adharma | Shut Up AJ: An Essay

Mukuro is a pseudo-sociopath. Pseudo is probably a nice way of putting it. I usually call him a pseudo-sociopath because he stands in contrast to Dietrich (Trinity Blood) who I also played for a really long time and on the scale of "foreign to human morals and emotional patterns" Dietrich is waaay further down the scale than Mukuro is.

+10 (overly empathic) ------------- 0 ("average" empathy) --------------- -10 (Dietrich)

Most characters I consider "average" -- that is people who feel bad about killing others or have a baseline morality for that sort of thing probably fall from +10 to -3 on this scale! -4 to -7 are where people who have been conditioned out of that morality or have a lack of empathy but don't get any real joy out of killing will fall. -7 to -10 is where the scale starts to curve around and move out of apathy at the action and into sadism! [ this is super reductive BLAH BLAH BLAH but it is more of example than it is a practical scale ]

Pre-Kokuyou arc Mukuro up until the fight with Tsuna falls at an 8 or 9. Post Kokuyou-arc shifts him down to 7 or 8. By the TYL arc he kind of hovers between 5 and 7, sliding up and down as situations arise, etc.

Aatherwise he started inside of a range -- from 4 to 7. But none of it was really active so much as passing fancy. Something wanders by, he tries it and then his emotional reaction falls in the 4-7 range and he decides from the fallout and internal pleasure gotten from that if he liked it or not. EXPERIMENTATION!1

The empathy scale gets a bit whacked out here because if it continued down an even slope he'd just be more disinterested in people. But he doesn't really think of people as objects or toys -- if he did there wouldn't be any measure of sadism! So it starts to deviate from the downward slant and move into something else.

[ Usually Mukuro has this bullying side. He is kind of an asshole! And beyond being an asshole he does derive pleasure from stepping on others a bit. This ranges from setting up despairing situations or trying to pull the metaphorical floor out from under someone to just exerting physical pressure on them.

It is my opinion that even without his childhood he'd probably have a bit of a natural disposition to dicking people around but it's exacerbated (toooo really high levels) because of his past experiences, etc. ]

So, Mukuro, in Aather, is shifting around in this range of reaction/internal arrangement and he runs into Riful. Riful is one of the people he "gets on" with because she doesn't have a normal range of emotional experiences and because she has that meanness. Which. Well, it's a particular brand of the no-feelings club and it was nice to have that mutual roughness. Of course he had no idea he was in over his head :'D;

But he essentially had a crush and then found her a challenge and interesting on a deeper level. Annnd she really opened the door to bridge his ? sex ? with his bullying thoughts and twined everything together in a really satisfying way for him.

SLOPPY METAPHOR TIME. When he first arrived in Aather, Mukuro's emotions were a bit like a box of legos. Not quite put together though distinct colors and shapes. Some of them were structured by his natural personality and remembering Hell, but in general there was a lot of disconnect. Different interactions he has with people build them together or take them apart and reput them together. Some of them -- like sadness, fear, etc -- are legos filled with sand :B and don't fit together well. In canon his legos are mostly put together except for the ones he stuck back in the box because he didn't feel like dealing with them. But it's pretty organized. In Aather everything is just messy and not put together yet and he hasn't decided to discard anything yet fully. [ Not that he actually can fully discard things in canon either, but he's far better at shoving them to the side to get what he wants. ]

One of Mukuro's big problems with relating to people is that he is very very very very self-focused. Self-centered . . . even . . . His natural inclination is to think of himself and what he wants first. Though at times it seems like a bit of grandstanding or overcompensation on his side. [ I am pretty sure he isn't entirely aware of his overcompensation though and believes that he's an utterly selfish bastard all the time. ] He postures a lot about how people are toys or tools, how he's only after Tsuna's body so that's why he's helping out etc. He loathes playing the nice card (in an honest fashion) and probably has a great deal of self-denial about that.

Mukuro doesn't connect with emotions of empathy, compassion, etc. It isn't that he doesn't understand them but some people see a picture of a sad puppy and are like :( omg sad puppy. He can say yeah that is a picture of a sad puppy, but he doesn't give a fuck. Or, another better example maybe, is that when people see/parse words like "rape" or "murder" their brain parses it slightly different than say "table" or "pillow". They are alarm words or words with heavy negative meaning. Sociopaths don't have any emotional weight change between "table" and "murder". So! If he was asked which is worse it isn't like he can't tell you but that isn't based on a personal feeling of "oh, that's bad" so much as "oh, other people would say this is bad therefore it's the worse one." He's completely missing the internal workings of a moral code in that respect.

