#kabru at first doesn't understand how or why mithrun makes him feel that way

[senseearly]

the boyfriend shirt

[batneko]

Oops I thought about Mithrun and Senshi too much and now the ship has sailed, sorry, it's cresting the horizon there's no point in even waving anymore.

(Cross-posted from a thread I wrote on bluesky yesterday.)

Mithrun was already fond of Senshi because Senshi is the person who made him feel like he deserved to keep living, so during the first year or so when the new kingdom is still getting settled Mithrun hangs around Senshi whenever they happen to cross paths.

Somebody mentions to Senshi that Mithrun wanted to learn to make noodles, so Senshi thinks that's why and is happy to teach him. Senshi is also trying to make a concentrated effort to unlearn his prejudices, and Mithrun turns out to be easy to talk to. He doesn't mind answering any odd questions Senshi has, or admitting when he doesn't know something. He'll also explain his own motivations (when he understands them himself) so even with Senshi's blunted social skills they can understand each other.

So it just makes sense for them to move in together! Neither of them is going to live in the city full-time, Senshi enjoys cooking for another person when they ARE both home, and they can report back to each other when they've seen particularly dangerous/delicious monsters on their trips. Logic!

Neither of them has a strong sexual/romantic drive so it's a solid decade before they even think to put a label on it. There are small changes here and there over the years though. Senshi learns Mithrun can't sleep without being lulled into it so he always makes him a filling snack and a warm drink. He keeps an eye on Mithrun's health and schedule. He likes doing this kind of thing, it feels good to have someone to take care of.

It's not perfect, of course. Mithrun has trouble expressing what he likes and wants, and since he's usually pretty blunt unless he's being bitchy Senshi has no idea when Mithrun is upset. Senshi can get upset about stuff too, and Mithrun has to learn to do things that seem pointless to him because they make Senshi happier.

(yes this is about doing the dishes)

And then one day while they're eating Senshi gently tucks Mithrun's hair behind his ear because it's gotten a little long and is suddenly overwhelmed with affection and the urge to do... something. He should do something here, right? So he offers to tie it back, but that's harder than expected.

Senshi tracks down Chilchuck to ask him how to do hair, and Chilchuck catches on immediately and is like, "lol, weird, you do you though man, congrats." Senshi is baffled and Chilchuck passes the lesson along to Flertom instead (her hair is most similar to Mithrun's). After that Mithrun heads out on his missions with his hair neatly pulled back and always returns once the braids have completely fallen apart.

Eventually Senshi is able to put a name to his feelings and realize he's felt this way for a WHILE, so he tells Mithrun he loves him. Mithrun says, "It doesn't feel the way it did before, but I care for you, your happiness is important to me. Being parted from you would be deeply unpleasant. I don't know if there's a name for this feeling other than 'love.'" And then reveals he inquired about dwarvish marriage customs EIGHT YEARS AGO and has had the rings in his room this whole time. Senshi, tearfully, accepts.

They have a quiet ceremony that weekend and forget to invite anyone.

Senshi eventually remembers to tell his friends, who are differing levels of surprised. Mithrun sends formal notices to the people who matter back in the elven kingdom and causes a HUGE scandal. He's quietly thrilled about this.

People who assumed Senshi and Mithrun were together this whole time and only mildly surprised they weren't already married: Laios, Falin, Kabru

(Kabru sees Mithrun often and always politely inquires "how are things with Senshi back home?" and Mithrun always says "good." or, rarely, "he's mad at me. 😑")

People who knew they weren't officially together but aren't surprised it turned out this way: Chilchuck, Cithis, Mithrun's brother

(Obrin came to visit once and Mithrun introduced Senshi as "this is Senshi, I like him." and Senshi was like "aw, I like you too! 🥰" and Obrin was just like "......hm!")

People who are absolutely blindsided: Marcille, Pattadol

(Marcille thinks love is supposed to be INTENSE and OVERWHELMING and LIFE-CHANGING and like, it can be but calm down.)

People who literally never wondered about them at all: Izutsumi

(Izutsumi lives with them, as much as she lives with anybody, she just doesn't care. She actually likes Mithrun's cooking better because he will serve her plain noodles without a word and Senshi is devastated by this.)

I'm not sure if they have sex. I think they would at least try it to see if it's for them. It does help Mithrun fall asleep! And I think Senshi would definitely enjoy being able to make Mithrun really come undone.

Not much really changes after they get married, they still have their own rooms, they still live largely separate lives. Except Senshi no longer has to worry about maintaining personal space when spending time with Mithrun. You're allowed to hug and cuddle your husband whenever you want, right? That's part of the whole deal!

Mithrun likes it but only Senshi can tell, at least until Mithrun starts reciprocating. Somebody who doesn't know they're together sees Mithrun wander over and lean on Senshi like an armrest and they're like "uhhhhh is that racist?" and somebody else is like "no no they're just like that."

[fallloverfic]

I'd have to see what someone is pointing out by going more deeply into the snake body of the dungeon version of Sultha + how this reflects on Mithrun's choices because I've never heard of that before. My understanding is that we know so little about Sultha that that kind of symbolism is a bit of a stretch, but if he did pick something that can look dangerous or something, there's some understandable reasons. It's possible he picked a creature that would survive against travelers in the dungeon to combine her with. A lot of people refer to that form as a lamia, which is kind of like a siren. Mithrun already imagined that Sultha went behind his back while he was gone to be with the brother. That's simple enough to frame her as a siren, regardless of whatever she was like. His suspecting her and perhaps his brother also doesn't really reflect on his opinion of Milsiril or people in general. He just didn't really trust the lover's motives/feelings.

