not sure which he would prefer at this point.

Ten.

The ghost is silent.

The first time you met Sunday, it was raining. Everything about him was limp in the storm — his clothes, the fabric clinging to his slender frame; his hair, spilling onto his pale brow and trailing down his mannequin-straight back; even his wings, which drooped miserably towards his shoulders, the preened feathers translucent at the edges from dampness.

When he turned to glance at you, you expected his demeanor to shimmer with the famous benevolence of his family. Sunday Oak, the heir, the young lord; certainly there would be a kindness to him, a gentleness permeating throughout the very essence of his being. Certainly he had been born a saint, anointed in the waters of his mother’s womb before he could even draw breath, incapable of humanity’s many shortcomings and fallacies. Certainly these things were true, and that was why it frightened you all the more when, for one singular moment, his impassive mien crumpled into a glare, as baleful as it was captivating.

His eyes were a sharp, canny gold, feline in both shape and shrewdness, framed by lashes clumped together with wet. They were terrible in the way of a dying star, that peculiar brand of horror so beautiful that it was impossible to look away, and indeed you stood transfixed until he cleared his throat and arranged his face into a polite smile.

“I wasn’t aware we had visitors today,” he said. He spoke carefully, perfunctorily, reading from a script he must’ve memorized long ago. You stiffened, for although he had not given you any reason to think it, you were suddenly very certain that you were not supposed to see him like this, his fingers curling over the slick rail of his balcony, his dark abdominal wings folded tightly over his stomach and his halo dull in whatever light struggled through the clouded sky.

“I was just leaving,” you said. “I must have made a wrong turn. I apologize for disturbing you, sir.”

“You needn’t apologize,” he said, and there he was, the man who you had expected: Sunday, the scion of the Oak Family. Gracious Sunday; magnanimous Sunday; Sunday the prince and Sunday the saint. He was so finely constructed it made you wince, his blinding delicacy and keen refinement eerie, preternatural. A baser instinct of yours told you to run, reminding you of a time when those of his kind ruled over humanity with impunity, pleading with you to save yourself before it was too late.

You bit back your fear so hard that blood exploded over your palate, salty and sweet in turn, viscous as you swallowed it back and offered him a smile. He did not return it in full, but the corners of his mouth curled up slightly. That should’ve been soothing, but it only served to worsen the electric anxiety running through your veins.

“I shall call my sister and tell her to fetch you,” he said. “I would hate for you to find the Oaks remiss in our hospitality. I am sincerely sorry that you were not given an escort earlier.”

There were so many things you could say to him. I ran. Does that make me remiss? I’m the one who ran from them. You could reassure him, promise him that you would be alright on your own and there was no need for Robin to come. You could do any of these things, yet you were frozen like an insect in the amber of his stare, and so you did not.

“Thank you,” you said, bowing slightly, lowering your eyes to his leather shoes in a valiant attempt to free yourself, “for your generosity.”

“Do you think it’s possible for people to forgive themselves?” he asks his sister. They’re sitting in the parlor, porcelain teacups in their hands, pinkie fingers raised primly in the air. His sister’s cup is chipped at the base, but every time he tries to throw it away, she pitches a fit, which is so uncharacteristic of her that it renders him speechless. This one is special, she insists. There’s doves painted on it. See?

It isn’t special, there’s countless others exactly like it, but he caves to her whims far too easily, as he always does. He’s prone to it, after all; she wants for things so rarely as it is, which means denying her few requests when she makes them is nigh-impossible. So he allows her to keep the ruined cup, on the condition that in his presence, she holds it in her left hand, for he never wants to see the blemish again.

“I’m not sure,” she says. Her voice is always dreamy, but as of late there’s been a tangible sadness to it. He’s asked her what’s troubling her countless times, but his every attempt is met with a shake of her head and a solemn oath that it’s nothing. “Maybe.”

“I don’t think that it is,” he says. “At least not at first. You can’t forgive yourself before you’re forgiven by anyone else.”

“If you were already so sure of the answer, brother,” she says, cocking her head at him, “then why did you ask?”

“Hm?” he says, furrowing his brow. She takes a sip of her tea, and maybe it’s the angle or maybe it’s a trick of the light, but he swears that that dammed chip is taunting him, smarting like a peeled-off scab.

“It’s a strange practice of yours,” his sister says, batting her eyes at him in a way that makes him feel shrunken and tiny, as if she knows everything and he knows nothing, although by all rights it’s the other way around.

“What do you mean by that?” he presses, voice coming out harsher than he’d like. Cringing, he sets his teacup down and folds his hands in his lap. “My apologies, sister. I — I did not mean to speak to you in that way.”

She raises her drink to her lips, smiling at him over the dove-painted rim, and says nothing more.

Robin Oak was like nightshade, the most beautiful flower you had ever seen and, incidentally, the most poisonous. She was lilac where Sunday was silver and sapphire where he was gold, but although the edges of her halo and her face were rounder than her brother’s, as malleable as he was rigid, she was no softer than he. Perhaps she was even colder for it, all the more deadly, unassuming and quiet, poised to strike with a warbling song and a tittering giggle.

“Hello,” she said, and although the two of you were ostensibly having a normal conversation, she still talked like there was a song in her voice, her cadence lyrical and amused. “We’ve been looking for you for a while.”

“I didn’t go very far,” you said, following after her as she navigated the hallways without hesitation.

“Of course not,” she agreed. “But who would’ve thought you’d end up in Sunday’s room?”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” you said, cheeks heating up at the sly implication. “I sincerely thought I had happened upon some study or restroom where I might recuperate.”

“He does keep his surroundings austere,” she said. “I’ve tried to convince him to hang up paintings or photographs, but he refuses. He’s like that.”

“I see,” you said, as neutrally as possible. Robin must’ve sensed your disinterest, for with a soft, breathy, chuckle, she steered the conversation away from her brother and to another subject entirely.

“Ah, you mentioned recuperation? Do parties tire you, too?” she said, and maybe it was manipulation or maybe it was genuine kindness, but it disarmed you all the same. Bashfully, you nodded, your shoulders hunching in on themselves involuntarily as you continued down the corridor.

“They are exhausting. I can never handle them for more than a few minutes at a time,” you confessed. She wrapped an arm around your torso, a companionable vice of a grip, and although you shouldn’t have been, you were surprised to feel that her skin was blazing to the touch.

“Nor can I,” she said. “There’s a commonality. Let’s be friends.”

It was a command, not a request. You knew better than to believe that Robin Oak would request anything; the world was at her feet, the universe shifting so that her words became truth, so why would she bother with questions and hesitance the way the rest of you did? She was no more human than Sunday. She was even less, only just as good at pretending, at painting on a doll-like mask to disguise her lies.

“Well, then it is a pleasure to be your friend,” you said.

“Don’t talk like that,” she protested.

“Like what?” you said.

“Like I’m somebody important, or like I have a status worthy of only the highest respect,” she said.

“But you do,” you said. She nudged you in the side with some measure of eagerness.

“No, no, forget about that,” she said. “I’m just like you, okay?”

“Okay,” you said, even though that could not be further from the truth, even though she could not be further from you.

“I swear on truth,” he says to the congregation, the beige churchgoers in their beige robes with adoration sparkling in their devoted eyes. “I swear on the calendar. I swear on words. I swear on values. I swear on rules. I swear on meaning. I swear on—”

A chill rushes down his spine, icy fingers grabbing onto the roots of his wings and yanking. He hisses under his breath, prayers of rebuke and protection, nails digging into his palms as he chants furiously, lips moving too fast for the gatherers to understand what he is doing.

Anxious murmurs arise like the songs of a choir the longer and longer he is frozen. Somebody coughs. A child whines audibly. He continues his chanting.

Ena, the Order; Xipe, the Harmony; defend me in this tribulation. Curse this evil, bind its spirit and banish it to whence it came. I swear on truth, I swear on the calendar, I swear on words, I swear on values, I swear on rules, I swear on meaning, I swear on—

The hair by the nape of his neck is ruffled, and then the sensation vanishes and he is left alone once more. He is grateful for only a moment before he mourns her absence with a sudden savagery that takes even himself by surprise. It’s a contradiction, but she is a contradiction, so it’s fitting. He could never understand her before, so why should it be different now?

