#Pipi was a bird.

[skunkes]

YAAAAAY HE MADE IT IN

[jjian1002]

Marchil bed sharing yeah!!!

[greenswing]

He keeps them warm

[bi-hop]

okay weird ass question bear with me but

is the text here implying that Laios thinks Pipi is a third parent or does it say something else?

[ditzyclown]

Me when people leave tags like "WAAAA" "WMDLSLZVJIWLANCIWPAÑ" "...ohhhhh" "fav" on my silly drawings

[rederick-ignis]

Oh my goodness gracious

[mysterious-secret-garden]

Hans Thoma - Riding a Bird, 1885.

[ask-spamton-gpory-spamgon]

Golden pipis? I am now very confused and intrigued so is it pipis covered in gold or is it somehow made of gold???

-@waffledragon10

"YES"

"TO PROPERLY ANSWER YOUR QUESTION I CAREFULLY [nurse injection please] THE [pipis] WITH LIQUID GOLD, MADE SURE TO LET THINGS SEAL BACK UP"

"THEN I [get dunked on] IN LIQUID GOLD AND LET IT HARDEN AND MADE IT WATCH THE MOVIE [gold 2016] FOR A WHOLE WEEK ON REPEAT ALSO MADE IT LISTEN TO THE [sliver and gold] SONG BY PUTTING HEADPHONES ON IT"

"SO WHO KNOWS MAYBE IF SOMEONE HATCHES THIS [pipis] THEY WILL GET A SPECIAL GOLD [porygon] IF NOT EH AT LEAST IT WILL MAKE NICE DECORATION!"

[elliesgaymachete]

Oh no, not the lifespan angst as Marcille’s nightmare 😭😭😭

[barkingbarghest]

people were right about this manga

[illutwister]

das kommt auch mit dem alter #pipi #nassehaare #haare #hunde #daily #cartoon #inkdrawing #bw #humor #comic #illustration #funnyanimals #birds #illutwister (hier: Rügen Sassnitz Kreidefelsen) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cku2bY-rt83/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[thefoolsprocession]

Sometimes being an anime-only consumer of dungeon meshi has its perks. I had seen several times the panel of Laios trying to guess who “Pipi” was and how it fit on Marcille’s family tree, but it wasn’t until just now that I discovered that Pipi is, in fact, a bird.

[malewifesband]

laios: (5 drinks in) i feel like im not cut out to be a guy i wanna be pipi instead

marcille: my bird? my bird???? you wanna be my bird??????

falin: no no he means

falin: sorry laios i have no idea what this means

laios: mama, papa, pipi. id be pipi. i shouldve been pipi

marcille: (thinking, panicked) is laios an egg??!!

[cheesycatz]

Wow! It only took me 966 days of Spamton brainrot to make an actual reference

(text ver under cut)

- Based on ventriloquist dummies and ball-jointed dolls, both of which require strings in order to move

- Bird nostrils: one of the only remaining "addison" features (also I didn't want to make him a chronic mouth-breather)

- Black hair is permanent from puppetification shenanigans

- Widow's peak to make him more skeletal

- Eyes, teeth, and muscles visible through joints are the only biological bits that haven't been covered by the plastic exoskeleton

- Scratches and yellowing across the plastic epidermis

- Tattered suit jacket and dress shirt; repaired with messy stitches and patches on elbows

- Joints poke out weirdly under suit, especially in the torso area

- Toes, tail, fur, skin, and part of his fingers are missing—destroyed in puppetification process

- Seam lines on body to mimic manufactured dolls

- Four fingers because bird

- Shoe-esque feet

- Where are his pants? Top 10 Questions Science Can't Answer

- Technically had an underbite? Your lower teeth are not supposed to be directly below the upper teeth

- "Ball jointed body"—he still has muscle, organs, etc. under the plastic

- Animatronic puppet eyes

- Lazy eye? He just like me fr

- Had blue eyes, but they're more gray at this point

- Pipis are, uh... he canonically makes nests for his eggs of unknown origin, I guess

- Jacket is longer in the back and ripped at the seam

- Design is meant to work in a 3D environment; AKA no weird v-tuber hair flipping when he's facing forwards so he looks more "real"

- Flesh under his chin where the puppet jaw connects to his actual jaw hinge

- Glasses are screens & clear on his end

- Lenses glow

- He controls what [the lenses] display when he's not having one of his frequent mental breakdowns

- Four hair spikes on top make his mullet look less weird from the front

- Blue tongue (mandatory Spamton design element)

- Addison Spam: 4 ft 11 in without those heels

- Puppet Spam: 3 ft 6 in - height of a ventriloquist dummy

- Puppetification: he slowly transformed into a living puppet due to his exposure to supernatural forces beyond reality. He was mostly unaware until he was on the streets due to his desecrated mental state.

skill issue

- Most shrinkage is from his legs getting shorter from the puppetification

i think i have developed chronic spamton wasting disease

[possamble]

What are your headcanons about Marcille's mom if you have any? It's interesting that what drew Donato to her was cause she lived the history he studied, or that was said somewhere at least. She must've had an interesting life.

so this was going to be just a normal answer but then I realized I have a Lot of Things To Say. so here goes, a compilation of what we know for a fact from the canon, what I've extrapolated from the visual cues and details, and my theories based on all of that.

