#young storytellers

[bigbeanbear]

Stephanie Beatriz talking about if she considered neurodivergence as part of the portrayal of Rosa Diaz, and relating her personal experience with anxiety to ADHD when she performed the stage monologue from the perspective of a teenage girl with ADHD for the Young Storytellers fundraiser.

@ TwinCitiesCon

FYI her stage monologue on ADHD

[kallenchi]

An illustration I made for the Young Storytellers "Biggest Show" fundraising event, to accompany a short story by an eighth grade student.

Image description in alt. text.

[unravelingwhy]

i wanna post this here in case i need a reminder when i'm comparing myself towards others 🥺

[wildcalendula]

[foreverunraveling]

Is it just me, or does Young Royals really love to scare us, lull us into a false sense of security, and then pull the rug out from underneath us (in a way that's much worse than the original threat)?

For example, you see August clocking Wille leaving the movie before Simon in episode 2.

You (if you weren't too distracted by the scene itself) might have worried that he might show up when they were having their first kiss there. But he didn't. The show consciously created that tension and then relieved it as a foreshadowing of the much worse version of that to come later.

That tension is recreated at the end of episode 4 when August is shown outside a window at Forest Ridge.

There's a brief moment of relief--he's at Alex's window, not Wille's. While you know deep down where this has to be going, you still have a kernel of hope. And then even when he does make it to Wille's room, you can't tell it's a boy (let alone Simon) for five full seconds. Hope tries to stay alive. We all know how it ends, though--that tension snaps right back into our faces when August spots Wille and Simon moments later.

This happens on a different scale with Wille and Simon's planned weekend together in episode 3. When Wilhelm tells Simon that August will be staying at Forest Ridge, that introduces a tension of "will they get their weekend together?"

That tension of "will they get their weekend together" is relieved when Wille asks if he can come to Simon's in Bjarstad, only to AGAIN snap right back into our faces when a much bigger problem surfaces--Erik dies. So, they don't get their weekend anyways.

Hell, there's even a hint of this in episode 2 when August walks in on Wilhelm looking at Simon's Instagram before rowing practice. He doesn't actually see what Wille was doing, though--so it's okay--and he ends up taking a call from Erik.

In another way, this happens with Wilhelm and Felice's relationship from season 1 to season 2. She initially kisses him in episode 3, and we worry that he might just go with it. He doesn't, though. What a relief. In the next episode, though, once he's crown prince, Wilhelm is publicly flirting with Felice (despite her relationship with August) over how "cute" she looks in a video. But our worries about this fade with the release of the video and Felice's support into season 2...

Until they actually almost hook up in the third episode, that is.

And it's definitely not limited to Simon and Wille and their relationships. It comes up with Sara and August too. When he initially kisses her in episode 4 of season 1, you might worry that maybe Sara will respond in a less-than-healthy manner, or that she'll keep what happened to herself instead of telling Felice. Sara rebuffs him, though, and tells Felice about what happened in the stables later that episode.

Tension introduced and relieved, so we move on. But then in the final episode of season 1, Sara goes to August's room to confront him about the video. And she ends up kissing him. In season 2, they end up being in AN ENTIRE SECRET RELATIONSHIP that Sara keeps from Felice. The original fear that you might have had about August twisting his way into Sara's heart was well-founded, it seems.

There are also smaller examples. Like when you see Erik driving incredibly fast in episode 1, or when you see Wilhelm riding on the scooters with Simon, Rosh, and Ayub in episode 2, some people worried there might be some kind of accident. (He was going hands-free, for fuck's sake.)

Well, in both of those instances, everything turned out okay, while Erik's actual offscreen accident in episode 3 obviously did not.

The anxiety about Marcus catching Wilhelm and Simon kissing at the Valentine's party is momentarily alleviated when it looks like him and Simon are going inside, but then Marcus turns around and sees Wille (not to mention he sees Simon eyeing Wille throughout the entire song and during the applause).

Let's not even get started on the drugs. We thought that storyline was resolved, gone, done away with after Alexander was seemingly expelled during season 1.

