#from an out of universe perspective
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
skyward-floored · 2 months ago
Text
Whumptober Day 24 - Equipment failure
I give Four (especially Vio) a Bad Time!!
I'm so behind on these, but I’m determined to finish, so don't be worried about that. I WILL get these done, even if it takes until thanksgiving 😤
...hopefully it won’t though.
Warnings: mental anguish/issues (magically induced), brief injury
Ao3 link
————————————————————
Four knew swords.
Strong swords, weak swords, big and small, light and heavy, he knew them all. Four wasn’t a master at blacksmithing like his grandpa yet, but his knowledge was pretty good, he thought. Especially when it came to his own sword.
The Four Sword had been a beauty from day one, even before it had been the Four Sword. After three adventures with the blade, ones where he'd helped forge the sword itself, and make it more powerful, Four knew every single inch of it. He could tell when the balance was off, knew the moment it needed to be sharpened. Saw every fleck of dirt, and cleaned ever speck of blood from the metal, rubbing it down and polishing it bright.
Four knew his sword more than he felt like he knew himself sometimes.
Which was why when Vio desperately raised his sword to block a swing from a spiked ball, he more felt the sword crack rather than heard it.
Pain hit like a bolt of lightning to his heart, and Vio gasped, dropping to a knee. He saw the others stumble in his periphery, Blue missing a swing, Red crying out, Green clutching at his chest.
“What was that?!” Blue yelled, but Vio couldn’t reply, out of breath from the sear of pain and trying to keep himself alive in the meantime.
The knight with the ball and chain continued to advance on him, and Vio struggled backwards, nearly screaming as what felt like jagged cracks shifted around in his chest. The knight seemed to smirk at him, and Vio hissed in pain. The weapon must have been enchanted, no regular weapon would be able to crack the four sword, even only a fourth of it.
Infected. Must be.
Vio grunted as his hand slipped, scraping his palm as he tried to back away. He knew he needed to assess the damage to himself and his sword, figure out what to do about it and keep his weapon safe in the meantime, but also his sword was the only weapon he had right now.
He’d lost his shield. The knight kept getting closer.
And his sword had a crack that spiderwebbed right down the middle of the blade.
“Vio!” Red called in a panic, watching as the spiky ball nearly crushed him again. “Hold on, we’re coming!”
Red was stuck battling his own enemies, as was everyone, but Green managed to make it over to where Vio was struggling, throwing his shield out to block a vicious swing.
“The sword...” Green said, sucking in a breath, staring at Vio’s blade. “Vio...”
“I know,” Vio forced out through the pain squeezing his chest. “We can f-figure it out later, we have to—”
The spiked ball slammed against Green’s shield, and he grunted, feet skidding through the dirt as he nearly fell on top of Vio.
“Where is everyone?” Vio bit out, and Green looked out at the battle, then back at the monster they were fighting.
“They’re all upstream, by that big collapsed tower,” Red shouted, having heard the question. “Too far for help!”
“We don’t need it!” Blue growled, slamming his hammer into a stalfos and shattering it to pieces. “We’re almost done with these goons.”
“Not the knight though!” Green said through gritted teeth, and Vio ducked under a swing, his fingers shaking where they clutched his sword. “Vio’s sword is cracked! Would one of you get over h— whoa!”
The spiked ball slammed into Green’s shield, launching him away from where he was protecting Vio. He yelped as he went flying into the nearby stream, and Vio stared up at the knight, breath rasping as he tried to scrabble backwards.
His back hit a large piece of ruin, and Vio clutched his sword as the knight swung his chain back, preparing to launch the ball forward. Blue and Red both shouted his name, and Vio swallowed, then watched as if in slow motion as the ball and chain swung forward.
But the same time, he gathered his meager strength and lunged forward, a yell escaping him as he plunged his sword into a gap in the trooper’s armor.
The ball and chain trooper howled, stumbling backwards, but Vio held on despite the cracks shifting around in his chest, blood roaring in his ears. Vio worked on logic, but despite his brain screaming at him to let go, he kept his sword buried to the hilt, his vision sparking, body cracking.
The trooper finally fell to its knees, dark blood pooling, and Vio felt another sudden crack, one that made his vision split into jagged shards.
Pain slammed into him and Vio screamed, something deep inside him cracking, unsettled, unraveling and deeply, deeply wrong—
The trooper fell, someone screamed his name, Vio’s hand clutched the blade as a blinding flash of color lit up the clearing and then
he
gl i t
c h
e
d
...
.
(...)
Twilight climbed over a fallen pillar, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun as he looked around. Everyone was busy patching themselves up from the battle, but Twilight hadn’t seen Four come back yet.
He’d seen him split from the main group to go chase off some skeletons, but Twilight had thought he was right over here. Four would know better than to go too far, but he didn't seem to be here anywhere. Where could he have gone?
