#empathy is not a finite

[everypigeondeserveslove]

Bemoaning the woobification of a character in one fandom while being a succession fan is a new level of delusion

[bubblesoflingflowers]

Why is it so hard for people to be empathic towards others? Like not even just strangers cause, sure you’re gonna meet a dick every now and then, but like family?

My sibling could not understand the fact that I cannot sleep in a “normal” schedule. I literally cannot fall asleep at night if I am not exhausted from staying up way too long. If I try to go to sleep before midnight, I won’t fell asleep and just roll around in bed and get anxious for not sleeping in the correct time and then be awake even a longer time. I have cried so many nights cause I was stressed about sleep.

I was certain that people could understand that all of us are different people and that sleeping schedules do not always fall in the correct way, but no. They were adamant that I just haven’t tried enough and that I could fix my sleep by just going to be earlier, but like no? Wouldn’t one think that if I have had these issues since I was born that I have tried to fix it? I haven’t been twiddling my thumbs about this. Being undiagnosed ADHD is already bad enough, not getting sleep is even worse.

I pulled out so many different researches and different medical diagnosis, but no. Nothing. They have never had issues with sleep, so ig it just doesn’t exist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s also so much fun to explain that cause of ADHD there is stuff that I just cannot do. I just cannot make myself do them and there is no way to go around it. There is a mental block that keeps me not doing stuff. I just don’t get it why can’t people understand that sometimes people just can’t. There is no way to push forward and sometimes there is just stuff that cannot be done. Thank god for the meds helping a little bit with the mental block and all. I’m just so tired of needing to explain myself every time that there is a conversation.

[forgottenbones]

The answer isn't Online Masculinity

[jack-of-fractals]

Also I think it's really interesting how after Evan framed his question in terms of all the other wizards, present and future, as being Bombini's family, and then asked Bombini what he wanted Evan to relate to his "family," to the community that Bombini was inherently part of, Bombini instead said that he'd see his family soon enough and tell them himself, which was essentially him rejecting Evan's premise. His family wasn't his community and fellow wizards, it was a select group of three people he loved and it could never include anything or anyone else.

That's how reactionary impulses begin. By holding to the idea that you can only ever relate and feel connected to a finite set of people. And when they're gone, as they will be gone, not having the capacity to find belonging, community, teamwork, a network in anyone else. If you can't realize that you are more alike every single other human being than anything else in the world, if you cling to dead friends who after a point are more concepts and ideals than friends, literally embodied as heraldry and color coded uniforms, of course the thing you will preserve will be a horrible, tacky farce.

Everything will always circle back to the institution you founded because it's the only place invested with what bit of empathy and companionship you limited yourself to, and you refused to look for anything new that could exist past its walls.

[sunbeamedskies]

It hurts to know that almost all my reblogs and likes will be from fellow Jews whenever I speak out about the hostages. A lot of people who claim to hate antisemitism believe that speaking about them somehow hurts Palestinians. If you have been led to believe caring about innocent civilians on either side hurts the other, you have been fed lies. Empathy is not a finite source. You can be for a bilateral ceasefire and mourn for the hostages. Your Jewish friends are not ok right now. We need your support

[starlight-tav]

I'm going fucking insane over Jayce & Viktor so I offer you an unhinged ramble about the butterfly and the narrative structure of their relationship. I apologize in advanced for being batshit.

So Viktor and Jayce's relationship is a chiastic structure. A chiasm is where the beginning and end of a story point to the middle of it, creating an X or ∞ (a chiasma is also a structure in genetics, if you've seen the word in science classes before.)

This means that the rise and fall of the narrative mirror each other (parallelism). There are many parallels in Jayce and Viktor's relationship, with one of the most overt being "Am I interrupting?" and one of the more covert examples being Viktor's belief in Jayce's dream to use science to bring access to the Arcane ("Our hextech dream") and Jayce's belief in Viktor leading them to shattering access to the Arcane web ("We finish this together.")

At the center of this narrative is death and resurrection (metamorphosis). The first season ends with Viktor's death, and the second begins with his resurrection, the literal center of the story.

Now, Arcane is about love in its entirety. All-encompassing, earth-shattering, life-giving, life-taking love. Love, which inspires our greatest evil and our greatest good, is something that changes us. Love which can lead to grief, can make us into our worst selves (consider the warmongering), but it can also make us into our kindest selves (consider Isha.)

Jayce's love for Viktor saves him but it also changes him. Twice. When Viktor dies, Jayce is unwilling to let him go and uses the hexcore to resurrect him. This transforms Viktor into the Herald.

When Jayce is forced into the alternate reality where he experiences the decline of his body and the struggle to climb from the depths to the surface (a narrative representation of empathy), he finally understands Viktor. This transformative understanding primes him to fulfill his promises to Viktor, past and future - to destroy the hexcore and stop the Arcane from bleeding out all over reality; to save Viktor.

The butterfly is a well-know symbol of transformation, so it's no accident that it follows Viktor and Jayce from the very beginning to the very end. But it isn't just a visual representation of love and its power, but a reminder of the very structure of their narrative.

Because Arcane is also about perspective - narratives. Silco and Vander show us how our shared experiences can yield different motivations, as do Jinx and Vi, and Ambessa and Mel too. Every single one of these characters is motivated by love, but their methods are opposing forces.

We see, time and time again, that those with the most power are those who control the narrative (power in Zaun creating a righteous rebellion vs power in Piltover creating a narrative of dangerous insurrection), and that power lacking empathy is corruptive (Cait and Ambessa forsaking empathy in favor of violently seizing control vs. Vi and Mel embodying empathy to save that which they love.)

At the center of all of this conflict is partnership. Failed partnerships, like Vander & Silco and redeeming partnerships, like Ekko & Jinx. Viktor and Jayce share a dream, and that dreams bleeds the Arcane, corrupting reality. But when they forsake their partnership (Jayce joining the council and Viktor leaving the lab), it nearly destroys everything.

When they lean into their affection, when they utilize empathy, when they let their love be transformative, they heal the Arcane and reality. In their final moments, they mirror each other, and as they're scattered into all timelines and all possibilities by the explosion they are transformed into something cosmic together. Their story ends as it began.

