#I can't I literally can't I'm miserable

[icantdothistodaybruh]

yea sooooo I may have or may have not watched and instantly rewatched all kuro musicals in existence in a spawn of one week and now have roughly 40 screenshots to redraw from

I think I might be insane or something

[serial-unaliver]

another thing I hate is when people say engaging with a persons delusions is bad because it validates the illness.

i'm not sure how to tell you this, but psychosis validates itself. delusions involve a lack of awareness that you're experiencing a delusion and others referring to the delusion as a delusion can create distrust. if someone is more content having others engage in symptoms like this in a positive way there's nothing wrong with it and it may make it easier to cope.

[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?

[officially-other]

My first attempt at writing that's vaguely like poetry: from a dragon

I am not what you think.

I walk around, awkward limbs and flighty mannerisms, and you think I’m strange. You have no idea how strange you would think I am if you only saw what was underneath.

Underneath, I am a creature of the ocean. Something that could never pass as human, and no longer wants to. Saltwater rushes through my veins in secret, silent to everyone but me. To me, it’s a roaring sound of the waves that I have never seen except for within my soul. It yearns to dissolve into the ocean like it could long ago, but for now those days are over and I am hidden underneath skin and muscle.

Underneath, there are wings; fins; antlers. They ache to tear from my back, through my skull. Nonetheless, they stay hidden for me, safe in the silence. Protected like I protected my kin in a lifetime so close to the surface and yet unreachable. Wrapped in a form that no longer coils around them like a serpent, but keeps them hidden from predators well enough I suppose.

I suppose.

I accept my form reluctantly and do what I can to make it mine. I shape it to feel better when I discover my gender, and when I can’t shape it to fit my true self I cover it in things that feel a little more like home. A little more draconic. A little more like the ocean that I never have seen, but feel homesick for anyway.

I do find joy in being in this body, at least. Out there, there are others. Angels working minimum wage, dragons sitting on a park bench, wolves buying groceries. We hide, but we do so to be free. We walk through crowds, and no one notices our scales and fur and feathers. But we do. We see each other, even if from miles away, and we see what’s underneath.

And underneath, none of us are what you think.

(Tags for side commentary/context)

[pumpkinrootbeer]

just so you know I'll never recover from the ending of magi like yeah in general it left me devistated but Jafar's final appearance being him back in the sindria robes still with this just steadfast never ending belief in a man who he devoted his life to and who then in return betrayed him on such a fundamental level. like im gutted.

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

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[rutadales]

people who participate in hate-fandoms need to get an actual hobby I'm so serious 😭 not to be a hater but for the love of God log off. genuinely humiliating to be spending that much time caring about something that makes you so miserable that is ultimately so meaningless

[deathbypufferfish]

I got a horrible stomach virus almost 3 weeks ago and I'm still having frequent seizures/auras because of it.

[kitsunefyuu]

Me gnawing at AFO the abuser sanity like a rabid animal. Because the more I learn about him the more miserable he is and it fucking great.

[caterjunes]

it's just like. you have to wash clothes if they're uncomfortable too. (you don't have the energy/executive function/knowledge to find clothes that feel good on you. you're a 6'2" trans woman and you've gained 20+ lbs in the last 6 months and you don't even know where to start looking.)

you have to wash dishes even if you just had boxed mac 'n' cheese or takeout or scrambled eggs or cereal & milk off of them. (you don't have the energy/executive function to cook or plan meals that are more complicated than this. every time you try you end up in tears or out of breath or sweating or shaking with fatigue. the last time you tried to cook anything more complicated/lengthy than scrambled eggs you had to tag out halfway through and lie down on the couch for half an hour.)

[natasha-in-space]

Man, seeing those videos like 'the day in a life of a nearsighted person!' really gives me a reality check that I am, in fact, not normal. Like, no, I don't go around streets without my glasses because I don't like wearing them. I will literally fall down the stairs or get hit by a car without them. Because I cannot see anything but very blury outlines. No, I cannot squint and see if this is the right bus for me to jump on. I will only see something clearly if it is centimeters away from my face. No, I cannot have a collection of different frames to style my looks. Because my lenses are so specialized that they often require me to save up money for an entire year to afford a new frame of glasses that is not the ugliest thing you have ever seen. And even then, I can only get very limited variety because of my lenses. And no, I cannot just go and buy whatever eye contacts they sell in the optical store either. Not only because my eyes are too sensitive for them, but also because they will not work on me. I have to order specialized contacts that cost a fortune, considering all the appointments and shipping costs. So glasses are way more affordable, and I am likely stuck with them for my entire life, even if I do get surgery one day. Because fixing my eyesight completely is either impossible, or will take me multiple operations on both of my eyes.

Also. I literally cannot function without my glasses. It is not just something for me to put on whenever I feel like it. I will be literally unable to survive in our society without them. Like at all. Be it by breaking my leg by falling over, or being unable to do ANY sort of work. I was born like this, so this is literally the only life I know, but when I see stuff like that from people who are seemingly the same as me, it's weird as fuck. Because no, we are not the same. And, in fact, my life is very different from someone just wearing glasses. And that's kinda wild for me to think about.

[ssaalexblake]

genuinely can't wait for jodie on bake off bc she Is going to be that weird one who takes the celeb version that exists only for raising money for charity, where the premise is basically that celebs make fools of themselves on tv by being bad at things to get people interested in a cause, too seriously, and she IS going to be weirdly die hard about winning and will go totally over the top. All to win an apron. An apron that you can just buy off their website where the proceeds go directly to charity. So you don't even need to actually win to get the prize.

[byanyan]

so anyway, thanks for reading my little dissertations on byan's gender. sorry for not writing again today, i'm just. i'm fuckin goin through it rn man

[daisywords]

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[doodlboy]

I'm actually so tired

[t4tvglow]

it happened so early in the morning and i am STILL frothing with rage over this text my boss sent me