#it is probably retraumatizing and to be fighting actively while all these feelings mingle just makes him a fuckin MESS

[mithranon]

I keep thinking about this post and trying to do so objectively because this perspective interests me. I don't know that it is cruelty, though it is certainly ruthless. Mithrun thinks in a way that is very factual and to the point and I feel like a factor of that frame of logic can be a sense of cruelty, but that he is punishing Thistle...? I don't know. It's an interesting take, but I have a hard time attributing malice, and it isn't "I like him" that results in this. It's more like... acts of cruelty can seem intentional even when they're not necessarily. Thistle is the biggest threat and while I can see the perspective of playing with him, and agree that it is very ruthless, I don't know that the aim is to punish Thistle, and can see the perspective of Mithrun simply thinking objectively and efficiently, machine-like, about the goal. I don't want to say he isn't self aware, but he's also incredibly single-minded, and I think this results in a fair amount of forgetting, even beyond his lack of care. I think he's closer than ever to his goal, and he could end the dungeon right then and there, and while he may believe himself to be right and helping, or trying to in his own way, he's failing to do so because he's actually quite restless and impulsive, and it's right there in his hands.

As someone who has experienced severe and intense burnout from chasing things similarly, I think he is trying to give Thistle genuine advice, and wants him to free himself by telling him the truth, but I believe half of the problem is that he's doing it in a way that would work for him, not understanding Thistle, nor really trying, because I do think he wants to help, and we're told and shown this, Mithrun seems to feel a great personal responsibility for the things that have happened around him, and a desire to do something about these things, possibly in part because of a low sense of self worth that makes him feel that it should be him who places himself on the line rather than anyone else, but sometimes wanting to help hurts more than it fixes if you can't reach people where they are. You see this with Marcille, too. He's aggressive and he is absolutely self-sabotaging his chances to convince anyone, because he's caught up in his goals, incredibly narrowly focused, and pretty much actively makes it worse because, while he wants to help people, he is still failing to do it in a way that is right.

And then I want to talk about pre-Dungeon Mithrun, who I feel was also doing this, where he was trying very hard to be "good" (and morality is often seen this way, where being small, unobtrusive, not causing any problems, is what constitutes for "good" behavior) so I think in both cases, he is trying too hard, overextending, and hurting himself as well as others because he is a bit unbending. He wants desperately to reach his goals, whether he wants to be loved or to die, but he's consistently a character who fails to manage that because, try though he might, to try means nothing if you are not doing it right. He keeps doing it wrong, where pre-Dungeon, he isn't actually bettering himself any, he's just hiding inside his own shell, envious and jealous and very inferior-feeling, and he builds to hide it away, but there is never a moment where he's connecting with others. He actively isolates and holds himself at the corner. He refuses to be vulnerable because he has to be in control, and he wants to change, I think, but the fear is too large. He gets in his own way.

And post-Dungeon, he really does care. I think he's always cared, but it can be hard to manage these things in healthy ways when you've lived in a way that was fundamentally unhealthy. There's work yet to be undone so that he can do it properly. And you can see the thoughtfulness in at least some of his actions, the way he looks at Marcille, saying "Free yourself" to Thistle, because that is what he wants, and I think in delivering the facts so blunt and straightforward, he likely does see it as useful (we're shown that this is essentially how his brain works), but I don't think he's considering how it could be unhelpful to do that to someone like Thistle. That there are certain things he fails to see.

It isn't a lack of awareness or social cues, but the single-minded focus, the restlessness, the impulsive behavior, being so close that he gets impatient and loses his composure.

"Useful" isn't necessarily "helpful", though. And he is too angry, acting too rashly, not thinking as well as he would, and not necessarily aware of that in the moment because I don't really imagine that he can feel his feelings in the moment they exist. It's likely something that requires reflection.

However, there's much here I agree with, and I really enjoy this perspective because it made me think. I don't see it as cruelty, myself, as I stated, but I think that's because I'm not registering any "intent", and I guess, really, does intent matter after a point? I would say it doesn't, really, because you still have to do better and try to reach people.

Mithrun is just... He's a knife, albeit a blunt one, and I think that, with his care gone and so his veneer, too, in the heat of the moment, he does not yet know how to be anything other than a knife. To be better.

I see it as a genuine attempt that misses the mark because it really is cruel, whether or not he means that, subconsciously or otherwise, and this is because he has so much work to do, and a half of that is realizing that he hasn't totally lost himself the way he believes, that there is so much left behind of the person he was before.