He's also missing the societal pressure emotions: pride, embarrassment, shame, etc. Those are emotions that help us navigate society and regulate our place and so forth. Dig. . . nity . . . You could make a case for pride, but I would say it's probably more like ego than it is pride. And he doesn't do embarrassment or shame. When he ends up close to these emotions it is always a sort of backhanded way.

In Aather!1 Mukuro has encountered embarrassment. This is mostly an outgrowth of having relations where what he hides from people has very little to do with his projected self and weakness so much as failing to meet someone else's expectations. Which is huge and very different from canon. Mostly this revolves around Souya but occasionally his team as well. He also has vague embarrassment at times with his inability to put on a good normal face but that's sort of mitigated by the no-feelings-club and other factors.

Guesswork! From me says that Mukuro's primary emotion is actually anger. But in canon he's sort of shunted that off and his general "feel" is smug. It's difficult to navigate his emotional space canonwise because he sits in the middle of things often. He doesn't lean into anger but he also doesn't lean into joy. There's a relative low key smug sanguineness to his attitude and he doesn't waver from that almost ever. He might move to irritation/annoyance or pleased by something but it still doesn't show the full spectrum. The like two times we see him really move out of this are when he has a bit of a loss of control -- in the fight with Tsuna and then again in the most recent arc. And when he gets to those points it's definitely rage that comes through. In the Kokuyou arc it's more of an off-balanced crazy rage thing but someone doesn't seek cold revenge -- he isn't approaching revenge pragmatically, but personally. Well, personally that he then sort of inflated across the whole world because he's a special cookie.

More guesswork! In this more current time of playing Mukuro, anyway, I am playing him as having completely shut down the sad part of his emotional spectrum in canon. Or mostly shut it down. Daemon, in the recent arc, tells Mukuro that "you've decided anger makes you weak [ so you got rid of it ]" which isn't entirely true because Mukuro is pissed as all fuck. I am pretty convinced that if you asked him how he felt about whenever he was wronged he would never respond with bad/sad/whatever other emotion like that. He doesn't think of his childhood as sad. People are cruel to each other, it's a fact of life. This world isn't worth it, not "this world makes me sad". He doesn't regret, he doesn't feel that kind of shock that's also kind of sad (as opposed to angry-shock). When he's surprised it is a miscalculation, not an emotional response (or so he tells himself).

Sooo, these are emotions Mukuro didn't shut out yet in Aather :'D. His default -- with no memories and no influence from others -- would be semi-apathetic irritated. But since he's gotten his memories back not quite in the right order and with a lot of positive memories before his negative ones it means his mental processes are all backwards. He still is clamping down on anger pretty heavily, like he does in canon. But . . . in terms of the sadness scale he just has no real connection to it. It happens to him and he just is like :/a well I do not really like that feeling, but that's . . . it . . . and then he proceeds to ignore it. Like a cool kid. Part of this is that he's super not in tune with himself. Mukuro never really is in canon either -- maaaybbee he is more together TYL but it's hard to say.

THAT BEING SAID. Mukuro, in canon, is relatively good at people. You can't manipulate someone without being somewhat good at them. He's pretty capable of long term deception, traps and working humanity. But he works in a pretty particular direction and intent. A lot of his "good at people" skills are almost academic -- like when Tsuna doesn't want to kill a friend to also kill a villain he's just like well that's a stupid weakness and makes for a poor leader. When he breaks down Masato he is like welp, people will do that so it is inevitable. He is a bit of a behaviourist in that way -- given the right formula, people will behave as you expect them to. He is good at people when it comes to stepping on them or forcing them to do something and he's pretty bad at people when he has to be compassionate or connect to them on an emotional level. Though he can fake it.