Things we know for a fact about Marcille's mother because they were explicitly stated in the manga and supplemental materials:

She was a court mage for a Tall-man kingdom at the southern part of the Northern Continent

Donato, a court historian, fell in love with her because she had lived through the history he was studying, and he courted her for 17 years (age 15 to 32) before getting married

She was a cheerful person who rarely showed extreme emotion and took things as they came

She always cooked a huge meal for Marcille on her birthdays

She remarried a gnome after Donato's death and a short distance away from Marcille's childhood home

Pipi, Marcille's pet bird, was actually older than Marcille and originally belonged to her mother (bird died at 62)

She was extremely heartbroken when Donato died and ultimately ended up instilling a deep fear of mortality in Marcille with her words

the only time she showed extreme emotion in front of her family was when Donato could no longer eat his favourite dish near the end of his life.

She scolded Marcille for being cruel to ants (implying she can have a stern side when needed)

Things that are explicitly shown but mostly through visual cues

She has a very distinctive style of dress always involving a ribbon choker (mirroring Marcille's habit of always wearing a matching choker with any of her outfits that don't cover her neck)

She was almost stereotypically good at housekeeping and traditionally "wifely" things (very frequently depicted wearing an apron or doing some domestic chore when not at work, seems to have been an avid cook).

She knits? (also, note the affectionate smile as she's looking at Donato and Marcille reading a book together in the full panel)

She was as excited for Marcille's milestones as Donato was.

She didn't tell Marcille much about elven food

(there are a couple things that this panel in particular implies:

She lived a good deal of her life (if not being born and raised) in a mainly elven country in the West, implied by her knowing enough of an elven region's cuisine to prefer Tall-man food over it

seems to have a pretty carefree and casual demeanour overall, if this is how she replied to Marcille asking her about it (sounds like she never gave her culinary preferences that much thought to begin with)

slightly related to number 2, it seems like she and Marcille had a fairly casual parent-child dynamic (especially in comparison to the Toudens' memory of their father)

(local elf tastes Italian food once and never goes back))

However, she seems a lot more... serious in most of the other times we see her? Almost like the very stereotypical archetype of a graceful elf.

Subsequent conclusions about her personality:

Usually pretty carefree and cheerful at home, has been a loving and attentive parent throughout Marcille's childhood (while not being so doting that she didn't discipline Marcille).

Slightly more conjectural theories on her personality:

Had a much more graceful and professional personality at work, which would explain the more serious portraits we see of her.

Given that both she and Donato had positions at the royal court, it seems a little odd that she'd go out of her way to do all the housework herself, so maybe she just enjoyed doing it?

Now taping all the evidence together and toeing the line between analysis and fanfiction:

It's clear that she loved Donato very much and was utterly devastated by losing him. But there's one thing that really stuck out to me in what little we see of her:

Doesn't she seem... angry? The way she's gritting her teeth, clutching the tablecloth, and how this is the first and only time we see her eyes opened that wide. In the following panel, you see her being quiet and dejected after her initial outburst. She's still crying very intensely, but her brows are furrowed, and she's not really responding to Donato's affection in her body language.

We're not told the details of how she felt about losing Donato other than that it upset her. But this, to me, implies that she was angry and resented that he was aging, that the end of his life was approaching. An "it's not fair" type of preemptive grief. And if this was the first and last time she cried like this in front of her family, she was either very good at coping in private... or very bad at letting herself feel unpleasant emotions until they become unavoidable and end up overwhelming her.

It's not too remarkable a detail on the surface. It's even reminiscent of what the audience has seen of Marcille. But... when it comes to the big picture, you'd think an elf who voluntarily chose to marry a tall-man and have a half-elf child would have been better prepared for this.

It kind of recontextualizes her cheerfulness to me.

"I'm sure everything's gonna be okay!" (or some variation thereof, depending on what translation you have).

And this is stated to contrast her extreme grief when finally confronting Donato's failing body and eventual death. But I'm wondering if... maybe this optimism was why she was so upset. What if she went into all of it thinking "everything's gonna be okay"? What if she was a little young by elven standards, and just followed her heart thinking that her own resilience would get her through anything?

Of course, only to get completely overwhelmed when she actually loses Donato. She turns into a completely different person. And that's heartbreaking on its own-- but what the audience sees is the effect it had on Marcille. Can you imagine being her, watching your invincible and upbeat mother suddenly lose all the light in her eyes in one go?

