#he lacks empathy

[the-badger-mole]

Would you classify Aang as a narcissist? Cause I feel like he has a lot of traits to qualify as one, especially with how he raised Tenzin.

I'm assuming you're asking if I think Aang has NPD. That's a valid reading of his character. I wouldn't say that's necessarily my reading of his character, though. I interpret Aang as deeply selfish and avoidant, and he definitely has narcissistic traits (like all really selfish people do), but I wouldn't call him NPD. His biggest issue is he doesn't deal with the things he doesn't want to deal with, and that includes his trauma. I think what happened with his kids is a result of him not processing his grief and anger in a healthy way and choosing toxic positivity instead.

What makes me hesitate to say Aang is an outright, diagnosable narcissist is...well, the fact that I'm not a psychologist and I don't know how to diagnose, but also despite how much I hate him as a character, I think he could change. It's just a matter of him facing what he's been through and working through it. It's a bit of a paradox, but allowing himself to sit in his anger, bitterness, and grief without trying to shove those feelings away because "the monks told me..." would make him a better, more empathetic person. The most comforting and giving people in the world aren't the ones who are always happy and cheerful and prosperous, but the ones who have really suffered, because they can understand the suffering of others.

[takineko-arts]

[knifearo]

this year my challenge for everyone is to unlearn the association between love and morality. love is not something that is inherently morally good, and the absence of love is not something that is inherently bad. sex without love isn't morally bankrupt, it's just an action. people without love aren't less kind or less good, they're just people. when we can get past this false (and often unnoticed) dichotomy of good love/evil lovelessness then i think we are going to be able to take leaps and bounds in sex positivity, aro advocacy, certain discussions of mental health...

[ms0milk]

thinking about mithrun dunmeshi who could incapacitate most opponents in hand-to-hand (update: he’s a trained knife-fighter!) but chooses to use extremely fastidious teleportation magic without blinking at how easy it would be to accidentally blow himself or everyone involved, friend or foe, all the way up

(and finding something in all of his lackthereof, to smile about here which only ever happens one more time SPARE me SPEAR me anything love this guy forever)

[tavtime]

There is something skittering around in my brain tonight about the way that BG3 intends the audience to view mind flayers as individuals vs as a species, and the way that plays out in the player's relationships with Omeluum and the Emperor.

I mean, one of the primary gears upon which the story turns is that when a person becomes illithid, the soul they previously had is destroyed (but not their memories of the person they were). This is presented as an insurmountable wrong - literally socially aberrant - and it certainly is so from both the point of view of the gods concerned with mortal souls, and illithids' mortal prey concerned with keeping their brains in their heads.

The Emperor's storyline takes this to the conclusion that the condition of being soulless is, in and of itself, a complete destruction of the individual; that whatever it was before, the illithid will be invariably manipulative, inherently untrustworthy, and unable to reconcile its needs and desires into peaceful coexistence with non-illithids. It's certainly the conclusion you're intended to draw from Duke Stelmane's story, as well as numerous supporting texts, most notably from the creche.

But then... Omeluum offers the refutation to that. Here he is, leading a peaceful life because he just... wants to. Absent a soul or comprehensible mortal desires to operate as a moral compass, Omeluum still chooses to contribute to the Society of Brilliance. He voluntarily and at personal cost researches alternative food for himself so that he doesn't need to feed on sentient beings. He helps the player character multiple times, despite the fact that doing so carries variable risk with little promise of reward.

So clearly, being illithid in and of itself is not what makes someone manipulative or untrustworthy: it's not a baked-in species trait. The Emporer isn't Like That solely because he's a mind flayer; he's like that because... he's like that. That's who he is as a person. That's what he has become, in his current incarnation, and yes, some of it is certainly due to his transformation (having your soul shredded and your will broken would screw most people up pretty badly, I imagine), but not all of it! If something about his circumstances had been different, maybe he could've been different as well. Maybe his moral compass would have pointed in a similar direction as Omeluum's.

[valtsv]

i gotta talk about my low empathy james fitzjames headcanon actually. i prommy i don't use it to excuse any of the acts of violence he committed against his fellow man (not just the colonialism either, but things like the petty rivalry with crozier that borders on bullying prior to the death of franklin) because as a low empathy person i know that's not how it works. but i do think that viewing his actions through a lens of understanding that both circumstances such as his birth and being a part of the british empire as well several choices he's made in life (particularly his sycophantic attitude towards those in positions of greater authority whose favour can work in his and his participation in active combat) have led him to become broadly alienated from other people and both their and his own emotions makes them more interesting.

[strawberrytalia]

Dick stans on this site are soooo chill and nice, and idk how they do it. y’all are better than me because whyyyyyy is half the fandom claiming that dick tried to lock tim in arkham??? 😭 the treatment dick gets is wild lmao, and i understand know why ppl say he has eldest daughter syndrome bc somehow every single problem in the batfam gets traced back to being his fault. tim and damian beef? obviously that’s the grieving 25 year old whose just been pushed into a role he never wanted’s fault. jason and bruce drama? clearly dick had no right to go live his own life and explore young adulthood after his own issues with bruce, he should’ve come back to play therapist 🙄 Cass being left out? Well based on one panel of dick reading cinderella to her, he should’ve been there more for her! Like lmfao i know he’s the heart of the family, but give this man a breakkkk

[angelicutz]

WHY IS THE WHOLE BSD CAST JOINING TIKTOK

[foxstens]

kevin had seen worse

kevin had seen worse

kevin had seen worse

[satisaranea]

yes i am the biggest advocate of surrogate father haymitch & adopted daughter katniss but like. they're so Awful. they've not got a mother/daughter relationship, they've got that father/daughter relationship where the dad is both reaching for a connection and rejecting the thing that he made because she's too much like him, too close to what he is and far away from it because of her potential and the daughter rejects because she doesn't understand him. understanding him is understanding herself. caring for him is caring for herself. and then she's awful to him because she doesn't understand and doesn't want to understand. and he's rejectful of her because she's got so many traits that are for the worse and not for the better. their similarities don't hurt nearly as much as what their differencee impale them with. it will always be what katniss could be (haymitch), and what haymitch prevented/could've been (katniss.)

