#it's all self-imposed

[johnbleepingzoidberg]

work stress makin me feel like im about to implode

[crayfishcoffee]

How it feels.

[fancyfade]

characters taking a break from their mental-breakdown arcs in their solo titles to show up in crossover events is always big 'ok you're sick but who's gonna cover your shift?' energy :P

[so-very-small]

reminder: g/t is not about trying to Get A Good Grade In Morality. g/t isn’t about making things palatable to others. you can use those fucked up ideas you have. you can draw that NSFW. not all g/t content has to be Ideologically and Morally Pure. you can do whatever you want actually. preferences and likes in fiction do not equal IRL values. fiction =/= reality. write that fucked up g/t shit

[sunnykeysmash]

[metanarrates]

hey kim dokja why does the protagonist you identify heavily with and who is foundational to your identity have so much transfem coding. why did the character you invented to put into the story literally become a trans girl while you weren't looking at her. come back here I have more questions for you

[titsthedamnseason]

once again i will remind you that no one is forcing you guys to buy multiple editions :) and literally no one is going to make you feel like “not a true fan” because of that please be serious….

[thatseitagremlin]

gremlyn's danganronpa: despair time x limbus company au: hell's chicken edition (in which arei is also the ultimate conflict escalator)

the number of students who canonically can cook is actually rather high, but with 17 of these bastards running around there's bound to be Multiple incidents... (more yapping under cut!)

drdt cast's canon cooking abilities notes: -) has cooked in-universe: eden (ch1e3 baking + ch2e1 breakfast), hu (ch1e5 dinner), levi (ch2e1 breakfast), nico & veronika (ch2e3 breakfast), charles (ch2e4 cucumber flowers... do they count?? but he can cook eggs by ch2e8 so i'm putting him here) -) implied that they can cook: min (ch1e3 baking; afaik eden does most of the steps but she was there for the scene and understands the processes so i'll just put her here), rose (ch1e3 baking + ch2e6 lunch: "i was apparently supposed to help cook this meal"), j (ch2e1: "...the last thing i feel like doing is cooking"), arei (ch2e1: "but i also don't want to cook. what to do...") -) stated in qnas: whit (best cook in the cast, specialty is french), david (can cook decently but is usually too lazy to), xander (has a weak sense of taste and compensates by adding in Too much flavor, so his food is inedible to everyone else) -) disaster in the kitchen: teruko (ch1e1 investigation + ch1e5 dinner uses this exact wording, but i assume this mostly pertains to her bad luck fucking up electronics since she makes her own food throughout ch2) -) unknown: ace, arturo (afaik these two's cooking ability have never been mentioned so far!), mai (we barely know anything about her. so)

i split up all 16 sinners (replacing whit with mai, since arei banned him from the competition) into four teams of 4. i initially tried randomizing it while sticking to my personal rules of "xander and arei in different teams", "arei and eden in the same team (so they can cook together once before arei's character development)", and "hu in the same team with a 'sabotager' so she doesn't win", but i eventually decided to just make the teams manually. in-universe you can see this as arei rigging the votes.

this didn't end up as chaotic as canon limbus, but i guess that's what happens when most of your cast can canonically cook, so you have to provoke them to beefing with each other...

-) team 1: xander, ace, j, david. there was not enough common sense to counter xander's tastebuds and he learned absolutely nothing. sad! -) team 2: arei, levi, nico, eden. there was not enough hater energy to counter arei's sabotage. also arei had fun even disregarding all the sabotage she did but she won't admit that (yet) -) team 3: rose, arturo, veronika, mai. it's less "food" and more "abstract art piece" that horrifies their poor client, inflicting 10 sinking potency and 8 sinking count -) team 4: charles, min, teruko, hu. with hu's guidance they actually made a really good "family restaurant"-style chicken dish. the ones where it's a big portion for a family to share. they try to get teruko to carry the dish but min realizes and stops teruko from touching the plate. Unfortunately teruko's luck kicks in and min ends up dropping the dish anyways -) won by default: mai secretly let whit in team 3's kitchen and let him cook a backup dish just in case every team fucked up. papa bongy accepts the dish and they eventually un-distort him, making him mvp of the mission and winner by default!

[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)

[astrowarr]

so now the only solo players are martyn (deranged red life who just lost all his friends and family permanently to a couple of green lives, who laughed and laughed as if they weren't filthy murderers) and scar (alone by his own design as he burns all his bridges, and shies away from every connection that could be anything more than just simple, clinical allyship)

[cak31ssuperi04]

fun fact: Them

[friezaglasiencold]

‘Smouldering coals’ my ass, you clearly adore Kuriza. Emotionally repressed man who cannot comprehend that he loves his child unconditionally because his own father was awful my beloved and detested.

My father was a rat of a man, but that’s hardly relevant. I never said I didn’t care for my child.

And to think… here I was, being so vulnerable with my feelings. Shame on you, and shame on me for trying.

[starbuck]

Walt’s fucking magpie tendency of collecting little mementos from his victims (continuing to cut the crusts off sandwiches the way Domingo liked it, the Eye from flight 515, Gale’s poetry book, the watch from Jesse) that he insists on keeping close to him is such freak behavior and i am OBSESSED with it.

[mishapen-dear]

your honour theyre FAMILY

[poppy-metal]

me when i dont have any friends to talk to abt my feelings bc i have distanced myself the past year from everyone and don't have any current deep connections w anyone

[monotone-artist]

zaps u zaps u zaps u

[id: two digital drawings of a rain world oc, the current. they're a black, scrawny slugcat with tall ears, several cyan-tipped antenna across their body, and a blocky cyan pattern on their tail. in the first drawing he is sitting down, holding a spear which he has set on the ground in front of him. they are leaning their weight heavily on it, their face partially hidden by their arm. they're peering over their shoulder, glaring.

in the second drawing, the current is on all fours, their back arched and their head lowered, their face angrily scrunched up. all of the cyan bits on his body, including his eyes, are glowing, and sparks of electricity dance on his antenna. end id]