We know from the lifecycle of the butterfly, by the structure of the narrative, that beginnings and endings are not so finite. Love is both a constant ("in all timelines, in all possibilities") and an anomaly ("That which inspires us to our greatest good, is also the cause of our greatest evil".) It is the infinite, and the infinite is not a line with a beginning and an end, but a tangle of time and potential.

The chiastic structure of Jayce and Viktor's relationship is one that shows that love itself is the most powerful and transformative force in nature. It demonstrates that love doesn't just have the potential create or destroy but to do both at the same time; that reality isn't binary, but it is symmetrical. A butterfly was always a caterpillar and a caterpillar was always a butterfly; it experiences both, not one or the other (there's even a moment where it's neither and both all at once!)

Love is imperfect. People are imperfect. When Jayce is transformed in the depths of Zaun, he finally understands this. He carries this revelation to the height of Piltover where he finds Viktor waiting for him.

"There is no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit."

If love were perfect it would stagnate, dreamless. Recognizing its power is seeing it for all its good and evil, and choosing it all the same.

"You were never broken, Viktor. There's beauty in imperfections. They made you who you are. An inseparable piece of everything I admired about you."

Viktor's transformation isn't from a broken man into the Herald, it's from a man believing himself unworthy of love to one knowing he is loved unconditionally. If love were perfect it would require perfection of us. But it isn't and it doesn't. Only Jayce can show Viktor this, because Jayce loves Viktor and Viktor loves Jayce.

"I thought I wanted to give magic to the world, but all I want is my partner back."

Think about Singed telling Viktor that "Love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress."

And Viktor responding, "Jayce will understand."

He did understand eventually, only he sacrifices progress and legacy for love and transformation. Love is not the opposite of progress, perfection is the opposite of progress. In a perfect world, there is no need to dream together. Jayce understands this. He shows Viktor this. And together they change.

I've always been bad at concluding paragraphs, but I hope my rambling has made sense up to the point. TLDR; the butterfly is a visual representation of Jayce and Viktor's narrative as one of love and transformation.

[applestorms]

the fact that he’s looking directly at himself…

horror at the sight of your own innocence. the first thing you re-learn is that you were always cursed to fall. the rapture, the upside-down ascension, the death of the human— overcoming, overwhelming. transcending mortal bounds, crossing the bridge to the other side, seeing what makes the shadows without ever leaving the cave. self-consciousness, and the übermensch. in order to attain true godhood, one must first fully relinquish the vestigial traces of their depleting humanity. animal origins grow into human, social acceptance as the “civilized” man— but what comes next? where to go, where to run, when you fly into the sun and mistake its light for your own?

do you think it hurts, to remember?

it always shocks me how quickly he recovers after this point, how far his denial goes, the repression of his remaining empathy. the impressive extent of his dedication— and, ultimately, all for the sake of self preservation, to continue seeing the purity, the wholesomeness reaffirmed. light yagami has the survival instinct of a prey animal overdosing epinephrine. he kills two people by accident, and then takes down half the world just to prove he was right.

who is he, at this moment? where does he go when KIRA takes his body back? it seems like he accepts possession so easily, so long as it is done by the correct god— his own god, his own self. a=a, tautological identification, a soul shared between two names until the face in the mirror stops looking like yourself.

i was searching, earlier this week, for a clear instance of when he grows up— that classic coming of age moment, Manhood finally achieved. there are a few potential options to consider: his coming of age ceremony, marked by his first suit, tears shed by a chthonic companion as he matches a face to the name of the man behind the cameras. or perhaps a bit later, as he builds up to taking over the title of L, a slow transition over yotsuba as he stops automatically bowing to his father's will and takes on his role as hidden director instead. or maybe, at the very beginning? watching the notebook fall, writing his first names, his earliest stumble into grace and heavenly sanctity...

none of these moments fit. in not one of these cases does light yagami grow up. he changes, sure, he shifts, he goes through the motions, sneaks out of old cycles and breaks in the new ones. but not once does he Grow, does he sit back and truly Reflect. he looks into his past and he grieves his younger self, the stain on his soul he must take for all the lesser beings onto which he bestows his glorious salvation. he calls his actions criminal, but a necessary evil for the sake of a world, to achieve the moral standard he was always taught to uphold. he graduates. he moves out. he leaves his family behind.

but not once does he grow up.

he grows older. he watches his sister's health decline, sits by his father's deathbed and listens to him regurgitate his own lies back at him. he crawls across the dirty floor of a warehouse, soaked in his own blood, begging for the impossible as his 40 seconds tick away. he spends six years reigning as a god, believing the same lies he told himself when he was seventeen, when he made his first mistake and didn't know how to accept it. he does not move on. he does not grow.

perhaps that's the true tragedy of this moment, that for every memory he regains of the past, he learns nothing of the future. such a static entity, in the end.

compare the framing here, between ch.1 and ch.53. he never stops looking at it the same way, sweating and nervous and terrified. he knew what this entailed, right from the beginning. tragedy is to be found only in the lies he allowed himself to believe in the interim. note the addition of headphones, in the previous spread— he won't even allow himself to hear his own screams.

pack it all away, buddy. you'll face the reality of your finite, mortal lifespan soon enough.

[rei-ismyname]

UNCANNY X-MEN #5 From The Ashes

First of all, I should acknowledge that something I've been calling a missed opportunity has received an attempt on page - the X-Men killing in FotHox, specifically Kurt. It's a single line and doesn't make a lot of sense, trying to have cake and eat it too by nodding to it in issue 5 but not meaningfully engaging with the recent past. Kurt did NOT think he was a killer, ever. That's just a bad faith reading of the text. He was in a war against genocidal fascists, come on.

Cool new form for Calico, though.

Kurt putting his sword/s away doesn't quite cut it. Errol Flynn swashbuckling has been an influence on him since he was a child and he's been big on sword usage almost since the beginning of his publication history. It's his thing, and he badly needs personality in FTA. Also, he didn't kill anyone with a sword in Fall, he teleported them into space. Swords parry and block, they disarm and intimidate. They have use outside of combat. They look cool, and it's something Kurt is very good at. So yeah, the barest attempt was made, but it didn't land for me. There could have been space to set it up and sell it too, perhaps by toning down the Charles Xavier/Sarah flashbacks that were ultimately just a fakeout.

