i am really bad at being a person

28 Oct, 2026

I watched an anime called The Ramparts of Ice (I think it was called that, anyways) recently. I enjoyed it a lot, slice of life will always bring me happiness, but I ended up having to stop because I couldn't help but get irritated with this one character...

This guy, Minato Amamiya.

He's portrayed as the primary antagonist for the first few episodes—not in the sense that he's evil, just that his goal opposes the protagonist's. His archetype is someone who seems to be pretty foxy, with orange hair and thin eyes, whose personality is dependent on those around him. Someone who's highly adaptive, but also in a way.. manipulative?

Anyways, spoiler alert in case you care enough to watch the show, but his entire initial character arc revolves around the fact that he adjusts himself to the people around him, and that in centering on them, he becomes somebody reflective of what they want, rather than his own person. But the people who he does this to most are people who seem lonely, or in any other way pitiful. He asks the "loser" kids about their interests and invests himself in them so that they can have someone to talk to, but his actions don't stem from a place of sincerity. This leads to the main character's best friend to be upset, since she feels as if she was pitied and doesn't want her friend to end up feeling the same treatment. It's fair enough.

The reason I got so annoyed with him, though, is because I saw so much of him in myself.¹ Or more, myself in him?

Regardless. I hated that. I don't think I have a saviour complex, but I definitely adapt to appealing to other people in the same way that he does—involving myself in other people's interests, diverting the conversation back to them, only referring myself by way of relation to their discussion rather than allowing the topic to be about me. More than that, though, it emphasised to me exactly the kind of people I do and don't click with: people like me, or more, people who expect me to be my own person.

It's not that I don't have a personality or interests outside other people, in fact, the comprehensive list of all the things I enjoy is a little over a thousand words, but rather that I'm so focused on things not being about me that when expected to act entirely as myself, I can't do it very well. I don't like attention, in that sense. But I think that it also makes me seem like someone who is very guarded and closed off. Also not untrue.

I don't like to talk about my negative feelings, but in turn this makes me someone who seems entirely sole—I don't portray myself as having the same issues, and hence my relatability comes off as false.

Minato is joked about as someone who has no "emotions", not because he isn't capable of laughing or crying like anybody else, but because they're so closed off and the persona he presents is, pretty much, so false that what's on the outside never reflects the inside, that he comes off as someone whose emotions are just calculations of how to react. Unfortunately, my one of my best friends has made me aware that she won't tell me about her boy troubles because, quote, "You're a robot with no emotions and you don't care"..... Yeowch. (Not really. In her defence, I never expressed any real interest in the topic anyways. I can't feign wanting to hear her squealing about him touching her hand for a moment, no matter how sociable I may be.)

But, I'm aware of how a lot of people see others, and that many people would rather just befriend those who appeal to them and allow them to be the centre of attention, than those who fight them for the spotlight. I'm aware that getting by often means flying under the radar, placing yourself in a neutral position so as not to rock the boat, but never to be dislikeable or unfriendly. I have a lot of friends, but in turn, I'm not really sure how close they could consider me.

It sucks to realise that maybe I am just a bit bad at being a "person", so much so as a person is defined to be "someone" and not just a "reflection of my (arguably quite subjective) perception of your values and intentions".

I'm aware that all of this probably made me sound like a sociopath. For the record, I did actually have a bit of a cry when I thought about this.

Big love! Rei, (who can't seem to write one post without sending off at least two others immediately after)

As always, email me here: appletender(at)proton(dot)me

Completely unrelated sidenote but I somehow posted this twice!! If you saw that, just pretend you didn't...