0:/MISC/RETROSPRING ARCHIVE/DUNGEON MESHI & THISTLE

Since Retrospring is ending service in 2025, I've created this archive of every question I've answered.

Questions have been separated into three categories. The questions are listed in chronological order (newest -> oldest) within each category.

※ The questions on this page are related to Dungeon Meshi - specifically Thistle! You'll see a lot of character analysis and headcanons here.

DUNGEON MESHI / THISTLE

Q:︎ i think the ideal thistle & falin postcanon bonding scenario really would be roughly 20+ years into the future. well-traveled 40something falin taking (about as recovered as mithrun was post-recovery) thistle on adventures to find new passions in life. i may have to do something with this concept eventually but i don't know

A: PLEAASE do smth with it, bc i love it. for the reason that i think thistle recovering would need him to have distance from melini so he can actually see the world and other ways of life and find for himself a way of life that isnt Complete service to his chosen person. and falin would be a perfect guide for this, esp if she’s in her middle age and has life experience…

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Q:︎first of all i hope you had a lovely birthday !!! for my real question, do you have any headcanons for any instruments thistle plays beyond the canonical ones? i see the cittern being fitting for him too...

A: ty, i did!! and i sure do - the setar and the violin, specifically!

the setar is a persian stringed instrument similar to the lute (a cittern is also this, isn't it?) and i think of it as the first instrument thistle was trained on before being given a lute. as for the violin, if i'm not mistaken it was developed in the renaissance period so i like thinking it's a fun new instrument that thistle is given by freinag to try out because it's Trendy. he's not very good at it at first and there's a lot of painful screeching sounds to be heard. but he gets better. eventually.

i have a bias towards strings so i haven't thought much about other instrument types he may know!

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Q:︎ in the vampire au you talked about ages ago, would the 1000 years mean he's around in the present day lol... maybe living in some secluded place with delgal & whoever until delgal escapes and thistle has to venture out to find him?

A: OMG. LOVE THAT YOU REMEMBERED THIS . i didn't go into as much depth with this au but there's something charming and fun about it to me. yes absolutely, let's say he's around in present day - we can have the best of both worlds, historical thistle and modern day thistle...! if he's been that isolated until delgal escapes though, he'd have a lot of difficulty navigating the modern world. and now this feels like the setup for a light novel . "An Ancient Vampire is My Roommate and He Won't Pay Rent Because He Says He's Too Busy Searching for a Dead King to Find a Part-time Job?!"

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Q:︎ do u remember that fanart with thistle and his big red pickup truck. what do you think he keeps in the truckbed

A: ILL LOVE THAT FANATT FOREVER…he makes yaad sit in there because there isn’t enough room in the cab.
JOKE!
i think the truckbed is empty and he drives a huge red pickup just to drive a huge car, not for any useful reason

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Q:︎i was reading your last fic, and your writing style is so pleasant! My expression fell when frienag said “I’ll just give you a name,” emphasis in the “just”.. giving thistle a name, something he can just whisk into existence, brought about only by the moment that compelled it, and how thistle was so overjoyed and struck by it, defined by it. The contrast is so incredibly depressing. Really well done!n

A: TYSM < 333 the contrast is everything. freinag really doesn't put much thought into what he's doing or what it means to thistle, but thistle has been denied this basic piece of humanity, having a name, so receiving one is life changing.

i don't know what thistle thought before this - maybe like, other people have names, he doesn't. parents name their children, he doesn't have parents, they abandoned him. maybe he thought he wasn't allowed a name because he was bad or undeserving somehow. the reason why thistle imprints on freinag so strongly is because freinag gives him a name and then gives him affection. as carelessly as it was done, it's the closest thing to a parent's love that thistle remembers receiving.

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Q:︎ Do you have any thoughts on when Thistle's self-injurious behaviors started developing (and why)? interested in whether you think it's something that started in early childhood or if he only started doing it later on when he was more under pressure from delgal...

A: early childhood, for sure. like pre-melini. things like nailbiting, chewing on yourself, scratching - in my mind, those behaviors are first and foremost ways to relieve anxiety and stress, and they can develop when you’re really young and remain as lifelong bad habits. you feel compelled to engage in those behaviors when you are so overwhelmed with emotion that it has to be relieved physically somehow, and that’s how we see thistle’s biting and scratching presented in the manga. it isn’t always a conscious thing either, sometimes you’ll just find yourself mid-bite or etc and then realize, oh i feel so anxious i could die!

thistle’s had a stressful life from day 1, and pressure from delgal wouldn’t be the catalyst for this pattern of behavior - it would be rooted in much earlier stress. delgal being like Save the kingdom Please Youre my only hope! wouldnt have helped matters, though LOL

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Q:︎ was going to say something about how "thistle likes Rules and delgal likes horseplay" with regards to them playing pretend as kids when i realized this is just "there are only 2 types of videogame: menus or parkour"

A: LMAOOOOOOOO this tracks with me saying thistle likes strategy and management games, while delgal plays whatever AAA fast action game is out

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Q:︎i have been wondering... who is cecil... from what i understand he is thistle (rp edition)? but is he an au, an expy... cecil!!!n

A: he's an expy! hooray! i wanted to join my friend's rp group, but i knew that i wouldn't be interested in writing any new or old ocs. i only want to think about thistle. and so cecil was born...

i might share more later, but for now i'll give an overview because i have um, five rp replies to write.

i've written up a whole timeline/history for cecil based on thistle and adjusted/changed details in various ways to fit the new setting. he's not an elf here, but belongs to a community of humans who were changed 1000s of yrs ago because of their connection to a magical font. no longer homo sapiens, something different, but still human. cecil's life began in 1933 in pahlavi iran, and he is currently living in a small town in washington state with ties to the supernatural...of course, we can't have a thistle expy without a dungeon, so he's living in a walled compound miles into the forest which extends deep underground. and he's digging tunnels, looking for someone...

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Q:︎i know you draw him the same but whenever you mention cecil i imagine him as thistle but without his lil hair swirliesn

A: oh my goodness. Plucked

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Q:︎oouuuughghhg the point about thistle's favorite toy being dolls... and then later in his dungeon lord madness his house being filled with dolls and sealing souls into them.. there's something there.. oh thistle

A: YUPPPPPPP an enduring fixation on controllable objects in the shape of humans...since that was the way he was treated, it's how he learns to treat others too.

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Q:︎ i'd never invade his privacy by looking but i DO wonder what thistle's poetry in his diaries is like, and honestly his relationship to writing as a whole. was it possible he was some sort of poet laureate, or was it all private... so many questions so little time in the actual story for it all

A: all the questions are a reason i love thistle, there's like a huge canvas for me to paint on and it's soooo fun. so thank you for asking me questions which have me consider a blank portion of the canvas...

this is a long-standing hc of mine, but i think of him as a painfully amateur writer, even after practice, but he has a like emotional sincerity in his writing that would make it compelling to read. specifically thinking about his journal writing...like, have you ever stumbled across someone's personal blog and you get trapped for an hour reading it because its like simultaneously fascinating and horrifying? yeah, like that.

i also have a hc that he tried his hand at writing a play or narrative poem before, and he finished it, but he never shared it.

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Q:︎it's funny i personally have written (but not often finished) pre-canon thistle being content unbothered in his element and yet. sometimes i somehow am still sometimes like "oh i forgot he wasn't always this miserable and tormented". guy who is constantly thinking about thistle frolicking and playing and having such fun shocked to remember thistle used to frolic and play and have fun (i never forgot but it's the same feeling as when you haven't thought about pangea in a while and then are suddenly reminded of it) anyway. What do you think thistle's favorite toys/games would have been when he was roughly 80% less tortured

A: HAHA I FORGET TOOOO and then i have to draw a baby thistle to remind myself. but i've drawn a lot of baby thistles lately and it's made me feel like, I need to draw him being our favorite execution-happy tyrant again......

i think he liked playing pretend with little carved figurines and toys like that but he was very orderly about it . like if he was playing toy soldiers he would act out battles which had happened before, and if he was playing with dolls he'd pretend they were people he knew or read about. he's someone who thinks very literally even as a child and i extend that into him struggling with imaginative play. i just know he's organizing objects into lines by size and color...

i compare thistle to a doll a lot, and because of that i think he was very attached to dolls because he could work out the emotions caused by his appearance/dress and his actions being controlled onto an inanimate object. like, projecting. he can protect the doll, he can hurt it, he can control it, he can throw it aside, he can cling to it. also, before delgal, the dolls were likely thistle's only "friends".

oh and speaking of delgal...i like thinking about thistle playing games that delgal liked even if he wasn't the biggest fan. stuff like riding stick horses or fake swordfighting or chasing animals around the courtyard...but he liked that delgal would have fun, that made thistle happy too.

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Q:︎I'm considering writing up an essay on how Thistle's struggle as an elf can potentially be read as a dire allegory for the struggles and trauma and objectification faced growing up perceived as "female" (as a tinfoil-hat thought experiment under the assumption this MAY have been one of the possible ideas driving his story, and that similarly to yaad initially being conceptualized as a princess but changed because it would "get in the way of the story", he may have been written as male to avoid the pitfalls that may arise from the audience's preconcieved notions, such as the likelyhood that a large chunk of the audience would have interpreted thistle and delgal's codependent relationship as an uncritical romance no matter how hard she attempted to avoid it if thistle were female, because people are odd about mixed-gender relationships) anyway! I was wondering if, should you humor me, you have any relevant observations or thoughts about this i should touch on...?n

A: oh thats a fun thesis. i would honestly love to read this if you decide to write it! i'm like crylaughing because i really agree, it would get in the way of audience perception of him and delgal and ive already see enough hallmark movie interpretations for a lifetime.

ok, i'm going to throw some unsorted thoughts at you plus some stuff i've already talked about before since i am very fixated on the like, third gender space we can interpret thistle being put into because he's an elf.
- thistle gender hc - i go into how his gender is shaped by being an elf in a tallman society and how when theres a choice between male or female, he is put into/chooses female
- discussing how his relationships with the melini family position him as a girl would be interesting. i'm reaching now but smth about how there are no named female characters in the golden kingdom's story because thistle inhabits that role. the emotional support, the hysteric, the nurturer, the mother and wife and daughter and witch and doll
- it's all in stereotypes based on appearance/behavior - being judged by society as "not man enough", isnt it. when he is perceived as girl-adjacent by tallmen around him, it was based on that judgement. failing to meet expected standards of masculinity. and then, do you even want to meet those standards? what if you are that girl? this is all very transgender to me.
- a thought rewording some of the above from when i was thinking about thistle's gender in a historical perspective: a boy who hasnt become a man through whatever coming of age has failed in society’s eyes and it places him alongside girls and women (shameful). thistle as an elf (and also as a child) doesnt meet tallman goalposts of masculinity.
- thistle still being a child while everyone became adults around him is part of this whole elf / tallman perception conflict, i think that should be commented on.

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Q:︎ thinking about modern thistle having an absolutely ancient cellphone because he doesn't trust smartphones. Gets sent a text with an emoji and is baffled why
cont. BAFFLED WHY THEY'RE SENDING HIM SQUARES I hit send too soon. Sobs

A: Ahsdjdjfj YES….he has a gruesome nokia flip phone or something along those lines. he’s like It calls. It can take (grainy) photos. It texts. why would i need more?

who would be the culprit sending him emojies….
Thistle: Get here by 5pm or else i know you were late friday
Falin: sorry ▢▢▢▢ ill b there early!!!! ▢▢
Thistle: Stop sending me squares i don’t like them

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Q:︎ Hi. It's been a while since I last asked you this and I want to know if everything is still the same. Why is Thistle SO cute?

A: thank you for checking in on this critical topic. it's still the same, but i think i've been focusing on his gap moe recently, so that is especially cute in my mind. if he was Only adorable and put-together and doll-like, then he wouldnt be thistle, he wouldn't be perfect. you need ugliness in there.

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Q:︎ do you think thistle would like the sims?

A: yeah. its gotta be like unanimously agreed upon that he shouldve been playing the sims instead of doing all that to real people

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Q:︎ reading the wikipedia article on favourites: "Successful minister-favourites also usually needed networks of their own favourites and relatives to help them carry out the work of government – Richelieu had his "créatures" and -" me: wow... thistle also had his creatures

A: LMFJSJDJJCKCJ yes his one million frustrating dragons and slimes…..

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Q:︎ Do you think that Thistle had his own house before becoming the dungeonmaster?? or did he only start staying there after a certain level of distance had grown between him and the royal family (Delgal etc)

A: i think the cottage used to be The Family’s House and it was in the castle village, but once the distance between thistle and the family became insurmountable and there were too many soulless bodies at the table, thistle moved the cottage to the lowest level of the dungeon as a protective measure. iirc, yaad remembered eating around the table with his family and thistle standing at delgal’s side, but it hadnt happened for a long time…

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Q:︎ thought about the possibility of thistle being the one to first teach delgal how to read and got so emotional i started feeling ill... reading little delgal bedtime stories and teaching him to sound out the words. Crying.