Twilight scanned the small clearing next to the stream, stepping around ruins and monster parts and blood. He was beginning to get downright concerned when his eyes finally caught on something that wasn’t stone or blood, and he gasped.
Four was curled up in the fetal position on the ground, his breath coming out in short gasps. His hands were clutched in his hair and there was a small puddle of vomit beside his head, and Twilight scrambled over the ruins and to his side, already scanning for injuries.
“Four, Four what happened?” Twilight breathed, brushing Four’s hair away from his face. He’d expected blood, but all he saw were Four’s eyes, rolled back in his head so far he could barely see the irises.
Twilight frowned and carefully tilted Four’s head up, then sucked in a sharp breath.
There was a jagged line running down Four’s face, purple and oddly shiny. It cut across his face like a scar, and different ideas of what had happened began whirling through Twilight’s mind, each more terrifying then the next.
He hesitated, then lightly touched the line with the pad of his thumb.
Four keened in distress, startling Twilight as he jerked away from him, and his eyes rolled around unsettlingly, limbs twitching. Twilight froze, and suddenly realized Four’s tunic was missing a square, the place where the purple should be oddly tarnished.
“What the...” he whispered, brushing a hand over it as Four stilled.
Four whimpered, and Twilight glanced to the side and saw Four’s sword sitting nearby. He leaned over and picked it up, and frowned. The blade was lacking the shine it usually held, strangely dull, something about the color just... off.
And he knew Four had split before running off.
“Link? Can you hear me?” Twilight tried again, carefully pulling Four up into his arms. Four just curled up tighter, mumbling something under his breath so rapidly that Twilight had no clue what it was. It grew in volume though, and Twilight listened in dismay as Four’s voice rose.
“Don’t know what— why can I hear— stop panicking, it’s not— why are we—”
Four’s disjointed sentence broke into another keen, and he curled into a ball, pressing his head to his knees.
“Fix it fix it— can’t! He’s missing— head hurts— Green what’s—”
Four wailed, then went limp so abruptly Twilight jumped, and he hurriedly checked to make sure he was still breathing. Four’s heartbeat was fast, but it was there, and Twilight ran a hand along his cheek where the line wasn’t.
What had happened?
A different groan came from nearby, and Twilight’s head shot up, his ears pricking. He leaned his head around the piece of ruin that was next to Four, his hand hovering near his weapon, then stared.
Vio lay motionless on the ground a few feet away.
Twilight looked rapidly between the two Fours, brain going a mile a minute as he tried to quickly process the sight, then cautiously scooted over and touched Vio’s shoulder.
“Hey, Vio,” he said, still holding the other Four tight. “Vio, wake up bud.”
The violet fourth of the smithy groaned, then twitched as his eyelids flickered.
“Vio, what happened? Why aren’t you... in Four? How is this possible?” Twilight asked worriedly once he looked at him, eyes exhausted. “Are you hurt?”
Vio’s breath hitched.
“The sword...” Vio rasped, ignoring Twilight’s questions. His hand shakily reached through the grass. “Ran...cher, get Le...”
His breath caught, and Vio’s hand clutched weakly at the handle of something hidden by the grass. Twilight reached forward to look at it, and sucked in a sharp breath at the cracked blade of Vio’s sword. It looked like it was barely holding together. He ran a finger over the purplish lines spiderwebbed across the metal, and Vio jerked like he'd been struck, a rattling gasp escaping him.
Twilight quickly drew back, and looked at Four and Vio, then between the two swords.
Four was only three. He’d merged without Vio somehow, and the cracks had something to do with it.
Twilight blinked hard, and swallowed, running a hand over Vio's head. How this was even possible was beyond him, but Four was in trouble. He didn’t have to know magic to see that.
"Twi," Vio rasped again, and Twilight immediately focused his attention back on him. "Le...gend. Sword. Know... fix."
"You need your sword fixed? That'll fix things?" Twilight asked, and Vio confirmed it with a pained mumble. "...Legend can fix it?"
"No... j-just..." Vio rasped, then coughed, his free hand clutching at the grass. "He knows... tell... him..."
Vio trailed off with an agonized wheeze, and Twilight gently took his hand. There must be some way Legend could fix the Four Sword, or at least something here that could do it for him? This was Legend's era after all.
Maybe he knew a way to help.
Four (or should Twilight call him Three?) suddenly jerked in his arms, and Twilight yelped, quickly stopping him from falling to the ground. Four froze again, twitching oddly, eyes still rolling around, and Twilight wondered with a brief spurt of panic whether he was having some kind of seizure.
Four stilled again after a moment though, and Twilight breathed out, holding him tight, but careful to avoid the purple scar along his face.
"Okay. Okay I'll tell him. We'll fix you up, I promise," Twilight reassured.
