#and he DOES have empathy

[isagrimorie]

"There's fight in Voyager yet. It's still got temporal shields, six photon torpedoes. It'll hold together. Besides, you know the adage. Captain goes down with the ship, right?"

Star Trek Voyager 4x09 - Year of Hell, part 2

Favorite Year of Hell moments

[bunnieswithknives]

GET HIS ASS FLOWERS! GET HIS ASS!!

Did Flowers target Dale specifically because of him shooting his own son?

Yes! Sort of. But don't mistake anything Flowers does to be out of genuine good will

[potatopassenger]

Usopp and Zoro might be my fave duo in Drum Island purely because they just don't understand how the other one works and then lose all sense of situation because of it

Exhibit A) Usopp trying to help Vivi feel better:

Zoro: He's talking shit

Exhibit B) Usopp moved by Dalton's bravery trying to do a grand gesture:

Zoro: Usopp needs my help

Exhibit C) Usopp trying to instil confidence in the villagers and also show off

Zoro: Focused on finding the others

[allastoredeer]

Controversial opinion but I think Lucifer gets babied too much by the fandom. Like I get that he has mental health issues but seeing all this fanmedia of women and men of color nannying this white-adjacent man who has been shown to be an incompetent and absent husband, father and leader. Just. Grinds my gears.

Not saying I hate Lucifer but... when people frame past radiostatic with current radioapple as a huge upgrade, it reeks of a woman leaving her abusive ex for a neglectful husband. While I'm glad Lucifer is a step up from Adam, I need to see actual improvements if I don't want to get the ick.

Agreed.

I massively agree.

Lucifer gets babied a lot. And like you said, yes, he has mental health issues and that's valid, but a lot of the time, it feels like his mental health issues become a scapegoat for his flaws and bad behavior.

Depression is a legit reason for Lucifer to struggle to maintain relationships and reach out to those he cares about. As someone who has suffered from depression, I understand pulling away from people, feeling like you need a reason to reach out to someone, having a negative opinion of oneself, getting overwhelmed with anxiety, even ignoring other people's attempts at reaching out to you because it's just...too hard and it's too much and you're stuck in this cycle that you can't break out of.

HOWEVER

Lucifer's depression doesn't take away from the fact that he's neglected Charlie as a parent. It doesn't negate the fact that he has acted condescendingly towards her and her ambitions. It doesn't counteract the fact that Charlie felt uncomfortable and awkward for a majority of their interactions in "Dad Beat Dad."

I sympathize with Lucifer having depression, but unfortunately, mental illness doesn't just effect you, it also effects the people around you, and i can't fault Charlie for her feelings too.

Because at the end of the day, Lucifer is Charlie's father.

Charlie is his child.

And as a parent, he has responsibilities. Ones that he failed to meet, which would have an effect on Charlie as children are meant to rely on their parents.

It's very telling that Charlie calls Lilith (who's been MIA for 7 years) more than she calls Lucifer (who's probably just a few Circles away). And no, I don't think this is because Lilith kept them separated and all that bullshit. I think Lucifer 100% had a hand in his and Charlie's estranged relationship and I hate it when he's passed off as nothing but a victim in all of it.

I hate it when he's boiled down to sad depressed man who's done nothing wrong. He has done plenty wrong.

And that's okay.

Because that's what makes his character good. He is multi-faceted. He is flawed. You can be depressed and still treat the people around you bad. I don't think Lucifer ever meant to be an absent parent, he obviously loves Charlie with all his heart, but that doesn't mean Charlie wasn't affected by his actions.

She very obviously was. Charlie is one of the most positive people in the show (to an extent that it becomes one of her flaws too), but the minute she called Lucifer it was a complete flip of how we normally see her. She was immediately annoyed. Her patience was already wire-thin. She was close to snapping so many times.

And I can see why. He only calls when he's bored/wants/needs something. He forgot about where she was and what she was doing despite her already telling him. He told her that he'd do anything to help her, and then said "no" the minute she asked.

Also, let's not forget how he answered the phone in the first place.

