Lemonsharkk - Lemonshark!

Mithrun & Drives & Self-harm

Warning's in the title, let's rock and roll.

So there's a super-circulated extra about Mithrun's recovery after having been rescued from his conquered dungeon.

And I don't know how widely known it is that this image is cropped, or that it contains something I consider pretty essential to his character.

The top two thirds of the page are upsetting in a suggestive way. The final third is very explicit.

I understand the impulse to remove the explicit imagery of self harm from something you scatter around God's internet where it could upset literally anyone. At the same time, I think something's lost when you can't contrast 'He spent most of his days lying down, either sleeping or awake,' with the visceral imagery of him struggling to get out of that position, into which he has been strapped. It's less affecting if your initial impression (that he is totally passive) is not subverted.

Without this, it's too easy to assume that his aversion to things like mirrors and birds is due a vague Upset it might cause him, and that keeping sharp things and fire from him is due to an absence of self preservational drive.

But it's not like that. These are precautions undertaken because he has drives.

How much of that lying down is due to being passive, and how much is compulsory? How much time did he spend restrained, since this was a known problem? The restraints themselves harm him, which is kind of inevitable considering how determined he is to escape.

To me, this does point to him actually having agency and motivation. It's not motivation to do anything positive, but it's present.

And it makes sense, right, that he'd be motivated to self destruction when it turns out his quest has been (unbeknownst even to himself) to be completely consumed by the Demon?

Something that feels important about Mithrun, to me, is that he doesn't fucking like himself, and I don't think he ever did.

He's judgmental of his past self despite not ever confessing to being, you know, cruel to anyone. His issue is with his internality, which was an insecure and petty one. Externally, other characters did not perceive him that way. Milsiril doesn't dislike him because he's cruel or because she can tell he's only pretending to like people, she hated him because he was well-liked while she struggled to make any friends at all. I don't think he'd be so well-liked, or basically intimidate Milsiril with his bubbliness, if he was an outwardly nasty person.

It's important to me to point out Milsiril's perspective, because it confirms what's said in Kabru's truncated version of events: Mithrun was well-liked, and people's perception of him was positive. He was not behaving in a way that would drive others away.

He just can't be close to people, not genuinely. He's nice for the same reason he's always finding reasons to look down on others, for the same reasons he can't resist the Demon's offer, for the same reason he hurts himself. He does not like the person he is, whatever that person does, and he is convinced that no one else could truly like that person either.

I have another equally disjointed post in me about the parallels between the Demon and actual dynamics of abusive relationships, but key to this one is the fact that Mithrun's vulnerabilities - that he has learned love is conditional, that he cannot bring himself to interface with people genuinely, that he has been discarded by a family whose care for him was ultimately superficial, that he does not see himself as good or worthwhile - make his admission of having felt loved by the Demon super heartbreaking. Considering what it offered him, I suspect the hole left in his heart was exceptionally large.

It might feel easy to brush off Mithrun's behavior in the early days of his recuperation as simply erratic, but I see it as very purposeful and very much inkeeping with his character. He had a love that he could convince himself came without conditions, that promised an emotional security that he could allow himself to rely on, and it was withdrawn from him in a way that is undeniably violent and violating.

I don't look at the image of him hurting himself and see someone acting erratically because their mind has been magically broken. I see someone in an understandable, mundane kind of complete despair.

On that same note, I see his later dedication to returning to service as a simple redirection of the original self destructive drive. Mithrun doesn't even consciously understand this about himself, he labels this desire as anger and vengeance when it's really the exact same drive he's had all along: to either be loved or not be at all.

...

happy holidays? i don't have a button for this.

I read a super cutee college AU fic recently so I wanted to draw my own little college designs hehe

Damn it Herbert, this has got to stop!!

*Edit* good god the quality. PLEASE click

she’s the antonymph of the internet! 🌈☁️✨

hey i was wondering something and i wanted to know your opinion on it

Why is it problematic to say i hate men but not white people or straight people

(i'm a trans south east asian man btw)

I'd say on, like, a casual exasperated level, its not problematic to say "I hate [x]." It gets problematic when your venting about a group becomes your sole lens of viewing + interacting with that group.