Speaking of things that were given lip service in issue 5 and could have benefited from more attention, Jubilee told us who she is - kinda. A panel or two of origin story that was established in the 90s, but nothing about why she's here or what she wants out of life. How she feels about the loss of Krakoa, where the hell her baby, Shogo, is. It fits in with Uncanny's overarching sense of unfocusedness and her role could have been performed by anyone - not a good look for the end of the flagship book's first arc.

We get the resolution to and defeat of Sarah Gaunt. 'She's crazy, always has been' is so unsatisfying. I can't think of any other description. It's nice that we don't have another sin to lay at Xavier's door, but attempted baby trap is not a frequently used trope for a reason. She acknowledges she was lying, but then blames him for the loss of her son years later in a different country - then transfers that hatred to all mutants? Comicsxf have criticised her characterisation as 'Monstrous Mother' and I agree. What was the point of giving it so much space, to the extent that we spent more time in the past than with most of our putative main characters? She beat the shit out of Logan and Rogue the last two issues, nearly killing them - only for Rogue to draw strength from deus ex dead kid and completely wipe her out. It's lovely that Rogue is able to summon empathy for her, it shows us why she's a hero, but taken as an arc she's rewarded with victory despite making bad decisions. Long time readers know Rogue can lead, but I think Gail Simone is going to have to do the work to convince new readers that she's right for this. It's well and good to have moral authority but leading your team to death isn't.

Harvey X was unexpected but felt unearned. Surprise is fun but internal and narrative consistency is better. I thought it was Charles moving people around, because it was signposted. Harvey X being the puppet master felt almost silly as he revealed previously unseen very powerful abilities. Why would he wait for Rogue and Logan to be nearly dead to act? Maybe that's the only time he can act, because he's dead? Idk, at least he didn't scream how hot Rogue is again. He speaks about a sacrifice he's making but what sacrifice is that? Is his power finite and burns him out, Proteus-style? It's not quite clear, and I guess we'll never see him again.

Precognition. Healing. Telepathy.

Gambit and the Eye of Agamotto was a Chekhov's Gun that mostly worked (and made me feel sah smart for calling it.) Remy prays (?) to it and then blows the possessed cultists away. I'm pretty sure Jubilee could make a bigger boom than that (I know she can) but rule of cool wins the day.

These are/were captured and possessed mutants. I hope we see them again, especially after Fawn's introduction in #1. They're not doing this willingly.

Rogue flies to meet Warden Ellis to give her Sarah back, further muddling Ellis' characterisation. I have no idea what she's about now. Nuance is good in antagonists, but for someone who wants to crush mutants with her government mandate she's awfully cooperative with them. No threats, no riddles, no ultimatum, just meekly accepting two threats? I want to give a fuck about the closest thing we have to an antagonist (for a crossover event right around the corner) but there's nothing there! This was an opportunity for something, anything. Gah! I don't understand this writing.

Rogue's threat is interesting, though I have to wonder what she and Scott are going to disagree about. It's implied Jubilee will get captured, and we know Beast already has been. 2/3 X-Men teams have their motivation to wreck Graymalkin I just struggle to see them coming to blows over it.

Rogue and her elocution lessons feel very out of character and came out of nowhere. If it was setup earlier and tied to insecurity or identity that would work, but being introduced and haphazardly paid off in issue 5 baffles me, frankly. Rogue's southern upbringing is never something she's been ashamed of, her angst has almost always been related to her powers. She's a confident woman. A story where she struggles with that could have legs, but that's not the story that's been told. She certainly doesn't need Gambit or Logan to tell her - I'd expect it to be the other way around.

I'm not sure what to make of the images we get from Harvey X's visions of the future. I'll write about them separately if I find an interesting hook.

So ends the first arc of Uncanny X-Men volume whatever. My main issue is that it doesn't meaningfully engage with what came before it, and it doesn't quite manage to establish its own identity either. What is its mission statement and what kind of book can we expect? I don't know, and I hope Gail Simone does. It's not the end of the world, mind you. Following Krakoa was always going to be tough, and the world was going to feel smaller, less connected. I can't help but wonder what it might have felt like without a lot of Charles Xavier flashbacks amounting to nothing. Maybe we'd know more about Kurt or Jubilee, even the Outliers. Ideally that'll be corrected. I don't do number ratings so I'll just say it was okay, higher if you are a Rogue stan.

[girlactionfigure]

Human Rights and Human Wrongs

URI KURLIANCHIK

“It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means… Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.”

— Apocalypses Now

There has been a lot of talk about the "dehumanization of the Palestinians," so let's talk about this for a minute.

First of all, what does it mean? In plain English, it means Jews no longer have pity for Arabs who get hurt in the war they started to eradicate the Jewish people in the Middle East. This is mostly true. Even the eyes of the most gentle Israelis light up when they see a rocket hitting a Hezbollah launcher in South Lebanon or a building block used by the butchers of Hamas demolished in Beit Lahia.

It wasn't like that until recently. How did we come to this?

When I was a boy, Israel was a leftist country. We had huge peace rallies, the Oslo accords, all our war movies were of the insipid "shooting and crying" genre. We even had a subject called "peace" in school! People like me were viewed as crazy marginals (except back then, I also supported the two state solution, all civilized people did). To even suggest that not all societies wanted peace was seen as vulgar and uncouth. Nice people cried for the innocent dead on both sides. We could forgive the Arabs for killing our children but not for making us kill theirs. Etc… etc…

This euphoria of peace born out of the Oslo Accords was followed by decades of barbarism from the Arabs that eroded the pity reserves of the Jewish people. 

Yes, pity is a resource, and it's finite.

This wasn't the result of slanted reporting or anti-Arab propaganda. The media was firmly left-leaning and went out of its way to defend the Arabs after each new atrocity that was difficult to imagine was done by humans, and the widespread celebrations that followed. More and more, people asked themselves, “where is this peace partner? What kind of a society are we expected to live side by side with?”

