#marcille’s mother

[bublines]

dunmeshi mothers

[fumifooms]

Marcille’s dress: threads and importance

This was supposed to be part of my upcoming Marcille & Chilchuck arc analysis, since it’s all about the themes of fantasy and confrontation with reality in Marcille’s arc, her mental state and fairytale coding etc etc, but that already was long af and this is something good to have as a standalone anyways, so. Here we go.

……….. So first of all it is 12 of august and suddenly my work phones are ringing to break me the news:

So this interview came in right when I was working on this analysis again. This now confirms the main intent of what the outfit was meant to evoke. There’s definitely a looot to look into just this and we’ll be going into it, but a complete analysis of Marcille & Momcille analysis would be ideal & that’ll be for another day. We will be bringing her up often throughout all this though.

So. "Why should I care about Marcille’s outfit?" Beyond possible story importance, on a metatextual and thematic level, analyzing imagery something provokes can be valuable and compelling even if it isn’t intentional or is flawed (historically inaccurate, etc). Less narrative wise and more character development wise, the lion does say the dress was to give her courage, and as her demon his job is reading her heart and giving her what she desires. What does her outfit say about her overarching character and her current mental state? Why does it give her courage, how does it do that, what part of it does that?

Like I just implied, when talking about this sort of thing, there are two aspects: the personal meaning something holds for the character, and imagery for the audience, which may or may not align with said character’s perspective or intent. Character vs meta. Because of the meta aspect, imagery can be disconnected from the character or the wider narrative, or that disconnect can itself be a tool to show the character’s mental state, unable to recognize or reconcile how different to their intent their being comes across as. This is to say that all of the analysis angles I’ll be bringing up in this post can apply to the same analysis of Marcille’s character and psychology, even all simultaneously. The different sections here are more or less ordered from most meta angle first to most character-motivated and strictly analyses of canon last, with little interludes examining specific aspects of the outfit regardless of reading. Imagery here will be looked at as a framing device, a way to comment on the themes and her character or her arc. For fun! Forward march!!

Table of contents:

Shepherdess: guidance.

Sorceress: power.

Princess: fantasy.

Funeral gown: mourning.

Mother: emotion, balance and identity. The conclusion ⭐️ Skip to here for strictly analysis of canon intent

Shepherdess

We’re doing an iceberg but I start from the bottom and make my way up, the shepherdess reading is the most meta one but it’s also the one I’m most interested in covering. It’s the longest section and the one with the biggest (only), um, history lesson. Feel free to skim if you only want the conclusions and not the reasonings.

Marcille? A shepherd? In action and wider imagery, the links are more or less straightforward (and will be discussed), but first I want to tackle the visual aspect because it was the most striking part of it to me and it’s the most complex one to explain…

The shepherdess look has been honed into a specific image in modern consciousness. There are always the same essential elements: a curved hook staff, a hat (often a kind that curls around the head), a poofy skirt for an elegant dress (wether fancy or modest), most often with lacing down the front and some cleavage. It’s of course not anywhere close to a perfect match if you compare Marcille’s dungeon lord outfit to pictures of shepherdesses, but it is very reminiscent. Nowadays, the classic hat of shepherdesses that Toy Story’s Bo Peep is emblematic of is indeed considered mostly a child’s accessory as well, halfway between a trimmed hat and a cap, has the shapes of a bonnet, so this coincidentally also lines up with the elven earmuffs as I’ll touch on later.

What

Wether or not seeing Marcille’s dunlord outfit will have reminded you of a shepherd probably depends decently on culture? I did research to get material for this and the start was real rough let me tell you— the only things I could find were… Bo Peep from Toy Story and illustrated nursery rhymes. In modern times, the image of a shepherdess, "shepherd woman that looks ladylike", is only a vague understanding we’ve gathered from the few woman shepherds we’ve seen in media that weren’t meant to be historically accurate. Myself, without Toy Story it’d only have felt like hazy fever dream memories of illustrated nursery rhymes from my childhood. It’s impressive that this concept still persists even if it’s only perpetuated through ONE character and a niche archetype, and for the word shepherdess to have had such a strong association with this look in my mind still.

Above: concept art for Bo Peep from Toy Story by Daniela Strijleva and Jean Gillmore, herself based on the nursery rhyme Little Bo Peep whose depictions are always in this style of outfit. Top right is a depiction of Little Bo Peep in a 1913 postcard, unknown artist, but if you want you can look up for vintage picture book depictions as well.

So what the hell? Where does this very specific look for the concept of a woman shepherd come from? Where does this conception, this specific shepherdess style wear and figure originate? Well the specific term that’ll get your research results is indeed "shepherdess". Art history time let’s go.

Okay so there’s no way those people were actually shepherds, right? What’s with that? To cut to the chase, turns out it’s mostly a trend that popped up in 18th century, one most associated with rococo but also with romanticism. Yes yes, a trend. The bourgeoisie deciding from hearing about the painted selfies of other ladies that dressing as fancy versions of poor people is hip. The new hit, becoming a dainty ladylike shepherdess for a day!

Artwork credits: In order, 1: Thomas Hudson (1701–1779) / 2: Arthur Devis (1712-1787) / 3: Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1750-1752) / 4: Sir Samuel Luke Fildes (1844-1927) / 5: Léon Sault (1839-1921) / 6: T. H. Lacy (1865) Some fun extra sources: Anecdotes: "Marie-Antoinette playing shepherdess", statues by John Cheere, Essays: Extravagance in revolutionary times: ladies of rococo, cottagecore through history, haven’t read this one but focuses on the shepherdess figure in 18th century plays and scultpures

Googling "ladies dressed as shepherdess" will give you a slew of 18th century portraits of, indeed, well-off noble ladies having portraits of themselves painted while dressed as "shepherdesses", well, the romanticized version of one anyways. I also found one from the 1650s. The trend also continued onwards, albeit less so once culture moved on. The word definition itself acknowledges this, unlike its french equivalent, as far as I know women shepherds are often still just called shepherds, meanwhile the shepherdess as per the Oxford dictionary: a female shepherd, or, an idealized or romanticized rustic maiden in pastoral literature. I don’t think I can do the explanation of the phenomenon’s origin and cultural context better than the essays I linked so I’ll quote:

"During the 18th century, an artistic movement known as Romanticism spread throughout Europe, seeking to evoke an idealized world of rural simplicity in contrast to the urban, industrialized centers of the cities. This nostalgic vision of a peaceful countryside was expressed through various art forms, including oil paintings and lead garden statues. The subjects of these artworks often depicted shepherds, huntsmen, and other rural figures, presenting an idyllic way of life, particularly for urban audiences." -Vizcaya Museum

"The cottage core aesthetic that people think and strive to attain, follows the ability of the wealthy class to be able to get away and take a break from the aristocracy and city life by escaping to the country. Marie Antoinette was an example of this, “… she had an entire hameau (rustic village) built as a place of leisure: it comprised meadows, lakes, grottos, streams, a dovecote, a dairy, cottages, vineyards, fields, orchards, vegetable gardens, and pagan temples. It was a fully-operational farm, where the queen would host social events. She and her entourage would “cosplay” as farmers and shepherdesses.” Marie Antoinette shows the “pretty,” the fantasy that people want, people want an escape from their reality. Cottage core is very different from one’s life, and the lack of knowledge of the true struggles of simple living, farming, and other cottage core elements makes people imagine and create a fantasy." -ZOESTAM1 (you’re a legend ty)

"Renowned for her great interest in fashion and more notably her extreme extravagance, Marie Antoinette set this ideal of the common shepherdess or milkmaid through her enjoyment of dressing in costume. She would often don the clothing of a dairymaid, a pastime that went so far as to see her commission the building of her own personal dairy at her palace Le Petit Trianon. These Rococo versions of lower class dress feature heavily in rococo painting such as in Fragonard’s The Shepherdess (1750-52), where a middle class woman is seen wearing a highly exaggerated interpretation of the dress of a lower-class woman. However, despite complying with the details of shepherdess dress it still features the expensive fabrics that are seen in images of Madame Pompadour. This interest in the pleasures of pastoral life shows the extent of the ‘myth and fairytale, festivity and fantasy, theatre and music’ that was epitomised in the paintings of the elegant women of the Rococo. The dresses made for and worn by the ladies of the Rococo are emblematic of the changes in society. The newly found ease of life for the middle class is seen in these images through the mythical landscapes, statues that appear to come to life and through the elaborate dress of the figures that combines a sense of the élite with that of the costume of common man. Wolfgang Menzel describes the Rococo in 1859 as a time that represented ‘empty and meaningless ornamentation’, a feeling that was certainly shared by the lower classes of Paris and one that was expressed in the French Revolution in 1789. The revolution sought to punish those of a higher class, meaning that figures expressed in the paintings of Fragonard, Boucher and Watteau would be guillotined within the same century." -Gabriella Sotiriou

To be sure, there have also been depictions of shepherdesses in history that were realistic and accurate, humble, commonfolk, both before and after this movement. There’s just this… Sweep in the 18th century that forever changed the aesthetic associated with the shepherdess figure in a part of culture.

