#hi i'm mentally ill about this guy

[nebulilli]

Hi borderlands fandom I redesigned borderlands 3 Rhys Strongfork for a school assignment. Hire me gearbox.

[gretagator]

Okay did anyone else notice that there's a little instrumental arrangement of The Winner Takes It All playing in the background of that scene from Better Call Saul 04x06. I have been thinking about this constantly for like 3 years and I've never seen anybody talk about it I need to get this out of my system...

That + the exit sign being there throughout pretty much the entire scene just hanging there above Jimmy. Chuck is practically omnipresent in that scene without even being there. Absolute cinema (also Jimmy's seemingly more emotional reaction to Mrs. Strauss' death is probably supposed to mirror all the repressed and unspoken grief he feels for Chuck that's just lingering deep down. So much to say about this scene. The horrors)

[tvckerwash]

random head canon I just came up with: tucker complaining about the meta suit being tight in the crotch is supposed to be a dick joke, but I think it's way funnier if it's supposed to be tight because that's how armor works: if its too loose you risk being injured because of things being knocked around when impacts are made, lessening the effects of the armor absorbing and distributing the force, so you don't want a bad fit. tucker wouldn't know that though because he's been wearing flowers armor, which was custom fit for flowers, and when they got new armor in s6, they used the measurements of the old armor, so tucker's been wearing improperly fit armor the entire series—which is a level of stupidity only the reds and blues could accomplish.

[katoska]

Fuck it, I'll vent once more about this, in my own post, and then I'll just ignore all the Annoying Wrong Opinions in the tag.

People who call Conrad a (right-wing/anti-vaxx/Andrew Tate incel type) grifter should look up "motive attribution asymmetry".

Motive attribution asymmetry is a psychological phenomenon where individuals in a conflict or disagreement tend to view their own group’s motivations as stemming from positive intentions, such as love, care, or a desire for justice, while simultaneously attributing the opposing group’s actions to negative motivations, such as hate, malice, or a desire to harm. This skewed perception can significantly contribute to the escalation and intractability of conflicts by creating a fundamental misunderstanding of the other side’s perspective.  

In other words, we tend to believe that those on the Other Side of a disagreement are more likely to be lying about their motives or opinions in order to benefit themselves or do harm to Our Side, than we are to believe that the Other Side might also be well-meaning but mistaken. Only Our Side gets to have good intentions and flawed outcomes if we get something wrong, the Other Side is is full of grifters who are doing evil on purpose. Well, grifters and idiots who fall for grifters. Our Side is ofc very smart and cares enough to do proper research, unlike those sheeple.

With that being said, ofc grifters do exist, and a few of them make far too much money off of podcasts, but I don't think that's what was going on with Conrad in Lucky Day:

Grifters don't invade HQs and demand answers at gunpoint, they incite their minions to do that. Nor do they wonder, after their third encounter with the Tardis, whether they imagined it. Or refuse to take the Shreek vaccine, after we saw them being genuinely scared of the alien, if they actually believed the alien existed and that the vaccine does what they were told it does. Anti-vax grifters still get their shots because they know they are lying to sell their snake oil.

Conrad was wrong in his beliefs, but I think those beliefs were genuine. The reason why the audience believes he was lying about everything is because Ruby made that assumption after he Mata Hari'd her and because he confessed to lying when the Shreek was right in his face and he was saying whatever UNIT wanted to hear so they'd help him. We like Ruby, so we side with her. And we side with Kate when she siccs an alien on someone for attacking UNIT (well, more because the guy insulted her dad), bc surely that guy is faking his skepticism of UNIT/aliens bc everyone knows aliens exist. Even Donna Noble (now, again) knows aliens exist. Nevermind that UNIT has been lying for decades about e.t. existence, right? Only crackpots would believe that their current alien narrative is some even bigger conspiracy than the previous "Aliens don't exist" one. And obviously, this guy who is functional enough to make good money with his podcast (ew), and, like many people with money, evades taxes (double ew), and who has friends, and plots with friends to topple UNIT, could not possibly be insane enough to genuinely believe in a conspiracy theory, right? He must be lying.

Except 1) you don't have to have a mental illness to subscribe to conspiracist thinking (though it helps; a lot of conspiracy nuts do have unusually strong apophenia and see Signs in everything) , 2) we see him get offended when Ruby calls him a liar, and 3) if you rewatch the ep, he doesn't seem all that rational, actually.

