#this life and in part her own failing to make it back to falin and prevent this from happening

[s-aint-elmo]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one obsessed with the Marcille Laios Falin gang. Like they are a unit.... A team.... Even if the rest of the party fell apart they would stay together.... Idk it's just really fun to see all the different groups everyone falls into across the course of dungeon meshi and I love how you can tell that the three of them are a unit even as they are separated for most of the manga.

YEAH!!!! that day in the laughing wolf when falin first stopped marcille from perma-killing her brother that was fate in motion binding them together for the rest of their lives. (/hj but also i have a vague nebulous idea for a series of drawings of the toudens + marcille thru the years starting w the laughing wolf.) i love how we know that in both laios and marcille's ideal visions for the far future they are together with falin and that by the end they make it happen. i love that they both started off being connected only by the strength of their love for falin but eventually developed their own deep closeness that cemented their trio as a balanced whole.

i don't see laimar romantically the way i do farcille but those two for sure mean as much to each other as falin does to them. i love laios's strongest impression of marcille being the moment she gave it all to bring falin back. i love marcille speaking to laios's corpse with her cheek laid on his cold breastplate. i love laios looking out for marcille's comfort and enjoyment as the baseline for the party because she's the most expressive about her feelings. i love marcille always being the first to notice when laios is being dodgy as all hell and making him spit it out.

however it shakes out those three are family 5ever and we all know the lengths they'd go to if they were ever to be separated <333

[problemstarchild]

This last chapter was really amazing ! I think it did a good job of communicating that laios is scared kabru might hate him or even worse might be obliged to be with him 'for the sake of the country' and that kabru feels horrible for knowing laios inside out by just being a spectator of his nightmares

I liked the flash back with his father I think it expanded on stuff from the manga nicely💥💥

I also liked the part where laios is avoiding saying what is bothering him and kabru calling him out on it, usually it's the other way around !!!

When he asked the hypothetical "would you kiss me?" question my reaction was literally NOO LAIOS HES NOT READYYY‼️‼️

Very excited to see where it goes and yeah the slow burn is slow-burning

I'm not sure when you sent this -- I didn't get a notification, my apologies!!

I love love love writing stuff about Laios' childhood; it's something he thinks about deeply (his nightmares are about childhood bullies and his parents, his dying thoughts when the ghosts are chilling him to death in the Sorbet chapter are about Falin and the way she saved his life and he failed her) but when he talks about it, it's super clipped.

Like, the version of his history he gives to Senshi is like "Yeah, I left home for school, dropped out, went into the army, deserted, worked in a caravan, and then my sister followed me here and got eaten," and it's so clear that he considers himself a huge failure and not just like... the end result of a wide-ranging societal cruelty toward Strange People, that the superstition and cruelty of the people in his hometown drove him to run away from the only home he had ever known.

And he just doesn't talk about it!

He'll tell people if they ask, but nobody ever asks. People GOSSIP about him, say they think he might be a prince or something (apparently), and that's at least a widely-enough circulated rumor that Asivia is able to pick up the fact that he's supposed to inherit leadership over a village in the North -- but she doesn't know enough about him to know that he basically ran away from home. Nobody really knows that. Has anyone ever bothered to ask? Like, we almost know more about Laios' childhood dogs than his dad. They're deeply imperfect people living a simultaneously interdependent and independent lifestyle -- they have their own homesteading and hunting they need to do to sustain their livelihood, but then Laios' father is also responsible for maintaining important goings-on in the village...

SIGH. I think it's totally valid if people want to depict Laios' parents as total monsters in their fics, we have very bare-bones personalities and neither Falin nor Laios can be fully impartial narrators... but I think it's all the more tragic that they did the best they knew how to do and still managed to fail.