"Heeey, bitch!"

And look, it was funny. I laughed too. I still think it's funny.

But, imagine you called your dad for the first time in years (a dad you have a very strained relationship with) and the first thing you hear is a peppy, "Heeeeey, bitch!"

Like??? I can't blame Charlie for being annoyed as all hell, okay? I get the sense that she's been putting up with this bullshit for a VERY long time ad she's lost all patience for it. She's done. She's sick of it. She's been disappointed one too many times.

Also, yes, it's not just that Lucifer has been an absent father but he's been a neglectful ruler too. I wouldn't be surprised if Pentagram City has as much respect for him as they do for Charlie. I mean

HE SIGNED OFF ON THE EXTERMINATIONS

Lucifer gave the go-ahead for a yearly genocide of the people he rules over. Can we get some repercussions for that? Do you know how many people lost their friends? Family? Lovers? Vaggie literally spared a child--a CHILD. And I doubt that was the first kid ever confronted by an Exorcist.

Imagine that Cherri died during an Extermination and here we have Angel Dust meeting the person who stepped aside and let it happen. Do you think he wouldn't be mad?

Imagine Carmilla did lose her daughters during that Extermination. Do you really think she'd meet Lucifer and feel nothing but anger and contempt?

Personally, I think Lucifer agreeing to the Exterminations is what fractured his and Charlie's relationship. Like, fully fractured it. That was the last nail in the coffin.

And honestly, I WANT Lucifer to see the consequences of the Exterminations. I want him to have repercussions because that was an INCREDIBLY SHITTY THING TO DO. I imagine he didn't think there was any other option, but we also know that he didn't hold the sinners in high regard anyway. He had the lowest of low opinions of them. I doubt it took much convincing for him to agree.

Lucifer is the oldest being in the Pride Ring--he may be the oldest being in Hell. He's the most powerful person there. He is the embodiment of Pride. And he ACTS LIKE IT IN THE SHOW.

He has acted that way towards Charlie too. He didn't go to her hotel with an open mind. He wasn't actually listening to her plan or taking it into consideration. He played stupid when she asked him what he thought about it. And when the hotel was under attack, instead of stopping it (which he could easily done with a snap of his fingers), he was smirking and acting self-satisfied as he gloated about being "right" about Sinners.

And if you think I'm exaggerating then go rewatch that entire scene.

Look at him

He is acting so smug and he is rubbing it in Charlie's face.

LOOK AT CHARLIE! She is in distress. She is angry. And she is hurting. Her hotel is falling to pieces around her, her friends are in danger, and the whole time she had her dad gloating in her ear about why her dream is, essentially, a waste of time.

And the only thing that snapped him out of it was Charlie asking why Alastor (the one actually protecting the hotel) has more faith in her than her own father. It took Charlie bringing up Alastor again for Lucifer to knock his shit off.

Look at how hurt and closed off Charlie is in the last screenshot. I can't imagine that this is the first time Lucifer has acted towards her in this way. Do I think Lucifer meant to hurt Charlie?

No.

But did he?

Hell-to-the-fucking-YES!

Lucifer is an asshole. He acted like an asshole towards Alastor. He's acted like an asshole towards Charlie. And he kind of acted like an asshole towards the rest of the Hazbin crew considering he didn't exchange a single line of dialogue with them. They introduced themselves to him and that was it. Lucifer spent the rest of the time dissing on Alastor and talking exclusively to Charlie and Vaggie.

Lucifer suffers from depression, yes, but that doesn't take away that he is as much of an asshole as any other character in the show. And I hate that being stripped away and getting turned into this sad, babied little man who's awkward and shy and everyone else is just being mean to him. It's so dull and it's such a disservice to his character.

I don't want sweet, shy little UwU Lucifer that needs to be coddled.

I want mean, condescending, ass-hole Lucifer who reaps the consequences of his actions and grows from them.

