shippofuri

[shippofuri]

on a bit of a hiatus as im in the process of moving and am also currently fixated on something else... i will be back surely

[shippofuri]

they took yaad to the beach that makes you old

[shippofuri]

i also think a caring and maternal older woman who enables you to be a worse person and tells you you are innocent and pure and always right would be awesome but thats not relevant to this blog

[shippofuri]

ithink i have a different idea of what found family means than most people because in my mind outside of nurturing mother/father figures like the elderly neighbor who teaches you the ways of the world it mainly falls into something along the lines of either "would do a blood pact to vow your mutual devotion to this person as a friend" or "bound together by some insane shared traumatic experience that renders it so no one can truly understand you on the same level them" and does not inherently entail actually viewing someone as family. Like I'm going into this with the most archaic definition of "brotherhood"(gender neutral) possible. i wouldn't be able to enjoy it if it were not even a little concerning

[shippofuri]

ihaven't been working on anything I'm writing because my normal pills are on backorder. But. It will happen there is just a thick layer of fog over my brain right now that makes it hard to formulate words

[shippofuri]

I am unfortunately a huge stick in the mud about canon compliance in everything i enjoy but i suffer in silence so as not to make people feel bad about not playing by the rules. mentally censoring and disregarding anything i deem incorrect when reading others works the same way they do looking at canon so i don't go insane

[shippofuri]

(half delirious) my postcanon thistle & falin scenario is kind of cruel to both of them. need to write it but suffice to say: 5-10 years later when thistle becomes functional enough to have awful emotional outbursts falin (on an entirely different continent) discovers that she is very much still soulbonded & emotionally linked to him as "his dragon". when he's distressed she's distressed. initially just feels vaguely restless for reasons she doesn't understand but once she finally understands the cause of this feeling she finds herself compelled to come back to him and it's a very unhealthy thing going on that neither of them really want but she feels compelled to orbit him. she wants to be free but she feels like she has to be by his side. tethered down. vying for his approval out of some strange compulsion. they're both kind of miserable. it isn't something sweet or beautiful it's something kind of festering and sickly

compensating for this with the good ending: mid-40s falin and mostly recovered thistle going on adventures together :)

[shippofuri]

I think I've said it before but I'll say it again

Thistle was right because if I was 15 forever I'd start fucking killing people too

[shippofuri]

if you for whatever reason did not interpret thistle as a child (as he is all but outright confirmed to be) i highly suggest you at least try to reread the manga with the perspective of thistle as an early adolescent at least ONCE and see how much more impactful it is with that knowledge. parentification and adultification are vital themes of his story.

[shippofuri]

at 50 followers i will post my recipe for stirfry sauce. this is not a joke

[shippofuri]

[shippofuri]

would he fucking say that? let's investigate.

[shippofuri]

cheating my way up the merini fan leaderboards by being the only person who likes eodio which is artificially inflating my score

[shippofuri]

i can't tell whether it's due to having been into media where the official translation fundamentally altered the personality of half the characters or just because i only pay attention to people who post about the merinis but when people talk about the dungeon meshi fandom being outstandingly unbearable i just think how lucky they must be to have this be the worst theyve seen

[shippofuri]

love this love this... especially the mention of his role in kabru's life...! i really like thinking about his role in Kabru's life, taking on almost the role of an uncle/older cousin/older brother even, but i always joke that more than anything he feels like "your closeted lesbian mom's 'best friend' who comes over a lot and acts like she's your aunt" but like. male (he does NOT feel like a straight mom's male "best friend" however. completely different vibe)... Could helsiril, too, be Yuri...?

Helki compilation

Helki is a prisoner-turned-servant. He’s a criminal canary and was implicitly one of Milsiril’s charges, and now that she’s retired he’s become her servant.

He must have gotten into Milsiril’s good graces, wether through attachment or convenience, which is a feat considering Milsiril’s a socially anxious recluse. Interesting since it’s not like he seems like the agreeable type, shifty upbeat delinquent style… We really don’t know much about him, not even what crimes he did, so there’s a lot of space for speculation on all grounds.

Edit: Shanghai QnA with Kui gave us a new juicy morsel of info!

Interesting… The original answer in japanese is: パッタドルと同じような杖を使っていました。今も同じものを支給されているのですが、すぐになくすのでもはや携帯していないようです。 That it’s written in japanese seems to say that there isn’t the same double translation issue there was last QnA, so if someone wants to look at the original phrasing and word choices it can be done. Perhaps Helki-Milsiril has a more protégé dynamic undertone than previously thought… "For various reasons", meaning circumstances that made it so the squad had to choose between saving him and saving their own skin, or like, "man this guy’s personality sucks we don’t really like him"? Likely to be a mix of several things, since ‘for various reasons’ implies the situation was either complex or they had multiple reasonings. In either case, the phrasing is very much that Milsiril couldn’t abandon him herself, and so a relationship sprung out of that. Another instance of outcasts seeking out and sticking with other outcasts in Dungeon Meshi. This could mean that it’s a bit less out of personal attachment and more out of a sense of duty on Milsiril’s side as well though.