More importantly, I disagree with that description of Milsiril's behavior about Mithrun.

I don't think noting that someone isn't perfect and that they're actually flawed is sadistic, and I don't think anyone is painting her as benevolent. I also don't think she delights in how far he's fallen.

She was very clearly jealous of him, and that's one reason she avoided him: that she hated him because of how perfect he was, and the bullying she faced by other elves in the Canaries is why she hates other elves, and intentionally lives apart from others after retirement (Adventurer's Bible p.80). It makes sense she'd be jealous of someone who was seemingly charismatic, charmed his way around people, was pretty, powerful, and seemingly never talked about his issues to the point he appeared to have none at all. Who hasn't been jealous of someone with fewer problems to deal with?

It's pretty normal to be shocked when someone you hold up on a pedestal isn't actually perfect. This is the first time she's seeing into him as a person, rather than the facade he holds up to others. It makes him seem far more grounded and like someone she could talk to. That's not sadism. That's humanization and empathy. Her words as she's smiling are clearly regretful. She's not delighting. She's clearly sad. They are both flawed people who have inferiority complexes and experience jealousy and anger: their similarities are why they literally "might have hit it off pretty well." Because of how nonresponsive and different he is now, and how uninterested he is in connecting with anyone, they potentially both lost a chance at friendship, and perhaps a betterment of both their circumstances (e.g., maybe they both wouldn't have been so miserable before he became the dungeon lord). As is, now it's a fight to get him to even engage with anything, or find a reason to live. Friendship comes secondary to getting him to not waste to death. (Not to say they can't be friends now, but that friendship will likely be different than it was if they'd Milsiril had tried to be friends before).

If this is referring to the corpse comment, I don't see that either as "telling Mithrun he was all but worthless now and taking delight in how far he's fallen in her opinion".

She looks grave and even a bit sad. Calling him a corpse isn't calling him worthless, it's noting his current state (if anything, it's maybe a bit ableist, but I also kind of theorize she's trying to insult him into moving, because she knows he at least used to be prideful, and clearly 19 years of everything else hasn't worked; she's very much a brute force caretaker in some ways, as shown with Kabru). He's essentially comatose and bedbound without aid (he can't feed himself, and in Daydream Hour it's shown he can't wash himself, either, he can't move far without aid, and he can't be trusted with dangerous objects). He's also pretty non-verbal. She can probably tell he's awake but he's not responding to her entering the room in even the slightest way. He's "fully" recovered, but he might as well be dead, which he probably agrees isn't recovery.

And overall, she's sad. Like I said earlier, "If you look at Milsiril's expression in that last panel, she is sad. She knows how terrible this is. She also knows this is the best they can do for him". She doesn't like seeing him brought so low, and essentially living as a corpse - this is almost worse than the reason she gave for nearly mercy-killing him (to her). She doesn't like that getting him back into dungeons is the best route she can offer him, because all her other means of trying to get him up and back into action aren't working.

Having reasonable reasons for what she does doesn't make her benevolent. She's a soldier who reached out to help a former comrade for perhaps any number of quite normal reasons, and the one way she could find to help really sucks, and she knows it, and she isn't happy about it. Perhaps she could have reached out to other, non-elven healers, but she didn't do that, either. But being capable of jealousy and hatred, and being bad at healing (which isn't her job, she's a swordswoman) doesn't make her sadistic. She seems more practical than anything else, which is pretty neutral, depending on the circumstances.

So I've been thinking lately about how Mithrun is Kabru's dark mirror (more on that another time- it needs its own post), and I thought it interesting that one of their parallels is that they were both cared for by Milsiril, but in opposite directions. She took Kabru in as her foster after he was orphaned and tried to convince him not to become an adventurer. On the flip side, she helped rehabilitate Mithrun specifically so that he could rejoin the Canaries.

And I kept wondering: why?

For Kabru, obviously she loves him a whole lot- despite any other shortcomings in their relationship, I do believe that.

So I get why she tries to convince him not to go dungeoning, and, failing that, at least prepares him as thoroughly as she can.

But why help Mithrun? She used to hate Mithrun, but after realizing what a secretly twisted person he was, she actually thought of him more positively (oh, Milsiril). So it wasn't as if she held the kind of grudge that might motivate her to make his already-depleted life even more miserable by sending him back to the dungeons. And it wasn't that she felt bad for him either, since she didn't visit Mithrun for the first ~20 years of his recovery.

The Adventurer's Bible says that Utaya was the impetus for Mithrun returning to the Canaries, but Milsiril is the one who made the trip to see him and tell him about it.

Why would Milsiril work so hard to get her old coworker back into fighting fit? Why encourage him to return to such a dangerous lifestyle, when she was the one who chose not to mercy-kill him?

That last panel is such a crazy thing to hint at and then never elaborate on. Without it we could have just thought that Milsiril wanted the Canaries' work to continue without her, even if it seemed out of character. I think some people even assume she's just a natural caretaker as a foster mom and handwave it to include nursing Mithrun too. What could Milsiril's suspicious motives be? What does she gain from Mithrun joining the Canaries that isn't an altruistic desire to see dungeons safely sealed? Feeling a sense of responsibility for the work she left behind isn't an ulterior motive.

My theory is: Milsiril, knowing that Mithrun was empty save for the burning desire to face the demon again, wound him up like a clockwork doll and pointed him back at the dungeons.

Hoping that he'd eliminate the biggest threat to Kabru's life, before it was too late for him.

Milsiril the puppetmaster.