[science-lings]

It really is so sad how much live action batman creators hate the fact that Batman is a dad and it’s a huge part of his character. All they want is some repressed asshole to commit acts of violence on the screen for two hours. Like it actively greatly diminishes his impact as a good hero if they refuse to let him interact softly with kids and even the angst they can make him go through just bc what? Being a dad isn’t cool I guess. It’s actually so important to his characterization and has been for like half a century.

It’s going to be such a missed opportunity when The Batman 2 has no mention of Batman’s most important allies (his kids) because including them would infringe upon the edgy vibe. As if that wouldn’t make it even more horrifying when something bad happens to them, as if the juxtaposition wouldn’t be so interesting to see. Fuckin cowards.

[windcarvedlyre]

I've been following @druidposting's DR2 playthrough on discord and we just had a really good discussion about DR's Closing Arguments. Specifically the way the murderer is depicted as grey and featureless, which until now I found a bit annoying.

In Danganronpa it's repeatedly the case that we don't have the full picture until the talking actually stops- which always goes beyond the end of the trial. We generally vote first and come to understand what the murderer's actual motive was, sometimes filling in important pieces of the timeline in the process, afterwards.

But none of that matters for the killing game because characters' emotions aren't directly relevant to who was the 'blackened'- the only thing that matters to Monokuma- so it comes out afterwards and does nothing to change their execution. It doesn't matter how sympathetic they are (basically everyone) or whether other people share responsibility for the situation (eg. Hanamura, Pekoyama, Momota) or whether they intended to murder at all (Nanami). They objectively pulled the trigger and nothing else matters. Nothing about them as a person matters.

The Closing Argument mechanic might illustrate that problem- literally. They're a dramatic, conclusive summary of the entire case... constructed before the vote even happens, before we know if we're actually right, and they're missing something really important:

The actual perpetrator.

We quite literally don't even begin to see the real person behind the crime, any real exploration of their mental state, anything besides the cold, hard facts of the murder that are necessary to convict them, until the comic finishes and the protagonist makes their final accusation- replacing the grey figure with their real appearance in a shot that's often intensely emotional.

And these comics lack crucial parts of the case's timeline and sometimes important parts of the very scenes they depict that we only find out about afterwards. And those are what we know; characters may die with some pieces of the truth and prevent us from ever learning them. These aren't objective depictions of the murder, they're the protagonist's subjective attempt to connect the facts they have. A join-the-dots portrait of someone with missing dots and no colour.

Even characters' expressions may not match how they truly feel, with the grey placeholder potentially looking way more confident and sinister than they were in reality. Pasting Falter's commentary here since they put it well.

For obvious reasons this could especially be a problem for characters that die before the trial- the ones we never get a post-vote testimony from. DR1 chapter 4 really highlighted that in the way Asahina's huge misinterpretation of Oogami's feelings took up a lot of the post-trial discussion, only for Monokuma to reveal Oogami's real suicide note and recontextualise everything.

It might really be a problem for how Komaeda's depicted in DR2 chapter 5. While he isn't greyed out, we get panel after panel where he's either level-headed or maniacally evil, and even the depictions of his self-torture and death don't humanise him:

But we know that his real feelings were more complicated than that. We have his actual corpse to compare the last page to.

He died afraid.

If we approach the comic as Hinata's mental image of him instead of reality, he died without anyone truly understanding him. He was alarming, very hard to relate to, actively fought against people doing so, ensured even the killer didn't watch him die, and the survivors couldn't begin to understand his motive until a chapter later. The Closing Argument reflects that.

Early in DR1 Togami calls out the rest of his class for judging others by their own standards. However, he, too, is doing this, maybe more so than many other characters; his inability to view other people through anything but the cold, brutal logic of the killing game bites him in the ass in chapter 4. In DR2 chapter 2 voting without a good understanding of Pekoyama's motive or Kuzuryuu's involvement nearly got everyone killed. Komaeda's a walking embodiment of the problems with flattening people into caricatures and not empathising with them, suffered from people doing that back to him, and his case- the Closing Argument for which turned everyone else into grey placeholders- was impossible to solve with objective facts. It was only survivable because the survivors cooperated and one person tried to analyse things the way he would.

