Lately, I've been thinking about Mithrun and the ways he is dehumanized in canon.
Before I get started, we know that elven society is incredibly afraid of death and illness. This is obvious in how they look down on the short lived races and see them as weak and childlike. We also know that Mithrun himself had ableist views toward his brother and these values did not leave him once he, himself, became disabled. He is a product of the society that raised him, but I also think how Mithrun is currently being treated contributes to his view of himself.
Mithrun has had three different caretaking groups over the years. The first are the ones his brother hired for him. From what we can see, they did the job, but we can understand that they did not know what to do with him. No one had ever recovered from having their desires eaten so the focus was less on rehabilitation and more on keeping him alive.
Later we see Milsiril take an interest in him because of his desire to return to the dungeon. Since she did not bother to visit him for decades after finding him, we can assume that there is an ulterior motive here. Timeline-wise, this was when the majority of the canaries had just been wiped out. They needed more men, and Mithrun is set up to be the perfect single-focused soldier.
Honestly, we can assume that Milsiril doesn't really care about him or see him as a person. Mithrun is just a new project for her to play with. We can see this in how she's focused on superficial level concerns like the fact that he doesn't look nice and wanting him to be overly grateful toward her. She also talks about him like he's not in the room and can't hear her. This is a dehumanizing trait shared by many characters when talking about Mithrun.
When he finally does recover enough to return to the canaries, the military does not make any effort to accommodate his needs. We know the canaries are understaffed and the ethics are already bad, but they really did not even try to care about Mithrun's safety at all.
Entrusting a criminal with his care was questionable at best, especially when Cithis immediately took the opportunity to abuse her power over him and no one stopped her.
While acknowledging the light-hearted nature of the manga, it's uncomfortable that Mithrun was treated like a child and an animal by Cithis for her amusement. Regardless of her 'learning to respect him' later, the point is that Mithrun was taken advantage of and degraded because she believed he couldn't say no. No one bothered to do anything about this until Pattadol yelled at her.
Truly his treatment is summarized well by Milsiril here. Mithrun is extremely vulnerable to being abused by those taking care of him because he won't advocate for himself. He has one desire so he won't fight for himself in any other way.
It is obvious that Mithrun was not treated well by his caretakers and this has resulted in him identifying his needs through a disconnected and frankly, infantilizing lens.
I understand that it may have been a translator's decision, but I always thought it was interesting that Mithrun says that he's "not sleepy" which is a childish term. Otherwise, he speaks like everyone else, if not rather posh.
This, followed by the fact that he is responsive to Kabru treating him like a literal infant to get him to eat, paints a clear picture of the fact that Mithrun is not unfamiliar with being treated like this. He responds to it because he's used to it and has no desire to argue with being treated this way. When we consider the fact that the chapter started with Milsiril treating an older child Kabru in the same way, it is likely that she also did the same thing to Mithrun when he was under her care.
In these panels, we see that Mithrun does not believe that he can sleep without magical assistance, even though it is immediately refuted when Kabru takes the time to bundle him up and help him relax. Not only does he fully believe he can't sleep without external assistance, but he states directly that there is no point in him getting comfortable.
As Kabru observes, Mithrun's inability to recognize his needs applies to needs such as hunger and exhaustion, but it obviously also applies to emotional needs. Kabru just wanting to feed him something delicious and not wanting him to give up on life is the most consideration someone has given Mithrun in years.
The relationship they form over the course of a single week is enough to shape Mithrun's behaviour completely. Mithrun ignores Cithis's demand in favour of asking Kabru's opinion. It is Kabru's hand Mithrun takes to pull him out of his defeated state. It is Kabru Mithrun confessed his true desire to.
Do you realize how depressing that is? All it took was the new perspectives from Kabru and Senshi to make him consider the fact that he should keep living despite no longer needing to fulfill his duty. Being treated well could have helped Mithrun much sooner and this shift in the way he sees himself contributes to his recovery going forward.
TLDR: Mithrun has no desire to be respected, but why does that make people feel comfortable acting like he doesn't deserve it? Someone not caring about being treated well doesn't give you permission to treat them poorly. This feels like a playschool-level consent lesson: just because he's not saying no to a humiliating or degrading act doesn't mean it's a yes and therefore okay to do. Acknowledging this is the bare minimum of treating him as a person.