Vio gave a pained nod, and Twilight carefully set down Four, reassuring the violet smithy he'd be right back.
Then he ran off back towards the others, fear speeding his steps.
(...)
“...take it to... trust them to fix...”
“...sure? If... this wrong...”
“...only choice. He...”
...
“Okay.”
Something touched him.
Vio stiffened, then gasped as arms carefully pulled around him, lifting him up. The broken pieces in his chest shifted around, and he choked back a cry, trying to stay still so they’d settle.
He felt shattered, cracked into pieces that would never be fixed. Something inside of him was broken, something that shouldn’t have been able to break, and it felt like it would never be fixed.
Was this how Shadow felt?
“We got you Vio, we’re fixing this,” a voice assured somewhere above him, and he tried to listen. “Legend knows a blacksmith, one who once worked on the Master Sword. He’ll be able to help.”
“O...kay,” Vio managed to croak out, and whoever had picked him up set his head on their shoulder.
Vio let out a quiet hiss of pain as the cracked pieces shifted again, and he flinched as someone else rested a hand on his head, saying something he couldn’t make out. But he was also relieved.
They’d figured out what he meant. They were bringing him to a blacksmith.
Vio’s breath hitched as whoever was holding him began to move, and his consciousness sank back under a sea of broken glass.
(...)
Vio woke up to a splitting pain in his head, like Blue had somehow smacked him with his hammer, and he cried out, trying to get away from the pain.
"Oh no— hold him!" someone cried out.
Arms grabbed Vio and he gasped, trying to stay still, but unable to stop himself from flinching violently as the pain hit again, an earth-shattering noise accompanying it.
“He’s connected to it, this must be agonizing—”
“At least the rest of him isn’t reacting—”
“Vio? Vio relax, I know it hurts,” a closer voice spoke up, and a hand rested over his. “He’s working on the sword right now, but it won’t be too long.”
Vio dragged in a raspy breath, and clenched his teeth to stop another scream as the noise slammed into him again. Right. The sword. He could handle this. It was being fixed. It hurt, but it would be a good hurt in the end. He knew what you had to do to forge a sword.
Unfortunately knowing that and living through it were two very different things.
Another hit shook through him, and Vio curled around one of the arms keeping him from thrashing, trying to take slow, steady breaths. If he weren’t in so much pain, he’d be rather interested at the physical effects currently hitting him like a hinox. He’d worked on the Four Sword before and never experienced anything like this.
Probably because this time it was actually broken, his mind whispered, and he whimpered as the sword was struck again.
A hand brushed over his head in steady motions, wiping sweat off his forehead, and smoothing wild hair. Vio tried to focus on that, not the regular pound of pain and sound that slammed into him like a physical weight.
“Hold on Link,” someone said quietly, and Vio lost himself in the steady hits of pain as the blacksmith fixed the blade tied to his very existence.
(...)
Four woke up.
He blinked slowly, a gentle light falling over his face as he tried to figure out where he was and what had happened.
A splitting headache throbbed through him, and he raised a shaking hand to his forehead, wincing as he rubbed the space between his eyes. He felt like he’d been through an avalanche or something, what had happened?
Also... hadn’t he been split before?
“Four!”
Someone took his hand, and Four squinted up at the group of blurry figures that had suddenly appeared around him. Their faces slowly swam into view, revealing themselves as the other heroes, and he saw expressions of worry and expectancy all around.
“How are you feeling, Four?” someone asked. Time, maybe.
“Drained,” he answered honestly, voice a hollow rasp. He closed his eyes, then reopened them, staring up at the others. “There was something...”
Four trailed off, and then a brief memory flickered through his mind, one split and jumbled and chock full of pain and cracks.
“My sword,” he said suddenly, and tried to sit up, arms shaking. At least three people tried to push him back down, voices overlapping with worries and admonitions, making Four’s headache worsen. “My sword,” he repeated urgently, sitting up anyway. His memories were a disaster at the moment, but he remembered feeling the crack in his chest, panic and terror and pain accompanying it.
“Here, here I’ve got it,” someone spoke up, and Four watched Legend push his way past the others, something held gently in his hands.
The Four Sword.
Whole and complete.
Four reached out with a shaking hand, and Legend gently handed it over, his face exhausted, but pleased.
“We fixed Vio’s sword up as well as we could, used the finest ore we had,” Legend explained as Four ran a hand over the blade. “I oversaw it myself. We did as much as we could with what we had, if there’s anything wrong with it it’s my fault.”
“The moment we handed it back to Vio you reformed,” Twilight said next, his hand on Four’s arm. “And you’ve been out ever since. We... weren’t sure it worked.”
“It did,” Four said softly, clutching the sword to his chest. He could tell there’d been work done on it, but the magic inside was stable and clear, four tendrils weaved intricately together working in harmony again.
