DUNMESHI MANGA SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Needless to say, a large part of Mithrun's character is his lack of desire. But what this can actually mean and how that can affect him, that can be a bit more ambiguous I think, so here's me rambling a bit about what I believe and how I write him. It's kind of long and I'm trying to be extra cautious with spoilers for anime-only friends so I'm slapping it under a read more but I think Mithrun is SUCH a wonderful character and a total puzzle to figure out how to write.
The winged lion likes to leave scraps. And although it consumed his desires, one of the scraps he left in Mithrun was the ability to desire.
Mithrun didn't lose his desire for revenge against the demon, although we later find out obviously that that desire was something else: he wanted the demon to finish devouring him. That's a whooole other thing I need to write up about insecurity and desire to be loved etc etc.
Things get a little murky sometimes in regards to 'desire' - for example when we see that despite the Winged Lion getting carried away and consuming all of Thistle's desires, we still see Thistle respond to Yaad. That's probably a topic for a whole other meta but the point is: scraps of some variety still exist.
But without the desire to live, the desire to get up or to eat or to drink, one will die quickly regardless. It's not the consuming of the desire that directly kills you, but what that lack of desire then deprives you of. Left alive, yes, but you will then starve to death if you have no desire to eat. It's the aftermath.
In the 40 years he spent recovering, he was taught things (or people attempted to teach him things) to help him survive with this deficiency: Milsiril suggests he envisions his old self and allow him to tell Mithrun what he needs to do. We know that canonically, he relies on pre-established routines and habits to be able to function independently, but when outside of those routines, he neglects/cannot recognise his own needs.
Mithrun has no desire to live, to eat, to drink, to get out of bed, anything. He does these things (and everything else) with only one motivation: pursuit of the demon. Everything that he does, he does to advance that cause. Then later, when that goal is achieved, we see he’s basically catatonic - because there’s nothing else for him to live for.
He also has extremely poor interoception - the ability to understand what his body is telling him. I believe Mithrun does get hungry, does get tired, does feel cold — it's not that he doesn't physically feel these things. He does, albeit weaker than most people which is one reason why things can progress as far as they tend to (like in the panels where we see his body ‘just stopped working’, and he can't explain why — exhaustion, lack of food, mana depletion, he was unable to identify the problems.) I HC at least that Mithrun experiences these feelings, but struggles to identify these sensations as being hunger, thirst, etc — and even if he does recognise them, he has no desire to resolve them.
But, obviously, Kabru brings him back around - You constantly want new things. Desires can be cultivated, and they are an innate aspect of existence. His story ends on the note that he can develop new desires even if his old desires are gone forever - and I believe that healing will not recover those desires. He is never going to have the desire to feed himself, or rest, or even to get out of bed. In my mind the demon ate his desires, and also a large part of his ability to desire - but, just as we see the demon leaves scraps of someone's desire when consuming them... he also left scraps of the ability to desire in Mithrun. Most of it is gone, but some remains. And I don't think Mithrun realised that until the end of the series: that he can try to want things. He can try to desire things. He might not always succeed, but he has the ability to try.
A way I think this shows up is that, post-canon, Mithrun might ask questions or try to be curious (which we see to a limited degree in canon, outside of gathering information pertaining to his goal) as it is a desire that should be easy to cultivate - even though he doesn't really care about the answer.
That sounds bad, but understand that Mithrun does care about people; his manner of showing it is simply different, and both he and others have to learn to recognise it. I have to do a write up on this aspect as well because Mithrun does care, but I think he struggles to identify that fact in himself -- and he may come off as uncaring, if you don't know how to recognise it in him.
I love Mithrun getting a happy ending, but I don’t think the damage that’s already done will be undone. Those desires are gone, they aren’t ever coming back. But he can try to replace them.
And I think another big aspect of Mithrun's story is that he's living regardless of if he has the desire to live or not. I don’t believe that he suddenly has the desire to live, or that he is suddenly regaining the desire to live (maybe that may come with healing, I'd say that is down to personal interpretation); regardless, I don't think the damages that the demon did can be undone.
