#not that kind of empath

[geezer88]

Time to dismantle some corrupt facilities!

[fellthemarvelous]

It pisses me off to see the way some Star Wars fans are so dismissive of Reva, Third Sister.

She's complex. She's interesting. She's clever. She's intelligent. She's strategic. She's conflicted. She's traumatized. She's scared. She's angry. She's a survivor.

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series literally opens with her and her friends watching one of her Jedi mentors get gunned down by clone troopers during Order 66.

She was a FUCKING CHILD!!! They were in the middle of a lesson when the clones walked in and started shooting everyone!! These were Anakin Skywalker's troopers and they were executing every single Jedi around them.

These children had NO idea what was going on. They were scared and they tried to run to safety.

We remember this scene from Revenge of the Sith and we all immediately knew what it meant.

These are the same bodies that Obi-Wan Kenobi found when he and Yoda returned to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant after having to kill so many of Anakin's clone troopers just to survive.

These are children that the Jedi Council wasn't there to save.

Palpatine snuffed out the light of the Jedi in one swift act of terrorism and then blamed the Jedi for their own genocide after taking over the entire galaxy.

And in times of war, the weakest among everyone always suffer the most.

This is what Reva, Jedi youngling, remembers most about the end of the Clone Wars.

Anakin Skywalker, hero of the Clone Wars and former padawan of the great Obi-Wan Kenobi, murdered all of her friends and injured her.

She had to play dead amongst the dead bodies of her friends, and that's how she survived. She witnessed Anakin Skywalker murder all the Jedi in the temple with no one there to stop him because the other Jedi Masters were being executed in a war they had never wanted to enter into in the first place.

She blames herself for not being able to save her friends because she wasn't strong enough to fight back. No youngling was ever going to be strong enough to stand against Anakin Skywalker. She wanted revenge against Anakin Skywalker, and she was just as desperate to get to Obi-Wan Kenobi as he was. She wanted to kill Anakin Skywalker just as badly as Darth Vader wanted to kill Obi-Wan.

She was alone in a galaxy that tortured and executed surviving Jedi. She spent ten years plotting her revenge against Anakin. She was angry at Obi-Wan for not being there to stop Anakin, and rightfully so.

The Republic fell. Reva and her friends were left unprotected. She was the only person she relied on because everyone else failed her. She was only a child when she lost everyone.

And it's clear she was conflicted by her role as an Inquisitor. She doesn't have the training the other Inquisitors do because she volunteered to be an Inquisitor while all the others were tortured and terrorized into falling to the dark side. She only wanted access to Anakin so she could get justice for what he did to her and her family.

Unlike Anakin, Reva couldn't find it in herself to harm a child. She was seeking revenge solely against Anakin Skywalker. Luke and Leia are the same age she was when she watched her friends and family die in front of her.

Yes, she was prepared to torture Leia, but she consistently hesitated, and when Tala walked in, Reva turned away. She stopped. Yeah she was mad, but she didn't have to go through with it. She'd already planted a tracker on Lola. She was already planning on allowing them to escape so she could locate their secret base. She just needed to bait Obi-Wan. Her plan worked perfectly, and she didn't even have to hurt this child who was annoying the shit out of her (not realizing she was dealing with Anakin Skywalker's offspring).

She went to Tatooine to kill Luke, but she couldn't. She hunted him down without bothering to kill Owen or Beru. She only cared about one thing. Getting justice for what happened to everyone she had been unable to save at the end of the war. She was only a child, and when she realized she was about to kill a defenseless child just to get revenge, she couldn't do it. She saw her face when she looked down at Luke and cried when she realized she couldn't do it.

She was so horrified by what she had been prepared to do and returned him to Owen and Beru alive. She fell to her knees and sobbed because she thought she failed her family in the end.

Obi-Wan was there for her this time. He reminded her that by showing mercy, she was giving her friends and family peace. She was not going to become the monster that Anakin Skywalker was.

Obi-Wan helped her and reminded her that she gets to decide who she wants to be from this point forward. She refused to become Anakin Skywalker, and a weight was finally starting to be lifted from her shoulders. A weight she had been carrying for ten long years.

She did what she thought she had to just to survive. She had only been a child with no guidance because everyone she loved died. She survived by joining the ranks of the enemy so she could plot her revenge. Obi-Wan showed her mercy at the moment she needed it most. He wasn't angry with her. He was compassionate. She survived Order 66 just like he did, but she had been defenseless when they were thrust into a galaxy that tortured and killed Force sensitive individuals and those who helped them. He had failed Reva during Order 66, and he wasn't going to fail her this time.

She is getting a second chance at finding her path in life despite the bad things she did. Everyone deserves a second chance. She was robbed of her childhood and had to grow up overnight. She had to learn how to survive. And that's exactly what she did. Just not in the way she expected.