It's implied he frequently saw stuff as a kid that got him accused of lying, which is why he brought (as is typical of conspiracy nuts, very shitty) proof of his encounter, expecting his Mum to just be convinced by said shitty proof. He very vividly imagines the Shreek hunting him while Ruby explains its hunting patterns, before snapping back to reality and reminding himself it's a story. He seemed erratic and obstinate during the mask-off scene (and that thing he said about disability benefits reminded me of what Kate said to Shirley when she briefly became paranoid due to the Toymaker's influence). He rejects what he did to Jordan, and again gets erratic and obstinate when his view of reality gets challenged, coming up with extremely dumb alternate explanations on the spot. And he later seems unsure if the Tardis encounter in his cell really happened... after seeing the Tardis three times, after listening to Ruby talk about her adventures for weeks, he is unsure if he imagined being in the Tardis and holding a whole conversation with the Doctor.

That last one especially is... that guy is not well, and on some level he knows it, but unfortunately he lives in the Whoniverse where weird shit happens all the time and a lot of it is unprovable later or does get hushed up. Bit hard to figure out if you are having hallucinations when cryptids exist and everyone tells you that the formerly secret military branch can deal with them, don't worry about it. So I pity that guy, despite the harm he did, because partially fueled by delusions or not, the mistrust in UNIT (or the government in general, see Children Of Earth) is very much warranted, and also, imo, completely understandable?

Any comparison to conspiracy theories or science-deniers you want to read into this episode fall down because... the Moon's an egg. There's not much a conspiracy theorist could come up with that would trump that. Meds aren't safe in the Whoniverse (see: Adipose, though tbf those weren't so bad. I want 50 of them), neither are phone signals, and also you can summon a Daemon by chanting Mary Had A Little Lamb backwards, so I guess satanism works. And don't get me started on gods. There's too much crazy shit going on to make a call about whose beliefs make sense and who is maybe lying about their beliefs and/or maybe crazy, because how tf do you even define insanity if sometimes trees try to communicate with kids by making them see lights? It's a perfectly reasonable belief that if the military has the tech to fight aliens, then they also have the tech to fake aliens, and since they until recently always denied aliens exist... well, Occam's Razor says they are still lying, bc it's that or the Moon's an egg.

[artificial-ascension]

Am I insane or is Rin's satanic lineage a metaphor for aggression and social misconduct caused by mental illnesses and the mental illnesses stigmatized by these symptoms??? I don't know how to word it perfectly but like.

1. People treat him like a horrible monster the second they learn of his condition, regardless of how much they liked him before

2. As a child, he was written off and shunned for being 'evil' because of actions he couldn't understand as good or bad because he was a literal child

3. Furthermore, he struggles to understand how to connect with and rely people because he's always been shunned which makes him come off as even more 'creepy and weird'

4. His abilities make it hard for him to do nomal tasks (such as hold down jobs)

5. People judge his powers and how he uses them as evil because some other guy also used him for evil

And that's off the top of my head. Like... he just sounds so much like someone with ASPD, autism, schizophrenia, ect, who exhibits aggression or a lack of empathy or psychosis or any other symptom that can make it difficult to exist in 'regular society.'

I have no idea if this was the intended reading, but the way they talk about how hard it is for everyone to live with him and how people doubt if it's worth the trouble to let him live is really reminiscent to me of how people discuss those of us with neurodivergences that make us hard to get along with.

[moregraceful]

hope everyone who got a creator subscription notif from me today realizes something deeply unwell and bizarre happened to me in march

[seithr]

powerful sorcerer with magical storm blood who can still magic and rend minds and transform people btw

[weirdnerdygoat]

guys... please help... I'm getting really into typology...