FAKING IT. Aww yiss. Okay, Mukuro pulls the faking it in canon a few times. As Kabane, as the kokuyou student omg ur here to save us, as Leo Lippi. These personas are all extremely similar. Eager to please, unconfident, shy, dere dere, uke uke sort of personalities. I ASSUME HE CAN DO OTHER PERSONAS TOO?? But I guess this is his favorite. He probably thinks it's kind of funny and super inverse of who he is. Mukuro doesn't fake it unless he has an explicit reason to! He does not spend the majority of his time pretending to be normal. If given his rathers he would probably just be himself most of the time and then when he haaaddd to do something, pull out a persona. In the Kokuyou arc almost immediately after he gets some info he starts to break character. BASICALLY what I am saying is that this isn't a social mechanism for him. In general he cares very little about fitting in or pretending to be "normal". [ There is also a very strong individualistic streak in him -- be very strongly himself and not nothing and not something else. I do attribute this to the fact that he was essentially nothing/no one as a child and then he decided to be someone and fuck ya'll. ] I suppose he might have been able to fake it for a long time when with Lancia's family, but there isn't any real canon given for that period in his life. Also he was an "orphan" picked up by the mob so I am not entirely sure what is expected and what not. He probably did throw some dere dere around at Lancia and them. [ Annnddd I go back and forth whenever I play Mukuro as to whether or not he seekritly!1 enjoyed it or not. It hasn't come up in Aather yet so I haven't dealt with this segment of his life yet :'D ]

Aatherrrrr . . . now this is where he's hitting some walls in terms of faking it. In canon Mukuro is the leader of Kokuyou! They don't give a flying fuck if he is a terrible person. There is an absoluteness that comes from being Kokuyou. They're all a little fucked up and weird and pushed out of society/dead/whatever anyway. So when he kicks it with his Kokuyou he is just himself -- which is a bit of a raging semi-sociopathic asshole and all is good. This is not really the way to get along with others in Aather. The people he was supposed to most get along with were all . . . really normal . . . AND KIND OF IRRITATING. But he would have them as his because they were Ruby so it was all right. But it was still kind of like . . . welp. I see how it is. He moved on from there to being pretty comfortable. He has just moved out of comfortable and into welp i guess i should just lie more. Really Aather is the only time ever in his life where who he is effortlessly and who he wants to be might be schismed.

Mukuro in Aather has developed a really blunt way of stating things. Either relating to himself or his opinions or whatever. I mean he is also a lying dickbag at times, but he has this nice blunt 'truth' at times. He is relatively up-front about stuff -- relative. To how he is. In the series. He was pretty okay with navigating what he wanted/who he saw himself as v. what he assumed his team wanted -- or at least heading in that direction. It was a pretty clean thing, don't do things that get Ruby in shit e t c but be whoever the fuck you want.

[ One of the Big Themes of Kokuyou as a whole is a place to belong. Really it's one of the themes of Reborn as a whole. Having friends and a group of people to hang out with, feel supported and loved or whatever. FAMIGLIA. ]

Is there where I get to talk about self. Oh boy. In canon Mukuro's sense of self is kind of really super duper special. I typically play him as having created the 'Mukuro Rokudou' self. Because he is pretty . . . he doesn't really accept his childhood. He buries it under other feelings. There is a break between self-continuity for him and he will certainly not talk about it. Ken's the exposition guy there.

-- oh wait quick intermission for trust. Mukuro doesn't trust people. He just doesn't. He doesn't really trust the world either. And because he's an illusionist he has a very firm grip on his reality and may as well discount all others or at least treat them with suspicion because fuck if he's going to fall into someone else's illusion trap. What he does trust is himself. When he makes mistakes it isn't like oh, my bad. Or oh I fucked up. He made a miscalculation! He's still not really wrong, the numbers were just a little off. This is kind of weird. It isn't even just that he "trusts himself" because that's simple. But he's the only thing he can count on. He doesn't count on other people to do him any favors, he doesn't count on gravity, he doesn't count on anything else. This does also result in sort of absolute egotism and self-centeredness, but whatever.

OKAY SO NOW THE FUN PART. Kokuyou! Kokuyou isn't just a group of people he spends time with. They're extensions of himself. He explicitly tells Ken and Chikusa that Chrome is his other self in one of the drama cds, but really they all are. He trusts them. It isn't like he trusts them to be extremely powerful or competent or whatever. But he trusts them to exist and be themselves/part of him. It's his world, governed by his existence and so forth.

Essentially Mukuro has replaced "real" with "himself" and then extended himself to Kokuyou :'D It's kind of great and I love it.