Clearing his throat and subtly adjusting his lapels, he raises his hands to silence the throngs of worshippers. They do his bidding at once, and he closes his eyes so that he does not have to see their naïveté at this final part, so that he is speaking to himself and the ghost alone — because nobody else matters in the end.

“I swear,” he says, his heart beating faster and faster until it is almost bursting from his chest and pounding in his skull, “on human dignity.”

What do Halovians know of human dignity?

“Nothing,” he says, responding to the unasked question as he turns away from the others, away from their applause and their grins. His wings cover his eyes and his hands cover his ears as he leaves the cavernous hall, the thunder of laudation fading and fading, replaced with nothing but a whistling, lonely emptiness. “They know nothing.”

He pauses, his eyes darting around surreptitiously. Then, when he is sure he is alone, he continues, under his breath so that no one can hear even if they try very hard to.

“I know nothing.”

He is sure of this much, at least.

On Halovians:

They abide by a so-called “divine creed” which they refuse to divulge to outsiders. However, they maintain that if they break these secretive laws, they are punished severely in what amounts to a foreshortened process of decay. Their holiness and altruism is, thus, not a choice but a compulsion; the one sin they are permitted is lying, and many will spin tall tales as a form of indulgence.

They are comparable in ability to the sirens from Lucyke — indeed, many researchers believe the species share a common ancestor and are one of many examples of divergent evolution found throughout the cosmos. They are nonthreatening when approached, capable of rational thought and intelligent speech, and have advanced societies with defined familial structures; hence, they are classified as a Level 0 Intelligent Species.

His halo is cracking. He doesn’t know when it began, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say he doesn’t want to know, but regardless it’s happening. The burnished gold, once a plain, gleaming expanse, is now marred by thin, unmistakeable fissures in the shape of spiderwebs. At first, he can only stare at his reflection in abject horror, but then he’s stuffing his fist in his mouth and screaming.

What will people think? When they see it, they will know what he has done. It’s tainting him. It’s above him and behind him and all around and he can’t escape, he can’t do anything, his halo is cracking and he’s screaming and she’s there again.

“Stop it,” he snaps. “Stop coming back. If you’re only here to torment me, then — then stop it!”

Is she laughing? She must be. She always laughs at him, always finds him so curious. An oddity. A Halovian. He’s not like her, she’s fond of reminding him, he’s different. He’s born for the Harmony and the sky. He’s born for a purpose greater than hers, with black wings and a bright halo and a tongue made to lie.

“Don’t leave,” he says when she begins to withdraw. “Hey. Hey. Don’t leave — don’t leave me — I can’t — don’t!”

Her absence is like a hole carved into his stomach daily anew, and if his wings weren’t losing their feathers so rapidly, he’d fold them over the gaping wound in an attempt to disguise it, to transform it, to hold himself together until he can once again become whole in earnest.

It’s pitiful. He’s pitiful. He longs for a ghost who he despises, a ghost of his own making, a ghost who is pulling apart his halo and his wings and his sanity alike. She is ruining him and he is powerless to stop her; somewhere deep inside of him, he’s not sure if he even wants to. This is what he’s owed. This is what he deserves. No matter how much he begs, she will not forgive him; no matter how much he prays, he will not forgive himself.

This time when he screams, he does not bother with muffling it.

You were certain that, in the pools of her mind, in places unknowable and unreachable, Robin believed that she loved you. She repeated that lie so often that she fooled everyone, even herself — everyone, of course, but you. You knew the truth. You knew that she never had, that she never would, that she never could.

“This is my very best friend in the entire universe,” she’d say, holding your palm against her heart. “I love her.”

She carried it like a trophy or a weapon, that meaningless phrase. I love her. Lilac instead of silver. Sapphire instead of gold. I am not a Halovian. That was what she really wanted to say. That was what you really meant to her. I am human, too. Treat me like I am human. Talk to me like I am human. Love me like I am human.

I am human.

His sister is worrying about him. He wishes he could allay her concerns like he always does, wishes he could promise that it’s nothing, that he’s fine, but whenever he tries, he can’t. It sticks in his throat, and he’s left to stare at her miserably, helplessly.

“If you need anything…” she murmurs, voice trailing off into nothingness as she pretends like she’s not looking at his halo, which is on the verge of collapse, or at his wings, which are approaching a skeletal state. “Maybe you should stay home today. Someone else can pray.”

“No,” he says. He has to do it. If he doesn’t, then he has nothing left — which is the truth, really, but he can’t accept it. Not yet. “No, I—”

He wants to say I can do it, but the words won’t come. She waits, but when he does not finish his sentence, she only sighs and nods.

“If you think that’s what’s best,” she says. If she’s expecting a response, she won’t get one, or at least not one that’ll satisfy them both. He can’t maintain his facade anymore. Those carefully constructed falsehoods which were once his birthright have abandoned him; now, he is left with nothing but the truth in its harshest form, his eyes sewn open to it and his wings tied back so he can no longer cower behind their trembling defense.

Unlike his sister, Sunday never pretended to love you. Indeed, he treated you no differently than he treated everyone else, keeping a polite, reserved distance between the two of you at all times. He was kind when you spoke, though he tended to avoid such occasions, and he took great pains to ensure that he appeared as harmless as possible, pulling his wings close to his body, averting his eyes from yours and shifting so that his halo was always partially obscured.

Robin told you that he was a proud man, so the fact that he shied away before you meant something. I’ve never seen him like this, she would ponder when he would sidle past, his feathers blending in with his pale hair, a coat thrown over his shoulders and his gaze trained directly ahead even when he greeted you. It’s unlike him.

It’s kind. That was all you ever said when she prodded at you for answers. He’s being kind to me.

Unlike her brother, Robin didn’t understand what that meant, so she would only embrace you, deceptively strong despite her frail figure, wings extending to skim along your skin in what she must’ve considered a sign of affection.

I’m glad you’re getting along, she’d say, and then you’d wonder, invariably, what it’d take to break the chords of her speech. Was she capable of producing dissonance? Or was it one of her many blessings, that avoidance of discord, of cacophony? I’m really glad. I hope one day he loves you, too.

She never asked you to love him back. She never dared to even hope for it.

“I can’t recall you ever laughing at me this much when you were alive,” he says, lying on his bed with his limbs splayed out. He’s looking up at the ceiling, which is bare, as are the walls, and the furniture — entirely by design, of course. Periodically, his wings will flap weakly, wracked with nervous tremors as he waits for her to quiet.

He doesn’t reprimand her anymore. The prospect of chasing her away is unbearable, even more unbearable than the sound of her mirth, which is as wrong to his ears as music from an untuned piano. So he ignores it, and when it is particularly agonizing, he speaks to the empty air, saying everything and nothing all at once in an attempt to silence her.

“You would ask me questions,” he remembers, drumming his fingers against the mattress. “But you wouldn’t laugh. I don’t think you found me amusing, unless I tried very hard to appear that way. I was better at it back then. At becoming what people expected of me.”

She’s not laughing anymore, but he knows she hasn’t vanished yet. She’s there in his periphery, poised to disappear as soon as he turns his head but there nonetheless. Taking advantage of the rare silence, he sits up, hugging his knees to his chest and closing his eyes.

“I didn’t pretend quite as much when it was you,” he says. “You know that, right? By the end, I couldn’t bring myself to at all.”

Does she believe him? He can’t tell. If he were her, he wouldn’t believe himself, so likely not. Exhaling heavily, he collapses backwards, tangling himself into a pile of blankets that he pulls over his shoulders.

“I should have lied to you more often,” he says, eyes drifting shut. “Maybe things would be different if I had.”

On Halovians:

Halovians are the only Level 0 Intelligent Species that do not choose long-term mates, although there is evidence to suggest that in the distant past, they remained with the same partner for life. According to legend, this is because they gave up fidelity for falsehood, trading their ability to love eternally for their freedom to lie at will.

Research disagrees with this old story, and many alternate theories have been proposed. The most common and widely-accepted is the claim that the Halovians once faced extinction and thus had to procreate at speed, leading to a permanent shift in their mating habits. The most substantial proof for this, of course, is the otherwise-inexplicable population boom…

You couldn’t say for certain when you began visiting Sunday in his room. It had happened so suddenly and yet so gradually that by the time you realized what you were doing, it was too late for you to stop. He never did anything untoward — you doubted he was capable of it — staying at his desk and scowling at his work while you wandered about, familiarizing yourself with the confines of the space.