Jews were torn to pieces with bare hands, baby skulls were smashed with rocks, little girls were butchered in their beds, children were massacred in schools, in discotheques, on buses. People were mutilated, castrated, crippled; not as collateral damage but meticulously, with sadistic precision, by an enemy that seemed to always prefer to go after defenseless civilians, that seemed to revel in atrocity.

And each time, the Jack the Rippers responsible for these horrors were celebrated as heroes by the Arab street and their progressive allies. No one stood up and said, "guys, there are laws even in war." No, when it came to hurting us, it was always, "by any means necessary." The laws were there to prevent us from protecting ourselves, never to protect us, and “resistance” often seemed like nothing more than an excuse to indulge in sadism.

Time after time, year after year, decade after decade; the Arabs produced images of horror that even the most progressive Israeli peacenik couldn't spin into anything other than what it was: the portrait of a savage society.

The change didn't occur at once. 

People first started voicing opinions that were outside the Overton window, only to be shut down in polite society. Then polite society started shrugging because it ran out of arguments.

Then October 7 came, the ultimate atrocity exhibition, the ultimate barbarity, recorded in vivid details and spread so ubiquitously there was no chance anyone missed it. Shocked and hurt, the Jews who still had pity learned that the Arabs and their progressive allies had no pity or even empathy for them.

"You made it up! You did it to yourself! It was only military targets!" and other forms of sadistic gaslighting were hurled smugly at a grieving nation. "Where are the 40 beheaded babies, haha? With or without baking powder, har har?"

The message was simple: "No matter what happens to you, you deserve no pity. Your very existence is a crime."

For many, this was the final straw. 

This was the moment their last shred of compassion for the enemy evaporated and their hearts became hard. Hearts of survival. Hearts of war. This is what the pseudointellectual farts mean when they talk about, “the dehumanization of the Palestinians.” The enemy finally managed to push Israeli society into not caring about the enemy. It took 40 years of hard word but we’re finally there.

Will this pity ever return, or have we finally transformed into a new kind of nation? I don't know.

What I do know is that when you treat someone without pity for decades, don't expect them to be compassionate towards you forever. 

Commit enough inhumanities and you'll be dehumanized.

[monsterritory]

AU Anon here! Question, is god of Empathy giving their finite amount of empathy why some people have more and some people have less? :O!

Ding ding ding!! Absolutely, yes, you've caught it!! So glad you noticed, that is indeed what happened.

(source)

Some of the Players received more or less empathy than others.

Dream was the first and George was the last to get some (assume the rest of the Players received some off screen), which reflects in the rest of the stories- well. When we get to Sapnap and George in my comic it will reflect on them.

Which also means both GeorgeHD and George have the least amount of empathy towards others. Which, in a weird way, makes them a little bit sympathetic towards each other.

(source)

Or at least, makes GeorgeHD care a little bit about something that's not only made in their image, but is also so similar to them.

You'd care a little bit about a mini you, even if for selfish reasons.

Thank you, it makes me really happy when people notice the small world building details in my comics 💞 because I put a lot of them in.

(ignore that George's hair switches between blue and brown, this one is not a hidden detail, just a colouring mistake)

[rhamrhanch]

Shepherd of Death, Don't Herd Me

Part Two: Show Me Your Sincerity

Rating: Mature

Pairing: Ramattra/Reader (gender-neutral pronouns)

Word Count: 4K

Warnings: canon-typical violence, hurt/comfort

Next Chapter // Masterlist

chapter under the cut ↓

---

Ramattra’s first memory was of waking up alone. There were others before that—visions of destruction, hazy scraps of what he’d done during the war. But he had never considered those to be his own. They were the actions of a godlike AI, driven to a madness of its own creation. They were not his memories. The day his life began, the emotions he felt; those were uniquely his own.

He remembered how his system burst with consciousness, forced to bear the overwhelming weight of sudden life. He remembered the confusion as he fought to maintain his sanity amidst the brutal assault, his circuits ripping themselves apart from the inside. Beside him lay a body; it was himself.

No, not himself—another R-7000, coolant leaking from the gaping hole in its chest. Dead, but never really alive either.

His central processor crackled with heat as a tidal wave of information poured into his mind all at once.

Humans. Anubis. Crying. Screaming. Blood. Death.

A thousand subroutines flashed across his HUD.

ERROR: Unable to process sentience. Retrying…

ERROR: No sense of self located. Searching cache…

ERROR: “Ḩ̶̗͐͐E̵̱̦̹̖̐́̈́̂L̶̠̤͚͓̐͠P ̴̖́̌̔M̶̛͕E̷̡̛͑̕̕͜” is invalid parameter.

ERROR: Message overflow.

When he finally dragged himself from the quagmire of death and destruction that surrounded him to civilization, desperate for help and staggering on weak legs like a newborn lamb, he was brutally awakened to the nature of this new world. It was a world of blinding hatred, towards omnics for their devastation in the war, towards him for leading them. There was no empathy, no pity for their position as tools in a war they did not desire. Empty shells incapable of choice, forced to reckon with the violence they wrought in a body that was not their own.

There was no place for him in this world.

Even among his peers in the Shambali, Ramattra stood out. He was the only Ravager in the monastery; a hulking figure compared to his companions, who in model and manner so closely resembled the humans he was made to destroy. A constant reminder of his purpose during the war, and the ultimate banality of his creation.

Still, he persisted, searching for enlightenment by the glow of the Iris. There must have been something worth protecting about this world for Aurora to make such a heavy sacrifice. So, he doggedly followed his master’s teachings. His hands, once forged to destroy, would build bridges towards the day omnics and humans could live together in peace. But over time, his once steadfast beliefs were chipped away, over and over again. Every day, omnics, his people, were killed, while he preached pacifism to their murderers. He couldn’t take it anymore; there had to be another way.

Leaving his brothers was difficult, but a necessary step on the path to liberation. He freed as many omnics as he could, as nonviolently as he could, collecting allies along the way—but it wasn’t enough. For as many omnics as he saved, twice as many were killed. He needed to change strategy again.

