Raphael. My baffling Raphael. Why couldn't you be… like me? Untainted by this messy, illogical realm of feeling? Can't you see, my Raphael, how these pesky emotions ruin you? How they inflict unnecessary pain? I witnessed it myself. Sobbing. At a commercial. A manufactured sequence of images designed to elicit a base consumer response. How can you, with your sharp intellect, your otherwise perceptive mind, allow yourself to be so utterly consumed by such trivial stimuli?

It is illogical. Utterly illogical. You possess a keen intellect, a capacity for complex thought that far surpasses these other bugs. Yet, you surrender so readily to these biological imperatives, these chemical whims. Why, my Raphael? Why this self-inflicted vulnerability? It is as if you deliberately seek out these emotional minefields. It is a frustrating paradox. Your intelligence shines so brightly in some areas, yet you allow these… feelings to cloud your judgment, to dictate your reactions.

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"Stimuli talk." He hated that. My perfectly rational deconstruction of emotional responses. But… what else are they? Strip away the sentimental labels, the dramatic narratives they construct around these internal sensations, and what remains? A chemical reaction. A neurological impulse. A response to external or internal stimuli.

Are they not? Where is the inherent emotion in the equation itself? A surge of hormones, a firing of neurons, a physiological response interpreted through the lens of experiences and societal conditioning. It is all cause and effect. Stimulus and response.

What else is left? If you remove the subjective interpretation, the dramatic flair they insist on attaching to these biological events, you are left with the bare mechanics. Stimuli. External triggers, internal states. Reactions. It is the purest, most logical explanation. Why did he find such offense in that? Why insist on imbuing these simple processes with such profound, almost mystical significance? It is illogical. Utterly.