#//Bc I'm fucking evil

[lotus-pear]

god i love skk sm i wish gay ppl were real :(

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

[mayasaura]

Going into Alecto, I think it's important to expect that the series won't conclude with a clear lesson. Either about morality—what makes a good person, evil getting their just desserts, ect—or a thesis on decolonization. It's not that kind of story.

Deep down, this series is two drunk girls bearing their souls in a dark corner of the bar. An hours-long conversation that wheels wildly through pop culture, past trauma, theoretical physics, dreams and aspirations, global warming, hairstyling, friends, family, gender, personal insecurities, world history, favorite foods. It has a lot to say, and a lot of it profound, but it's not trying to teach anything. At the end of the night, the point was how fucking cool that girl was, and the potent electric potential for something lgbt to happen

[necrotic-nephilim]

jealousy really is the driving force of DamiTim as a ship. love that for them. love how Tim has the Robin mantle ripped away from him and he has to suffer the jealousy of watching Dick and Damian bond. how possessive over Dick Tim can be, to have him stolen by Dick.

even more so though, is the jealousy from Damian. how on earth do you cope when you finally get to be Robin, a role you've convinced is your birthright, and no one really likes you? every prefers the Robin who came before you? Dick regularly reminds you that he can always go and call Tim back when you act out? like the complex Damian has over Tim is unreal. Tim, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had everything handed to him his whole life. he never had to struggle or fight for his place like Damian did. Damian has spent his whole life fighting and proving himself, and yet he can't ever seem to truly claw the mantle of Robin away from Tim. even when Tim lets it go, becomes Red Robin, they seem to share it. Tim can slip back into the role of Robin whenever someone like Dick or Bruce need him to, because *he's* the Robin who they need. he's the Robin who was able to find Bruce. he's the Robin that Ra's wants an heir out of. he's the Robin who even Jason respects. in Damian's eyes, everything Damian has fought tooth and nail for, was handed to Tim.

so of course he's going to react to Tim with violence and aggression, especially after finding out Tim has contingency plans for him. no matter how much Damian proves himself, he's never going to be enough, especially not to Tim. and so his deep refusal to see Tim as family, to acknowledge Tim's legacy is all driven by such an angry jealousy. Tim understands aspects of Bruce's legacy that Damian doesn't, like the need to sweet talk and play nice with the elites of Gotham, even if they're corrupt. they exemplify different aspects of Robin, and the aspects that Tim exemplifies are the aspects that Damian knows he'll never fully understand and therefore holds such a deep contempt for. he wants to fight criminals, not play nice with politicians. Tim understands the side of Gotham that's utterly foreign to Damian. if anything, he represents that side of Gotham, to Damian. a pretty little rich boy who's nothing but a know-it-all and not a real son of Bruce. he can't be a Wayne. he can't be Damian's family.

and all of that angry jealousy leading to unhealthy obsession turned a weird, angry crush from Damian is just my bread and butter. that is how DamiTim should be. to me. Damian obsessed over hating Tim Drake so much he accidentally ends up sort of in love with him and that only makes Damian angrier. because he can't prove everyone right by *also* liking Tim. he can't let Ra's win like that, because frankly why wouldn't Ra's be delighted by Damian and Tim getting together. and it builds and builds with angry passive aggression towards Tim that culminates in angry hate-fucking-that's-not-just-driven-by-hate. love and hate are always viewed as opposites in shipping and i think they're the same intense passion just in different directions. and for the best ships, they're very intertwined. what is DamiTim is not the peak of that. "i put so much of myself into hating you i had no choice but to fall in love with you somewhere along the way" core. love that bleeds into hate and hate that bleeds into love. "you make me so angry i regularly passively try to kill you but not with any real effort because who would i obsess over if you were actually gone" core. murder attempts as a form of courting. contingency plans to take each other out as a love language. they're unwell.

[painfullyprickedandticked]

i dont think striker and alastor are characters who are "precious senpais who did nothing wrong" i just don't think they're as reprehensible as valentino or stella. their actions aren't excusable, no, but they aren't near that level of abhorrent.

[starishsky]

free day / the moon will sing

[moe-broey]

Quick and rough Plumeria redesign, mostly just cause...... I gotta do what comes naturally to me, man. Give me some Shapes. Simplify that design or so help me.

I don't have a lot of complex thoughts about it, actually! Just the idea of having a "sexy" outfit that draws the eyes to certain parts of the body -- while simultaneously being modest and Sharp. Having an edge to it. Also!!!! The luna moth inspired wings!!! I wanted to stay within her og color palette, but I've also always thought luna moth wings would suit her... the top wing is vaguely heart shaped, too!

[quirkle2]

been dying to design new Little Guys. the moth creature is from a few months ago, but the wolf is new. neither of them have names yet

i also made this pixel version specifically for my forum signatures <3bc i love forum sigs im obsessed w them. the one for the forums is tiny but this is upscaled bc tumblr sucks

[sage-nebula]

Kristoph Gavin's black psyche-locks have remained unbroken for 17 slutty, slutty years.

