Voice; @the.boneless Can't hurt feelings when there's none there

[ragnarsson]

[It's the early morning, so early some might still consider it to technically be part of the night. Deal with it, people, he cares nothing about your sleeping schedules. The only reason he's up this early is his left leg is aching and won't stop. Ah, the thrills of having a disease that create brittle bones easily. So he's bored and this is what he's left to do: bug all of you until he can get back to sleep.]

Serious question time. What does a conscience feel like? In detail, if you don't mind. Or, if you're like me and don't have one, what does empathy feel like?

[This has been on his mind as of late. Blame talks with guilt-ridden ex-assassins he's had. Ivar's been thinking a lot about it. He can fake the latter to some degree, but the former has never much bothered him, which does explain why killing comes so easily to him.]

Comments

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

[ Will's sleeping schedule has always been an art form in how not to sleep.

Which is just a fancy way of saying he was awake and probably had been most of the night. ]

Empathy and conscience aren't necessarily the same thing. You can have one, without the other.

text; un: stranger.things

[potentialed]

[ Stephen has his nights of being unable to sleep and if he's not allowing his body to rest while his spiritual form is in the astral dimension, he often sees these "late night" posts. But he tends to have more regard for his "roommates". ]

Having empathy and a conscience are two separate things and both can make life ridiculously difficult.

[ He's just going to say it because it's true. ]

And painful. But I wouldn't want to live without either one.

@a.parrish

[antietam]

[ He's awake to get homework done, but a break can't hurt. ]

What does it feel like to not have a conscience?

[ audio | un: jkent ]

[supersweet]

It's kind of like a voice in your head that tells you not to do bad stuff. Sometimes it sounds like my mom.

@dodger/text

[smokedout]

kinda like explaining colors to a blind man.

[Hi he's not sure where he stands with you so he'll just give an honest answer and see what happens.]

[ragnarsson]

I know that. But they are related.

[He also has neither, so there's that. He's self-aware enough to realize this isn't the case for everyone.]

And you didn't answer the question.

[ragnarsson]

Seems like there's too much caring and guilt involved with either one.

[He can do without the amounts of either. If he didn't, he'd probably be crippled with guilt after how many people he's killed.]

cw: gore

[ragnarsson]

Kind of hard to explain. I just don't feel bad about the things people should feel bad about. For an example, my brothers and I killed a king in a very horrible manner before we got here. We shoved nails through his hands and then blood-eagled him, which involves tearing open someone's back and pulling their lungs out while they're still alive.

[He sounds positively gleeful describing the brutal way in which they tortured a man to death.]

I figure most normal people might feel a little bit bad about that, maybe have some nightmares if they aren't feeling it in their waking hours. Me? I'm only sad I was only able to kill him once.

[ragnarsson]

[That gets him to laugh.]

If I had one, it wouldn't sound like my mother. She did a bunch of horrible stuff herself.

[Yeah, allowing her children to watch her force a Christian missionary to hold a red-hot piece of metal was probably the least of what Aslaug had done.]

[ragnarsson]

[Considering he still remembers the time Dodger was practically purring over the idea of torturing him to death, it seems he's got a kindred spirit here.]

Humor me. Do you even have one?

[Ivar shares the sentiment of not knowing what to do with each other. Well, at least the advantage of these devices is they don't have to do this awkwardly face-to-face.]

[supersweet]

Uh, okay. What do you think yours would sound like?

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

That's what I'm trying to explain to you. They're not always related. Some of the most effective sociopaths gain a lot of their high functioning ability from the strength of their empathy.

It's what allows them to successfully mimic what 'society' deems normal behavior.

[smokedout]

[For congruency and his own convenience, he's actually switching to audio.]

Used to have one. Turns out it's possible to beat it out of people.

[S h r u g.]

Far as I can remember, a conscience is just an impulse that tells you what'll help other people. Without it you can focus better on helping yourself.

voice | un: d.wayne

[bestrobin]

( Damian hadn't slept yet. He was used to spending this time patrolling, but it often ended earlier than he was used to with so little to deal with in such a seemingly non-threatening place. )

Everyone has a conscience. What differs is your morality. An assassin's conscience will differ greatly from that of the surgeon or someone sworn to spend their life saving others.

[antietam]

It depends. I mean, did he deserve it? There's no reason to feel bad if you thought he did. [ Or maybe that's just Adam. He's pretty sure he has a conscience, he just doesn't feel the way it tells him he should. ]

I think a conscience is a construct of societal norms, which is why most hear voices of people they know in their heads. Would you feel bad if you killed someone who you liked?

[ragnarsson]

And a Viking's is different from just about everyone else's here.

[But Damian would know something about being raised in a society like the ancient culture that Ivar comes from, revolving around killing. Granted, the Vikings did it to please their gods, and gain a place in the afterlife.]

[ragnarsson]

I don't know. Maybe my father? He was always one of the most sensible people I knew, even if most people disapproved of some of the things he did.

[Ivar's loyalty to his father Ragnar was absolute and ever-lasting. Even in death, nothing could shake the love he felt for him.]

[ragnarsson]

.....Sounds familiar.

[Technically, Ivar's behavior falls more under the psychopath category rather than pure sociopathy, but it's a close enough match. Granted, since he's come here, finding out what people deems normal behavior has been a challenge. Such is the switch after coming from a culture that revolved around violence and killing.]

[ragnarsson]

Sometimes, I think you're the only person here more fucked up in the head than me.

[That's not necessarily a good thing, but at leaves it gives Ivar a comparison for moments like this.]

It does make for easier single-minded thinking.

[When Ivar wants something, he merely looks at how to get from Point A to Point B. If someone is in the way, he simply removes them from his path.]

text;

[inebriety]

And you tried to tell me you're not crazy.

[ragnarsson]

Of course he deserved it. He murdered my father.

[Just one man wasn't going to be enough for revenge. Maybe when he'd razed the whole of England to the ground, Ivar would finally be satisfied.

The question he answers without the slightest bit of hesitation.]

No. Not a bit.

[Ivar's impulses would get him in trouble sooner rather than later, but short of killing a family member, he's never felt bad about killing anyone before.]

[smokedout]

You're still a kid. You'll grow up.

[He was closer to Ivar, when he was 16. Nine years can do some serious damage.]

Empathy is equally pointless. It just makes you feel what others feel when you see them feeling it. Feeling sad when others are sad. Happy when others are happy. If you're good at mirroring expressions, you don't need it anyway.

[Objectively, he doesn't believe feelings have a point outside of manipulating others into giving him what he wants. But in practice... it doesn't work as well as he'd like, which is partly why he values the ability to ignore empathy so much.]

[ragnarsson]

Says the crazy one himself. So do you have one? Or is that an inconvenience for a supposed 'genius'?

[ragnarsson]

I am not a kid.

[He will always stubbornly insist upon that fact. Sixteen was old enough to be considered fully-grown and a man among Vikings and Ivar was never going to get used to the attitude some had here regarding his youth.]

I learned how to fake that a while ago.

[Not that he ever actually bothers doing it. Ivar doesn't care enough about most people to pretend to do it most of the time.]

[supersweet]

Yeah. I mean, you can't always do the right thing. But it's important to try.