A: WAH i love that…my hc is that thistle wasnt taught how to read or write until delgal was getting lessons (his previous keeper didnt want him to know how and thistle only picked up a few letters and words on his own) so freinag was like oblivious monarch voice Oh he didnt already know? He can learn with Delgal!

and so they got thistle his own set of books and parchment and ink, and delgal’s tutor got another student.

since thistle was a little older than delgal at the time + thanks to his perfectionism, he picked up reading faster than delgal did so he could definitely help him learn and also tell delgal he cant be writing his a’s backwards even if it “looks better like that”. reading bedtime stories would be so cute…what if delgal asked thistle to make up stories but thistle wasnt really good at spontaneous creativity so the stories kind of sucked. and were boring. but delgal still liked them ….

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Q:︎ what are some other fun seasonal outfits thistle would wear... i think he would be a really scary snowball fight general

A: yeah you recruit him onto your team if you want to win. i want to see him in a puffy winter coat and mittens - OMG matching with delgal too, novelty knit reindeer hats

and then i think a straw sunhat+white sundress combo for spring would be darling. imagine with me…

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Q:︎ hi 11. would you please kindly design a group enrichment activity for thistle and the vampire armand. thankyou :)

A: i think they could build a truly terrifying surveillance system together. < 3 thats not a very pro-social activity though so maybe they can talk about art instead. armand has his paintings and thistle has his music

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Q: ︎i keep saying "if you ask me thistle is the REAL main character of dungeon meshi" and the more i say it the more i start to genuinely believe it. objectively the most important dungeon meshi character. entire story takes place in HIS dungeon. this is thistle's world and we are all merely trespassing in it

A: LMFAOOO NO IM WITH YOU I was literally about to make a delusional tweet about how thistle is the main character in my heart and mind and also the fabric of the world. all because i want him to have more outfits for me to look at

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Q:︎ About what age do you think Eodio was when thistle became the dungeon lord...? Looking at the comic on Thistle figuring out the dungeon ecosystem, Delgal is holding a toddler that looks like it could be either Eodio or Yaad, but Eodio looked older than that when thistle became dungeon lord, and it seems strange that he wouldn't have to think about these problems until yaad was a toddler...? Really i just can't wrap my head around if it's supposed to be right after he became dungeon lord or some point after he separated Eodio's soul from his body

A: my guess is 9-10! but that’s just based on vibes & how much older delgal looks during those scenes compared to when hes younger.

each of the thistle bonus comics has some timeline inconsistency so i just dont take them too literally anymore. like you said, why would a comic about basic dungeon setup be taking place years after the dungeon was built? why does thistle have long hair in another comic when delgal is a boy when thistle’s only shown with long hair otherwise after delgal’s wedding? why is thistle being scolded about sucking as a jester and being recommended to play instruments in a comic where freinag looks 30+ years older than when he first got thistle? I DUNNO! it’s not gonna make sense. so i cant think too hard about it

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Q:︎ do you have any kind of neurodiversity headcanons for thistle ? ^^

A: yes! i think he is autistic :) our favorite jester who had to read a joke book to figure out jokes…along with that i think he’s always struggled socializing without a script, he needs things to stay the same or else it’s all ruined, and he has meltdowns when it all gets too overwhelming. i think he had to learn to mask well and to develop social awareness of others’ moods for survival though.

i also hc him as fitting bpd and ocd criteria, stemming from his childhood trauma. he struggles a lot with fears of being abandoned by the few people he cares about, and fears of being “found out” as something evil/tainted/unforgivable, so most of his obsessive thoughts and rituals are centered around that. i also think his self-harm habits are based in soothing these anxieties and aren’t premeditated - they’re escalations from “harmless” unconscious nailbiting and chewing and scratching…

there can be overlap though between all of this so i’m not gonna say Ok this behavior only goes into the bpd bucket, this one goes into the autism bucket, this one goes into cptsd - you know what i mean?

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Q:︎ do you have any yaad gender hc's? that original princess design for him from the daydream hour makes me wanna hc him as trans but i can't decide which "direction" i like better lol

A: i dont have any 🤔 i’ve honestly never thought about it until now, but he’s probably just cis to me. follow ur heart though! give yaad genders!

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Q:︎ knowing thistle became progressively more distant with each generation (while still being involved, but less intimately) but still seeming very taken by baby yaad, being present when he was just born, it's funny to imagine thistle looooving eodio and yaad when they were babies but then after a certain point becomes sort of hands-off and distant and doesn't spend as much time with them one-on-one... too busy being slowly driven insane to play with his kind-of nephews. but i think he would make some time for cute baby. his weakness.

A: YEAH… YEAH… if you ask thistle “want to hold my baby?” the answer is always YES!!!!

i think thistle loves babies and children but once they’ve grown up a bit he doesn’t know how to interact with them anymore. young children are easy, you take care of them and it’s clear when they’re upset or happy or want something. but in just a decade or two, that child has grown up and suddenly the old way you were with them isn’t viable and they’re simultaneously More Adult and More Stupid than you. plus now they start having an adult’s personality with its capacity for hidden meanings, passive aggressiveness, unsolvable dislike…i bet it was unsettling for thistle every time a tallman child he knew suddenly (to him) became an adult

and with yaad…he looked toddler age when eodio confronted thistle. i wonder how long eodio had been harboring resentment since i doubt that argument came out of nowhere, it was likely preceded by smaller incidents and tense relations. it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume eodio didn’t let thistle be around yaad for fear of what thistle might do (even though thistle wouldn’t do anything!) and thistle wouldn’t even notice it with how busy he was with the dungeon, and that enforced distance from yaad would contribute to the future disinterest that thistle has in yaad as a person…

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Q:︎ do you have any favourite thistle/delgal/dungeon meshi in general fics? :)

A: i've answered this recently if you scroll back a bit on my profile!

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Q:︎ do you have any thoughts/headcanons on eodio... particularly how he was before The incident? I am currently on a mission to trick myself into being the first eodio fan... because someone has to... Even though right now i feel nothing in particular about him. been trying to imagine what his relationship with thistle would have been like when they were still on good terms (and his personality in general, since we don't really see what he's usually like)

A: WOW! I salute you. I’ll stream-of-consciousness type some thoughts I have about Eodio.

- Mama’s boy. A little (very) spoiled. He’s used to doing what he wants and getting away with it - living half his life in the dungeon where there wasn’t as much pressure to conform to a role meant he spent a lot of time trying to have fun and explore and push the boundaries of what is allowed. This tendency is why Thistle’s Epic Dictatorship grated on him so badly.
- He’s hotheaded compared to Delgal and Yaad because he expresses his feelings loudly instead of avoiding or suppressing them. Yaad’s post-canon temper is inherited LOL
- He was never close with Thistle even though Thistle was a participant in raising him when Eodio was very young. The distance wasn't solely from Eodio’s end, Thistle also was beginning to have difficulty connecting with the tallmen around him who grew up so fast but still seemed so naive to him.
- An idea I’ve been considering is that factions within the nobility who disliked Thistle’s influence on Delgal approached Eodio to turn him to their side. When a king has a favourite, there will always be people who hate that person and want to pull him down, especially if the favourite is "low-born" or otherwise marginalized. They’d whisper about how Thistle was overreaching and the dangers of elves and magic and all this other shit…Eodio didn’t immediately jump to their tune, but he became much more sympathetic after Thistle became a dungeon lord and did start behaving erratically and um, disappearing dissidents.

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Q:︎ do you think post cannon thistle would form any sort of "bond" with marcille? not right away, ofc, it would take a long time. but yknow those two and their "much more in common than theyd like to admit"-ness. maybe they could be a form of relatability to each other bc if anything thistles still young for an elf so he wont be leaving as soon as the others if he goes through his whole life span. plus she is court sorcerer now and that did used to be thistles job, and i bet shes still interested in dungeons and stuff, maybe a little bit!

A: Yes! I do! I looove thinking about how these two would interact in a setting where they're forced to be civil. I just love it.

In the epilogue we see that Marcille doesn't bear any grudge towards Thistle despite the heinous shit he said to her along with everything else he did LOL. Any friction would come from Thistle's side - This isn't to say she'd forgive and forget it all, but Marcille would WANT to get to know him better and learn from him! She genuinely admires his magical knowledge. That's an area of interest where none of her other friends share her same ability or enthusiasm for the technical, book-learning shit. Other people have written about the parallels between Marcille and Thistle better than I can, but I think that Thistle was on some level aware of their similar situations and that is why he was so cruel to her specifically. If he can get over that then they would have a lot to talk about and many years to do so...

I like to imagine that a recovered Thistle would tutor Marcille in magic/being a court sorcerer the same way that Yaad becomes Kabru's mentor. He'd agree to it at first only because he couldn't bear to watch her stumble through esoteric problems he'd learned how to resolve, but over time I really do like to think their relationship could be cordial, and maybe they'd even become friends. I also think it'd be funny that the two magical advisors for the kingdom would be Dangerous International Criminals according to the western elves. What are you gonna do about it? Hit us with that bat? Better make it count. Better kill us in one hit.

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Q:︎ do you think delgal held thistle as highly as thistle held delgal. was thistle as important to delgal as delgal was to him

A: I was typing up this whole thing about how I don’t think so, but then as I reread the shit I was writing I realized I was disagreeing with my own thesis. So…yes, I think Delgal did hold Thistle as highly as Thistle held Delgal, but it expressed itself in a different way.

I initially said that I don’t think he did because Thistle’s attachment to Delgal is intense beyond any “normal” standard, but that I DO think Delgal held Thistle highly and that I believe his relationship with Thistle was the most important one in his life. And then I started going into detail about that…and I was like, oh jeez, Delgal…

Like, we’re all Thistle apologists here, but Delgal could really give us a run for our money.

It’s like - Thistle has been with Delgal since he was a baby. He was Delgal’s best friend and playmate. He took care of Delgal and taught him things, but it was different than how the adults treated him, it was better! Thistle was fun! He was always there! He solved every problem Delgal had. And as the years passed, Thistle is still there, a steady presence in a turbulent time, the only person Delgal can depend on and be vulnerable with. There’s a blurring between “friend”, “brother”, “servant”, and “parent” in their relationship, but in all of these roles there is dependency and trust and Delgal took advantage of it without realizing how much he was asking for from Thistle.

Thistle was an irreplaceable person in Delgal’s life which was otherwise occupied by nobles with duplicitous motives and citizens who need him to be a perfect figurehead—and the loss of his parents when he was still young. I think he unconsciously put Thistle on a pedestal and felt closer to him than anyone else, and Thistle reciprocated! Unconditional devotion!

This isn’t to say that Delgal didn’t love his wife and children or that he wouldn’t want to protect them from harm or whatever…but that when Thistle is the one causing the harm it becomes paralyzing for Delgal. We see how shell-shocked and lukewarm Delgal’s reaction is when Eodio is disembodied, and how Delgal becomes depressed and withdrawn and self-blaming instead of lashing out at Thistle or labeling him an enemy…in that unconscious calculus in his heart, Thistle is still #1. I’m extrapolating here, but it’s notable to me that we’re told that villagers only ever tried to escape and that we’re never told about attempts on Thistle’s life. Could Delgal have forbidden people from trying to harm Thistle? Who knows…

So tl;dr, Thistle destroys himself trying to protect Delgal, and Delgal destroys himself trying to endure Thistle’s actions. They are like two balanced plates on a scale - the actions and emotions are different, but the weight is the same.

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Q:︎ i keep thinking about how it might not just be that thistle doesn't remember his "real" name, but that he never HAD a name until freinag named him. he mentioned he was abandoned not long after he was born in the cake comic (based on japanese wording, don't remember how it comes across in the translations going around) so it's not unlikely that his parents didn't even bother naming him. it's a sad thought. i wonder if he would have been excited to finally have a name if he hadn't had one before...?

A: yeah :’) i think being given a name by freinag was one of the actions that completely cemented thistle’s devotion towards him&his family. it’d feel like being treated like a person for the first time in his memory even though (from my earlier tweets) how he was treated was still disturbing and objectifying.

it’s my headcanon that prior to Being Procured by freinag’s advisors , thistle was only called shit like “the elf” or “kid”. the people who had him never bothered naming him because they didn’t care about treating him like a human being because he wasn’t one to them

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Q:︎ how big do you imagine the Golden Kingdom was in right before thistle sunk it? (Mostly asking in terms of population. The kingdom prior to the dungeon is such a vague image in my mind!)