“Why don’t you decorate?” you asked him one day.

“Decorations are only needless distractions,” he responded promptly, signing a paper with a flourish that, somehow, represented his name. Sunday Oak. You didn’t know how something so enormous and grand could be summed into two squiggles and a cross, but he seemed confident of it, so who were you to question the method? “I cannot fathom sleeping with such clutter surrounding me.”

“I see,” you said, and that was the end of it.

Your conversations with him typically went as such, endless games of question-and-answer, where you would ask whatever was on your mind and he would respond as truthfully as he was able. You often wondered when he would grow tired of it, of you, but he never did. You asked Robin why it was so, and she only shrugged enigmatically.

“Maybe he’s glad to be the one speaking for once,” she said.

“What do you mean?” you said.

“You ought to ask him,” she said. “He might not tell anyone else, but if it’s you…if it’s you, then he’ll definitely answer.”

His sister’s hands are frigid on his shoulders. She’s warm by anyone else’s standards, but for a Halovian, she’s always been cold. Even when she was born, half the size she should’ve been and with eyes as boundless as the sky, she was freezing, a shivering slip of a baby shoved into his arms by his bleeding mother.

“Your halo is breaking,” she says to him, but she’s angry, her melodic voice wavering as her fingers dig into his muscle, shaking him back and forth. “It’s breaking. Why is it breaking?”

She’s glaring at him, tears welling at her lash-line. He wants to reach out his hand and wipe them away, but more will replace them in an instant, so what is the point? She shakes him again, harder and harder, and he allows her, because he’ll always allow her impulses, and because he’s never seen her like this before.

“Why?” she says. “Why is it breaking? Tell me what you did, brother, tell me what you did!”

She isn’t asking because she wants him to give her the answer. She’s asking because she wants him to deny it, to tell her that she’s wrong, that the conclusion she’s arrived at is incorrect somehow. Once, he could’ve. He could’ve made up some story about tragedy and misfortune, and she would’ve believed him, as she always did.

That was their relationship. He lied and she believed him. She asked and he obliged her. But now that he can not lie and she has nothing to ask for, what is left?

“You know already,” he says. She gasps in the manner of an injured animal, berry-stained lips parting, indubitably to hurl accusations at him.

He doesn’t think he can handle hearing them, not from his sister of all people, so he leaves before he gets the chance.

“Does it feel strange when people touch your wings?” you said. Sunday was in his bed today, afflicted by some illness of the lungs, and you were rummaging through his bookshelf, pulling out volumes at random before putting them back where you had found them.

“Huh? Why do you ask?” he said, raising a porcelain cup to his lips. It was prescription, a medicine reeking of menthol but wearing the guise of peppermint tea — the only way, according to Robin, that he would drink it. A servant had brought it and presented it to him with a bow, walking out of the room with a look thrown at you over their shoulder, concern and envy blending into something razor-thin and cutting.

“I don’t have any,” you explained, taking out a book and tracing your fingers along the gold lettering of the title. “I can’t fathom what it’d be like.”

“Come here,” he said, and although it was mildly done, you obeyed immediately. You could never forget what he was, not completely, no matter how hard he tried to make it so that you did. You would always be human and he would always be Halovian; this fundamental disconnect was insurmountable, and anyways, you had no interest in surmounting it. It’d serve you well to remember these many little differences between yourself and the Oak siblings, between yourself and Sunday in particular.

He extended his hand, the palm facing up, and dipped his chin towards it. You tilted your head in confusion, for the act was all but inexplicable, and at this he smiled. He did not smile very frequently, and it transformed his face when he did, lighting it up, turning it into something close to human — not quite, but close. Closer than he ever was otherwise.

“Here,” he said, setting aside his teacup and using his other hand to place yours against his, wrapping his fingers around your wrist and then waiting. “Does that feel strange?”

“No,” you said.

“It’s the same for me,” he said. “To you, my wings are bizarre and outlandish, but to me and those of my kind, they are simply another body part. No more or less fantastical than an arm or an ankle.”

“Ah,” you said. He settled back against the cushions of his bed, allowing the wings by his ears to stretch out comfortably, closing his eyes and letting out an exhale that shook with the remnants of a cough.

“You want to touch them,” he said. He phrased it as a statement, not a question, and when you paused before answering, his smile grew imperceptibly larger. “I don’t mind it.”

“You don’t?” you said. He shrugged.

“It’s only fair,” he said, pressing down on the point where your veins nearly surfaced, tapping in time with your pulse before drawing his hands back and clasping them together in the cavity below his ribcage. “I wouldn’t have told you you could if I’d hold any resentment for it.”

“Aren’t Halovians known for lying?” you said. He snorted.

“Have you been doing your research?” he said.

“It’s common knowledge,” you said.

“We are,” he said. “But I swear I will always tell you the truth.”

“How can I believe that? What if that’s just another one of your lies?” you said. He cracked one eye open so that he could peek at you, and whatever he saw must’ve proven your seriousness, for he hummed in thought, carefully considering your words.

“I suppose you can’t,” he said. “It’s your prerogative. Do as you’d like, then.”

He closed his eyes again, which you supposed was his version of an invitation. Waiting until his breathing stilled and he was caught in some form of repose — whether he was truly unconscious or not escaped you, but either way he was certainly in some altered state of mind — you extended your arm and brushed your index finger against his feathers.

They were as soft as you had anticipated, cottony and shapeless compared to the firm flight-feathers of the pitch-dark wings jutting out at his sides. The bones were hollow and slight, as if you could break them only by taking them into your fist and squeezing. This was such a contradiction to the appearance he so carefully maintained that your heart softened to him despite your greatest efforts to guard it.

“Those ones are mostly down,” he said, startling you out of your daze. You had assumed he was asleep and had allowed your movements to become casual and complacent. Jerking your hand back as if he had burnt it — which he just as well might have, given the temperature of his body — you held it to your chest and took an involuntary step back while he adjusted himself in his nest of bedding. “In antiquity, back when we still ruled the skies and rarely touched the ground, it was considered a sign of friendship for Halovians to groom one another’s upper-wing feathers.”

“And now?” you said.

“And now it means nothing,” he said. “Fetch me a new cup of tea if you have the time. This one has grown cold, and I am yet unwell.”

The feathers he used to be so proud of are fraying at the edges. He hasn’t cared for them in so long, hasn’t carefully misted them or doused them in diluted soap in ages, and now they have come to this. Scraggly and broken and bent and wrong.

Sticking a finger in his mouth, he rubs it along his teeth and the bitten flesh of his inner cheeks. Decay. This is decay. He’s seen it so many other times, in so many other forms, but never did he think he’d experience it himself. And least of all so quickly! Yet it has come for him, as it comes for everyone in the end.

He finds it’s different this time. It’s different when he’s the one who’s dying.

“They say it haunts us,” Sunday said. His arm was heavy over your waist, his blankets pulled up over your chin and tucked tightly around your shoulders. Your forehead was flush with his collarbones, your eyes fluttering shut as he played with the hem of your shirt while he spoke. “The first time we kill something. It haunts us to death.”

“Is that why you’re vegetarian?” you joked.

“Yes,” he said, and although he sounded grave, you could tell he was joking, too. “Can you imagine being followed around by the ghost of a chicken and then dying while it watches?”

“A horrible way to go,” you said, laughing at the image of Sunday plugging his ears and running from the shadow of a bird as it chased him, his own wings flapping furiously as it squawked at him with no small amount of indignation.

“Indeed,” he said with a laugh of his own. Then, after a pause, he hummed thoughtfully. “You should laugh more often.”

“I’ve been told my laugh is grating,” you said.

“It’s not,” he said. “Not at all.”

“Then I shall endeavor to do as you ask,” you said. “I will laugh until you tell me to stop.”

“I’ll never tell you to stop,” he promised, and you should’ve known better than to trust him, because he was a Halovian and donning that impenetrable mask of his was a part of his nature, yet you couldn’t help yourself. You did, you trusted him more than anything or anyone, and didn’t that make you a fool? A happy, laughing one, maybe — but a fool nonetheless.