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Wait, no, this Kalina thing is driving me slightly insane I feel like I need to write it out rather than do shower-thought-analysis.
- Kalina was pretty adversarial with Kristen at the start over what their plans should be, but that seems pretty understandable considering A) they were literally fighting to the death the year before when she was the NMKâs familiar B) her goddess existence - and by extension her own - was super precarious (or âinstantly killableâ as she put it) with only two followers, with the cleric kinda dropping the ball on their responsibility to spread Cassandraâs worship. Cassandra was noticeably anxious about straight-up dying, and Kalina was forceful on her behalf in advancing the argument since Cassandra was afraid and hesitant to be pushy about it C) Her character trait is being a petty bitch like that and honestly good for her; maybe she was even trying to be Cassandraâs favorite over Kristen but thatâs just inside politics.
- Kalina advocated going to the mall, which is where the attacks took place and that can be construed as suspicious or purposeful, as the Bad Kids concluded later in the season. However it could also just be a story excuse for Brennan to get them at the mall to use the battlemap, and there are some alleviating factors; before the attack Kalina went to Adaine at the strudel bar to ask her if she could get Kristen to come (if she orchestrated the attack it wouldâve been better to keep a high level cleric absent), and as Cassandra was initially affected by the shatterstars she again told her to get Kristen there asap. During the attack Brennan described multiple times through insight checks that Kalina was horrified, stressed and panicked.
- She threw herself in the path of a shatterstar headed for Cassandra (bloodily piercing through her paws to halt it), and even then first rushed to heimlich the shrimp out of Cassandraâs throat before the rage effect took hold (her eyes go red) and she says she liked Cassandra more when she was the NMK and slits her throat. Before being affected by the shatterstar she also quickly shouts out Raghâs name as a hint to the Bad Kids to help them solve the mystery.
- Aelwyn said Kalina had come to her to modify the spyâs tongue curse so that itâd work on herself (being a non-humanoid) at some point near the end of freshman year (so before the Bad Kids destroyed her in Sophomore), so working together with Porter seems to have been an old plot from back when she was the NMKâs familiar rather than a recent thing. Aelwyn also mentioned she seemed rather pissed about needing it, and of course she mentioned Raghâs name already to try and lead the Bad Kids down a trail of questions thatâd end up pointing them to Porter (how did Ragh become able to see Kalina -> barbarian healing)
- In Baronâs Game she manages to push through the rage to repeat Raghâs name again, and then when Cassandra offers her a moment of clarity she clarifies the hint (âitâs the only name I can sayâ) and < SNAPS! HER OWN! NECK! < in order to not be a threat to the Bad Kids anymore, like how hardcore do you want your sacrifice to help the heroes be because even if you can be brought back, that one is pretty hardcore.
- The Bad Kids discover some medicine in Porterâs desk to help with cat allergies. Could be recent, but could also be old from when they worked together in the past. This seems to be what leads the Bad Kids to conclude Kalina is still evil, but I can also construe it as Brennan trying to offer confirmation they correctly identified the link between Kalina and Porter.
Like, with all this I find it kinda hard to square Kalina was being evil and working against Cassandra; her actions at the start of the season speak more of protectiveness and anxiety, and after being shatterstarred she used every opportunity available to help the Bad Kids crack the mystery, why would the final reveal be she was actually still a villain - why actively sabotage herself, without any payoff? I can understand her to be bad if all she did was trick Cassandra into going to the mall in the astral, and that was the end of her role in the season, but she did so, so much afterwards to help the Bad Kids. To me this speaks at most of her having been a participant in the past, prior to being reconstituted, unless I am missing something major.