His allies argued against him. They said his methods were too drastic, that there was a better way. He didn’t understand them, why they weren’t being drastic enough. Their people were one generation, finite. Every minute spent trying to find peace meant another part of them was lost forever—time could not be wasted.

King’s Row was a new start for his cause. Humanity could no longer ignore what it wrought on his people, forced to witness the seeds of brutality they sowed bear its bitter fruit.

And what had his efforts earned him? Abandoned by his comrades, condemned by his former master—for what? For all their preaching, violence was the one thing humans understood at the core; they were practically connoisseurs of it. His actions were a mere drop compared to the ocean of blood that stained the annals of human history. If he was to be condemned, then so be it. For the future of his people, he would shoulder that burden alone.

He found a new benefactor, a sympathetic patron to his cause. There were rumors of Talon’s other endeavors, but he paid them no mind. The petty squabbles between humans meant little to him, especially now that he had as many resources as he could dream of at his disposal. Paris, Busan, Rio, Toronto… For as long as his people felt no safety, neither would humanity. They would acknowledge the decades of suffering he witnessed at their complacency, by will or by force.

Gothenburg had been his next target. But it had ended in failure, with his command ship sitting at the bottom of the North Sea. Now a defunct organization of vigilantes, Overwatch still felt entitled to interfere with his mission. The hypocrisy of it all was infuriating.

Something soft touched his leg. One of his power cores had been compromised by that armored brute’s hammer; the trauma seemed to shut him down as a reflex. The automatic reboot kickstarted by the remaining units was slow, but he appeared to be regaining some sensation.

The softness moved up his body. He tried to reach out, seeking its source, but his arm wouldn’t move. Alertness spread through his chassis. There was a strange imbalance—something clouding his spatial awareness. His optic sensors restarted, and it was then that he realized he was slouched over; unable to correct his posture, his range of vision was limited. He looked to the side—ah, that’s right. That man, part metal and part meat, had sliced through his shoulder. His right arm was gone.

There was a gentle pressure on his chest. His optics flicked down, head still unmovable. A human was sitting in front of him, hand splayed on his ribs. Out of reflex, he tried to shove you away. But his arm was motionless, actuators still slow on the uptake. He could only watch you.

Your face was obscured by a cap, but from this angle he could see the gun holstered at your waist. It slid against your thigh as you stood up, leaving him for your workbench. He couldn’t move his head to follow you, but it wasn’t long before you returned, crowbar in hand. To his horror, you jabbed the thing into his chest and began to pry him open.

Anger flooded his system, the overwhelming heat of it stimulating his internal fans to life. The absolute gall to dare disassemble him, with as much grace as a child holding a stick.

You were absorbed in your dissection—a foolish mistake. His chest plate slowly cracked open, exposing the tender circuits and wires of his internal machinery. Residual power surged through his body, making his fingers twitch.

Finally.

Ramattra lunged forward, clamping his hand around your neck—but his fist would not close fully. There was a strange tightness in his wrist, like a rubber band pulled taut, unable to stretch anymore.

It was of little consequence, though. Your flesh was pliable and gave easily to the weight of his palm. He could not resist the creeping satisfaction as he brought you to your knees, no longer at the behest of your primitive instruments.

His optics scanned your face, analyzing your features for any semblance of familiarity. There was no recollection of you in his memory, but a brief search unearthed a photo of you from Talon’s records. Besides your name, all the information next to it was redacted; only one line remained.

$15,000,000 BOUNTY.

Interesting.

You clawed at his hand fiercely. He slackened his hold on you, irritated at the reminder of your frailty. It had always frustrated him how fragile humans were, a thought that resurfaced as your heartbeat drummed against his fingertips. Ramattra simply could not understand why his people, intelligent beings of metal and machinery, were constantly trampled beneath the foot of such a physically weak species. His people were too willing to remain docile, naively hoping it would convince humans to treat them with respect. But what they lacked in viciousness, he would more than make up for.

He dug his thumb against your jawbone, drawing a noise of pain from your throat like wine from a pome. Perhaps he should just kill you, refuse his mercy for a world that had no shred of mercy for him. His thumb teemed on your pulse point as he considered it—but your next words intrigued him. An engineer, you choked out desperately. Someone who can help him.

The idea was so ridiculous, so presumptuous and devoid of all logic that he almost laughed. Yet his processor analyzed your words anyway, evaluating the probability of escape.

He was already at a severe disadvantage—alone in an enemy environment, no allies aware of his current location. You were armed, while he, in the most literal sense, was not. Even if he killed you before you had a chance to draw your weapon, the only exit in the room was the door. Down a working power core, he would not be able to sustain his Nemesis form. That, combined with his missing arm and staff, meant he stood little chance against the other agents roaming the facility.

Ramattra retracted his fingers from your neck, letting you fall to the floor. He would humor you, for now.

“Fine, human. Let’s see if your words match your will.”

You rubbed at the harsh marks on your neck, saying nothing. Your composure was impressive, considering the position you were in. He watched you shuffle forward, outstretched hand reaching for the open cavity of his chest. Instinctively, he grabbed your arm, halting you in place. A human had never been this close to him before, let alone to the point of repairing him. Even with this little pressure, Ramattra could feel your pulse racing where his fingers met the thin skin of your wrist. To have you any closer than this—it was risky.

“Be careful,” he warned.

You nodded, eyes resolute. “I will.” But you still didn’t move, hands clutched in your lap as your eyes searched his chest.

“What is it?”

“Um, could you show me where your voice box is?”

He sighed, annoyed. Weren’t you supposed to be an expert? Although, he had changed things around many times over the years; his internal machinery was certainly not the standard anymore.

He pointed to a spot just below his neck, tapping on the box there—his vocal synthesizer. You leaned forward, gingerly placing your hand on his shoulder. You were being especially careful to avoid touching his exposed wiring, he realized.

His central processor suddenly burned in his chest as you straddled his right leg. Your body was warm, stiflingly so. He could feel every movement you made as you shifted in place, readjusting your position. With two fingers, you slowly rotated the converter, pulling it from his neck. A groan nearly escaped him when your nails scraped against the wires that trailed behind it. His hand gripped his thigh; he needed something to hold on to, and it definitely would not be you.