A: Tentative guess because we don’t know the country’s exact size but like, 1-2 million people in the entire country seems reasonable on the small end for a renaissance-esque kingdom that was the size of that empty chunk next to kahka brud. I’d imagine most of the population was centered around the castle and a few market towns scattered around the countryside, otherwise people lived on the land they farmed

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Q:︎ i love this image in my mind that thistle had no idea what a baby actually looked like so he just imagined delgal would be born looking as old as him so he didnt bother too much, but then when he actually got to see delgal newly born he was just !!!!!stunned really, nearly overwhelmed by the feeling of holding a whole new world within his arms

A: really cute 🥹 i bet he felt very responsible and grown up during the first bit of delgal’s life when thistle was the one teaching him things and keeping him out of trouble…

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Q:︎ Thistle meets the diagnosis criteria for schizophrenia☝️

A: i can see how it’d fit! i’ve seen the winged lion’s effects on dungeon lords = abusive relationship, addiction metaphor…but yeah it could def be read as a metaphor for psychosis, especially with how thistle holds very strong beliefs that run counter to others’ reality in order to preserve the dungeon how he needs it to be, and his difficulty communicating and thinking clearly, and the way his behavior changes as the lion eats him is like negative symptoms becoming more severe. i wish i had more to say but i’m not as knowledgeable on schizophrenia as i’d like.

have to add my obligatory disclaimer that collecting symptoms under a label can be a helpful way to address symptoms and find resources/community, but also dsm labels are all too often used to dismiss or vilify certain experiences & groups of ppl. they weren’t created in a vacuum so i always have this in my mind when i talk about this shit…my own negative nancy sensibilities… these labels immediately make me think “modern day, our society” - and in that case, why is he being diagnosed as schizophrenic and how is it affecting his life and who pushed for the diagnosis - himself or someone else? how does he feel about it, does he agree, disagree? lots of heavy questions

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Q:︎ do you have any favourite thistle fic recs🤲

A: It’s a short list! I’m picky and I got scared by the word favorite.

the end of desire by rubiginosa - This fic is about all three dungeon lords, but Thistle’s section really shines. I connected with the framing due to my interpretation of those thousand years in the dungeon as a fairytale.

thistle and senshi by eatingwould - My friend wrote this based on one of my drawings and I love it! One of my favorite types of fanwork are canon-divergent “what if?” scenarios like this.

apatura iris by shippofuri - Short fic about transmasc Thistle and the disorienting experience of identity in a place where he never quite fits in or understands the rules.

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Q:︎ Do you have any hc's abt Thistle's sexuality? Not that there's any potential partners in the story for him. and also he doesn't have time for all that lol. but curious especially with how he's from a medieval tallman country and how that would affect him (and its connection to his gender and status as an elf)

A: (I cleaned up this answer and turned it into a tumblr post here.)

WELL…This ended up being an essay about the impact of child abuse on his ability to form relationships or feel attraction more than it is about gender or race…in my long answer I bring up CSA and trafficking and their effects on Thistle. It is discussed in a non-graphic way, but please take care reading this if the topics are triggering.

short answer: bi and repressed and traumatized

long answer:
Thistle has a heaping pile of trauma centered on interpersonal relationships and intimacy. This inhibits him from forming equal relationships with others - outside of his very small family group, he doesn’t feel safe or capable reaching out to people or letting people in. He can feel attraction towards others but he shuts it down and doesn’t act on it because it feels like something bad will happen if he does. I consider him to be more comfortable around men than he is with women because he thinks he knows what he can expect from men (men were the main perpetrators of his abuse, but men like Freinag and Delgal were also the most important relationships in his life)—he has no idea what to expect from women. Most of his attraction is towards men as well and that complicates things due to the likelihood that these medieval-adjacent tallman societies are homophobic - and Thistle isn’t a man but he isn’t a woman so is it allowed? Is there something wrong with him? He doesn’t know. It doesn’t feel safe. So he keeps it all to himself.

In my timeline, Thistle doesn’t start puberty until shortly before the kingdom is turned into a dungeon. He never has the typical experience of crushes and childhood romance because he has no peers to engage in them with - his slower aging and his race isolate him. Everyone sees the silly little elf jester first and not the person. All he has is the royal family. Delgal goes through puberty, fools around, gets married, and through it all Thistle only understands that behavior like it’s something he’s read about in a book but can’t experience himself. I think when Thistle was brought to the castle he briefly had a crush on the king, but it was a child’s harmless emotion directed towards someone safe who he perceived as having saved him. If you’ve ever had a strong attachment towards a teacher or mentor growing up it was like that, and Freinag wasn’t aware of it and did not encourage it.

This is going deep into headcanon territory now. Thistle was trafficked by someone in the troupe that took him in before he was brought to the castle. He's suppressed the entire thing and can’t recall the first twenty years of his life and the information he has about that time is what people later told him (“your parents abandoned you”, “you were part of a traveling troupe”, “you already knew how to play the flute and follow instructions well”, etc). Freinag unintentionally replicates the emotional abuse that Thistle had suffered — he calls Thistle his child but treats him more like a pet that has to perform for approval and he is overly physically affectionate while neglecting the very real parental needs Thistle has as a young child. It is like a barely scabbed over wound that keeps being picked at until it bleeds again.

Thistle grows up with an incorrect idea of how adults are allowed to treat him and wariness towards everyone who is not the immediate royal family. They’re safe, they don’t do anything bad, but he can’t trust anyone else. Plus - he doesn’t like when strangers single him out for being an elf, he wants to fit in so badly and instead they invade his space and point out how he’s different and are always reaching for his ears. The few times he feels attraction he suppresses the emotion on instinct without understanding what it is. He doesn’t want to feel drawn to anyone that he isn’t already close to. It’s a self-preservation mechanism and a reaction to the abuse he suffered and after a while the curiosity is blocked off altogether.

In a post-canon future where he’s found a will to live and is healed to the point that he is interested in meeting new people, I still think he wouldn’t want to have an intimate relationship. It’s like a chasm, a frightening abyss of possibility for new experiences but also for getting hurt, and he has been hurt too many times already. Friendship would be daunting enough - I genuinely think he’d struggle with it - but anything more is equivalent with ruinous loss of control in his mind. Things can get better with time, conscious work, and understanding, but this mindset is where I see him staying for a long while. Thistle doesn’t do well with change or admitting truths to himself that he’s worked very, very hard to suppress.

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Q:︎ does rhe fic your working on discuss /how/ thistle found out yaad wasnt delgal and how he may have reacted to that, and if not, can you maybe share a liiittle bats my eyelashes i just think that topic is very fun to explore. he could just not have it in him to care at all but i feel like its hard to just write it off as something like that.. i feel like in his state he may still have the thought of "delgal is dead" in the back of his head, if that makes sense

A: the fic is entirely about that!! please look forward to it :) without giving too much away, i’m exploring thistle’s attachment to delgal and how it endured even when he is meant to be completely without desires, as well as exploring how his definition of “delgal” evolves as a self-preservation mechanism.

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Q:︎ Do you think when Thistle was much younger Delgal ever accidentally made him cry?

A: Short answer: Yes. Long answer: I’m writing a fic about this now

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Q:︎ I don't know if you've already seen it but at the end of the scene with the winged lion when thistle is thinking "i don't want to disappear...!" he used boku after using watashi for quite a while up until then and it absolutely broke my heart. it just made me think about how he's just a scared kid and going through something so horrible. (also some more fun trivia that is fun and not sad: in the original text of the comic with frienag first receiving thistle he doesn't actually use any gendered language, just calls him "my child"! another win for trans thistle truthers...)

A: oh thistle T_T yes, i spotted that when i was flipping through the book yesterday and it hurt so bad reading it. even when he’s pissed off and emotional before, thistle never loses his composure like he does in this scene. throughout the scene it feels like his behavior regresses back to when he was a younger child, including indicators like using boku and wanting to see delgal’s face one last time and the desperate way he’s reaching for anyone’s hand.

I LOOVE THAT “MY CHILD”… i wonder if freinag was never told anything other than “here’s an elf baby” and he just arbitrarily decides “Ok this is a boy” one day. its my hc that it never made much of a difference to thistle what gender people thought he was.

i’m interested in knowing where else thistle is referred to with gender neutral language vs gendered terms (i know for ex that yaad calls him male in the golden kingdom chapters and thats the first time thistle’s gender is made explicit LOL) but it’d be tricky to do myself since my japanese knowledge is limited to hiragana, katakana, and very few kanji and simple grammar lol. and my trusty ole translate tool

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Q:︎ Idk if youve gotten this question or if its a weird one but how do u see delgal and thistles relationship ? i really like thistle but i cant really tell if some ppl see him as perpetually 15 or smth else… just earlier i saw nsfw of thistle n was utterly disturbed T_T thank you! I hope you are having a wonderful day/night (whenever u see this) :)

A: LOL i have gotten this question before but dw abt it

i see thistle and delgal as brothers and i don't ship them. i'm interested in their relationship as family, like there is so much to dig into...thistle was raised as delgal's brother, but he was still a servant because it wasn't an official adoption. thistle saved and then killed delgal's son. delgal was thistle's king and his captive, his best and first friend, and by the end he wished thistle dead (along with himself). i think they were mutually the most important people in each others lives. there is a lot of ugliness there, but also a lot of love.

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Q:︎ what kind of person do you think thistle would be if there had been no dungeon and he'd gotten the chance to grow up

A: if there was no dungeon then thistle would've come of age in a time of war - melini overrun and likely conquered by its enemies, eodio dead from his illness (so there's no heir to the throne or hope for the melini lineage), the citizenry starving and suffering and furious...delgal still leaning on thistle, but also giving him the cold shoulder.

would delgal even be king by then? maybe they're on the run. thistle would be as paranoid as a dungeon lord but his every action would be fed by guilt. he'd believe he'd failed delgal, that if he was only a better mage or smarter or whatever then all of this misery would've been averted. i think he'd be quieter and less likely to speak his mind, but his viciousness towards quashing threats would grow faster than it did inside the dungeon because his ability to protect would be limited. as dangerous as a wolf in a trap...his attachment to delgal would be more corrosive to his self. i'm sure he'd regularly endanger himself while trying to protect delgal or while helping him regain what he lost...he'd get involved with studying/casting veryy illegal forbidden magic and likely get on the elves radar as a threat. ohh now im imagining a scenario where ten, twenty years after melini fell, delgal-urged-by-thistle goes to war against the usurpers to take back the throne. it'll end in horrific death for all involved, of course

woah! i hope all this was what you were even asking for

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Q:︎ your so right about the farcie and thistle thing..... thistle doesn't even respect or like marcille that's something you gotta earn with him unless you're one of two exceptions (delgal&co, family) (falin, happened to come into thistle's life just at the right moment where he was feeling particularly lonely and vulnerable, he learns the truth about delgal only a couple days after she gets chimera'd) he isn't even all that nice to them either. put thistle and marcille in a room together and he'd bully her over her subpar (in his opinion) understanding of advanced ancient magics (and she would fight back)
but i must admit i Am fond of like. fanart of falin being like (@ marcille) hey would you mind me bringing this kid im looking after rn along (because of x reasons) and then thistle is just there killing the mood. marcille voice what if i dont like the kid my girlfriend is taking care of. what if it has bad vibes

A: LOL i like that genre of fanart too. i give it a pass if shit is funny. and you just know that at the same time thistle is also thinking “what if i dont like the woman that my dragon is dating. what if it has bad vibes”

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Q:︎ is yaad an apple or an onion, if you had to choose one?

A: an onion because his hair and heart have many layers and i’m also adding him to a soup for depth of flavor

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Q:︎ hi! i want to ask you this because you're like ceo of thistle to me haha anways.
also sorry for the small rant.
but i want to ask you what you think thistles ethnicity is? some characters in dunmeshi do have direct references from certain cultures like kabru for example who many believe is indian or even how marcille is canonically italian.
thistle now doesn't have really any of this, especially because he was abandoned but there's still elf culture to look at which even still we don't have much to go on. i've seen some make ties to how thistle (the flower) is used in a lot of historic portuguese dishes and so thistle could be portuguese. but obviously all are speculation.
so i guess it comes down to headcannons or vibes. eitherway i want to hear your interpretation about it! ok thank uuu

A: HI! i talked briefly about this before !

my interpretation is that since there isn't a monolithic elf culture (there is the main kingdom, yes, but also populations across an entire enormous continent) and because we know nothing about thistle's past, his roots could have any real world connection that you want.

this is a little pedantic, but since the name 'thistle' was given to him by the king of the golden kingdom, i see facts like its historic use / symbolism in various cultures as evidence for what the kingdom is based on, not thistle himself.

OH, an interesting tidbit...when i was in my viking research hole, i read that the thistle is scotland's national flower because of this legend: a group of sleeping scottish warriors were about to be ambushed by norsemen when one of the norse stepped on a prickly thistle plant and yelled out. the yell woke up the scots and they fought the enemy off. GOOD JOB, THISTLE PLANT!