The games have always been a critique of the justice system and Japanese society and push us to care about others as individuals, not reduce them to- and judge their right to exist by- something they've done or their net impact on society. There are always consequences when someone neglects to do that, and the above might be yet another way the games explore that theme.

[wilsonsmcgillsweatshirt]

House's problem isn't that he lacks empathy. It's that he has too much. He cares to the point that it's self-destructive. That's why he avoids interacting with patients like the plague because he knows that he'll care. He knows that he'll get attached, and he can't cope with that kind of vulnerability. House can empathize with and understand people so well that if he didn't constantly fight against it, he'd lose himself. He insults people and hurts people, and pushes them away as a survival tactic. Nobody spends that much time trying to convince people they don't care when they actually don't care. He has experienced so much heartbreak and abuse that he's learned his only way to survive is to push people away. He's not just trying to convince others he doesn't care. He's trying to convince himself, too. And he fails every single time. Because Gregory House loves people. He relates to them, he cares about them, and he feels vast amounts of empathy for them. He never gives up on patients, and he'll try to convince you that it's just because he loves puzzles, and while he does, it also is because he cares. When you experience that much empathy for people, it saturates every single part of your life. Every interaction you have becomes painful and overstimulating. You start to lose yourself. House is desperately trying not to drown in the minds of others. His ability to understand and care about people is what makes him a great doctor, but it's a blessing and curse. So he bites and claws and avoids and fights because it's all he can do to stay afloat. He's trying to constantly battle experiencing the emotions of others, on top of his own emotions, all at the same time.

[sysig]

Puts the “plates” in “Fellplates” (Patreon)

[holyshit]

.

[susiephone]

fun fact! no one, no matter what they've done, "deserves" to be abused. abuse by definition cannot be earned. someone can be shitty and still be an abuse victim, and the person abusing them is doing it for reasons entirely separate from the victim's moral character.

[literallyjusttoa]

I am a “Meg and Apollo’s master/servant bond evolved into something a lot like an empathy link post their dip into Chaos in TDP” truther and I will be till the day I die.

[froginabogg]

rewatching nowhere boys (yeah sue me i know i know) and i'm lowkey obsessed with how sam isn't even like,,, mean, he starts talking to andy and felix right from the start and isn't insulting or rude to them, he calls them nicknames he uses for the rest of the show, he has a few rude moments and insults but definitely not as much as jake does, who's an actual bully

it's very fascinating to me how sam's ENTIRE arc is really just him getting a reality check and being like "dude you gotta be less selfish", dare i say incredibly adhd coded (hi hello it is me i relate to this so fucking much), and he's right at the age for it too, which fifteen year old hasn't gotten bonked in the head by destiny and told "yo cut it off and think of others", it's genuinely so nice

[chase-the-ladybug]

Went back to compare shima-ujie interactions

It’s interesting how the words revolving around Shima and Ujie when he was practising volleyball in chapter 41 compare to what their interactions this chapter(61) were.

Shima had said before how he couldn’t get angry before bc he couldn’t empathise, but here he is, clearly upset. He’s come far from the kid who wouldn’t bother getting upset bc ‘it’s not worth it’. What specifically changed though?

Let’s compare to Mitsumi in the past. She was upset in chapter 41 when ujie told her to stop playing a good person, bc it means something to her to look out for other people, and she values it. She could empathise with ujies pain and yet he treated her with disdain in response.

Shima however didn’t care at the time. But now, he’s finally learning to look forward and go after what he wants, so when ujie says what he does, it hurts him. It’s like a dismissal of what he’s working toward, but it scares him bc it’s also a feeling he empathises with.

Ujie says here he probably doesn’t understand that. But Shima got mad bc he DOES UNDERSTAND, it’s a point of contention for him that he just can ‘play along’ in whatever way to please others. He wants to change that though and Ujie hadn’t recognised it.

