#all of this does (up to a point) also inform her firm irreligiosity in all verses. even ones where gods existing is common knowledge

[vullcanica]

I've been thinking a little bit today, re: Avita, morality and love. Namely, how she makes a clean separation between the two and how she operates and makes her choices based on that.

To start with she's a woman with completely neutral moral innerworkings. It has nothing to do with alignment charts or what have you, I'm talking about the general basis of the morality of judgement and action, which ideally functions on neutrality and which posits all are born deserving of the same treatment. In any verse Avita is a firm believer in this. She approaches everyone with the same consideration, believing they are owed it. Yet she's capable of loving the morally reprehensible who act in opposition to that worldview. One would think this clashes with or even entirely negates her fundamental ethics but it doesn't. She maintains a complete mental separation between love and morality. They're two different, independently operational compasses that she follows on a case by case basis.

It's why she does not need love or even partiality to act morally and does not heed morality when she loves. Her type of easy kindness, acceptance and borderline heroism might get confused for deep empathy or compassion and suggest that she feels, relates to or even cares about everyone around her but at its core it's simply the unbreakable belief in equal merit by birth. That all creatures come into existence equally entitled to life, survival, freedom, respect, honesty and basic kindnesses. None above the other. Love itself, the concept of it, comes into direct conflict with those ethics - its very nature suggests partiality. So it is kept entirely separate. She does not need to love or even particularly like someone to treat them morally. Her kindness isn't only reserved to a select few. It's a much stronger sentiment and far more consistent an altruism than one borne of her emotional compulsions would have been.

((The other edge of the sword: She doesn't need to hate someone to harm them either. She could feel bad or remorseful for them and still choose to not let that move her. Yes, she's empathetic, there is an emotional compulsion there, but she allows it to play little part in her opinions and decision-making. Empathy is NOT morally charged and never will be.))

And then there's love.

And though love is separate from her moral views, it always reigns far above them.

The brightest example of this: In all verses Avita loves her fathers unconditionally regardless of their amorality, ruthlessness and infamous renown. They are her family, come hell or high water, and that is an immutable fact of her person that all who befriend or come to love her must accept in some capacity.

She experienced the best of them, yes, but was never spared their true nature either, nor lied to. Therefore her love for them is full, sincere, genuine and not exclusive of their darker sides. She spent her upbringing lovingly surrounded by the morbid and macabre and moralities and ideologies she did not end up growing into. In fact, her natural traits were nurtured fearlessly in such an independent household, even though her fathers did not possess them. That's the love she was surrounded by and the love she gives. She's capable of looking past differences, vast though they may be, and places no moral conditions on those she cares for.