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Q:︎ Do you have any thoughts abt what happened to Eodio and Delgal's wives? As in, what was the final straw to drive them to try and reach the surface? Unless Thistle had a more direct role in their souls disappearing. I just think its super interesting how we don't even get to learn their names, they're so absent in the story

A: i’m too lazy to dig it up, but a few months ago i talked in another question about how delgal’s wife would be one of the first people to try to reach the surface after eodio is disembodied because she was shattered by what happened to her son. eodio’s wife i see sticking around a while longer because she had yaad to look after, but that would keep her there for only so long. the chance to escape is hard to resist when you remember what the outside world was like, after all…

i don’t think thistle got rid of them on purpose, but we can’t rule out him putting them into “soul time-out” temporarily which would only drive them away faster. i’d gotten the feeling that by the time he put yaad in timeout, he’d refined the technique and had a better plan for dealing with the ejected soul LOL

yeah, they’re really not fleshed-out characters! they have a simple role in the story and that’s that. i imagine if someone had been recounting thistle’s past mithrun-style we’d get the wives names as well as the names of 30 other supporting characters and a dozen longwinded extra substories LOL kui did the pruning that kabru did

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Q:︎ 'if thistle recovers postcanon' wait wait WAIT it isn't confirmed he died?! i hope he isn't dead.....

A: it’s left ambiguous! i think you could read it either way. schrodinger’s thistle

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Q:︎ any fun thistle headcanons

A: i could only come up with vaguely Grim ones, sorry.

-thistle is actually very shy and doesn’t like being in the spotlight. having too many eyes on him makes him feel a deep anxiety that he masks by getting stiffer and meaner. i think he inherently doesn’t have an extroverted, show-offy personality, but matters weren’t helped by a childhood where he was treated like a novelty to gawk at by everyone around him. it embedded in him a sense of self consciousness and perfectionism that he struggles with his whole life.

-thistle was the king’s personal jester/musician , not one that belonged generally to the court like other performers they would’ve had on retainer. he’d spend most of his day around the king and his immediate family playing music for them and doing other jesterly activities, he’d accompany freinag to meetings and official business (where he learned a lot of things that he wouldn’t have been allowed to hear about if they’d taken him more seriously), and he had free time after to do whatever it is he wanted.
it was understood among the residents of the castle that you couldn’t order thistle around the way you could other servants - the king favored him too highly and was biased/soft towards thistle when hearing both sides of a story. he was the king’s emotional support babyelf - precious and spoiled and cute and infantilized and exoticized. bad bad bad

-if thistle recovers postcanon, it’d be funny to me if he managed to hold onto an irrational grudge against mithrun for being the one who broke the news about delgal to him. mithrun going to visit thistle and thistle like rising out of blankness to be bitchy at him…the whole room shocked like - is this good? bad? should we stop this?!

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Q:︎ what online discourse could you see thistle getting into

A: delgal is the one who finds himself caught in the middle of some drama and thistle digs his heels in to whiteknight for him and inbox spam the people who dared criticize delgal

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Q:︎ what do you think delgal's thoughts and feelings towards thistle were when he set out to the surface? mithrun phrases it as "he wished for your death" but he doesn't know him, the lion phrases it as "he was trying to save you too" but it's manipulative... either way there's not much he could have expected to happen except thistle's death, huh

A: i turned him into this, i can’t save him, we can only find freedom from this purgatory through our deaths.

i very much believe that delgal blamed himself for what thistle turned into and that he wasn’t able to see a better solution. i don’t think he ever hated thistle. i think he felt like he failed him. delgal was trying to save the kingdom, which includes thistle, by having them all die. he says specifically “whoever can defeat the mad sorcerer…” those are words which dance around what defeat means as well as what will happen when the kingdom is unearthed

so mithrun and the lion were both right and wrong. they both only said a piece of the truth. and death in this instance wouldn’t have been frightening or cruel to these residents of the kingdom who desperately wanted an “end” - it would have been a kindness, a relief

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Q:︎ how do you think thistle & delgal's relationship would have developed if not for the dungeon? (assuming the kingdom isnt just immediately destroyed lol.) i think youve talked before about how there were fault lines forming between them already but then everything changed too much too quickly...

A: like lit fuses moving towards the bomb these two pieces come to mind: delgal’s inevitable death, and the fact that there was a conflict between them that never got properly addressed - delgal’s dependence on thistle / thistle’s influence on delgal combined with the volatile mix of roles they inhabited with each other. the explosive trigger could be anything from thistle not being able to fulfill an impossible request (so if the dungeon never happened and eodio died), to delgal being confronted by his advisors or family about thistle “controlling him”, it really could be anything, but i do not think their relationship would have been stable for much longer in that crisis situation without the shock/reset of the dungeon. the instability being a conversation or argument or realignment that never happened because the dungeon smoothed things over and then thistle had the power to enforce permanent stagnation

in a dungeon-less world…such a broad setting you could do a lot with it. if eodio dies, would delgal blame thistle and refuse his help later, his belief that thistle can fix anything shattered? or would he lean on thistle even more in his grief? i know thistle would blame himself. he’d just fall further into learning forbidden, impossible magic , something which is frightening to most people - it’d alienate his allies and give his enemies more fuel to use against him. would eodio’s death frighten thistle into actively attempting to prevent delgal’s? i dunnooo…. this is the shit that you could write a 100k canon divergent genfic about and there’d be so many paths you could take it down. i feel there’s no good answer except “shit would go down” and that i’m certain there would be a time where they lost faith. up to you how long that lasts and if they can relearn who they are to each other

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Q:︎ do you think thistle would like cartoon network (or cartoons in general)? is so, which shows? this became a very debated topic amongst my friends..i think he would, but if you tell him its "for kids" he'd get really mad.

A: my take is that he wouldn’t like cartoon network shows because the style of humor, the fast pacing, and the bright colors and loud, exaggerated sounds would be irritating and hard to concentrate on for him
i agree with his reaction to being told that something he likes is for children though, he’d be very defensive about it and try to argue why its actually not just for kids and it’s very deep and mature if you think about it and really kids shouldn’t be into this, they wouldn’t understand all the layers—

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Q:︎ i feel like this might be common a thought for thistle fans but thistle wearing a dress that has its hemline / skirt designed to resemble a thistle head is such an idea in my head. it may sound a bit silly i think cause the thistle is prickly and a rigid and yet…... (like one of those bigger puffy dresses maybe.. like a ballerina skirt or a small crinoline (as anachronistic as that sounds lol))

A: IVE NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS! what a cute image, i want to doodle this later and see how it’d look

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Q:︎ ive seen you talking about your hcs for what ethnicity and where the people or the golden kingdom could be, do you have any hcs for thistles?

A: this made me realize i haven’t thought about this in detail bc im preoccupied with him being a fantasy elf and how that affects him LOL
ethnically, he identifies very strongly as belonging to the golden country! and the specific way ive thought about his race is in terms of a transracial adoptee who was raised to completely assimilate into the adopter’s culture. if we are mapping onto the real world, my first thought was that he is from southeast asia. you could decide whatever you want for his race tho since his past is an enormous blank spot!

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Q:︎ I was gonna ask something right now but before that, the ask about thistle age made me go like, even if Thistle was 80 it would just be the equivalent of being 16 year old for a tallman, he's just a little guy

A: HAHA yeah! i've seen this be a point of contention with izutsumi also because she is 17. like i'm not gonna go up in ppl's faces telling them what to think (i've long held the belief that trying to argue with a stranger on the internet is pointless) but i'll still be over here saying what /i/ think...which is that even though the age of majority in this setting is set at 16, in our world they wouldn't be considered an adult. do with that what you will

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Q:︎ Do you think Thistle is an adult or a child? I personally believe he's an adult. There's a tumblr post that says there's more than enough room for him to very likely be an adult. But it's anywhere between teenager and young adult. https://www.tumblr.com/room-surprise/741830575930933248/how-old-is-thistle

A: i see him as a teenager, not an adult. i've spoken about my perspective before in these posts:

talking about what age i think he is
my thoughts on his mentality

i have seen that post before and i address how i feel about ppl creating numbers in the first answer of mine that i linked. since we aren't given solid ages at any point for any golden kingdom character, making up age charts is just a fun guessing game and doesn't support any side of the argument, so to speak. it is fun to try to math it out though! it just isn't concrete evidence for anything.

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Q:︎ when eodio said thistle made everyone who disagreed with him disappear do you think that was actually thistles doing, or could it have been the lion/influenced by the lion, i had assumed they had just tried to leave on their own.

A: i took that line to mean that when people disagreed with thistle and tried to get in his way, he would 'disappear' them. probably executed them, let's be real, and it was all him, no lion needed. thistle's got a vindictive, authoritarian streak LOL. and in the official translation, the line is "when people oppose you, you drag them away" which removes any ambiguity

the lion posed as a kind, helpful figure that tempered thistle's harshness in those days. even to thistle it only spoke about festivities, compromise, mercy...carefully planning the wedge it drives between thistle and the people of the country

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Q:︎ https://www.tumblr.com/eternal-moss/750202998214557696/just-realised-yaads-clothing-has-thistles-on-it?source=share
Not sure if you have pointed this out before but thought it was super interesting! Especially the analysis of thistles being a national symbol prior to Thistle

A: WAH i hadn't noticed this! whenever i draw yaad's clothes i just scribble vague plantlike shapes LOL i was like Yuppp for sure there are leaves and stems here...

that post is fun. if we assume the thistle plant was a symbol of the kingdom then it makes him being named after it even more, hmmm, objectifying. and thistle was already very objectified. a symbolic name for the living status symbol... but a thousand years later, the royal family still wears a thistle motif on their clothing and it feels possessive in the other direction - now it represents how they belong to thistle :| i see it as control, weeds choking a garden, vines shackling you in place...

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Q:︎ That post about thistle not sitting near Delgal in dinner scene reminded me how I was mad as to why at the end and at winged lion dream sequence falin was not sitting near/right side of Laios……where are my siblinglism

A: when i read that scene i just got unreasonably excited that yaad was at the table too . i dont remember anything else about it. I’m sorry.

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Q:︎ I was the anon who said that find eodio attractive thanks for the support...because when I opened my heart about it with my friend they texted me "YOU WANT THE UGLY ASS BOB FARQUAD?" And it never leave my mind, eodio farquad, imlaughing

A: EODIO GET BEHIND ME THERE’S HATERS OUT THERE

ok im also laughing. because the bob is fine to me but his beard i had to get used to. howd that shit go….a beard without a mustache is like an angel without wings

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Q:︎ I pronounce yaad kinda in the same way you'd say yaaaassss

A: LMFAO that actually works well as a pronunciation guideline

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Q:︎ Oh no... Latest news: the melini in Thistle and Elf Cake is delgal, kui marked his name next to it, it's just that the translated version blacked it out. Goodbye eodio…🥲

A: WOW! honestly im just glad to know for sure. i’d only looked at the english and chinese tl scans before and they both removed his name

goodbye eodio, consigned to only two scenes forever…but now that i know that melini blob is delgal i can think even more about that page and what it means for him and thistle

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Q:︎ That thistle thumb post reminded me of Alicent !!!she did it a lot, poor them

A: omg yeah. she was also under an insane amount of stress…

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Q:︎ how is yaads name supposed to be pronounced?

A: katakana is ヤアド , so i just say it exactly how it looks , yaad. the double a in my head sounds kind of like the o in 'log' or a in 'chicago' in american english? or like the alef in یاد (that word is literally 'yaad')... maybe that's not helpful LOL . i'm curious what the english dub is going to pronounce it as bc falin's name pronunciation in eng dub was kind of shocking. hypnotizingly american

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Q:︎ I'm curious to hear your interpretation of the melinis personality,,, like the rest of the family since we don't know too much about them in some ways more than all of them looked the same as kids, im open to hear your headcannons too, what about delgal's and Eodio's wifesss... IM A GOLDEN KINGDOM LOVER LATELY ineedthis

A: ohoho one of my favorite topics…ive talked about this in pieces all over the place, let me put some of it together here:

freinag is jovial, carefree, and immature…a classic king who ruled during peace and could get whatever he wanted. i cant help seeing him as a harried dad with two kids he doesnt understand who are both hard to handle in different ways, but he’s too soft to do more than ineffectually lecture them. i don’t think he fully prepared delgal for the reality of ruling.

delgal is bold, teasing, but passive. he lets others act for him & make choices for him, and he lets things go that he really shouldn’t. i think he gives up easily and can’t handle pressure. he’s not a bad person, but he’s not a shining example of virtue and bravery either. if the whole dungeon mess hadn’t happened, he’d probably be down in the history books as an unpopular king who let his country be overrun. he should’ve been at the sports bar 😢

eodio we dont see enough of to really say much, but he seems a bit rougher around the edges. i think he’s quicker to anger than anyone else in the family - honestly i think he has a normal temper but when he’s put next to like placid freinag and delgal and yaad he looks like a loose cannon LOL.

yaad has a noble bearing and is prone to anxiety, but is kindhearted to the bone. he’d empathize with even his worst enemy. he inherited eodio’s temper but he never let himself express it while in the dungeon. i think he feels everything very strongly and it’s a bit exhausting for him but it makes him more emotionally mature / aware than the average joe. he keeps a lot of his feelings/self internal and bottled up. ok funny thing but i see him having the same trait as thistle where he needs things to go exactly to plan or he starts getting really, really stressed out

ive talked about my hcs for delgal and eodio’s wives here!