A lot of the things our parents do to hurt us are things they did on accident, things that they never knew bothered us. Isn't it worse in a way, that they didn't mean to? At least if they did it on purpose, we could hate them for it. I enjoy having the context of memories and nightmares and sudden, aggressive flashbacks to force these sorts of maladaptive life lessons and formative experiences into the spotlight -- I sort of just write characters in a way that suits them without trying to write up a whole psychological profile in advance or anything, but the more I write Laios the more I feel like I wouldn't be surprised if he just straight up has CPTSD, on top of whatever else is going on. Between his village, school, and the army, the amount of alienation and violence and cruelty he's endured, along with a long-term lack of any level of meaningful parental support... like, no wonder he's so, terribly dependent on Falin. He's a social creature, he loves to be with his animals and he loves to be with his sister, and he's in a world that doesn't want him!!!!!!! And it makes me insane!!!!!!!

One of the things I really really love about Laios is that he's TERRIBLE at lying, but really good at omission. Like, he can't hide the man-eating plant seeds or changeling-changed Kensuke from Marcille, his lies to the Canaries when they arrive at Thistle's house are TERRIBLE and Kabru is even like "oh my goddddd he is so bad at this???" but when it comes to just not mentioning stuff. Chilchuck being like "BY THE WAY, you didn't know Marcille was into black magic, right??" like he's looking for an alibi and Laios just being like "I mean kinda, but I just sort of didn't ask her about it because it's her business." His backstory basically gives nothing. In the side comic about the dog names, he says kind of distantly that he never know his dad's dogs were named after elven gods of the hunt because his father never told him anything -- but he ALSO never tells anyone anything. Like, he just straight up hid the fact that he was plain ol' obsessed with monsters for years. That's the part that makes me the craziest. He was surrounded by the thing he loved and he just was being so normal about it all of the time. Because he can just chop about 90% of himself off and hide it inside of the other 10% and just puppet that little bit around.

The big thing for me was... he knew Falin's resurrection might not work. The demon basically implied several times that if it was vanquished, Falin couldn't be revived. "You want to destroy magic itself, even though you desire to revive your sister with a magic you want to deny to others... hypocrite." Threatening him with the looming knowledge that his "greatest desire would never be fulfilled" and him obviously assuming that would be Falin's resurrection.

And then he still asked all of those people to help him cannibalize his sister.

And didn't tell his friends that it might not work until they were almost done eating her, nearly a week later.

Like, he's not a good LIAR but Laios Touden is a master of just not saying things. Essentially, he strong-armed a good hundred people or so into eating Falin knowing full well it might not work, and didn't tell anyone -- including his closest friends -- that it might not work until it was too late to back out because they'd already done everything he wanted. Like. I'm not sure if he was trying to brace them for disappointment or if he genuinely felt like he had somehow been tricking them by not mentioning it... but to me, that's HUGE. Lying to the whole big group of people eating -- sure, whatever, but these people went through so much already, the fact that he still just quietly hid the fact that everything they did might still be for nothing is just. Oof. Ouch. My bones.

SO. IN A ROUNDABOUT RESPONSE.

Laios is good at hiding things, but a bad liar! He just usually is very straightforward with Kabru about things in private, I think, so even though Kabru has a hard time reading his FACE, he's already clued in that Something Is Wrong and he's not going to drop it until he gets his answers. Big tells would be Laios using more diplomatic or careful language despite being alone (taking care not to be misunderstood, which means he's hiding something in his words, or worried that the thing he's talking about is just inherently bad), misdirection, unwillingness to address the topic...

It's really fun to flip their usual dynamics on their head. I had Laios gently reminding Kabru of a kobold's name in the Karkadann chapter, I believe, and then Kabru trying to get Laios to be straightforward and honest in this last chapter... it always feels super rewarding when I find an opportunity to do something like that. Like, situations are always changing, they're never going to be exactly the same from one moment to the next... one minute you think Laios fumbled the whole situation with the kobolds, the next minute Kabru and Laios are performing a flawless combo social attack finisher. It's so much fun.

Kabru is!!! Doing his best!!! I've been focusing on Laios mostly in this ask mostly because next chapter is going to be Kabru POV and I don't want to get TOO far ahead of myself... but he's definitely having A Time!!!!!