He is close to collapse when he drags himself to his bathroom. Leaning over the counter of his sink, he grips the marble edge, noticing in fascination that his knuckles are almost as white as the stone. He almost can’t endure the thought of looking in the mirror, but in a last burst of inspiration, he drags his gaze up to his haggard reflection.

His heart skips a beat when he realizes he’s not alone. Standing there, beside and behind him, is her. The ghost. His ghost.

Her face is placid — she’s not laughing, and neither is she frowning. He doesn’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but he can’t change it, so who is he to complain? He waits for her to speak, but she is silent, and he considers calling out for his sister before deciding that this time, this once and never again, he will be selfish.

“It’s you,” he says, reaching out and placing his fingers against the mirror, where the image of her cheek is distorted by imperfections in the silver.

The metal is cold under the involuntary curve of his palm, which tries to follow the contours of her face but finds it to be impossible in the second dimension. Then again, to him, she was always cold, so there’s no difference, except that she is flat where once she was whole, empty where once she was everything.

“I killed you,” he says. It’s the first time he’s spoken it aloud, the first time he’s spit out the words that he’s been dancing around ever since she appeared to him, almost a year ago exactly. Somehow, it feels like a dagger driven into his heart and a weight lifted off of his shoulders simultaneously. If he had the strength, he’d run down the hallways of the mansion and scream it at everyone.

I killed her. I killed her and now I am dying for it. You bowed your heads in reverence to me, and all along I have had this blood on my hands. I killed her! How does it feel to have followed a sinner for so long? How does it feel to know that I am forsaken, and that one day, if you are so lucky, you will be, too?

Sunday’s mouth on yours was hot like a furnace, clumsy and demanding, with a lingering aftertaste like menthol. At first, it alarmed you, the overwhelming sensation, the much of it all, but before you could even pull away, something in the back of your mind twisted, and then you were grasping for anything you could. His hair, his wings, his shirt, it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, you only needed to hold onto him in some way. You could not breathe without him. You could not live without him.

That was your first indication that something was very, very wrong.

On Halovians:

Much like their presumed cousins, the sirens of Lucyke, Halovians are irresistible to their prey. Unlike the sirens, the Halovians no longer hunt; some assume that this must be one of the religious laws they abide by, while others argue that it is mere ecological responsibility.

Simply put, the Halovians were too efficient as hunters. Several lesser species have been driven to extinction by their efforts, and it is only due to the reduction in Halovian numbers, their vows of vegetarianism, and concentrated conservation efforts that the food webs on the Halovians’ native planets have stabilized in recent years.

“Sunday,” you said to him one day, when the sun had not yet risen in the sky. “I think that I will die soon.”

His mouth moved, but no sound came out. No, it seemed he was trying to say. You won’t. His lips formed the words, but they wouldn’t take shape in his throat, wouldn’t bloom into existence, and you watched as he struggled for a while before pressing the heels of his hands to his forehead.

“Yes,” he said.

“It will be your fault when I do,” you said. You weren’t accusing him; you said it simply and plainly. You were dying. It was his fault. He was the curse and the cure, if a mere prolonging of the inevitable could be considered as curing it.

He was quiet for so long that you assumed he had forgotten about the question entirely. You did not begrudge him for it — how would he answer, anyways? There was nothing that he could say which would change it. There was nothing that he could say which would reverse what he had, knowingly or unknowingly, done.

“Yes,” he said when you were halfway to dozing off.

“What?” you mumbled, the contents of the conversation already escaping you.

“Yes,” he said. “It will be my fault.”

The ghost doesn’t say anything, watching him as he turns on the sink and splashes the water onto his face in a futile effort to cool himself off. He’s feverish as he pushes himself back into a semblance of good posture, pacing back and forth along the length of the bathroom. He can only see her in the mirror, and he wonders if he somehow trapped her there or if that’s her way of teasing him; she must find him so absurd, storming away from her visage before crawling back to it like he is starved.

“I didn’t know,” he says. “You must understand that. I didn’t know! Not at first, anyways. I would’ve sent you away. If I had known, I would’ve sent you away…”

He can hear her feet against the tile, copying his own path, but he dares not turn around. What will he see if he does? What emotions will reflect in her eyes? The first time he saw her, it was fear, unadulterated and pure and choking him with its overwhelming intensity. Then, over time, it warmed into something resembling indifference, which in turn became fondness and then, finally, a sick sort of dependence, the former liveliness and curiosity glazed over with vacancy and fixation.

“I did this to you,” he admits. He’s read that accursed book on Halovians and their accursed vestigial organs and accursed archaic hunting methods so many times that he knows this for a fact. He killed her. “But I didn’t — it wasn’t my intention, please, it wasn’t, you must know that. Did you die knowing that?”

When he halts, she halts. When he takes a step forward, she does the same. It’s maddening. He doesn’t want her to echo him. Her steps sound like a prophecy, the drumbeat to a seer’s chant, and they clang in his head, the antithesis to everything he holds precious. Order. Harmony. And then there she is, discord, cacophony, waiting for him at every turn, inescapable and unavoidable.

“It’s the truth!” he snaps. The argument is entirely one-sided; the ghost never speaks to him, after all. She only laughs and sighs in turn, but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot convince her to say anything. “I can’t lie anymore. Although, that’s irrelevant; when it comes to you, I haven’t been able to lie in a long time.”

Ena, the Order; Xipe, the Harmony; defend me in this tribulation. Curse this evil, bind its spirit and banish it to whence it came.

I swear on truth. I swear on the calendar. I swear on words. I swear on values. I swear on rules. I swear on meaning. I swear on human dignity.

He’s murmuring every prayer he can think of. They play in an endless loop, springing to his lips at random, more like nonsensical jumbles of words than anything coherent. A prayer for salvation. A prayer for forgiveness. A prayer for protection. A prayer for order. A prayer for harmony. A prayer to banish her. A prayer to bring her back.

A prayer to bring her back. A prayer to bring her back. Bring her back. Bring her back. Bring her back.

“I won’t come back, you know,” she says. That’s the first time he’s heard her voice in so long, and he’s startled to find that it’s almost foreign, like he’s already begun to forget her, like she’s turned into something entirely beyond his understanding.

“Why not?” he says, his voice cracking as he scrambles for purchase against the wall. “I’ll do anything they ask. Anything you ask.”

“It doesn’t matter what you do or who you beg,” she says with a snicker. “You can’t bring someone back once you’ve killed them. You should’ve regretted it earlier; it’s meaningless now. Well, anyways, I have a question for you.”

He swallows but nods, his back to her, vision blurring out of focus as he squints at the plain wall in front of him.

“If you could meet me again, would you?” she says.

“Yes,” he says without thinking, because of course he would. How could he not?

“Knowing that it would kill me?” she adds, giggling.

Is this what it’s like for those who he interrogates? Now he is the one who cannot hide behind the comfort of fabrication, who must strip himself bare to an unsympathetic audience. He hates it, in truth. He hates it more than anything, but — but he doesn’t hate her, so clenching his jaw, he nods once more.

“Yes,” he says.

“Oh, my,” she says. “How romantic. Careful, or I’ll think you really do love me.”

He whirls around. “I do—!”

There’s nobody there. He wonders if there ever was.

#sunday x reader #sunday x y/n #sunday x you #sunday #sunday hsr #hsr x reader #hsr #honkai star rail #reader insert #canon au #hierophant #m1ckeyb3rry writes

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dolche-tejada · 3 days ago

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"I respect shirakumosolos opinion because he's realistic"

Saying villains shouldn't get an happy ending because it's unfair isn't realistic, it's just moral. And claiming these villains deserved to die because "an eye for an eye" isn't either, it's the classic edgy teenager bs you can find everyday on the Punisher subreddit.

"and I also see what you're trying to convey but the world didn't work like that."

Yes and that's kinda the problem in MHA. The Hero Society is consistently framed as heavily fucked up but in the end, problems are either swept under the rug or superficially addressed. Yet Horikoshi treats this situation as if everything was fixed or soon to be when no, shit barely changed.

"You are disappointed with the ending of the manga because the Hero is alive and well after they save the world from the villains."

