Wtf gay little deer

ok ok ok so I was torn between writing a fic and writing an essay and Essay Brainworms won over lol, but in a post from Brainrot (@Iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia), an anon sent him an ask talking about how Forget-Me-Not by Laufey reminded them of Muriel. Anon goes on to say that "It doesn’t exactly align" but I am of the VERY personal opinion that it aligns almost PERFECTLY with Muriel and in multiple different angles as well.

To begin with, most notoriously, Muriel's "curse", causes people to forget about him unless they hold onto a pouch of myrrh, so the main plea of the song to "forget me not" feels like a plea from Muriel to break his curse or connect with him. While this may initially seem contradictory to his actual character and the fact that he sees his curse as more of a blessing, Muriel does show signs of wanting connection with others. We see it in the way he treats Asra, how he seems to think that he and Asra are more distant than they actually are. We can also see it during the ballroom scene in his route where Muriel panics in a crowd. He doesn't panic just because he's in a crowd (though he was already uncomfortable and uncertain) but he panics because he is recognized by a part of himself that he hates: his gladiator days. So Muriel doesn't necessarily want to be completely forgotten full stop, he just doesn't want to be remembered as a fighter and a murderer. So, if we look at the song as related to his curse, the core theme of "forget me not" could be a plea for someone like Asra to recognize him in his entirety to look past his time as a gladiator and remember him for who he is, or for someone (like MC) to break through that forgetting curse and remember him in his entirety and still care for him.

While this is a sweet and good correlation between the song and Muriel's character, it is still pretty tenuous, and leaves a lot of the lyrics not actually correlating to him or his experiences. Not right away at least.

Now, I have to note, just for clarity's sake, that this is highly interpretive. Meaning that the ways in which you think this song could or could not suit Muriel depends on how you view Muriel's character and how you view this song. In fact, many of my arguments for correlation are based on some assumptions (interpretations heavily based on cannon) and headcannons (interpretations less based on cannon) I have about Muriel. Having said that, we need to look at the actual song first!

So, on a meta-level, Laufey's song is actually about her feelings towards her home country Iceland, and how she feels distant from it now having moved to the USA. In her own words from a podcast interview on youtube, "it's about being far away from your country and loosing a bit of it". We see this even further in the non-english lyrics, which are actually Icelandic. With this context of the song, more of the meaning becomes clearer. The "black sand beach" in the last verse refers to the Icelandic beaches that are known for their black sand, and the "him" in the first verse refers to Iceland as a whole. It is notable that Laufey refers to her homeland as a "him" since most people refer to land as feminine. There's a whole feminist argument about this that I could get into, but as a contributor on [Genius Lyrics comments](noted to a contributor on Genius Lyrics,) making the land masculine to contrast the feminine singer, alongside the general vibe of the music and the chorus all about love draws associations to a romance story, and with it the implications of the ferocity, complexity, and drama that tends to be associated with romantic love (though let's be fair, platonic and familial love can be just as powerful, complex, and dramatic as romance!). Personally, I think it serves to help build this sense of other-ness to the land and her relation towards it. Our nationality can very strongly define our sense of self, and how others see us, and while we may see the extremes of this in very horrible and brutal scenarios through the news, there are softer versions of this too, which Laufey does express. Except, Iceland isn't her anymore. It's no longer so closely attached to her skin that she could imply they were the same entity. No, it's another creature now. Another entity. Another person that she loves so fiercely but is still separate from her. There is a tragedy to this, just as much as there is love.

Of course at least Laufey knew her homeland enough to love him. To miss him when she left. Muriel, is not nearly as fortunate.

It's worth noting that the music that's played in the song is almost dreamlike to me. It sort of reminds me of a Disney movie in a way, with the clarinets(?) and strings, it gives a very fairytale dream sort of feeling to the music. And when we tie this to Muriel for most of his life, his only association with his homeland is the vague dreams he has of it as we see in the Travel At Night tale. He doesn't know nearly as much about the home he once came from as Laufey does, and yet, growing up on the streets of Vesuvia, I bet he misses it, vague and uncertain though it may be.

