It's Baaaaaaaaaaack...

[nostabbing]

✭ THE ANONYMOUS QUESTION MEME✭
With a truth-serumed twist!

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Comments

[(Anonymous)]

So. That kiss back at the mansion.

What are your feelings about Nietzsche?

[(Anonymous)]

And what kinda opportunity and means are you talking about?

[explosivecombat]

You'll know once we've obtained them.

[Aha, so technical truths still work, excellent.]

[(Anonymous)]

OK so hypothetically, let's just say that you've got these means, and the opportunity presents itself. Describe the means and the opportunity in detail, without the use of vague wording to ignore the objective of the question which is to figure out exactly how you will enact your grand scheme of conquering/laying waste to the world.

[bertall]

I think that'd really depend on who it was. I'd give anything for it to be someone I knew--Reiner or Annie for example, but I doubt that's who you're talking about, right?

[explosivecombat]

Well, if we're speaking purely in hypotheticals, we could always just lure out and capture that god-creature that was described in that castle we were just in; it is just a Pokémon, after all, and - hypothetically speaking, of course - it would be stupid to not capture God in a ball and use it as we see fit, should the opportunity present itself.

[Well, it can't be said that Kimblee disobeys the letter of the law, though the spirit is another matter. I mean he's still ignoring the objective, but hey, he's not being vague about it, now, is he?]

[(Anonymous)]

And is that your current plan? Go back to nightmare-ville to grab Don Demon over there and re-enact Fantasia?

[(Anonymous)]

Ding ding ding we have a winner.

Let's say it's Eren.

[explosivecombat]

I'm afraid I don't understand the reference, but when it comes to the basic question - I'm not exactly interested in doing that, no.

[(Anonymous)]

So what would you be interested in doing given your current resources at the moment?

[explosivecombat]

Why are you so curious about it?

[(Anonymous)]

Because you're interesting, and I'm curious.

[explosivecombat]

Consider me flattered, then. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to divulge that information at the moment.

[bertall]

_{[weeps internally. 'nonnies why you do this to him?]}

...I-I really don't want to think about that... It'd be bad enough with just him, b-but he'd probably tell Mikasa.

[(Anonymous)]

That's how the cookie crumbles. I'll keep an eye out for the end of the world then. You'll make it grand won't you?

[(Anonymous)]

...yeah, you'd be pretty screwed. I'd hate to be in your position. Let's talk about happier stuff. Do you like your situation now? You know, no Titans, no obligations to cause the death of humanity?

[explosivecombat]

If I can't make it beautiful, then it's not worth doing.

[freshprints]

Of course I like him.

I'm under the impression the feeling is mutual.

[doitrockapella]

Probably not as correlated with your observed variable as you seem to think.

And you might want to refine your question, or I'm going to be compelled to write you an essay, and I'm not entirely sure if that's what you want.

[(Anonymous)]

Essay away. Whether you really like him in that particular way or not, the two of you are very interesting people.

[doitrockapella]

Really.

All right, then, be patient. This may take awhile.

[(Anonymous)]

how often do you bang your head on doorways?

[solas_ion]

...What's wrong with it?

[doitrockapella]

The way that we work is...complex, and in a way I almost think the most telling part of the whole statement is the fact that we even work in the first place. It doesn't seem like it at first glance — or at second or even third, really — but we're considerably more alike than you might think, and in the times when we do have disagreements, it's usually because one of us (traditionally, me) is expecting the other to perceive the same set of facts according to the same logic, which again speaks to the idea that we're similar enough in enough respects to even make that kind of mistake in the first place.

Which is, of course, part of where it gets complicated, because I'm not entirely happy about the notion that I have a lot in common with a psychopath.

On the other hand, it's also not the first time in my life I've had a lot in common with a psychopath — at offhand count, I'd say it's probably the third. So aspects of the relationship that you'd think would bother me often don't (or at least not as much as they ought to) because that kind of thing is to some extent just par for the course in my life, and all things considered he's undoubtedly the most amiable psychopath I've had the pleasure of crossing paths with, given that he's neither obsessed with me (...I assume) or out to see me dead, and I've yet to see him break his word once he's given it. That's not to say that he won't bend his word or adhere to the letter of it while throwing the spirit right out the window like a cheap copy of Fifty Shades of Gyarados, but if I leave open an exploitable loophole like that knowing that that's how he operates, well, that's really my fault for not catching it, and to expect anything different is foolish because he's not going to go out of his way to make me the exception to anything, regardless of what he thinks about me.

