I hate how everyone decides to call Elias/Jonah etc. someone who lacks empathy. When the whole thing about TMA is that there are people who feel so hard that those feelings (though negative) themselves grant the person in question super human powers. Also the process of taking and reading statements requires you to feel what the statement giver goes through in order for the fear to be fed. I could argue that he feels everything too much.
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elias-rights:
Mm, have you read the one-shot “Cactus Tree” by blue_blue_electricblue on AO3? I think it takes a similar approach to his characterisation, positing that Jonah does love all the people he betrays but simply loves being alive more, and I liked how it was written.
But to tackle the main point, yeah, it feels to me like people are attempting to reach a definition of humanity that excludes him by any means possible. I’ve seen a lot of short-sighted discourse about which characters are “the most human”, and it seems very silly to use love or empathy as parts of that definition, not only because real-life people often have low empathy or just don’t love easily or at all, but also because Jane Prentiss is right there.
Jonah can be hyperempathetic or be a low-empathy king, and this has no bearing on how “human” he is. To argue otherwise is a disservice to people with low or no empathy, and also just misses the point of the very nuanced discussions of humanity and lack thereof in the podcast.