Good morning, Scribe! Here is a Brassica Heresy question I've meaning to send you for a while (I've waited for most people to catch up, plus I was a bit nervous about how should I put it sjkdhfsdf): as you can see, I'm very fascinated by your portrayal of Mezato in this fic. However, it was a bit ambiguous to me if she was being brainwashed by the broccoli or merely pretending just like Tsubomi.
For now, I lean towards the first option. Firstly, because considering the food situation in Seasoning City, its unlikely that Mezato wouldn't consume something from the Divine Tree. Second, because her confusion in Chapter 15 really reminded me of when Reigen broke off from his brainwashing earlier in the fic. As Dimple mentioned in the canon Divine Tree Arc, the brainwashing simply changes a person's priorities: they keep their personalities, preferences and tendencies. I can completely see Mezato playing horrid mind games with people under the right circunstances. The Divine Tree situation is the perfect opportunity for this, actually! Mezato has something important to care for, has influence... and is bored, which encourages her further. Besides, she has her limits in canon: she thinks about giving up on the LOL Cult article after believing they were just weirdos having fun, and while she pushes Mob into becoming Psycho Helmet, she does keep her distance when he gets uncomfortable. Perhaps because she isn't obsessed enough to become her worst self, as much as she doesn't really empathize with others. When she changes her mind in the later chapters of the broccoli fic (and even seems ashamed of her past behavior), it can appear as if Mezato finally regained these limits as the brainwashing faded off.
At the same time, the moment in which she realizes the extension of what she was doing to Tsubomi isn't limited to a "brainwashing is gone" reading: I've also interpreted it as Mezato - an extremely bored girl who no real connections to others and so is very disconnected from people - realizing she was playing with real human lives. Tsubomi isn't a doll, or a pet project, or a nice little mystery for Mezato to solve before getting bored once again. She was causing irreparable to this random girl! She was torturing her!! FOR ENTERTAINMENT!!! Mezato was going to indirectly cause the apocalipse for THAT!!!!!! This caused me the impression she could have been on her right mind, but that's super unlikely for her situation, besides the fact... well, it doesn't feel right for her to completely stop caring about Mob and the fate of the world, even with the way she faces relationships as exchanges.
My rambling must have already given me my answer. Pardon me if you made it clear enough in my writing and this wall of text is a consequence of my poor memory, but I wanted to put this into words, as I've been thinking really hard about it. I periodically reread the dialogue in Chapter 15 because it's that awesome. Besides, maybe there is a detail somewhere in this question nobody else has noticed before, and you could appreciate it.
In any case, I hope this message entertains you. Have a good day!
Thanks for the message! I always love hearing your thoughts. Sorry it took me a while to get around to answering it; things have been a little crazy around here lately.
The short answer is that Mezato is definitely being affected by the broccoli, but that it took advantage of all the things about her that were already there—the drive for something Big and Interesting to happen, the disconnect from other people, the desire for her actions to have an impact—and encouraged them so that she became the worst version of herself. But she is in a unique position because not everyone is affected in the same way; despite the influence of the broccoli, she remains most interested in the cult as spectacle and as a way for her to make an impact and is less of a True Believer than most of the others.
This is because I wanted her to retain as much agency as possible as an antagonist; if she was just a mouthpiece for the Divine Tree it would have been a lot harder to give her a meaningful arc. But as is I was able to take all of her canonical personality traits and dial them up into true supervillain territory. It lets her have the same "getting carried away" character arc that so many Mob Psycho characters have; she's being influenced, but it's still *her* that's doing it.
That's why the scene where she breaks away from the broccoli's brainwashing has such different vibes than the ones I wrote for Reigen and Ritsu. They mostly needed to get over the internal denial that was keeping them from seeing reality as it was, but they weren't character development moments in the same way. On the other hand Mezato has to acknowledge her own culpability, realizing that she's been treating this like a game but these are *real people* who matter just as much as she does. It's interesting that you bring up some of her canonical limits because yeah, under most circumstances she would never take things this far. But even disregarding the influence the broccoli has on her mind, there's the angle of okay, even if she realizes what is she supposed to do? In my head she has had a few moments where the mind control hit something close to a breaking point (definitely when that first building fell, and maybe another time or two). But in those instances she can either end up like Tsubomi, hiding and terrified from something that seems like it's wielding complete and inescapable power over the city . . . or she can pretend that she's still in control and this is what she wanted all along. Without Tsubomi confronting her with the personal cost of her choices, there's no motivation to do the hard thing and face up to reality.
So yeah, the scene where Tsubomi gets through to her is about breaking through the brainwashing, but it's also about breaking through the walls she'd been setting up in her own mind long before the Divine Tree took over.
I hope that makes sense! I overextended myself last weekend and am still pretty loopy, but I love to talk about Brassica Heresy so feel free to ask about anything I didn't cover!