[saltwatersweets]

this scene with young shadowvanilla. do we see the vision.

[youmakemestrong]

i hate continuously reverting back to denial but dear fucking god i just CAN'T believe it

such an important part of my life for over 12 years and he's just gone

i was here for him when he was 17 and loved green beans and i was here for him when he was 31 and trying to get his life together and i have always loved him all the same

i'm going to be plagued by the what ifs of the rest of his life for the rest of mine

[valtsv]

*types any question containing the word "empathy" into a search engine*

like half the results: are YOU an EMPATH??? EMPATHS are a SPECIAL ULTRA RARE SHINY POKEMON GROUP OF PEOPLE they are like MYSTICAL PERFECT FAIRY ELVES they are the BEST most MORALLY PURE beings on the planet they basically have MIND READING SUPERPOWERS and they are also SUPER OPPRESSED by SELFISH GREEDY ORDINARY PEOPLE who DRAIN THEM like VAMPIRES with their NEGATIVE ENERGY. if you are an empath you are guaranteed to get into HEAVEN 😇 but if you are not you are BASICALLY THE DEVIL!!! 😈🔥😈🔥😈🔥

[encounteratnearpoint]

Hostile alien: I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU PICARD!! DON’T TRY ME I’LL DESTROY YOUR SHIP AND YOUR ENTIRE PATHETIC CREW WITH IT!!!!!!!!!

Counselor Troi: I am detecting anger

[equalperson]

BTW "destigmatizing mental illness" doesn't just mean being tolerant when someone says they have a psychiatric diagnosis or go to therapy, it also means investigating how your own view of "evil" may overlap with the signs of madness.

this is because the mainstream idea of what a "bad person" looks like is heavily influenced by sanism, thus most people's perception of what makes someone bad is literally just them being mentally disabled.

to support the crazy, you must accept that grandiosity, delusionality, attention-seeking, rage, homicidal ideation, and many similar experiences are not inherently dangerous. likewise, you must also understand that love and empathy are not the ultimate goods that everyone makes them out to be.

madness can easily be an abundance of the former and a lack of the latter, not just the quiet insecurity that most people reference when they talk about "mental health."

ultimately, the world will never be a truly safe place until it's a widely acknowledged fact that there's no such thing as villainous cognition or emotionality; prejudice is the source of all evil, not abnormality.

[ariadne-mouse]

Still thinking about just how deep in it Liliana Temult is. Like in the eyes of the narrative she went from

absent & possibly dead, very sad -> alive just estranged?? mysterious! -> possibly involved in a cult, tragic, can her daughter reach her? -> uncomfortably high up in said cult -> the cult's goddamn General and striking such terror into the local population of the Ruidus that they are afraid of even her appearance or someone who looks like her

Ordinary people who are trying to resist the dictatorial Imperium/Ruby Vanguard alliance and their iron control of the populace are terrified of her. You don't strike terror just by "being there". Terror happens because of actions. And it leaves us to wonder what exactly Liliana Temult has done during her time on the moon to make the citizens fear her so much.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Broken Roofs and Fixed Perspectives

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[logicalbookthief]

It’s so funny to me that the boss demeans Kazuki at every opportunity, calls him a peasant, poorly skilled, a bad influence. And yet it’s Kazuki who has gained in three years (probably less) what this man never could — the absolute loyalty and devotion of his son.

Like, the boss has tried to get Rei to take over the organization and accept his role in the family legacy, twice, and each time he’s dragged his feet reluctantly.

Meanwhile, all Kazuki has to say is, "Rei, we’re keeping this kid and raising her as our own" or "Rei, we're sneaking into the zoo to spy on our daughter because she’s mad at me and forgot her lunch" and Rei will sigh and groan but immediately go along with it like: “Ok, babe, whatever you want.”

[shoulderholsterfreak]

Look, I know Thrawn is a pragmatic, highly tactically-minded person and he works for the bad guys, but I’m kind of tired of all the cherry picking people do to portray him as the Literal Worst Person Ever.

“He doesn’t care about non-Chiss!” “People are only assets to him!” “He only cares about individuals in how they can serve him strategically!” “He’s quite literally a real-world Nazi and he should be taken outside and shot!”

Meanwhile you have passages like this:

Just related to this event alone, in Outbound Flight there’s a scene where Thrass lectures Thrawn (who is lying in a hospital bed with a shrapnel wound to the chest) about overextending himself and getting himself killed in his quest to patrol outside the borders to deal with threats—and “humanitarian” crises—that aren’t immediately relevant to the Chiss.