This too, however is a tenuous relationship with the lyrics overall, but it is valuable to inform some of the interpretations I will be providing later on. Until then, let's establish some more certain ties between the lyrics and Muriel's character.

[Verse 1]

Hold up your chin, deep breath in, it's alright Here I begin missing him, it's my plight Nothing worth having has come to me easily I've sacrificed you, all of you, completely

Here with the first verse, we come to our first split in the pathway. Namely who is "him" in relation to Muriel? Like Laufey, could "him" be his home country? But the similar pronouns diminish the same effect Laufey conveyed in her song, and Muriel doesn't know his home country well enough to have a "plight" over missing him. So for Muriel, this is most likely an actual person. Who could this person be? Personally, I have to admit, when I first listened to this song, I thought of "him" being Muriel, and while that reading doesn't as easily apply when we look at the song as a whole I want you to put a pin in that interpretation. For now, though the more obvious answer is found by looking at the last line, "I've sacrificed you, all of you, completely". For Muriel, we can assume that this sacrifice was done for "him", draws up the image of Muriel's gladiator days, as during his time under Lucio, Muriel fought and killed people in order to protect Asra from Lucio, as Muriel believed that Lucio could kill or harm Asra at any moment's notice. But why would Muriel be missing Asra? Well, based on some of his lines from Asra's route, as well as the fact that Asra and Muriel were implied to live together but no longer do so, Muriel and Asra very likely grew apart after Asra met and started hanging out with the MC, leaving Muriel lonely and longing to re-connect with Asra again.

So "he" is Asra, but I want to revisit that last line, because "sacrifice" is a heavy word with implications. The line before it, "Nothing worth having has come to me easily" is something we can easily associate with Muriel's rough childhood growing up on the streets of Vesuvia as we saw in the Travel At Night tale, having to sleep under bridges or in alcoves for shelter and needing to steal food to survive. So Muriel suffered through a lot of things as an Urchin on the streets of Vesuvia, but as we see from the presence of the little gangs of children that try to recruit both Asra and Muriel, they aren't the only children growing up on Vesuvia's streets. Now, while it is possible that Muriel maybe was able to get along with Asra only and that the two of them really just kept to themselves, it's possible that Asra and Muriel may have met and befriended some of the other kids of the streets, and even maybe made some friends during their childhood. Of course, given the fact that Muriel has only one friend in Asra now that they are adults implies that unfortunately, many of those other children just didn't survive their childhood, which can better explain why we see Muriel relying and pining over the distance between him and Asra as Asra is the only living friend he has left (besides Inanna!). But what if Asra wasn't the only kid Muriel knew growing up from the streets who got to grow up? What if there were others?

Now, this is more of a personal headcannon, but as I've stated before, growing up on the streets of Vesuvia is difficult, not only with the lack of food, but also the mistreatment from people who look down on the destitute and poor, and who cannot empathize with thieves. I can't help but imagine that as a child Muriel suffered or witnessed or at the very least heard of various forms of abuse that he and his fellow urchins were forced to suffer through due to their vulnerable state with no home or adults to advocate for them. We also see in Asra's route that Vesuvia's gladiator Arena has served as a sort of judicial system, where people fought for their innocence. Given this, I can't help but imagine that Muriel could have been lured into becoming a gladiator for Lucio under the guise of punishing criminals and cleaning Vesuvia's streets from the cruel monsters who used to torment him growing up, only for the cruel reality of "justice" to come crashing down on him as he has to fight those poor destitute children who did not have a best friend to build a hut in the woods with, or did not have the magic to befriend an apprentice magician and live in their shop. So Muriel doesn't want to kill anymore, he doesn't want to be the justice that slaughters those other friends he'd once had, but Lucio threatens Asra, and Muriel must sacrifice the others he once knew in order to ensure Asra's safety.