Nope, I'm actually disappointed by how villains are either dead or incarcerated for life in miserable conditions despite Horikoshi spending hundreds of chapters building up themes and a development for them which should have logically resulted with them being saved.

If a story promise its audience something only to do a 180° at the last minute and pretend it was the logical conclusion, it's perfectly legitimate to call out this bullshit for what it is.

And since this is the topic of this post, I'm also annoyed by how Horikoshi unfairly favored the heroes with a blatant lack of consequences for their actions and stakes overall while the villains suffered from them at every corner. Not by the heroes winning a conflict they were obviously going to win at the end...

"Villains who caused the mass destruction in Japan, which in turn cause harm to the public."

Which doesn't change anything to my point. Yes the LoV committed atrocious crimes across the plot, it's undeniable. But the thing is it isn't the point, the question wasn't about whether they should be forgiven or if they deserved a redemption. Hell Tomura, Toya or Toga never even asked for that to begin with, none of them seeked forgiveness (at least not for killing people).

Their entire point was about them being saved by Deku, Shoto and Toga, this was literally their arc but they weren't. Horikoshi can sugarcoat that with all the "Toga was truly happy thanks to Ochako", "Toya got to reunite with his family" or "Tomura got his soul saved by Deku", it's just narrative gaslighting.

Despite all his speeches about trying to understand and rescue Tomura, Deku didn't save him. Worst, he never made a proper plan to save Tomura or tried to talk with him despite this being literally his goal for weeks

The only thing Deku did during the final arc was beating the shit out of him so hard his body crumbled to dust. That and taking a look at his backstory...

Toya spending some time with his family is sweet but it would have been way more coherent if Horikoshi wrote an ending where he was actually saved by them like they textually intended to. Instead of painfully keeping him alive for a few years before passing out offscreen...

As for Toga, I'm pretty sure that suicide doesn't count as "being saved" either, even if it's to save someone you care about.

"I see your point and I truly wanted the Lov to live but they already redeemed themselves by saving the people they care about.

Except again, that was never the point, this story wasn't a redemption one about a group of "evil" characters trying to be better and actually doing so by sacrificing themselves at the end.

It was a story about a new generation of heroes learning from the mistakes of the previous one and improving society by saving villains instead of just beating them to a pulp (something textually framed as wrong many times) among other things.

But again, it just didn't happen. None of them were saved.

"Toga bleeding to death trying to save Ochako not because she scared of Tartarus"

Meanwhile Toga a few instants before sacrificing herself

"because she finally have someone who understands her and sees her. A friend."

And because from her own admission, she knew dying was still better than rotting her whole life in prison, even with Ochako for friend.

"Shigaraki is free from AFO control. Cool."

And he died like 15 seconds afterwards due to Deku beating him into dust so it may just be me but I don't get how he's supposed to be free now.

"No concrete proof that villaint will murder innocent people. Didn't Dabi confessed on the live TV that he killed 30 peoples include innocent people?"

This point concerned Twice, why are you switching the subject on Dabi ?

"The hero shouldn't kill the villain but the villain can kill the hero?"

When your job is literally neutralizing criminals without killing them, that you can effortlessly subdue them at any point and that they are trying to run away, yes stabbing them in the back is rationally not justified, in addition to being also outright fucked up.

"I can't take the logic because look at Batman and Joker."

Yes and Batman isn't in the wrong for not murdering him. I've already had this debate hundreds of times, I won't refute the same eternal bs arguments once again.

"Eye for an eye."

Believe it or not but most modern societies have evolved over the last few centuries beyond this childish and stupid approach of justice.

Also for someone who truly wanted the LoV to live, it's strange that you're reasoning exactly like the people who wanted them dead.

You know, I think this ending would have been slightly less of a fucking disappointment if the heroes hadn't been so unfairly favored by Horikoshi compared to the villains. I mean, seriously

Deku destroys every bone in his body multiple times throughout the story and is warned that if he continues, he'll permanently lose the use of his limbs ? Everything's fine, his body's just got used to being reduced to a bloody pulp somehow so there's no consequences for him. In fact even when he literally loses his arms to Shigaraki, he gets them back two minutes later thanks to Eri because guess what ? Her horn still works even when cut off from her body. How convenient.

Gran Torino gets his ribcage obliterated by Shigaraki ? Don't worry guys, he'll survive that despite his old age and injuries, and this to have no particular role in the plot afterwards.

Bakugo dies heroically trying to buy time before Deku arrives ? Lmao, did you really believe it ?? No of course not, Edgeshot just uses his last-minute Deus Ex Machina to save his life at the cost of his own and- Oops nope he's fine too, my bad !

Hawks murders a criminal fleeing for his life in cold-blood ? The best Hori has to offer is him completely free and in charge of the HSPC.

And no, losing his quirk isn't a real consequence for him because not only it literally played a major part in saving the world with Vestige!Hawks raising an insurrection among AFO's quirks, but also because his quirk has always been the element through which people exploited him.

Endeavor abused his family for years and completely destroyed his eldest son ? No jail time and no media backlash for that, the only blame he received was due to the heroes' failure to stop the League during the Raid Arc.

And don't even get me started on this bs about facing hell or whatever for what he's done : He's literally free and wealthy ; he has Rei, Fuyumi, Shoto, his sidekicks and Hawks on his side ; and all the difficulties he's apparently going to suffer are off-screened.

Deku had to sacrifice OFA and his future hero career to save the world ? Guess what, Bakugo invested all his time and money to make him an Iron-Man suit and now he can still be a hero with everyone else.

There are plenty more examples of this but I think you get the idea. Now let's take a look at the villains' ending :

Toya is now a piece of charcoal kept artificially alive for the few years he has left, unable to move a finger, and whose few minutes a day during which he can stay awake will be spent talking to his father who abused him as a child.

Toga, a literal teenager, killed herself to save Ochako and because she knew it's still better than rotting at Tartarus her whole life.

And not only did she die but she did by bleding to death. Let me repeat for those who have trouble grasping what I've just said : In a manga where the heroes can survive having their heart blown to bits, being impaled Kakyoin-style or smashed against buildings like a fly on a windshield, one of the main antagonists died of a fucking hemorrhage…

As for Shigaraki, after learning that his very birth and all the tragedies of his life have been orchestrated by AFO, after all this development and narrative promises about him being saved in the end... Deku just kills him.

Because despite all his speeches about saving him, it seems like the best our MC could do was beating him both physically and mentally until he crumbles to dust…

Compress on his side is apparently locked up for life and kept alive by machines too.

A begging Kurogiri tried in a desperate attempt to save Shigaraki, only to be unceremoniously blown up by Bakugo and dying off-screen without anyone giving a shit, including Aizawa and Mic.

And Spinner will now spend the rest of his life struggling with the extra quirks inside him that affect his body and mind, while having to cope with the thought that his boyfriend best friend and companions have either died alone or are locked away for life in horrifying circumstances.

Clearly not the same as with the heroes...

Now don't get me wrong, even if they suffered just as much from the consequences of their actions or the plot as the League, this ending would still be a disaster in terms of writing but AT LEAST it wouldn't reek that much of hypocrisy.

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sirazaroff · 2 days ago

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Hey :)! Just asking but how does Glinda hide her scars on the visible parts of her body(like hands or the one on her face). And if anyone ever noticed did Morrible say that Glinda got attacked by the Wicked Witch?(you don’t have to respond with a drawing :), hope you have a good day/night)

Hey there! Thank you for the inquiry, I know yall are waiting on me to say SOMETHING since first posting the two ideas. Such a tease I am~

I will make a disclaimer that my ignorant ass has yet to know what goes down in act 2. I have plans to change that soon enough. Here’s my current take on things but I’ll make an update if they no longer have any merit in the timeline.

And speaking of a timeline, just keep in mind that after she’s struck on the back, the final beats of act 2 start to play out: Glinda going to Kiamo Ko and witnessing Elphaba’s ‘death’. The Wizard leaving and Morrible tries to grab power before Glinda can, and then failing. Glinda takes over as ruler and changes Oz in Elphaba’s vision.

——————

So, why does Glinda cover her scars?