SO AATHER. How did this work? Well, first of all Mukuro didn't have his complete lack of trust in the world and he didn't have his illusioning to really roll it around even more. But he was still kind of himself anyway. And he did a swap out of "himself" in that chain of words up there with "Ruby". Fuck everything else, count on the team being "real". This had the hilarious side effect of him not disliking anyone on the team by virtue of they were Ruby, setting the team aside in its own category and pretty much being "comfortable". It brought out some protectiveness to the team as well as an absolute belief that they were cool no matter what :'D. Yes, and then Mukuro Rokudou had absolute faith in Jacuzzi's coolness. This also did weird things to his self-value since he just placed it all in Ruby instead of all in himself. This is sort of when Mukuro is getting better at being team-y etc. Learning how to be tsundere, bluntly accepting whatever whatever. He knows who he is and Ruby is awesome what the fuck ever.

So, where did the problem happen? Well, the problem was always there he just didn't get it at first. The problem with this self-trust-group model is that if the group doesn't believe in it, well it doesn't actually work. It is like if a few objects suddenly decided not to agree with gravity. Then gravity doesn't work as a rule. And in short succession Mukuro heard from Luke that individual > group, Konatsu expressed doubt in Ruby's solidarity and Oz flat out said that it didn't matter :'D Which was three strikes again the model and it fell apart.

[ OH ANOTHER SIDE NOTE. He never really thought Oz was a spare so much. Mukuro has this tendency to be a dick first and in some ways he maintains his rep by dicking around a lot. Also in the self perception he has it is just like. WELL DUH YOU ARE PART OF THE GROUP OTHER STUFF DOESN'T MATTER. So like if Ken is dumb and calls Chikusa names or if MM calls Chrome a stupid little girl or whatever it doesn't matter 'cos they're all Kokuyou in the end. So Mukuro calling Oz Spare had very little to do with distancing him from Ruby. It was just more of a personal thing and OF COURSE YOU'RE STILL RUBY?? He would have been confused as to why Oz wouldn't have been. Then. ]

The self of 'Acedia' had been created specifically for Ruby. Acedia only existed inside of Ruby. The base of his world and trust and whatever was Ruby. So this break down of the model sucked ass. It was really the break down of Acedia as a self. Because where was he supposed to be located if not in Ruby? Like, Acedia as an individual could exist but then his trust would have to be elsewhere. The two models of self:trust:world he has are in Ruby or himself. With the lack of trust in Ruby he shifted it over to himself and saw that as being Mukuro. Mukuro trusted himself! And then he binged on three memories and that was not the best decision.

There are a few problems with his switch-over. One of them being that he is just pretty incapable of switching over like that. Well, unless all of Ruby left him or whatever. But he has really strong ties to Dera, and he can't get rid of Acedia without getting ride of that -- which is something he absolutely won't do unless he has to. And his ties to Kaworu and Souya but those are less important in terms of self because they're not grounded in Ruby. Also even if he switched himself over he'd . . . still . . . be on a team . . . so. Also it is just kind of impractical now because people know him and so forth. So he attempted and then kind of self-aborted later lol.

SO HE WAS IN AN UNCOMFORTABLE PLACE but whatev whatev trucking along. The great thing about Mukuro is that he does a lot of self-maintanence. SOMETHING HAPPENS -> categorize it, adjust for it if need be, add it to his information pile -> MOVE THE FUCK ALONG. He'll hold grudges but it isn't one of those things that is boiling right up at the forefront. He stores information against people -- or his perception of them but doesn't necessarily think of himself as acting vindictively. Like, there are definitely times when Mukuro is just like OKAY NOW I AM GOING TO BE A TERRIBLE PERSON and then there are times when he is just himself an it happens to be terrible. But he considered things mostly sorted before the Turquoise-Ruby game because he had figured out Oz's deal, was leveling out with himself and in general was like well fuck it. Turned extremely self-focused but didn't commit to either self from before.

Sooooooo, cabinshare game! Mukuro pretty much considered himself on good behaviour! And he absolutely didn't see anything wrong with sharing that memory with Yayoi. Okay, yeah, he knew it would be a dickmove. But he figured it sort of akin to like ... snapping someone's bra-strap or kicking their shins or something ... not run away crying level dickmove. Cos he's a winner like that. And this was definitely not as bad as breaking fingers, right :D? Also, he was just really into doing things for himself and THAT SEEMED LIKE FUN WHAT IS FALL OUT.

