Muriel’s trauma as seen in the new chapter
I’ve finally processed and I wanna talk for a little second about the way Muriel’s trauma is being represented in his route so far.
The first thing I wanted to talk about was this:
The circumstances of his leaving. I’d never really thought about the exact circumstances of his leaving the arena; I think I’d just assumed that he left after Lucio died and made his deal to keep his privacy.
Clearly, he only made his deal because if he didn’t he literally would have been dragged back to the arena, back to being forced to kill people over and over for the rest of his life. He had Inanna to look after now, and he needed everyone to forget him to keep his, and her freedom.
He calls it a “gift”, a “blessing” because it gave him his life back. It let him escape the man holding him as a slave. He keeps telling himself “It’s a gift, it’s good no one can remember me, I don’t want to be remembered” because it’s the only way he could see himself surviving. He wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, and anything, anything was better than going back. Even if he wanted to he wasn’t sure he could reverse it, and why would he want to when everyone who could remember him would just think he’s a monster?
Which brings me to the other thing I wanted to talk about.
His shackles, and the circumstances of them coming off. This was something I saw quite a few people being confused about, and here’s what I love so fucking much about what happened.
There is a lot of discussion in the arcana of self-perpetuating curses. For every love interest, their own flaws are what hold them back the most. They are trapped in a cage of their own making and all of them need assistance to get out of it and grow as people.
I think of Howl’s moving castle (which the game references so, so many times), when Sophie goes looking for Howl in the middle of the night and finds him at his worst. He tells her “You can’t ever break your own curse,” before flying away and leaving her in the dark.
This is what the arcana tells us. None of the main characters can break their own “curse”. They all need some sort of help to get through their issues. When the devs said Muriel couldn’t get the shackles off by himself, they didn’t mean he physically couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He kept his shackles as a reminder of his time in the arena, but as much as it was a hindrance, it was also his protection.
You can’t ever break your own curse, and you can’t break your own spell either. We know Muriel is good at protection magic. He’s so concerned constantly with protecting the things that matter to him, and in protecting himself.
He kept his chains to remind himself of his trauma, but as much as it was his way of punishing himself, it was his way of excusing his isolation. To put walls up and close himself off from everyone else. It’s an excuse not to get hurt. It’s the reason he cites for being alone constantly, because it’s just better that way.
“I can’t let anyone in, I have to be alone because I’m a monster. I deserve this. They’ll just forget me anyway, and regardless being alone is a blessing. I can live, I can be free.”
At some point, his magic became subconsciously interwoven with his shackles. He relied and dependent so heavily on using his trauma to shape his life and identity that it became second nature, reinforced by magic.
MC helps him break his self-perpetuating curse. As he said, they showed him that he could expect more from himself, that more could be expected from him, and that his past didn’t define him. He watched this person pull down his walls and accept him fully for who he was, and the second they kissed him he felt safe, loved, he felt for the first time in his life that there could be a future for him. In that moment, his spell broke. The chains came unbound from him. MC helped him break his own curse, and now he’s free. Properly free.
Sure, things will be hard, recovery is a process, and he’ll never really forget what happened to him. But it’s a start. He doesn’t have to protect himself anymore, because he knows you’ll protect each other.
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