So to summarize. Rich ladies LARPing as rural peasants for fun and portraits. From there you can easily see the throughline of how this very elite vision of a shepherdess would become the model for if, say, a children’s book illustrator wanted to design a shepherdess for a nusery rhyme, books which at the time would be luxury goods, the target audience noble little girls who should aspire to look as cute, elegant and well dressed as the shepherd girl in the book. Okay! We just have to get lost in the sauce a little more before getting to a full look and conclusion.

More fun context, in english the main shepherdess nursery rhyme is Little Bo Peep, don’t ask me how it goes I have no clue. But in french I could mention many like the nursery rhyme Il était une bergère (there once was a shepherdess) that comes from the 17th century, but the most sung one and the one I knew growing up is Il pleut, il pleut, bergère (it’s raining, it’s raining, shepherdess) originally from 1780. I did not expect this when starting to fall down this whole rabbithole going "Haha dunlord Marcille kinda looks like Bo Peep", but looking at that latter song’s wikipedia page there’s a whole thing there too. It was sung right after the storming of the Bastille during the very beginning of the french revolution in 1789— In which the opening lyrics, warning the shepherdess that rain is starting and a storm is coming, to "get your sheep, go home, and take cover"(though more poetically), became more goading than the original fairy godmother energy. The shepherdess here in this revolution context became the queen Marie-Antoinette, and the rainy storm is the french revolution brewing. It is said that that the author of the song hummed it at the gallows before being executed at french authority’s decree. We see then just how much the figure of the rococo shepherdess became a symbol with hated connotations and ties to rebellions.

So! The figure of the shepherdess is hazy to most people nowadays, but historically it was associated with excess, extravagance, classism, misused unearned power and the then-queen of France. It was both the ignorant and selfishly idealistic aesthetic that the queen wished to embody and that twisted the original commoner humble conception of a shepherdess, and the infamous image embodying her faults that was then used against her in mocking resentment and revolutionist sentiment. The representation of the fantasy world she created for herself with her power, and the ironic reminder of the real world she was exploiting and ignoring to do so.

You’ll notice the shepherdesses are typically blondes, especially in Bo Peep or more modern depictions. Marcille’s name is french.

What

… But all of that was just to inform on the topic before we got to the links and parallels that can be drawn between it and the story & Marcille, and to prove I’m not making up "the shepherdess look" in the first place. I already briefly went into visual similarities and appearance-related connotations (bonnet, rounded staff, dress with cleavage, lacing like a corset, poofy skirt, elegant and formal yet promiscuous undertones) in the previous section, so now I’ll be properly going into what this comparison can mean for her and for the narrative.

I summarized this section as shepherdess: guidance, and ultimately that’s what I think this focuses on best about her.

I do a quick overlook of her mom friend tendencies here (+ here) if needed, but I think we can agree Marcille often acts motherly through canon, not only fussing over her friends and coworkers often overbearingly so but also directly caring for them like helping them bathe, enjoying being able to do that for people she cares about (washing Senshi’s beard included). But also, often deciding herself to adopt a sort of wisdom-imparting dynamic within a group or relationship where she knows what’s best for others better than the individuals concerned do, where she’ll scold or push others out of their comfort zones as if she’s doing them a favor (Chilchuck), where she’ll talk in a holier-than-thou tone about a topic (often an academic or moral one), that classic long lived race condescension as some characters put it.

So isn’t the figure of a shepherdess, one who cares after sheeps, one who directs them in a direction she chooses and watches over them grazing the grass as their protector guardian and guide fitting? Isn’t that what she figuratively wants to do, obtaining unfathomable power to shape others’ lives quite literally even to the point of changing their lifespans regardless of their thoughts on the matter, being a figure that chooses for them and keeps them safe as someone who knows better? A bundle of good intentions and genuine care, but still patronizing and robbing them of their freedom of choice. I’d argue this is a large part of her arc with Chilchuck, and even for her dynamic with Izutsumi! Looking at Marcille saying farewell to Izutsumi near the end when she thinks she’s going to prison, it’s easy to wonder about how this is the same Marcille who once refused to trust Falin’s judgement and choice to be with her brother, thought she shouldn’t be away from her and what Marcille decides to allow and not allow for Falin’s career— the same Marcille who here in tears with Izutsumi is telling her to take care of herself as she leaves to travel alone, trusting her to make choices for herself by herself and supporting her in it even through her heavy emotions and the grief and loss she’s already anticipating, but learning to accept.On a more literal parallel level, in this last arc she commands an army of monsters at her will effortlessly, making them march towards the surface and then into battle. Sending out orders through her hands, words and staff like a war general, ready to choose to change the world to fit her wishes.

As to what feelings dressing like a shepherdess could quell, I think it’s a way for her to reaffirm her goals and feel certain in them. Her friends she respects just told her that her lifelong goal of extending everyone’s lifespans is a pipe dream that could do harm as much as good, and even though she ignored her it did shake her, it is after that and just before the upcoming battle that the winged lion deems she’s in need of a morale boosting wardrobe change. Marcille feels more directionless and aimless than she should, so the winged lion gives her an outfit that reaffirms and steels her goals, examplifies her motherly and controlling instincts and validates them, encourages them. Wouldn’t a shepherdess figure make sense then?

The fakeness aspect of the shepherdess fashion also reflects how she’s not fit to be a proper dungeon lord, as that requires maintaining an ecosystem that she doesn’t have the knowledge, experience or will to manage. She’s a shepherdess in looks and has the power to command people places, but she doesn’t have the hands-on farming experience that is needed to make a dungeon lord a competent one, a good gardener so to speak. Marcille has high academia knowledge of dungeons but when it comes to basic care that’s more in line with farmer experience, she’s largely stumped. She lets herself be moved by aesthetics rather than practicality, like with her spiders and her coatl.

If we put the history of the shepherdess figure in context with her arc, she wants to mimic the look of a folk hero, while still being privileged with power she can exerce over others. It gets to a key trait and arc theme of Marcille: romancitization. Which is in big part tied to her idealism, and that idealism often makes her more resistant to accepting things, but now I’m getting ahead of myself.

(Ironically, as we’ll go over in latter sections) This can also reflect how Marcille’s mother was an elf, presumably from high elven society from her elegance, court etiquette and magical skills- (meaning she likely got a good education), but moved to a tallman region feeling its culture less stifling and more fun, prefering its food and clothes etc etc. She’s still court mage, but to elven society being part of a short lived race’s court is a downgrade from being part of elven society at all, so here the "noble willingly becoming "lower class" because they find it pleasant or fun" is fitting. (Not an actual critique of her choices or morals whatsoever, just an observation.)

Marcille is not seemingly in touch with her elven culture. The dress tallman fashion, but the earmuffs would be elven, perhaps denoting the wrong or fully romanticized usage of it. Like meshing two things together that clash— in-world in this case cultures, but here in context it’d be class, and as we’ll touch on later in another section, identities.

Marcille also grew up around in a rural region surrounded by "books and chickens", so it’s not like a rural identity or a relationship with farm animals is fully irrelevant or separate from her as a person. The chickens make the egg imagery Marcille uses to explain souls in the same body and in some art extra interesting.

Like mentioned, shepherdesses also obviously have an association to lambs and goats especially. Which is fun not only for figurative parallels like her leading the monsters and everyone like lambs to slaughter into war but also how the demon has been shown as a goat and a sheep before. In a way though, Marcille is the lamb innocent as she is and the demon is the shepherd. After all, Marcille’s dress even has some animal-like features, fur all over including her ears and even a tail. The dress is not only to make Marcille feel more confident, but to distract Marcille from having second thoughts and self-doubt that could make her think better of being a dungeon lord, like she ends up doing after talking with her party in the tower. The demon takes on forms to lure in his victims, as the adventurer’s bible puts it forms that make his victims trust him. At his very beginning, he would take on the form of food and offer himself up for eating. Similarly, I think it’s interesting to consider the dynamic between Marcille and Winged Lion as one where he presents himself as a servant, as the one guided and ordered and not the one pulling strings and walking her like a sheep to breaking him out of the dungeon. You could also mention how the sheep form the demon has taken before is when he was traumatized in a way— The time all humans died around him that made him live in loneliness for what’s implied to be quite some time, the time when he reconsiderd his whole approach from people pleasing towards cunning and control.

Tldr: - History makes it a good comparison for aesthetic-obsessed well-off people who want to play folk hero while actually being selfish or misguided, it’s a paradox of a humble station represented by unattainably expensive fancy flourish and frills. - Marcille herself is of rural origins where she interacted most with books and chickens. She has a taste for over-the-top aesthetics and dresses (not as much as the golden kingdom’s people, but enough to desire her dunlord dress) and novels, and she is a mom friend type, caring after others (in bathing and dressing and healing and comforting and guiding) - As a dungeon lord, the way she commands an army of monsters in perfect synchrony with shepherdess-like staff in hand makes the shepherdess comparison very literal. The demon having been notably a goat, a sheep and maybe even a lamb in the past also makes this imagery more compelling and fitting.

