The Devil In Meme

the fool

Out of all Supermassive Games, something has really clung to me about Directive 8020. Mitchell’s arc is absolutely amazing because it is constantly showing to fight against the first impression we, as players (which, added ‘in the perspective of others’), get of him. He is shown as somebody loud, social, wise-cracking, and—on the surface—easy to understand, which ironically makes him one of the easiest characters to misread. A lot of what makes his character SOOO interesting to me is that the story never really tells you there is more going on, because, well, he’s a side character. It just slowly creates little cracks in the image he shows the crew until you start realizing how much effort he puts into maintaining it. Or don’t.

He feels like somebody who built his personality around accessibility. He is approachable, seemingly easy to joke with, and good at keeping energy up within a group, which makes people gravitate toward him. The downside is that people who become “the easy one to talk to” are usually expected to stay that way, and often become the ones suffering the most in dire situations. A lot of his arc is somebody carrying that expectation far too long after it stops being easy because he feels the need to hide himself so desperately. He keeps performing normalcy because everybody around him benefits from it—including himself.

Something I see important is that Mitchell is never characterized in game through his direct vulnerability. Most of what matters about him comes from humor—and absence. What he avoids, what gets brushed aside with humor, what only shows up when he is under enough pressure that he cannot maintain the version of himself he prefers. His character writing relies strong on contrast. The bigger his persona is, the more noticeable the moments become when it disappears.

His relationship with confidence is also more complicated than it initially looks. I personally don’t think Mitchell is pretending to be confident as much as I think confidence became a constant habit for him. His confidence feels practiced, like something he’s repeated enough times that it eventually became part of him, even if the insecurity underneath grows with it. That makes his weaker moments stand out because they feel less like character shifts and more like interruptions.

Though I posted about this earlier, Imm still going to mentioned it because I think it’s just. So so so important for understanding what and how he’s hiding. The mimic aspect explored reinforces my statements because the mimics are hinted at connecting to things characters cannot escape. Mitchell’s mimic doesn’t focus on his strongest qualities, or the traits people immediately associate and assume is him. Instead, it drags quiet attention toward a moment where his certainty breaks down. It matters because it frames insecurity as something foundational rather than occasional. Though the encounter is brief, the fact that such interaction is optional deepens the importance. The mimic is using what Mitchell hides to sneak its way to the crew’s emotions.

' if you need to be mean, be mean to me. '

Mitchell’s development is less about gaining confidence and more about losing control over how carefully he manages people’s view of him. Earlier on, as seen in the cockpit with Young, he feels much more capable of directing attention where he wants it. As things get worse though, that control slips. People see more than he intended them to see, and he becomes harder to reduce to the role he originally filled. Mitchell tries his hardest to hide this—and when he does admit it, it’s to the person he believes would understand it best: Cernan. He shifts the conversation into a brief mention of how he believes he’s fucked up most of everything in his life. He goes to Cernan because he trusts him, because he knows he’s calm. He knows he can rely on him.

Despite all this, he never really abandons who he is. He stays funny. He stays social. He stays himself. The difference is that those traits slowly stop functioning as protection and start functioning as actual parts of him instead. By the end, Mitchell feels less like somebody maintaining a character and more like somebody who got exhausted trying to keep one together. His outburst on Anders isn’t some hateful remark—it’s his hope for a distraction. He knows he’s losing himself, so he directs attention onto someone else who’d stand out.

The heavily implied absence of Mitchell’s dad also matters as a side note because it adds context to why so much of his personality feels built around maintaining an image that he obviously does not fit. Obviously though, absent parents don’t automatically create absent traits, but with Mitchell, there are enough faint patterns that it feels incredibly important. He comes across as somebody who learned early on that if foundation or stability is hard to come by, then personality becomes something you build controlled. Being funny, approachable, useful, or easy to be around stops being just personality and instead becoming something built to hide yourself. A lot of his behavior feels centered around making sure he is doing something. Keeping energy up. Filling silence. Staying valuable.

It explains why vulnerability feels so indirect with him. Mitchell rarely seems comfortable placing emotional weight onto other people and is shown directly to instead redirect, joke, or, even worse, snap back. This is shown very briefly if Young talks to him after the clone discovery is made. Young. Of all people. He’s that desperate. If somebody important is absent while you grow up, feeling naturally sufficient is hard to get and parts of Mitchell feel very repetitive with that. What makes this interpretation interesting is that it does not center his arc around his dad specifically. The absence itself feels less important than what it may have taught him, because so much of Mitchell’s development revolves around the version of himself he built in response to that instability and what happens when he can no longer maintain it as easily. Part of him thinks that if he tries hard enough, he’ll impress his father enough to gain what he so desperately needs.