[mad-hunts]

barton being awkward at first or even completely throughout a whole interaction whenever he's trying to comfort people is so in character for him TBH and let me tell y'all why because i think it's important to his character:

he can fake a lot of things. barton can fake being nice to people, he can fake being innocent, and he can even fake having a much stronger sense of morality around people if he wants to — but whenever it comes to empathizing with someone on an emotional level... barton finds himself often struggling with faking it because of the nature of it. and this is due to it being different than whenever he's trying to feign something easily comprehensible like innocence. but empathy is something that's usually viewed as innate in us as humans and has to do with love, which doesn't depend on logic. it's something that comes from within, so it doesn't have clear parameters as to how you should do it, so whenever barton tries to fake it in the event that he's trying to make someone feel better; he'll stumble. and so although barton can cognitively empathize with someone, his efforts to actually put himself in other people's shoes fall flat, as he just can't physically imagine himself being in someone else's position probably more than half the time.

so if your muse were to ever come to him seeming upset, barton would likely not know what to do / how to comfort them, at least for a bit before referencing back on how he's seen other people do it. because i hate to say it (i don't, in reality, but y'all know what i mean LOL) but barton does actively mimic behaviors that he sees people do whenever he feels the absence of a certain emotion. he especially does this whenever he's trying to appear charming to other people, but like i said, he'll also try to use what he's seen his peers do as a guide as for what he should do in regards to empathy. and sometimes he may even seem a bit flustered before he's able to do this because he knows that it is expected of him to be able to empathize with people and can identify it in other people BUT knowing how to approach faking it has always been sort of hard for him even as an adult.

but yeahhh, that's just my own two cents about how barton sometimes break character that he is quote unquote ' normal, ' though he does try to mask this around people who aren't really familiar with him as simply being social awkwardness. however, it is part of a larger thing with him as despite the fact that he can blend in with the population REALLY well and also is pretty good at manipulating others, i suppose you could say that barton is still not an expert at ' constructing empathy ' because whenever someone is visibly hurt in front of him... he is more liable to act like he isn't sure what to do, than to put on an act immediately since he is likely to feel nothing first before anything else. and i realize that that is a rather unsettling thought, but i think that he is a lot more suspectible to doing this with people he doesn't know well / who he isn't particularly close to, as he's got a lot more practice with being falsely empathetic towards friends and/or sometimes even family members.

[quetiapinnapark]

of course my dad had to ruin last night's dinner (we were celebrating my cancer test coming out negative 🙃) by bitching about how mental health is not a thing and that if my spoiled ex was poor and working a hard job he wouldn't have severe ADHD

[birdsandcake]

She's such a girl

[calronhunt]

Oc question! What was Condor's childhood like? Or if that's a spoiler, how does he feel about his scars?

not spoilers! Condor grew up in a totally normal family, with his mom, his dad, and his two sisters. They lived out in the woods on their own, outside of a colony. Condor has always had a crazy high prey drive. like. a REALLY high prey drive. anything smaller than him he wants to catch and kill and such. This at first was great because he was a great hunter for his family and they praised him all the time for how much food he brought in. Now, condor isn't. the smartest guy. I hope i've gotten that across. Awful stats in both Wisdom and Intelligence.

Hunting prey was fun but it wasn't all that exciting after a while. So eventually he started hunting other cats! He kept it a secret from his family, just a side condor funtime, until his sister found him killing a cat, so he killed her! He couldn't stand the idea of the rest of his family hating him for the rest of their lives, so he killed them too! They can't hate him or be afraid of him if they're dead! Condor's scars from his ear, his lip and his front leg are from the tussle.

That whole thing did deeply traumatize Condor, but it also started Condor's extreme cheery nature. He was always a bit jolly and such, but it ramped up really bad after that. Without the worry of his family not liking what he was doing, he was able to go full hog on anything he wanted to do. You can be happy doing anything when you don't have to worry about the disgust and fear in your mother's eyes as you tear someone to shreds.

[fakecats]

there's no such thing as "me," now / as hard as you look, nowhere to be found / i can't remember a single role i was suited for - lyrics from dramaturgy by eve

[elytrafemme]

every single fictional character i like should split and have mood swings like me. "ohhhhh but it's not canotical" "ohh they have good control over their emotions and stable views on the world" i don't fucking care. i see cq in his fake desert i see klavier's control dialogue i see dahlia and her serial murders and komaeda and the gun literally fuck with me right now. we need to stop being cowards about our fictional character headcanons i think everyone should kill people always because i can't

[elevatourism]

Ohhh I must find someone who Makes Outfits. If I want Earl's entire outfit I need someone who can actually make that. and I need someone in mind so I remember to save my money for it. Does anyone know anybody who Makes Outfits

[clamorybus]

i don't wanna call that lobotomy tiktok misinfo, because it isn't really, it's just that thing where it's hard to condense history into a 1 minute clip without stripping some context