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FEELINGS totes scattered thoughts
GOSH IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE I LAST DID THIS. But Mukuro is basically a neurotic personality -- falling between aggression and withdrawal. This is the Horney theory if neurotic, not the pop culture neurotic. Well, really, he's sort of a neurotic personality + trauma + crazy, but in Aather he ends up being far more the neurotic at the moment because he doesn't remember his childhood and the crazy is sort of floaty and not as solid.
Children can have 'basic anxiety' and 'basic hostility'. Both of these emotions are basically I AM DEPENDENT ON YOU BUT YOU DON'T LOVE ME/YOU HURT ME AND IT MAKES ME ANXIOUS/HOSTILE TOWARDS YOU. Toss in some Erikson building of the world trust v mistrust and all. And it moves into more of Mukuro's general interactions with the world -- heavy on the mistrust, pessimism and basic hostility. But the other half of that is he feels like he has to deal with this world and it kind of makes him pissy.
Mukuro is naturally an introvert. He isn't really into the whole social butterfly thing and if he has his comfy space he doesn't really care about moving out of it. He's also pretty smart when he wants to be, but that might also just be the whole. Negative thinking and overthinking makes him more observant than he would be if he were an optimist. HE WAS THE QUIET TYPE BEFORE HE WENT CRAZY. And probably his base personality still runs along that even now that he's crazy, considering how Kokuyou is. . .
Anyway \o/ Neurotic personalities basically is what happens when instead of a person moving from SELF --> BETTER SELF. There is a DESPISED SELF <----> IDEAL SELF back and forth movement. The ideal self isn't a good thing, because it's an absolute perfection that can never be met. Horney described this stretching between the despised and ideal selves as "the tyranny of the shoulds" and neurotic "striving for glory."
Mukuro rolls between "I should" and "I want" and then over to what Horney put as "The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability." For him, he doesn't make wrong decisions, anything he gets into he can deal with it, etc. But since it's built over this far less sturdy I should/I want it doesn't . . . work so well.
Some other notes he hits hard and fast and often:
"The neurotic need to exploit others and get the better of them"
"The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence."
"The neurotic need for affection and approval"
"The neurotic need for power, for control over others, for a facade of omnipotence."
"The neurotic need to restrict one's life to narrow borders"
Some of these you kind of have to stack and combine. So power/control + affection approval, because Mukuro doesn't parse emotions quite correctly. He can't identify some of them in the way a normal person would. SO LIKE. 'I WOULD LIKE TO BE LIKED BY MY TEAM THAT IS A NICE THING' sort of comes out as like 'OH THIS IS MINE YOU CAN'T HAVE IT' or 'I'M JUST USING IT FOR X OR Y REASON'. On some level sometimes he understands genuine affection but it's very difficult as a general concept. And the restrict one, Mukuro sort of trims people out of his world if he doesn't need them. In canon he is working on a plan on such a large scale he has to remember people. In Aather almost everyone is inconsequential to his wants so he just. Forgets them. (Though sometimes he is just being a dick because he does remember them).
HE LOATHES 'SHOULD' and he really dislikes well duh it's common sense no one would do that. And he kind of dislikes OH YOU'RE A FREAK even though he doesn't really. . . feel that in the way he should either. Mukuro is the kind of person who has taken any of those negatives and just decided to be like \o/ fine I am totally those things, now what, bitch. But it does also make him sort of eternally frustrated. Fuck your should 8(
One of the things about Kokuyou is that they're sort of . . . really important to each other. A place where we belong is what Ken talks about and Mukuro clearly has some kind of fucked up notion of that as well. It's important to him to have a place to belong and while he has decided Ruby is HIS in Aather it's still sort of a messy concept for him. Part of it is because the general WE'RE HUMAN/PEOPLE AND YOU'RE NOT LIKE US has irked him greatly. People do things that make them happy and he thought it was pretty damn banging to break Gil's fingers so!1
But he's also not dumb. He can predict some of the ramifications of his actions. HE CAN EVEN CHANGE HIS BEHAVIOUR NOT TO CAUSE THEM AGAIN. Thus again being a faux sociopath. But he also just. Miscalculates a lot. The human factor is hard for him. He KNEW Peridot would want revenge, he'd prepared for that. He just didn't expect it to be an escalation. Whenever he messes with Riful he kind of . . . HE HAS THE FEELING HE IS IN OVER HIS HEAD but he can't back out because of the stuff mentioned above and also he doesn't parse this possible bad idea/red flag/fear? as ... what it should be. He parses it as excitement or a need to dominate or whatever. Someday he will actually do something and she will like. Break like all the bones in his arm or whatever and he'll be like :\a well fuck. And maybe still not learn because lol.
Mukuro is someone who like. MOVES TOWARDS DESTRUCTION. It is something about him. He has a lot of destructive impulses. It's a lot easier for him to emotionally manipulate someone than it is to be honest with them. He finds hurting others easier than being civil, blah blah. Instead of withdrawing he's sort of just turned it upside down to hurting people.