This angle shows Marcille wanting to take on the role of the shepherd, the lighthouse so to speak, the mother that guides the people whom she wants to change the life & world of for the better. They need only follow her lead and they’ll be shown how great their life could be.

Where does this imagery fall? Definitely all meta and not in-world, this is for the audience and has no in-world acknowledgement whatsoever. Again. I know this was kinda insane, this is the most wild and meta section of the post like I mentioned and like I implied I don’t even personally think it was intentional on Kui’s part honestly! But as art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, even when there’s no intent, imagery can bring an interesting and relevant framing, angle or flavor to the original text. A lot lines up well and there are small coincidences, but again I am not saying Kui intended Marcille to parallel Marie-Antoinette help. Isn’t it kinda neat though… Just a little bit…

Okayy so things are calming down from here on out we’re cruising guys

Interlude: earmuffs, elven but childish

It was important for me to get a groundwork analysis done for the earmuffs before going into the next ones. This interlude has a focus on supporting the shepherdess section with comparisons, but I want to take a moment to focus entirely on elven earmuffs, their connotations and existence as an in-world fashion accessory, and thus environmental context for how Marcille may see them.

So, if we go back on the shepherdess for a bit— The shepherdess fashion had a hat iconic enough for it to be called the bergere hat, but the type that’s more associated with them nowadays is the type that Toy Story Bo Peep wears, which is a bonnet.

To me it’s intuitive to say that elven earmuffs are very alike bonnets, even in cultural context. I recommend browsing the wikipedia link I put for the pictures. It used to be very widespread and popular headwear, and to be fair probably still is even though not fashionable much anymore. It used to be, though, fancy pretty laces and this and that were put on it and trends were made of it. A type of bonnet especially has become emblematic of the shepherdess look, like mentioned.

The elven earmuffs are subject of discourse within the fandom and the biggest reason is the age connotation they have, and I do have to say it’s less strict in practice than people like to say. Kui not only keeps herself from explaining the social perception of them in a categorical end-all be-all way, but we also see a range of earmuff designs worn by adults in the doodles. We see that adults can and do wear them even if we don’t have much coherent context for it, and perhaps more importantly we see it implied that there is a market for earmuff designs especially with the fashion of it, which solidifies there are customers and adult customers for them.

Similarly to bonnets irl, it might feel weird to see an adult or anyone wearing it, but it’s not like it’s illegal or strictly reserved to some kinds of people. Rather, it’d be embarrassing, like the elven bonnets in Dungeon Meshi. It covers ears while still looking and feeling dainty, often accessorized and designed with lace or ribbons. It’s very strongly coded with babies and was very popular across baby dolls, ads, etc, though it’s starting mostly considered vintage nowadays. Though these are associations so strong that for example in Alice in Wonderland, the original book like the 1999 movie, when the baby gets transformed into a pig, understanding that the pig is the baby and A baby remains smoothly because it keeps its bonnet. It helps sell it.

(And if we’re referencing Alice in Wonderland while talking about Dunmeshi, psst, look up the chapter cover for chapter 64, rabbits 1)

Beyond babies the traditional simple bonnet is associated with rural people especially women. I do not want to sound like a bonnet expert because I am not— but from my understanding it does make sense if in occident rural people are the majority of who still wears them to this day. One reason being that more isolated less rich regions tend to care about being trendy less, and expectations on dress differ from region to region of course— And that’s a point I want to make about elven earmuffs, because I do think especially in colder regions like Kui mentions they would be more widely used and considered commonplace for older adults like perhaps the ones in the doodles. Just like how gnome hats go in and out of fashion constantly, Kui does have a good grasp of how fashion can be treated and coded amongst people and groups. It’s earmuffs for a culture Marcille isn’t fully in touch with, so it could take part in reaffirming Marcille’s identity and belonging in it, wether or not she knows all of what it implies. Like said, in the pages we see seemingly earmuffs high fashion for adults. It’s something young teens and young adults are said to be culturally ok to do, and people do generally like to look young so, it could be part of the cute hip young woman look. Would it be thematic for her to wear childish outfit? Yes, but I honestly can’t see it bringing her "courage" much if that’s the main intent. We’ll talk about it more later though.

Some do say that historical fashion is Kui’s weakness so to speak lol, and I’m not one to disprove that. Again, I can’t claim to know what Kui intended or didn’t intend to do and where she got inspiration from consciously or not.

Sorceress

Okay okay okay my enthusiasm for explaining historical/trope meta sorta started and ended with the shepherdess let’s get this done. I am interested in laying the groundowrk that I’m not making shit up in pop culture and for that I have to build up context so we’re all on the same page, but this is just what it says on the thin. If you want a recap of tropes surrounding black magic sorceresses and how they look beyond the minimum, here’s a couple relevant tvtropes pages: Evil Wears Black, Evil Costume Switch, Evil Sorceress, skimpy villains. More interestingly, you could argue that Dungeon Lord Marcille apparents herself most to the vain sorceress, even though what she would like to be is closer to the lady of black magic akin to her mother’s demeanor, and meanwhile the regular Marcille we know and love acts most like the black magician girl. The latest I would have never guessed existed is a trope of a spunky outgoing girl deuteragonist who’s gifted in dark magic and it’s honestly really fitting, which I find a really on the nose coincidence. This is still optional, beside the points I’m about to make.

Marcille, like Chilchuck, is concerned with reputation and social perception. Beyond other examples of it, there’s how Marcille prefers to let other people believe she’s a full elf and how Thistle’s shaming affects/embarrasses her — her reason for not being upfront about her origins socially not being shame but that it’s a hassle to explain and deal with, the questions and judgement and differential treatment, but moreso!!! There’s how similarly, she’s not ashamed of her dark magic research & knowledge, but she avoids talking about it. She knows it’s a touchy topic and kept the main topic of her research a secret for 2 years of working together. It only came to light because it was absolutely necessary to save Falin. She knows the reputation of dark magic and readily fires off counterarguments to Chilchuck talking shit about it with quick practiced ease.

But now as she becomes a dungeon lord and the canaries know everything and they’re are after her, there’s no more hiding or pretending or deflecting. She embraces the reputation of dark magic and her academic identity fully with an outfit that screams "I’m a black witch" and wears it like armor.

This is more in line with what the people who don’t know Marcille were framing her as during her dungeon lord stint, Marcille’s in-world image at that time, the same way Thistle became known as the mad mage with time. Evil sorceress. Dark witch. It’s the epic villainess look. Mixing Maleficient with a D&D seductress look. It does a lot of skin especially for Marcille, off the shoulder sleeves, a line of skin showing from inbetween her breasts to her navel, a skirt cut like Rin’s dress... The deadly sin of lust in french is the word for luxury— lust is desire but it’s for as money or power as much as sexuality.

Unlike with the shepherdess there’s less specific boxes to check. The main’s color black or at least dark, there’s magic (preferably black or forbidden or cursed) and the outfit’s feminine and elegant and a dress? You got the winning recipe. Then there’s extra boxes like having a fur or feather trim, having a magic staff, long sleeves… If you want examples beyond literal Maleficient, I’d google for sexy sorceress halloween costumes lol. Google also showed me some AI art that’s exactly what I’m talking about whole looking those up and that sorta drives the point that this has become a vague but striking figure. We’re not operating with poofy skirts here, that’s for the kooky villains. But the length of the skirt and the vibe is right, and fur and especially feathers aren’t unheard of tacked onto their dresses, which ironically Maleficient both wore in her important 2014 movie, funnily enough the year Dungeon Meshi’s serialization started. Though, especially with her barefootness it also gives her a of… Lost fey witch vibes more than dark sorceress, depending on how you see it.

Oozing maturity makes you feel in control. It makes you feel adult and powerful and independence. This is also very true for the mother section later on, but here we focus on the confidence aspect and less the assurance, if the distinction makes sense— Confidence coming from within yourself and assurance coming from an external source in this case.

"Fumi you’re saying Marcille wanted to look like an evil sorceress?" No! But unconsciously or not she’s drawing on these vibes. She’s done hiding and she’s done hiding the topic of her research and what she’s ready to do to succeed, the extent of her determination, her "dark" magic, that very term she’s been fighting against. She’ll wear a dress that reflects that and gives her confidence in pursuing what she wants in plain sight. It’s relevant for this to remember that Marcille getting her dunlord makeover is soon after she had a conversation with her friends who tried to talk her out of her biggest trauma and purpose and want, even laughed at her goal, and juuust before a huge life or death battle. She laid it all out bare and told the full story and the full truth and argued a bit, and now she’s sent them away for a time while she does her dunlord thing and bam here’s your confidence dress my queen. You’re scared about the canaries? You just need a fit to remind you you’re strong and kick ass. You know, because you’re a cool mage with convictions and nothing holding you back anymore and also you’re hot and in control.

She has power now, the demon even referring to himself as it, Power, and she’s going to wield it. Feels confident in seizing and using it— momentarily.