But then he's back in season 2, and the question of whether anyone will tell Alex that Wilhelm was the one to pin the blame on him arises. It seems a minor issue--given that Alexander wasn't actually expelled, and he seems to like Wille, we don't necessarily expect it to matter all too much. In episode 6, though, the "drug thing" is back at the top of our list of problems. We thought that this had been dealt with! That we'd gotten past it!

But it's worse than before--there's a pill bottle with Simon's father's name on it, and August has it! August has a potential witness behind him (Alex) and is threatening to tell not just the school, but the cops!

Don't worry, though, the tension is relieved when Simon tells Wille he's not going to report August to the police... for approximately six seconds until we see that Sara is reporting August instead.

Anyways, following this pattern, you can draw some really interesting potential conclusions about season 3 based on some of the big tension reliefs that have occurred over the past two seasons. Not saying that any of these will happen, but I'm preparing myself for anything:

Wilhelm has some sort of drug OD—like Simon (and some of the audience, probably) worried on the night of the Society party. This is one I'm really hoping doesn't come up.

Wilhelm actually kills August—when Wilhelm puts that gun down, it's a massive relief for most of us (also the characters present). This would just be... wild. And would explain Omar's tweets about how crazy the season is, I guess.

Sara outs Stella's crush on Fredricka, like she was threatening to do when Felice was moving out of their room at the Manor House. Istg if she does this I might lose it.

Wilhelm's mother dies. This was definitely one idea on some people's minds when Wilhelm takes that call that turns out to be about Erik in episode 3.

Wilhelm actually abdicates. This is definitely a threat made in season 2 that was later assuaged. I'm pulling for Wilhelm taking the throne only to abolish the monarchy. That might be a bit too optimistic on my part, though.

ALTERNATIVELY, August gets the throne. They teased us with this when Wilhelm almost didn't give the speech. August was literally walking up to the podium when Wille leapt up to take his place and momentarily rescued us from the notion that August was going to be ascending the throne.

Wilhelm and/or Simon and/or Sara get pulled from Hillerska. After the video, both Simon and Sara were potentially not going to return to the school. Simon was even late for the first day back, when he missed the choir performance. And Wille was almost physically removed from the school in episode 2 of season 2. Given the statement in the trailer about the school potentially shutting down... this one doesn't seem like too much of a long shot.

It's hard to say what any of this could mean for Simon/Wilhelm's relationship—I mean, in season 1, we had about six instances where we thought we'd get Simon and Wilhelm together and originally didn't (the first music room scene, the conversation after Erik's memorial, the second music room scene/drug situation, the video leak, Wilhelm LYING about the video leak).... the reasons kept getting worse and worse, until there's a release of tension when Wille says he won't deny the video—only for it to be far more crushing when he does deny it having promised otherwise. It seems like there's a new, bigger problem every time they turn around. So far, they've overcome all of the obstacles they've faced (honestly, I don't know how)... but I can't imagine that they're about to be facing an easy course based on that trailer.

Anyways, these are my meandering thoughts about some ways that we can try to guess at what we might have coming based on the show's patterns and its use of foreshadowing. Like I said, I'm just trying to mentally prepare myself for some of the wild-ass shit that might go down. So these are some crazy scenarios based on a few fake-outs that we've had so far. I'm still hoping that they don't take the smallest, most hopeful bits of seasons 1 and 2 and crush them in season 3....

[pilkypills]

🎷

[ouestjessicahyde]

[keitorin3]

The Reckless King and the Old Storyteller

So I had this idea that came to me one night just sitting around watching this movie "Three thousand years of Longing" on TV. If you've seen it, you'll probably know which part of it inspired me just by the title of this post.

So the setting for this story is based in the 1200-1300s where there is a young boy named Arthur who was crowned king at the early age of 11.

At age 20 he leads his army's to war, fighting alongside his men in the battlefield. Stories are told of his recklessness, even with his own life, but still with his strength and the power of his armies, he conquered the surrounding lands and the other neighbouring kingdoms as well. He returns to his kingdom as a conquer, but his soul has rotten in war, making him unable to shed his bloody armor (Figuratively speaking).

His councillors, fearing his bloodlust tries to distract him with other gratifications. They gave him all one could desire, alcohol, exotic foods, beautiful women and entertainment.