It’s cause of her image as hope to the masses. The Good Witch can’t be appearing all busted up like that, people will ask questions. They’ll be afraid that the Wizard can’t actually help them, or at the least that Glinda can’t. Truthfully she’d rather people believe the truth but between the threat of more punishments from Morrible, and the fact that she’s putting her own public image and safety at risk, it’s better to just hide the scars. No one ever really sees them and so they never question it.

——————

Now let’s talk about how she covers them.

My thought process is that with her hands she would hide those with gloves during the frequency of the beatings. Gauze underneath, hoping they won’t bleed thru while she’s away from the palace. When Morrible eased up on this, Glinda switched over to covering them with makeup since they could finally heal over.

For her lip, Morrible gave her 3 days to figure out how to deal with the fresh wound before throwing her back into the spotlight. The pain of this caused Glinda to resent smiling. This scar would also be hidden with makeup once healed.

Now once she’s struck by lighting, all of this goes out the window. Glinda is quite literally bedridden for a few weeks and her absence is dully felt. Ozians are aware something happened at the palace, but they’re not sure what and who did it. In that instance it was easier to just blame everything on the Witch and rile up the public. (This narrative falls apart after Morrible tries to make for a power grab. Ozians will learn that it was she who hurt Glinda).

When Glinda can finally stand again, she’s in no shape to work. Of course that doesn’t stop the Wizard from having Glinda stand out on her balcony and address the worried masses.

From here on out Glinda doesn’t cover up any of her scars, only her demeanor. Even if she wanted to cover her back, it’s too large and touching the entry point sends a jolt that feels as sharp as when she was first stricken. She’s riddled with constant pain and walks with a limp, but when in public she acts like everything is peachy and is full of smiles. Glinda does this mostly because the people need a leader and if she shows her true ailments, there’s bound to be a threat for power by those taking advantage. Years down the line she’ll eventually retreat within the palace, unable to physically do much anymore but drink in an effort to numb the pain.

#fooze #non art #wicked the movie #wicked the musical #wicked #madame morrible #glinda upland #glinda the good witch #elphaba thropp #I should give this idea a tag but idk what to call it #yeah! hopefully this makes sense. I ramble so much it’s why I draw for answers too. to get to the point lol #she covers them up until Elphaba dies. then she stops caring about anything #the people are quick to turn on Morrible because Dorothy and co vouch for Glinda’s character #‘uh yeah why are we letting this old woman kill the only good public figure we’ve had in a while?’#if only it were that easy to restore Elphaba’s name 😔

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infini-tree · 3 days ago

Text

episodic - part 4

< back | next >

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Summary: Everyone doubles down.

A/N: alternative chapter summary: Melvin Has A Normal Day.

once again thank you art of book for listing all the faculty names and subjects.

on that note: Melvin's characterization. since this au is primarily based on movie continuity, in the end i decided to defer to its lead. which makes things difficult, as most of his inventions were all pretty lowkey (and the turbo toilet had been further augmented by a third party), and some future plots hinge on his more OP inventions. scene 2 is meant to bridge the character gap between all his incarnations, and also narratively sets some stuff up for this AU. i did say he's a core secondary,

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With the final bell rung, Benjamin made quick work of packing his suitcase. Considering how fast the kids ran out of the school, the halls should be quiet now. The last thing he needed was noise and talking. And so, he stepped out into a reception room filled with faculty.

Not just talking– yelling. At him.

He glanced over to Anthrope, who should have shooed them all away. Her now-empty seat was still swivelling.

“Of course,” he grumbled.

“Whadd'ya mean 'of course'?” Rected griped.

“We’re up to our eyelids in marking these brats’ worksheets!” Ribble waved a stack of papers at his face– all from the impromptu beach day, if he read the date right. “And you expect us to mark an entire grade’s worth of volcano projects?!”

“Clearly it's not just the students that need to apply themselves.”

The rest of the teachers froze.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” He narrowed his eyes, his tone still as clipped from the announcements. “Aren’t you the one always complaining about their marks?”

“Well, yes, but–”

“But nothing, you're the one who insisted on teaching three subjects.” He moved on to other teachers. “Meaner, you’re only doing the running tests– I don’t see why you’re complaining. The most you have to do is make sure they don’t trip over their own shoelaces.”

“The papers–”

“Because its so hard keeping track of when kids stop running.” He turned to Guided. “And you– all the tests are based on stuff your class should have covered by now.”

Guided grumbled something about how the topics were from the start of the semester, no one remembers that.

“Dayken–” Said teacher jolted up from the back. “What are you even doing here? You're a kindergarten teacher.”

“I wanted to feel included--”

“In any case, all I’m hearing–” He pointed an accusatory finger at all of them. “Is that all of you are mad that you need to actually do your job.”

“Excuse you?!” Ribble shot back. No other teachers spoke up.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do before you barged in here.” He pointed at Rected and Ribble. “You have until the end of the week to make it work.”

He could feel something tighten in his chest flare as he saw the teachers back off. It wasn’t relief, but it was a near thing. At least he wasn’t on the back foot.

“Dismissed.” The tone broached no argument.

The impromptu staff meeting ended– not with a bang, but a whimper. More accurately, it was a grumble of swears that cannot be recounted in a fanwork made for general audiences. He watched all the teachers skulk out of the room with a leveled glare.

None of them dared to look back.

If we could have, we would have. Who else would agree?

He stood there until he was absolutely sure he couldn’t hear anyone nearby. After that, it was just a matter of going down the steps. Of making it through the hallway.

Ignoring how unmoored he felt. He looked to his feet– left, right, left, right. Repeat until he was at the door.

It wasn’t the first time anyone would have thought that about him. Heck, it wasn’t the first time the quiet part was said out loud. It was, however, the first time it was actually doable.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, Ben?”

“Guh–” He whirled around. “Edith!”

She blinked. He stared. The silence lingered a bit too long for his liking, though it was clear she wanted to say something.

“Do you need anything?” he managed.

“Are you alright?” When no answer came, she continued to trail off. “I mean, I– I saw everyone goin’ up to your office. And then there was the announcement earlier, so–”

“Of course I am.”

Another blink. “O– oh, uh, ok, then…”

“OK, then.”

Edith persisted. She trailed behind him closely as he came closer to the door. Most days he’d be a little endeared to it, but right now, right now–

“So, where are you going to set up this whole ‘science fair’? You, uh. Forgot to mention it.”

Of course he did. “The cafeteria. It has the space for it.”

He held a hand up to the door.

“I guess the floors have to be cleaned early…” she mumbled. “Uh, hey– wait!”

He had barely half-opened it.

“If you need anything, just ask, OK?” Then, in a lower voice, she added: “I don’t know why you’re actually doin’ this, but–”

His hand was gone as he whipped back to look at her. “Actually?” he snapped back.

“I– I know you, and you wouldn’t be doin’ this without a reason.”

“Know me?”

His rage was already so spent– from the boys, the teachers, the other guy, it can only persist for so long. It doesn’t billow out so much as burn him out from the inside. And when pushed that far, something had to give.

“It took you a month to realize I wasn’t being an idiot on purpose,” he said. “The real question is why didn't I do it sooner.”

Edith’s eyes widened and her shoulders shrank at the remark. Guilt curdled in him, but it was a distant thing. He wanted to leave. He wanted to reach out and take it back. His body chose the worst compromise between the two and made him stand there like an idiot.

“OK then.” She looked away. “Um, I guess I’ll prep the cafeteria for it then.”

“OK then,” was all Benjamin could manage before she left to do just that. Which was fine. That’s what he wanted, right? He needed to get going too.

Left, right, left, right. Car. Drive. He forced himself to focus on the road completely. To hold onto the wheel like a lifeline. And it worked. At least until he hit the first red light– and then the thoughts crept in.

He should have said something different. He should have said it differently. What kind of answer was I should have done it sooner, anyway?

His knuckles turned bone-white at his grip.

Still, he felt unmoored– like a sharp turn would make him leap out of his own body, and– If we could have, we would have, George’s voice rattled in his head. They had the motive, and they had shown time and time again they had the means.

And yet here he still was: sweating in sixty-degree weather.

He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was yet another thing to mull over and hang over the other guy.

---------------------

For the next two days, the elementary school was a minefield for George and Harold. Which was why they found themselves stumbling around a corner and quickly entering the nearest empty classroom. The small mob ran past the corner none the wiser.