Is this angle character or audience focused? I do think both, because yes these powerful vibes would make her feel confident like I went over and theorized, but definitely a lot relies on an audience level. It’s our official sign, to both us readers and to Laios’ party explaning their reactions lmao, that "oh she’s truly lost it". This is her dark evil wardrobe change. We see her get her goth makeover and we know she’s gone to the dark side. Jojo Siwa moment. (Sorry)

Interlude: fur, luxurious but monstrous

Ok what’s up with all the fur on her skirt and sleeves and the furry ears though. Why a poofy fur dress. We’ve never seen Marcille show interest in fur lined outfits or such before. At most, there’s her trying out the golden kingdom outfit, with its antlers and leopard pelt uhh lointcloths? Which- that is a point to make I suppose lol, gave her a taste of bold high fashion. Her dress is pretty out there as the character reactions hint. Here’s even someone from reddit comparing it to Cardi B’s 2024 met gala dress! If you go back to the earmuffs pages, there’s one ear design with something that looks like fur too. More seriously, fur has long been a way to show class and wealth, because they’re expensive, especially on garments that are meant to be not just practical but pretty.

Quoting @room-surprise : "Costume design wise, the gown just screams class and wealth and power, like as a costumer when I saw it I immediately went 'evil renaissance queen on her way to war'."

But, especially the furry ears, for a manga about monsters that feels quite on the nose right? As revealed by the official dunlord Marcille acrylic stand pictured later in the post, she even has a tail. It definitely represents that her opinion on monsters has shifted imo. Like, it could be just visuals but then that defeats the psychological look into Marcille that the outfit gives us, it could just be a nod to who’s really in control or aesthetics, but I do feel it shows how Marcille has grown less repulsed of monsters. Let’s remember what Marcille said about eating monsters in the barometz chapter, that even if it isn’t logical she has a fear that eating a monster means taking something bad into herself, that it’s dirty and corrupting. Marcille, who takes horror in knowing that fertilizer aka poop has been used to grow vegetables that she then ate. She’s always had a bit of disconnect with ecosystems and the cycle of life so to speak, foiled by Senshi, she wants to defeat death and she doesn’t know how to balance a dungeon because she has trouble tending to ecosystems unlike Falin, she sees them like math when she should see it all as organic living balance. So in the end, it can either show that her mental state is so unstable for her to have been reduced to such a state alongside her barefootness, or on its opposite that she’s accepted the important place of animals and monsters more in the world, that she doesn’t see them as dirty anymore, or even that she likens herself to them. Maybe she’s become a bit of a monster herself, after all, because the dungeon does corrupt, the dungeon devours like how its structure was once compared to a digestive system by Laios, because if the demon isn’t a shepherd and Marcille isn’t a sheep the demon is still who actually has control over everything in the dungeon including the monsters, despite wanting to make believe it’s the dungeon lords who do, because the dungeon lord is a puppet of a demon, just another one of its monsters, its creatures in its guts.

Princess : fantasy

This is it this is the moment. I reworked my post structure after the interview but this was originally going to be the last angle explored after funeral gown instead of before it, this is also the angle that’s most important to my Marcille & Chilchuck analysis. Dungeon Meshi has some fairytale and princess prince royalty knights etc etc imagery and this is a continuation of that in a way, topic for another day though.

As we know Marcille is someone who loves aesthetics, she loves novels and pretty things and idealizing and romanticizing, and this can be seen as the core of the outfit to her. If her situation feels unsettling, it can be fixed by a change in framing, by an aesthetic by an angle by a cool look. Something that inspires and makes the situation feel less alarming, positioning herself as the protagonist rather than the villain. It was given to her by the Winged Lion when she started being more anxious to the battle that is to come, it has the goal to make her more confident but in this context very pointedly the goal to make that self-doubt go away— to keep Marcille from thinking about her situation some more and realizing she may be on the wrong path, it’s to isolate her in her dungeon lord world as part of her role, it’s to keep her in that malleable unstable state and encourage her to chase fantasy and stay in her own bubble of makebelieve. Do you follow me? It’s "don’t think about the stakes, don’t rethink your goals, what you’re doing is right and you should keep going however you want to", it’s "you don’t have to face reality, I’m here and now your dreams are the reality that matters". It’s fantasy.

It’s an epic poofy dress that makes her look cute yet cool. It’s the imagery of a princess in a tower. Calling out to her from beneath a balcony, overseeing her army and her kingdom. A princess dress not unlike the one she felt embarrassed in in the Golden Kingdom, where they talked of prophecies and kings, and wanted to be complimented in, to laughter and dismissal. And even though those things feel more disconcerting in real life than it does in stories then, becoming dungeon lord is good at blurring the lines to the point you can’t tell your doppelgangers of loved ones aren’t the real thing, and the Winged Lion chose her so that has to count for something, she was chosen.

If the princess imagery is left unnoticed by Marcille herself, then I definitely think it was meant for the audience to some degree. If not the poofy dress and heroine status alone, then the tower imagery and the balcony scene. The tower and the princess, the dragon, the knight, the prophecized king, the witch, the monster army, it’s all very reminiscent of fairytales like I mentioned. The balcony thing is a classic play thing though like that is Romeo & Juliette imagery right there, calling out to her from beneath a balcony?!! Aladdin too, Rapunzel, heroes and princes climbing towers to come see and save princesses.

This is the point that is most related to her love of novels and dalclan. Romanticization may be the name of the game for the history behind the shepherdess outfit style, but then fantasy would be the princess’. It’s also about twisting your current situation into something positive despite everything, but Marcille wasn’t that far gone yet, just struggling, framing and aesthetic still subtly help sell it all though. But if there’s something that’d make Marcille feel more confident and ready to do something, hype herself up or give her a twinge of comfort outfit wise, it’d be one that makes her feel like a princess.

Interlude: black, solemn but gloomy

Short one because it’s very straightforward but black is traditionally associated with evil and death, etc etc. Because of the former it’s often associated to powerful malevolent figures like villain sorceresses, but because of the latter irl it’s widely the color of funerals. It’s also cultivated this connotation of elegance, this sleek clean look both in modern and noble contexts, it’s very much this image of cool and ushakeable composure. Interestingly, we can’t 100% tell because mangas are in black and white, but black seems to be Marcille’s mom’s color, what she always dresses in.

Funeral gown

This was the most popular reading by the fandom before the interview and with good reason. As we got the confirmation, it’s nudging towards the intended one! It argued that the dress is a funeral gown, because her mother wore dresses like it and because of its black color, meanwhile the childish earmuffs are because her mourning her father happened when she was a child, because she feels frail etc etc. In her state with her current worries she’s feeling thrown back into her childhood, not unlike Thistle’s weird ambiguity there, feeling helpless just like then except now she has power to change it and a devil on her shoulder telling her all she has to do is affirm herself and take it.

It’s externalizing her trauma and validating it in turn, offering some catharsis and reminding her of her goal, defeating death so she never has to endure loss again.

As you may notice, both their outfits here are fur-lined too, so the amplification of that in her dunlord dress may be similar overcompensation to how she made the dress very revealing.

Interlude: barefootedness, filthy but earnest

Bloodstained bare feet no less. From what I can tell this is a direct callback to her being barefoot when resurrecting Falin. Again this could be a way of reminding herself of her goal and reminding herself all she’s accomplished, but it’s notable that Falin’s resurrection is something that made her feel very guilty and indecure because of how her becoming a chimera turned out. Maybe more about reminding her of what she has to fix and that she can’t give up on her goals including Falin.

Beyond that it’s interesting too though! Prim and proper Marcille who cares about her appearance and pouts at dirt just walking everywhere barefoot like nothing can hurt or bother her. There’s a sense of her being messy as a dungeon lord, her hair isn’t in an updo and looks unbrushed, she’s in a weird uncharacteristic outfit in a questionable mental state and she’s barefoot on top of it all. It also recalls a sense of vulnerability of course, reminding again an unstable mental state or showing desperation or how naked she might feel. Inversely, it can be more about acceptance, like in the last interlude we talked about knowing your place in the ecosystem and feeling secure in accepting it. Walking barefoot is to bare your skin to the ground, to walk knowing they’ll get dirtied and not minding it. Did you know humus and humilty are from the same word root?

In the end, it gives both ethereal forest fairy vibes and also poor little orphan vibes. Victorian sick child, especially when she gets carried by the winged lion all overwhelmed too haha. Very much gives her out of touch vibes, even if the bloodstained look is powerful. She’s willing to get her feet hands dirty to do what must be done.

Mother : balance

I turned this section into an excerpt post as well, here’s a link, serves as an essier to share highlight + allows me to put in more pictures since we hit the limit here…

Kui: "I just combined [a dress like what] her mother liked and [earmuffs] which are considered a little bit childish."