None could quinch his thirst for violence. Until the court summons all of the kingdoms best storytellers and bards to the castle in a bid for one of them enrapture the King with their tales.

At first, after many of storytellers failed and try to flee from the kings displeasure and impatients, they almost lost hope. But there was one that was able to enchant him.

The old storyteller went by the name Merlin, and he was a different kind of man. His insolence and quips would have earned his neck the blade, but the tales the man told stole the kings attention and even his foolishness and blunt comments was a charming quality to Arthur. It made him laugh and soothed the harsh king.

Merlin became his first friend. And that friendship eventually evolved into love.

Arthur grew very attached to the old man, and eventually it became a very common sight to see the two together as Arthur didn't just seek Merlin for stories but for company, somebody to speak too. For Merlin was honest in a sarcastic way that Arthur appreciates.

The tales Merlin told were many and holding a lesson and point of truth to be told. But Arthur especially loved the stories of Artorius. A Roman General from the 4th century who later becomes king after many adventures that helps to gather his loyal men of the Stone Round Table.

Arthur especially loves the tales featuring Artorius and his secretly magical Manservant, Myrddin. Their tale was of loyalty, love and heartache. Once, Arthur told Merlin that he thinks Artorius was in love with Myrddin and not the Queen Guinevere with how much they had been through together. It saddens Arthur that Myrddin had to hold onto Artorius dying body alone, weaping for him by a lake.

When Merlin finally reveals to Arthur his magic one day by via magic butterfly, and there and then, Arthur knew love.

Arthur tried to place Merlin in his court as advisor or court magician, but Merlin denies both offers and chooses to be his friend instead.

Now, this is where things get interesting! There's an assassination attempt on Arthur after hearing of the king going soft, someone had balls to try and kill him. The attempt is thwarted by Merlin who took a blade to the back after pushing Arthur out of the way.

The King holds Merlin in his arms as he dies.

The assassin dies shortly after with his internal organs ripped out and his head set on a pike in the front gates. But as soon as the bloodlust depleted, Arthur found himself beside Merlin's body and weeping.

The people ran for the hills as news of the Storytellers death spread, fearful of the violence the Kings grief filled rage will ensure.

Arthur did none, he remained at Merlin's side crying for the man who held his heart.

(Now here I would have left it off and said Arthur dies after drinking himself sick, but I'm a suckered for happy endings.)

It was only due to him never taking his eyes off Merlin that he witnessed it.

The Magic.

It was glowing gold, much like Merlin's eyes when he practiced magic, it sprung from the very earth and wrapped him. Before his very eyes Arthur watches in shocked Wonder as Merlin's sliver white hair turned raven black and his wrinkles disappear and smoothed clear into flawless white skin.

The best part was when Merlin's lungs breathed air and his eyes opened. They were gold for a long while before turning into very familiar blue eyes.

It was Merlin, his Merlin, only not so old anymore, but it's him and he was alive. Arthur had no restraint in hugging the just revived man tightly. Sobbing again but this time in relief.

Merlin: I'm ok Arthur, everything is ok my King.

Arthur: Don't- don't ever do something like that again do you hear me! Never again Merlin. Thank god you're alive.

Merlin: Err, your not shocked that I'm young again? Sorry about that by the way, I was planning on telling you but it slipped my mind, being old wasn't fake, just temporary. But man, it feels good to not feel my bones ache.

Arthur: You idiot. *then proceeds to kiss him dumber.*

Arthur would later trick Merlin into marriage and make him become King Consort. Nobody questions about the Old Storyteller become an Young Storyteller, content and happy with the positive effect he has on the Once Reckless King.

(This was great to get out of my mind. I loved the part of the Gjinns tale because instantly my mind went to Merlin and Arthur, but Merlin is the magical Being so he don't stay dead.

In my mind, the stories Merlin tells are all real events, especially Artorius and Myrddin. If it wasn't obvious, Merlin is Myrddin of the story and has been waiting for his King to return for 5-6 hundred years. He went across the lands telling their story. Now he found him in young Arthur and it was time they make new tales to tell, one of a round table and a sword in the stone.

