#because trauma

[nadiawritessomething]

You don't get it, I love Punkprowler not only because they have a "matching color palette"

I love them because they really DO fit together.

These are teenage antiheroes who had to take on this role in a worst world, these are people who understand each other's morals and motives better than anyone else, these are two children who had to grow up early because of their family situation and losses, these are two adult kids who have taken custody of the ones they have left, two brilliant chaotic mechanics who can even create anything as a team, two children of the criminal and corrupt streets, two cat lovers who are perceived to be much rougher and colder than they really are.

This is the Prowler, who in one of the universes had to become Spider-Man, and Spider-Man, who in one of the universes had to become the Prowler.

You simply do not get it.

[earthfluuke]

Episode 8 // Episode 9

[scribsbg3hell]

Man, Larian really didn't have to go so hard on Astarion's trauma based identity crisis but I'm glad they did because that shits relatable af. But at the same time, I am absolutely fucking heart broken for him because trying to heal from that trauma and rediscover who you are besides it is so fucking hard I just want to hold him and tell him he's going to be okay.

[moss-and-marimos]

you could literally start talking abt the grossest shit in my tags and I'd start clapping honestly pls do ramble

people who dont want to see talk of the intimacy and eroticism of horror and gore dont click read more vbjdhfdfvj

ougugghghhghghg goes wild its the intimacy and inherent eroticism of gore, sorry if this is a bit incoherent im tired but maybe I will dump more in your ask box another time bvjhdfd, for me its a sort of like fucked up thing between trusting the person to put you back together afterwards and wanting to be understood in a way nobody can without literally taking you apart, I guess kinda similar in a way to like wanting people to know about your trauma in a self destructive way, thats what a lot of it is to me that makes it interesting is the art of self destructive clearly unhealthy codependency dynamic between consumer and consumee, test subject and scientist, im not gonna put my own year old poem here bc it needs some revisions vbjdfd but to summarize it talks about being loved through the restraints binding you, and being seen as what you truly are, some mass of meat, and them taking you apart and loving you anyway. they will see you laid bare, more vulnerable than you have ever been, and they will make the choice that you deserve to stay, or in the case of cannibalism that they want you to be their nourishment. That in trusting you to take them apart, you are trusting them to sustain you. its really fucked and interesting to me. The idea that consumption or vivisection or similar are some warped sort of love, the same sort of way that people will abuse others and say theyre doing it because they love you, is very interesting to me. obviously its bad but its the only comparison I can draw here and its an interesting thing to explore in fiction. its a type of love that is obsessive and destructive and painful and violent and thats why its so interesting. And again referring to that poem I wrote last year "and you wish you could be a better test subject. and with the blood on their hands and a smile on your face you thank them. after all your life is in their hands." and "theyve been inside you more times than you can count, and something about that is so appealing. to be taken apart. to be examined. to be understood. oh how invasive. you long for it" and the fucked up eroticism of instead of having like idk bite marks or hickeys or whatever shit on you you're covered in scars from their invasiveness and tests, showing just how much you belong to them and just how well they know to put you back together. After cutting away everything vulnerable, after getting to just the bones (and maybe even cutting away those too), after seeing the abomination you are, they put you back together anyway, again and again. In both a metaphorical sense of like exploring trauma and trusting the other person with that and in a fictional but more literal sense, it is quite literally exploring the other person, and its incredibly intimate, and requires so so much trust.

[taoserene]

"John has his own body" = separation anxiety. You can't change my mind.

[you-have-been-frizzled]

Why are you so nice

i don’t know

[evidently-endless]

i think we should remind musicians they can absolutely make up little stories for their songs btw. it doesn’t have to be about them at all. you can invent a guy and put him in situations to music. time honoured tradition in fact.

[linecoveredinjellyfish]

normalize sexualizing that old woman without having mommy issues. maybe i don't want to be her pet because i'm traumatized. maybe i want to be her pet because she's hot. you ever think of that.

[ambrosiagourmet]

I want to talk about why I think this is the one of the most important Falin panels:

So, Falin is really nice, right? It's one of the first things we really learn about her. She's kind even to the monsters of the dungeon - choosing to ward the party rather than fight spirits and cause them needless harm.

In the above early flashback in chapter 11, we see Marcille fawning over Falin's kindness, calling her an angel. Namari calls her soft-hearted. We see Falin choose not to fight even when a zombie attacks - instead she resolves the confrontation with a hug. After the flashback, the first thing Senshi says is that Falin "sounds like quite the person," which Marcille strongly affirms.

At this point in the story, all we have seen of Falin are these impressions; she is a healer, an angel, a caretaker with an infinite well of kindness towards everyone she meets - both friend and foe.

And honestly, that remains most of what we have to go by to understand her. The only times we get to see Falin on the page, alive and just herself, are in the opening and closing pages of the story and in the brief period of time after she is resurrected.

Nonetheless, we do have some more details to work with. For one, there is the scene that The Panel is from - a short memory in chapter 75, when Marcille flashes back to while she's dying. In that scene, Falin prepares to teleport them all out, and says that she's sorry "if there is a person at [their] destination." And that's when we get The Panel.

If you teleport someone or something into another person, the person teleported into is likely to be, at minimum, severely injured. They could die.

We can see a lovely little horrifying example of exactly why in one of the Daydream Hour doodles:

So, hmm. That's not... that's not SUPER nice. Certainly not displaying the same "kindness to all, friend and foe included" we saw represented earlier. On a basic level, this adds some nuance to Falin's kindness. We see it break a little, when pushed to the limit. We see her chose to protect the people she loves above all else.

Which makes sense! As Laios says when the Winged Lion accuses him of similarly being motivated more by his friends' safety than everyone else in the dungeon, "...most people, aside from virtuous do-gooders, would feel the same way."