See what it’s doing here? Kui combined a dress from her mother with a hat for children, adult dress vs childish hat. Adulthood vs childhood. Mother vs child. It’s also notable that the dress is tallman fashion while the earmuffs are elven. Again she’s combining those distinct things into one. It’s about emotions and maturity. Stability and instability. Growing & potential vs having grown & knowing yourself. It’s about her cultures and expectations and how can she possibly keep up with all of them, like the genius child she was portrayed as? It’s duality it’s conflict it’s being pulled in opposite directions. It’s about identity.

Marcille wants to have all the answers and wants them all already, she already acts like she has everything figured out more often than not, when it comes to ways to harvest mandrakes or her image of Falin and Chilchuck and orcs or her rigid sense of ethics, but the story does show that she had growing to do, plus her main goal beyond keeping her friends safe and near her is that pursuit of knowledge for what she doesn’t yet have answers for— rewriting the laws of life and death. But, as we’ve all been told before, death is simply a part of life and we have to make our peace with that one way or another. Like Marcille says in the last chapter, this was in large part the lesson and arc she’s had to go through. A lesson that Marcille’s mother has learned herself, one that she has accepted and tried to pass on to her daughter, which didn’t work and kickstarted Marcille’s pursuit of extending lifespans. Marcille has to settle with uncertainty, with knowing life can end at any moment and knowing this is who she is even if the world has no answers for her as to what that means, she has to come to terms with ambiguity and inbetweens.

Marcille’s relationship with her mother is very interesting because it’s shown all in very small moments and implications, but we do see that Marcille’s mom is arguably her biggest role model. She’s the one who shows up in Marcille’s nightmare about monster food early on, she’s who told Marcille she’ll have to bear loss througout her life due to her lifespan, Marcille wears a choker like she does, it’s debatable that Marcille mimics her demeanor to seem more elven and dignified, in Marcille’s true nightmare she hides behind a portrait of her, she was the only living elven role model Marcille had around. Mother, who didn’t let grief of her husband rule the rest of her life, having even remarried, mother, who’s a court mage, mother, who pursued a life she wanted even if it cost her a lot. And we do know being an elf is important to Marcille! She seeks to conform to elven beauty standards rigidly, both in gender presentation and things like facial hair, and she’s masked as one since she was enrolled in the magic academy, as far as we know her first time away from home and her first big period of social contact since she isolated herself with chickens and books when she was younger. Books like the daltian clan, with an all elven cast except for the one half-elf she deeply related to.

Marcille’s bangs are also half down and half cut. Before she had to cut some hair to make familiars, long bangs were what Marcille wore for years, meanwhile in all of Marcille’s childhood flashbacks including at the magic academy her bangs were always cut short. As we know, hair is important to elves. Her hair is elfness. Her hair is elegance. Her hair is her age. Her bangs are uneven now. It’s part of accepting her precarious weird spot in an inbetween, half up half down haircut. Acceptance on her own aging, that there’s no empiric answer for what Marcille’s equivalent age is in elf or tallman or other, maybe just a ballpark if even that. Answers which are what she’s most desperate to know. What do you mean that student over there has got an astronomic result on her dungeoneum and what do you mean she doesn’t really care for how you did it? Falin who’s thus showing her another way to be, with less self-made pressure, that you can just go with the flow- that you can just… Be.

Her hair being all down and messy as a dungeon lord is part of making the characters and audience understand that Marcille is out of it, but… Like her barefootness there’s some flexibility it implies, for Marcille who’s so rigid on appearance. Accepting her hair to be messy, a sort of shedding of who she is even as she’s overdressed and trying so hard to look like something she doesn’t feel as.

That’s why her outfit makes her feel courageous. Because it makes her feel different from who she is otherwise, because it grants her a look she feels naked without, even with barefeet and messy hair. It’s externalizing how she’s been trying to hold it all together and all her confliction and her feelings and offering some catharsis, no more hiding herself, she’s a half-elf trying to do dark magic. Clean Marcille, clean clean Marcille— Overthinking the dressing, the superficial the aesthetic, without looking enough at the body it’s covering up, the laws of the world the ecosystem of the dungeon the opinions of her friends’— what’s standing right in front of her face, the underlying thing holding up the rest of what she’s trying to change, what’s truly important. She’s back to being like with meeting Falin, overfocusing on the details and the nitpicks and the theorics while oblivious to the slimes and the bats and the balance of mana in that small cave dungeon. She has the dress and the hat but as a whole she doesn’t look like a slay queen or a princess or a cool sorceress or even like her mother, she just looks like a mess. 

Ultimately after calming down she takes the hat off. She leaves behind the grip that her childhood trauma had on her and moves forward in the dress of adulthood, with maturity and emotional intelligence and logic to deal with her current situation instead of coping mechanisms and desperate grasps for control. And then when the dungeon lord becomes Laios her dress poofs, she’s in her very plain pajamas, plain Marcille, and it’s that Marcille who goes forward to help Laios save the world and defeat the demon. Hence why post-canon she starts dressing in similar dresses to her mother as well, and starts wearing more black. Black here is a color associated with her mother. She keeps her own touch and color here and there, like her red choker instead of a black one, but it’s a stark and sudden difference. She’s matured.

And her friends aren’t afraid to say it like it is and bring back her feet to the ground instead of up in the clouds of fantasy and power where she was, her feet back on the dirt of where they are right now instead of the theorics of "when" and "then" and "forever". She’s weird, she’s unique, in some ways she doesn’t fit in with any group anywhere, and that’s ok and she’s accepted that it doesn’t mean she can’t feel belonging and joy as herself with her flawed friends in a flawed world. After all they did stick with her even after seeing her whole tantrum and embarrassing breakdown makeover. Personally I do say, slay queen.

Her dungeon lord outfit is a coming of age outfit in a very literal way. A bridge between childhood and adulthood. We see her struggle metaphorically between the past and the future, moving on or holding onto trauma. The dress, from her mother, with cleavage and low cut sleeves and a lace gap going down to her stomach and a very short risqué skirt cut, represents maturity but it was very purposefully contrasted with the earmuffs, a childish piece of accessory associated with youth. This shows her mental state, battling with her emotions, wildly fluctuating between her academic put-together powerful self and the childish emotional outbursts the pressure is causing. Time moves on too fast but she’s not growing up fast enough to keep up or make the academic breakthroughs she wants— time is always running out and she’s both too young or too old she’s pulled in both directions and she can never be up to standards. It represents her struggle with her lifespan, her struggle to fit in, to know who she should be and what she should be doing. Considering this, it’s no wonder Marcille is someone who finds ecosystems and the cycle of life unappealing and unintuitive notions, because she has to carve her own space wherever she goes.

Conclusion

Her friends are laughing because she’s doing one of those over-the-top sexy costumes with a baby bonnet and both of those are extremes uncharacteristic of her and the whiplash of Marcille out of anyone in that weirds them out. They’d take plain old marcille in her pajamas over all-powerful dungeon lord Marcille in an epic revealing goth dress any day. Marcille with messy hair is crossing the line though someone braid it please.

Marcille had a flair for the dramatic, values the grand and the novel-like, big gestures and being swept away by knights. As was discussed in this post of mine and as will be covered in my Marcille & Chil arc analysis, fantasy is something she uses to make the world more digestible, less scary, more handleable. As such, I can totally see how a gown that makes her feel larger than she is, more important or, more narratively, like a protagonist, like a sorceress and a princess, and understood and validated in her mourning, would make her feel like she can tackle things more, better in her own skin, or perhaps, giving into the delusions ever so more. She needs a dose of reality and dw her party (chilchuck) will come to give out that.

Dunmeshi prones the importance of balance for both a healthy body and a healthy mind and hope & fantasy vs logic & reality aka optimist idealism and cynical pessimism are one side of that.

"Fumi, do you really think Kui intended all of this?" To a good degree I wouldn’t be surprised, but ultimately that’s not what matters bc this is still compelling cultural context and themes to read into the text, like I mentioned at the start. Diversity of interpretations is good!! It’s a sign of a deeply rich story! I think in 15 years we’ll still have essays being written on Dungeon Meshi and I think that’s incredible and no small feat.

[puppppppppy]

made this while watching ep 1 of dunmeshi

[s-aint-elmo]

part 2 of my pining falin agenda aka I STAND WITH MARCILLE THAT DRESS WAS CUNT

part 1

(ID in alt text)

[lylahammar]

Hi ✋ I have a little Marcille theory/headcanon (which honestly could possibly be canon) to share

I often see people characterizing her as the person who wears inappropriate clothes to a hike, like the girl who doesn’t know how to handle herself outdoors. And I always thought, why is that?? She’s shown to have been kinda an outdoorsy kid

I still think that characterization that people give her is incorrect BUT only partially. I was thinkin about it more and I think that Marcille is a reformed agoraphobe. She grew up playing outside all the time, until her father died and her mother said the worst thing possible to her daughter dealing with that trauma lmfao

Marcille became terrified of death, not just for herself but for others. I’ve seen people joke about how her early life timeline doesn’t have much on it, and I know part of that was because her backstory hadn’t been revealed yet when the adventurer’s bible was written so it was avoiding spoilers, but also. Maybe she actually didn’t do much before going to magic school?