That's all for now, till next time fellow dreamers~! ✨)

[decepti-geek]

okay, I'm pretty annoyed by how they handled the fallout of this plotline with Robby, because the setup/initial conflict for it was... a genuinely really traumatising direction to take things? it would have been just as much for a fully-grown adult as it would for a kid, so this weird half-hearted swerve where there's clearly SOME kind of effort to give it emotional depth makes it all the more irritating when the gaps are papered over with the most generic teenage angst stuff imaginable.

[warwickroyals]

Sunderland's Royal Jewel Vault (21/∞) ♛

↬ Queen Irene's Illyrian Emerald Parure Tiara

Sometimes, Queen Irene fancies herself a jewel maker. Despite the vast majority of the royal tiaras being inherited from queens long past, three tiaras were commissioned by Irene herself. The oldest being a jaw-dropping emerald tiara, the centrepiece of a magnificent parure. In 1971, Queen Irene was presented with an emerald necklace and a pair of matching earrings, a gift from the Illyrian Royal Family on the occasion of her accession as queen consort. King Edward II of Illyria was a charming ruler, and his family's jewel box was stuffed full of spectacular emerald jewels, reflecting his country's wealth and abundance. The large oval-shaped emeralds caught the Queen's eye, and she decided to expand the demi-parure over the next few years. In 1977, Irene commissioned Garrard to create a tiara to match the parure. The tiara and parure continued to be re-designed and evolved, with more Illyrian emeralds being added to the collection. By 1991, the finished tiara stood at a hefty 9 centimetres tall and was accompanied by a necklace, a pair of earrings, two matching bracelets, and a brooch. Irene since the parure's completion, Irene has worn it somewhat consistently, stating that the tiara makes her feel "as pretty as a peacock" although it often makes her the tallest lady in the room—even taller than her husband. Despite her age, Irene still manages to pull off this tiara with mastery despite having smaller and more comfortable opinions at her disposal. The Illyrian emerald tiara is truly fit for a queen.

Thank you @the-lancasters for gifting Irene such lovely emeralds 💚

HM Queen Irene, wearing the Illyrian Emerald Parure, frowns as she attends a banquet on April 15, 1996

HM Queen Irene wears the Illyrian Emerald Parure, during a State Banquet on April 18, 2014

[a-storytellers-wish]

Sharing a wip~

hehe goat

His name is Velid. Old Velid.

I based him on a few concept artworks of Valentino, in which he's depicted as an older goat. Hence, why Velid is an older goat.

[astramyr]

i've seen a few other people bring up good points on here so im gonna add in my thoughts about why i don't like huntlow

to me it felt like hunter was clinging to the first person his age who saw him as like, a regular teenager. sure, amity and luz have their moments of "the golden guard looks my age wtf" but in both cases, they saw him as the golden guard before anything else. willow was the first person who saw him as an equal, who saw him as "hunter" before "belos' right hand man". willow was nice to him because she's a generally kind person, not because she had to or because she pitied him.

and i feel like that kind of relationship is fine when the character receiving unconditional kindness has time to heal from their trauma! time that this show just didn't have!! and if you know you don't have time to fully develop a relationship in a healthy way, why try to develop it at all?

[not-poignant]

Me, reading this : "Like, my intention in amongst the hurt/comfort isn’t for things to feel easy or nice all the time, I am absolutely challenging the reader by introducing things that feel uncomfortable.". AH... I see. Here's Pia's dom personality XD Much love! Please keep challenging us forever!

Aha, it is weird sometimes to think that like, this is something that all writers are generally doing, and then it's like 'yeah no that's... introducing conflict means ideally you feel it too, that's... that's what makes the resolution feel so good' - like that's the job.

Tbh, this is why when folks are like 'omg I can't believe they KILLED that character' or 'I can't believe THIS HORRIBLE THING HAPPENED WHY' it's like well, they wanted you to feel this way. That's why. They did it on purpose. Outside of shitty tropes like 'burying your gays' etc. when folks are genuinely bemoaning why a show has made them miserable the answer is nearly 100% of the time - they wanted you to feel miserable.

They wanted you to have the awful experience of a tragic ending. They wanted you to feel the conflict at the end of a season so that you'd be driven to the catharsis of resolution in the next season. It's an intentional move to create emotional response, catharsis, expression, frustration and resonance, to lead you through a journey that is more than just cerebral.

