Schrödinger's Catboy

First, you have Ellen, who represents denial. She lost her husband, David, and somewhat forces acceptance upon herself and her daughter. Even though the story picks up after David’s death, we see Ellen’s journey through grief when David comes back. Ellen’s acceptance of her loss is juxtaposed with denial. When her husband comes back, she’s confused and hurt. She doesn’t want to accept he’s back because, well how could she? She’s lived two long painful years without him. She’s gone through so much, having to accept that he’s gone just for hime to come back. She’s terrified with the pain that comes along side embracing him. If she accepts him as alive again, she also has to accept the possibility of losing him again. She has to learn to accept the pain that accompanies love. Even though she eventually accepts David, her denial to his resurrection is still highlighted earlier on in the show.

There’s also Chanda. He is a not so subtle representation of the anger associated with grief. He literally burns a building and kills a family because he was blinded by his grief. He was grieving his life, and how he would never live as he once did. All of his actions are propelled by his anger over the loss of his life. He is desperately trying to achieve what he never got the chance to while he was human. He’s trying to create the world he never got to live in. He can’t accept the way things are because he’s still stuck in his anger over his loss.

Next, there’s Cody. He represents bargaining. He can’t accept the loss of his wife, so he does anything minimize and postpone his sadness. He doesn’t question or deny Laurie when she comes back like Ellen did with David. Rather he accepts her without a second thought. His actions aren’t solely propelled by love, but rather his avoidance to pain. Even before he knew Laurie’s upload was successful, he didn’t accept that she was gone. He still felt that she was alive and the same as she had been. When she came back, he did anything for Laurie because he didn’t want to lose her or accept that things had changed. He did everything in his power to keep things the same and try to live as he did before. When Laurie is prepared to die to spread her message to the world, he doesn’t accept losing her again. Rather, he prepares to “reboot” her and keep thing the way the are, even though they’re not.

Next there’s Capsian, who represents depression. Now the thing he’s mourning is a bit different from the other characters in this analysis. He isn’t mourning the physical death of someone, but rather the death of his innocence. He found out he was a clone and that his entire life was a lie. Everything he thought he knew wasn’t real, and that’s terrifying. While he goes through the other stages of grief, the show draws attention to the depression part of grief through Caspain. He quickly recognizes the true extent of his loss but still struggles to accept and cope with it. Thus, he is easily manipulated by Pope and throws himself into curing the flaw because to him it’s a way to avoid the looming hopelessness of his situation. He’s lost interest and passion for the things he once cared about, and focuses on what he feels he has to do. He feels hopeless, and desperately trying to cure the flaw is his way of trying to reclaim agency. If he solves the problem, he regains some control over the hopelessness he feels.

Finally, there Maddie, who represents the complex journey to acceptance. Throughout the show, she experiences all the stages of grief. The show focuses on her journey to accepting the loss of her father and the life she once had. We watch her go through the stages of grief at her own pace and eventually come to terms with her loss. We watch her grow into the person that can eventually let her father pass. We watch her move forward despite her loss. She still is in unimaginable pain because of the death of her father, but she still keeps moving.

"Pantheon" asks a very ancient question: What does it mean to be human?

It's answer? Connections.

We're the neural pathways and firing synapses in this magnificent meat sitting in our skulls. But it's not just electric chemical signals. Those make us physically function, but they're not the only thing that makes us humans.

We're that stupid song we love to hate.

We're an argument with our siblings.

We're the compassion for a baby bird with a broken wing.

We're the grief when we lose someone.

We're the joyful memories that stay even after they're gone.

We're every relationship we make from loved ones to complete strangers, from close to distant, from real to imaginary, from material to theoretical.

We're made up of every single little thread of feeling that ties us together both inside ourselves and to others. Physical or digital, "real" or "simulated," those never go away. Even when you're "gone," whatever that means to you, the connections stay in one way or another.

We're all the things we learn from each other when we decide to make those connections; both when we reach out and reach back. Humans are woven together like a quilt, every one their own square yet all inextricably linked.

And y'know what? It's not the answer, because there never can be one to such a complicated question, but it's an answer I really like. Which the show portrayed in a really beautiful way that had me sobbing by the end.

Aplatonic activism and instances changed me and affect me positively to an enormous degree, as an alloplatonic neurodivergent and mentally ill aroace.

They empowered me to enjoy my own company, knowing I don't need friends either to be happy; I can be content with myself. They made me see the value in loneliness. Considering socializing drains me fast, so I tend to stay alone in my room a lot, this is very relevant to me.

They made me look inward, noticing my internal narration is actually possibly the best company I could ask for 90% of the time (when depression doesn't turn it into literal hell). No other person on the planet would understand me better than myself. Nobody shares 100% of my values. No one person shares all of my interests. When I have a healthy dose of self-confidence, I actually laugh at my own wittiness and think that no single friend's humour caters to my taste nearly as well. It would feel frustrating and self-absorbed if aplatonism existing didn't make me realize it's okay to not place friends above yourself.