. . . fall out is everyone getting peeved or upset and Turquoise moving out . . . Konatsu hit him and Dera yelled and him and he was like BALLS THIS ACTUALLY KIND OF SUCKS. And everyone wanted to have talks and blah blah. It became pretty frustrating and annoying and wow how did that much trouble spring from that. But it also got him thinking a lot. The conclusion he came to was that he fucked shit up and he couldn't trust himself. Which knocked everything down again and was pretty depressing. And tiring :I Tired and kind of depressed. VERY TROUBLESOME. MADE APOLOGY ROUNDS AND THEN WENT AND SLEPT FOR A WHOLE FOUR HOURS and was mad that he overslept.

Apology rounds: He was sincere that he was sorry he caused trouble because it was very tiring and everyone got mad and really that sucked. Also DON'T BE MAD AT RUBY :U though he is pretty all right with people being mad at him, but a team-on-team conflict is not really what he wants at all. And then Wrath was STRESSED AND MAD and Dera is his favorite and really the only person he has the conscious level of caring about/deredere/less denial over these things on the team right now :'D And Konatsu smacked him and was like BLAH BLAH GROW UP. Sooo much trouble. He also rather dislikes being lectured. He was sincere that he was sorry he scared Breeze --- because it led to troublesome things. But he really doesn't give a fuck that he scared her. But by then he was also just. Tired of Ruby not being what he wanted and tired of not having even ground to stand on and just tiiiirrreeddd. SANITY BENDER, NATCH.

So he is basically at the point where he is working on himself more. Trying to redivide up his trust and world view and just general dispersion of existence e t c. WHATEVER WHATEVER there is always a lot of shit in his head. Oh and then he took his latest memory which was like I'LL WORK FOR TSUNA FOR MY TOOLS' SAFETY. Which has just sort of added to his sanity bender. But that's more self-contained than it is expulsive. Despite the fact that he is super expulsive. HE IS KIND OF A CHARACTER IN PROGRESS. Breaking up his life and his decisions for amnesiagame has really always put him in-between decisions. :9 becoming an real person!1

I had actually really debated about playing Mukuro in amnesiagame because I wasn't sure I could do it. He's a character that I see as having a lot of really solid character traits and a lot of really solid character traits from events in his life. So it's kind of a terrible juggle for me and I had a lot of waaailll i can't dooo itttt. Before I decided to try it out. I find breaking down his character in this way immensely pleasing :9 though I am well aware of the 800 different ways you can slice up his characterization but this is the way for me this time around. It's slightly different than some of my CFUD headcanon too, but you know different game different character. Noowwww onto specific things!

• Kaworu and Souya.
Mukuro's two off-team Big Influencers. And the two people he loev the most outside of Ruby. Kaworu is by far his best friend and someone that Mukuro is okay being like yeah Liberty is my friend. He's actually pretty able to extend some kind of consideration towards Kaworu and if we ever come up to a choice game again he'd probably pick Kunzite for a safety docking (After Rubidot). It is actually one of those situations too where Mukuro has a thought of like "man I would make out with Liberty" but that's stopped by "but Liberty and Bones are exclusive". IT'S COURTESY gosh. Something Mukuro doesn't have for a lot of people :'D.

Mukuro is also pretty willing to tell Kaworu most things. Part of this is because Kaworu isn't overly involved or judgmental or whatever. They can hang out and be philobff or whatever, or actually talk about stuff. But Kaworu isn't like WELL YOU SHOULD DO X so much as offer an opinion without adding pressure to it. He also feels comfortable with Kaworu because they are both part of the no-feelings club.

THEIR RELATIONSHIP WAS VERY MUCH PLATONIC PHILOBFF but then there was hand-holding. And mutual draping. And it's sort of wavered out of that section a bit. Not that it will be anything else, because Mukuro's courtesy to Kaworu ;'D; and they both have other options they could take, etc. In a world where there weren't other complications though, Mukuro would totally go for philobff with benefits.