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Q:︎ guhh your recant drawing really has the gears in my head turning.. them snuggling together when delgal was younger, its early in the morning and delgal moves to attempt to get up but thistles subconsciously clinging to him oh so tightly. half asleep he mutters for delgal to stay, its much too early for him to be getting up! thistle has to make sure his little brother gets a good nights rest! delgal finds this slightly amusing and lays back down, hes sure thistle wouldnt have let him get up anyways. he moves to cradle thistle against his chest and almost swears who could spot a content smile on his older brothers face.

they mean so much to me im begging literally anyone to write something about them just being happy together. doesnt even have to be this exact prompt!!please i beg. i will pay you!!! i will give you my soul!! BOWING DOWN. HANDS ON MY KNEES PRETTY PRETTY PLEASE.

A: ANON U WROTE SMTH IN THIS QUESTION!! the power is in your hands. i understand though… i held this question in inbox purgatory for a while bc it was so cute i liked rereading it

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Q:︎ Opinion on marcille chilchuck friendship

A: very cute. i’m in the camp where i think marcille reminds chilchuck of his daughters (she’s around their age, right?) so he gets worried about her the way he would about them. he still teases her the same mean way he does everyone in the party but there are a few scenes where hes protective or the one where he does her hair that i was like aghh cute dadchuck

i dont have as much to say about marcille’s pov because i havent reread those bits recently…i think she respects chilchuck as a dungeon vet but still has a hard time seeing him as like, middleaged and not a babyblob LOL. she kind of struggles with babying everyone younger than her in plain years though. oh and the comic where she wanted his Exact Same Bag was so cute LOL its like when you see someone experienced in Thing use a certain brand and youre like Ohhhhhh i need that too to do Thing

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Q:︎ Do you think younger Delgal enjoyed teasing Thistle?

A: yes. up until the first time his teasing wasnt tolerable to thistle and made him mad at delgal for a week. the old king calling them both in for a lecture like *extremely beleaguered* Delgal, it is not nice to make fun at Thistle’s expense. And Thistle, setting Delgal’s shoes on fire is not how we should express our emotions when we’re frustrated.

LOL i can also imagine delgal telling a joke or doing a prank and thistle’s just like, who’s the jester here? you or me? are you trying to take my job? he is joking by saying this but it is delivered very seriously and delgal gets worried that thistle will get kicked out, a fear that probably never goes away until he is king and can ensure thistle has a place in his court Woah there! Ok that’s all for now

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Q:︎ i keep thinking about a post i saw about how hair is important to magic in dunmeshi and when thistle was brought into the family, they immediately cut his hair short...

A: god ive seen posts abt that and it makes me so depressed. the king’s advisors were veryyyyy worried about the idea of thistle doing any magic so i interpreted it as their suggestion, and i don’t think the old king cared either way so he’d just let them do it. i also wonder if the haircut was just a style thing because all of the boys and men in the kingdom have short hair or jaw-length hair at maximum - but that is the charitable interpretation here LOL. i have a lot of thoughts about what thistle and the advisors’ relationship would be like - strained, based on fear, enforced by control and thistle’s ignorance at the time, and subverted by the old king’s whims at random

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Q:︎ not the same anon as b4 but your answer to the sleepover question i will be weeping over it and also thinking abt it forever and ever
also the bit about thistle basically being a preteen who has to be an adult breaks my heart, and especially the part abt how he doesn’t realize just how young he is since he never grew up around elves… crying sniffling hitting my head against the wall

A: LOL i am sorry abt the tears and wall damage.
yeah it’s like, i don’t think thistle was totally ignorant of what an elf’s lifecycle was, it’s hard to imagine not a single book in the castle library went over it, totally accurate or not. it’s just that he only had tallmen who reach adulthood within a couple decades around him, and it is impossible not to compare yourself to others that way. he’d be thinking like, i’m already many decades old, i must be mature enough now, all these men are 50 and halfway through their lives! and i’m wiser and smarter than all of them! (the unfavorable view he develops of these tallmens capability is just so elven… thistle… you crack me up)

the whole thing is massively unfair and harmful to thistle’s self-perception and development, and the main culprit is ignorance. even 1000 years later, we see laios’s party struggle to understand different races life cycles and maturity points

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Q:︎ I was the one who sent the thistle Delgal sleeping over ask and you made my day omfggg I feel insane when I read your takes on their relationship you make me want to write about them

A: PLS WRITE ABOUT THEM

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Q:︎ i can easily imagine delgal behaving somewhat like one of those slice of life anime girls with a soft voice that hang out and eat cake with tea and such. moe traits, if you will.

A: so cute… i think yaad is a perfect example of that archetype, he has very refined and gentle mannerisms. um, for the most part, when he’s not being stressed out by laios. LOL
but moe runs in the melini family’s veins. that’s why thistle had such an overwhelming urge to protect them. i think they are all dojikkos.

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Q:︎ Do you think that when Delgal was little / growing up he would sneak out at night to either have sleepovers with Thistle (waking Thistle up like a pestering child) or seeking comfort in Thistle if nightmares occurred? I like to imagine Delgal did this often as a child but as he grew, he grew out of it but Thistle started to be the one who would take over the role of seeking comfort in Delgal to not be alone and missed the way Delgal relied on him.

A: oh anon you will absolutely love the drawing i'm going to be posting tomorrow.

but let me answer this now - yes absolutely, thistle was very present and involved with raising delgal when the prince was young so he was the person that delgal would want comfort from when he had a nightmare, etc. i don't even think sneaking would need to be involved...

sharing a bed was really common back then, there wasn't the same idea of privacy and Everyone Has Separate Rooms as we do today. within the monarchy, it would be common for a favored servant to sleep in the same bed as the king or to have a bed laid out in the king's chambers- for company, or to protect their lord, or to be right at hand if they were needed, shit like that...and thistle's position in the castle (which is endlessly fascinating to me) as an extremely favored servant/brother-in-all-but-name would allow him this close access to the prince. so imo they shared a room for a good number of years.

they only shared a bed when delgal was a young boy and after he got older, thistle had his own bed set up in delgal's apartments. when delgal got married and the king died and thistle was appointed court sorcerer, that is when a separation occurred and thistle was given his own chambers to live in. it'd be an amazing gift and a sign of his new status - but it'd be very lonely too. the king's death is something that traumatized both thistle and delgal, and no one else would really be able to 'help' them with that except each other. i say 'help' tentatively because i think thistle is stuck in the role of a reassuring, almost parental figure to delgal instead of feeling able to express his own feelings of being a boy who saw his father-figure be killed. he has to stay strong, he can't show that he feels unsteady and scared and out of his depth too. during those days, even if thistle was woken by the worst nightmare, he wouldn't go to delgal. he has to stay strong for him. delgal wouldn't have the same hangups though, so sometimes he'd ask thistle to sleep over again and it would just make thistle's entire week. i'm going on a lot of tangents in this reply but ok - thistle at this time is basically a preteen trying to act like an adult. i don't think he even realizes how young he is because there are no other elves around to view as an example. so he tries not to ever need comfort, no matter how much he wants it.

i think the only thing that would make thistle reach out to delgal is if delgal is pulling away. i like what you said about how he "missed the way Delgal relied on him" - imo delgal only stops relying on thistle during the dungeon purgatory years when he rejects thistle's control/unwanted help. there's a picture in my head of thistle spurning the lion trying to comfort him, and instead turning around to cling to an unresponsive delgal's sleeve. depressing...

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Q:︎ Gwah.. can you give any miscellaneous Thistle hcs you have. I love your Thistle ramblings I read them like academic text I just wanted to say I love your thistle ramblings you don't even have to reply to this with anything. IK you get a lot of asks about Thistle and I eat them all up. Thank you for making more people Thistle fans and keeping me fed. Omnom the Thistle long live the squishy.

A: AKGJHFKG thank you. sometimes im like Oh god this obsession is just excessive. but i promise to never stop posting.

here are some assorted hcs, i may have posted some on twitter before:

thistle was part of a traveling troupe of performers before the king's advisors 'found him'. there was an older elf in the troupe who took thistle under their wing and taught him some things, but not enough. so thistle's knowledge of what it means to be an elf is very fragmented and based on the few things that person told him when he was a very young child & the things he reads in the books that melini can acquire, which i imagine aren't always accurate or unbiased.
bad handwriting. can't draw to save his life. he's not very creative/artistic, but is very skilled at memorization and replicating what he learns
related to the above, i think the poetry he wrote in his diary was like...not good. even after centuries of practice. but it was painfully earnest and personal which makes it compelling to the theoretical reader (but there SHOULDN'T BE A READER! BECAUSE THOSE ARE HIS DIARIES! KEEP OUT!)
thistle never learned how to juggle properly because the one time he tried he ended up launching a pin straight at the old king's face and gave him a black eye. this is also one of the only times thistle's ever cried in front of anyone. the scene quickly became ridiculous as the king started consoling the sobbing thistle instead of getting his own injured face looked at LOL
thistle and delgal got the same education because thistle would just be there whenever delgal had lessons and no one stopped him from participating too

i'll stop here otherwise i'd just be typing all day.

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Q:︎ ik thistle talks and acts all posh, and its really cute when he breaks character (like when laughing at laios) but i also like to imagine he speaks with really old words that havent been used in years. like its so easy for people to forget just how long thistles lived, and then he pulls out a word that has not been uttered since the dinosaurs walked the earth and your like "huh, yeah, he has been here a while." maybe that could also be one of the many reason he's hard to communicate with, because he talks in a way few people would understand. this is cannon to me now actually.. kui just had to tone it down so the readers could also understand what he was saying.

but then again all of the golden kingdom is pretty old and would probably have older speaking patterns ig. its a fun hc to indulge in tho!

A: i was just thinking about this!!! (bc i've been reading gawain and the green knight and comparing the tl to the original middle english again....) there's a common language in the dunmeshi world that most of the cast seems to know well, even if another language is their native one. i think the golden country also knew that language - i saw some theorizing that the common tongue originated from elves, and that would make sense due to their longevity and the influence they have on the world. one thousand years would only be a couple generations to an elf...it's possible the language has had some changes in that time, but i think what thistle speaks is still intelligible to the modern speaker. it'd be fun if it was like, the difference between shakespeare's early modern english vs modern english LOL. we can still understand it but it's like. what on earth are you saying man

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Q:︎ As the last anon I will admit that I find eodio too attractive in ways I can't put in words I must defend my honor, melini adult men fanbase where are you

A: anon i stand with you, thank you for telling me your truth. so far i think the fanbase is you and me and a couple of my friends who think delgal is a little sexy

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Q:︎ The male melinis genes are so predominant is so funny, like eodio's wife is literally a goddess in earth she's so pretty in every panel she appears idk how eodio got her heart was he funny enough, pretty woman ever and her son is just a straight up copy of her husband when he was young

A: are you saying eodio is ugly LMFOAJSSKXKKFJF im sorry im sorry. i had an urge to defend his honor. i’m really charmed by how the melinis are all clones of each other, esp with what it’d feel like for thistle to keep seeing them pop up identical and then yaad’s situation later on… well i sure did make a whole comic abt that
and i guess since the children are always identical there’d be no one in court who could say they weren’t the fathers 😅

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Q:︎ thistle jopping....what kpop groups do u think he'd like

A: i have to outsource this to my followers because i don’t listen to anything except SuperM’s Jopping, sound of the summer.

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Q:︎ on the topic of aging idk if you’ve talked abt this but im curious on your interpretation on thistles mentality.. we know he perdured physically as a teen that never aged but the fact he was stuck in there for a millennia makes me go in round in circles trying to imagine just how differently he fared against other elves his age that had stable emotional development and didnt have to go through the horrors of time long overdue for his species with no “parental” figures to nurture him (this is not implying i think he’s an adult mentally i still believe he was stunted but im still trying to piece together the hows of it. was it his obsession? was it his desire to remain unchanged forever along everyone, in that same time period that he ultimately latched on to where he felt comfortable and surrounded by “family”? - (im starting to think it was the latter, in which every day just restarted.. for 1000 years…))

A: a good analogy for how i interpret thistle's mentality is "preserved in amber". when he became the dungeon lord, he was unmoored from time and stopped growing mentally and physically. i don't think the rest of the kingdom was affected this exact same way, not even after he stopped their aging! thistle is affected much more by the dungeon than they are. i see thistle's case as a combination of being the dungeon lord + the lion manipulating/carving off pieces of him to keep him in a malleable state. it's hard to grasp just how long one thousand years are. i don't think thistle remembers most of it - it's just a long blank stretch of the same day in his head.

we are used to immortality meaning an eternal adulthood where each day has meaning (like tolkien elves), but an immortality where nothing changes and nothing has meaning is also very interesting to consider. yaad calls it a "curse" after all

hmm another comparison...i've talked before about how i see those one thousand years like a purgatory and a fairytale. a child's wish for nothing to ever change. it's like, peter pan has lived through enough days that he would be an adult if we are counting, but it would be silly to say he is one because those days don't count, they never change, he is never changed by them. there's a soft reset at the end and you go back to the start, metaphorically. you don't typically engage with a fairytale using the strict rules of our reality. suspend your disbelief, set aside the calculator, meet it where it's standing.