It was fixed. It was whole.
Legend had sat down on the bed next to him, and Four leaned against his arm, overwhelmed with relief.
“Thank you,” he whispered, blinking back the sting in his eyes.
Legend nodded with a little smile, and Four held his sword tight as the others gathered around him, relieved and glad he was okay.
91 notes · View notes
lord-squiggletits · 10 months ago
Text
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...
Tumblr media
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.
Tumblr media
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?
#squiggposting#pharma apologism#i'm sure the doylist reason for the writing is just that pharma was a designated villain#so since he's a villain and 'crazy' it's fine for everyone even the good guys to treat him like complete trash#i just think from a watsonian perspective taking a sympathetic approach is way more interesting and logically consistent#what i mean is like. from a meta perspective one of the best ways to show that a character is super evil and not worth saving#is when even the good guy heroes. the ones who are supposed to be kind and compassionate and wise. see him as dirt#and this is also kind of a necessity in most plots bc TF is the kind of series that just needs action villains and long-term antagonists#so not every villain is written or has a plot to be made redeemable. and pharma is one of these bc he's not important or a legacy character#so from a doylist (meta) perspective you could read the autobots' disregard of pharma as a sign of#'this guy is not meant to have your sympathy as a reader. pay no attention to him'#but from a watsonian (in universe) perspective it paints a miserable picture of pharma being utterly forsaken by the ppl he served alongsid#and like yeah i'm super autistic about pharma so of course i view him with sympathy but like#the idea of being a loyal and good person for years only to be subjected to a Torment Nexus of#being blackmailed into breaking all of the oaths you held sacred. under threat of you and all your comrades dying horrible torturous deaths#then when your comrades find out about it they focus solely on the 'harvesting organs' and not on the 'blackmail' part#and then you get literally left for dead by your comrades and best friend hating your guts#and then you get rescued by a guy who uses you as a test subject for his evil machine#this is a fucking nightmare scenario like pharma could hardly be suffering more if the author TRIED to make him suffer#and for me it's like. the evil pharma did can't be decontextualized to what drove him to that. as well as the question of like#how easily ppl can write someone off as evil and turn a blind eye to (or even find satisfaction in) their suffering bc theyre evil#and either brought it on themselves or it's just karma paying a visit#like. i feel like if pharma WERE a shitty doctor and a terrible person his whole life then the delphi situation would feel like karma#but the way it's written and the lore retroactively put in makes it feel more pharma getting thrown in a torture carousel#and THEN becoming evil. but then being treated as if he was always evil or was some sort of bad apple#bc like i'm not opposed to LOLing when a villain gets a karmic torture/death related to the wrongs they committed#but in pharma's case it feels less like karma and more like endless torture + being abandoned by ppl who should have been more loyal
392 notes · View notes
mediabrainrot · 12 days ago
Text
no idea if this is an unpopular opinion or not but. god i miss when JJ was a media liaison. it was so much more interesting when there were multiple jobs on the team and not just all profilers (and garcia). it was her strong suit and made so much more sense for her- even having her as some sort of victims/family members liaison like someone whose job is to work with grieving relatives and friends and interview them or work w them specifically. that’s where she shines the best and (sorry girl) she’s giving nothing as a profiler like she doesn’t add anything to the team other than another person.
49 notes · View notes
thenugking · 1 year ago
Text
so in oh titan, where art thou, darius says that before raine started rebelling, he thought he was the only one who was against the day of unity.
does. does this mean that the Mess in eda's requiem is bc darius and eberwolf both thought the other one was pro-belos and were faking villainy at Each Other????
did they both end up Seperately going to raine like "hey i'm with you we can take belos down together, sorry i was a dick in the whole capturing you business, i didn't want the other coven head to catch on"
raine is fucking Suffering here
536 notes · View notes
waitineedaname · 7 months ago
Text
i love the bingge extra because it's like
the horror of realizing you're the dark universe version of yourself. the injustice of seeing this other version of yourself be happy and loved, seeing him be treated with such gentle tenderness from a person who only ever treated you with cruelty
bad sex.