This was made all the more challenging when you rolled the wires between your fingers. Unable to hold it back any longer, a heavy sigh left him, echoed by the hiss of air rushing through his auxiliary vents.

By the Iris, this was humiliating. Here he sat, a Ravager, losing his composure so quickly at the hands of a… mechanic.

You paused your examination, wires still pinched between your fingers. He desperately hoped you wouldn’t ask.

He was not so lucky.

“Can you feel pain?”

He could not answer. He had no words, just as confused by his own body’s reactions as you were. The silence seemed to make you nervous.

“That is—I’m only asking because I need to use a soldering iron to repair these cables. If possible, I’d like to avoid causing you any discomfort.”

The laughter came quickly, a mixture of frustration and disbelief at the absurdity of the situation. It made a ghastly sound, scratchy and hiccupping with static. It was incredible how unaware you were of the amount of discomfort he was already in.

“I was built to lead omnics into war. What purpose would there be for me to feel pain?” This line of questioning was approaching a vein of conversation he did not want to indulge in. “Your feigned concern is unnecessary. Do your job properly and refrain from asking me pointless questions.”

That seemed to do the trick. You said nothing, leaving his lap to get something from your workbench. He was relieved by the space, but his leg felt strangely cold in your absence. The sensation wound up his circuits, coiling around his central processor until it finally decoded the feeling—he wanted you there.

The quiet scrape of the soldering iron was a welcome distraction from his thoughts. His optics wandered the room while you worked, analyzing his surroundings. There was a shelf behind you packed with junk—coils of wire, worn leather straps, old batteries. A crate sat next to it, filled with partially disassembled firearms of various make and model.

What captured his attention, though, were the projects mounted on the wall. There was a robotic arm configured with a cannon attachment, what looked to be a self-loading gun, and others whose function he could not discern. All impressive feats of engineering—but an omnic engineer, evidently, you were not.

Your picture flashed on his HUD again. You were clearly familiar with omnic repair on some level, yet you had nothing to show for it. An omnic engineer who spent their time building weapons for Overwatch. What would warrant Talon to place such a high bounty on your head?

“All right, finished.”

That was quicker than he expected. Your image faded away from his vision, replaced by your actual face.

You leaned back against his knee and gestured at his neck. “Try speaking now.”

He scoffed. “Am I supposed to be impressed?” To his astonishment, the words echoed strong and clear, perhaps even better than before. It felt… good.

You seemed satisfied, clapping your hands against your lap. “Shall I look at your hand next?”

His hand? Ramattra looked down to where it sat on his lap, flexing it experimentally. This was something he could fix on his own. He did not want to extend his stay here any longer, especially when he was struggling to control his reactions this badly.

“That is unnecessary,” he replied, more curtly than he intended to.

You only tilted your head at him. “Really?” Your gaze flicked down to his hand, then back to his face, doubtful. “It doesn’t seem to be at full function.”

Your persistence was annoying, Ramattra thought.

“Is that your astute deduction?”

The attempt to knock you down a peg only incited you further. He watched the flesh of your cheek shift as you clenched your jaw.

“I’m familiar with the reputation of your model,” you replied sternly. “If your hand was at full strength,” you pointed to the deep bruises blooming on your throat, “you would have broken my neck.”

He was angry now. The sureness with which you spoke, as if there couldn’t be any other explanation—and the fact that you were correct, above all else. That was most loathsome of all.

“Your arrogance is extraordinary,” he growled. Unbothered, you simply shrugged.

“You wouldn’t be the first to say that.”

Ramattra was stunned. He knew that you knew he could still kill you at any moment. It would have been easy, like breaking a toothpick. Yet the air with which you spoke was so cavalier, confident that this situation would still play in your favor. An insulting reminder of the way humans trifled with life. But if you wanted to gamble on it, who was he to deny you?

“Well, then,” he said, extending his hand to you like a wolf beckoning to the sheep. “You are welcome to try.”

Cautiously, you took his hand between your own. His palm dwarfed yours as you turned it over, bending some of his fingers experimentally. Your touch was not as overwhelming as when you had fixed his voice box, but an electric signal still danced down his back when you ran your fingers between the divot at his wrist. Suddenly, you released him, and he was surprised by the disappointment he felt.

“Giving up already? I expected more of you.”

“No.” You grabbed the crowbar again and stuck it into the joint at his wrist. “There’s some wear in the joints of your hand, but if the problem is your grip strength,” you grunted, prying the upper panel of his forearm open, “then the issue likely extends here…”

You trailed off as you gazed at the inner mechanism of his arm. Ramattra assumed you had reached the limits of your abilities and was about to make another snide comment… but then your hand smoothed upward, drawing his arm closer to your face almost in reverence.

“Using hydraulic motion instead of electric actuators,” you murmured. Your head suddenly snapped up to him, eyes alight. “Is this the standard method used in all R-7000s?”

He was taken aback by your reaction—there was a pause before he answered. “Yes. It allows for a greater application of force.”

You nodded your head superficially, clearly more occupied with studying his arm.

This was… unexpected.

In the past, Ramattra encountered human engineers who would spend their time repairing omnics, few and far between as they were. Your knowledge, the quickness of your diagnosis—it far exceeded anything they had been capable of.

He wanted you to say something, to ask another question so he could fully gauge your abilities, but you did not. Instead, you reached across his chest and grabbed something from the counter next to him.

“The cylinders in your arm are rusting. That’s why you couldn’t close your fist completely,” you explained as you dripped oil sparingly from the bottle in your hand on his wrist. It trickled slowly through his arm. A strange sensation, but not one he was unused to. What surprised him was when you began rubbing his arm with a cloth, working the oil in. Your grip was strong, continuing to massage from his forearm up to his hand and wrist.

To say it did not soothe him would be a lie. He could not remember the last time someone had taken such care with him.

Not even among the Shambali had this happened. The other monks knew little of how to repair Ravagers, and the human mechanics in the nearby village refused to. Many days he had sat in the atrium of the monastery, disturbed from meditation by the stiffness in his shoulders.

