Answering another round of asks for Max and Connor :3
Connor is learning about emotions the same way anyone else learns about something new, through exposure. He’s always technically had the capacity for it, but the Vrak as a species just don’t have that kind of emotional stimuli for others to mirror. Him being around Max is like eating a Snickers bar after only consuming cottage cheese your entire life – it’s a very overwhelming experience at times, especially when it’s for concepts that he just can’t grasp.
His 180 change is a very gradual thing. At first, things were going pretty good! Even if he never fully “got” something, he still understood the basic idea of it, which was far more than he knew before. He was developing empathy, he liked how being happy made him feel (well, maybe not at first…) and that he’s at his happiest with Max. He’s breaking out of his shell, becoming something more caring and humane. He loves Max with all that he’s capable of.
Until he learns about jealousy through firsthand experience. He was never jealous of her old friends that she always talked about, because they were dead and obviously held no competition. But her little…romance she’s starting to develop with another survivor makes all the warmth inside him turn bitter. Then he realizes about the concept of grief when losing a loved one, since helping Max and the others leave would mean never seeing her again. It would be the right thing to do, it would be selfless and compassionate of him to make that sacrifice, it would be an act of pure love that defines his character and proves how much he’s grown.
Unfortunately, he decides against all of that. He doesn’t like these new, ugly feelings. They hurt and make him feel anxious and upset. These weren’t feelings he was supposed to know, he only wanted the good ones. So if he keeps Max instead, he’ll get those good feelings forever (:
She’s mildly aware of it, but he’s already a weird dude in general, so she just brushes off his behavior off as freaky lil quirks. It doesn’t start setting off alarm bells in her head until it’s far too late.
It’s such a shame, because Max spent a lot of time drilling into Connor’s head about morals and kindness and putting others before yourself. Obviously, Connor is doing none of that, but he also turns these lessons around on her with the ultimatum that he’ll let all the other humans go home in exchange for her staying here forever with him. It should be a cut-and-dry deal based on everything she taught him, but…it’s hard not to be a hypocrite when you’re the one tasked to be the sacrificial lamb.
The first real friendship he’s ever had and it’s with a drunk grunge bitch who tells him to kill himself and shows him a sick rail grind before immediately eating shit at the bottom of the stairs.
And he thinks it’s the best experience ever.
Nope! The frequency still plays through any radio waves that are on, but all the remaining survivors are immune to its effects one way or another, so it’s not much of an issue aside from Max getting migraines around them. Since this is an abandoned experiment, Connor doesn’t really have the means to control it anyways.
He didn’t get permission because it’s one of those things where no one said you can’t go take a peek or interact with it after it’s been concluded. It’s basically just laying around collecting dust, no one really cares what’s done with it now. It was just by chance he happened to look into this particular experiment and become interested in it on his own.
Yeah pretty much lmao. Although it’s been several months since the event so most of the bodies, that have also already been torn apart by others or scavenged, have decomposed significantly.
They sort of clean it up, in the sense that they’ll move bodies out of the way or to prevent some kind of contamination that could make them sick, but they’re not walking around giving everyone a proper burial. If anything, they might cover the remains with something, but by now they’re all pretty desensitized to the mass graveyard of a city.