#svsss#julianno#the little glimpses into bingge's perspective when he's watching them are so rough!!#the sqq he knew was cruel and cold and abused him#and so he got his revenge and became powerful and should have everything he wanted#and then he goes into this other universe#and he sees himself being fussed over by an sqq that is gentle and kind and worries about his wellbeing#an sqq that drains himself of his spiritual energy just to tend his wounds#an sqq that brushes his hair and answers with an indulgent hm? whenever he calls out to him#and how unfair is that? he has everything#but this other version of him is loved#and maybe that's all he wanted this whole time#augh.#and then binghe coming back from pidw's universe and saying he looked everywhere but couldn't find shizun#he had so many people at his side but he didn't have the person who mattered most#GOD. anyway. I have so many thoughts on this extra and I haven't even gotten into the bad sex!#i love how sqq is like FUCK HE'S HUGE. NO WAY I'M TAKING THAT.#and binghe is like maybe shizun should top 🥺 <- definitely something he has fantasized for a long time#and sqq is like wait no what if i hurt him i wouldn't be able to bear it. so he ends up bottoming anyway#also the fact that he's so tired by the end lskdjflksd old man.#he claims it was awful and yet he came twice. you are a liar ❤#reading these books after reading mdzs is very funny#going from wangxian fucking like rabbits and having very enthusiastic kinky sex#to binghe crying in the middle of sex and sqq being like If He Puts That Thing In Me I Think I'll Die.
87 notes · View notes
floweringpopcat · 6 months ago
Text
jason todd playlist! red hood playlist! metal/rock music!! my brain has latched onto this man
36 notes · View notes
total-drama-brainrot · 6 months ago
Note
i come humbly requesting the post about chris’ descent you teased in an ask
Of course! I'll start by outlining how Chris' behaviour changed over the course of the series.
Chris starts off the first season of Total Drama as a huge dickhead, but not an outright morally bereft one.
He doesn't have the same familiarity with the gen 1 cast as he does in later seasons, but he's friendly enough with them - as friendly as you'd expect a television host and de facto caregiver to be to a group of twenty two teenagers. Sure, he's a bit of an arse at times, but it's very rare that he puts any of them in direct, life threatening danger. Most of the first season's challenges aren't outright lethal, in fact many of them are just regular camp activities taken to their logical extreme.
The main outliers here are the two torture-based challenges, and even then most of the mini challenges within are bearable if incredibly uncomfortable and painful - none of them are outright fatal. Plus, it can be argued that Chris himself doesn't have a lot of agency or input on the challenges themselves; he's there to host the show, nothing more and nothing less. At least, in the first season, there isn't any indication that Chris himself has control over the challenges (save for when Chef takes over for an episode, but his challenges are a lot simpler in design and execution than anything Chris hosts, so it can be assumed that was a last minute change.)
Now, it's been a while since I've rewatched Island, but I'm fairly sure Chris doesn't ever show the same amount of glee in the contestant's suffering as he does in later seasons. He's sometimes amused, sure, but there's very little in terms of outright vindication. More often than not, he's just trying to host the show.
Take Island's Chris and World Tour's Chris and contrast their attitudes against each other; time, it seems, developed an almost malicious streak within Chris. He even goes so far as to take his competitor's suffering into his own hands, at his own whims, using the excuse of entertainment value. (Dropping them out of the jet repeatedly at his fancy, deciding to choose the most dangerous moments to have them sing, ect ect.)
And then we get to RotI, where Chris is almost consistantly taking a great deal of joy in exposing the new cast to the horrors of nuclear waste and chemical hazards. His blasé attitude towards their mortality in the cave episode speaks for itself, and the fact that he gives a grand total of 0 shits about Dakota's mutation is the icing on top. By the time this season came around, any semblence of care for others within Chris was diminished.
The question therein is why?
The most obvious answer here is that the repeated threat to his contestant's lives became so normalised, so mundane to him that he simply stopped caring. Or seeing it as something wrong, or anything more than a ratings tool. None of them have actually died yet, so why not continually up the ante? Raise the stakes? Add more thrill to the show he's hosting - that's bound to draw in a bigger audience!
Which is how you end up with situations like Alejandro's and Scott's, where a contestant is injured enough to warrent use of machine-assisted healing and trauma chairs. Two situations that Chris himself is directly involved in, and doesn't seem to care about in the slightest.
Because showbusiness as a whole has a tendancy to reduce the people within it into objects of entertainment. There's a lot of dehumanisation in the world of TV - even reality TV, where people oftentimes play up aspects of themselves to become characters instead of people.
Throughout the show, Chris often talks about things like ratings, or the producers, or other business-focused aspects of entertainment. In his eyes, the teens under his dubious care gradually became little more than pawns in the game of Good Televivion. They stopped being kids and started being ratings jewels - puppets for him to manipulate and torture for his own and an international audience's amusement.
Perhaps there was some pressure from the producers themselves to be crueller to the contestants, to draw in a bigger audience or maybe just to add a sense of thrill and urgency to the challenges. After all, there's a reason shows like I'm a Celebrity are so popular, and it's because the people competing in them are having a decidedly bad time.
So, in his mind, making the contestants go through cruel and unusual punishments and challenges is justifyable because the show itself has benefits from it. He doesn't consider (or, perhaps, just doesn't care about) the harm he causes.
