#and he went ah fuck!!

[nicistrying]

I can do it 😮‍💨

[tallymali]

boyf left the house to go to the pub and ended up accidentally leading the search for a missing child?? predicaments follow this man everywhere

[travalerray]

honestly never having watched CQL beyond the part where WN gets randomly possessed (???) at Biling Lake is pretty funny because I hear the most random of things about it later. what do you mean there's a conversation between Lan XICHEN and Wei Wuxian where LXC is all "Wei-gongzi pls come back to Gusu so that my didi can chill" in his previous life and Wei Wuxian wipes off Jiang Cheng's tears in the Guanyin Temple. How did the XiYao meeting end up as a sexually charged gift exchange. What do you mean they had Lan Yi and Baoshan Sanren as tragic lesbians. What is a Yin Iron. Why does half the cast know demonic cultivation. Why is Wen Qing getting dramatically threatened to spy in the Cloud Recesses. WHO MADE LAN WANGJI THE CHIEF CULTIVATOR

[puppyeared]

Little brother

[lord-squiggletits]

Pharma's place in a Functionist society (headcanon)

So I've talked in some previous posts about all the reasons that Pharma isn't a functionist because canon never showed him espousing functionist ideals + he's actually in a place to be a victim of functionism. And I've been working on a Pharma-centric oneshot that made me put into words the best metaphor I can think of for Pharma's relationship with Functionism:

He doesn't support Functionism, but is simultaneously a beneficiary of it and also marginalized by it, because his position of being forged both a doctor and a jet basically turns him into a "token minority" of sorts.

I know that sounds kind of silly or maybe like a clumsy political allegory, but hear me out. There are a couple facts about Pharma and the circumstances of his forging that put him at the crossroads between privilege and marginalization within Functionism:

Tyrest says that Pharma was "famous for being forged." Not famous for being a forged medic-- otherwise surely Ratchet would be just as noteworthy-- but famous for being FORGED. But also, note that this is an opinion that SOCIETY had about Pharma, not something that Pharma espouses about himself. (For the sake of an example, Pharma isn't Starscream, who has an explicit, deep-seated need for others' love and approval. Pharma himself doesn't express any opinions on his own popularity or convey that fame/adoration is something he wants.)

Functionism on Cybertron held that if someone was born with a certain alt-mode, they can/should only have certain jobs. For people born with flight alt-modes, those people were almost always regulated to military or transportation/courier jobs

SIMULTANEOUSLY, Pharma was forged with medic hands, which under a Functionist society were viewed as the peak of medical care and all the best doctors were forged or at least had a "special something" that non-forged hands lacked (according to Ratchet).

So taken in combination, this means that from the moment of Pharma's birth, he straddled a line of Functionism between two different "predestined" paths for him, where he was simultaneously forged to be a doctor and also forged to fly, fitting into BOTH of these categories despite norms of Functionism which say you're one or the other. And I speculate that the reason Pharma is "famous for being forged" is precisely because of those lines he straddles: his very existence is a contradiction, but he was also FORGED that way. The same creed that dictated the two different functions of "hands" and "alt-mode" also says that Pharma should be what he was born to be. What he was born to be was a forged medic jet.

In my opinion, I think that being "famous for being forged" is sort of like a token-minority situation for Pharma, where perhaps Pharma was seen as a curiosity or even something exotic, not just as a person. Maybe because he was a jet and people assumed jets were only soldiers/transportation, a lot of his achievements were put in the light of "Oh, he's a really amazing doctor, for a jet" or "It's crazy that he's a doctor AND a jet at the same time". The attention Pharma received for the unique circumstances of his birth WAS positive, but it would've likely been framed in a bit of a condescending way, as if Pharma is noteworthy and famous not for being a good doctor, but for being a good doctor despite being born a jet.

So I would say that as far as Pharma's personal experience with Functionism, he simultaneously experienced privilege and marginalization. He enjoyed the privileges of being a medic while avoiding the restrictions of being a flight frame. However, a lot of the idolization and attention he received would have also come from a place of tokenizing Pharma: he's "famous for being forged," because in this society he's defying expectations merely for existing as himself. That is to say, Pharma in a Functionist society wasn't treated as remarkable because of who he is as a person and how hard he worked to be a good doctor; he was treated as remarkable for the circumstances of his forging, something he had no control over and can't change, and apparently Pharma being a forged medic jet is such a noteworthy origin that he's "famous" for it.

The above paragraph is purely headcanon, of course, but I like to imagine that part of Pharma's reason for having a big ego isn't out of simple vanity or insecurity, but because of a sort of "gifted student" syndrome, in a sense. From the moment he was forged he was treated as a rarity and an incredible phenomenon, and he would have had to work incredibly hard to be seen as "an incredible doctor" in his own right rather than just "that forged medic jet." Maybe, as a jet, he also had something to prove; he had to show to a Functionist society that being a jet doesn't make him an inferior doctor and that his alt-mode has nothing to do with his skills at his profession.