They taught me to be independent. That's still a work in progress but if I hadn't learned about aplatonism, I'd probably obsess over my best friends way worse than I already do.

It also taught me another level of consent. I have yet to meet an aplatonic person irl (at least as far as I know), but the idea that even placing a label like "friend" on someone without consent could be wrong makes me feel both safer myself (I've gotten a taste of it when my ex QPP broke up with me and asked if we could still be best friends. Wtf we were never best friends dude, just friends, that felt almost dirty), and probably makes people around me feel safer too. Since I'm friendship favourable it actually makes me experience my friendships more respectfully and thoughtfully so they come out healthier.

I don't mean to make it all about myself here—aplatonic people already get the shortest end of the stick when it comes to a-spec visibility and general attitudes towards them, so it's not in such good taste to bring the focus on me and my alloplatonism—but maybe some other alloplatonic people can come across this and be inspired to deconstruct their own platonormativity.

Aplatonic advocacy helps literally everyone I swear. Aro advocacy falls short in some places by too often shifting the focus on platonic bonds as a "replacement" for the "missing" romance. Understanding aplatonism directly contributed to actually *fully* deconstructing amatonormativity without just recycling the same rhetoric.

and it takes maddie seeing her father die three times, seeing her lover die, then coming back 20 years later to die again, having her son bleed out in her arms, and having no one she loves in the physical world, for her to create her own universe via massive computer powered by the sun where billions of simulations run and become a god

FINALLY COMPLETED!! My first full-size pixel art illustration, based on a screenshot of the Svalbard data center from Pantheon. This was an idea I've been stewing on for the better part of a year, and only recently got the confidence to go for it! I was very inspired by the style of 8pxl, especially how they do clouds!

Which, stopping pedos sounds good, but this bill will not do that.

The EFF has more on it, but the long and short is what it will do is basically outlaw encryption as inherently suspect by way of people being potentially liable if anyone could do anything with it, and it carves out Section 230 to do so.

Which, if you don't know, means that websites are gonna massively overcorrect and ban basically anything that could set it off, and if you don't think that's a big deal, remember that the last time that happened was FOSTA-SESTA, which kicked off the censorship wave that fucked over a lot of sites including Tumblr, and also didn't do dick for its stated purpose of stopping sex trafficking.

It's currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee, so if you see any of your state's Senators in the list of members, CALL THEM ASAP, and even if they aren't, call your senators and especially your House reps and tell them you do not want this censorship law rammed into a must-pass bill without public debate.

for his whole career, kimi has been treated like some kind of prodigy, and it was almost seen as an inevitability that he would one day be fighting for an f1 championship. he’s been lauded as the future of mercedes, and he has toto’s complete and enthusiastic support. going into this season, mercedes was expected to lead with no clear competition, so all the chatter was around kimi and george.

at the start of last year, on the other hand, mclaren certainly had the strongest car, but red bull was still in contention, and the title conversation was entirely focused on the norris-verstappen rematch. nobody in the media, and i mean NOBODY, was talking about oscar as a serious contender for the title despite some of his strong performances in 2024 and his vast improvement over the course of his first two years. oscar’s title bid seemingly came out of nowhere because he’s never had anywhere near kimi’s level of hype (even with a significantly more successful junior career), and the only people who knew how strong of a driver oscar had become were his fans who had been paying close attention to his progress. and despite his incredibly strong start to the year (and all of his wins being earned and not gifted by lucky safety cars), the media still didn’t seriously start considering him a championship contender until around saudi/miami.

another very important distinction is the fact that kimi is mercedes’ golden boy, toto’s pet project, and you know he’s going to have the complete backing of his team throughout the whole season. oscar, on the other hand, is very clearly NOT the golden child. that’s not to say that mclaren doesn’t value him at all, but their support of him is limited, conditional. they were happy to celebrate his success at the beginning of the year because it helped their “two number one drivers/happy papaya family/there is no war in ba sing se” narrative, but once he became too serious of a threat, they started to suffocate him (bad strategies, not defending him from bullshit penalties (silverstone), media mind games, invoking hungary 24 to guilt him into following team orders, blatant favoritism like robbing him of a very deserved grand slam in qatar because they didn’t want to even slightly disadvantage lando with strategy, etc). and that’s not to mention the fact that the team didn’t make any upgrades later in the year when oscar was struggling with the car but they worked tirelessly at the beginning of the year when lando was struggling with the car (i know they had turned their focus to 2026 at that point, but people still don’t acknowledge the fact that lando and max got upgrades to help them when they were struggling and oscar didn’t and that definitely played a part in his decline in performance later in the year). and even with all of that, he managed to stay in contention for the title all the way to abu dhabi. merc just isn’t going to throw that kind of bullshit at kimi this year and everyone knows it

🚩Who has deleted all the beautiful memories