BUT WAIT AJ HE DOESN'T REMEMBER HIS CHILDHOOD SUCKING!!!!! No this is true he doesn't. I did start him with a memory of Hell though. Which just. A long period of sucking and various Hell things and it is kind of actually something Mukuro would really rather not discuss ever \o/ Or at least not in a meaningful way. But in general his 'base personality' got kind of too warped for amnesia to fix. It did allow certain things to happen.
Because IF MUKURO WASN'T FEELING FEELINGS OR HAVING POSITIVE CONNECTIONS WITH PEOPLE HE WOULDN'T BE SO ANNOYED \o/ But no because he now has positive things to deal with too instead of lol i'm an asshole and general just Mukuro fwippy sociopathiclike things he wouldn't be as irritated. I DON'T WANT TO DEAL WITH PEOPLE THEY FRUSTRATE ME AND MAKE ME ANGRY but yes i do i need them. sort of. MAYBE I DON'T.
But Mukuro is basically parsing all of his emotions into sociopathy emotions because it's easier for him and he would rather do that. It's just. Not a good fit. So some of them like . . . I LIKE X and I'M AFRAID OF X end up getting parsed as the same MAN I SHOULD SHANK THEM THAT'S AWESOME. Not enough channels, too much water, etc.
Other thinggss...
• Souya - somehow Souya ended up saying the right thing at the right time??? IDK. But Mukuro pretty much trusts Souya and will go along with what he says to some degree. Souya is probably responsible for like. A third of Mukuro's general frustration on average though, quite possibly up to half.
• Ruby - is his. No questions \o/ Don't mess with my shit i'll cut you. He has started to value them as individuals now too, but it's still kind of weird. THEY'RE PEOPLE??? Is much more comfy with the idea of 'ruby' than who they are as people.
• Girls - ... Mukuro really enjoys Marie and Vanille. They both serve different purposes and it's in a way a very shallow thing but that's what makes it work for him. Vanille is a bit more \O_o/ because she's all let me heaalll youuu and he's like not so trusting of people doing nice things without easy to trace motives but whatever. Marie is just fun. He likes fun. AND HE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TO MAIM HER FOR IT, GOSH.
• Hell/Vindice time - both of these memories are BEING STUCK IN A SHITTY PLACE. ALONE. IN A SHITTY PLACE FULL OF SHIT AND GOSH THIS IS SHITTY. Hell is less sparse. And really the Vindice thing kind of freaks him a little. It kind of ticked him over to more HOSTILITY!1
• Luke's memory - which he saw and didn't really understand it contextually and then ALL OF LUKE'S FEELINGS and in general found it a weird moment of like. EMPATHY coupled with EXTREME FRUSTRATION because there was a general lack of articulation, understanding and he didn't know what to do with it.
• Lack of powers - After like. 7 or whatever. Mukuro had access to 6 skills one of which was illusions, one of which was mind control, one of which was like BADASS FIGHTING and one which was like DEADLY ANIMAL SUMMONING. I am 70% sure he uses illusions to hide whatever CHILDHOOD EXPERIMENT!1 marks he has in canon -- until he starts wearing gloves, anyway. And just a general lack of an ability to illusion has put him out of sorts, even if he doesn't know why. Coupled with this is just a general sense of ... he's kind of weak? Mukuro doesn't have any fighting skills (I bet) outside of his fourth realm.
• On the topic of the above - Mukuro and the 'real' world are really. . . weird. As an illusionist he is HYPERAWARE of 'real' but also sort of willful when it comes to 'defining reality'. But he also just. Doesn't really like 'this world'. It's dirty and should be cleansed C: He isss not really in that mode in Aather yet but it is sort of. Jarring. He feels out of sorts a lot.
• TRUST - Mukuro doesn't have it. People do things he expects they do them cos they want something. He told Shadowchild people talk to each other when they want something. He fully believes that. HE IS NOT LIKE. PARANOID well okay he is paranoid. But it's more of a worldview thing and less of a YOU'RE LYINGGG AREN'T YOUUUU.
gosh that is probably really difficult to understand. questions are okay, etc.
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Probably it would go something like this:
oh :|a well that was dumb of you. I bet it's all your fault. /INSERT OTHER GENERIC APATHETIC ANSWER HERE. Also, I don't care.
and then he would go off and have some fun cathartic time :)b
Because he doesn't count Souya as 'his' -- prolly because of the knight/team barrier and the fact that Souya's sort of . . . in a weird category. So he doesn't have that outlet of BITCH NO THAT'S MINE but it would be kind of totally grumpy inducing. So he'd just misdirect it until he decided what to do about whoever did the mauling :)!
It's like problem solving, only with an additional collateral damage spectrum.
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with an additional collateral damage spectrumpsychotic. There, I fixed it.no subject