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Q:︎ happy to tell you that I wasn't originally old men liker, but since I loved thistle, feel that delgal is more handsome and cuter every time I read manga. I guess it's either me having a thistles head or he's really handsome (now I think it's the latter). The funny thing is that all my thistle head friends are like this LOL

A: DELGAL TOXOPLASMOSIS he is very handsome and cute isnt he :)

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Q:︎ do you think delgal and thistle ever got into verbal fights while in the dungeon, how frequently would they be, how badly would it escalate.. ik thistle would come crawling back to delgal like an hour later bc he cant stay mad at him.. delgal has probably gotten used to the mood swings atp

A: i do :( i think fights happened rarely, and it was awful and memorable every time tensions boiled up and erupted because neither of them find it easy to be genuinely angry at the other.

like you said, thistle can't stay mad at delgal ("crawling back" made me so depressed to read bc it's not wrong) and delgal's personality is very permissive and laid-back - not in a chill way but in a "he lets things slide that he shouldn't" way. the only time we've seen delgal close to angry is when thistle couldn't create a miracle to save eodio from dying in his sickbed. even later when thistle attacked and basically killed eodio, delgal couldn't manage a response stronger than asking thistle what in the world he'd done, shell-shocked.

the dungeon and thistle's control smothered delgal's spirit to the point that i could see a scenario where THISTLE'S temper snaps and causes him to lash out at delgal, but delgal would just sit there and take it. of course, thistle would feel sick and guilty the second after he spoke and that would end the argument before it started. and i could also see the reverse, where delgal snaps at thistle but thistle just tries to console and plead with him, asking what's wrong? why are you upset? and that reaction would take the wind out of delgal's sails.

that's why i think arguments where both of them are heated at the same time would be rare, and the aftermath would be an uncomfortable return to the status quo where they don't talk about their hurt feelings and thistle does Delgal Apologism in his brain (his special skill) to explain away any fault on delgal's behalf. delgal would just feel emptier and more defeated after a fight. we know he blames himself for thistle's deterioration and we know that it is impossible to have a conversation with thistle after a certain point in his dungeon master career bc he just won't follow or hear what you're saying, so it feels sisyphean to try and argue with him. and what do you even do when your jailer is someone you care for deeply but also can't recognize or reach anymore...

i want to briefly touch on "how badly it would escalate". i think thistle is more likely to react with physical violence when he is angry - i talked a bit about this before . i can't imagine delgal striking thistle, but i can imagine the reverse. the scene in ch68 where delgal grabs thistle's arm is the furthest i think he ever goes with violence.

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Q:︎ I'm really curious about why you like delgal. Can you tell me secretly?👂

A: OK, but can it even be called secret if i'm answering an anonymous ask publicly ?!

well, i've always thought older men are cute. delgal is also handsome in a very normal way, it's easy to imagine him as a real person, i like his plain beard and large nose and gaunt cheeks and middle-parted long hair. it's cute that he tends to tuck some of his hair behind his ear to keep it out of his face :| moving into delusion territory, i see him as someone who was athletic in his youth but lost a lot of definition with age and inactivity - he's in his 50s now and has more body fat and loose skin than muscle. i'm sorry delgal i'm talking about you like youre a piece of meat, but youre a prime cut to me

now the thing that makes me actually think he's very moe is his personality combined with the above - i like that he is a king who is unsure of himself, fairly submissive and passive, and struggles to meet the expectations of his role. if he was a strong perfect self-assured king with a 6 pack i would not give a fuck about him. i like the glimpse of a boisterous, energetic personality in his youth that got smothered over the years but still peeks out now and then...i like in the side-comics where he tries to understand thistle's dungeon-building and magic and is like not quite getting it but he's still supportive. i like his overwhelming fear of death, i like how his spirit got crushed and how he chose to die to beg for help one last time - his begging was how the nightmare started, and its how it ended. i think the way he suffers is very lovely

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Q:︎ i must admit i never quite got why you liked delgal so much... until now. i don't relate to it but i guess i do understand

A: I BURST JNTO LAUGHTER READING THIS i’m glad the distance between our hearts has lessened.

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Q:︎ Thinking about just how Right you are for the "Thistle stuck in time in his teens" take because aside from things feeling like it points there, it also makes him contrast very strongly with Marcille (the resident adult whose relationship to her childhood is odd due to her own rate of aging), & how Thistle being stuck in every sense while Marcille continued to progress while still bogged down by the weight of things that haunt her from her childhood (ie, the ear hat of grief that comes with her dungeon lord outfit) kind of offers a lot of very tasty foil/parallel bits to their characters because they're so dissimilar yet so alike and like. It just doesn't WORK the same if Thistle isn't viewed as very young to contrast the lost and scared oddly-aging-in-relation-to-others adult Marcille

A: that’s exactly it!! you said it perfectly, i got nothing to add.

another comparison i’ve been thinking about is how in the epilogue, the golden kingdom is freed from the dungeon and yaad “grows up” by gaining an older body. he’s never treated like a child again after this. but thistle just looks younger and smaller, and even his words are born from a past that no one remembers anymore except him. he doesn’t get the chance to grow up, he’s stuck in that single moment in time, and that’s the tragedy.

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Q:︎ hello i just listened to your thistle mix and it was so spot on literally perfect
i will never die and ein fluch were so haunting and so fitting
and the line in unbecoming… “though there was no light, yet everything that can give pain by being seen was visible”
yeah i will be thinking abt this playlist probably forever thank you so much for making it !!

A: TYSM ❤️💖 if you liked those two tracks from unto ashes i suuuper recommend checking out their discography, they’re one of my favorite bands, i love the medieval-inspired, melancholic feeling in their music.
it means a lot that this playlist is sticking with you, i’m gonna make more in the future for sure!!

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Q:︎ gwaaah the thistle mix is so good….. a playlist to ponder the boy…. ty twitter user agaresia for being leader of the thistlehead nation‼️🫡🫡

A: thank you i’m so happy you liked it 🥺 let’s all think a lot about thistle today as usual

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Q:︎ Do you think Thistle's house was one of the things that was pulled up from the ocean when the spell was lifted? I never considered it before but it would make sense... Desperately need a post cannon comic with Yaad/Marcille or whoever going to explore it in full and sitting down to attempt to read his diaries.

A: IT WAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and i know this because i was rereading the epilogue last night actually GFJKHAGF and got so excited when i noticed his little house was also rising from the sea...

closeup of the house
house next to whole kingdom

i also desperately need a comic about that. i hope his diaries weren't too water-logged... reading those diaries would be painful in any case. it's the hardest thing on earth to revisit items someone left behind after they pass, and words are the hardest, at least for me. i could see them taking the diaries out of that house and storing them somewhere in the castle and thinking "i'll read these someday soon, i promise".

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Q:︎ would you say thistle has something resembling borderline personality disorder?

A: ive answered a similar question before here !

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Q:︎ the concept of izutsumi and thistle hanging out/interacting is really interesting to me... they have more i common with each other than either of them would like to admit. im so sad we never got to see izutsumi ask thistle to get rid of her "curse" and him just replying with something like "?? i have no clue how to do that?? why are you asking me??" i think they would probably be annoyed by each other at first (as they are with most people) but once they talk more and start warming up to each other they would be an unstoppable duo. i'm not sure if izutsumi's bluntness would be something thistle would like her not.. in a modern au izutsumi would greif thistle's minecraft server and he'd get so unbelievably pissed at her.

A: 💯 i don’t have anything to add to this, the ask stands on its own (also i feel like i want to reread some chapters before talking in detail about izutsumi LOL. but she so would grief thistle’s server and he wouldn’t talk to her for a month. friendships have their ups and downs

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Q:︎ That tweet about thistle and Delgal going to hunt and Delgal k1lling boar reminded me of Rhaenyra-Criston scene from House of Dragons, she a princess k1lled a boar=Prince Delgal

A: oh god i only hope that delgal’s hunting attempts weren’t as dire as that, if i remember right didnt she get like charged by the boar and have to stab it a million times 😭

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Q:︎ Everytime you call thistle a platonic yandere it gets me so bad.... I guess he really is one huh. Collective toxic relationship between thistle and everyone in the kingdom. If your ass stays out past 11pm he sends you to the dungeon gulags but that's only because of how much he loves you, he's going to go feed some poor lost trespassers to a fish monster now just for to keep you safe < 3

A: HAHAHAHA yeah, its just like...yeah. that's our thistle. obsessive controlling fixated willing to do anything to make you stay where he can keep you safe. he's only cute and reassuring towards the people in his favor. outsiders who interfere can all go die. he'll separate your soul from your body to teach you a lesson and won't see anything wrong with it.

god though how often did he like temporarily do that as a punishment... there were all kinds of creepy little dolls in his house that looked like the one he put yaad in, makes me think that wasn't the first ummm "time-out" that yaad got...it's definitely an efficient way to punish someone without physically hurting them while ensuring they can't run off. extremely horrifying to think about experiencing

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Q:︎ do you think thistle would be a good dancer? and if u have time thoughts on other golden kingdom resident dancing capabilities ?

A: i’ve been tormenting myself with this ask since i got it trying to figure out what i believe. ok so this is all headcanon…i think thistle has the potential to dance well but he has a very specific self consciousness about doing it, so it depends on the kind of dance and the context. hes like the kid in drama class who refuses to do the inhibition-less acting exercises and just stands there arms crossed, so silly shit is off the table. that self consciousness also applies to things like juggling or cartwheels or physical comedy at his expense. even as a young child he had a lot of pride and a serious personality which interfered with his ability to be successful at certain jesterly duties because he didnt like being laughed or gawked at even though that’s part and parcel of being a court fool. what he Would be interested in is learning formal court dances, especially if they were unique to the kingdom, but he would never be on the dance floor himself so it’d be useless to actually learn them. and then for spontaneous dancing like in the new opening…..i think delgal initiates those kinds of things, pulls thistle in from the sidelines LOL

speaking of delgal, he can dance well but formal dancing bores him. i see him as more of a tourneys and jousting king than anything LOL. get a few beers into him though and he’d start linking arms with people and climbing on top of tables. that’s our king!

yaad can’t dance but by god he tries so hard. terminal shuffler. amazingly off-rhythm with the music. steps on his partners toes. but you just can’t stay mad at that cute little round face

im wondering now if dance was also something the villagers did to stop from going insane over the years…i hope they evolved incredibly strange moves just like how their fashion got very avant garde LOL. sitting laios & friends down for a show and breaking out into a unsettling contemporary dance routine straight out of suspiria 2018

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Q:︎ what do you think about romantic delgal/thistle interpretations?

A: I find it distasteful and confusing. I think it’s pretty clear when you read DM that Thistle and Delgal saw each other as family, and that Thistle was not in the same stage of maturity as Delgal for very long (teenager vs middle-aged man). These two points are what cause my initial Ugh reaction to seeing them shipped. I don’t like seeing incest ships or minors shipped with adults. (I’m aware that some opinions exist that Thistle is an adult, or that they aren’t “really family”. That reading provokes distaste and confusion in me as well.)

The second level of my opinion comes from confusion that the ship would occur to anyone. What’s the point? If you want drama or heartbreak, their existing relationship already has that, including many layers of uncomfortable power dynamics, control & harming the other, misunderstandings, etc. So I don’t see what is gained by overlaying a romantic dynamic on top that doesn’t add anything interesting to the relationship. This is a rhetorical question by the way. Please don’t send me your shipping manifestos, I will just delete them.

I hope this answered my opinion on this clearly. I don’t want to see this ship everrrrrr, and I request that people don’t make comments about it on my art or posts. You will turn me into the scowling frowner

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Q:︎ Have you seen that tweet how Mithrun and his brother looks just like thistle-Delgal, made me think of their parallels….

A: I SAW A POST ABT THAT ON TUMBLR literally 5min ago LAGKJHGFKJDG i hadn't realized before that mithrun's brother has literally the same eyes as the melinis....good post i really liked it. and in part, both thistle and mithrun were driven to become the dungeon lord out of insecurity (thistle thinking he isn't "doing enough" for the kingdom, mithrun from his unstable perception of his worth in the world&to other ppl)

ive said before that if i hadn't been totally consumed by golden kingdom love, i'd be fixating on mithrun and his disastrous family relationships.........

