#like okay theres nothing of value or interest to be learned here. are they providing reasoning for

[scuderiacanucks]

side by side comparison is so funny the top 7 of team principals' vote are just same position as in the wdc standings and then they mix it up with the bottom 3 (rip pérez)

[actualbird]

yo you totally made me think about low empathy michael and it like totally makes sense and i think about it a lot when i listen to two player game bc ye like he OBVIOUSLY cares a lot about jeremy and he loves him and like jeremy's stating his problem and michael keeps saying the same solution cause like "that's the answer bro, don't be down" bc he cant wrap his head around the emotions and connect w them that well so in his mind he's just saying this completely fool proof solution i love this hc

yo i got this ask while balls deep in three books of discourse analysis i could only understand by like 10% but because of that was in the mood to just. keep thinking my brain in circles.

so heres a stupidly long answer cataloging canon instances of michael being low empathy af/exhibiting other traits related to this. along with like, characterization to extrapolate from that (at least by my own personal interpretation. obligatory disclaimer that how i see characters is not law, this is just My Take). 

but before that, im gonna define some terms outright so we’re all on the same page. empathy is a person’s capability to understand and feel what others are feeling. basically how well you can put yourself in somebody else’s shoes. this shouldnt be confused with sympathy, which is feeling compassion, pity, sorrow etc. for another. empathy is recognition/replication while sympathy is more on the caring about it. here i focus on empathy and the lack of it. 

im not an expert on Anything but speaking from experience as somebody who has very low empathy, this causes some complications. when you dont feel what others are feeling, sometimes you dont notice other people’s feelings at all. this results in stuff like bluntness, trouble reading social cues, insensitivity, etc. all things that 1) may happen unintentionally, 2) can be worked through via healthy communication, 3) are not inherently bad, just a result of how one reacts to external emotions and 4) things i totally think michael exhibits because hes a low empathy goblin i love with my whole heart. 

let’s get right into it. in more than survive, right after jeremy and michael discover their boyf riend backpacks, this exchange occurs

this seems pretty normal at first glance but it is the first instance of what seems to be michael’s go-to pattern for when he notices his best friend is feeling down, which, at least, kudos to michael, he very obviously noticed jeremy’s feelings. hurrah! so his process for how to fix this goes a little like “step 1: notice jeremy is upset. step 2: cheer jeremy up! step 3: unknowingly kinda mess up step 2“

jeremy is upset about the backpacks but then jeremy provides an out with something supposedly positive. michael latches on to it. it turns out to be negative. michael tries to salvage the situation by cheering jeremy up! by giving him a cool science fact! hell yeah! except it’s a shaky save at best because he does call the both of them losers but in an “it’s okay :D” way. 

all in all this is nothing really, just some friendly fast paced banter between best friends. whats important here is the 3 step pattern aforementioned because it 1) shows that michael Cares about his best friend and tries to make things better and 2) is BASICALLY the entirety of two player game

TWO PLAYER GAME is such a BOP and, at its core, is a song about how michael has got jeremy’s back and vice versa. but tpg is also textbook the 3 step pattern with added sprinkle of unintended invalidation. ive briefly spoken about tpg before so this might look a lil familiar but at its gist:

like you said anon, in tpg jeremy tells michael a problem he has, and throughout the course of the song, he continually makes it known that hes upset and has a lot of issues. step 1 has been achieved: michael knows jeremy is not doing too hot. time to do step 2: cheer him up!! and what better way to do that than to think positive with his trademark line “guys like us are cool in college” like, over and over again. because….it makes sense for michael. things might suck now, but just keep swimming yeah? it’ll be better later.

but it’s not better now and thats what jeremy actually needed validation on. michael thinks the solution is to look to the future but jeremy has his problems bothering him in the present. for all that michael says this is a two player game, he’s unintentionally dismissive because he doesnt understand that this isnt something that can be fixed with a simple “look forward to two years from now” mentality. neither of them are in the wrong, really. theyre just not on the same page.

onwards we go to something else entirely. the chili fries

this is a RIDICULOUSLY SMALL MOMENT but it stuck out to me because imo it is pretty obvious that jeremy says “leave me alone” because hes bummed and is being dramatic, but michael takes it literally and uses the opportunity to skedaddle and get his sweet sweet discontinued soda. im aware michael had to be gone for plot reasons and also the discontinued soda is foreshadowing for the mtn dew red, but taken at face value, this is something that happens a lot w/ low empathy: things are taken literally. 

jeremy is upset. jeremy said to give him some space. thats cool, i’ll go for a bit and come back with something neat that might cheer him up—hey, where’d he go?