So, we can take The Panel as simply showing a moment of weakness for Falin. A time when she was pushed to her limits, and that "most people" selfish side of her shone through.

However... I think there's a little more going on with Falin than just her being an angel 99% of the time, except just that once. I love The Panel because I think it helps us understand that Falin isn't just motivated by kindness - she also has a desire to avoid seeing people in pain.

Isn't that the same thing?

No, no it very much is not.

Let's look at a short comic from the Falin section of the Adventurer's Bible, because I think it illustrates this point perfectly. The group is complaining about how much Marcille's healing hurts, and comparing it to Falin's, which "doesn't hurt a bit." Marcille retorts with the following:

Now, the punchline of this comic is that, despite Marcille's sentimental assertion that she's "thinking of [them]" by letting her healing magic hurt, they all still prefer to be healed by Falin.

But hey, this wouldn't be the first time that Dungeon Meshi hides a very real character beat or insight in a gag, so let's think about this somewhat seriously.

If Marcille is right (and she knows a fair bit about magic, so we can assume that she has at least somewhat of a point), then what Falin is doing isn't kind. I suppose if someone specifically requested to not feel the pain, it could be kind, but that's not really what happened here. She is the one who felt badly about the others being in pain, and she is the one who decided, without telling them or giving them a choice in the matter, to take away that pain.

Both Marcille and Falin are healing the party, but Marcille is doing it in a way that accomplishes the task in the most straight forward way, without any additional interference. Falin is going out of her way to perform the healing in a way she is more comfortable with. A way that avoids pain.

Going back the The Panel, I don't think its a coincidence that the only time we see Falin (well, non-chimera Falin) willing to do something that could hurt someone is when any potential pain will be far away from her. If she got someone hurt or killed by teleporting the party to the surface? Not only would it be far out of her sight, but she'd be dead before she had to deal with any consequences of that action.

Falin is not a confrontational person. She doesn't push when Marcille won't tell her the truth about the resurrection, and she comforts Laios about her own death - both of those things happening in the only full chapter she is alive and conscious in the whole story.

We also know that she considered accepting Shuro's proposal, despite not having any special feelings towards him, and that Falin never explained to Marcille that she wanted them to share a meal together. When she brought Marcille various foods at the academy, she just accepted Marcille's confused rejection and gave up.

And lastly, we know that she is still in contact with her parents, despite the neglect and abuse she suffered at their hands. Although the way someone chooses to handle contact with abusive or bad family is a complicated topic, which I don't want to overly simplify, I do I think this fact gets at the heart of how she handles conflict.

So many people that Falin loves have hurt her. There are understandable hurts, like Laios leaving the village, or Marcille not understanding the food. And there are bigger, far less justifiable hurts - like her parents neglecting her throughout her childhood, and sending her away to be alone at the magic academy.

It doesn't seem like Falin has ever confronted any of it directly.

And the unhealthy aspects of this kind of avoidance of pain and confrontation is one of the things that the story of Dungeon Meshi is all about. We see Laios grapple with it before he goes to kill Falin, and we see Marcille acknowledge it at the end of the story, when she tells Laios that she has come to terms with Falin's death:

Eating is a part of life. Consuming other living things is a part of life. It isn't really possible to avoid that pain - you can only hide from the truth of it. You have to be selfish everyday. You have to eat - to choose to live. To choose to take up space.

And this is something Falin embraces, too. She comes back to life, after all.

We see her choose to come back to life.

And how does she make that choice? She eats. She consumes, and then she is asked a question by the manifestation of hunger itself:

Do you want to eat more?

There is a double meaning in the Winged Lion's final words on the next page.

When I first read this, I took it as him saying: life is cruel. You will suffer. You will feel more pain.

But perhaps, especially for Falin, this also means: you are choosing a path where you must cause pain. Where you must consume. Where you must take, and must be selfish. Because eating is the special privilege of the living, and it is their burden, too. In order to stay alive, she will need to keep eating.

And she chooses that. Chooses to be selfish. It's why her resurrection scene is so important, and it's why The Panel is so important. Because Falin coming back isn't the ultimate reward for all of the party's hard work.

It's her choice. Just like it was her choice that started everything in the first place. But this time, she doesn't choose to accept causing pain for the sake of Marcille and Laios. She does it for her own sake.

[soft-debauchery]

This move is coming up so fast. I feel like I have so much to do and no time to do it but also when I do have time, I'd rather do something else.

I want this so badly, it's gonna be so good for me and my life so why am I so paralyzed by the fear of it.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

going through my old journals as part of therapy homework and i'm reading a section written in the emotional wreckage of a full-on breakdown when i get hit with this line:

There is never a satisfying answer to ‘Why didn’t they love me?’

like wow babe. good fucking point

[trans-androgyne]

“Women and non-binary people” stop. Do you mean people with marginalized genders? Do you mean gender-oppressed people? Then say that. Stop refusing to recognize the very much gendered oppression of other trans people. There’s not some chasm of difference between how our oppressors treat a very masc non-binary person and a more binary trans man. I’m also non-binary and very much oppressed for my gender but because I’m transmasculine I could never feel comfortable in a space that marketed itself like that. Tell me what the real harm is of letting gender-oppressed mascs into spaces discussing gender oppression is. Because the consequence of not doing so is denying them space for their experiences just because of their gender identity. Do better.

[alicerader]

My mom's other favorite line was "Who wants to get slapped first?"

[thepeacefulgarden]

You are worthy, you are enough, and you matter. No person or circumstance can ever change that or take that away from you. ❤️

[nicktoonsunite]

silly little spongebob and danny comic