And when it works, it's incredible, and it's my favourite part of storytelling.

[thebramblewood]

Read an exclusive excerpt of "Chapter 5: The Mysterious Cal and Lily" from Tangled Vines: A Complete Investigation of the Vatore Disappearances, the bestselling phenomenon sweeping Sim Nation!

The advent of the Roaring '20s put a new city on the map. Prohibition was in full swing across the nation (though often loosely and selectively enforced), but citizens were more eager than ever to revel in excess. Producers of alcoholic beverages (including the Vatore family itself, having swiftly resumed business operations despite the loss of its future inheritors) transitioned to an outward emphasis on medical spirits while moving recreational production underground. Equally clandestine speakeasys began cropping up by the dozens, but one city's winding sidewalks, grimy storefronts, and labyrinthine system of underground tunnels made it particularly well-suited to hosting these secret locales. Soon enough, San Myshuno was the pinnacle of glitz, glamor, and elegant debauchery. All who attended a party wanted to be seen. Curiously, though, two of the names most often uncovered in tabloid archives, Cal and Lily, seemed to fully avoid the increasingly ubiquitous flash of the camera. While other frequenters of the speakeasy circuit often found their grainy black and white faces in print, providing endless fodder for the burgeoning gossip rag industry, this pair remained elusive, which of course sold even more papers. Fellow partygoers pitched first-hand accounts to the highest bidders, and readers clung onto every salacious word. Lily and Cal were always observed to arrive together, but she would soon make a beeline for the gramophone while he settled in at the bar. Nearly every report calls Lily an exquisite beauty with an almost supernatural ability for drawing men into her orbit. In some instances, partygoers describe a herd of suitors nearly erupting into fisticuffs as they competed for her attention. It is impossible to say how many of these accounts are exaggerated or even fabricated. Nevertheless, it is clear she was quite the force. At the end of the night, she would leave with her chosen companion, stupefied by his stroke of good luck, on her arm. Meanwhile, Cal would watch listlessly from a distance, nursing a glass of whiskey he was never observed to actually drink. The relationship between the two was unclear, as was his reason for accompanying her, as he seemed to have little interest in the raucousness surrounding him. He rarely engaged with other guests or even Lily herself, though there is at least one report of an argument in which he seemed with little success to be dissuading her from leaving with yet another man. One cannot help but draw parallels to a certain set of siblings with suspiciously similar names. Despite being younger, Caleb Vatore was always said to be protective over his sister Lilith's interests, even if she rarely heeded his advice. Digging into the newspaper archives at Myshuno Meadows Library unearths several more disturbing accounts. Increasingly, there were whispers that the men Lily seduced completely vanished from San Myshuno society after coming into contact with her. While there was a small spike in unsolved murder cases at the time, a concrete connection between the victims and the mysterious Lily cannot be made. In one story, which admittedly reads like a hallucinatory drug trip, Lily is described as a succubus with glowing red eyes and sharp blood-stained teeth. This account was clearly dismissed, for its revelations were never entertained further. All at once, the champagne and glitter dissolved into a more sober era, and these socialites vanished from public life just as swiftly. In isolation, similarities between Cal and Lily and the disappeared Vatore siblings may seem like mere coincidences. In truth, it cannot even be proven that they existed. No official records matching either individual have been discovered. One could argue that they were works of fiction concocted to boost sales or composites drawn from several individuals. However, considered alongside the evidence to be presented in later chapters, the theory that this duo and the Vatores are one and the same becomes too tantalizingly probable to dismiss.

[fumifooms]

You’re the resident chilchuck expert, so I was wondering about it there’s any canon evidence that he did smoke or drink alcohol when the kids were younger. I always thought it was something he picked up due to the strain of long jobs, when the kids were already older, but you seem to think differently and I was wondering if there was anything in canon that made you think that way!

