#eodio

[flawlessflesh]

beneath the wings of their deity, the royal family prospers.

[son-flower]

something something i think thistle would be more emotional at delgals life achievements than delgal himself

[aphel1on]

the longer i look at this panel the more deranged i feel about it. this is environmental storytelling at its finest.

the eodio stand-in doll in particular makes me crazy. where did it come from? did thistle just pop into the village like "hey ungrateful wretches, one of you needs to make me a life-sized mannequin, For Reasons". did he make it himself? seems quite unlikely, yet the possibility haunts me. i mean, i guess there could've been one just lying around the dungeon somewhere. it's the act of replacement itself that really gets to me. (edit: it's been pointed out to me that the eodio doll also could have been left behind as part of delgal's escape plan. slightly different kind of madness but tbh, just as funny-sad to me if that happened and thistle went Ok, Guess That's Eodio Now.)

both the wives are there too. we know very little about them, which makes me tend to assume thistle wasn't all that close to them, but they're still included. when did they end up here? did he kick their souls out of their bodies at some point, or were they among those who left their bodies voluntarily to try and escape? when did yaad become an effective orphan, delgal an effective widower? women in the margins of the narrative, tell me your stories!

and the fact that they're surrounded with the living paintings, which thistle habitually wanders through to relive the past. this truly is his inner sanctum, his place of utmost comfort... and it may as well be a tomb.

that panel is so creepy when you first see it. just a sense of "ohh jeez, there's a lot to unpack there".

and actually, yeah, it remains creepy from pretty much any angle, but the more you think about it the more it's also tragic.

this is where many of thistle's happiest moments took place. everything he had in that picture is now gone. first he lost their warm regard, then one-by-one their bodies became hollow shells. before the end, none of the people here needed or enjoyed food anymore. the dinner table, as a center of both family life and nutrition, became obsolete.

a line from someone else's excellent post about thistle has stuck in my head ever since i read it: "to eat is to live, but to eat together is to be loved". to me, this is the sentiment and symbolism at the core of everything that happens in dungeon meshi.

it makes this bit all the sadder and more disturbing.

there's several things to note here:

thistle has gone from seated and eating with them as part of the family, to a lonely and ominous figure hovering over delgal's shoulder

eodio is conspicuously absent from view, and his body would have been a husk by now, but yaad says parents, which forces me to assume that they are sitting at the table with eodio's soulless body, hidden under yaad's speech bubble

they're not actually eating anything.

those plates are empty. you could assume that they've already finished eating, maybe, but yaad refers to it as sitting around the dinner table. in fact, he compares it to what he's currently doing; sitting at the dinner table watching the touden party eat, not eating anything himself.

it paints a pretty grim picture. for some time even after the fantasy had fallen apart, even after there was no need or desire to eat, they kept gathering around the dinner table. at that point, i'd guess only so as not to provoke thistle's wrath.

but even that last happened a long, long time ago.

this is a callback to what senshi said in the golden kingdom: the reason the people keep maintaining their fields and silverware and so forth is that they need to do so in order to stay sane.

paradoxically, the dinner table is the most striking evidence of thistle's insanity, and at the same time, it's the only anchor to sanity he has left.

he kept enforcing the ritual of dinner together long after it lost significance. when even that was impossible- because almost everyone's souls were gone- he kept their bodies at the table anyway. it's fine. it's fine! he's protected them, physically, just like he set out to. they're all still breathing. at a glance it looks like they could wake up and resume dinner at any moment. like this, it's easy to pretend.

isn't that what being a dungeon lord is, at the core of it? rejecting reality, staying in the prison of one's impossible desires. it's just one long game of pretend.

thistle did all this to protect his loved ones. no matter how obsessive and twisted he became in pursuit of that over the years, his core motivation never changed. this is all he has left of that dream: his loved ones' bodies gathered around the locus of their happiest memories together. like this, he can tell himself he's succeeded.

when eodio's body vanished with delgal's soul in it- when he couldn't even have that anymore... well.

i want to reach through the screen and shake him. no, they're not, thistle. THISTLE, NO, THEY'RE NOT! the doll of eodio is the closest thing to him in this panel, underlining the point. when that final illusion was shattered, he became completely unable to cope with reality.

therefore casually forgetting the creepy eodio doll isn't real.

thistle isn't stupid. eodio's body vanished at the same time as delgal's soul. shortly after, more adventurers came pouring in than ever before. deep down, he knows what happened. if he didn't, being confronted with the truth by mithrun wouldn't have made him panic so hard he summoned chimera falin to the first floor.

yet still...

he absolutely can't admit that to himself. he is clinging to the last scraps of the illusion with everything he has.

this is a dungeon lord at the end of desire. this is a lotus-eater machine left running long after its conclusion. this is mithrun lying listlessly in his bed, his replica lover having given up any pretense of being human. the illusion is all that's left. (an illusion is all it ever was.) thistle and the citizens of the golden kingdom- they're ghosts just as much as the ones who wander the dungeon floors. and if it weren't for thistle sealing the lion away, he would've been eaten by it long ago.

all of this encapsulated by that single panel of the dinner table.