Like, its entirely alright to be frustrated with behaviors common to cishet white men and express that in a vent by saying you hate them. But... its like how people make the correct point that they shouldn't be expected or obligated to give all their energy to coddling people with power over them, but translate that into "i never have to care about a member of this group at all" which directly conflicts with just. being in a community? Like women should not be expected to be caretakers for men, but people in a community need to take care of each other. When the only way you engage with a group of people is by expressing hatred and asserting how much you aren't obligated to care about them, its easier than people think to find yourself dehumanizing them.

Which does not mean "you are just as bad as a racist/misogynist" or "you are oppressing them"; you are An Individual whose biases are not necessarily backed up by powerful systemic powers. But, for one, its very easy for those biases to be used by systemic forces: with men, misandry is very easily used to justify all kinds of violence towards marginalized men & people perceived as men. You also have situations where people will say the Holocaust "wasn't as bad" as, say, US slavery, because it was "white on white violence," or saying the Armenian genocide also wasn't that big of a deal because "it was done to Christians and Christians are always killing people" (two real things I have seen been said). And, again: if you are going to care about community and restorative/transformative justice and all that, you need to be able to give a shit about all kinds of people who you live with. You need to be able to see them as whole beings you are capable of connecting with on some level. You don't personally need to date or befriend men, but you do need to be able to give a shit about men in your community.

Its fine to feel annoyance and anger and use "hatred" to express that. But the problem occurs when people take "its okay to be angry with your oppressors and not spend all your energy coddling them" and make that the end-all be-all of their relationship with people of whatever group; revolutions can't accomplish compassionate goals when they are run on hatred. Very hooksian concept but "love" (as in "a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust", not in a strictly emotional sense but as an action) is a skill that is as vital as understanding class dynamics and protest tactics. Maybe you don't need to love everyone, but try to have the capacity to love anyone; the ability to physically care for someone you don't emotionally like is, I think, a vital step towards truly challenging and bringing down the kyriarchy.

Basically its about recognizing when your venting stops being an outlet and starts being a way for unproductive feelings to shape how you view other people.

A Boy Band Made Up Of Four Falins: How Shuro was rescued from the Nightmare

God i miss him already

How can I help my family in Gaza?

I am Mahmoud, a resident of northern Gaza. Since the war started, everything that touches a decent life has disappeared, and everything has become a mess.

I woke up in the morning and found that I had to stand in line for drinking water so that my family and I could have some.

I woke up in the morning and realized that I had to wake up before dawn to get in line for bread.

War, destruction, and killing,

The next morning, I had to make a fateful decision; should we stay in the house we were in or leave it? My whole family had to evacuate because the occupation issued evacuation orders for our residential area, and I didn’t know what was right or wrong…

Eventually, we left our homes, our belongings, and all our sweet memories, and we went wherever the army ordered us. After a while, the situation calmed down in our area.

I woke up to the sound of a phone call, "We reached your house after the army withdrew," but we didn’t find the house, nor did we find your family’s house.

I didn’t sleep that day; I sat with myself, wishing I could find time to mourn my life. My phone rang, "Come on, Mahmoud, let’s eat together." But Mahmoud had no money left! We spent everything; how could I go without food?

I woke up after 200 days of war, talked to my mom: "Mom, I want to look for internet and electricity to go back to work and support you, or I’ll stay with you to fill water and manage food." My mom said, "No, go, my son, the important thing is that you return to work."

I woke up after that; my mom went out to fill water, and my heart was breaking, but I had to get up and find a place to go back to work for her.

I managed to get a laptop from your support and found a place with electricity and internet at such a time because it was almost impossible. I also got a new tent, and things went well, thank God. However, at this time, everything turned back to how it was before; prices rose again, and famine returned amid the closure of crossings. Everything became worse than before; you can’t even provide for your daily expenses to the point that two or three days can pass without eating bread. Sometimes you manage with rice, bulgur, or lentils, but for how long?

How many mornings do we have left in this life? We don’t know.

The question is: dear reader, will you wake up to the disaster we are in? Will you realize that we truly need financial and moral support to be able to continue?

You can donate here

https://gofund.me/8044910a

My campaign is now $21,439 of the short goal of $25,000 We are still a long way off but I trust you guys to help us before we collapse

Or via paypal

paypal.com

Donation to Mahmoud Abu Hamam

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Post corrections/clarifications are my favorite genre of humor: a compilation

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