Angsty? Yes, absolutely, but this is just the first verse! I must persist.

[Chorus 1]

Love you forever, don't let go of me I left my own homeland to chase reverie Gleymdu mér aldrei þó ég héðan flýg Gleymdu mér aldrei, elskan mín

So based off the first verse, the chorus, becomes a plea for Asra to not forget Muriel, to not abandon him as they go off with Asra, but that second line "I left my own homeland to chase reverie" well, if anyone's chasing reverie, it's Asra, isn't it? But Muriel did leave his homeland, though not just his physical homeland in the Shining Steppe, rather, Muriel and Asra left the streets of Vesuvia. Looking back on how Laufey expressed that feeling of leaving iceland, leaving poverty may have had a similar feeling for Asra and Muriel. Of course, there's much less to miss when you have to sleep on the streets and steal for food, but if we assume that Muriel and Asra knew some of the other kids or homeless folk who lived on the streets, there is a sort of community they could have been leaving behind. Not to mention, when Asra and Muriel made their hut together, they chose to live outside of Vesuvia and in the forest instead. Close enough to vesuvia to actually make contact and sell and buy things, but they still left Vesuvia in order to find their own happiness.

Now, I have to admit, this isn't really a perfect tie between the lyrics and Muriel's character it's a bit dubious and still feels a little off, but I feel like the point of Muriel's life the song references differs between the first and second verse, so this first chorus serves as a little bit of a transition between those two moments, most notably in the last two lines, in Icelandic, "Gleymdu mér aldrei þó ég héðan flýg / Gleymdu mér aldrei, elskan mín" In english, this translates into "Never forget me even if I fly away / Never forget me my love." This is where there's a much more clear break between Muriel's past in Vesuvia, and Muriel's forgotten history with the Kokhuri, as if we interpret the chorus as something directed to Asra, Muriel clearly isn't the one flying away, but if we interpret the line as something directed to the streets of Vesuvia, though Muriel may feel some bit of nostalgia to the place, it's certainly not enough to call it his "love". However, because it's sung in a different language, notably Lafey's (presumably) mother tongue, we can interpret this as being sung in the Kokhuri language for Muriel, something that when his only history meant the streets of Vesuvia or his life as a gladiator he does not understand yet. But we'll get to that the second time around.

[Verse 2]

I miss the wind, stone cold kiss on my cheeks Bends in your body, the hope of your spring Millions now hear my soliloquy I'm still that child on a black sand beach.

Muriel's route, despite it's many flaws, does something very interesting with it's concept of Muriel's past. We start the story with a general assumption on Muriel's character based on what we've seen of him in other routes, namely that he had a bad history growing up on the streets with Asra, and then becoming a gladiator under Lucio's command, which he hated. However, we learn at about the mid-point of the story, that Muriel has more history than that, history that he doesn't even know of, that helps to re-define who Muriel is and who he can see himself as. He is of Kokhuri blood, he had parents who loved him very much. The remaining part of the story is Muriel coming to terms with those two pasts of himself, but in the same way that we get that reveal of Muriel's deeper past in his route, Laufey's song also opens up to touch on that second part of Muriel's life.

Once again, Muriel's only real memory of the past was something he only had vague dreams of to remember it by, so there's little for him to actively remember details like the wind, or what it looked like in spring, but maybe there are vague little parts that he does remember in his dreams. Does he remember it being cold when he was sent away? Does he remember the smell of flowers maybe? Though this is a little bit of a weaker connection, I think that the dreamy-ness of the music can carry the connection a little easier.

