Just Three Of Em

One of the biggest gaps between narrative and what the player can see as reality despite the faulty narrative is with Curly and the way Jimmy thinks for Curly. Curly is a morally grey character in general, he sticks up for Jimmy and the tragedy of the Tulpar happens because Curly is bringing a known danger into a new community and hoping for the best. Curly assumes Jimmy is a good person pretending to be bad, and so he supports him as such. But when Curly is punished by the story to become a bystander even in his own life after his injury, he now knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of his violence instead of apart of his brotherhood. A huge part of Curly’s relationship has to do with rape culture in the first place, and how Curly consistently defends Jimmy as a nice guy because “he knows him”. Then after his injury he’s forced to become someone Jimmy doesn’t consider past his own guilt for the only action he thinks is worthy of guilt: hurting Curly and taking away his capabilities. But by that point, Curly likely doesn’t think of Jimmy as someone totally worthy of forgiveness after any action. A big cornerstone of Curly’s character as morally grey is that he’s too nice. He believed in Jimmy too much to the point that it became a detriment to the others because being kind to someone inherently bad DOES have consequences. People aren’t magically fixable, and especially not with forgiveness of every action and freedom from any consequences. But to that point I don’t think that Curly still thinks that Jimmy is good underneath after everything he did. Yes he’s still friends with him and he believes it’s his responsibility to be tied to him because he was a bystander to his actions for so long. Curly is a pretty even mix of misplaced good leading to unintentional bad.

Curly, in Jimmy’s mind, will still do everything in his power to excuse his actions and forgive him.

me wearing a dog collar and leash looking up at my manfriend in his trench coat and fedora: let’s go out in public where you can walk me like i’m a dog in front of people who are visibly uncomfortable

sufins 4rever.... you can imagine what fin might be talking about ...

here’s the closeted furries “hey man… can u bum me a cig” and “the one uncle nobody invites to the family reunion but SOMEONE keeps telling him where it is anyways”

if you want an idea of what john is like, imagine hau from pokemon sumo

ALSO the ppl who kept asking me for trans thomas art, HERE he’s trans in this au (; 

ft John:

no way.

no way no fucking way no FUCKING WAY

Oh oh oh!!!! And lemon sharks!!!!!!!

@tardigradeinatrenchcoat

Sources (gifs all created by 🦩me)

🦈.🍋.🦈

🦈.🍋.🦈

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Johnny DEMANDS that I let him talk about lemon sharks but this would be too long of a post so uh?? Be on the lookout for a huge textpost about lemon sharks I guess lol

-🦩Matt (ew fictroject/fictant)

DNI: endos, pro-endos, anti-mogai, alt-right, bigots, disrespectful singlets, etc! Carrd w/ extended dni.

Mithrun & Drives & Self-harm

Warning's in the title, let's rock and roll.

So there's a super-circulated extra about Mithrun's recovery after having been rescued from his conquered dungeon.

And I don't know how widely known it is that this image is cropped, or that it contains something I consider pretty essential to his character.

The top two thirds of the page are upsetting in a suggestive way. The final third is very explicit.

I understand the impulse to remove the explicit imagery of self harm from something you scatter around God's internet where it could upset literally anyone. At the same time, I think something's lost when you can't contrast 'He spent most of his days lying down, either sleeping or awake,' with the visceral imagery of him struggling to get out of that position, into which he has been strapped. It's less affecting if your initial impression (that he is totally passive) is not subverted.

Without this, it's too easy to assume that his aversion to things like mirrors and birds is due a vague Upset it might cause him, and that keeping sharp things and fire from him is due to an absence of self preservational drive.

But it's not like that. These are precautions undertaken because he has drives.

How much of that lying down is due to being passive, and how much is compulsory? How much time did he spend restrained, since this was a known problem? The restraints themselves harm him, which is kind of inevitable considering how determined he is to escape.

To me, this does point to him actually having agency and motivation. It's not motivation to do anything positive, but it's present.

And it makes sense, right, that he'd be motivated to self destruction when it turns out his quest has been (unbeknownst even to himself) to be completely consumed by the Demon?

Something that feels important about Mithrun, to me, is that he doesn't fucking like himself, and I don't think he ever did.

He's judgmental of his past self despite not ever confessing to being, you know, cruel to anyone. His issue is with his internality, which was an insecure and petty one. Externally, other characters did not perceive him that way. Milsiril doesn't dislike him because he's cruel or because she can tell he's only pretending to like people, she hated him because he was well-liked while she struggled to make any friends at all. I don't think he'd be so well-liked, or basically intimidate Milsiril with his bubbliness, if he was an outwardly nasty person.

It's important to me to point out Milsiril's perspective, because it confirms what's said in Kabru's truncated version of events: Mithrun was well-liked, and people's perception of him was positive. He was not behaving in a way that would drive others away.

He just can't be close to people, not genuinely. He's nice for the same reason he's always finding reasons to look down on others, for the same reasons he can't resist the Demon's offer, for the same reason he hurts himself. He does not like the person he is, whatever that person does, and he is convinced that no one else could truly like that person either.

I have another equally disjointed post in me about the parallels between the Demon and actual dynamics of abusive relationships, but key to this one is the fact that Mithrun's vulnerabilities - that he has learned love is conditional, that he cannot bring himself to interface with people genuinely, that he has been discarded by a family whose care for him was ultimately superficial, that he does not see himself as good or worthwhile - make his admission of having felt loved by the Demon super heartbreaking. Considering what it offered him, I suspect the hole left in his heart was exceptionally large.

It might feel easy to brush off Mithrun's behavior in the early days of his recuperation as simply erratic, but I see it as very purposeful and very much inkeeping with his character. He had a love that he could convince himself came without conditions, that promised an emotional security that he could allow himself to rely on, and it was withdrawn from him in a way that is undeniably violent and violating.

I don't look at the image of him hurting himself and see someone acting erratically because their mind has been magically broken. I see someone in an understandable, mundane kind of complete despair.

On that same note, I see his later dedication to returning to service as a simple redirection of the original self destructive drive. Mithrun doesn't even consciously understand this about himself, he labels this desire as anger and vengeance when it's really the exact same drive he's had all along: to either be loved or not be at all.

...

happy holidays? i don't have a button for this.