Generally speaking, I know we're told he has no desires, but we see no desires in a character like Thistle, who can't get up on his own, and Kabru says as much about him not being able to access the awareness of these things but certainly still needing to, still feeling, and I feel like there's some allegory for alexithymia the way that it takes him time to realize his desire was to be eaten. That's a great example of having a feeling you can't place in the moment, requiring lots of reflection to access these parts of yourself. I won't say "He didn't lose anything", but I think he really didn't lose as much as he believes. To do that work, though, he has to go back to who he was, because there's definitely a lot of that still in there, even if he no longer feels the anger and envy and resentment, he's still not done the work, and to be fair, he has no time for that kind of therapeutic work, but as you said, you can do a lot of damage with these misplaced feelings, of trying to help but wrong, and the way those things and the person he was and how he feels about it intermingle, it is absolutely a toxic mixture.

I don't know if I really added anything to this. I just had a lot of Thoughts™️. I guess that's all of them, though?

thinking about this post again, and what malewifesband points out in the reblogs about Mithrun's violence towards Thistle vs his violence towards the shadow governor

i hadn't made that comparison myself before, but it truly is such a striking difference, and because Thistle is my special little guy i've been mulling over it

i think it's interesting that Mithrun's behavior towards Thistle is not only violent and frightening but outright cruel in a way that he isn't even with Marcille

(which is not to say that he isn't violent, frightening, and shitty to her - the whole bit where he catches her out in a lie and then the canaries sit around shit-talking her mom and the fact that she's a half-elf is very bigoted and unpleasant!)

he scares the absolute shit out of Marcille, but his violence is very single-minded and directed. first, he's trying to get the books off her. then, he's trying to kill her.

with Thistle... it almost feels like Mithrun is toying with him. take a chunk out of his arm so he drops the book. take a chunk out of his thigh when he tries to run and grab it. chokeslam him to the ground and get on top of him and say The Cruelest Possible Shit to him after tormenting him physically like a cat with a bird.

now of course, we can justify. he didn't want to risk killing Thistle outright (although then we get into the questionable territory of "would being sent to the surface kill him anyway?" since he says the dungeon lord has their lifespan extended by the dungeon, and that teleporting Thistle to the surface would confirm if he is or isn't the dungeon lord), or he can't be so precise when he isn't able to touch someone and he's using his magic on them from a distance, especially with his lack of depth perception or whatever, you know

he hurts Thistle, who comes across like someone who's not used to experiencing a lot of physical pain, and then he tells him that the person he's dedicated himself to is dead, there's no point to continuing, and that the most cherished person in his life wished for his death

i do think that Mithrun, on some level, genuinely does want to prevent other people from suffering his fate, whether that means preventing them from becoming the dungeon lord in the first place or convincing them to give it up before they're devoured and left alive but empty. however, i also think (thanks to talking with @schniggles) that on a much deeper, more viscerally subconscious level, he wants to be eaten, and when those two desires come into conflict, the desire to die is stronger and results in what can at best be described as half-assery and at worst is outright self-sabotage

he tells Thistle there's no point to what he's doing and that it's time for him to free himself. charitably, one can imagine that he sees his words as the equivalent of a brisk slap to the face to snap Thistle out of his dungeon lord hysteria. but the thing about Mithrun is that it's not that he doesn't understand social conventions or other people's feelings, he just doesn't care

he didn't suddenly forget the concept of being nice or being cruel, or what it means to hurt someone's feelings. he just doesn't give a shit. it's not important to him. he lacks the desire to even make the effort for appearance's sake.

it's not like he doesn't know that telling the Melinis' elf slave that Delgal is dead, he never said what Thistle says he did and Thistle just misunderstood, and that Delgal wished for Thistle's death is going to fuck Thistle up. he doesn't care about how badly it hurts and he either hopes that the pain will make Thistle stop resisting or that hurting and tormenting Thistle this way will drive him to summon the demon. possibly (probably) both.

i don't really have much of a thesis statement here, just i guess an exploration of my thoughts... Mithrun is deeply cruel to Thistle and it's quite easy to imagine that part of this is because he knows Thistle has no status and no powerful friends, that he feels no need to even pretend to treat Thistle as a person... one could also easily imagine that it's because he's trying to provoke Thistle into summoning the demon, and one could ALSO easily imagine that there's an element of self-loathing to it, that in a sense he's punishing Thistle for his own past