But what of the soliloquy? Muriel is quite notorious for not giving speeches. Except a soliloquy isn't really a speech is it? No a soliloquy is a speech to oneself that the audience just so happens to hear. It's an inner monologue in a sense. So rather than an actual speech perhaps it's more akin to hearing Muriel's thoughts. But how can you hear a person's thoughts? Well, they have to speak (or sing) it aloud right? But the only people Muriel would speak those thoughts aloud to would be his friends like MC or Asra or Nadia or Portia or (tenuously) Julian, and that's four in total. While four is leagues better than the single friend he'd started out with, it's a far, far cry from "millions" right? Well another way for something to hear your thoughts is if it's an inhuman entity. Like, let's say a ghost. Ah, but ghosts can't hear your thoughts right? Well, that depends on how you define a ghost! Of course, the with more literal ghosts like Lucio, well I doubt he'd be able to hear Muriel's thoughts, but what about the ghosts that are stuck in your head? That haunt you not in a literal sense but in a metaphorical sense? Millions listen to Muriel's soliloquy because there are millions who fill his head haunting him as he wonders about this past he did not know, the past who are largely all dead and gone.

This links smoothly into the last line of this verse, "I'm still that child on a black sand beach". As Brainrot said in their post, this line absolutely represents Muriel SO WELL, but it also represents Muriel in SO MANY WAYS. The sand and the beach both evoke memories in Vesuvia, with the beach calling to mind how Muriel probably spent a lot of time with Asra under the docks when they were little and how Muriel might've almost drowned growing up like that based on the way he mentions how he doesn't like swimming in heart hunters. Of course, the sand evokes the memory of the colosseum, which was filled with sand and likely made him associate sand with that place. But the full words "Black Sand" evokes in my mind, ashes.

Now this is admittedly a bit of a stretch, but given what Morga mentioned when she confesses to Muriel about raiding the Kokhuri tribe, she mentions how her people were in need of food. Despite Muriel's experience as a gladiator (where he looks very explicitly starved!!) people who are starving might not be nearly as well coordinated or strong against those who are eating well. Furthermore, the presence of all those beetles and the fact that Lucio made his first deal with his village, makes me think that maybe the Scourge were the first people to be affected by the plague. So not only were they starving, they were sick with a plague that deteriorated their bodies (as we see with Lucio). While maybe Morga may have collected fighters that did not yet have the plague or were not affected by it, and were still able to eat somewhat well, their numbers might have been down considerably. All of this plus the way Morga encourages Muriel and MC to try to catch Lucio I can't help but imagine that she pulled some backhanded tricks of her own when raiding. One of these tricks may have been spreading the plague to the Kokhuri tribe (as seen by the various beetles on Khamgali's tapestry), but I also think that they could have used fires. I'm not all too sure if it was historically commonly used by raiders, but it certainly is a common trope in stories. So that black sand is something Muriel may have had to encounter as a child, it might have been the thing he only faintly remembers of his childhood. A smell that takes him back to a memory he doesn't really fully grasp.

And of course, the actual beaches of black sand—the Lazaret where Muriel buried the charred remains of those who died with the plague. There's something to be said about how the plague and fires seem to chase both Muriel and Lucio around, but that's perhaps a discussion for another time. For now, we return to the chorus, but from a different angle this time.

[Chorus 2]

Love you forever, don't let go of me I left my own homeland to chase reverie Gleymdu mér aldrei þó ég héðan flýg Gleymdu mér aldrei, elskan mín

And now we return to the chorus. Only, it sounds different now. It's stronger, with drums and brass making the whole moment seem like a desperate plea, one all too attached to that visceral final line, that black sand beach and all it's many meanings. Of course, with all those many meanings, this swell of the orchestra for the second chorus can evoke a lot of imagery to many different people. Muriel witnessing people burning in the fires of the Lazeret, him and Inanna running from the colosseum, possibly risking injury to Asra, maybe even looking for Asra in his escape, but the one that sticks to me most is the image of a child, barely old enough to walk, being torn away from his mother as his village burns to the ground. As his parents stay to fight, in hopes of ensuring that he'd survive.

