quietmounds | (no subject)

(no subject)

WHAT SHENANIGANS
WHERE bed
WHEN 88...early....

[Hey someone is your bed!

Or you're in their bed!

Maybe several people are all in one bed.

How did they/you get there? Who cares? Maybe go back to sleep, or something else. You can't seem the leave the bedroom until dawn and there are a few hours to go.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[hm]

Why?

Most people wouldn't think of increasing empathy as an academic exercise. It probably didn't come naturally to you, so you must have been in a similar position to Mori. But then you saw value in it, and learned it without compromising your personality. Nobody wants to think of empathy as a skill, but that's what it is and aspiring to master anything from scratch is a lot of work.

I'm definitely not trying to master it.

[vague wave, conceding the point]

Knowing that it can be improved, it sees like it'd be hard not to.

Is that what you're doing?

No, I've never had empathy problems. I learned something similar though. I guess you'd call it how to be likeable.

[kind of amused]

So now you're trying to master like-ability?

[They seem thoughtful about this for... A while. ]

I still am, yes.

......were you debating if you hadn't already mastered it?

[laughs]

No, just if I was still was.

Did you consider quitting?

No, just thinking about what that means, under these more intimate circumstances.

[hm]

People aren't as 'average' here, it does away with a lot of the daily annoyances, especially regarding 'being liked'. I've pretty much stopped trying entirely.

[Definitely super amused.]

That's—Accurate so far, now that you mention it.

It makes a kind of sense, if you're going to get a lot of bugs for pets, you probably don't want that many mundane ones.

Oh? That's your theory?

[shrug]

More or less.

I didn't think anything could make this place sound more boring.

Sorry, bad news, probably anyone powerful enough to set this place up wouldn't view us as more of a recreational curiosity far beneath them in every conceivable way.

[laughs]

That says more about you than whoever's fault this thing is. You're probably on the right track if they really haven't shown themselves at all, though.

I did my own investigation into 'superior beings', though obviously I can't really speak for anything even more superior than whatever is caught in this trap.

[sigh and rolls onto his side]

But the mostly indifferent god sounds a lot more believable than the benevolent but indifferent and inept god, doesn't it?

I've met a god and the avatar of a god before, and I would call them the opposite of uninvested. The former is, and I quote, "omnibenevolent", and I wouldn't call either indifferent, just—very unbelievable priorities.

I've met a youkai who's older than humanity, she drinks a lot and eats people and only cares if people are interesting and would still probably eat them because our lives are fundamentally meaningless to her.

[shrugs]

This place is safe and we're 'well cared for' so it's hard for me to not think of it as being like in a cage for someone else to watch. They care about the illusion that we're comfortable, but not about anything deeper than that. And why would they? Who really worries if their pet frog has unfulfilled potential or whatever?

That's the actual consequence, regardless of how they feel about it.

[Sighs; rifles a hand back through their hair.]

With all the random goings-on, you'd think they care about something.

Who knows how much effort is going into any of that, though? Maybe it's just a programmed algorithm designed to keep us from keeping completely brain dead, because that would be 'inhumane'.

Or maybe it's high level comedy entertainment and someone is making god-tier bank.