#and the show will be fine i'm sure

[heretherebedork]

The Ex-Morning

Look, I love the meta commentary of Krist and Singto playing exes and I don't care about much else but also ADULTS!!! Gay adults!!! CAREERS! They're playing ADULTS, damnit. Thrilled. @absolutebl I am simple and pleased.

[wrongspacetime]

The Fall of the House of Usher 1.08 | The Raven (2023)

[knifearo]

ultimately when it comes to shipping and fandom space treatment of aspec characters i just don't accept "aro/ace people can still date/have sex" as an answer from nonaspecs. like yeah. mhm. okay. now i think we both know that you're not saying that out of real interest in the diversity of aspec experiences. so you can turn in your seventeen-page essay on why and how you plan to examine this character's aspec identity within the context of a romantic or sexual relationship complete with evidence from canon and peer reviews from multiple aspec people within the next week or i'm putting you in the pit from the edgar allen poe story

[mobius-m-mobius]

DANIEL CRAIG on The Graham Norton Show (13.12.24)

[marypsue]

Man, it's cool and all if you see a metaphor for marginalisation in the monstrous, and if you want the power fantasy of 'what if you could just eat anybody who threatened you/pissed you off'. Me too.

However, as soon as you start saying 'no, these monsters are a 1:1 on Specific Marginalised Group, and you have to treat them in the fiction like they are directly representative of real human members of the marginalised group', BUT you also, in the fiction, make them hurt/kill/eat humans? And then try to shame me, your audience, for noticing or engaging with the bit where they kill people, because you made them directly representative of a real-world marginalised group? You have lost me, and also, I think, the plot.

[eelclaw]

stupid fucking bastard. i am not coping with the leaks

[yagurlhere]

PayJay and Lightbrush I understand, but FanTube???????

I'M SORRY I FORGOT TO PUT A SPOILER WARNING ON TOP

[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?

[yaoist]

ksjshdjd a different lens where human beings magically understand modern ideas of sexual assault like it's hardcoded into their dna

[icewindandboringhorror]

A little costume with eyebrow whiskers again.. making their return lol..

[1pcii]

oh, you like the idea of zolu or find the fancontent cute but can't bring yourself to ship it because you HC Luffy to be aroace? (ignoring that asexuality and aromantisism exist on a spectrum. and that QPR's/relationship anarachy are a thing). should we tell everyone??? should we throw a fucking party???

[billpottsismygf]

Catching up with wwdits and they've finally addressed the nonsense contradiction of secret vampires and yet a documentary crew filming their every move!!!

[ampresandian]

The thing that the whole "Poseidon told me to stay away" sets up is that it's absolutely going to be thrown back in everyone's faces in season 5 I just can't decide who I want to do the throwing

There's Hermes, who upon finding his favorite (and evilest) son dead on Olympus, could scream in rage at his uncle that he was wrong and that advice caused all of their problems

There's Poseidon, who upon finding the ruins of Olympus and the ruins of his own kingdom waiting for his return but his favorite son shaky but alive, can announce to Hermes and the rest of the Olympians that he was wrong and it was bad advice they should never have followed

Or there's Percy (I think this is most likely), who upon the return of the Olympians to find death and destruction everywhere that they could have prevented, among his "you have to pay attention and claim your kids" speech, can throw back the "you once told me my father said you had to stay away even when it's hard. But none of you did that--if you had, I would have died years ago. I wouldn't have made it through my quests without help from each of you at different times even when you were told not to interfere. I couldn't have fought this war if I hadn't had the support of my father and my family/friends, and we certainly wouldn't have won. You can't ignore your kids, or keep them at arms length and stay out of their lives. That's how we got in this mess in the first place"

[howtodisappearcompletelyand]

20/10 stars little guy

[commandermeg]

I don't want a shiny-new series every other year if it means the currently running ones get axed. Just settle on longer-running storylines, already.

I can't wait for the Streaming Bubble to explode because this currently method is ruining a lot of things.

[biterflies]

saiki k au where he gets tired of people stealing his power dampeners so he just starts claiming its medical equipment. for like a nerve disease or smt. like oh why did he collapse on sports day when his little head thing was removed then get better when its put back? and why did he spend the rest of the day all shakey and off his game? cause you removed the piece of Vital Medical Equipment that's supposed to stay poked in his head at all times to deliver little electrical shocks or something to his brain so the signals in his head for being able to move his limbs work. so it screwed him up for a bit cause supposed nerve disease. and that's why he almost had to go home sick that day yknow. and why does he sleep with them on? well do people sleep with their pacemakers on? and it being pointy is cause it needs to stab into the head so it can send those signals directly to the brain. I like to think he starts claiming this after the class trip where teruhashi steals one cause once is chance (and nendo being dumb) but twice with two seperate people? thats cause for paranoia. so he just uses his powers to forge medical records and make doctors remember diagnosing him incase there's questions. saiki justified this because they are technically life saving equipment. just not HIS life nessasarily.

when he makes this paper work for proof the gym teacher decides to give a lecture to the students about proper care regarding fragile medical equipment and how this could be life and death for their classmate, and gives saiki less of a hard time in gym classes for medical reasons

then nendo gets all upset about hurting his best bro on accident and clings even harder while trying to give saiki things to cover them up with so they don't come loose at all, like hats and helmets which saiki refuses on principle.

teruhashi says something generically Perfect Pretty Girlish about it on the outside but on the inside shes freaking out because if she hurt saiki to satisfy her own curiosity then there's no way shes PERFECT but no one KNOWS she did that since they were alone at the time so reputation is fine and saiki didn't SEEM hurt but he was asleep so who knows!!! but she freaks out over it for a long, long while before deciding she'll make it up to him by spending more time with him because why WOULDNT he love that but its mostly to satisfy her own conscience and ego. she probably has a fantasy where he's all blushy and shy and saying "oh wow" a million times while she takes care of him so selflessly when his illness acts up, yknow the classic Blushy Shy Fantasy Saiki but she gets to feed her superiority/savior complexes even MORE, then it goes nothing like that in reality.

kaido thinks that saiki is at risk so of course The Jet Black Wings must protect him from any attempts from the Dark Reunion to harm him by stealing his lil head thingys in an attempt to get to The Jet Black Wings through harming his closest ally. there must have been attempts before after all to justify a whole speech being given regarding it, and has a subplot where he's assuming nendo is part of the dark reunion cause of the sports day accident.

hairo says something about how saiki wasn't even going at full swing during sports day and how saiki has to push himself much harder then the rest of the class to do the same or even better then them (citing how he apsolutely destroyed the running events despite supposedly having an disease that directly affects his ability to run). then he calls him a inspiration on never giving up and working hard everyday. then rallys the class to work just as hard as saiki so all of them can do even better like saiki obviously strives to do.

SAIKI has realized his plan went so, SO wrong because now his popularity is way too high right now but he has to live with the consequences of his actions so he just spends his time trying to get people to like him less for most of the initial kickoff after the speech and the subsequent attention that came after. probably blows off teruhashi under the excuse of medical reasons (says something like "why would you help? no offense but you're not a doctor" when she offers to help, insert the fantasy sequence she had in her section around here), and that gets his popularity back down to normal. and it goes back to normal cause people are used to it now, just avoid touching his head, easy

but yeah that's my pitch for a chapter basically. (are all the separated plots in an episode called chapters? that's the closest word I can think for them)