Have You Ever Met A Person With Such A High Sense Of Empathy It Circles Right Back Down To No Empathy

Have you ever met a person with such a high sense of empathy it circles right back down to no empathy at all? Because the truth is you cannot be impartial to every side and still care. You will tell a person like that how you were wronged and they will understand you, but at the same time, they'll try to convince you of your own wrongs in the situation because they can't help but look at it from all perspectives. It's just a different kind of not listening.

Anyway. Renee Walker.

i really need tlt asoiaf and aftg sideblogs huh

the theme is same faces

(ID in alt text)

bonus + design notes:

sparknotes:

tridentarii: the building block was "lions" (corona's mane of hair and king vibes + ianthe's scar lionking swagger) but i think i lost that plot at some point. regardless peep the earrings for symbols of their twisted mutualism. also they have dimples <3 bc on corona they're perfect and on ianthe (when she smiles wide enough) they're sickeningly dissonant

the nonas: harrow has curls bc i think the only thing funnier than saddling a nun who's been shaving her head since infancy with fast-growing hair is for that hair to be horrible messy springy curls that are barely spared from frizz by the sheer grease #bathingisn'tsafeformern. please also applaud my restraint in adhering to canon and not giving nona dimples. she deserved them

the sixth: came to me fully formed honestly. palamedes calls camilla beautiful enough for the alexandrites so i just let my heart and sapphism take the wheel here. for pal when i first read gtn i visualized him very differently but other artists made such a compelling case for scruffy pal that now i can't see him any other way

the second: also let my heart take the wheel here. wanted to draw a man carved out of hardwood so i did <3 at the caliber of necromancer that g1d is i know he probably wouldn't have so much scarring but the heart wants what it wants (cool factor). in my head and in my heart they're from wake

naberius: i don't have anything to say in my defense. i rewatched teen beach movie, found the perfect face claim and set the wheels of fate in motion. i think babs is hot the way a ken doll is hot, y'know? it takes yanny piloting his flesh mecha for him to be gender (<- testimonial from my masc nb friend)

Usually I want to avoid discourse at all costs but like,,, if I don't say this once I'll explode

Riko is the prime example of the "I was treated this way so I'm going to treat others this way" abused to abuser pipeline.

Andrew is the prime example of the "I was treated this way so I refuse to treat others this way" abused to not abuser pipeline.

(And even those two above statements are dis-including nuance that I don't have time to dissect)

Every other character seems to lie somewhere on the spectrum of this idea. Neil lies closer to where Andrew lies. Grayson lies closer to where Riko lies. Etc etc. And their positions on that spectrum are not fixed points but rather dynamic positions based on their choices made every day of their lives. Choice and agency and yadda yadda

All this back and forth about whether or not acknowledging the truth that Riko was abused erases the truth that Riko was an abuser is just missing the fundamental truth that I honestly think is Andrew's whole main Principle Of Life:

Everyone, no matter how kind they seem, is capable of the greatest atrocities. It just depends on what might push them to that point and how much they resist the temptation when brought to it. And everyone, no matter how fucked up they seem, could fall or have fallen prey to the greatest atrocities of others. Because "the shit people did to me" and "the shit I do to others" is not a fucking linear graph with a one to one ratio in any fucking configuration. People get what they get and it's not about "deserving". And people do what they do and whether they're held accountable follows the same logic as above. The universe is apathetic about human morals and humans are biased and fallible and easily manipulated when we try to uphold and enforce our morals in its stead - and humans don't even universally agree on morals in the first place so it's a fucking mess from the start.

And honestly, sometimes those people who don't grasp this idea are like Jeremy "But they're your parents, they're supposed to love you" Knox. That's a sentiment of morality, not an observation of how reality actually plays out. I see the best you are capable of and I see the worst you are capable of but I expect nothing because I don't have perfect foresight, I don't have perfect information, nor can I read minds.

Riko was a victim of abuse. Riko was a perpetrator of abuse. These two truths exist in harmony and cannot be separated. Whatever you feel or think about him after that is your fucking business and exists as separate from those two truths because it is born from you and not from Riko or any truths regarding him.

"Hurt people hurt people" is TRUE and "You'll never know the violence it took to be this gentle" is TRUE but not all truths manifest in all people but that doesn't make them less true!!! It just makes humans the canvas of infinite possibilities each born from the same finite palette of colors!

But at that point we're talking about nuance and discourse doesn't like nuance and also these characters aren't real people in the first place so imma shut up now I guess

“Teacher, may I ask a question? What does it mean to love God?”

Thinking about Judith Deuteros, told that her Blood of Eden captors are debating letting her die from peritonitis without pain relief:

"I thank the Prince Undying my God, merciful in justice and gentle in remembrance, for this being so. I haven’t thanked God enough over my life. It always seemed incredibly sentimental. And I didn’t wish to presuppose his interest."

About Ianthe, who doesn't pray, but who

“studied what happened when the Lord our Kindly God took our dead and dying Houses and brought them back to life, all those years ago … what price he would have had to pay."

And yet, who will ultimately turn on her mentor to save god himself.

Abigail, who doubts:

“I firmly believe that the Kindly Emperor knows nothing of that undiscovered country. He never claimed omnipotence. I longed my whole life to give him my findings”

And yet amidst that doubt, even in death, believes the god whose servant brutally murdered her is good and prays for help to the man who never claimed omnipotence:

"Pent even murmured, “The King over the River is good”

“Oh, God,” she heard Abigail say. “God, please help me.”

About Silas, a child raised in vengeful fundamentalism to exploit his cavalier, and yet who cannot fathom the possibility that god would ask the brutality of Lyctorhood of him:

"I understand that if the Emperor and King Undying came to me now and asked me why I was not a Lyctor, I would fall on my knees and beg his forgiveness, that any of us had ever failed this test. May I be burnt one atom at a time in the most silent hole in the most lightless part of space, Lord—Kindly Prince—should I ever contemplate betraying the compact you appointed between him, and you, and me.”

And Harrow, the product of the murder of 200 children in the name of preventing the death of god, who desperately asks god what it means to love him:

“Decent dinner and a bottle of average rosé. Maybe a movie. I’m not picky,” he said.

the usamerican concept of generations worked exactly once, kinda, a little, and since then people have been trying really hard to insist that it's a universal principal