It's a relationship that's changed me, there's no doubt of that. It's not always in ways that I might like, and those changes have usually followed some fairly nervewracking arguments. But I've always thought that one of the most profound things about human beings is their capacity to change, and while it does sometimes unnerve me to see them happening, they're not things I'm going to shy away from, either. I'm the product of my experiences, my choices, and the people who've had an influence on my life. Whether or not that influence is good...that's a different consideration entirely.

But it's also a relationship I'm interested in maintaining for a number of reasons. The obvious one is that with our arrangement in effect, my valuable people have an extra line of defense between them and any harm that might be impending, assuming I can get to them in time to get them out of the way. There's also the unanticipated, but equally fortuitous, side effect that without knowing who my valuables are, he can't launch an impromptu attack without risking the possibility of unintentionally breaking the agreement. There's obviously the motivation that I enjoy our conversations because I like (and need, to some extent) the intellectual stimulation and attention, and of course there's the part about being given the opportunity to learn alchemy — and goodness knows I'm not one to say no to learning.

And assuming I were writing this essay to him and not to you, Anonymous, I have a feeling this is about where he'd be pointing out that I'm offering up a fair amount of textbook recitations of "what is" while subtly dodging the question of "how I feel".

Of course, the last time he pointed that out, I argued that I had to set up those baselines in order to provide a context to even attempt to answer how I felt in the first place, and I think the same holds true here. It's not enough to say "I feel X and Y" without understanding where that's even coming from in the first place, and the sorts of motivations that I'm always taking into consideration (combining and weighing and occasionally discarding) when dealing with him.

I think what I'm in the process of learning right now is the fact that I need to let go of some of the motivations that have been driving me in this since the beginning. They've changed — evolved, really — over the course of time, because for awhile I was in it to try to stop him, and then it was to try to solve him, and then it was to try to help him, and somewhere in there we threw in a whole mess of feelings of loneliness and a need for acceptance and praise and a handful of other things that I don't think I was even aware of at the time, but they were there and it was complicated, and the real point is that most of them were also unsuccessful, which as we all know has never prevented me from continuing to try before.

But I also remember a certain occasion where I was trying to figure out something he'd done — and this was after a streak of surprisingly accurate guesses about something else he'd done, so I was on quite the roll at that point — and I ended up breaking my streak because I ended up overthinking things. Sometimes the answer really does just boil down to little more than "because I wanted to".

If you're asking what was going through my head during that particular moment in the battle, that's a considerable part of it. Even in a moment like that, it turns out that there are some things about him that stay constant, and that's a reassuring revelation when you take into consideration that those are also the things I've tended to put my faith in when it comes to him.

What I feel is different from the relationships I've had before, which I suppose is to be expected, to some extent, but I'm used to my personal relationships tending to follow reasonably similar patterns, so it's always strange when I come across one that tends to break the mold. Agent Cooper shattered the mold because I could never figure out how to define him, and ended up having to come up with an entirely new pattern to accommodate the way I felt about him. Nietzsche is the same way — he doesn't fit any of those existing patterns (including Agent Cooper's), so at the moment he's occupying his own little corner, in a category all his own. He makes me feel safe — maybe not always in terms of security of person, but...in consistency, maybe. Reliability. I like that. I like...being able to count on that.

And I like the confusion. I like the challenge. I like the danger, even, but that's hard to explain in a way that makes sense without falling prey to the pitfalls of poor connotation. I like that I can say things and he understands. I like that he's made me take a better look at some of the uglier parts of myself so I can try to fix them. I'm still working on embracing the idea that I can't fix him, but it's a work in progress. And Rome wasn't built in a day.

I've never really had a friend before, all things considered. I've had partners and subordinates and teachers and rivals and proteges and even someone who loved me, but I never really did...friends. Sometimes I wonder if maybe this is just how I do friends. And if that's the case, maybe that says something about why I've never had any before now.

So. There's your essay. But in the interest of echoing something I've already mentioned in there, and in recognition of the influence of the man in question, let me try my hand at not overcomplicating things for once:

I like him.

Do you really need anything more than that?

...I am so sorry but

[explosivecombat]

You know, I'm somewhere between flattered that I apparently inspire so many words and mildly appalled at the sheer amount of overthinking that you're putting into this.

That was a good call regarding how well you were answering the question at the outset, however; may whomever's listening have mercy on whomever asked.