#the worst way to have a hyperfixation. is to fixate on something you l it erally cannot do

[corvidshipping]

i’m at work but no thoughts head empty just e.ddie bestfriend.

[flusteredmountainman]

Why do you think Muriel doesn't like Julien? I'm thinking it's just incompatible personalities (since Julian is loud and dramatic and Muriel is,, not) , but it might also be due to the fact that Julian had an initially somewhat friendly (?) relationship with L*cio, presumably at the time that L*cio took control over Vesuvia. Do you have any theories? I love your analysis(plural) of the game

OH TKJNAKJEFNF THANKS!! 

I think it’s a combo of a lot of different things including just that Muriel probably finds his personality grating. I think the MAJOR reason he doesn’t like Julian is literally just because of his complicated relationship with Asra.

Muriel is an incredibly lonely (I typo’d as lovely the first time and that is Also true lol) person, and Asra is the only person in his life who’s stuck around long-term and hasn’t hurt him. He sees pretty much anyone who gets close to Asra as a threat to his relationship with him and tends not to like them (e.g. he universally just does Not like MC at all in any of the routes when he meets them). 

I think also it has to do with some complicated feelings about Asra’s curse and him hating to see Asra suffer. I think he (similar to Asra) has complicated feelings about Julian because he blames Julian for MC’s death (and consequently, Asra giving up half his heart to bring them back). Obviously Asra’s been unhappy and lovelorn for several years before the start of the plot in the game, and seeing Asra that way would make Muriel unhappy. He likewise doesn’t like MC for being the cause of this pain for Asra - not that they have any control over that.

He also has a valid reason for feeling unhappy by Asra’s fixation on MC too though, I love Asra so much but literally in the scenes after the arena fight in Asra’s route when Muriel ran away and Asra was like “anyway is MC ok?” I was just like. DUDE. Go comfort your best friend smh!!! He just relived his greatest trauma for you! Asra’s relationship with MC comes at a detriment to his one with Muriel at times, and even in Asra’s upright ending when Muriel is a Little bit better off he’s still lonely. 

I think he’s aware on some level that his dislike of MC is irrational, which is why he usually helps them despite his mistrust of them, but he doesn’t seem to be able to get over that with Julian. 

This could also be because Muriel has feelings for Asra (as we see in Nadia’s route). I think this is also evidenced by how little we see Muriel in Julian’s route. We see him a lot in both Nadia and Asra’s route, but literally only in the Hermit and in the reversed ending briefly for Julian. Asra and Muriel don’t end up together in this route. I think this is because Julian’s route is the second worst for Asra according to the devs for heartbreak (they described like on a scale of 0-100 for each character that Muriel would be -1000, Nadia/Portia would be 0, Lucio would be 1000 and Julian would be 50 in an ask arcana lol), so Muriel would have spent a lot of time comforting Asra if they did interact in this route, and then Asra still ends up close with Julian in this new found family scenario but Muriel is the odd man out. Whether or not it’s a romantic jealousy thing or just him worried about being abandoned, he clearly sees Julian as a reason Asra might leave him (e.g. in HH when Asra and Muriel are both at Mazelinka’s house, Muriel asks Asra why he’s still talking to Julian when Asra doesn’t mention his name).

Also, beyond Julian’s personality, I think there’s a huge cultural difference between Nevivon, Vesuvia and Prakra.

Muriel likes Nadia, but she also directly acknowledges what happened in the arena was wrong. She’s from a very different place with better systems of law and order who was horrified by the treatment Muriel received, and validates him that it was horrible and shouldn’t have happened to him

Vesuvians seem to be fairly mixed in attitudes to the arena; some loved it and some hated it

BUT we see both Portia AND Julian being extremely excited about the prospect of the arena and the red market. Julian gets a kick out of the idea of playing gladiator (as we see in HH on his Colosseum interaction), and Portia also when she meets Muriel at the Colosseum LITERALLY says to him that she bets he was awesome on the sands and she wishes she could have seen it. Needless to say he’s upset, and this is pretty insensitive, but she genuinely doesn’t think that killing people is something to be ashamed of in that context

Also, Julian is pretty insensitive about Muriel’s privacy and trauma when they meet in his route; he calls him Scourge repeatedly. Even in the HH interaction where Muriel and Julian are both in Muriel’s hut, Asra says “Muriel won’t like you being here”, and Julian literally says “What is he going to do, crush me?”

Like Julian. Listen. I love you to pieces and it’s clear you think he’s hot (kjaefnknaf i can’t stop thinking about “You’re a.... big boy.... (blushing)”) but PLEASE curb your horny for 5 minutes and try to be a little more sensitive and not just “oh giant man please crush me” also please Julian you’re both bottoms this would not work

I think generally there’s a lot of stuff there that means Muriel would feel alienated and objectified by the way Julian behaves, but also just in the way Asra’s relationship with him is complicated.  Maybe it also has something to do with him helping Lucio, I mean he doesn’t know about the plague beetle thing so maybe that’ll be a uniting factor for them? That’s a good point that I hadn’t thought of!I’m interested to see how they resolve that tension in Muriel’s route, but I really have No idea how they’re gonna go about it

That was way kajefnkae longer than I thought it’d be this is what happens when you hyperfixate folks lmfao I do have screencaps of a lot of the HH stuff if yall need proof kjaefnfae lmk and I can dig them out