Still edit: So then maybe him staying with Rin in that comic isn’t that much because of work ethics or that he cares for kids (or maybe he does because he feels kinship to them, alone and mistreated), but because he didn’t want to join the other canaries in that room chatting and laughing… Maybe the isolation was exacerbated because he became Milsiril’s favorite, teacher’s pet style, but I’d also be careful about assuming the others disproportionately dislike him, it could be that they just don’t really care for him. Why? Could be because of his personality, because he’s seen as shifty or unreliable or annoying, if an event, who knows who knows, but I like to think because of the Rin comic that he generally just tends to be a loner, that he’s "weird" in a neurodivergent vibe, he doesn’t conform to proper social behavior which in elven society seems especially alienating. He’s the only one with Rin to think of her sake, not only worth observing/caring for but also asks her to eat, but he does this with an offputting stare, not really emoting, and then well, the infamous alone with her staring munching covered in blood panel. He stands out. I’m a fan of the theory that it was a "Helki? Not that I dislike the guy but I’m not risking my skin for him" situation… Ok end edit back to older observations.

He seemed to be acting out of his own initiative in the Rin comic, he doesn’t look thrilled to be there in many post-canary comics but he also seems content enough. He restrains Milsiril in the Mithrun cleaning comic which is interesting to think of for their relationship.

It’s fun to notice how he’s the only one that didn’t get bored of looking after Rin, and then reports back about her condition… I’d say he was getting used to taking care of kids which would come with the job of serving Milsiril, but then, not enough for him to clean the blood off himself hah. In this way it’s interesting to think about his relationship to the idea of parenthood, he’s probably the closest thing to a father figure/male role model Kabru had growing up, without mentioning the other kids. I feel like he’d consider himself an older brother, cousin or uncle figure sooo much sooner than a father, but even then I do think it’s just his job and he’s not really invested or forming real relationships with any of them much.

It’s curious to note that he’s dressed in canary uniform presumably after having been pardoned and living with Milsiril? Which you can tell by the armor bits (the yellow strips of spider silk). In the Kabru training montage and the Rin comic specifically. It seems very implausible for him to have still been a canary while being a retired Milsiril’s servant and being with her all the time, and the cleaning with Mithrun comic (where he’s not in uniform) happens after Utaya so it could happen after Kabru was taken in but around the time of the Rin comic. So why uniform? It could be one of the best outfits he has, so it’d make sense to wear it around especially if you’re sparring or getting… Blood on you? Could just be because that's how Milsiril wants him to dress. But yeah we don't know when exactly Helki becoming Milsiril’s servant happened. We do see Mithrun’s charge Cithis be tasked with taking care of him, so charge being given a servant-caretaker role doesn’t seem all that out of the ordinary, sometimes even prior to retiring.

Imo, if he doesn't work for Milsiril he goes back to jail/the canaries/has to try and get a job instead of just tending to her, so Helki is staying with Milsiril because she's the best option for him. He’s her milsiril's personal servant and does mostly dull tasks involved in that. He’s not particularly suited to the role but they’ve gotten used to each other to him so she took him with her, and he does prefer it to canary work so it works out decent for him. I think he’s used to reading her and managing her moods and he’s one of the rare social connection she has.

Under spoiler is stage 2 interpretation stuff, bigger speculation, in a reblog I’ll make soon I’ll go over my thoughts for stage 3 interpretation lol. Helsiril I’m coming for you

Translation of the canary hierachy chart used is by Thatsmimi, here

[shippofuri]

im not gonna get into the weeds of discourse or what is acceptable to depict (my thoughts have absolutely nothing to do with the question of "is he legal" i think the fixation on that is weird) but my (semi-joking) read of thistle and yaad's maturity is that yaad was effectively denied adolescence and that ironically allowed him to mentally mature more than thistle to a degree. yaad being more akin to someone on puberty blockers able to gain life experience and grow as a person vs. thistle magically locking himself into the phase of adolescence where you are just chemically insane and irrational for a couple years (or even decades, in his case...) stuck as a volatile hormonal teen for 1000 years. this is a fate worse than death i think

[shippofuri]

this is how i gotta cool down whenever im reminded of chapter 72