[mickeym4ndy]

You can spend a lot of time trying to justify everything a character has done, and it’s great to look at the reasoning behind their actions that people might not understand.

But you can also sometimes say yea it’s understandable why they did it but it was still a shitty thing to do, and that’s okay. Humans make mistakes, your favourite characters will too. It’s ok. It doesn’t make them bad people.

[octodrawn]

LPS AU where everything is the same but Sunil is an evil sorcerer who commits Wizard Crimes on the daily (so no change actually)

[yuwuta]

peds surgeon yuuta??? u cant say things like that i need to jump. the cartoons, the glasses, of course his freaky ass would have a thing for u calling him doctor okkotsu i need to die id wanna tease him sm and be all over him but i cant think of anything if its in a hospital how did the greys anatomy ppl made it work?

the grey’s doctors were FREAKS LMFAOO bc there is not space to be doing all that in the on call rooms…. honestly yuuta is probably too busy to even try anything with you in the hospital 90% of the time… he’s either in surgery or buried in the research library or falling asleep standing up 😭 sometimes you two pass each other in an empty stairwell and have time for a kiss or two, but never more than that (also because yuuta has very little self-restraint when it comes to you… if he allowed himself more than that, then it would be much harder to stop…) 

sometimes the two of you will fall asleep in the same on call room. yuuta will page you there and by the time you arrive he’s already half asleep, it’s probably his only nap in the last 24 hours, so you do your best not to wake wake him when you cuddle up next to him. you get a few hours of bliss in his arms before his pager is waking the both of you up, and he’s got to scurry downstairs to the peds floor and in his hurry he doesn’t realize he’s snagged your lab coat instead of his own, and it’s only when he’s haphazardly slipped it on and the arms are too short and the shoulders are too tight that he figures it out. it’s too late by then, because gojo is the attending on this case which means he doesn’t miss anything, which means he’s the first to giggle and tease, poking at your name embroidered above the breast pocket, “oh? i didn’t know the two of you got married already! oh and you took her last name, how noble, yuuta!~” 

[cyrusthedragon]

I swear to god if I ever see another post about how Homelander "isn't growing" and "isn't a good parent" and we're all "being happy for nothing" and "simping over him just because he's just cute" I'm going to eat someone

If there's ONE thing in the world that he, okay, doesn't deserve, but which he NEEDS, as a person, as a living, breathing being - that thing is love. Once. One second of pure love. Let him be LOVED for one miserable second.

And then do whatever you want. Just let him taste it. He can't be human, not because of his DNA. But cause he was never loved. He cannot be human until he's loved.

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

dot and bubble might just be my favorite episode this series. it's safe to say there have been NAUR bad episodes but the futility of dot and bubble, the slow realization that these young adults (who have been chosen as the final vestiges of this civilization) aren't just rich and beautiful, they're also ALL white. the subtle, unexplained hostility lindy pepper-bean has for the doctor. the way she listens to only ruby, addresses only ruby even when it's the doctor who is talking to her. and then. that ending. the doctor's disbelief. he can't believe these people aren't letting him save them just because he's black. and they could have gone the allegorical racism, the whole sci-fi alien bigotry. but I'm glad they didn't. the doctor has never encountered this problem before and what does he do? he screams. he cries. because if there's anything the doctor will always hate, it is the meaningless loss of life. and that's exactly what will happen to lindy and her friends. they will die. and as audience members there is some part of us that enjoys that, because we hate bigots and we love the doctor. but the doctor cares, so part of us cares, even when we don't want to. and that's the beauty of doctor who. I truly don't believe a piece of media has had more of a hand in making me as empathetic as I am and for that I love it. best episode so far this season for me. rtd at his absolute best!

[yujeong]

oh. by tonkla’s "it'll get better" (tapping win’s cheek) what do u think he meant by it. is he completely out of korn’s life now? watchuguysthink?

Anon, I'm afraid Tonkla cannot get out of Korn's life without facing some serious consequences, the most severe one being.... becoming homeless.

(In case it wasn't obvious to some fans, Sammon confirmed that the house Tonkla is living in is Korn's, although I personally had figured it out on my own.)

But other than that, I don't think Tonkla wants to get out of Korn's life. He still loves him and wants his attention and affection. He just got justifiably upset by Korn's behavior and kicked him out.

Now, in my opinion, what he meant when he said "It'll get better" to Win was their own relationship - Tonkla and Win's. Meaning that Win will get used to Tonkla's situation and there won't be any problems in the future for them. Let's not forget that he said it as a response to Win's "What should I do now?":

"Should I leave? Should I stay?"

Tonkla essentially told him to not think too much about it. I don't trust Win to do that, though.

I love it so much when the dialogue is subtle and BOC has produced so many shows with scripts that contain a bunch of it. I couldn't be happier about that, to be honest.