Then here it could be argued that his callousness and the detatched, joking attutide he has towards the suffering of these kids is actually just a super unhealthy coping mechanism Chris uses to get through the horrors of his job. That is to say, Chris is just as contractually obligated to host the show as the contestants are to compete in it, and he knows that they're gonna suffer regardless of his input, so being a Good Host and at least making their pain marketable/entertaining will at least garuntee him a bigger paycheck.
Or maybe he was always predisposed to be sadistic, and his relative niceness in the first season was just him testing the waters of how cruel his TV persona could be.
All I can say as a fact is this; Chris' actions and inactions become far more grevious as the series continues. He blows up a volcano on purpose. He sinks a whole island on purpose.
(He, and the series as a whole, drops any pretense of semi-realism to explore cartoonishly whacky and outlandish themes. Because it's a kid's show, at the end of the day. I'm overanalysing how a children's TV show leaned into the freedom of a fictional cartoon world.)
Saying that, he seems to have taken a step back in the theatrical and outlandish nature of his cruelty for the reboot. Maybe the decade away from Total Drama mellowed him out, or maybe the show just does't have the budget to accomodate for his more ambitious stunts. Who knows?
27 notes · View notes
unholyglitch404 · 4 months ago
Text
Y'know, there's literally no situation where "feminine products" is a better alternative than just labeling the period section either "menstruation products" or "period products", and I'm tired of pretending this game of dodgeball is even remotely rational.
17 notes · View notes
scattered-winter · 6 months ago
Text
every day i kick a rock and bash my head into the wall because i'll never get to go on a big space adventure and become tightly close-knit with my new found family up there <//3
#re lrb..........#i mean realistically if i was in the voltron/quintenary stars universe chances are i would probably NOT be one of the people#going on the space adventure.#i'd be roped into the plot when the aliens invade and earth almost gets destroyed. spoilers for arc 2 btw sorry#but man. child soldierism aside i wish that were me so so so bad#sadly kicks a rock when will EYE have a deep and mystical connection with a giant ancient cat :(#its not even that i want to interact with the main cast bc i dont really i just. wanna be in their position man#i think one of the reasons why voltron grabbed me so hard (among MANY) is how badly i wanted to do what the main characters did#i remember when i was first watching it while it was coming out i would CONSISTENTLY daydream about being launched into space#with a handful of other people and having to fight a war and grow up far away from home and all the suffocating stuff that came with it#and then coming back years later already solidly knowing who i am and being confident in that#so i'd actually be brave enough to be unapologetic about it. and i'd be found family with the people i went to space with also#that parts important#idk man just. i dont like saying i was abused when i was younger because i really dont think it was like that and it isnt even close to#what how people who have really been abused have had to go through#but sometimes i really do wonder. like now that im (mostly) out and able to review everything with an outside perspective#not even getting into the cult survivorism stuff this is JUST family dynamics im talking about here#bc that shit is a whole other can of worms#i think my parents were genuinely doing the best they could with the cards they were dealt but. jesus christ.#i would have given ANYTHING to be able to run away from all that. and throw magic cats into the equation? brother im GONE#anyway this tags ramble has derailed in a MAJOR way. tldr i wanted to be a paladin sooooo fuckign bad bro#like it actually makes me SICK how much i want a lion. red you are my forever girl even if only in my heart <///3#i still do want to do all that out of principle but its not as desperate now i just really love space and really want a big kitty friend#winter speaks
14 notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media
Man i cant wait for Egmont to see this and make a story where hdl mention them not being part of the JW anymore months after they have rejoined again in Italy
13 notes · View notes
cleromancy · 1 year ago
Text
war games 🤝 battle for the cowl;: yeah that was a big pivotal event but uh. it didn't happen like that. They told it wrong
25 notes · View notes
martyrbat · 2 years ago
Text
Tumblr media
world's finest (1990) #1
[ID: two in-universe drawings from two different orphan children talking about their heros. The first one is by Ann Gray, who's eight years old. She drew a surprisingly decent photo of Batman in front of a yellow background and wrote, ‘My hero — Batman. He is strong and fierce and he can beat anyone. He is very tall. He wears a cool suit with a bat on. He is not afrade of bullits and he saved my life (true). No one nows his reel name or address. the biggist crinminel in all the world could not make him sorender. Batman keeps gothum city safe for everyone and pets.’
The second drawing is by Zachary Sikes who's 12 and a half years old. He drew a photo of Superman using his heat vision as he flies. He wrote, ‘My Hero — Superman. My hero is Superman. He is able to fly and I have seen him lift up a car (with 2 peeple in it). If you hit him in the face then he will just laff. Every one likes him and he saved my life once. The big S on his shirt is for his name (Superman). He lives in Metroplis (where I used to life also). He keeps everything there in law and order.’ END ID]
72 notes · View notes
arolesbianism · 3 months ago
Text
I <3 the existential horror of shit just being completely removed from reality with no hope of getting it back or even no one to be able to long for that hope
5 notes · View notes
abrahamvanhelsings · 6 days ago
Text
somewhat baffling to ask for a small alarm clock as a gift and receive what appear to be circular knitting needles when i am not a regular knitting person and i have not expressed the desire to become such
2 notes · View notes
court-of-constellations · 3 months ago
Text
Hello everyone!! I'm back with another post about my original universe, this time about nymphs!