He's left his homeland for a brighter future, to be somewhere without this war without this fighting, but he won't even remember what he's fleeing from. And once again we're hit with those Icelandic lines, which mean "Never forget me even if I fly away / Never forget me my love." I feel like in this moment, it's no stretch to assume that those lines were probably sung by his parents, in this association between Muriel's life and the lyrics. Sung in a language he doesn't understand until he revisits that "black sand beach" of his childhood, until Khamgali is there to explain and re-connect him back to his family history.

But—and I admit, this is a little nit-picky—the song doesn't really support the notion of a sudden secondary singer appearing out of nowhere to sing those lines of the chorus. Of course, it's a delicious interpretation, perhaps, Muriel mulling over the words he remembers from his brief childhood with his family but doesn't understand, or just the echoes of his past reaching out to haunt him, but what if it was something more than that? What if there' was something more that we're not considering?

[Outro]

The outro of the song is just Laufrey vocalizing softly, going "ooooooooo" a bunch of times along to the melody of the song. It's not the first time she does this, as it also appears after the first chorus, but well, it wasn't really applicable then. Now however, well.....

Within the original context of the song, it's a really pretty moment and helps to serve as a sort of denouement/falling action from the grand climax of the second chorus, slowly drawing the song to a close. It's soft, compared to the chorus, a return to that dreamy state the song has been upholding up until this point, sort of evoking that soft drowsy moment you wake up from a dream, or perhaps a fog clearing over the horizon.

Or even more than that, a ghost, fading from view.

Because, what if this song Wasn't from Muriel's POV? What if it was his parents. Their ghost haunting him as the reminisce about this life that they've given him. Now keep in mind, I'm not saying this interpretation of the song is supposed to replace the interpretation we just discussed looking at it all from Muriel's POV, but it serves as more of an added layer to our understanding of it. The same way new information at the end of a story can recontextualize a lot of the moments that might have been brushed off as just silly or "filler", or how for Muriel a lot of moments in his youth which he might have seen as something bitter or sad, when he wallowed in the assumption that he was an unloved child, can now be recontextualized with the knowledge that his parents just desperately wanted him to live. That he was a loved child, just one born during a bitterly misfortunate time.

So, with this new context lets revisit the song, because when I say the parent's POV slots in almost, perfectly:

"Hold up your chin, deep breath in, it's alright" While this is a rather common saying, it is also very commonly something that people typically told their children. A child perhaps going to their first day of school or trying to overcome some turmoil of a new day. I can imagine it being something his parents maybe wanted to tell him many times through his life as they watch over him as ghosts.

"here I begin missing him it's my plight" Of course this refers to missing Muriel, although can you really say you're missing him if you're there with him as a ghost? I'd like to argue yes, because they cannot touch him or interact with him. They cannot actually give him the advice (like "hold up your chin") that they want to give him.

"Nothing worth having has come to me easily" This line requires heavy speculation on what we might assume Muriel's parents' life before him to be like, but we can at the very least assume it could refer to their more nomadic lifestyle that lacks a lot of the common conveniences that we see in the modern day or even in Vesuvia. Alternatively, for an extra sprinkle of angst for Muriel, it could refer to the fact that maybe they were trying for children repeatedly, that maybe Muriel was the first and only child they got to have after a lot of struggle. Which of course, makes the next line hit even harder:

"I've sacrificed you, all of you completely" Because, maybe they did, Maybe Muriel's parents had some sort of leadership position, or maybe they just sent him away without telling anyone. In any case, when they sent Muriel away to ensure their safety, the fight might have become much less, protect the home and make sure as many people survives, to making sure Muriel survives. I don't think that they intentionally sacrificed everyone, but prioritizing Muriels escape might have made them a bit sloppy, something which they probably regret, with how many are dead, and how Muriel then no longer had a home to return to.

"Love you forever, don't let go of me" And now the chorus. What once was a desperate plea from Muriel, becomes now a desperate plea towards Muriel. A futile attempt to let him remember his family, remember his parents who loved and cherished him and wanted him to survive.