When she met Falin, she was confronted with a kid who was just as, if not probably more outdoorsy than she was as a kid

And she actually got panicked by it! This interaction reads at first like Marcille being a prissy nerd who doesn’t go outside ever, which is why I think people often mischaracterize her that way, but it reads a lot different when you realize she actually used to be outdoorsy herself and is just a (probably recently) traumatized girl with a horrible fear of anyone around her dying

Anyways, it’s very clear that Falin’s carefree attitude and podunk knowledge helped her get past the worst of her fears, and now Marcille’s able to travel and go on adventures again. Which, again, makes their love hit even harder. And also the terror Marcille feels at the idea of Falin dying. Top yuri couple of all time moment

[possamble]

Hold on

Was she

Hiding behind a portrait of her mother????? I know I joked about her emulating her mother to put off an air of a competent woman and mage but??? Did Ryoko Kui just straight up make the most straightforward visual metaphor of her feeling like a child behind the demeanor that she directly modelled off her mother??

[dunmeshistash]

Do you have some good image references for Marcille's mom?

These are the ones I remembered

[reigann]

I’m going to miss dm thusdays so much 🥺

[theotherpacman]

"my lover, my maker, my breaker, take me by the hand"

a farcille edit to miles by mother mother, inspired by this iconic gifset by @pink-vacancy !!!

I used this and this from youtube... idk how else to get my hands on clips...

[alphs20]

TELL THEM TO BRING OUT THE WHOLE DUNGEON!!!

[bublines]

i’ve been thinking about how marcille’s dungeon lord dress looks a lot like one of her mother’s dresses

[fumifooms]

Chilchuck, family & alcoholism

Collection of thoughts and speculation on Chil’s upbringing, his dynamic with his family and how alcoholism ties into it all. If you want the groundwork info on Chil’s background I recommend my masterpost on his family, here beyond a summary of the facts it’s really just me speculating from the crumbs we get of his parents and siblings, how it’s all affected him and in turn affected his own wife and kids etc etc.

There’s nothing more I’d like on mother’s day than to speculate about Chilchuck’s maladaptive attachment style. I’m fascinated by how distant everyone is and how much he’s been devoted to them all despite having been so absent. Intergenerational trauma get over here

Actually it’ll be easier if I make a rundown here too, it’s just stuff I reiterate from my masterpost tho.

Tiny table of contents: 1- rundown: family facts 2- rundown: alcoholism 3- dad 4- parenting 5- daughters 6- wife

^ Every time his dad gets mentioned. His mom never gets mentioned. His siblings I think are only ever mentioned in this extra, and then there are more ambiguous relatives cameos.

We know is hometown isn’t Kahka Brud, but we’re not sure wether he moved there upon getting his own house (presumably around when he got married at 13), or if it’s only after his wife when he rented out his place to relatives then rented the place in Kahka Brud.

If he rented it out to relatives, maybe that meant it was in his hometown? Especially if he and his siblings are "almost strangers" so presumably he doesn’t really keep in touch with his family. And I mean, he hasn’t seen his wife or daughter in 4 years so you can imagine how he’s like with his more distant family…

Additionally half-foots and Chil are very coded to be from an impoverished opressed working class people. So that’s the context.

I’ll say that I mentioned intergenerational trauma at the beginning, and I def think the distrust of elves is part of that, but here I want to focus on the interpersonal effects rather.

Copy pasting my masterpost thoughts overall: Chilchuck is hinted to have had a rather dysfunctional family himself (alcoholic father, distant siblings, etc). So he doesn’t really have the best model on how to raise someone and such. I imagine it was a sort of neglectful home situation, where the kids are encouraged to be independent. If they didn’t have to work or help around much, then a free range parenting sort of thing.

We do see how the family has full and warm feasts, where someone cleans his mouth with a rag, so it’s not like he didn’t have caring people or had a tragic childhood though! I don’t remember if it’s explicitely stated but he’s heavily implied to having grown up poor, as most half-foots, and I just think it’s the hardened hardworking family type of childhood where just like he does with others, they instilled somewhat harsh life lessons in him, which in turn encourages him to indulge in the simple pleasures of life like alcohol and sex, or at least women’s beauty and crass jokes. We do see he seems more optimistic when he’s younger in flashbacks, so a bunch of his harsh view on the world is still likely learned and earned rather than taught.

I still think he inherited many flawed views from how his father acted, like his attitude about excessive drinking not being a big deal, it being worth it. That work hard play hard, enjoy life die young mentality he has, shown mostly in the “alcohol” section of his Adventurer’s Bible profile, could very well be partly a result of the general poverty half-foot communities are that he grew in as well, like how he doesn’t hope for things to be as best as they could be and contends with good enough.  As far as I remember, his mother is never mentioned, but I doubt it implies she was out of the picture. She was probably a regular sort of mother that took care of the home and was still around when his father died, not unlike how Chil’s wife was implied to be a housewife. It looks like there’s a good age gap between one sibling to the next, that could be interesting to speculate about too. Mostly though I think it’s big family because it’s just sorta what happens when you regularly have sex and you don’t have contraception, being poor often makes family planning harder for various reasons and leads to more children.

Alcoholism context rundown:

Good Chilchuck analysis baseline here. Alcohol seems to be his main stress reliever/coping mechanism, especially for how emotionally constipated he is, and his job is being stressed about his party’s safety. Then he also mentions as a changeling that having his senses dulled feels relaxing to him, further confirming alcohol, as a drug that dulls senses, is something that he likes for the intoxication aspect and feels it’s relaxing. Alcohol also acts as a hunger suppressant, so it for sure has played a role in his dieting and unhealthy eating/diet habits, especially since he shows the instinct to drink to soothe hunger, all of that about how going hungry for 3 days used to feel manageable. Chil dieting info compiled here.

Chilchuck is at his most effortlessly cheerful when drunk or drinking. Compilation of every time he was drunk here.

And to be clear, a cheerful drunk is still a drunk. He literally will drink anytime he gets the opportunity to even if he’s aware overdrinking leads to health problems and death. Like canonically. He does NOT see how drinking should be a problem and does not seek to show restraint with it.

Dad of the dad

Marcille and Chilchuck having a talk on how losing a dad be like "You lost your dad young too…? I know how it is, it must have hit you hard…" "No not really tbh. Do you want lasagna or chicken for dinner?" <- either genuinely doesn’t feel much about his dad’s death or has 10 layers of repression, idk which is worse

I think Chil not making a big deal out of his dad’s death, not having worries in following into his footsteps that way in the least, is super interesting.

As a buddy @saccharineomens puts it: " I kinda imagine chilchuck and his dad didn't have a bad relationship, but in general chilchuck is so blase about drinking (he sees it as a delightful time, a wonderful thing! he wouldn't mind dying doing something he loved!) that he's not very upset about his dad's passing? like "yeah, he died, but i was already an adult, he was an adult, he made his choices, i make my choices, it's cool" " And I’ll nitpick that we don’t know how old he was when his dad died, I always assumed it was pretty early since Chil left home when he got married, and like I’ve gone into he doesn’t seem to be the keep in touch type. It’s on the table though, and he could have learned about it through letter if nothing else and that contributes to the "meh" reaction.

And that is very Chilchuck, the whole "we made our choices, it is how it is, he died doing something he loved", and you can totally believe that that’s the crux of it, but I do think the nonchalance hints at the family overall being distant and not only the siblings, that there’s dysfunctional shenanigans going on in there more than just… Healthy coping and having moved on.

I wonder when Chil first drank… And I wonder how he came to realize he liked alcohol a lot. His father probably gave him sips… Or he stole them

No because, with how disaffected he is about his father and siblings I could definitely see him having started to kind of numb himself/dissociate with the help of alcohol in that home environment that felt so… Either devoid of feelings or too messy to get attached. I can totally see his family being one that encourages dealing with feelings by bottling them up.

Because too… We saw him have a family/community feast of some sort presumably when he was a kid, in that chapter cover, so it’s not like there’s no warmth or sense of family at all, but then like… What went wrong? If as I theorize that girl with short black hair in that panel is his future wife, since she’s his childhood friend and all, what if his family/home life was always kind of cold and distant, even when gathered and cheery or despite those occasions? So then it’s like, at the family gatherings, she’s the most important person there to him, the one he actually connects to the most, the warmest presence he has…….. Someone he jokes around with that feels on the same speed as him, that doesn’t have the same connotations as everyone else present, a bit of a haven, someone different, a breath of fresh hair and a regained sense of childhood… Spitballing of course of course

I feel like they had a pretty big family and they were poor and such so there were always chores to be done etc, so their household might have operated like a mini busiess of sorts where everyone’s too busy, always has this and that to do and the mother asks them to go do tasks. I used to think it might be more of a neglect situation, where the kids are expected to provide for themselves and so cook their own meals and whatnot, both parents distant, but I don’t think so with the feast illustration. Chil at the beginning of canon used to see eating as a practical thing more than anything, you have to eat to live but don’t eat much or your weight will make your job more dangerous, might as well skip meals and have beer instead, etc etc. So the thought that he doesn’t know how to cook all that well despite this speculated background where he cooked for himself and keeps cooking minimalistic, since he does tell Senshi he taught him about cooking, is fair, but still… There could definitely be a situation where his older siblings were pushed into a parental role too, where they helped with the food and raising the younger siblings etc etc. As mentioned, the age gap between siblings may play into the dynamic as well. But on this front I have less ideas…

So yes my general take on Chil’s family is that everyone was too busy to emotionally connect as much as is normal, the parenting leaving things to be desired with alcoholism and emotional neglect.