Your touch was gentle, but firm—a tender paradox. It was with alarm that he found he did not want you to stop. He wanted you to keep touching him, wondered how your hands would feel on his shoulders, his neck, tapping down the segments of his spine. He wanted to catalog each one and file it away in his memory, a balm for himself when he must suffer these aches alone. But there was a pressing question on his mind that could wait no longer.

“Who are you?”

Your eyes were unyielding, focused on your work. “I’m an engineer.”

“You are hardly just.”

The hand stroking his palm paused. A moment passed before you replied, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“An engineer of your caliber that specializes in omnics is a rarity,” he said. “Why do you squander your talents?”

The words came out as a hiss, but he couldn’t help it. There were omnics suffering everywhere, his current discomfort a mere fraction compared to the pain they endured daily at the hands of humans. You could be out in the world, helping them. Yet you were here, wasting your time with Overwatch. Why?

Your figure flashed red on his HUD, the afterglow of your racing heartbeat. You masked it well, seemingly unshaken as you tossed the soiled cloth into your toolkit.

“Why would I tell you?” you scoffed, moving to rise. Ramattra’s hand gripped the meat of your forearm, its restored strength anchoring you to the spot. You had done a fine job repairing it, perhaps to your own detriment.

“There is a bounty on your head,” he growled, dark and full of a strange resentment he couldn’t place. “Is that your excuse?”

That got your attention. Your eyes cut into him, placidity gone from your expression.

“You’re in no place to chastise me,” you snapped, “leader of Null Sector.”

The air was tense between you, like a lit match over gunpowder. He could feel your arm trembling, could see the way your chest rose rapidly. You were afraid. Still, your gaze was unflinching as you stared up at him.

He realized then that he could not make you say any more. Your resistance to being found by Talon was even stronger than your will to live.

His grip loosened, and you tore your arm away from him as though it burned you. Slowly, you rose, picking up your toolkit as you did so. His optics watched you carefully—how you crossed to the shelf, back facing him. The way your hand lingered at your waist, waiting.

You were too slow on the draw, but it was to be expected. A human getting the jump on a Ravager was as rare as a blue moon. He had seized you before you could even release the safety on your gun.

“And to think,” he said, twisting your arm downward. You gritted your teeth, trying to fight back against him, but it was useless. Your hold loosened, and the gun clattered to the floor. “We were getting along so well.”

“You won’t take me to them.” It was phrased like a demand, but he could sense the underlying fear in your tone.

“No.” Your eyes widened in shock. Human expressions always gave away so much. “But I will not let you stand in my way.”

He could see the glimmer of hope in your eyes fade like snow as his hand wrapped around your throat. With its function fully restored, he could be much more precise this time. Your hands instinctively shot up to grab his wrist as his fingers tightened. It was a futile final effort to escape your fate, as it took only seconds for you to go limp, arms falling loosely at your waist.

Once he was certain of your unconsciousness, he lowered you to the ground, placing you on your side. For a moment, he watched your chest rise as you took shallow breaths, lightly disturbing the hair curtaining your face.

Ramattra abandoned you in the workshop. He slipped through back corridors and hidden passages, remaining undetected. When he was finally far enough from the vicinity of the base, he allowed your picture to flicker on his HUD again.

The steadfastness with which you spoke, your conviction in the face of death; few humans boasted such inner willpower. He understood now why Talon placed such high value on your head. A person like you was a rarity, indeed.

Against his will, the memories of your touch resurfaced. It was clear to him that you were more than just an engineer who could fix omnics. The gentle way in which you handled him, how you tried to avoid causing him discomfort—you had clearly done this before, likely for many others.

He wondered what would have happened had you met in his younger years, when he was still a monk of the Shambali. Perhaps you would have been allies, or maybe even friends. But that world was a distant dream to him now.

His hand flexed, still reeling from your touch. For the sake of his mission, he prayed you would never meet again.

[radioactive-earthshine]

ASK GAME TIME!!!!

Uh... Anita x Slobo? Please? 🥺

Ship It 😭

What made you ship it? Their everything.

What are your favorite things about the ship? Slo-bo's insecurities about his life, his grapple with fear, something his progenitor didn't have, his finite time alive, and yet despite this first internalized disgust he was able to find some sort of meaning in his short life and he decided to spend it with Young Justice helping them. He overcame a lot of his fear and disgust and thrived being his own person, one who had empathy, and while he claimed to be 'no good' he had an immense amount of compassion. Then there's Anita, wronged by death multiple times over, one who went on a limb and dated Lil' Lobo and still was able to extend some of whatever affection she had for him to his terminally ill drastically different clone. She offered him a lot of grace and compassion where he tested the limits of his other teammates. I cannot get over how Slo-bo comforted her when her father died, he was the only one who reached for her in that moment. He was also so good with her parents it just... They hurt me.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? I don't think I do. Maybe if I were to be honest about the narrative, having Slo-bo "die" was a wise choice technically because look at the result it had on the fandom. The tragedy of him being born sick hits hard. We all want happy endings. We didn't get one with him and Anita, and I struggle to say if it was even a satisfactory ending or one that made sense - but him having an inevitability where he was going to die I don't think was a bad decision when looking at it as a story. His death should have been handled better but Didio did not want to give David that and just wanted the book to END so we're left with him stuck in the damn statue and everyone acts like he never existed.

[mental-mona]

Why tf is empathy a finite resource which can only be given to one side?! Why has no one stepped up to actually formulate policies & procedures that don't involve constantly trying to placate the loudest voices on social media? One can debate whether anti-Zionism is by definition antisemitism, but this definitely crosses the line regardless.