"I left my own homeland to chase reverie" Once again, there is no real reverie to be chased here, but in the context of Muriel's parents, well, their homeland is (presumably) the Shining steppe, so when they "left" their homeland, it was through their deaths. On one angle, we could interpret this as accepting death to go into some sort of "heaven" like place, but it could also just be Muriel's parents choosing not to haunt their homeland, but to haunt Muriel instead, to "chase" the "reverie" of the life he's living in a bigger city so far away from bloodshed (or so they had hoped)

"Gleymdu mér aldrei þó ég héðan flýg (Never forget me even if I fly away) Gleymdu mér aldrei, elskan mín (Never forget me my love)" And again, touching on the point of Muriel's parents begging him to not forget them, despite it being impossible for him to remember due to just how young he was when he left them. It's kind of funny in a cruel ironic way really, how Muriel, a character begging to be forgotten, could have parents that are begging to remember him. Fun, no?

"I miss the wind, stone cold kiss on my cheeks" As we move to the second verse, this imagery of Muriel's homeland becomes much more settled and much clearer, as his parents would definitely know these intimacies of the land they lived on. Even more though, the memory of physical touch, something they now lack as ghosts, unable to feel even the familiar winds that blow right through them.

"Bends in your body, the hope of your spring" This again, could be reminiscent of the feel of their homeland, of the plants they grew and cultivated so they would have something to harvest when they returned to the area sometime within their season or the next, but it also could refer to Muriel, holding him as a babe in their arms, soft and pudgy, hoping for his "spring" or hoping for him to be able to grow up. To be able to bloom and mature. They get to see it now, but they can't hold him anymore. There's no real hope in how he might have grown up, for they see now how he's grown up and how, he's had to suffer growing up all alone.

"Millions now hear my soliloquy" Once again, Muriel is haunted by many. Former opponents in the colosseum who could have been friends, the people he'd buried in the Lazaret, the people of the Kokhuri. I don't imagine Muriel's parents would be alone in their discussions of him, but I can imagine them knowing the most about him, having followed him for so long, trying to dissuade vengeful spirits from taking revenge on his soul.

"I'm still that child on a black sand beach." And once again, I feel that this line just hits so bitterly hard, because it opens so many implications once we view this from the perspective of Muriel's parents. It frames their actions as something being childish. Juvenile. Maybe something brought on by their own past traumas, Because what if this wasn't their first time witnessing a raid? What if their parents were killed in a previous raid? What if they had to witness that, had to witness the burning of their home once upon a time. It would explain why they were so quick to send Muriel away without them. Of course Khamgali did mention that Muriel's mother (?) had clairvoyance, and knew they would die, but why leave Muriel with a stranger? Khamgali survived, so why not leave him with her? Maybe Muriel's mother's clairvoyance was fuzzy and uncertain, maybe she just wasn't sure how many of them would survive, if any of them would, but maybe they were partly fuelled by their own past, their own traumas, their own past of having to witness death, and desperately wanting to make sure that Muriel wouldn't have to experience the same, only for him to find his way to bloodshed anyways, to be abandoned by that merchant, to be left to starve on the streets to have to fight to survive for so much of his life. I imagine they regret it, even if there was nothing they could have done otherwise.

And then of course, we return to the climactic second chorus, only now, not from the perspective of a child crying for his parents, but from parents sending away their child with a stranger, hoping that he'd survive as they fight against their impending doom, a death they know is coming for them. But all they can do is fight, fight and beg that Muriel would remember them, that Muriel would know how much they loved him, know how much they wanted him to survive and carry on for them, to live a good life away from all this fighting. Imagine the desperation as they're fighting. The way they hope against the odds that they might survive and find him. That they might be able to take him back, that they might be there to actually raise him. And of course, the bitter, bitter narrative irony, as they plead for him to remember him, as they call him their love, while we must sit and watch and know that Muriel never knew all of that. That he thought he was hated and loathed and discarded instead of saved.