[the-golden-kingdom]

After decades of perfecting the bob, the Melini's have finally made the perfectly circular boy

[dunmeshistash]

Do we know how Delgal managed to leave his body and possess Eodio's? That part always confused me

You know what? Amazing question, idk

The lion says it but he doesn't really give details

[abadabadon]

Reposting various drawings because my old account got terminated. Sorry to people that had me blocked you can just block me again lol anyways

(First one is outdated since I don't hc him as transmasc anymore, they're just both transfem)

(The second thing is not a ship)

[shippofuri]

Thoughts on Thistle's relationship with Eodio (headcanon+analysis)

It's very easy to assume Thistle never got along with Eodio, since the most prominent interaction between them we see is their confrontation, and i do see that sentiment a lot. But I think it's quite underlooked just how present Thistle was in his life.

I think it's safe to say Thistle did have a good relationship with Eodio at some point, we see them sitting merrily at the dinner table, Eodio having a jovial conversation with his father, Thistle smiling fondly at him. And when Eodio held Yaad for the first time, Thistle stood closer to him than even his own wife. i don't think Thistle was totally distant just yet.

My personal headcanon is that for a long time, Thistle genuinely loved and cared about Eodio, just as much as his parents! Practically viewed him as his own child, even. Which made it so frustrating for him to have so much pressure put on him, being treated like he's not doing enough, when he's doing everything he possibly can. He wants Eodio to recover just as much as Delgal, he really does!

But it's just so hard, and he feels like they don't understand just how painful it is for him to do everything in his power to help and never succeed, how terrible it feels watching Eodio be in so much pain and not being able to do anything about it, all while Delgal is being so short with him, expecting more than Thistle can provide because he's stressed. they're all stressed. Eodio is dying and the kingdom is under attack and he's trying he's trying he's trying so hard but nothing is working.

Which makes it even more hurtful to him to watch Eodio grow up and take his recovery for granted. To be ungrateful, when Thistle suffered and struggled so much to keep him alive.

It's not so bad when he's young, of course, a child isn't going to be the best at expressing gratitude. But when Eodio is an adult and still doesn't seem to realize just how much Thistle has done for him, that (in Thistle's mind) he owes him his life, it sets him off. The boy who he loved so much and did everything in his power to save is now yelling in his face, vilifying him, spitting on everything he's done for him...

...And Thistle is not going to tolerate it.

It's a moment of weakness. And at first, he's really only intending for it to be temporary. In his eyes, Eodio is being a spoiled brat, and he's just putting him in time-out. Giving him some time to cool down and think about what he's done, that's all.

...But he never does bring him back. Maybe he just forgot, maybe he decided it wasn't safe, we'll never really know. It's a shame they could never mend it.

I think the animosity Eodio had toward Thistle grew fairly late in his life, some time after Yaad was born. He doesn't seem the type to seethe for years upon years without speaking up.

All that said... I really do wish we saw more of their interactions before their confrontation, how Thistle felt about him... I think people would appreciate Eodio much more if we knew... well, anything about him, really! Bit of a shame we don't.

[pusong-mangga]

mapping out real-world parallels to melini real quick, mainly for fic reference

melini -> italian, similar to "medici", derived from a latin name that means "of the sea" and can be found in lombardy, which shares a border with veneto. golden kingdom's geographical location mirrors venice/veneto; further parallels being "of the sea" along with melini having a mediterranean climate (note: marcille is also italian but her homeland probably mirrors a different region, like piedmont)

freinag -> germanic/scandinavian; the most notable germanic influences can be found in north italy, specifically lombardy, named after a germanic people (the lombards) who originated in scandinavia and established a kingdom in northern italy, fragmenting it into city-states (potentially mirrors the geopolitics of the pre-dungeon GK, threatened by various rival kingdoms)

delgal -> french surname with spanish/italian origin, means "of gaul". and on that note the design of the golden castle also evokes mont-saint-michel in normandy, france. french influence in italy can be found with the norman and angevin dynasties in sicily and naples, and these places along with sardinia and the duchy of milan in lombardy (notably, one of the few feudal kingdoms in italy) were under spanish rule for a time

eodio -> arguably latin/italian, not much to say here. pinocchio.

yaad -> hebrew/jewish, means "hand" and also is the name of a ritual pointer used when reading Torah scrolls. religious connotations, very fitting. i like to think these influences come from his mother, as the GK is more christian-coded (and it's an intriguing possibility given the rampant antisemitism of the middle ages, but perhaps the idyllic state of the early dungeon allowed for relationships that might not have been acceptable before then)

thistle -> native italian thistles can be found in the country's mediterranean range, inclusive of lombardy and veneto. regarding a potential thematic connection to his place of origin, thistles can be found on every content except antarctica but are native to asia (particularly india, but they can also be found in all of east asia and vietnam), northwestern africa, and north america.

winged lion -> venice, italy; the winged lion of st. mark. originating in china, its modern iteration symbolizes st. mark's evangelism through the symbols of wings, a book under its paw, and a halo. this is probably where the magic book is from too!

all this places melini/gk in parallel to northern italy, and here i've just quickly highlighted the relevant regions mentioned above in red dots:

credit to this essay on ao3 which has been a hugely helpful stepping-point for research:

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