Fathering

And I think that’s especially interesting considering he hasn’t been keeping in touch with his daughters either. It’s "they’re independent now" and that’s kinda it. His daughters haven’t sent him letters or visited him or tried to make him talk to their mom again. It does feel like with his own parents and siblings to me, where people are almost strangers, where relationships grow apart and everyone shrugs and goes ‘that’s how things are’. Is it that everyone including all his daughters gave up on trying to keep in touch, or is it that they all went "well divorced or not he’s absent, this is our normal tbh", and which is worse?

So yes, I think his relationship with his daughters is probably similar to his relationship with his parents, sort of hands off. Chil's dad was probably not a good dad but probably not quite a bad dad. A definitive He Was There, to quote another friend heh

Imo the thing with Chil is that he was pretty absent bc of work travels to dungeon dive, right. He’s working hard to provide for his family but in the process he’s not spending much time with them, slowly making a gap grow between him and them as they drift apart and change as people. He’s a career dad who never realized spending time with his family was more important and threw his pager into the ocean— But also here’s the thing!! You want to say being his family is more important, but money is arguably more important! They’re poor, they don’t have the privilege of free time as much. Sure he’s not there, but he is providing for them what they need to keep living and growing healthily. Similarly, you want to say Chil should stop doing harsh dieting for weight management, but, he has a point, maybe starving is still preferable than dying in traps. Of course the ideal would be to change jobs, but again, life is a struggle and that’s not always an option.

^ Truly the classic "if you don’t listen to me, your parent, a cryptid is gonna kidnap you!" international experience………

He is so so so the "What? My way of parenting is kinda bad? But my father raised me like that, and look how great I turned out!" <- emotionally dysfunctional…….. "Pshhh what do you mean having an alcoholic parent negatively affects you? My father was an alcoholic too and look at me"  🤡

All of it was behavior normalized to him. And listen, I’m saying this but not as like, shirking of his part in it. This isn’t a teen or young adult, he’s middle aged, he’s become the one giving and not receiving the generational trauma. He’s chosen to never think deeper on the topic.

And like, he himself is so indifferent to his father and what their relationship was like, of course he wouldn’t notice if a parenting choice wasn’t great for his daughters. He doesn’t have a relationship with his dad, he’s not (at least not consciously) traumatized by him, so from his perspective it’s mission success! He got raised decent enough 👍⭐️ Except he doesn’t realize that like, not particularly caring if he died is sign of a problem between them in itself… And this even as he remains somewhat of an important figure in his life, especially since that’s who he sees on the other side of the life river in the ghost chapter. It’s implicitly the biggest instance of loss through death Chilchuck has in his life I think.

But despite it all he obviously does love his family a lot, right. So I do believe that like, while he has imperfect standards when it comes to parenting he still tries to be better than his dad was, that even if it’s necessary that he has a lot of long work travels, he spends time with them. And there’s sort of this dissonance that he’s both "it doesn’t matter wether i’m here or not, they’ll live, they’re tough girls. Oh they didn’t like my scolding earlier? It’s just how kids are" dismissive and "I love them so much and I want them to have a good life. I want to do my best by them" devoted and so so caring. And like that’s why he works so damn hard, he does it for them, but also that’s why the girls grew up with an absentee father and aughhhh AUGHHHH the unsolvable dilemma of it all Chilchuck in Dunmeshi truly represents like, the harshness of reality & the world and how sometimes things will just suck no matter what, and then of course balancing that with Marcille in their shared arc where she tacks on "And despite that there is beauty everywhere even in the small and menial things, despite that your flawed relationships and dreams are still worth fighting for" ie giving reconciling with his wife a shot, etc.

All that said I think the very strict "you’re gonna grow up to have a stable job by god, young miss" attitude, those strong work ethics he highly values and focuses on and no doubt tried to instill in is own kids, is something he somewhat inherited from his own upbringing and parents.

In my masterpost bit on his parenting, I said I don’t think he’d do any kind of corporeal punishment, but. I do wonder about spanking aftee all. It can be so so easy to rationalize it… Sigh

Daughter pov

Again, my general interpretations for the daughters are written in my masterpost. I think Patti knows her father the least and is the one least worried about jobs and stability and least settled down as a result. Flertom is the more social one who I imagine tended to be the one worried about her parents’ couple and their emotions the most. And Meijack… Ohh Meijack.

When your father tried his best to provide for you but he worked all the time and even when he was home he was either tired or stressed and he’s always liked to get drunk to relax and cheer up. When you know he values work ethics and respectability so you grew up to be capable and quiet. And when he says you’re like him you’re sort of puzzled, does he really know you so little, or does he know himself so little? But you like the feeling of your father ruffling your hair so you accept it and still you stand next to your mother just as quiet and just as stoic during family gatherings. He leaves again and again and when your mother leaves him nothing changes, really. You wonder if it’s more telling that you know him better than he seems to himself or that you don’t know him as much as you wish you did, or that you don’t think about him all that much these days. Out of sight out of mind

Thinking of those posts about how kids never forget and during the "draw your family!" things at school, some of the kids draw their working parents seperate from the rest of them...

Absent father and when he’s at home you get the crumbs of him that you get and you’re grateful for it and that’s that <333

She doesn’t know how much he loves them bc he hasn’t showed them in a long time </3

The horror of drunk Chil in my fics is often about what in this state he can’t do rather than what he could do, how someone who’s as proud of his skills and work ethics as he is has truly changed, not comprehending how he could become so sloppy or how he could allow himself to get like this, marred the values he preaches above all else. It’s in the way that he fumbles with doorknobs, that he could never lockpick a door if you were to lock it, and it both being your salvation and bringing you extreme distress at the thought of it all. His footsteps usually featherlight now sound heavy as stone, like a troll’s.

You know the thing that gets me so bad with alcoholism angst is when people describe the drunk person as a stranger. Often making a metaphor that they’re monsters, have some monster they shapeshift into uncontrollably once in a while, as a way to split the unreconciliable halves of the person sober and drunk in your vision of them……. It gets me soooo bad Little Puckpatti growing up on tales of trolls kidnapping disobedient kids and replacing them with doubles so no one even knows they’re gone… Coming face to face with a drunk Chilchuck that roams the halls of the house with heavy steps in the night, because she wanted to go drink a glass of water, too thirsty to sleep………..

And this is where I reveal that I wrote a fic about just that!! Trolls that thump and tiptoe through the night Mei @ Chil, You made me of stone and still every day you wear me down and chip away at me bit by bit

In the end notes I describe my takes and interpretations: With Mei I tried to give the sense of a kid who sacrifices some parts of childhood to feel closer to her parent, like not playing games to spend more time with him no matter how empty, or wanting to be worthy in his eyes. With Fler, since she was the one in canon to take in their mother and write Chil a letter explaining the situation, I feel like she’s always been the one most involved and aware of the problems in their family. The one most there to emotionally support or to understand what the vibes in a room meant. Puckpatti I think knows her father the least, since with time I think Chilchuck was more and more away from work and more and more cynical like the flashbacks of younger him dungeon diving. I think because of her not minding unstable odd jobs that she’s the most passive, that she’s the most go with the flow. I do also love when Mei is the one most aware of her parents’ flaws and most critical as the eldest, but not in this fic. Meijack grows up to never touch a drop of alcohol, what people joke is the one difference between her and her father. Flertom drinks, too much sometimes, but she considers drinking should be a social activity rather than a habit. Puckpatti only drinks on special occasions when she has the chance.

They already don’t have that much time together because of his work, I wonder how big of a percentage the amount of memories the daughters have of him are when he’s not himself truly… How they kinda reconcile it all. It’s their normal. 

And the thing that’s gutting too, is that Chil always looks so so much more open, relaxed, cheerful and happier when drunk than he usually is. He doesn't know how to get his defenses down without alcohol

"you're all that's good"

Because we do see how he truly used to not be so closed off and bitter. But distrust and fearing for betrayals from both coworkers and then his wife aka the person who’s supposed to be closest to him (he doesn’t even have close family besides his daughters. Does he even have close friends) turned him into what he is now. He was so cheerful!! Happy and trusting and optimistic.

He leaves and she left

God there’s the whole ‘wife leaving him’ trauma too is the thing… It had to have fucked him up so bad like no wonder he got paranoid and decided not to open up to ANYONE like. He never saw it coming is the scariest thing. He didn’t expect her to just up and leave. He didn’t see the warning signs. He won’t know if it’s coming this time either.