This is even longer than the vampire one so the rambling is under the cut, and I was so tempted to include information about my inspiration for certain things and why I made the creative decisions I did, but I refrained because I wanted to keep this focused and not go off on tangents (however, if you do want to hear about that stuff, feel free to send me an ask at any time! I'm always happy to ramble about this universe!)
So. Nymphs. They're typically defined (by humans) as nature spirits, but what does that mean?
Well, the literal dictionary definition is "a spirit born from the earth or water; a being connected to the earth." Nymphs are, in short, personifications of nature. That's not to say that every little aspect of nature has a corresponding nymph- but there are several kinds of nymphs for several different types of nature.
Nymphs, as a whole, can be divided into two categories: land and water. There are a couple types of nymph that could fit into both categories, and one specific type of nymph that doesn't fit into either, but most nymphs can be clearly defined as one or the other.
Nymphs frequently spawn in areas with high magical concentration; why this is, nobody knows, and most other scholars have put it down to those areas being sacred in some way. These scholars are the same ones that hail nymphs as creations of the divine, made to safeguard the lands that are rightfully ours, so any conclusion of theirs must be taken with several grains of salt. I find that many scholars who subscribe to this field of thinking have never even seen a nymph in their lives, and assume that they are all perfectly like us humans (despite their appearances). This is a lie, one that continues to be retold despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
To understand nymphs, one must first understand that they are not human. They are sentient, intelligent, and quite interesting, but no matter how humanoid their shape might be, they are not and never will be even close to human beings. The exceptions to this rule will be covered later, but true nymphs are nature in its purest form: wild, unpredictable, and untameable. Like fairies, they operate on an entirely separate morality than humans, but unlike fairies, there are no clever tricks you can use to escape them, no set rules you may follow. If fairies are order, nymphs are chaos. If you should encounter a nymph, then by all means converse with them and befriend them if you like, but never forget that they are not the same as you, and no matter how benevolent they may seem, they could turn on you in an instant.
With all of this out of the way, let's finally get to the types of nymphs and their origins.
Land Nymphs
This category of nymph, as the name suggests, are tied to the land. There are several kinds of nymphs who fall under this category, and those nymphs have so many subspecies among them that if I listed them all, this text would be thicker than my torso.
Still, I shall endeavor to at least impress upon you the general idea of which nymphs come from where, so that you might know to use the correct terminology when describing to a friend and encounter you may have had in the woods or fields. Any further study into the subspecies can be found in other, more involved texts, ones whose authors were compensated enough to care about listing every type of nymph that could possibly be found in our lovely lands.
The first to be aware of are dryads, nymphs who have spawned from trees. It is unknown how long a tree must live before becoming a dryad, but this author suspects it to be somewhere in the hundreds, if only for the fact that cutting down younger trees has not as of yet brought a furious dryad out for my blood into my path. Should this change, this text will naturally be updated should I survive long enough to do so.
There are as many types of dryads as there are types of trees, and though there are certainly scientific names for each and every one, I personally have found that simply using the name of whichever tree they spawned from is quite sufficient. A dryad who spawned from an ash tree is an ash dryad, from an oak tree is an oak dryad and so on and so forth; I am quite sure I need not recount the name of every tree for the reader to understand my point.
True dryads, once born from whichever tree they are, are from then on about as attached to the tree as a human might be their parents; their personal feelings vary from nymph to nymph, but in terms of life force, they can and will live even if their tree has been cut down. Unlike humans, the only thing that can kill a true dryad is when the last trace of their tree has disappeared from this world; be it by decay or fire or a misplaced disintegration spell, once the tree is well and truly gone, so too is the dryad.
In terms of a dryad's appearance, their skin will be made out of the same bark as their tree, their hair the same leaves, their innards the same wood. Their eyes may have fruits or flowers in them depending on the tree and time of year, but they may simply be empty sockets. In any case, you should know a dryad at first sight, for unless walking trees are quite common in your place of residence, there's really nothing you can mistake them for.
I would give a description of a dryad's typical personality, as so many others have in their own texts, but my experiences with them have made me aware that they differ in personality as much as humans do; this holds true for all nymphs and I will not repeat such trite and blatantly untrue statements as "all dryads are nurturing, all naiads are mischievous," etc. That is my final statement on this matter and if I receive one more letter from my editor asking where the personality descriptions are, I swear I will-
(Editor's Note: The rest of this tirade had to be cut for its vulgarity and surprisingly creative threats towards me, my place of work, the scholars that continue to perpetuate these stereotypes, their families, and oddly enough, any cows they may have in their possession. Rest assured it was very much unsuited for such a text, but I preserved as much as I was morally able to.)
