How can we present a story of listlessness and empathy to young adults, who report steadily increasing levels of such feelings, via the medium of animation and illustration?

Indifferent to or taking no interest in what happens about one; languid and unheeding: as, a listless hearer or spectator.
Marked by languid inactivity; manifesting relaxed attention; inanimate: as, a listless attitude.

- The Century Dictionary -

Listless

In the fine arts, the surface quality of animate or inanimate objects, natural or artificial, which expresses to the eye the disposition and arrangement of their component tissues.

- The Century Dictionary -

Texture

Goldentar_arts

twitter@fqqq749937401

Storytelling

the activity of writing, telling, or reading stories.

- Cambridge Dictionary -

Mike Flanagan

Pain

An unpleasant feeling occurring as a result of injury or disease, usually localized in some part of the body.
Bodily suffering characterized by such feelings.
Mental or emotional suffering; distress.

- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition. -

Claire DeCoste

That which is remembered; anything fixed in or recalled to the mind; a mental impression; a reminiscence.

- The Century Dictionary -

“Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man’s memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull.”

- Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns -

Memory

Power Pak

Parallels

Having comparable parts, analogous aspects, or readily recognized similarities.

- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition. -

Shinmaji

The combination of external physical conditions that affect and influence the growth, development, behavior, and survival of organisms.

- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition. -

Environment

Jacob Geller

Floating at random; not fastened by any kind of moorings; at the mercy of winds and currents.
Hence Figuratively, swayed by any chance impulse; all abroad; at a loss.

- The Century Dictionary -

Adrift

Avogado6

Empathy

Capacity to understand another person's point of view or the result of such understanding

- The Century Dictionary -

"for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes."

- Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) -

Avogado6

Music

Existing

Presently existing.

- GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English -

Living without anything to live for is just existing.

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

- Oscar Wilde -

Frank Somma

The art of using rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic materials in the production of definite compositions, or works having scientific correctness, artistic finish and proportion, esthetic effectiveness, and an emotional content or meaning.

- The Century Dictionary -

"Music embodies expressive qualities like melancholy and cheerfulness. Musical sounds can imitate or represent emotions, such as sorrow, joy, fear, and hope. For example, the rapid, skipping tempo, or the loud level of sound make music cheerful. In contrast, a slow tempo or dark minor tonalities make music sad."

- Shahram Heshmat Ph.D. -

Arcane, Studio Fortiche

Emotions

A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a feeling.

- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition. -

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart"

- Helen Keller -

twitter@_rexpo

Forgetting

To lose, temporarily or permanently, the power of recalling to consciousness (something once known or thought of); permit to pass, for a time or forever, from the mind; cease or fail to remember.

- The Century Dictionary -

"for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes."

- Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) -

Connection

A relation; esp. a person connected with another by marriage rather than by blood; -- used in a loose and indefinite, and sometimes a comprehensive, sense.

- GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English. -

"It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being."

- John Joseph Powell (The Secret of Staying in Love) -

@myriamtillson

The Caretaker

Animation

The art or process of making movies with drawings, computer graphics, or photographs of static objects, including all techniques other than the continuous filming of live-action images.

- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition. -

Having, showing, or caused by strong or extravagant tenderness or sadness, often in an idealized way.

- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition. -

"What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic."

- David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) -

Sentimentality

@cutec3

DestinyBlue

The character of being humane; consideration for the sensibilities of others, and sympathy with their needs or suffering; kindness; benevolence; a disposition to relieve distress, whether of men or of animals, and to treat all creatures kindly.

- The Century Dictionary -

"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?"

- Mark Twain -

Humanity

Love, Death & Robots; "Pop Squad"

Having, showing, or caused by strong or extravagant tenderness or sadness, often in an idealized way.

- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition. -

"What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic."

- David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) -