#philosophical,

INTERDIMENSIONAL NIHILISM

Fragment I - “Anhedonia”

(IN-I-2025), 11/04/2025

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She wasn’t actually her, but the hairstyle and the color of her hair were so similar that I caught myself thinking:

“huh, how strange it is sometimes, how a single familiar detail can make you feel like you somehow know another person too, and because of that it becomes hard not to feel yourself somewhere nearby with them, in the same situation”.

That mother, after a Russian strike hit a residential building, stood for hours watching the rubble being cleared. By afternoon, my own mother told me that her daughter had stayed in contact until the very last moment, but after another collapse, the signal disappeared. The parents held on to hope for a miracle until the very end.

I recognize a voice that sounds like that of a friend I once had — in a completely different girl. She’s with a guy whose tone even reminds me of the one she used to date back then, the one I never really got along with — and the one she later cried to me about after their messy breakup, before getting back together with him again.

They are trying to evacuate from a building, around which strikes and interceptions are still happening. He tries to shield her with his body and calm her frightened voice, which in some distant way reminds me of how my friend used to react to horror movies — but she never sounded like this, not with this real, cold terror.

I realize that I actually don’t know at all how that friend of mine reacts to explosions at night or during the day. We haven’t spoken in a long time, even before the full-scale invasion began.

In a way, none of us truly knows each other, but I’ve heard both of them in some of the harder moments of their lives.

This frame is familiar to me too — like the ones I used to take after walks with friends, to later set as my phone wallpaper or post to my stories.

I don’t recognize this extra element in the sky, although by now it is more familiar than something I wouldn’t know.

I don’t recognize anyone in this frame.

I recognize the building — one of many old historical structures across the city. But I don’t know exactly where it is.

The fire from the strike looks far more familiar to me.

I recognize the square in the city center very well, but I don’t know these people — just some volunteers who came to plant a tree.

I wish I could recognize more people in moments like this.

He can understand metaphors and knows about philosophy, but he’s always struggle to truely grasp the tragedy and helplessness so may of them hold. The idea of someone being doomed from the start, by the author and the narrative or maybe just the world they were set in, just doesn’t really make sense to him.

Part of him knows it’s because he was born with a vintage silver spoon placed delicately in his hands, but there’s more to it than that.

See, most of the bad things that have happened to Tim have either been consequences of his own action or the fact that his friends and colleagues all have the same dangerous job.

To him it just makes sense that bad things will happen and so he can just… prepare for it. He can do what he can to fix it or move onto something else and push away his own feelings because what else is he supposed to do?

So, no, things like Hamlet and Dorian don’t really click for him

At least… until he thinks about Jason.

Born in poverty with a world surrounding him that would not bother to care or offer help to him purely because of how he looks of his parents.

A mother who loves him endlessly, only to fall into the drugs she tried to protect him from.

Finding out that mother didn’t even give birth to him, but the father that never showed anything other than distain and cruelty was still his own.

Being given Robin, hated by the first one for a time, only to die in the suit by the hands of a mad man all because his real mother sold him out.

Waking up in a coffin, digging himself out and roaming around catatonic and the only thoughts he can actually process is that he must be a ghost.

Being taken by a league of killers, lied to and trick and tormented into thing a perfect weapon.

Realise his mentor, who he once thought the father he deserved to have, has failed him and let his killer free because of something as fickle as a moral compass.

Seeing that mentor seemingly replace him with a perfect rich kid who doesn’t swear or complain or sneak off without permission from what he can tell.

Having no real friends in that time.

Having no one to trust because everyone had an ulterior motive. Everyone uses him.

And through out it all, even with all the hate and the bitterness and injustice he had been faced with, his first course of action is to make the home he first had and the only one he will ever have… safer.

To protect the kids like him from becoming statistics and killers, from the pain he felt and the false promises of the Batman.

Jason keeps honesty and integrity, even when no one else offers it to him in return.

Tim can’t understand Macbeth or Antigone or Othello, can’t see why someone would write something so morbid just to try and entertain.

But he can understand, or at least try to understand, Jason Todd.

Because that is someone who had actually been hurt for no reason. Someone who had been tormented by the universe, by fates and coincidence, with no real lesson being taught other than the world hates him.

Sure Jason has Roy and Biz and Artemis and Kori, but what about a brother?

Dick tried, he still does, but he fails Jason over and over by trying to make him ‘better’.

Damian doesn’t really care too much, not out of malice but there’s just not much of a connection between them.

Cass tries, but Jason is always awkward around her and that’s not his fault, you can’t hide a thing from her.

Duke liked Jason a lot, but again, the newest Bat is trying hard to find his place in the world of vigilantes and can’t quite find it in himself to be too close to Jason’s violence.

But Tim…

He’s morals have always been held together by the simple fact of ‘it’s not really that approved of’ and not much else. He won’t kill, but unlike the others he is happy to leave a Rouge in a sinking ship and not feel a hint of guilt.

He adores Jason’s Robin, he knows to some extent how much he lost with that, and now he knows that Jason might not need much more than a few good things.

Small things, nothing that will trick him into thinking the world is apologising because it won’t, but enough to show him that Tim thinks he’s still worth something.

Tim won’t try convince him to become a better person or to stop killing, he might ask him to be a bit more rational and probably won’t be able to stop himself from giving tips on how to run his business, but he wouldn’t ask for his violent brother to change.

Because unlike everyone else, Tim knows that violence exist for good reason.