Now that you mention it I guess it’s true there’s no evidence he did. Smoking we literally only know he does at all because of one post-canon panel where he has a pipe, so no, maybe this stick-looking thing in the panel below too though, I’m not familiar with medieval blunts eh. We’ve only gotten one panel of him and his daughters interacting when he was younger so that’s not too insightful on that end, and every time we see him young and freckled it’s in a job context so again not really where we’d expect him to be drinking. The earliest proof (/heavy implication since we don’t see inside his cup I guess) is 3 years before canon when Laios hired him, where he’s at a bar, classily placed in front of all the bottles ✨

Yes alcohol is almost certainly a way through which he copes especially with stress, so if we go with the theory he started around when work got stressful, well… Chilchuck started working as a dungeon diver ~10 years ago so when he was ~19, making Mei, Fler and Puck ~6 and ~4 respectively, so from that draw the ‘stressful enough to start drinking’ line wherever. We don’t know what he did before that with any certainty, and it could be he did odd jobs, lived off mostly mutual aid and community work, or just focused on only raising the girls. Half-foots tend to be poor and I see a lot of that in Chilchuck specifically so I don’t think he could have afforded to not have some paying work though.

Alright, so then why do I think he did drink when the girls were younger?

I give a more complete rundown of the info we do have on his alcoholism & his family with panels and references + all the speculation I make from it here. But the most targeted and objective answer I can give is:

Of course there’s just very very little we know of Chilchuck’s life with his family, and I think that’s by design too. I think the details being up in the air is to allow more nuance of the topic, like, will trying to reconcile go well, is their relationship salvageable? We don’t know, because we don’t know. So the message of giving hope a chance even if it’s a long shot, that things could truly go either way, is more relevant, impactful and meta in that way. How long was he usually away for work travels into dungeons here and there? How did he act with them? All we can really do is "it’s likely that", it’s a game of which way we think it’s more implied. There’s no right and wrong answer, it’s all Marcille-like larping the events out.

My main reason for thinking he did is that his father died from overdrinking and Chilchuck is very aware of that. He mentions his death casually in the extra about their stance in alcohol and in his Adventurer’s Bible profile, etc. He acts towards the alcohol presumably the same way his father did: with abandon, uncaring for the health effects, probably happily too considering Chil says "dying doing something you love is a good way to go". Very nonchalant. So you see what I’m saying here right, wether he started early or late, his view of alcoholism is very influenced by what he saw of his father growing up, it’s something he’s always been aware of and saw in a mostly positive light, something that was inherited you could say. It’s something that was normalized to him from a young age. Regardless or where it goes from there I do think this part is pretty inarguable. If he views it positively and we know that in the present alcohol is his favorite food that he loveees, why would he have held out on it? Personally that all makes me think he started drinking very young, especially since I don’t think they limited alcohol to age as much as modern standards (and I mean, teen drinking is obviously still a thing). And here you could argue, maybe his father only started being more alcoholic later when Chilchuck moved out, or something! And to that there’s nothing I can say except I think that’s a strained theory, and that Chil might even have largely cut contact with his family after moving out (since he and siblings are listed as almost strangers and he doesn’t seem to have much emotional attachment to his parents, but also we know he rents out his place to "a relative"), but it’s true we have no evidence. "I’ve picked up the same unhealthy substance abuse as my father haha! No big deal right haha" repeated several times to me just reeks of intergenerational trauma, & the alcoholism gene as they call it. Like effortless sliding into drinking as if it’s second nature, it’s natural after all, it’s normal after all, it just makes sense, it makes you feel good and that’s what matters.

BUT from my interpretation then we have a whole other layer: Alcohol is of course not all bad always. I think he’s always liked alcohol and drank it on occasion and it brought him joy etc etc, but I think here the implication in the question is, how much effect did his drinking have on the family relations and how early? And that isn’t so much about when him drinking started but when the alcoholism started. Addiction is defined by a habitual need, that has negative effects from filling that need (physical, psychological, social, etc) and negative effects from withdrawal. If Chilchuck drinks to cope and he can’t not cope without it, that’s addiction, if it affects his relationships, if it’s a need he has, it’s addiction. Addiction can be very insidious or look very casual, and how much people around the person are affected by it is case by case. Cheerful drunks can be sooo annoying and uncomfortable though let me tell you. Drunks are drunks. And this sounds harsh, but even if people around them don’t mind drunks it’ll still have some effects here and there, living with one can be such a challenge, ily drunks good luck with everything much like Chilchuck you deserve good things 🫡　