Instead, he is making the choice to live regardless. And while he will never feel the desires that the demon consumed again, maybe he'll eventually be able to desire other things. He can't right now, and maybe he never will, but he has the ability to try. And whatever he is trying to desire will help him continue to live, even in the absence of the desire to live.
He may lack the desire to live, to rest when he's tired or feed himself when he's hungry -- but maybe if he can learn to want other things, resting or eating won't feel so pointless. So he's trying.
49 notes
·
View notes
I'm sorry but Shuri is the only sane person in the entire movie:
Ramonda declared War to the Talokan nation without a backup plan.
Namor kidnapped the Princess of Wakanda, forgot it was a kidnapping halfway through and took her on a touristic tour without thinking about the consequences. How did he even think for a second things would run smoothly?
Nakia killed a lady guard and refused to listen to Shuri when she asked her for the kimoyo beads.
M'Baku thought he could beat Namor with his stick and came to a council meeting with a carrot.
Attuma became obsessed with Okoye the minute he met her. Man, I don't know if you've noticed but you have a job, you need to focus.
Riri casually built a vibranium detecting machine and thought she would stay trouble-free
Ayo works with her girlfriend.
Shuri is the only one with some common sense left. She tried to reason with Namor, told him they should find a peaceful solution and then when she wanted to attack him, actually had a plan and a backup plan in case the first plan failed.
All the other characters are incompetent. Lovely, adorable, but incompetent. *This doesn't apply to Namora, she has never done anything wrong in her life ever.
640 notes
·
View notes
Tachihara losing his brother and not understanding what he was feeling or how to deal with it since he was so young (5). And as he gets older, he starts to wonder if he really missed his brother or he missed the idea of having a brother.
He assumes that because he’s grown since then and it feels so distant that he could handle it if it were to happen now. Maybe that’s because he’s killed people of his own. But he never really wants to dwell on it.
Turns out. It’s not. It hurts just as much, but now he blames himself as well. Why wasn’t he there? Why didn’t he stop Fukuchi when he had the chance? If he’d just asked for help, this all could’ve been avoided.
He’s always been a loner to some extent, never good at processing feelings, always wanting to belong but feeling like he was an outsider.
It’s not until they’re all gone that he realizes how much emptier he feels without them.
Shunzen may have been his brother by blood, but as much as he doesn’t wanna face it. Tachihara barely remembers him.
He remembers them. He spent the last 6 years being raised by them. They always encouraged him, supported him, even when the government and fate itself were trying to control them. And yet.
He wasn’t there.
31 notes
·
View notes
this is so random but i was doing a genasi/titan wiki research session (for obvious reasons) and i saw that they had two sections on the genasi page that stood out to me. one was for the kryn dynasty, and one was for the cerberus assembly. i didn’t watch cr2 nor calamity, and i also don’t own egtw, which seems to be where most of this comes from, so if anyone knows more details about this pplleeeeaaase let me know i need to go insane about it, but. anyways. both are wild to me for different reasons,
basically the kryn have almost no genasi if any and so kryn scouts are under orders to bring any genasi they find home so that the dynasty can gain information about them. the cerberus assembly are noted to be obsessed with genasi and pressure any genasi they find in the empire to join the ranks of the assembly under pain of exile or even death (all of this is according to the wiki)
so. first off. can you imagine being the fucking kryn scout that carts in Ashton Fucking Greymoore. not only a genasi but. known beacon brain. constantly noted by pretty much everyone with magic to be weird as fuck and full of endless potential. maybe infused with a fragment of your god’s essence. That Fucking Guy
second off. can you imagine being the fucking cerberus assembly soldier or whatever that carts in Ashton Fucking Greymoore, especially now, when the fucking assembly is staring at ludinus’ moon laser and going what the shit is that. you bring in this fucking punk who’s very dead set on murdering that blond elf. and somehow that bitch didn’t notice what he had on his tail. so i guess it’s your turn to figure it the fuck out! good luck bitch!
102 notes
·
View notes