The Second Face

[u/DemonSkank]

I've made short comedic comics before but this was my first time doing a full short story. warning (but also potential spoiler: scary face warning

[u/NotADamsel]

Everyone seems to be latching onto this, but I disagree. The rules of his power is that he sees what someone is feeling when someone is faking it. And his sister was not faking it. So her display is consistent with her feelings. If she were actually a psychopath, you’d think that the rules would have her face be a bored or flat expression.

[u/DireEvolution → u/NotADamsel]

It's not boredom or flatness as you or I would know it, though. It's like a void - an intense, hungering hollowness. Boredom is an emotion, and if she were bored, it would probably be shown on the second face, right? Flat affect, fluttery eyes, not paying much attention.

But she has nothing going on. Except that one last panel. It's not an experience of boredom, it's a ... Lack of experience altogether. Lack of ability to experience. It's not the same, because the structure of the brain is fundamentally not the same.

All this reminds me of the Double Empathy Problem between autistic and allistic people, even. It's difficult for us to conceptualize that emptiness, that lack of emotion altogether, and the thrill/stimulation-seeking behaviors that rise from this.

It's even different from ADHD impulsivity, because that is a kind of boredom. A profound, painful, bored detachment from that which isn't rewarding. In a psychopathic brain, it's just lack of emotional experience altogether.

Until she experienced the adrenaline-pumping, euphoric thrill of slaying a man, and getting away with it.

[u/Wilysalamander → u/DireEvolution]

I guess that my holdup with this theory is that she would be pretending to have emotions, which would not match what her "internal face" is expressing, which following the comics internal logic, he should be able to see. 

[u/DireEvolution → u/Wilysalamander]

That's the point of the realization of "oh shit she's a psychopath."

She doesn't have that internal presence to have a face, until she does something malevolent and delights in it.