Harold gave a forlorn look to the stack of comics in his arms. “I don’t know how much of the sales can take this.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it.” George placed a hand to the other boy’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”

A pause. The other boy gave a cautious look around, now that they had a moment to breathe.

“Well, maybe put that on hold for five minutes, what the heck is up with this classroom?”

The classroom looked normal for the most part– if you ignored the absurd number of desks. There had to be triple the amount– several stacked up on each other like a fortress or maze walls. One precarious tower looked further away than it should be possible in a room this size, but it could easily be tiny desks.

“What the…”

“You two!” a voice cried.

“Ah!” Harold yelled.

“Ah!” George yelled with a little jump.

‘Ah,’ Melvin did not yell. Instead, he said: “I’m surprised you two aren’t out for recess.”

They were still standing by the door so there was no chance of him sneaking past them, and his shock of ginger hair would have stood out if he had decided to stay in.

“Yeah, well, I’m surprised you, uh… you…” George said, letting the statement hang. “-- That you’re not working on something for that pop science fair.”

Melvin didn't react. He didn’t know whether it was better or worse– especially after Krupp made that dreaded announcement.

“What is it this time?” he continued, gesturing to the desks. “Something that increases the amount of class per classroom?"

"A scale model of the school’s pop science fair-- with additional statistics?” Harold added.

“Something to make people remember why they went into a room!” George added with a laugh, before snapping to a more contemplative look. “No wait, that’d actually be… not half-bad.”

“Hm. I’ll make a note of those,” Melvin said as he continued to stand there and not do that. The conversation lulled into silence a beat longer than comfortable. Before they could speak up, he added: “And for your information, I am working on it. Hold on.”

The both of them gave another cautious once-over to the room. The room– outside of the weird amount of desks– looked normal. It looked free of any invention, save for the muffled rattling noise. George had even peeked behind the teacher’s desk on the off chance it was hidden.

“What do you mean hold on? There isn’t anything here.”

Melvin didn’t answer.

Instead, the walls and some of the surrounding fixtures started shimmering different colors before settling on the color of error bars you see on TV.

Harold jumped away from a nearby desk he was leaning on as he felt it shift and become less sturdy, wobbling like heat hazes. As they lifted up to the ceiling, the whir had become a fraction louder.

“What’s going on?” he turned around. “Melv– ah!”

George let out a yell, seeing Melvin’s shape shimmer until he was a mass of red and greens. He ran to him, and his first instinct was to try and grab where his shoulder was. All his fingers met was air. Then thin strands as his hand sailed past where his shoulders would be and into the now-clump of what was the tattletale.

“Melvin!”

The strands rose up and darted away like all the other ones until they were standing in a regular classroom with its usual amount of desks and a third smaller than it looked before.

“He was too young!” George said.

“It should have been me!” Harold threw himself to the ground, bashed a fist against it, and stopped. He thought for a moment before continuing in the same dramatic cadence: “OK, I take it back, that’s a bit too much, but you get it!”

“Are you two done yet?”

“I swear I can still hear his voice, even now–” the boy whipped his head around so fast his tie went askew. “Melvin!”

He got out of his overdramatic kowtow. “What the heck?!”

“Like I said, I’m working on the Warp-Weft-O-Tron 2000,” he said like it would explain everything. “Stress-testing it, to be more accurate.”

“The wh–” Before George could finish his sentence, the other boy stood up and pointed at the whirring thing behind Melvin.

In the corner of the classroom, around some tools and papers was something that took the space of two desks. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a sewing machine grafted beside a blocky computer . The needle continued its work and its now-unobscured rattling.

They all followed the threads converged to the machine, now completely colorless. They could just barely see the shiny thread zip through it and up the machine until even that thread dissipated. And once it did, the needle made its final whirring before powering down.

The adrenaline of seeing a kid disintegrate, like the strings a few seconds ago, dissipated to incredulity.

“What kind of science is that thing for–” Harold pointed an accusatory finger at the machine. “Freak-People-Out-ology?!”

“It's built on the principles of techno-textiles and a bit of virtual simulation.” Melvin clicked his pen a few times before pointing it at them. “How about you two?”

“Huh?”

That was apparently the wrong answer as he put a finger to his temple. “I’m merely curious what you’re working on, seeing as Krupp’s announcement said you two suggested the pop science fair.”

And you believe him? George wanted to say, before answering his own question– of course he’d believe that.

Or at the very least, he wouldn’t cast further doubt. Doubting Krupp would mean doubting The Man. Plus, grades were on the line, and that was top priority to the tattletale than trying to think through whether they would ever suggest that.

It had only occurred now to George that that was the reason why Melvin wasn’t automatically on the defensive.

“We’re, uh– keeping it under wraps,” Harold said, realizing the other boy was taking too long to reply.

“Of course.” Melvin nodded in understanding as he made his way to the Warp-Weft-O-Tron and pulled out a spool the size of a lava lamp sitting on top of the sewing machine half. Its threads were soot grey and frayed. He placed it to the side and put an empty spool in its place, but not without grumbling about the material being insufficient.

“I will admit, the sudden nature of this assessment adds a wrench to everything, but– nothing like the stress of an unforeseen deadline to get everything in gear.”

Harold stared at the machine, and then to the boy still engrossed in fixing… whatever. In gear was an understatement if he made a simulation machine on a time crunch.

“You were really holding out on us all these years,” George said, eyeing the computer.

Rows of code scrolled up its screen. Most of it was gibberish, but there were parts he could understand. A record of previous commands and whether it was typed out or recorded through audio. S., MELVIN x1, DESK x15, and more distressingly, a MATERIAL PROCESS WARNING, whatever that was.

“How’d a sock sorter beat this out when you were picking out stuff for the Invention Convention?”

He poked around a nearby toolbox– which was more of a folder of assorted squares of materials. Many of them looked like normal threads, but a good chunk of them weren’t, from how the light bounced off them.

“Firstly: it's a sock matcher. Secondly: Krupp only accepts the ‘practical’ ones–” He pulled out a square of the latter and placed it in an adjacent slot. Something between contemplation and annoyance edged into his tone. “The Turbo Toilet was pushing it. But, the pop science fair has no such restrictions!”

“...It doesn’t?”

A thread the same color as the square spat out of some unseen cavity and began wrapping itself around the spool.

“I asked Ms. Ribble about the specificities for this assignment, and she said, and I quote: ‘sure, do what you need to do’.”

George and Harold both sucked a breath through their teeth. Unlike the tattletale, they knew that wasn’t full permission, so much as the classic grown-up tactic of dismissing a kid by giving them a vague answer to sate them.

“Guess not even tattling can get you all the perks you want,” Harold said carefully.

Melvin stopped typing on the computer part of the machine for a moment. With him faced away, they weren’t sure what expression was on his face, but they could feel a shift. Nothing as drastic as what happened in the principal’s office, but it was there.

“You should go.” It wasn’t a suggestion. “I need to troubleshoot.”

Harold looked to the clock. Recess was almost over, which meant their opportunities to prepare were dwindling.

“Right,” George said.

And they slipped back into an empty hallway. They looked back, and through the window-sliver on the door, they could see the threads shoot up and around the room. The classroom became a black void, though it slowly made its way along the color spectrum.

“What do you think?” Harold asked.

“That our playground street cred is in the gutter at this rate,” George replied.

He gave him a light punch on the arm. Despite everything they couldn’t help but laugh, the sound echoing through the hall.

“We could use it in the Captain Plan,” Harold replied. “It might be a little difficult to, ah–”

“Turbo Toilet it?” George finished, thinking back to the Invention Convention. He watched as Melvin tried to recalibrate it. “It’s a pretty big wildcard.”

As if on cue, after a few basic prisms popped into existence in the classroom, a rough approximation of a cat did. That, apparently, was too much as the simulation spooled itself back up like before.

“But I think we do need a wildcard. It'd drive Krupp up the wall.”

Harold winced. “Well, I mean it can’t make anything worse.”

The both of them walked off to the abandoned art room. Harold shuffled his backpack to the front of him as he counted up the supplies he pilfered. To name a few: flour and water to make glue on the fly. Baking soda and vinegar, because those were Classics. Toilet paper– ‘nuff said.