….. But then also, why he didn’t reach out to her (besides hurt) was because it was a petty silence treatment, like "oh she left without saying a word? Fine well I won’t reach out to her either" <- man who is so not fine and collected about it. It’s been FOUR YEARSSSSSSS I wonder if he always was like… "This week she’s gonna send a letter. … Ok fine, this month she’s gonna crack. … Within the year she’ll come crawling back." and it’s a bit why it was allowed to go on for this long unchecked like… Why he still considers her his wife even though functionally she’s more of an ex by that point after 4 years.

I can never stop thinking about him and his wife they’re fucking crazyyy. Him not reaching out to her started as a silent treatment from frustration. She never reached out to him either, she just up and left, didn’t even leave or send one last letter she’s just gone and has left this all behind, the house and everything in it. It’s been 4 years but he still considers her his wife and considers themselves only "estranged", "due to circumstances we haven’t seen each other in years". His face in the panel he said this is interesting too, trying to be casual but defensive and exasperated, already dreading the judgement and questions. He moved out of his house to rent a place in Kahka Brud instead. How much of him not reaching out was avoidance… Guilt, frustration, sadness, confusion, just procrastinating and dread and fear of a rejection more concrete, or something else… Maybe realizing he doesn’t miss her as much as he should, not enough to chase after her or try to get her back, just resigning himself to it… Is he a bad husband, is he a bad person? Should they reconcile?

Not seeing it coming… It’s half trust, that this person who’s so dear to you could never just up and leave and hurt you like that, half entitlement, thinking that she would never think of leaving, and third it’s blinding himself to the warning signs, not wanting to believe or acknowledge them. Because like, there WERE some, he said she "suddenly fell into a bad mood on the way back [from the outing]" and I don’t think he’s too dumb to be aware that something was off, he literally just dismissed it and then went surprised pikachu face when it turned out things were indeed off.

Part of it is definitely, how do you even react if your wife walks out on you without warning. If it happened to me I think that I wouldn’t reach out for a while either, wait for them to reach out to me first, give them space. As I put it in one of my marchil wips, "I respect your right to be rid of me too much to try and shackle you to me if you want to leave". Inaction is easier than admitting he’s scared to check and find out that the worst case scenario is true. It’s been years and he still hasn’t worked it out why she left. Do you think that’s on purpose. That he doesnt want to know for sure. It’s so so so scary to try and do anything about it

He said he didn’t reach out right away when she left because he was petty and wanted to give her the silence treatment back. Ok but is it that he blames her for their marriage falling apart or does he blame himself and he’s just misdirecting the conflicted feelings? Did he not reach out because a part of him was too scared to know why she left or if she would refuse to come back? Did he just think that she’d come back on her own, and things would get fixed while still staying unsaid and unconfronted like they always have, the first month, then the next and the next, until it was a year in and it sunk in that oh, maybe she wasn’t coming back?

He seems genuine here when he says that he was angry about it and gave her the silent treatment, but it is an habit of his to lie to make himself look worse instead of showing vulnerability, so who knows.

He is so so scared of being affected by relationships. Same thing with his compulsive habit to disguise his worry for anger. It’s why he doesn’t want people to have expectations of him, "I’m a coward I’m selfish", because then they can’t be disappointed, they can’t be surprised if he bites, they can’t leave when you lose what they’ve been staying for.

He has avoidant tendencies too. Every time there’s an interpersonal issue he just accepts it’s out of his control immediately. He’s passive when it comes to relationship problems, just like with coworkers, relationships are a ticking time bomb to him, and he just wants to be left out of it and come out unscathed. It comes back to his pessimism. He doesn’t think that like, things could be better. According to him life is tough and cruel, you accept your lot in life and make the best out of it and that’s it. If people are scummy you don’t whine about how unfair it is, you close yourself off and work to not be taken advantage of again and adapt. So then with his wife, when Marcille is like "Have you tried… Talking?" it’s such a crazy idea that it might work at all, that he could have the power to fix things… And that’s why it’s such a big deal when he goes "Alright I’ll try… I don’t know if it’ll go as well as in the stories, but I’ll try". That CRUMB of allowing himself to be hopeful is so huge

Honestly for the longest time I misread this bit, I thought she left in the night like how Marcille framed it, but no she left after he left for work. She left after he left again.

The way it’s told, it really sounds like Chilchuck just came home from work, stayed probably a couple of days in which they went to that outing together, then left for work again right away/soon after and it’s like. Was that outing the most special thing you guys did together. You came home from like a month of work, you had one outing where she ended up having a bad time, y’all didn’t talk about it further and then you left for another couple of weeks. Are you kidding me

Your married life is waiting for your husband to come home, spending mediocre time together, being shut down when you voice discontentment, and things being left unaddressed before he leaves again.

She left when he was gone for work, but did she leave the day of, or did she flip flop on it and took a while before working up the strength to leave? Was she waiting to see if he’d say anything before leaving and when he didn’t that was the last straw?

Chilchuck trying to prove a point that half-foots can make it out there, trying to rely more on himself because that’s the only person he can trust. His wife feeling like he's leaving her behind (because he does. over and over and over and over.) This guy just keeps throwing himself into work because he thinks it's what's best for everyone. Hey sir neglecting emotional needs can be kinda detrimental to everyone involved, I think you might wanna know that ^ quotes courtesy of @soappox

And to come back to alcoholism for a bit, alcoholism is alcoholism, and someone asked why I thought that a Chilchuck with depression would drink and cope through alcohol, since drinking seems to be something cheerful to him. It does puzzle me a bit but it’s worth going over, so… I don’t think him using drinking as a coping mechanism is far fetched at all. Cheerful drunks that are alcoholic still can absolutely use alcohol in ways like that. If something makes you happier, or even just more numb which translates to you feeling more free etc etc, then I definitely think it tracks that he’d keep drinking. Like personally I do think he’d drink a lot after his wife left him, and in rough patches like that. Depression -> not wanting to have to think, the days are blurring together and you either don’t want to be conscious or you want to feel something etc etc -> drinking for the alcohol. Alcoholics tend to be, well, dependent on alcohol. If something bad happens etc they’re usually more likely to go harder on it rather than stop. We can debate on when and why Chilchuck first started to drink but it’s straight up his favorite food now and it’s deeply ingrained in his life, in his favorite outings and activities and priorities and moods and meals. A CHEERFUL DRUNK IS STILL A DRUNK!!! They drink to get happy not drink because they are happy, though obviously the two can have overlap.

Chil represses sooo much. His solution to interpersonal conflict and feelings is just don’t think about it and dull your feelings & senses to everything ✨ I love him. I need to kill him with hammers Like the other day I was thinking about an AU where he might have ran away from his neglectful home or something, but then I remembered he deals with everything including his family by dulling his feelings and senses to things 🫠 He wouldn’t leave

I’d say he doesn’t look troubled by loss through death, moreso loss through mistakes. His nightmare is his daughters dying yes, but moreso them being killed, there’s an axe in the wall etc, it’s about having failed to protect them.

If he can’t fuck something up or if he’s already fucked it up there’s this pacifying sense that he can’t have the rug pulled from under him, because that’s what having connections is, having a wife isn’t an insurance it’s a rug waiting to be pulled. And his brand is sort of Flawed Mr Mistakes Man so he’s kinda been having to cope lol. I do think he throws himself into workaholism, because it’s sort of the only way to live he knows, making yourself capable and useful and spending his days working like that, less time to think, too tired to think. Senses dulled, senses that are usually too sharp, cutting with clarity that he prefers ignoring and avoiding. Work is something he doesn’t have to feel through, something that gives him pride and self-esteem, something through all the danger and life or death risk feels safer, emotionally. No one taught him how to deal with things another way, it’s always been suck it up and work.

Conclusion

Stop smoking we love you and we don’t want you to die

No drinking will not externalize your feelings no it won’t vent them out well please Chilchuck ple-ea-ease…….

</3 They should invent an alcoholism that doesn’t make you dysfunctional and hard to be around

^ Drunk, by The Living Tombstone

I’ve been thinking about enneagrams and Chil is 6w7 highkey. Becomes 3 when stressed, a little 8 but it’s more that he wants security so much that he becomes paranoid rather than having the core of an 8 y’know. I haven’t dug into it for quotes yet but this paper goes hard if you’re curious.

Dropping my relevant Spotify playlists here bc why not: Chilchuck & his wife, marchil angst

[pinkieriver]

“I could be a good mother and i wanna be your wife”

[ventiventigrande]

[octojuiceyuri]

Been in an art slump + a new sem has risen to haunt me so have some art dumps w stonch and frens

(bonus this papercraft sniffer from u/biggggggggggcat on the signalis subreddit with mini snorf + marcille in the background)

[twyrrinren]

Laios is not obsessed with Kabru because Kabru is not a monster. Kabru's childhood fear was that he is a part-monster. "Thanks for validation that I'm not a monster, I guess?"