Annnddd the kicker. In his Crisis of Trust (ololol). Kaworu asked why not trust in him. And Mukuro prettty much took Kaworu up on it. It's now just a fact of his world. I trust in Liberty, cool beans, etc. CONGRATULATIONS, KAWORU, YOU GET A PLACE ON THE MUKURO WORLD MAP.

Souya is a bit harder because there isn't that level comfortableness that Mukuro has with Kaworu. Souya is an Adult and in a position of power (lolknights) and is not part of the no-feelings club. But Souya seems to stumble down saying and doing everything right with Mukuro which has sort of forced Mukuro to like Souya.

Fooorrrr Mukuro Souya is sort of a . . not really like society, but Souya is an outside set of parameters. When he disappoints Souya it is KIND OF EMBARRASSING. And Mukuro isn't entirely comfortable with that idea because lol what is bending to other people's expectations when they are not part of my in-group. And sometimes Mukuro tosses out things to try and trip Souya up and then have reasons to be all prickly. . . . but Souya magically sidesteps them idk idk something has happened.

The closest that Mukuro probably has in relation to Souya from his own past isss Lancia. Which doesn't at all equate because he ruined Lancia's life and then continued to bully him for years \:D/. BUT IT IS WEIRD AND KIND OF CONFUSING and . . . weird . . . and he isn't sure if want but it's there??? Mukuro has tipped over to accepting Souya though, mostly. And. Uh. Developed more tsundere.

• Ruby
lmao ... I guess lmao ... Ruby is such a complicated bag of shit for Mukuro. ON ONE HAND, HE WOULD REALLY LIKE TO JUST BE LIKE welp. Ruby is Ruby. Duh. And leave it at that but he kind of can't and SOME PEOPLE!!!1 would prefer it not be anyway so. No matter what Ruby will probably have a leg up on everyone else in his mind unless something really drastic happens. Or we have a big team turnover 8|a

Ahiru! Starting here because duck is easy. AS A DUCK SHE WAS EASILY HIS FAVORITE. He adored her sort of irrationally so but he adored her. He would talk to her and he liked her and man if anyone fucks with the duck he will mess your shit up. And then she became a girl and he was kind of U N S U R E. Because he doesn't like change also THEN SHE COULD TALK BACK O GOD!1 But he was coming around to liking her again and he hadn't lost any of his fuck with her and i will kill you slowly. Definitely contemplated shanking Mytho for the duck. ... he will be either really pissy and slightly psychotic or just depressed that she's gone. Or both. Who knows. But the duck could shame him into good behaviour too. looooovvvee duck.

Jacuzzi! Is also relatively simple. At first Mukuro didn't have a ton of attachment to Jacuzzi because Jacuzzi was just Despair who cried a lot. Though he accepted that as his thing and whatever whatever this guy cries a lot. But eventually he came around to really liking Jacuzzi. Jacuzzi and the duck are kind of in the same space for him. HE LIKES JACUZZI AND IS KIND OF PROTECTIVE OVER HIM and don't make him sad i'll kill you >:( Despite all the Ruby shifting, Jacuzzi's position hasn't shifted much for him. Also Jacuzzi has some badass memories apparently so whatever our Despair can beat your Despair up (...or sth).

Dera isss lol. Okay. So Mukuro did have a bit of a "wow Wrath is easy I guess I'll compliment him cos then he is mine more" attitude. But Wrath was also the person who was most aligned with him in terms of team thoughts and general dynamics. And then it turned out they were from the same place and Mukuro had a bit of a ha . . . ha ha enemies thing. And had some Major Anxiety about that but Wrath pretty much was just like ARE YOU STUPID and it was fixed and Wrath became his favorite :U. A lot of his Ruby-connection right now is thoroughly tied to Wrath. If Wrath left or rejected him it would pretty much kill Mukuro's desire to Ruby. Undeniably his favorite Ruby but there is also just a lot ... piled on Mukuro's thoughts on Wrath. .. though Mukuro is also super willing to lie to Wrath to placate him or try to make him less stressed.