Thank you for reading, and thanks for the message! I'm so glad you enjoyed!

[ame-to-ame]

How ironic that literally the moral of dm is that to live is to consume and to have desires is a proof of living and so wanting is not bad!!! Wanting is not bad!!! But every waking hour I repress myself from wanting that I don't even know really how I feel or what I want anymore

Which is kinda why I have like mixed feelings Abt falin bc I like falin I do she just reminds me of someone and she reminds me of the part of myself I thought I was growing out of but recently I've been falling back into

To not have any dislikes. To not want to hurt anyone. To be nonconfrontational. To forgive and say nothing about your family who cast you out and your brother who left you. To not have any complaints about the injustice of the world enacted upon you for being just a little different, but not really different from anyone at all because like everyone else you were just a kid trying to survive in a world that was new to you.

Falin was most alive to me when she said that she was willing to hurt others to ensure the survival and wellbeing of marcille and laios. Because in that moment she wasn't just someone who would go along with anything who was okay with everything--She wanted her brother and friend to be well. She wanted something!! And I think it's kinda implied with the whole message of the manga that falin was most alive in the end when she does choose to live. She chooses to live by consuming. She wants to live!! She wants to eat! And the lion says that it's the more painful path or something like that. But nonetheless she does it because she wants to. Want. Desire. You have to want something to have any force of will, any proof of living in this world, because how else will you change anything if you're okay with everything and let it change you?

But anyway. Yeah. I saw a post that ended like. I am crude at piano, crude at life, and full of wants (by onenhillion on tt) about being scared of wanting things for fear of rejection and fear of loss but coming to accept it. And imo with my own meaning projected onto it, accepting wanting bc it's such an integral part of being alive. You have to be okay with wanting things and have to be okay with rejection and loss.

Anyway all it is to say that I don't want to have lived a life where I only did things that other people wanted from me. Things other people told me to do. Things other people thought I should do. I want to have at least tried to do the things I wanted and be the person I want to be and even if I fail on the way I will have felt better knowing that I at least tried.

I guess that's why I always try to take the initiative and try to be open and make the first move and whatnot because. Well. Life is too short to be scared or to wait for a better time or to doubt myself. But even then I'm too aware that I'm still not brave enough sometimes that I'm still too scared sometimes. But at least the times I've tried I can be proud of. It's a work in progress. Progress isn't linear. I just have to be more sure and more certain in myself.

God it's my life and I'm the only one responsible for it so. I better be taking the wheel back soon lol.

[ildannatorp-blog]

“ but there are nights when instead of sleeping i think of you And lie feverishly awake on knives of roses - ”

N A M E -  Scarlett Cabot A G E - 25 C A R E E R - Ballerina/knife thrower A F F I L I A T I O N - Dannato Club

“ TEN YEARS FROM NOW, MAKE SURE YOU CAN SAY THAT YOU CHOSE YOUR LIFE, YOU ‘DIDN’T SETTLE FOR IT. -

Born into a world that she never quite felt like she belonged in Scarlett Cabot was always a particular child with an affinity for the complexities of life and the more profound problems most people around her faced. For Scarlett, the solutions were always secure, cut, and dry- she could take emotion out of her decisions, believing that it merely clouded her judgment and produced muddy results. Even as a child Scarlett didn't fall into line with the other kids, she grew up with. As her friends were playing house or imagining worlds of fantasy and lore Scarlett preferred the reality she could understand. For her parents it made her a straightforward child, they knew what to expect of her in any given situation and yet at the same time they never knew what it was she was thinking, just that she was continuously thinking. The gears in her head turning as she grew into a resolute girl sure of her every decision.