The florae, nymphs born from flowers, differ from dryads in appearance and origin, and that is where the differences end. They are comparatively rarer as flowers are quite fragile and much more likely to be destroyed, but so long as the vine or shrub or roots survive, so too will the flora. Oddly enough, trees that produce a dryad may also produce a flora from its flowers.
Florae are typically made out of whatever their flower bloomed on, be it vines or stems or branches. Whatever their flower was, replicas of it will be blooming all over their body, including in their eyes, and their hair will be made out of its petals. I have encountered florae many times, and I have yet to figure out just how some of the hairstyles they have are physically possible. One of the many mysteries of life, I suppose.
I suppose now that we have discussed dryads and florae, we must now discuss the dragon in the room: the dryads and florae that were once human beings.
There are many, many different theories of why and how this phenomenon occurs, but there are three facts we know: one, that if a human being is turned into a plant, they will inevitably become a nymph, two, that these humans are visually indistinguishable from true nymphs, and three, they are much more fragile- if their tree is cut down or their flower dies, they will die too and there is nothing that can be done about it.
It is for this reason that turning people into plants is so harshly punished, for you have condemned them to either an early death or a painfully prolonged life that could easily be cut short by anyone unaware of their plant"s true nature. But this is not a book about ethics or law, and if you wish to know more, than you must look elsewhere, for I have shared everything that is relevant.
With that out of the way, let's talk about (gods save me) the other land nymphs.
There are nymphs far older than human civilization, and indeed, humanity as a whole. These nymphs are known to the particularly religious as "The Elder Ones" and to the rest of us as simply the land nymphs.
The best way to explain these nymphs is to take a quick look at history. All throughout time, the earth has been shifting and changing, and as it changes, so too do the nymphs who personify it. These nymphs are fluid and ever changing, their types only vague classifications that serve to describe just what they represent at the moment. They are old, wise, and frustratingly reclusive, and the only reason we know they exist is because of what other nymphs have told us.
Thus far, the classifications are:
Oreads (mountain nymphs)
Valleaeae (valley/pasture/glen nymphs)
Pratae (meadow nymphs (Editor's Note: I personally don't understand the point of this distinction))
Napaeae (dell nymphs)
Haliae (seashore nymphs)
Umidae (wetland nymphs)
This is all we really know about them, and though other nymphs claim that it was them who created all other nymphs, that sounds far too religious for this book.
Water Nymphs
Water nymphs are far less varied than land nymphs (thank the gods, this chapter is getting long enough as it is) and they are all, in terms of origin and appearance, functionally the same.
Naiads (the term for water nymphs in general) spawn from a water source that isn't the open sea (why, this is still unknown.) They are made out of water and may adorn themselves with objects found in their water source, such as colorful rocks or flowers and things of that nature.
The subspecies of naiads are:
Lacuae (lake nymphs)
Pegaeae (spring nymphs
Fluminae (river nymphs)
Naiads are a curious case. Unlike land nymphs, they cannot be killed by any means. Instead, they will spawn, live as long as they like, and then once they're done they will dissolve into the water from whence they came, and another naiad will spawn and the cycle will start anew.
There will never be more than one naiad at a time from one water source, and we have yet to discover any nymphs born from the ocean.
Underworld Nymphs
Underworld nymphs have only been said to exist by the precious few undead who are willing to discuss such matters. They are not proven to be anything more than the dreams of a dying mind, and thus I will not be including them in this text no matter how much my editor begs me to.
If you wish to research them, there are a number of scholarly texts that hotly debate their existence, role in the Underworld, origin, and quite literally every little thing about them.
Vagari
Whatever Vagari may be, they almost certainly aren't nymphs. Some say that they are the children stolen away by fairies, others say that they are the tormented souls of lost travelers. All that can concretely be proven about them is that they can be seen wandering the woods, wearing clothes made out of animal skins and leaves, and wearing a mask in the shape of an animal's head.
I write about them in this text solely because we are just uncertain enough of their true nature that they could, possibly, be some form of nymph.
And with that, this text comes to a close. I hope this will serve you well wherever you may be, and always remember: if you should meet a nymph, treat them and their source with respect, never forget that they are as wild as the earth that formed them, and don't get too attached to any objects they may see in your possession. Or just run. That would work as well.
3 notes · View notes
thegreatyin · 21 days ago
Note
Is there any memes or running jokes associated with the character, both in- and out of universe?
rigel
yes. several. because i love bullying my children.
monarch monarch is probably my personal favorite though
5 notes · View notes