He stared at a box labelled Office Supplies. In it were huge packs of sticky notes, for irony.

As wrong as Melvin was about whose idea the pop science fair was, he was right, frustratingly, about one thing: nothing like the stress of a deadline to get everything in gear.

---------------------

The Captain Plan was one of their simpler plans, in theory.

It was simple in the sense that it was meant to only target Krupp. The hard part, for obvious reasons, was that Captain Underpants was integral to said plan.

It amounted to swapping them out at strategic places they set up. Things he can’t stand. Things that he’d be afraid of. Long enough for the experience to stick. Then they’d swap him back to Captain and slowly amp it up. Rinse and repeat.

They’d keep doing this until he took everything back– the whole assignment gauntlet, the whole thing with the science fair–

The whole capital T Thing with Captain.

And if he refused, well– there wasn’t anything else for it except to rinse and repeat until he did. They’ve got almost half a decades’ worth of grievances to pull back up.

(“Krupp won’t– can’t expel us for this,” George said the night before, his form backlit by a jumbo flashlight. “I mean, he’ll need us to ‘deal’ with Captain.”

The Treehouse’s windows were boarded up to get ready for the colder weather. They should be prepping it for winter, putting stuff away so it won’t get messed up, since they insisted they didn’t need George’s parents’ help, but here they were–

“I mean, he could hold us back now.”

“But would he really want to keep us there if we keep doing this?”

Harold shivered. “Point taken.”)

The walkie-talkie in Harold’s pocket made a noise.

“Yyyello’.”

“How’s it going?”

Right now, the ‘it’ in question was scoping out the cafeteria. The tables were all neatly arranged in rows and ready for whatever project the fourth graders will put on them later. There was no one here save for Edith, who was deep in the kitchen.

“Melvin’s stuff is here.”

He made his way over to the Warp-Weft-shaped tarp. After double checking for any Tattle-Turtles, he was disappointed to find no obvious screws to loosen at the access hatch.

Harold began pulling at the spool on top, unsure of how exactly to mess it up outside of tying the thread in knots. One end of the thread snaked its way to the needle, while the other end–

The other end came out of a small hole, which in turn was connected to the strange hatch Melvin put in that material square that one time. He pulled out a pair of undies, courtesy of Captain himself, and stuffed it into the slot.

The sewing machine whirred, clearly having difficulty with processing a non-square material. The thread didn’t move to spool itself, but it must have processed it by the way the underpants were disappearing in the slot.

As for the computer: it reminded him more of the school printer. There were menus upon menus of settings. In any case, Harold set out to randomly poking at them all. Some he understood– audio commands on, because that may be useful for their plan since it would be easier than trying to get close to type anything out. Everything else?

“...What the heck is a Young’s Module?” Harold asked, less out of curiosity and more to commentate for George’s benefit. “What do you think? Max or minimum?”

“I mean, Krupp’s pretty old…” his voice crackled through the walkie talkie.

“High it is!” And with that, he quickly swiped it as far to the right as he could before quickly closing everything out to the first screen. “OK, I’ll get back to y–”

“Ben!” Edith’s voice called out from across the cafeteria.

Harold ducked under the tarp before either of them could see him.

“We got a situation. Krupp’s here,” he whispered loudly.

“What? Why?!”

Harold hazarded to peek at the small gap between the tarp and the floor. He had been expecting like-liking goo-goo talk. If he had to be honest, he would have preferred that to whatever angry inspector routine Krupp was doing.

“Checking, I think.”

He tilted his head at the principal running a finger over a table for dust. The action was clearly more for acting out… whatever this was, than any actual concern for cleanliness. The lunch lady continued to trail behind him, trying– and failing– to start a conversation.

There was a quick inhaling noise through the speakers. “OK, give me a minute. Move when I give the signal.”

Harold didn’t reply, mostly because they were close enough that he could hear them. Even from this distance, he could see how heavy the bags under his eyes were. How his posture was more hunched than usual.

Krupp sighed deeply, and his shoulders sagged even further. “I’ve been through worse. Trust me.” It almost sounded like a plea.

The lunch lady had no time to dwell on a response as the intercom screeched to life.

“Principal Krupp, please report to your office immediately,” George’s voice crackled through the intercom with a mock-smug air.

“Oh, for–” Said principal ran past her brusquely that the pin that was keeping her bangs up over her face had jostled to cover half her eye.

The signal!

“Good talk!” she called after him belatedly, but made no move to go after him. Then with a big sigh, she mumbled, “I’m blowin’ this.”

And with that, she made her way back to the kitchen and finally gave Harold an opening to get out of there. He made a mad dash to the doors, making sure to not slam it as he trailed him. Now that he was in the hallway, the faint sound of crackling and shuffling echoed throughout.

“Hey, how far is he from the office?” George asked, his voice crackling from both walkie talkie and still-active intercom.

“He’s making his way up as we speak.”

“Cool.”

Krupp was up the first half of the stairs when he turned around. He was breathing heavily, and it was definitely not just because he was speed-walking up the stairs.

“You two have got a lot of nerve disrupting everything–”

“You’re one to talk,” Harold replied, thinking about the pop science fair coming up in a few hours. To all their years in school. To the capital T Thing with Captain.

The principal halfway down a step to approaching him until–

SNAP. The sound reverberated through the school intercoms. For a split second he saw something cross his face. Wide eyes. Furrowed brows.

And then Captain Underpants fell on said face.

He snapped back up, the toupee sitting lopsided on his head. “Sidekick! Where’s–”

Harold held up the walkie talkie.

“Up here,” George replied.

He gave an unsure look as he tried to find where up was in relation to a walkie talkie.

“In the office,” Harold clarified. He walked past him and up the stairs, motioning him to follow.

Captain stood up, wiping the grit from his cheek. It might be because he took a heck of a tumble, but there wasn’t the typical shock of liveliness he expected when he swapped in. All things considered, he was… well, maybe not calm, but expectant.

George was standing at the receptionist half of the office, one of the curtains tucked under his arm.

“You ready?” Then, in a stage whisper to Harold: “Anthrope’s gone off because of… ‘printer repairs’.”

Harold stared at the empty corner of the room. There was a smattering of printer ink at the walls, outlining the office printer that was not there anymore. They couldn’t help but snicker conspiratorially.

“Er,” Captain leaned over to look at what had got their attention. “What’s the plan to Free The Children now, sidekicks?”

“We’re putting Krupp through his own personal gauntlet.”

“I don’t think it’ll take long for him to crack.” Harold gave him a reassuring pat on the arm. “We’ll make sure of it. Everything’ll be back to the way it was faster than–”

“A speeding waistband?” the superhero offered. He was definitely hiding it as he shimmied out of the principal’s clothes and put on his cape, but that same look was back on his face.

“Exactly.”

“Where do we start?” He approached the ink stains on the wall, as if expecting the answer to pop out of the mess.

“Uh, Captain?” George pulled his attention back to the door of the principal’s office. He opened it with an overdramatic flourish. “Just step into our office for this first bit.”

Harold let out a low whistle at the sight. Every surface of the room was covered in sticky notes, leaving the room in an unsightly pale yellow that made the room look flat. Between the writing and the shadows, it did little to help figure out where everything was as Captain nearly tripped on a chair.

“What do you think of our Prankovation 2– trademark?”

Captain took to floating, mindful not to touch anything. He looked confused– he probably didn’t get things like irony yet. “…How long did this even take you?”

“Prankster’s trade secret.”

“This looks done, though,” he hedged. “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to help you here– especially with this–”

He gestured to his wrists, now tied together by jump rope courtesy of Harold. The boy went over to the sticky notes-engulfed water cooler and poured out a thimble’s amount into an open hand.

“For this one, we need to swap you back over to Krupp,” George explained. Seeing the superhero's disappointed look, he quickly continued: “This part's quick-- we're going to bring you back right after for the next bit.”

“O– OK, then sidekicks. I trust you.” Captain twisted around so his face was in patting distance. This close, he could see the expression for what it was– hesitation.

And Captain was gone, leaving Krupp to fall on the floor, a flutter of pale yellow in his wake.

#mellsian fanfics #captain underpants #sticky notes au

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