thing is i don’t really feel bad for any tma character. i get disappointed when a character i like dies, but i can’t observe the series from an “i feel bad for these people” perspective, because it’s so damn fascinating to observe it from a thought exercise perspective instead. not “would i feel bad if this bad thing happened to this person”, but rather “would this person be bad if they did this thing?” or “if a bad thing happened to a bad person, would they deserve it? is pain something you can deserve?”

which is why malevolent is fucking destroying me because it’s not a thought exercise or a philosophical ramble, it’s a story. and i’m viewing it from the perspective of “this is a story that i am being told about awful things happening to people”.

all of this to say, i feel genuinely bad for arthur lester and i don’t know how to deal with that