The logical followthrough for a Senior Year season - if it were to happen - would be to run with the thread that accusing her of being evil was a hasty judgement, and that because Ankarna was all to happy to smite her wifeâs cat she never liked (even at the end Cassandra meekly protested, but was overruled by everybody), Kalina knew to make herself scarce. Great story potential, with the reason for the Kalina-Buddy teamup being that though wrongfully accused she was now on the run and grabbed the nearest ally to hand. Being able to be summoned by Bakarath could indicate Kalina was forcibly disowned from Cassandra as her familiar, and if I were a familiar unceremoniously dumped like that because someone else said youâre bad, I too would probably become the champion of a tiny god of rage because Iâd sure be a teensy upset about it. Imagine the potential emotional payoff and catharsis to resolving such a false accusation during the story, Brennan doing one of his monologue things, and proving the faith Cassandra seems to have in her familiar correct despite everyone else insisting otherwise. I really really really hope thatâs the direction they take it, rather than doubling down she was bad the whole time (fully ignoring the ways her help was integral to sabotaging the plot) and randomly slaughtering her in a Night Yorb treatment.
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give me rtc character hcs for being in the subway for the first time
i love how this implies that theyâve never been in the subway before. well, since most of them almost never left uranium, this checks.
ocean â she always advocated for public transportation (and for some reason believed it wasnât widely used, probably because she assumed everyone could use a car and subway was for noble people who cared for the environment), but if she ever went to a big city, she never stayed there for long, and usually walked by foot. when she actually used the subway for the first time, she decided to hand out flyers that said something like âthank you for choosing public transit! here are some other ways you can help the planet (âŚ)â. ended up absolutely overwhelmed and in a taxi, wiping tears with the flyers no-one seemed to like. wonder why.
noel â romanticized the shit out of paris metropolitan, said he researched all about it and prided himself on being more knowledgeable of it than a local. when he got to go to france (probs a family/school trip when he was a teen) he bought an overpriced graphic t-shirt with the metropolitan map and confidently entered the underground. immediately got disappointed it wasnât all gothic catacombs, and accidentally sat on a wrong train. had to take off his t-shirt and figure out where he was, and after two hours of being chest naked in the french underground and hopping from one wrong train to another even wronger train a kind passer-by pointed out that the print on his tee was of marseille, not paris. he spent an extra hour figuring out the correct map and asking for directions in broken french (the locals despised him). he entirely missed the drag show he waited for, and ever since then grew to hate the french underground.
mischa â is in on a ukrainian inside joke about metro in odesa. successfuly convinced all choir that thereâs metro in odesa. there is no metro in odesa.
thereâs also a ukrainian book called toreadors from vasyukivka, where two boys want to build a metro in their village, so they dig a big hole in their yard and a cow accidentally falls into it. safe to say their idea doesnât stick. at some point these boys get to kyiv and immediately get lost in metro there. thatâs 100% mischa. he did this i was the cow.
also he always finds ways not to pay for his ride: jumps over the tourniquetâs, crawls under them, squeezes in with a person in front of him etc. sometimes gets extremely bored and hides in a train wagon when it reaches the final stop, and stays in it when it goes to depo.
ricky â his parents drove him everywhere by car, and told the tales about toronto subway being inaccessible, dangerous and full of freaks. he never believed them. at some point (maybe in a trip with the choir) he got to travel by subway himslef. it was, in fact, a bit of an unpleasant experience, but he found out that it sucks on his own terms and was lowkey proud.
also he was listening to some cringefail furry music (i do not know if furry music is a thing but it will be now) and realised his earphones disconnected and he was blasting it to everyone only after he got home.
penny â had a secret hiding spot in toronto subway where she could keep her things and return to see them intact. she and ezra hid there often and spied on people, sometimes picking up what fell out of their purses â like pieces of candy or pennies (get it? penny? pennies? penis?). they never stayed there for long tho cause it was too overwhelmingly loud.
one time she went to that place and realised some construction workers occupied it. she was emotionally devastated.
constance â always saves the seat for the elderly, disabled and other people who might need it, and people always thank her plenty when she does so. actually never ever sat on a train seat unless the wagon was mostly empty. however, one times she had a horribly tiring + devastating + bad day and decided to sit down for once. got called 10 slurs by an old guy who didnât see there was another free seat and ocean then told her she should have thought about others first. when she got home she wrote an angry vent in her musical diary (yk, the ones that open with a password and then play a one direction song or smth) with a fluffy pen.
+ talia â she is a subway rat. has a love/hate relationship with obolon station. has beef with pochayna station. she herself is from solomyanka region of kyiv where there is no subway. considers it her curse.
thank you folks for reading this, feel free to send me asks for headcanons!
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