Kek as someone who is part fire you'd thibk she would have a higher need to consume. She is a higher level lifeform and has dominion over all non human creatures.
that "Kat will eat anything, or at least try anything. Annie prefers processed meals because fresh/raw stuff makes her nervous." Which makes sense, since Annie probably spent most of her childhood eating food from the hospital cafeteria. She's probably more comfortable with organic stuff after her summer in the Forest, but maybe the elves just fed her on artisan Velveeta.
We could probably draw some parallels between the girls' respective food preferences and their approaches to romance.
Sure, your feelings are absolutely real, but wallowing in them isn't helpful, to you or anyone else, and getting you out of them (by whatever method works for you) is necessary. But the thing is, you WANT to come out of that state.
I do
now, because I'm on the right meds and I'm in a good place self-care-wise. But when I was sickest, I usually didn't want to get better, because then I'd be a
self-satisfied loathsome monster and that would be worse. Severe mood disorders are often self-reinforcing. You might hate having anxiety, but you can't afford to stop being anxious because then the Bad Thing really will happen and you won't be prepared. You might hate being depressed, but since you really
are a terrible excuse for a person, lifting your depression will just lead to future disappointment and other people getting hurt. That sort of thing.
Robot's probably not going to want to get rid of his negative feelings until he gains some hope that he can serve the Angel and his people better without them.
Oh, I think I know the kind of person you're talking about. My mother had some of those tendencies; she would frequently and randomly declare how guilty she felt about something she'd done decades ago that none of her kids actually minded, so that we would reassure and comfort her. And meanwhile she wouldn't even acknowledge the things she'd done to hurt us that we actually told her about. Her attitude of guilt was instantly replaced with defensiveness and hostility if she received criticism rather than sympathy as a result.
But the difference is, she
advertised her distress. If
Robot wants attention or pity, he's done a terrible job of demonstrating it for the entire comic. I don't recall him ever admitting to suffering or negative feelings, or complaining about poor treatment, and he's said that
jealousy is a flaw. The only reason he's disclosing any of this is that he's trapped in Zimmyngham, his body is massively mutated, the Seraphs are castigating him, and Shadow and Annie are confronting him about it. And he literally
shuddered with shame and begged Antimony and Shadow not to even look at him. Even Tom's comment
on this page is "can't hide forever." So I don't think that Robot wants any of this attention. He's just been forced to open up for the first time in his life and everything's spilling out. Turns out it includes a lot of weird shit.
Robot's like a more extreme version of Tony, really. People who aren't close to Tony think that he's cold and unfeeling because he locks up in public. People who
are close to Tony and confront him one-on-one discover that he's actually feeling a ton of things, often much more strongly than he "should", and that these feelings have spawned some very distorted beliefs and attitudes that can go a long time without being repaired or corrected, because of his social isolation and the Court's near-complete lack of a mental health care system. And when he finally vents to Don or Jones, the intensity he's expressing can make him seem deliberately dramatic, but it's really just that there's always been a garbage fire inside his head and this is the one of the rare times he cracks a window.
I don't think he's implying any of that last part. He said that his execution would be morally appropriate—-that Kat would have "no choice" but to execute him given the magnitude of his evil—and that his death would be a minor loss balanced against the welfare of robotkind. That's kind of the definition of accepting responsibility. He's badly deluded about the consequences Kat would hand down for his behavior, but he's doing his best to accept what he thinks they'd be.
Of course he doesn't
want to die, because he doesn't want to be parted from Shadow and his other friends. But he's not trying to convince Annie and Shadow that he shouldn't be executed; instead, he's condemning himself for selfishly wanting to live. His
love multiplies his shame because he can't even do the noble thing and reconcile himself to martyrdom.
And yes, it could all be a clever ruse to make people feel sorry for him. But I think it's more likely that he's acting like a misguided altruist because he actually is one.
Yes, that's called
moral injury. It's a frequent factor in PTSD, for instance among combat veterans, overstretched healthcare providers, and addicts. And it can absolutely drive anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior.
The anxiety doesn't come from fearing that you might do something bad. It comes from knowing that you
did do something bad, something deeply bad by your own ethical standards, and fearing that you are therefore deeply and permanently tainted. That you are beyond recovery, because you're the sort of monster who knows the difference between right and wrong and deliberately does wrong anyway. That there's a contradiction at the core of your self, and that any world you'd want to live in would be too good for you to live in it. That you'll devastate your loved ones if you kill yourself, but you'll also devastate them if you live to commit more sins and hurt more people and prove yourself unworthy of their love and trust.
Feelings of guilt and self-hatred are very common in trauma survivors in general, but they can be particularly nasty after moral injury because, as you say, the person actually did the bad thing. In other types of trauma, the survivor may be able to eventually accept that they did nothing to deserve what happened to them. The moral injury survivor can't do that, because, well, it's not entirely true. They did do
something wrong, by their own standards, and they have to learn to reconcile that fact with the understanding that they're worthy of life and happiness anyway. It's tricky.
Nah. That kind of Robot would have disposed of the other Seraphs long ago, since they were only ones who were aware of his crime and could publicize it. He would do everything in his power to avoid its discovery, and if it was discovered, he'd fight, flee or die rather than be judged imperfect by a superior.
Robot's delusion of
justified public condemnation, conviction, and execution would be unthinkable for a narcissist. Same reason Hitler shot himself rather than face judgment by the Allies or his own people.
So normally the trope for a redemption arc sort of thing would involve the malefactor reaching a low point or experiencing a crisis of conscience, realizing the error of their ways, and then at minimum resolving to do things differently from that point on.
And I think we're just hitting that low point now. This is Robot's intervention. In 12-Step terms, he's like a quarter of the way through Step 1: Accept that you've screwed up your life and don't currently know how to fix it. Robot's
just now realized that whatever he was hoping to accomplish with this convoluted plan of trials and first deaths isn't gonna happen. Everything else comes afterwards.
Robot's certainly on board for that possibility!
Well, I dunno about redemption, but
recovery doesn't generally require you to regret most of your past problematic behaviors. The question is whether you can accept that they're not working anymore. If Robot continues to believe that the "Torn Sea" scheme was justified by the plight of his people, fine—-Kat and Annie can decide for themselves whether or not they still want him in their lives. But can he accept that future problems don't
need to be solved by lies, violence and betrayal followed by suicide, because there's a better approach and he's capable of following it? If not, even his attempts to make amends will just make things worse, and he'll continue to be a threat to himself and others.
Personally, I don't think that's likely. His emotions are going to get bigger, stronger and more complicated as a New Person. His Ocean's going to have a lot of barnacles in it, and it's going to take a lot of work to get them under control.
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