I've already made a huge post about how I think Marcille models her "work persona" off her mother, but another thing that stuck with me as I was looking for more details in the manga was this:

copy pasting from the other post i made about it lmao it's like... the second she resigns herself to lifelong pain and terror, there's another portrait of her mother facing her like this. with their heads bowed, in mirrored body language of resignation and despair and sorrow. Except it's posed like Marcille is still looking at her mother but her mother is looking away.

It took me a second to realize, but I think that it's a visual metaphor for the fact that Marcille's mother was the only long-lived role model she had-- and she failed to model healthy grief for her daughter. I don't say this as an accusation or to disparage her as a character, but just as a matter of fact. In her, Marcille was seeing herself older and losing a short-lived spouse or loved one of her own, and all she saw was hopelessness.

But her mother didn't mean to instill hopelessness and terror in her. She wasn't really thinking of how it would truly affect Marcille at all (at least, that's how I'm interpreting her looking down and away from Marcille in the metaphor), she was just sad. And she, in her own way, was trying to protect her daughter and help her prepare for future losses.

What she meant was "loss is inevitable, and you have to learn how to be in pain but live on anyway." What Marcille heard was "loss is inevitable, and you will be scared and hurt for the rest of your life."

Again. Marcille's mother doesn't feature explicitly in the story the way her father does -- but in so many ways, her shadow, her silhouette, her reflection is always hanging over Marcille.

All that to say... headcanon-wise (everything from here on is 100% without evidence lmao), I'd like to think that she matured and realized that she failed Marcille. I imagine her being regretful about it, wanting a chance to fix it but never finding a way to insert herself back into Marcille's life when Marcille is so so so busy becoming the most accomplished mage possible. I imagine her being herself again, now, so many years after her loss and after remarrying -- but with her cheerfulness tempered with a lot more wisdom and the pain of having gone through loss like that. I think the second Marcille actually tells her what happened in the dungeon, she'd want to go running to her daughter again -- if Marcille tells her the full truth instead of just being embarrassed she let things get that far. (oh, the tragedy of her wanting to be more like her mother and an accomplished adult who doesn't need to be babied... being embarrassed to actually tell her mother how much she fucked up...)

There's also the tension of her having remarried -- I know that there's at least a little bit of resentment that Marcille harbours about that, because she's childish like that at heart even if she makes an effort not to externalize it. I think that her mother would be aware of that, potentially adding to her sense of guilt and apprehension at trying to reappear/intrude on Marcille's life. I honestly don't think Marcille has met her stepfather -- or even considers him a stepfather rather than "mama's new husband" and kind of a total stranger. I think she and her mother actively don't talk about it in their correspondence, like an elephant in the room.

but, ultimately, I think her mother is on her side no matter what. Ancient magic? Dark necromancy? Sure, she'll feel guilty and like she was partially responsible for setting Marcille down such a painful path, but she wouldn't care. that's her daughter!! she would've moved back west and been petitioning for her at the court, buying a house right next to the Canaries barracks and visiting her every day that she wasn't on a mission. And if her husband had opinions on Marcille becoming a "dark arts user," he either gets over it or it's divorce with him. Yes, she might have had her optimism completely humbled by losing Donato like that -- but she's still headstrong and self-assured and she doesn't care what people think of her. It's her way or the highway and she's always going to be in Marcille's corner.

(She also needs a name lol. I went with Juno, just to be cute about "Marcille"s closest real life equivalent being Marcella, which is the female version of Marcellus, which in turn is a diminutive of Marcus, which was derived from Mars. Absolutely in love with Marcille potentially being named after Ares/Mars the fucking god of war btw)

[cryhounds]

Honestly one of my favorite chapters in Dungeon Meshi is the nightmare chapter & I'll tell you why.

Dungeon Meshi understands something about grief that most of us know, but rarely think about, which is that, as children, we are very, very, deeply affected by our first experience with grief, even if (especially if) that grief is something brushed aside by adults in our life, or society at large.

When I was in college, I took a course on Death & Dying, and one day we had a guest professor who had worked with a support group of widows. When he was leading this support group, he asked these women to think about their first experience with grief, "no matter how small." It could be losing a stuffed animal, or a pet dying, or a friend moving away.

One by one these women came forward with such stories, of "small" griefs that happened to them when they were young. They started crying, because they realized nobody had ever asked them about this before. They'd never properly stopped to grieve.

Dungeon Meshi understands this--while it's obvious Marcille is much more affected by the death of her father, in fact it's one of the driving forces of her character, the death of Pipi, her bird, is still an emotional wound that was never healed, something that worsens and complicates the grief she feels for her father and Falin.

It's this attention to small, overlooked things, and how they affect us, that defines the way Dungeon Meshi approaches its themes--hunger, desire, death, grief, etc. Dungeon Meshi handles these themes with a great deal of empathy. That's something I really respect