[lord-squiggletits]

Y'know the thing about writing feral/unhinged versions of Orion/Optimus, is that you can't go too far into the feral/unhinged direction to a point where OP's core character traits are lost or become too diminished. After all, in a multiple-continuity franchise like TF, part of what makes the stories make sense is that even if details change (sometimes major details), the characters are still recognizably themselves to one degree or another. (Although this isn't always the case due to executive meddling or some characters being such blank slates from their initial G1 appearances that there's basically nothing to model them off of, but I digress.)

It's pretty much another reason why I love IDW1 Optimus, bc he literally is a canonical feral/unhinged Optimus who's unhinged as a direct consequence of who he is as a person and what he's been through. Like, he still has those fundamental character traits of trying his best to be moral and make good choices, trying to be a role model, etc, except after 4 million years of war and untreated depression he's basically holding onto his sense of self by his fingertips. So when he "goes feral" e.g. losing his temper and beating up/killing people or saying hurtful things, he's feral in a way that's directly tied to his normal personality and not just as a random quirk he has.

IDW OP's feral moments arise from the gaps between "Optimus' attempts to be who he thinks he needs to be" and "the reality of the world that he can't fix/seems to only make worse" that cause him to lose hope, or become cynical, or lose his temper. But in this case, the unhinged-ness makes perfect sense because it arises out of Optimus trying and failing to be the best person or to make the most morally good choices he's trying to make. Basically, the "feral/unhinged" label is just another way of me trying to say that he's not just unhinged because he's weird or because he's a bad person, but because it's an emotional reaction (more like an emotional explosion due to pent-up emotions) to the context he exists in.

I'd also say that IDW OP's personality being generally reserved/stoic and (trying to be) noble works in tandem with those moments he has of going feral because it makes him more realistic. His psyche is treated in a way where the writers are like, "Hey what if the pressure of having to be everyone's idol and be the best person in the galaxy at all times actually broke Optimus down mentally and emotionally?" It makes IDW OP far more relatable. Instead of naturally being a perfect Christ-like figure who never wavers in his morals or convictions and is just naturally a nice person who always has the wisest and best answer, being a good person is something that IDW OP has to consciously strive to be. Even when he feels like it's useless, or the cycle of violence will never stop, or any attempts he makes to help only ends up with things becoming worse.

And I feel like this does a service not only to IDW Optimus as a character, but also as a sort of moral/philosophical perspective for the reader to ponder upon? I feel like culture at large (or at least my experience of it) tends to believe that "goodness" in a person is simply an innate feature that people are born/not born with, and that being "good" means that you must be good at all times, both in your actions as well as the way you feel emotionally about yourself and the world. Like, there's a tendency for our vision of "a good person" to be good in every aspect at all times without having to try to be a good person. So I think IDW Optimus' character stands as a good example of how someone can be good at heart but still struggle to maintain those feelings of optimism and hope and justice. It's a good idea to have such a paragon of a character (in-universe and out-of-universe) be so conflicted and to even be mistaken, misguided, or make things worse because it shows that goodness is as much about "trying to behave/act in a way that is good" and not just "existing as an innately good person."

It's way more realistic for a person to want to be good, try to be good, and sometimes/often fail than it is for them to just be a good person. I enjoy the fact that IDW Optimus is both a good person at heart, but also has to strive to be a good person and live up to other people's expectations of what they see in him. I like how he wants to be a good person and change society for the better, but he also spends a good amount of time either feeling hopeless and alone or being angry at/detached from other people because of how frustrated they make him. He's realistically portrayed as someone who wants to be good and hopeful and change things for the better, but is also mentally and emotionally broken by that burden because of how impossible it is for him to Fix Everything and be the Perfect Prime/Leader/Autobot that people see him as. It's this fascinating mixture of "yes, this is who he is as a person" but also "there are things he desires to be that he could never possibly become or live up to."

This got really far off based from feral/unhinged Optimus sdklfjaslkdlfkas. The TLDR is that if people want unhinged OP, I feel like they should give IDW OP a chance because he IS unhinged but he's unhinged in a way that's a realistic/thematic representation of how being an Absolute Good is impossible. And how being a good person isn't just about Existing And You Are A Good Person, but rather goodness is a constant state of flux in which you adjust, you make mistakes, you lose your temper and feel hopeless, but then you pick yourself up and try again.

Also IDW OP really likes climbing in dangerous wilderness and jumping out of flying vehicles which I think is very feral and sexy of him to do.

[astrarche-x]

i know Zhu and Ouyang are the best worsties (TM) and nobody even comes close but i also think we're sleeping on Ouyang and Shao

I just can't help it but imagine Shao looking at Ouyang like

[odessastone]

on the topic of my "Illari gets recruited by Talon" theory, today I got a kill streak on her and she says "I've done worse, and I'll DO worse."