Konatsu THE FLOATER. Mukuro can never decide what to do with Konatsu. Part of this is because Konatsu often responds with the right answer. Like, Ruby is important whatever. But Konatsu is also really concerned with what is Right and being more the diplomat, Mukuro thinks. Next to Luke, Konatsu is the person Mukuro feels he'd have to change himself most to get along with. ALSO MAYBE KONATSU IS A LIAR (???) can't quite figure out what to do with him. And Konatsu clearly has SUPER IMPORTANT off-team ties. Though once Mukuro figures himself out a bit more and figures out the Dera-Konatsu dere shit he will probably just move into lying to Konatsu all the time for great profit. Unless something shifts in how he views Konatsu 8|a

Luke ololol. Luke is the person Mukuro most feels like he can't be himself around. Also Luke stresses him out and is really bothersome and persistent and won't go the fuck away. But Luke is also the person he feels like he knows the most about and Luke knows the most about him out of everyone etc. In a lot of ways Mukuro wants Luke to finally be like GAWD I CAN'T DEAL WITH YOU ANYMORE because it would be less pressure for him. Cutting ties with Luke would make everything easier for him. And there is a part of Mukuro that groups Luke in with Ahiru and Jacuzzi ;'D. Luke is the sad thing that needs other people to make it happy again.

Oz theeee only member of Ruby Mukuro would bus. Quite easily. He started out keeping Oz on the same tier as everyone pretty much -- or at least the default tier. But then shit kept happening and he Oz pretty much wrote himself out of Ruby (in Mukuro's POV). He is quite sure that Oz doesn't give a fuck about Ruby so much as fitting in and pleasing people. Also quite sure that Oz is a semi-sociopath, if not an actual member of the no-feelings club but is kind of ... not fessing up to it? Which makes him not like Oz. There is a sort of unspoken relaxedness with the no-feelings kids and their get togethers and Oz pretty much breaks all of those rules. In general Mukuro feels he knows Oz's character, is pretty sure Oz doesn't care about Ruby and therefore he won't trust Oz or count him as Ruby :'D. But he will apologize to Oz and pretend to play nice for as long as he needs to since ~team is important guys~. This is hilarious because before Mukuro was playing a bit with Vincent and toyed with the idea of pre-emptively scaring Vincent off and whatnot. But now he'd easily trade Oz to Vincent for profit.

• Other people.
Gil! Mukuro honestly enjoys spending time with Gil. He just. . . his relationship with Gil is one of those fucked up Mukuro things where it is just fucked all over and even if he honestly enjoys Gil he can't really separate that from his fuckeduppedness. A bonus is that Gil is Peridot and Mukuro considers Peridot's default close to Ruby's -- it's a team he likes no matter what (with some caveats etc).

Cass! Mukuro thinks she is cool. And a good person. ... yeah ...

Beato! One of his favorite Peridots :3c He thinks she is funny and cute and enjoys spending time with her. Would probably also like to fuck her over just for funsies. But whatever.

Shadowchild isssss ... not really a friend. But kind of like a friend. He loev Shadowchild a lot and would hang around with it forever.

Devin just gets a mention because Mukuro would approve of Dev dating Dera but don't tell Dera he said that.

Guy ... lol. WELL NOW IT'S AWKWARD because Mukuro is like wow i was totally depressed at him and then apologized for shanking him that one time AWKWAAAAAAAARDDD. And before he was like wow i hate you you made my sad thing sadder. But now he is just like. Oh. It's. That Guy :|a + awkward.

Rin he thinks as funny but actually has no other thoughts cos he is a winner.

OH ROLO!!1 Mukuro's favorite new person. Rolo is great. He would chat with Rolo forever. He appreciates Rolo's different perspective but Rolo is still a no-feelings kid so he gets an auto-boost. Also seems pretty reasonable with good opinions and insight :B

Annnddd there's Asch. Who Mukuro disliked for being Luke's copy (duh!!1) and for making his sad thing sadder. But then he saw Asch's hilarious replication memory and had this like. Irritated curiosity. In his moments of sanity he was like WELL WHY CAN ASCH BE KIND OF NORMAL AND I CAN'T 8|;; and that fueled him to bother him more and then somehow they ended up in this weird deal where Asch talks about himself and they chat and what. He is unreasonably fond of Asch now, but not in a way that matters (in comparison to Ruby, Peridot and the no-feelings club) so much as he doesn't hate Asch anymore and would mess with him fun but not malicious fun.

And then I over 6k words on a Reborn character, fml. I take questions, comments, whatever :B;;;; If you read all of that, congratulations. If not... I don't blame you.

also i am pretty sure i forgot some shit i was going to talk about but this is already too long.