That is to say, I don't think Pharma would have been openly anti-Functionist, or had many opinions about it at all. I actually lean towards the interpretation that Pharma basically saw himself as getting lucky with the way he was forged and being content with the fact that he'd managed to carve out a reputation for himself as being incredibly skilled. However, Pharma not getting involved politically in Functionism doesn't change the fact that he WOULD have had a very complicated relationship with Functionism, in that alt-mode discrimination would have had an effect on him even though he was in the scientific/medical class and supposedly privileged.

[clonerightsagenda]

One of my professional nemeses is a guy who does not know I exist who consistently posts god awful takes on Inside Higher Ed but today he posted one bitching about the decline of Western culture being taught in schools and how "It’s no secret that today’s kids have much less exposure to those Greek, Roman and Norse myths, legends and sagas" which is a bold take in the age of Percy Jackson, but he then went on to cite Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia as newer cultural touchstones that "reflect more modern sensibilities, values and concerns, including themes of diversity and inclusion and environmental awareness. They’re crafted with contemporary language and settings, even when set in fantastical worlds, making them more immediately accessible to today’s children than the sometimes archaic language and unfamiliar settings of ancient myths" which ???? Yes Lord of the Rings, infamously written with accessible language.

This is the same guy who wrote a post about how we no longer produce the same caliber of intellectuals as... and then listed off 15 people, all white, 1 woman, and two Georges, so I honestly think he may have been cryogenically frozen for a few decades and they thawed him out to write terrible thinkpieces.

[lancelotslair]

played with their designs while playin with something akin to the animated style smile alt: Yea they had a whole musical episode it was really fun but they had to cancel it due to their natures

[trainingdummyrabbit]

oh btw the line that started this whole thing was

[i-miss-lotor]

So I romanced Astarion and let him ascend and I'm not going to lie, I always had a bit of a hate towards people who look down on me and call me or well, my characters, pet and such. And Astarion didn't change that, especially with the degradation part

But

Imagining the future where my character slowly becomes miserable with Astarion because while he does love her, he doesn't see her as his equal. And I mean even if you want to break up with him after the ascension and defeated brain he just doesn'tlet you (though im not there yet, i just read it somewhere). Imagining him slowly becoming furious, compelling my character to do things, to love him and then anger turns into desperation and hell, he just wants her, what can he do to make her love him again, what does she want, he will give it to her

Anyway I just want them to be happy, then miserable, then to slowly learn to love each other again with Astarion begrudgingly being a tiny bit nicer to others (cause my character mostly likes being nice but also she was an urchin, she's not above blackmail and deception and such. Ohh plus she's a bard, imagine Astarion wanting her to sing again but she doesn't so he makes her and it just breaks the trust again and again

And a scene where she escapes and then Astarion finds her and brings hell with him and kills whoever decided to help her and he's slowly breaking her spirit from the strong and defying woman she was, not realising at first that it's breaking him too.

(I especially like that little movement, swinging himself a bit when you ask if you can talk about your relationship with him and he responds "yes, my treasure?" *happy swingies, he's so happy and cute* and then cuts to him being angry and desperate and sad that his love doesn't look at him with adoration anymore, that the look he receives is not even angry but empty)

And the realization that oh no, did he became another Cazador? But no, he is better than him, he doesn't treat you like he was treated! ...does he?

[theres-a-bea]

if i had a penny every time i was severely turned on by the sight of andrew koji committing several human rights violations in a row while covered in blood i would have two pennies, which isn't a lot, but oh boy am i fucking glad that it happened twice cos that shit woke me up faster than Pedro Pascal's starbucks order

[monarchisms]

[alchemistys]

This is fucking killing me

[ratatatastic]

do you also think about when cats are about to commit the frutiest shit possible but mikksy is the target of said shit he just gives them most bombastic side-eye possible

[nmzuka]

some more Primal Rage concept work... Diablo V.3 after some input from the wife (bless her for letting me info dump on her and taking even the smallest amount of interest in the series hhhh) Sinjin will probably get some work as well cause I'm not happy with his outfit... need to make it make sense and also really want to rework his mask

[bidokja]

only on episode 3 of the untamed but my fav characters (aside from the obvious wwx numero uno) so far are lan xichen (so sweetie 🥺💖), jiang cheng (YOU HAVE SO MANY ISSUES i just know hes gonna break me), and wen ning (SO BABY...HOLDS HIM SO GENTLE...)

[packet-of-staples]

FALLEN IDOL WHAT THE FUCK!!!!! THE BROTHERS ARE FIGHTING!!!