and now let’s jump to something everybody and their dog knows about. michael in the bathroom. except not really. because mitb isnt what interests me so much as what happens before.

pre mitb is very, very interesting. before i say anything i’ll be clear in saying that literally nobody had even remotely a nice halloween night, it’s a disaster for everybody involved, but keep in mind that jeremy goes into the pre mitb scene immediately after the clusterfuck that is do you wanna hang and also getting chased down by a sloshed but aggressive jake. many people have said this before me but i’ll say it again: jeremy was not doing well. at all. 

and this is where michael fails step 1 of his pattern. he doesnt pick up on this at all. michael is kinda stuck in his own head right now. hes pissed. hes confused. hes betrayed. he cant understand other people’s feelings and now he has to deal with his own too. his head is a melting pot of AGH and he takes it out on jeremy. yeah, he tries to help jeremy, but he doesnt do it very well. it’s all very accusatory, and jeremy just had a terrible night, so jeremy lashes out.

teenagers are bad at emotions but theyre not bad people for it.  //cue mitb notes, we know the drill

to the play!!! 

recap for maximum contextualization: jeremy realizes the squip is bad fucking news and wants it gone. michael makes an entrance with the one thing that can kill it. and then this happens

AIGHT okay so the whole “i need an apology” scene is obviously played for comedy, and it does a good job at suddenly diffusing the end of the world stakes with some more down to earth teen friend drama but that aside, this scene is a good candidate to be listed under the definition of the phrase “bad timing” because michael, holy shit. BAD TIMING. like great timing for humor but bad timing as a human being. 

here we have jeremy clearly in possessed distress and michael has the antidote but he only wants to give it on a condition. it is absolutely a dick move. yeah, michael is is valid for wanting an apology, but not at this moment with the current stakes. this is michael thinking pretty selfishly. hes stuck in his own head and his own thoughts. he cares about jeremy and wants to help but…this apology important to him. it’s easy to get stuck on things like this when you cant empathize with others. the low empathy means that the only feelings you really get to really interact with are your own, so theres a tendency to focus on them. sometimes even at inopportune moments.

unintentional asshole-ery behold. in fact, this can be pushed even harder by this snippet in the score of be more chill that had some lines from an earlier draft. 

the fetus version of michael makes an entrance is hilariously low empathy, oh my god. this happens while jeremy is rolling around on the floor fighting an invisible-to-everybody-else squip and this is the first thing michael says. it’s positively dickish. 

SO with that done, a little bit can be extrapolated in terms of characterization. i think michael is low empathy so the dominos fall. michael is terrible at feelings. hes got a tendency to get stuck in his own head and not see what others are going through. his emotional periphery is abysmal, hes like a horse with those things that stop horses from looking to the side. in spite of all this, he still has a lot of love and good in his heart and he tries his best to show that in the ways that make sense to him. post-canon, the rift between his brain and jeremy’s brain can only be bridged by a big healthy heap of communication where michael learns that what makes sense to him isnt always what makes sense to other people. hes a good kid. he can do it. 

of course this is, again, all my take. the fun thing about transformative work and fandom is that all interpretations are valid and there will always be somebody out there who agrees. or disagrees. but on this blog, this is my michael. or at least one aspect of my michael. //shrug

ANYWAY im glad you like the hc anon!! ive obviously got a lot of feelings about it since i used your ask as an excuse to aimlessly ramble for, holy shit, 1.6 k words lmao. i hope you have a good day!!!

[subconsciousmysteries]

Interesting... 7s vs. 9s. I am a 9 or at least a 9 wing and I have known a lot of 7s in my life. most of them drain me if I'm forced to spend too much time around them. I do not relate to finding their communication style too fast or hard to keep up with, at least not with all of them. But with every 7 I feel like their ACTIONS, their lifestyles, are impossible to follow without wanting to explode. They move too fast and don't give me time to BE when I try to share experiences with them. Just as I'm getting comfortable in this restaurant we're at and starting to soak up the vibe, or just as I'm starting to enjoy this song we're playing on the aux cord, it's QUICK ON TO THE NEXT THING. QUICK STAND UP AND GO TO A NEW RESTAURANT SO WE DONT MISS ALL THE POSSIBILITIES!! OOF WE HAVE INTERRUPTED THE GREAT SONG JUST AS ITS REACHING THE CLIMAX AND GONE ONTO THE NEXT ONE! fucking enrages me to be around. its like. STOP. but if I try to tell them "hey lets stay here, hey lets stop, hey lets let this moment last a little longer" I can see the visible disappointment in their eyes. So its like okay, whatever. We'll keep moving. You can't appreciate what's in front of you anyway so why bother fighting to stay in this moment.