There’s also the case of how he still holds in a lot of self-hatred for the type of person he is, imo. He finds it incredibly hard to be ‘selfish’, and it’s already taken so much for him to chase acting again, but there’s always this worry that he’s just taking advantage of the people around him. Even though him pursuing this doesn’t logically hurt them at all.

In the end though, when he does talk to Ujie again to explain what he thought, it comes back to the words of assurance he himself gave Ujie in chapter 41

Because since that chapter he DOES know what it’s like to try hard for something, he DOES care about the role he worked towards, it’s NOT a role he stole from someone more deserving. And in the end, it resonates with Ujie too.

[qoldenskies]

You're so right that Leo is the main villain in CL, because like.....dude is already canonically implied to have a fundamental understanding of what makes people tick, and we've seen in that one episode with Big Mama that he is fully petty enough to play the long game of running circles around someone/just genuinely riling them up until he breaks them down or otherwise manages to get a response out of them (which I think was why he kind of fell back into little shit behavior during the movie for a time BUT WE CAN TALK ABOUT THAT LATER). He may not be as in tune with emotions as Mikey is, but he understands people.

And CL explores what would happen if you took the moralistic side of that personality trait away from him. I've always kind of maintained that Leo would genuinely make for a terrifying villain if he had less of a strict moral code, but CL!Leo really......showcases that to an extreme. He's really the first one to be overtly nasty towards Donnie, and even when Donnie questions it he immediately gaslight gatekeep girlbosses the shit out of him in such a ruthless way that it completely undermines his confidence from then on out. Watching him during the curse really was like not being able to tear your eyes away from a car wreck or something, it was beautiful and terrible all at the same time.

(Of course, now he's going to have to live the rest of his life knowing about how easily he could break someone down if he tried hard enough, and that's.....gotta be not entirely fun knowledge to be in possession of.)

YES EXACTLYYYYYYY..... like i know donnie loves villainous aesthetics and is occasionally a deranged little freak for fun but i still posit leo would be a LOT scarier as a villain. donnie may be capable of more but i think leo's opportunism and ability to psychologically profile people he barely knows (because he is not super acquainted with big mama at the point of many unhappy returns! they've met, like. what, twice? maybe three times?) and then use that to outwit and play them, even when big mama is established to be conniving,,, tell me that isnt a guy that would be capable of some utterly evil shit

[wilsonsmcgillsweatshirt]

🗣 HOUSES PROBLEM IS NOT THAT HE LACKS EMPATHY, IT'S THAT HE HAS TO MUCH OF IT

[sweetshelluvaau]

Is it me or does it feel like the show is making everyone in Blitzo's life (minus Fizz and Oz. for now at least) hate him/think little of him all because the show seems to have a hate boner and likes to victim blame him? It even feels as if it's written as every one in IMP even hates him now and it's kinda gross honestly considering that for all the reasons for people to be upset at Blitzo for, and for good reasons: him 'wornging' Stolas is not one of them.

Also it feels like the show just wants to beat down Blitzo until he reaches his breaking point and then breaks him down more and more and I'm sorry if the show is about wanting Blitzo grow as a person that's not how you get there.

People get better and change when they're being lifted up not beaten down. Not saying you shouldn't call out Blitzo's behavior, you should he's an asshole at times but he's already a self destructive mess and knows it. And even for all that dickwardry, he does CARE and the show SHOWS us that supposed to TELLING us like they're doing with Stolas when we've seen him do nothing but guilt trip, manipulate and treat those lower than him like shit. He even negligent his own daughter.

Blitzo cares. He cares about his employees, his friends, his family and in a sad way, even for Stolas though not in a romantic way more than he's trying to keep him 'happy' so he doesn't lose his business and livelihood. If he didn't care he wouldn't have gone through all the work in 'spicing up' their sex lives.

So why is the show making it seem like Blitzo is in the wrong for sharing how he feels yet has every right to feel as frustrated and used as he does. But no, he's a monster because he made the creator pet cry.

Srsly fuck you Viviziepop.

(on a less ranty note: I have to give credit where credit is due that Brandon Rogers can act! No matter how bad the emotional moments are written at times (which is most), he still sells it.)