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Q:︎ Need kabru thistle izutsumi have a tea party where they will be discussing their trauma of parents and how far away they lived from home

A: i'm afraid this tea party would devolve into chaos because kabru is the only person who would behave politely. izutsumi would instantly go on the aggressive-defensive and either kick the table or storm off, and thistle would be pissed that these peasants are bringing up history that he's tried his hardest not to think about. like "what do you mean "far from home'. THIS IS MY HOME!"

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Q:︎ Your changeling comic is so cute i love thistle's little list of intruder murder methods but also it's very funny to imagine delgal's subsequent bucket of cold water moment where once he's aware of what happened and looks at thistle for 2 seconds he has to contend with the possibility that his entire country's health, security and environment spheres are managed by one very dedicated 14 year old

A: LMAOOOO yeah. thistle looking only a few years older than delgal's own child...bucket of cold water moment is the perfect way to describe it. i always feel sad when i think about this because i don't think an elven 14 (70 entire years old...) is equal to a tallman 14. but if thistle had been raised among longer-lived races, he would've still been treated like a minor in their society at that age. the thing is, i don't think there's any truly fair way for thistle to exist in the golden kingdom where they seem truly ignorant of any race except the tallman majority

now this got me thinking about if delgal and thistle ever travelled to an elf kingdom or if they entertained elven dignitaries. the looks on the faces of those elves when thistle is introduced as the court sorcerer...like, "that kid...?" "i'm sure he's very talented for his age." (whispering)"are they lacking experienced candidates?"

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Q:︎ love your jesterbabe work❤️ I always thought that delgal knew why thistle let everyone live forever, because it was he who said didn’t want to die and asked thistle to save the entire country. But yaad has lived with him for a thousand years, and said "I don't know". They seemed to think that his madness was due to black magic. I wonder what you think about this?

A: I’m not sure Delgal knew the ‘truth’ the way that we know it!

The Winged Lion was the deity of the Golden Kingdom. They believed it could intervene in human affairs (Delgal wondered if the lion had abandoned them when there was no cure for his son’s illness). The lion was present at Thistle’s side during the ‘good years’ of dungeontime, it was even present at the dinner table. Based on how Yaad speaks about the lion to Laios, the absolute belief they have in its prophecies, and the fact that he still prays to it…they believed that the lion (devil) was their deity manifested in material form, and that it was lending Thistle its powers because it heard the kingdom’s prayers and saved them from doom.

That’s all just summary. From that, it’s easy to say that Delgal expected the lion to grant them their wishes…not understanding that Thistle was the one who had total control. The tallmen of this kingdom (Delgal especially) DO NOT understand magic! The lines are blurred between “act of god” and “Thistle’s magic”. What they do see is that their deity came and saved them using Thistle as an intermediary. Thistle had been using the lion’s power for good…but now it’s suddenly becoming scary, he’s making people disappear, he’s casting frightening spells. He won’t let them leave. And then, the lion is sealed! It’s like the village’s reaction to Falin’s magic. They don’t understand it or where it came from, and if the magic’s form is frightening/associated with erratic behavior, then it’ll be lumped into “dark magic”.

From their perspective, Thistle has been using dark magic to control the kingdom’s deity and people, and he was corrupted by it somehow because you can’t touch an evil thing and walk away unscathed.

Delgal’s wish from a thousand years ago is only remembered by Delgal. No one else was there when he pleaded with Thistle for a miracle. And he did not ask for immortality for the kingdom, or never getting sick or hungry or any of that stuff! That was Thistle’s interpretation based on his own fears :’) I think Delgal sincerely thought Thistle was corrupted by dark magic use that he was pushed into studying by Delgal.

When I consider all of this shit, I feel a little impressed by how the lion manipulated the whole situation.

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Q:︎ Serious question, why is Thistle SO cute?

A: *answering seriously* he’s adorable like a porcelain doll, cute face and long wavy hair. fun to see in many outfits and looks good in bright colors AND monochromes. it’s always appealing when someone who has a cute face looks haggard, so he is enhanced by the eyebags and flyaway hairs and ugly expressions he makes. that + his haughty, serious, controlling personality gives him very powerful gap moe. i also think it’s cute that he is a rare platonic yandere

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Q:︎Thistle is Merlin and Delgal is King Arthur(a really bad one)?

A: THIS MADE ME LAUGH OUT LOUD thistle is a really bad merlin too, lets be fair. hmm i havent read enough arthuriana but i do get the impression that merlin and king arthur kind of suck in the legends too
so maybe thistle and delgal are Correctly Incompetent ❤️

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Q:︎ Opinion on chilaios?

A: it’s cute :) i like when laios gets bullied. affectionately in this instance since that’s how chilchuck shows his worry and care lol
i haven’t thought abt it more than that!

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Q:︎ Aroace Thistle should be a thing for people if they saw the vision/j

A: that is not my vision LOL, but im chill with whatever ppl headcanon!

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Q:︎ Do you also like Falin/Marcille(same anon btw)? Honestly would love to hear opinion/ratings to every popular dunmeshi ships as I do enjoy them all^^(I guess only Laios/Falin is A BIG NO to me)

A: yes i do! what i like about this ship is the friction caused by marcille’s assumptions / perception of falin, and how falin’s avoidance of conflict makes her go along with it even if she is unhappy. thinking specifically about how marcille had a tendency to baby falin and make decisions for her - now, this isn’t something marcille sticks to her guns about nor is it unique to her - laios treats falin the same! part of it is due to Worry about her wellbeing. but marcille’s comes with that Elf Lifespan problem where since they have lived more years they assume they know best. it’s sad bc that’s a trait marcille dislikes in other elves but she isn’t immune either… where was i going with this…so i like this push and pull btwn them esp coupled with how devoted marcille is to saving falin. it’s her worst nightmare realized- a person she loves more than anything is DEAD and she is grasping at any tool to undo it. its especially painful tho bc i think falin was the first true friend she made that wasnt family, so its unbearable for marcille to realize falin’s mortality

i also like how falin changes marcille - example is how at school, falin’s way of interacting w the world and being herself totally overturned marcille’s ideas about how to do magic / understand nature / judge ppl …. really good stuff , and despite how i said falin tended to go along with what other ppl decide for her, she still stays very much Herself thru it all. i think thatd be inspiring to marcille forever

LOL this got long and disjointed sry

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Q:︎ do you have any face claims for the dungeon meshi gang?

A: i dont 🥲 bc i barely know about faces or the celebrities theyre attached to. umm my faceclaim for thistle is my dragon’s dogma 2 character sculpt *nods*

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Q:︎ My only Thistle ships are: Thistle x warm bath, Thistle x wonderful meal, Thistle x snug-like-a-bug in fresh bedsheets, Thistle x bedtime story and Thistle x goodnight’s sleep

A: LOL i like thistle x revenge on all who trespass

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Q:︎ Do you like Laios/Marcille as a ship?

A: TWITTER READING COMPREHENSION DISCLAIMER: this fandom has a lot of ship wars that i’m not invested in at all, so i will preface this by saying that i don’t care about any dunmeshi ship enough to do more than rt art and say awww how cute. other types of relationships are more interesting to me and remain my focus.

i do ship it! i enjoyed seeing their friendship strengthen over the course of the manga, i like how laios is aware of marcille’s worries and fears and tries to relieve them whenever he can. i like how he admires marcille’s strength and conviction, and i like how marcille trusts laios as a party leader and a friend, and how her opinion of him has changed since their first meeting. they have an incredibly close bond of trust and understanding, moreso than any other two members of the party i’d say, because they have gone through the rough periods already and had to accept who the other really was - not just who they saw them as. i think they also share a closeness because of how important falin is to them both and the lines theyre both willing to cross to get her back. typing this all out, i’m realizing i enjoy their bond more than anything and the thought of them getting married and being in love is pretty boring. but i feel bored by that scenario for most ships under the sun, so it’s just a personal preference. wait, do i really ship them at this point then?! i guess i do bc i like the fanart where they have ust LOLLL and the bad end au where theyre both demon lords is very fun too. drag each other to hell to mirror how they lifted each other up in canon…

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Q:︎ You were talking about Thistle's voices a few days ago so I finally decided to check out my country's dub to compare. Noticed they gave him a way deeper voice there but for some reason unlike in the eng/jpn ones they still had Marcille refer to Thistle as boy/kid? Just a very funny sequence of choices overall, it really paints him as a sinister moody teenage boy there lmao

A: LMOAIHGFDKHGF his voice dropped in that dub... imagine he's saying some ominous threatening shit and then his voice cracks in the middle of the sentence. lethal damage

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Q:︎ oooh the detail about hair is so interesting!! i knew about how hair could be seen as an indicator for desire or like the devil, but it's so fun how that loops back into dunmeshi's magic system!!

also, from your research, what century & cultures do you think dunmeshi outfits & armor draw inspo from? i'm trying to design some ocs and do a spoilery marcille painting hehe...

A: that's a good question that i don't have a good answer for LOL. a lot of the clothing is anachronistic and fantasy-european-medieval to my eye, so you could honestly just pick a year and location that you like the style/have a headcanon for and go for it. since you mentioned marcille, it'd be very cute if you researched italian medieval styles from whichever century and designed something off that!

i've only researched thistle & the golden kingdom's clothing in detail - some of it reminds me of 15th century styles, especially the puffed sleeves with slashes. but the women's dresses look more modern than even that (the high, tight collars throw me off!). even the men's clothes...the fancier stuff thistle wears especially are pushing into renaissance fashion - the collars, the ruffs, the fit...

some paintings that have elements that remind me of thistle outfits:
15th century - the boy on the right
15th century
16th century - collar & sleeves
16th century
17th century

if anyone has more info about any of the costume inspiration in the manga, pls feel free to reply! i'm definitely still a beginner at identifying this stuff.

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Q:︎ Do you think they will end with succubus episode? Or maybe earlier even?

A: i was suspecting earlier - ending the next season with the "on the 1st level, i-iii" chapters would be a really cool cliffhanger. but i'm not sure how they'll be combining chapters or cutting things so we could also get all the way to succubus!

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Q:︎ Fun fact, if you look up the credits for the dunmeshi anime dubs, nearly every single one uses the names from the official translation, except for Sissel. Farlyn is Falin there, but Thistle is still just Thistle

A: GOOD!!!! likely because the eng translation only got thistle's name wrong for some reason - the rest are the spellings ryoko kui wrote in the adventure bible. jp adventure bible literally writes out on his page that シスル = Thistle

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Q:︎i 'm a little curious, since there's no set canon answer for it, what age do you think thistle is physically/mentally supposed to be? i personally veer toward 13~15 because the elf hat comic implies he is still underage (so under 16) but kabru had no reaction to the idea of thistle being harmed like he had with the other kids, so he can't be Too young, but I always find interesting to see other people's interpretations of his age

A: Oh boy you’ll get a real indepth answer from me, I hope you enjoy LOL.

I think he’s around that age range too. I’m with you on the elf hat comic where it says the ear covers look ‘right’ on him because he looks young enough to wear them without it being silly. I also take into account how Marcille thought he was a child during their first encounter, Thistle’s appearance/height being much more youthful compared to other male elves, and his human version that Kui drew for a Daydream Hour looking like a teenager. And I’m not even getting into his behavior and personality…it’s a lot of details that add up into an impression that says ‘this character is not an adult’, especially compared to the rest of the cast! To me, Thistle reads as a teen who had to grow up too fast—not like an immature adult.

Time to discuss feelings/metaphor:
Dungeon Meshi is fiction, not a historical account. The Golden Kingdom, frozen in time, reminds me of fairytales where a person or place is cursed into an immortal stasis (Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan). During this stasis, no one grows and nothing changes. If you enter it at one age, you will leave it at the same age. This is the foundation I build my perception of Thistle’s mental maturity on. A millennium has passed but those years were not the same as years ‘actually lived’—this is part of the tragedy! Thistle and the surviving Golden Kingdom residents never had a chance to grow up and live a full life. In many, many Medieval texts, the Wheel of Fortune symbolizes the unstoppable turning of Fate and the random triumphs and tragedies that pepper life as the seasons change. Thistle stopped the wheel’s turning when he became the dungeon master and created in the dungeon an eternal stillness. It’s only when control is taken from him that the wheel begins turning again.

Time to get pedantic:
Thistle looked very young when he was brought to the castle, let’s say around 20, and we can say he was around 65-70 when he became the dungeon master.
There’s not much point in mathing out a chart (although I have done exactly that LOL) because we aren’t given definite ages for him or any Melini at any points in their lives - we can only guess wildly and make up a timeline that suits what we want it to be.
Check out my cool timeline I made up based on vibes, take it with a grain of salt because it is so easy to change any of these numbers around because again, we are given nothing in canon:

LINK
NOTE 9/2/24: i made this timeline way back in march. for the sake of clarity, i'd like to add that today i believe thistle was brought to the castle when he was in the 25-30 range (5-6yrs) and that delgal was born not too long after.