And there’s a LOT more like this out there. I don’t know, it’s just weird to me that some of his fans, the people you’d think would be ready to jump to his defense, are so determined to hate him that they ignore the moments where he displays more positive and humanitarian traits.

[caeslxys]

Zephrah actively postpones ruidusborn births. It is believed that the actual number of ruidusborn in exandrian history is much larger than has been officially recorded because the stigma of it was so intense that people lied about it. Alyxian, one of the few recorded ruidusborn heroes of the calamity who received direct blessings from three different prime deities (our very own Changebringer, the Archheart, and the Moonweaver) , has been all but forgotten (read: likely erased) by history.

The Archive of knowledge that revealed the truth of Predathos and Ruidus was never some forgotten thing—it was intentionally hidden by the elites in Vasselheim. And we have no idea how long they have been operating with that knowledge. We have no idea what they have been doing with that knowledge, what silent wars have been waging for years or decades or centuries. But we saw what they were willing to do, in Hearthdell. We saw the violence and suppression they were willing to commit. We saw the pettiness of the exandrian pantheon in the Dawnfather’s response to Deanna’s: “Are you worth saving?”. In the Changebringer’s manipulative change of course in her pleas to FCG. In the Wildmother’s rejection of Opal. In the knowledge we have that Imogen spent so much of her miserable time in Gelvaan begging the gods to aid her to no avail—just for Kord to reach out only to demand that she not let them down.

Liliana’s point that Vasselheim and the other faithful elite of the world will hunt ruidusborn down to negate even the potential of this happening again isn’t new, it isn’t something this solstice and the machinations surrounding it caused, and it isn’t some unsubstantiated, fearful claim—it has been happening.

The vanguard—and Liliana—are unequivocally wrong in their means. But can you really fault them in their desire? Can you really fault the conclusions they have drawn from the experiences they have lived? If you spend your entire life being rejected by the people and the pantheon of your world for means you could not possibly control, would you not seek out someone and somewhere that would accept you? And if you found it, if some being that has been connected with you your whole life welcomed you home and wrapped you in an embrace that felt like your mother’s and says that it is starving; well, aren’t you, too?

There is likely a holy war brewing. At the end of it all, is it truly the sole fault of the people and not the organizations and society that expelled them?

[silviakundera]

Does it feel like they're trying to redeem the dickless bore? idk if he's doing a con on her or they're showing he has real feelings for her wasn't the novel different?

One thing I'm really noticing in the Princess Royal (Grand Princess) adaption is that they will 'play it straight' with characters like Su Rongqing and the Emperor: giving the character similar dialogue and facial expressions as they would have in the novel -- except without PWX or LR's internal dialogue of 🙄 why u lying???

🙄 lol ok sure

😒 oh i see, back on your bullshit again

😤 the AUDACITY

😬 oh shit oh shit danger BE COOL

The consequence is that if you take everything at face value, the Emperor seems like a reasonable guy and not up for The Absolute Worst Dad award. Under the surface, the novel reader knows he is acting out a play and coldly calculating every interaction with Li Rong, the Crown Prince, and Consort Ruo. Every single scene with him, Li Rong is in peril and she knows it. She's pretending to be his sweet, obedient 19 year old daughter who believes in him and is following Pei Wenxuan's direction and acting as a puppet, making moves that he has already approved PWX to make. The Emperor's pretending that this play isn't supposed to end with LR and the Crown Prince taken down & the power transferred into Consort Ruo and the other prince's hands.

The viewer can just interpret all the words coming out of a character's mouth as facts & just believe everything they claim about their motives/real agenda as true. Or they recall the implied horrorshow of Life 1 and view all of these interactions with a cynical eye, questioning what else could be under the surface.

With SRQ, that guy is so fucking complicated. I think actually he's portrayed in character. Nothing we have seen isn't .... him. At least so far, as of ep 19 he aligns with the novel.

But 3 different factors: A) The music is romantizing him; B) The audience is given a couple internal-thought voice overs from him, which other antagonists don't get; C) With those voice-overs, the screenwriter has chosen to affirm his love for his brother and LR way earlier than the reader has it confirmed in the novel (where he is intentionally kept a total mystery for far longer, while the reader is the math lady meme, trying to piece together clues to figure him out).

And ultimately, when in SRQ's PoV in the drama, we have to deal with him being the hero of his own story. He is absolutely sincere about himself and, as has been revealed, in his own way he's sincere about wanting LR and his brother to have a good life this time around.

So does that mean the writer intends to do a swerve in the narrative arc and redeem him in the end? It's totally possible. Maybe?

However, not necessarily.

#1 There is a certain refrain from many of the great cnovel/drama villians: I had no choice! You all forced me to this!

We saw it from Shen Yurong in The Double, we saw it from Meng Yao/JGY in The Untamed, and in the novel (and I presume in the drama), we're gonna see it from Su Rongqing.