Ok so with the dad thing and the "ok well maybe he’s always drunk casually but it grew worse with time around when he started working as a dungeon diver" precision made, the other bit of info we have that can inform this is that Chilchuck is on a harsh diet and that alcohol is a hunger suppressant. We know Chilchuck "used to be fine not eating for two days", that literally on screen to quench his hunger so it doesn’t keep him awake he goes to drink water, drinking is his instinct to hunger. Again alcohol is a hunger suppressant and if you want info on that the internet has a lot of research and anecdotes about it. He diets to be light enough to not trigger traps, so it’s something he’d have started after dungeon diving most likely. Between the stress and the diet, yes it’s extremely likely he started going harder on alcohol after he started working in dungeons. There’s arguments on wether two days without eating is less bad for half-foots than humans, but apart from smaller portions there’s nothing that indicates half-foots should get less than 3 meals a day. They need less food but that’s because their bodies are smaller: the need is proportional to the body, not smaller than others’ races, the % of need is similar even if the kg amount of food isn’t. There’s also a popular headcanon with support basis that half-foots run hot and have a faster heartrate and whatnot, and that points towards a faster metabolism rather than a slower one: a bigger need for eating rather than a smaller one. He has the same bmi, 18, as Mickbell, but perhaps because Chil is much taller he’s less intensely visibly underweight with ribs showing than Mick during the bath extra, it’s most apparent when he becomes tallman.

Alcohol is something so important and omnipresent in his character that I have trouble believing it’s something that was part of only a small fraction of his life. It’s his immediate go-to, his no-brainer solution to a good time, I’ve sort of always assumed especially after looking at his family that it’s something he discovered decently young. Like he just acts like someone who’s always had alcohol to fall back on and started young idk. Alcohol is one of his 5 keywords. Alcoholism is very ingrained into his world view and life, his "it doesn’t matter" stance his ‘work hard play hard’ mentality his idea that the world is harsh so you get relief where you can, so it just makes sense to me that it’s always been in his life, if not actively then at least looming.

So yes, in summary, my take: Alcohol was always something he wholly enjoyed to an unwise level, but it could have been considered casual until he started working into dungeons and his need for it on a regular basis intensified. Alcohol has always had positive association to him as far as we see, so when it started being a problem he didn’t see it as such. To quote him, "I drink anytime I get the opportunity to". Why always? Approval of father’s alcoholism. Why alcoholism at all? Diet + stress & coping mechanism & emotional stunting + relationship issues, and she decided she had enough after they went out for drinks.

Conclusion

Chilchuck having drunk from a young age makes sense to me and it’s the strongest narrative angle I see on the table, but that’s objectively a me opinion, yes! There’s no evidence, moreso there’s canon basis and supporting info, but it’s all very left up to interpretation. I’ve made my own interpretations of things from the scraps we see, like everyone else making Chilwife and daughters content. Wether you have a stance on the topic or prefer to leave it vague in your takes, it’ll be a matter of what you think makes most sense, or what you’d rather believe I suppose (which is literally fine)

There’s a lot of subjectivity in even just setting up causal links like you probably noticed during this and I was careful with my word choices, because we’re just extrapolating from what we see and unless Kui states it explicitly from a reliable mouth all we can do is have informed opinions on most things. This particular interpretation is influenced by other details I’ve come to form about my interpretation of Chilchuck too, the more psychological and emotional sides of him and the timeline and how his marriage even happened, unplanned pregnancy imo. Like I hope you see what I mean, this wasn’t supposed to be a speculation post just a quick simple answer but there’s sort of just no other and concise but complete way with the subjectivity nuance to put "maybe it could be yes because of this but maybe it could be no because of this" haha

Edit: Wait the phrasing on this… Interesting. "In recent years"— This does imply that if not just his alcohol consumption increasing then the diversity and quality of it did, so either he indeed did start drinking more (not necessarily meaning he didn’t drink before) assumedly because of his wife leaving, or he started drinking other/more different kinds of alcohol maybe due to the union he formed + his experience gave him greater salary than he had previously (and no wife and family to provide money for), a mix of both perhaps.

[the-lancasters]

Waiting for the baby to arrive 🐣