-Patches' Misery is increaseing-

In terms of what its actually looking for, its more of a soul-read situation. It goes a bit deeper than just a surface level and more into the person's inclination or ability to be moved towards that action, so even people who might feel social pressure for their own safety or people who have psychological reasons for struggling with that would still be analyzed with a degree of 'what kind of person do you really want to be? do you want things to be better? to be fair?' It's hard to word exactly why it has a particularly strong interest in Liar, but the gist of it is that she is someone aware of 'the problem' and unhappy with it but also wants to passively occupy the low rung because its the path of least resistance. The depression, the lack of motivation, the willingness to accept a place of clear inequality simply because going against that is too much... someone like that is someone Rat King wants to save, to drive to action. The cogs in the machine are something to be pulled out and repurposed into a siege weapon. The way abnormalities actually work (within the lore of Lobotomy Corporation) is that they, at their core, are aspects of humanities collective traumas and fears made manifest in unique form, and reflect those concepts in very rigid ways. This is why you can't kill them (you can't really kill an idea) and why you can contain and control them- because unlike a person who can grow and learn and change and get better an abnormality is stuck in instinctual response- so you can learn what triggers it, calms it, etc and use that to control it with a degree of success (but they are, by their nature, volatile and emotional. An abnormality might be shaped like a person, speak clear English and seem to learn, but when its nature breaks it response will always be simplistic and patterned) Which is to say that Rat King's personal growth with any individual person can be overwritten by its instinct to sort people into Good and Bad, for equality to be maintained, to eliminate the 'bad'. There is a very big difference between a calm Rat King and an angry one, and its prone to outbursts which make it destructive in a way that is dangerous to even people it would sort into 'do not harm'- because a large part of its being is dedicated strictly to the concept of violent retribution, and when that emotional aspect of it is provoked the part of Rat King that feels more logical and human collapses. Rat King itself is basically based on every single 'I hope karma gets you' thought all of humanity has ever had about their shitty boss, their abusive boyfriend, every sleepless night dedicated to job searching for the option that was least likely to kill or disable you, the condensed hate anyone's ever felt about a situation they couldn't do anything about. It's 'story' and perception of itself is of a storybook fable where the evil king does something evil to people because it had the divine right to be evil to those people, and then was murdered for it. Because it deserved it. So that is the Rat King's reason for existing- to be the combined force of every pain-filled wish for karmic justice against someone who hurt you just because they were in a position where they could. (That is also why the Rat King conceptualizes itself as victim, because it is ultimately manifested from the side of the person hurt- it isn't just the idea of revenge, but the concept of turning the tables itself) -- As for the second part here about what counts as a positive interaction. Abnormalities are inherently big scary things with the capability to hurt relatively squishy humans without much intention to. Even if Rat King doesn't want to harm you, its mere existence as a giant psychological monster is stressful and upsetting to be around, and even if it puts significantly more care into not hurting you it is still very much capable of physical harm on accident, or as a byproduct of being annoyed or upset. LC itself has four main types of work- with the abnormalities having preferences, the gist of those is as follows:

Instinct: Basic instinctual needs. Feeding, contact or satisfying instinctual behaviors and desires. A lot of these aren't actually physical needs an abnormality needs to fill, but can desire to fill. Second favorite.

Insight: Environmental and psychological needs- cleaning the environment, adding elements to it that are pleasing, etc. Covers a lot of things technically. Third Favorite.

Attachment: Social needs. Talking and interaction. Maybe even things like play. This is Rat King's preferred work type overall. It likes interacting with its subjects! Unless those subjects have Very Bad Vibes, in which case it would like to kill them very much. Another reason why Rat King's bond with employees is so complicated, the best way to work with it in terms of not pissing it off is the kind of interaction that is most likely to cause long term issues.

Repression: Suppression of desires. This ones a little more complicated to explain, but you can sort of think of it as curbing undesirable desires and psychological reactions. In-lore these then to be more in line with things like drugging, physical abuse or gaslighting rather than therapy. Dangerous and messy. This one is Rat Kings least favorite because obviously the only reason someone would want to suppress Rat King down is to prevent it from fixing what is obviously broken. Would almost certainly piss it off more. However based on the way Rat King exists I do think this could be a 'high risk, high reward' type work. Maybe the type of work most effective with high-level employees (the kind of employee it likes the least)

To be honest, I sat down to draw this with practically no idea.

Other color version and version without colors.