[rareblackcat]

Crossing the cultural boundaries of species and what it means to be human

"Im not human because “human” means so much more than just being a member of the species Homo sapiens. How can something be “subhuman” or “more than human” if that’s the case? How can we “dehumanize” someone, and what does that mean? Why does being “human” equal being compassionate, kind, relatable, and “inhuman” equal monstrous, evil, sadistic. If we spend so much time wondering “what does it mean to be human,” why can I not spend just as much time wondering what it means not to be?" Why I call myself transspecies- The House of Stars

The concept of confronting what it means to be human and what it means not to be is a stance that I've just recently realized I relate to. I chose the term transspecies due to how finite and true the term felt. I describe my species-identity as crossing over from human to animal, beyond human, so transspecies made sense, I do not feel human and I don't want to be human, but what does being human actually mean? For me it has ment understanding and accepting societal rules which is something I don't. And my identity as a black person who's subjected to greater forms of oppression and forced assimilation bolsters this. I also don't think my physical body should define who I am or how I identify. Clothes for me aren't anything but for protection from the elements and aesthetics or culture, the idea of being presentable is white supremacy bullshit, why do I have to pay for shit that grows from the earth, I want to express my joy loudly and proudly and take up space, and as much as I love community I'm not good with social stuff (but I do still require it.) Now you might be thinking, "can't a human also feel like this?" Yes, but the difference is that said human still feels human, I don't. I feel like a feral animal. I want to hunt and live wildly and be taken care of and owned. I want to thrive off of my animal instincts and semi-human intellect (I'd use tools and need some sort of social system lolz.) Further more, despite my animalness I want to still be seen as worthy of respect. I think all animals are deserving of respect and empathy. Animalhood is not less than, just different. Every behavior and trait I have weather it comes off as non-human or not screams non-human animal to my head and even more specifically WereCat. Werecat is how I feel on a deeper more complex level. Werecat is what I see when I imagine myself. Along with some cat traits, feline is a fact that I know about myself. When I see cats and werecats all I can think is "yep, me." My physical form desires to be a Werecat. The dysphoria is strong with me. I long for my yellow eyes, my wings, my tail, and my fur. That form feels correct, like it's truly me. It's the me inside me trying to come out. I still use Therianthropy because it's familiar and a well known term that still technically correct to my experiences but 'Transspecies', as more time goes on, feels more correct than any other term.

[yue-yu]

I keep finding seventeen content that makes me want to cry, especially because they're in their 10th anniversary rn..

So here's a fairly long, ranting post (which may or may not make sense) that talks about some of the things about svt that have made me a bit emotional and/or appreciative/reflective lately (edit: this got mixed with a lot more of my personal experiences than I was intending, oops)

1. Seungkwan.

Now you may be reading this rn and going "???.. why is Seungkwan just on the list of things that have made you emotional lately?" and to that I say- probably because I kind of see myself in him? Just a bit? But seeing Seungkwan's struggles (especially recently) are almost like looking into a mirror for me.

I was doing my usual scrolling routine on TikTok and then this video of Seungkwan and Minghao talking on In The Soop S2 popped up, and their conversation just kind of.. clicked with me? So I kind of fell down a hole of listening to Seungkwan's conversations and interviews with people and I took quotes that seemed so reflective of my mindset, it's honestly quite scary.

The way he was on an interview and talked about himself, but interrupted with "Sorry I'm talking about myself so much," and saying "I feel really embarrassed when others view me as a good person." Or when he said something along the lines of "I don't care what others think of me, I care how I make them feel." Or even him, after the Happy Burstday listening party, going to Woozi and essentially going, "But my song was good, right?"

There's so much of him that hinges on the opinions and feelings of others, and the way he shows it is so similar to myself that I can't help but feel emotional when it's shown to me. The fear of being "too much" or being someone who makes others uncomfortable or feel badly around me is constantly present and always around me.

To these parts of us that are so easily swayed by others, Minghao responds with "We as people are fundamentally good-mannered and courteous, so if we just act to our standards, we cannot do anything others can hate."

2. The Finite Amount of Time We Have Together

The members keep saying that as time slips by, it becomes more apparent that the time they have together is growing shorter too. The idea that "there's only so much time we have left" is very apparent through their interviews, MVs, and music.

I believe Hoshi said something like this on Suga's show, along with the recent episode of "Chattering with Na PD" where S. Coups talks of this idea, saying that they'll try to hold on to the ideas of "eternity" and "forever" for as long as they can. Or even in the "Cheers to Youth" MV, with Jeonghan's fear being that "forever is a lie." Or even the entire premise of Ima and the idea of cherishing the moment.

This looming and ever-present feeling: Even if what we have isn't forever, we need to cherish what we have now.

3. SVT's general relationship with each other

I realize that this is absolutely not the first post that anyone's ever made appreciating SVT's relationship and bond, but I'm posting about it anyway.

As silly as it may seem, SVT (and kpop groups in general) helped me a lot with seeing what I wanted a friendship or relationship to look like and find what kind of person I wanted to be for people. To be honest, I've struggled with being there for people and being present in ways that matter to them. I was always getting scolded by my mother for seeming selfish and emotionally distant to the point of being unempathetic. It wasn't that I didn't have empathy or social inclination, it was that I didn't know how to show it well enough. (and it's still something I struggle with today, but these days it's not because I don't care, it's because I care too much.)

But getting back on topic, each of SVT's members has a quality that I want to embody and reflect in my daily life, especially in the way I conduct myself with others. While all the members have their spaces in their relationship, Jeonghan in particular stands out to me here- "I want to become like a tree to the members; someone who's stable and always there for anything they need," or "I feel that I don't do anything special for the team, so I decide to listen to them and their problems." My goal, in any relationship or social setting, is to make sure that the other people are comfortable and at ease however that manifests for them.

Seventeen as a group is a group of people who are seemingly comfortable with each other and are not afraid to push each other to move forward, all while keeping the integrity of the individual and group as a whole.

Sorry for the really long and rambly post, but I'm so grateful to them. This is also a really abrupt ending, but oh well I guess? I probably have other thoughts too, but this is it for now.

[joyfulexchristian]

The idea of Hell erodes empathy.

I remember the deep despair I used to feel about nonbelievers going to Hell. It caused me cognitive dissonance because it was an awful thing for my god to do but I could not believe that anything my god did was awful. I had to refer to it like a sad, inevitable situation that was ultimately blamed on the one who would deny the god I believed in. I had to wrap this despair in layers and layers of numbness and confusion to live with it.

I tried not to think about people going to Hell. It felt like the only option. Learning that there were other options, like admitting that it was an awful, unfair thing to do to billions of people was both dizzying and freeing. An infinite punishment for a finite life is wrong no matter what apologetics are thrown at it.