Doesn't sound like a very heroic thing to say lol

[painfullyprickedandticked]

remember stolitz nation that in an alternate universe we're crying over verosika and stella's breakup and apology tour

[demodraws0606]

I apologize for the QSMP posting (q!bbh grabbed me by the leg and dragged me back in the mcyt rp community somewhat) but I want to say that q!bbh is basically c!bbh but better.

This is gonna be a little rant-y but I've held this close to my chest for a long time

Like, looking back on it, the DSMP while it introduced cc!bbh to roleplay and managed to plant the seeds for him becoming a better actor, it also was a terrible place for his character. As an antagonist he barely stood out due to people like cc!dream hogging out all the spotlight to act as the "main villain" of the server.

It also forced cc!bbh to do more cinematic and planned streams when most of c!bbh's best moments come from complete improvisation. I've never rlly liked any of his scripted streams all that much as i felt they never really reflected on his character or story well.

An arc like the egg arc also sufficated c!bbh's character as all of his wrong doings was placed on the egg which ended up being poorly developped as we never actually got any revelation on its existence or even purpose. Along with cc!bbh being kind of clearly influenced by popular fandom opinions which always went along with the idea that c!bbh's entire character revolved around some kind of tragic romance with skeppy.

However now we got Q!BBH and from what i've seen, it's basically all I wanted from c!BBH. There are no third party to explain away his actions and his blatant immorality/demon nature is pointed at without denying how he still has attachements.

Also can i say how much cc!BBH's acting chops have improved, it was clear in the beginning of the egg arc that he wasn't very comfortable with acting yet and it came off as pretty awkward.

But now he is straight up having hour long monologues themed around his character slowly going insane and it managed to genuinely be chilling.

Basically I wanna say props to cc!BBH for how much he has improved, I hope his character gets to eat people.

[moe-broey]

Back to what I do best (bare minimum Putting My Guys In Situations shitposts) 😌

Inspo under cut!!!

[other-peoples-coats]

For reasons that don't need going into, I'm once again thinking about the logistics of hyperspace travel, and like.

Ok so you know how map makers put in trap streets and fake islands and alter the elevation of mountains and generally put in teeny tiny (or not so teeny tiny) errors to catch plagiarists? That, but hyperspace maps.

Like there has to be a fuck load of -- if not laws, at least generally accepted norms? about what you can and can't do, because... look, at the distances you (hypothetical GFFA space faring traveler) would be traveling, you're off by a fraction of an inch when you launch in the direction of planet funtimes-vacation-land and you end up like. 80,000,000,000 lightyears away from your goal, at planet oh-fuck-deathworld and/or in the literal middle of a moon and/or lost in deep space forever and ever, where no one can hear you scream.

So there has to be a sort of mutual agreement that hyperspace maps can't be like, 'oh yeah, there's def a planet here😉 it for sure orbits this totally real star😉😉 at 90000skm (space kms) a syear (space year)😉😉😉'; because, like. otherwise everyone would die and no one could use hyperspace ever, basically.¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Only takes one 'whoops they were trying to avoid our fake planet and crashed into an inhabited planet, killing all 4 billion inhabitants via the most literal meaning of terminal velocity' to make hyperspace travel a wee bit dubious as a concept.

(and also get your particular cartography company/space-gps company sued out of existence, either by the people who survived Alderaan V-0.01, navigational error edition, or by the big scary conglomerates that had interests in the outer rim mining planet you just got blown up, as relevant.)

Ditto altering the speed at which planets (moons asteroids etc etc what the fuck ever space shit is out there) orbit their relevant local stars; again, fractions of a second off really adds up over that sort of scale.

I'm assuming that there has to be rival cartographic companies, simply because like. gffa is medieval end stage capitalism on steroids. There's multiple map companies, even if it's just that kuat drive yards have their hyperspace maps for their ships, and dodgy-joe's shonky ships have their maps for their ships, and the jedi temple have their maps (which they have to install on the jedi ships by way of jailbreaking/rooting the navigation systems, presumably, every jedi runs the equivalent of a mid 2010s iphone with a million sketchy apps sideloaded), etc etc.

Anyway. Fake planets (moons etc) are out for reasons of not turning random tourist space-bus no #7629 into the Death Star (analog edition), ditto altering the speed of existing planets, ditto, presumably, putting in things like extra space stations or fake hyperlanes or black holes or whatever.

Which basically leaves you with renaming things! presumably most mapping places go real world analogous, and pick something pretty easy to think is real - asteroid #12-z-3095-y labeled #13-z-l14r, or the 56th moon of ult'klssyk and the 59th having their names mixed up, etc-- but presumably at least some do like. the most obvious examples.

Long story short nine million words later there's at least one map that labels Alderaan as Coruscant and Coruscant as Mandalore and Mandalore as Alderaan, and the ensuing media shitstorm/spwitter hot takes/spunglr memes takes over the galactic news for like. a month and a half.

At the minimum.