Life is fast and dynamic but also loses its value when you interact with most 7s. Interacting with most 7s is like being in an endless loop of go to sleep, wake up, go to sleep, wake up, except every time you go to sleep its never deep REM sleep, just shallow sleep thats never satisfying. youre trying to "fall asleep" aka extract insight and dreams from the stream of new experiences the 7 is giving you, but JUST as you're about to extract the insight and depth, it's onto the next thing! and nothing ends up being valuable or memorable in the long term because you weren't given enough time to soak it up and enjoy it fully.

@kcuniquesimmer if you are a 7 and you are trying to vibe with a 9... slow down. that's all I can tell you. learn how to JUST BE. 9s are very angry all the time that nobody knows how to JUST BE, everyone is always demanding action from everyone else and most of it isnt even necessary. 7s are one of the worst types, next to 3s, when it comes to the constant gogogo. 7's vice is feeling like they have to constantly Work Work Work to find happiness, instead of slowing down to try and find happiness in simple being. an unhealthy 7 can be presented the world but still be lost in mental cloud ideas about how its going to be bigger and better in the future. you are probably frustrating the hell out of the 9s you know by always needing to be on the move looking for cooler things or "sussing out your options" as my 7 cousin puts it. 9s desperately want you to stop doing that and just be in the moment with them. and it isnt necessarily bad to live a fast paced life where you're making grand ideals about the future (provided you follow through with some of them and dont go making false promises!), its just a clashing of two different natures between you and 9s. 9s probably frustrate you too by being too slow and heavy, but thats the thing with 9s, they dont really want to assert their desire for slowness and slowing down. they will go along with your fast paced life as they fear abandonment, and then they'll secretly resent you for exhausting them, and eventually run away instead of confronting you about it. you're lucky this 9 was so honest with you about fearing abandonment... lol... most 9s cant even provide you that.

you can perhaps find middle ground by working on yourself to slow down and be less gogogo at the expense of your own wellbeing first. if you are a 7 and you haven't done years of work on yourself, then you will be moving too fast in your life at the expense of your own body and/or soul's health. fix this first and then getting along better with 9s should come naturally.

but theres also the situation where, and I experienced this personally as an assertive type / wing who has numerous withdrawn exes, types like 5s and 4s and 9s and other less assertive ppl will be suspicious of you just because you are an assertive type and that intimidates them. they might treat you like an alien creature who behaves very strange, which can be very hurtful. if this is the case... if you have done everything you can to work on yourself, if you have worked hard to slow down, be respectful of the moment and the people within the moment, and yet the 9 still fears abandonment from you and thinks you're Too Much tm, then you unfortunately cannot help the 9. you are probably getting passively manipulated because they fear your healthy boldness and its very dangerous to stay in that dynamic... if you stay in it they will demand you to suppress your true nature and stifle yourself so that you can cater to their issues. they have to develop the strength to be worthy of you on their own. if this is the case ofc.

Majority of my friends are 9s.. so on a daily basis I only communicate with 9s. Something interesting that i was told by one of them was that their scared of being rejected and abandoned so they distanced themselves whenever they get too close to someone. They stopped speaking to us for a few days and came back like it was nothing. They felt like they have too much going on in their minds that they couldnt articulate which emotion their feeling and speak about it. They had it happened in the past before that made them have trust issues so they want to perfect themselves and think their a bad person. so I spoke to them and told them that doesn’t mean you push people away because believe it or not others help us see the flaws in ourselves and we need people for support in times where we feel lonely. I just wanted to know if there’s any advice you could give me that I can give them so they can share things their struggling with and be more open to speaking. I told them they can tell me anything I’m always willing to listen and I never shut down things that they want to do I’m always willing to accommodate knowing they always accommodate for others. I just want them to do things they genuinely want to do and not feel like they are forced to do what we want to do. I have pushed them to speak their mind and tell me what they feel and think genuinely and not to hold back because they don’t want conflict. I never really know what a 9 really feels or pleases to do until it’s too late.

You cannot change them. Only a 9 will be able to change themselves, by deciding to take a more active role in pursuing what they want (even if it causes them some “discomfort”). The best way to help out a 9 is to not invalidate their experiences, to give them space to make decisions without arguing with them (do you want to go here or here for lunch? Then even if it’s not your first pick, go with them and honor them “taking up space” in the world), and by remaining unflappable—in a sense, being more 9ish. Less over-powering, less loud and excitable. 9s do not possess the energy you have as a 7; they have much less. So be aware that the more excitable, ambitious, driven, bouncy your brain and conversation are, the faster you are draining them. Learn to be peaceful and quiet with them and not bombard them with too many thoughts all at once.