TL;DR Thistle reads as a teenage elf who, due to living with shorter-lived tallmen, grew up too fast in order to keep up with his formerly same-aged peers (primarily Delgal). Time spent as the dungeon master does not count as true time—it is a similar fictional treatment as Peter Pan’s Neverland, or Sleeping Beauty pricking her finger and falling asleep for a hundred years.

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Q:︎ what videogames do you think thistle would play. what about the rest of the melinis

A: i feel like im reaching for a low hanging fruit by answer like this, but thistle would be so into management sims...like of course we are paralleling this with his 1000 years of jester dictatorship but i think he genuinely enjoys when people do as theyre told and tasks get completed successfully and you gain a positive result - and i can easily imagine him getting trapped playing dwarf fortress for fifteen hours straight

yaad...he's not into videogames, he's more of a boardgame person. i could also see him playing chess or backgammon. if you put a controller in his hand he wouldn't really understand how to use it and would keep accidentally walking his character off cliffs

delgal is into AAA action rpg titles, his favorites are the ones where you can play a knight class. i think he gets really into learning the pvp tech in souls games and attends fight clubs regularly. could also be into fighting games, those have the same "learn tech, practice endlessly" element to me. im not a fighting game person tho so dont kill me if im off the mark

eodio isn't into games, he goes outside

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Q:︎ why do you think thistle's house isn't in the golden country? it seemed a little odd to me... did he make the family travel back & forth to have dinner at his place every day (back when. they Could go back & forth and werent trapped in his diorama. lol)

A: thistle’s house is the biggest mystery of the dungeon…my feeling is that it used to be part of that village outside the castle, but as tensions increased and thistle got more paranoid, he changed the dungeon’s layout and pulled the house down into the lowest level - we know that his magic is stronger the deeper he is, so moving house downstairs would be like raising stone walls and digging a moat and placing cauldrons of boiling oil above the gates of his metaphorical castle LOL

i will rt it, but theres actually a panel that got me thinking his house was a structure which existed pre-dungeon, but i dont know if it was part of the golden castle proper or adjacent to it in the village. perhaps the latter…whatever it was, it became the main place the melini family inhabited and when the family fell apart, i think thistle took that place (and their bodies) into the depths where he would feel safest.

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Q:︎ me and my friend compared thistles behavior to the symptoms of bpd on call together and when we finished we both just fucking sighed. he fit basically all of them. i don't know if you'll agree with this but i've seen it said once before as a hc ig(?) that thistle has bpd and delgal is just his fp, and that makes a lot of sense to me. get over here thistle we are going to pull out the dsm-5 and diagnose you with a disorder.

A: i’ve seen that hc before! it’s an interesting lens to examine his character through. i agree, he does fit the symptoms, particularly during the time he is a dungeon master. delgal as his fp is smth ive gone back and forth on because we never see thistle split on him - he violently refuses to even think that delgal could do wrong or betray him. but i don’t have bpd myself, so i dont feel confident making a definitive judgement here. delgal could just be an exception because thistle’s feelings about the other members of the melini family change from positive to negative and back again

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Q:︎ i need a concrete answer on wtf happened to thistle post cannon. bc the demon ate all his desires and after that its said that the dungeon master will die.. but thistles death is never listed on the timeline or his profile in the ab2. like i want to assume hes dead but also i dont want him to be dead. like if he died wtf did yaad do after? did thistle die in his arms? did thistle get a funeral or anything like that?.. what im choosing to go with now is that he is alive but just asleep somewhere in the castel. maybe the left over dungeon magic is also keeping him alive for now. i have so many questions i need answers to! if we go off what i said before and hes in a coma like state he may be able to live a little longer seeing as he doesnt need food or anything like that. the left over dungeon magic is keeping yaad alive so id assume included in that he still wouldnt need to eat anything to survive.. im just confused

like i said, ofc i want him to be alive and recover and interact with every one else post cannon, but it really would make more sense for him to be dead (which i have trouble believing he fully is..) the theory that hes still "alive" in a sense also has so much angst potential. yaad coming in to check on him every once and a while, looking at his peacefully sleeping body and thinking back on everything thats happened, wondering if he actually wants thistle to wake up.. idk. this ask is like way longer than it should be.

A: THIS ANSWER GOT LONG TOO, SO DONT WORRY...

yeah, it's really interesting that Kui kept it vague in the AB2. there's only the image of him in yaad's arms in the timeline, and really you could take that any way you want...the first time i finished the manga I actually thought he was still alive! (this was before the release of the post canon extras which thistle is suspiciously absent in).

The second time i reread, though, I got the strong feeling that he had died - it's satisfying in a narrative sense - like, he is the last remnant of the original golden kingdom, he was in a state of suspended death for a thousand years, he'll be with delgal now in whatever afterlife exists. it feels purposeful that only the kingdom's children born in the dungeon survived all those years. like you mentioned, it was foreshadowed with the line that dungeon masters whose desires are completely eaten no longer have the will to live. thistle had a kinder end than all of those people, he had his biggest wish come true thanks to yaad's words. Right after the embrace, the spell Thistle cast over the land breaks, presumably because he's no longer alive to sustain it, and we can see yaad wiping a tear from his eye as he walks towards laios. I assume he left thistle on the ground LMFAO because it was like, is an earthquake happening?! so i'll forgive him. and i'm sure thistle had a funeral, i think yaad would insist on it especially with the symbolic meaning it would have for the remaining golden kingdom people.

NOW. I SAID ALL THAT WAS THE MOST SATISFYING END FOR THE NARRATIVE...but i'm a human being and i will indulge in wish fulfillment. i'm with you, i love the idea of thistle surviving and being taken care of in the castle. it is hard for me to argue against the possibility of survival because mithrun proves that losing desires does not mean you can never gain new ones and rebuild your life. i'm in the camp that losing/regaining desires = allegory for living with severe depression/trauma - you won't be the same person as before, and the way you feel about things and interact with the world will be different, but life in all its beauty and possibility is still open to you.

my headcanon is that the golden kingdom ppl will live out the rest of their natural lifespans now that the spell is lifted and that applies to thistle too - the food/water problem is a big one since he is essentially comatose, but i'm sure there is a way to give him nutrients with some magic spell or another...let's believe...

i want to see him recover enough to be present and interact with people again. yaad would not abandon him if he was still alive, and laios & marcille would lend their support based on their softened feelings towards thistle in the epilogue. it'd be nice if thistle got a chance to "have a life" and to grow up - he was practically frozen in time ever since he gained the dungeon's power. it'd be fun to see him boss old man yaad around and tutor marcille in ancient magic and actually share a meal with falin and uncomfortably talk with laios (who is looking more and more like a melini as the years pass...) SCREAMS the fact that none of this happens is part of thistle's tragedy. but his official story is over, so we can do whatever we want with our fan stories :)

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Q:︎ Do you think thistle is more of a dog or cat person? Like his vibes, is he dog or cat or something entirely diffrent?

A: Wildcard answer, but I don’t think he’s a fan of animals in general! Basing this off of his low tolerance for the monsters disobeying him/acting on their instincts, his disinterest in learning about monsters until he is forced to, and the way he consistently ignored the lion in its cute cub form. It’s kind of like, humans are troublesome but easy to control - animals are even worse, and you can’t even talk to them! (People like Laios have the opposite mindset though, HAHA) I also wonder if lifespan would play a part. Elves already have a hard time with short-lived races, how would they feel about a pet that can only live 10 years? Sorry, that got a little grim.

If he had to choose dog or cat…it’d be cats because they are more likely to leave strangers alone. I think he was glad Delgal liked swordsmanship more than hunting, because walking past the castle’s dog pens would be something Thistle hated every time LOL

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Q:︎ What do you think are the differences and similarities in Thistle's personality pre- and post- dungeon master role? :>

A: Being the dungeon master emphasized Thistle’s worst traits - his short temper, the way he is dismissive of others opinions, too controlling and serious…well, he’s always been serious. I wonder how much of that is his base personality and how much is a mindset he adopted because people did not take him seriously (because of his appearance, his role as a jester, his age…). People looking down on/dismissing him clearly bothers him, as seen in the bonus comic “Thistle’s sense of humor”.

see a another change in his personality/priorities if we draw the line at King Freinag’s death. Before that, he was willing to laugh and do silly things with Delgal, but the reality check they got put a stop to all that. Kind of the death of childhood too LOL. I think that was the point when Thistle started feeling like he had to take care of every problem Delgal/the kingdom experienced because no one else was going to do it, and that leads into his line of thinking as a dungeon master that no one else is capable of taking care of themselves, he has to do xyz for them because only he knows best what they need.

Before the dungeon…he was willing to entertain things he thought were pointless or silly — and he could get pulled in and enjoy himself! He still had a temper, but he could control it. He may have thought he knew better than others, but he was taught in what situations it wasn’t socially acceptable to express that. Becoming the dungeon master removed those inhibitions and limiters - he could do what he wanted, say what he wanted, and he had the power to back it up and legitimize his behavior. And there was also the lion, slowly nibbling at the edges to make him a more convenient/controllable dungeon master…

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Q:︎ i think to think after delgal, thistle tried to act as a playmate to eodio and yaad but he didnt have the same kind of interest or any real connection that he had with delgal.. with yaads personality i keep thinking about casual interactions between the two of them. my friend said that baby yaad and eodio when they did interact with thistle, would try to pull on his long hair and play with it tho idk what do you think

A: Yeah, I think he had a really hard time connecting with them, it’d be at this point that the difference between an elf’s lifespan and a tallman’s would start hindering his personal relationships. He’d act more like a babysitter/older relative who has to wrangle their younger charges LMAO

I love that idea, it absolutely happened. Often.

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Q:︎ i think you've mentioned having thoughts abt delgal & eodio's wives, i'd love to hear what headcanons do you have about them? like, what were their marriage cirumstances like, what was it like at that dinner table, etc

A: I GOT SO EXCITED WHEN I SAW THIS QUESTION…

Delgal’s wife was named Parvaneh (butterfly in Farsi). She was born in a neighboring human kingdom and the marriage was arranged to strengthen ties between their people. It was arranged when they were both in their teens, so they had met a few times before the actual wedding and got along well enough. I don’t think they loved each other, but they had a good partnership.

I think a lot about how her outsider status would have made her feel. Living in another country, surrounded by people you just met in adulthood, unsure of their goodwill towards you. Your husband is kind to you, but he isn’t your confidante. And you aren’t his, either. She was very attached to Eodio because of this - that was her boy! She spoiled him a little (a lot).

Parvaneh was quiet and curious and spent most of her time painting or reading. I like the idea that a few of the portraits in the cottage are her work. She had a hard time coming to terms with her isolation from the outside world after the kingdom was sunk beneath the earth. She had a realization early on - earlier than her son, or Delgal - that like…oh, I can’t leave. Thistle won’t let us leave. I won’t see my birth family or home ever again. She could endure this when Eodio was around, but she snapped after Thistle disembodied him. I think she was one of the first people who lost their bodies trying to escape the dungeon.

I can’t talk about these characters without mentioning Thistle - neither Parvaneh nor him understood or knew where they stood w/each other. She’d never met an elf before and his status + age confused her, and I think his influence over Delgal felt threatening. To be clear, pre-dungeon she didn’t hate Thistle or fear harm from him - he was just the most inexplicable thing about the kingdom in the closest proximity to her. They spoke politely about books when they were forced to make conversation thanks to social rules and they sometimes lent each other a book from their personal libraries and they got along as well as a wife and her husband’s 13-going-on-65 elf-brother-jester-advisor could.

Eodio married for love. Her name was Maryam. The early years of the Golden Kingdom dungeon were dreamlike and carefree and some of the court traditions fell to the wayside - why not marry your sweetheart who offers no political advantage, who isn’t from a ‘good family’? Her parents were commoners who wove silk and sold it to traders. She met Eodio during this period when social norms broke down. There weren’t any new people or places to go, and a strange equality had settled on the kingdom even as people continued to play out their prior roles. Delgal and Parvaneh supported the marriage; Delgal because he allowed Eodio anything after his brush with death, and Parvaneh because she never denied him to begin with.

Those would have been blissfully happy years :’) Maryam was as energetic as Eodio and they tended to get each other in trouble. They liked wandering around the dungeon and exploring the different areas Thistle was creating…these adventures were what led to the root of their discontent: Why can’t we leave? Why won’t Thistle let us near the upper floors? Why do the halls get more twisted every year?

Maryam had no relationship with Thistle. At the point she married into the Melini family, he was completely consumed with the dungeon’s upkeep and the first whispers of discontent, and if he had a hard time connecting to Parvaneh and Eodio then he had a harder time with newer people LOL. At the dinner table, Thistle’s eyes never rested on her - she existed only as an extension of Eodio - who was an extension of Delgal.