Could an Ananasi actively try to care/have empathy?

Question

Ananasi by default, after their First Change do not care about or possess empathy towards other people, becoming very emotionless and just seeing others as potential pawns and meat.

But could an ananasi ever perhaps actively at least try to care/have empathy?

Perhaps on a wide general scale, they might have used to be very empathetic about others and want to try gain some of who they once were back, as part of that ananasi individualism.

Or perhaps on a solely very individual basis, they've been closely associated with a Brujah or Toreador kindred, who has some to view them as a friend and care something fierce for them - and they might want to try work to reciprocate even some of that.

Just some different examples for the sake of clarity, but whatever the hypothetical reason and scale of the attempt - could there in actuality by game game lore, ever even be a reason or attempt had by one?

Or is it, by how ananasi are, completely impossible and something that would never even occur to any to try at all?

Answer 1

Canonically Yes, They Can Care

First, the Ananasi breedbook page 84 lists the Empathy Flaw which seems to be exactly what you need. In fact, the Flaw makes one care about others, including strangers on the street, to a degree that may be above-average even for normal humans. Logically, a less extreme version is also plausible.

Why a given werespider would have this Flaw is of course a matter of individual backgrounds (lowercase); perhaps in your case the reason would be deliberate cultivation of the attitude, or maybe it started out as trying to understand other people's caring behaviour and/or emulating it for the purposes of social camouflage, and then BecomingTheMask occurred. Be warned that such mental peculiarities aren't appreciated by siblings.

Second, I'm not sure whether this serves as evidence of such possibility, some of the sample characters have dots in the Empathy Talent. Not high levels, admittedly. But I do not remember the book prohibiting taking a higher level, nor does there seem to be any penalties in terms of roll difficulties (I bring this up in contrast against some other that breeds do take penalties to some rolls due to being bad at those things, such as Corvus having +2 difficulty on smell rolls).