Many people mistook Scarlett for cold, detached- harsh even but those who truly knew her could never doubt that Scarlett Cabot was full of passion. At least, when it came to ballet when it came to the stage and the lights- her first pair of pointe shoes and her first solo.  From the time Scarlett could stand on two legs the girl was enrolled in ballet, it was one of the many electives her affluent family afforded her, and it was the only she found any interest in. It was a regimen sport, that demanded discipline and fluidity, determination and passion- it was a fine line that you had to toe to be considered a valuable dancer, and it was made all the more difficult when you had to do it in pointe. Ballet was Scarlett's first passionate love in her life. Her studies were often slid to the side; paying and bribing the honor roll students in her private school to ensure she maintained her grades while she focused on her true ambition;  Salle Le Peletier, the Paris Ballet.

All of her ambition and hard work surely paid off as after high school Scarlett was admitted a space in the New York Ballet company. For years Scarlett worked her way through the company until she finally made her way to the coveted space of a soloist. Her dream was in her sights,  Salle Le Peletier was coming to the states to audition Ballerinas. The likely hood of any of the dancers even being considered was a phenomenal chance, but Scarlett was determined to dance her heart out anyway. The day came, and her audition was set in mere hours when the news rolled in; her brother was dead. A heart defect, an anomaly that no one had accounted for.  Devastation gripped Scarlett, her brother was the only person in the world who she felt truly understood her. The only person who she knew never judged a moment of her existence, who supported her in every endeavor and suddenly and without warning, he was gone.

Scarlett still went on for her audition, and as she danced through her grief, she ended feeling as if she had ultimately failed and let herself down. There was no way she thought she would be getting that position, and yet through the grapevine, there were whisperings that there were two dancers  Salle Le Peletier, was considering. She and another soloist who had been her most fierce competition her entire career. It was no secret the girls were enemies, always head to head vying for the position of the next Prima Ballerina at their company.  Scarlett felt as if she had no chance against her not after her performance, not after her brother's death. Then suddenly her competition was in the hospital, a broken leg. It was a scandal bigger than Tonya Harding. A would be prima ballerina in her prime was the main suspect of the attack on the young ballerina; Scarlett Cabot.

Scarlett's career ended violently, the ballet world blacklisted her, and suddenly every ounce of her hard work was ripped from her. Every passion, everything she had left to love was pulled away with the same warning as her brother's untimely demise. Scarlett was devastated; a villain in the eyes of the media, and there seemed to be no future for the girl. Then in a desperate stumbling, she found herself into her brother's favorite club; il dannato. It was in the haze of her night that Scarlett found herself swept up by an aerialist; swinging back and forth in a new sort of fervor. It felt like the most uncertain thing Scarlett had ever done in her entire life since the death of her brother, but the next night she was lacing up her pointe shoes equipped with knives as the most delicate point she would ever dance on. As Scarlett danced as precariously, she'd release herself from the blades, and with a flourish of years of practice, Scarlett would dance to unique choreography as she took her anger and grief out on the stage as she threw knives while dancing her elaborate dances. Twirling endlessly like a dancer stuck inside of music box unsure of what her next move was or if this was now her forever.

Atticus Salinger & Aryan Leghari -  She met them both the night she stumbled into Dannato looking for a way to forget. Both of them swooped her into the heavens and made Scarlett feel as if she were walking on air. Both of them seem to understand her in ways she never expected another living person would be able to. Scarlett is in love with them both, and both of them are in love with her. Together the three of them navigate a polyamorous romance full of its own unique challenges and victories. One thing for sure is Scarlett is unsure she could live this life without either of them.

Celeste Chopra - Her late brother's fiance, and someone she once admired.  However, towards the end of his life, Scarlett saw Celeste as what she was, an enabler and a problem to her brother's recovery. Scarlett has started to question the circumstances of her brother's death. Her family had all of the best private doctors, and there was never so much as a high reading of blood pressure on her brother's chart, let alone a heart defect. The last person she knows of to have seen her brother alive was Celeste.

Faline Aureum - The newest of the Aureum brood to join the scene and by far the most interesting. Maybe Scarlett is selfish, but she wants to know Faline. She has more than once caught the girl sneaking around the forbidden parts of the clubs and is interested in what she is up to, and in discovering what her motive is.

Scarlett Cabot (Courtney Eaton) is played by (Admin Darling) -