And it's the reason why they become villians who can't be saved. Because so many people suffer in life or experience unfairness. But they don't turn around and use this as an excuse to enact horrible cruelties on others.

Out of the billions of people in the world, few have no problems but so many of them actively chose to do good, or are willing at least to turn back and be better.

#2 imo the reason LR has historically been bad at reading people's hearts but has an exquisite read of SRQ, his flaws & darkness, is THAT'S HER FUCKING MOM. And I do think ep 16-18 put that out there in the text, if you're looking for it. He and the empress are the same sophisticated aristocrat who is clever & educated but with a narrow perspective limited by their privilege and desperate need to maintain the status quo. So sorry bro, but no wonder she might have settled for marrying you in the first life if you wanted to, but she was never gonna fall in love with you 💀.

PWX can see that SRQ loves her and he thinks that matters, so it scares him. LR has tender nostalgia for her empress mother and her former companion but she's all too aware that their love for her will not necessarily get in the way of stepping on her to protect the social structure of a powerful aristocracy class operating at a higher level above the peasants and restraining the throne. To them, this is safety and stability that guards the realm.

(ofc both those characters are complex and when it comes to LR's life & death we can't be confident on what they will always choose. that's part of what made all the palace drama aspects of the novel incredibly suspenseful. So many of the suppporting characters are layered and tho everything they do makes sense when it happens, you can't often predict people's hard choices when their back is up against the wall)

Story of Kunning Palace and The Grand Princess say that caring about people and trying your best to understand them, wanting what's best for them by listening to what's best for them, can make a huge difference. But not everyone is willing to change.

[felinedae]

Someone on this site will complain about annoying tropes in battle shounen anime and everyone in the tags will come out of the woodwork like "This is EXACTLY why I don't watch anime." or "Can anyone give me recs for anime that don't hate women? If they even exist 😞" as if it would kill them to just watch the ones made for girls. Or even anything not tailor made specifically for 14 year old boys. Or even the ones made for 14 year old boys that are just written by women.

[viiv-westwood]

Honestly I can not imagine being Gojo. That shit sounds so tiring. He gets sealed and it means that the whole world falls apart without him. Like yeah he’s the strongest but oh my gosh this guy does not get a break. Every time that lady’s voice comes on to describe people’s powers she is like “so yeah this person is really good at this thing but the person holding the top spot is Gojo Satoru.” No one is like him so everything has to rest on him. Don’t even get me started on the fact that he is the only one left in the Gojo clan. And the fact that he became a teacher after all of this. He’s a lot more selfless than we give him credit for. Honestly the whole overconfident, jokey personality feels like a front at this point. My boy needs a cup of tea and a nap.

[sesamestreep]

“requiem for methuselah” crazy ass episode for many reasons. Kirk is being fully insane, like I don’t actually think, even controlling for how quickly and easily and readily he seems to fall in love with anybody at the slightest encouragement, that he’d go that bonkers for that android woman he just met while everyone on the ship was this close to dying, but that’s neither here nor there, because in the background you’ve got an equally but much more subtly insane episode for Spock, who extremely uncharacteristically admits to experiencing an emotion (or nearly experiencing, whatever) and that emotion is ENVY of all things. And then spends the rest of the episode warning Kirk away from this new love interest (something that doesn’t usually happen, even when Kirk has very inadvisable love interests) and is, in the end, the person who accurately identifies that Rayna’s competing love for Kirk and Flint is ultimately what overwhelms and destroys her with the most killer line in maybe history???

And then to wrap it up we get an equally uncharacteristic sort of denouement scene (TOS loooves to cut an episode off right after the actual climax, leaving little time for falling action or character reflection, or to stick a sitcom-y button on the end where the gang all smiles and laughs at their misadventures and everything resets to zero, which is not a criticism, it’s just the style of that era of tv, honestly) where Kirk is literally miserable over Rayna’s death (again, kind of unusual for a lot of his love interests, he tends to be able to move on pretty quickly) and Spock goes to see him and he falls asleep right in front of Spock (also odd) and then when Bones comes in to give the final word on Flint, Spock waves him off from waking the Captain (tender) and Bones gives him that awful speech about how it’s sadder that Spock can’t even imagine the love Kirk felt for this random android woman than it is that Kirk lost her in the first place (debatable but also rude) and how his great tragedy is that he can’t love at all like they can and how all he wishes is that Kirk could forget about all of this and move on. AND THEN, to have Bones leave and Spock go over to Kirk and very gently, tenderly, reluctantly touch him and put his hand to his forehead and tell him to forget and HAVE THAT BE THE END OF THE EPISODE??? What am I supposed to do with that??