#one way out for best writing yeah. yeah.

[kasandor]

genevieve o’reilly outstanding lead actress in a drama series. to me.

[shepscapades]

Thanks to artfight, I’ve finally finished a detailed, official dbhc cub reference! :D

(I’ve put his Artifight description below the cut, which has a more detailed explanation of his timeline, lore, and aesthetics! >:3)

-ˋˏ ༻ ❁  OVERVIEW ❁ ༺ ˎˊ-

Name: C.B.F.N.4000 (Cub) Pronouns: He/Him Species: Android Height: 5’9’’ Associated Visual Themes: vex, ghosts, explosions, mischief, scientist aesthetic, potions, potionmaking, sleepy/tired aesthetic, conspiracies

-ˋˏ ༻ ❁  ABOUT ❁ ༺ ˎˊ-

CBFN4000 is an au version of MCYT Hermitcraft’s Cubfan, set in my DBHC (or Detroit Become Hermitcraft) AU! This au is inspired by the 2018 game Detroit Become Human, but not because it really has anything to do with DBH—I simply yoinked the android mechanics and incorporated them into the world of Hermitcraft. It began as a S8 au, and has roughly followed the hermitcraft timeline up to the present! 

Cub was the last android made during Season 8. While many of the hermit androids were made at the beginning of season 8 and a few were made for season 9, Cub was finished and activated mid-late Season 8, around the time when Hermits started noticing the Big Moon. Cub’s model ended up being a sloppy experiment in deviation, as Doc suggested they try to transfer deviancy to an android upon activation to try and avoid traumatic situations that might cause an android to deviate violently or upsettingly, such as Etho’s, Tango’s, or Mumbo’s experiences. While this went relatively well initially, it clearly wasn’t very thoroughly thought out, as Xisuma (who is normally so adamant and detail-oriented when it comes to assuring the androids’ safety with experiments like this) wasn’t truly himself due to external manipulation and mostly left a relatively young-deviant Doc to carry out the project himself. 

Cub, though adjusting to sentience rather well at first, very quickly became wrapped up in the Big Moon happenings on the server, new personality and inexperience to emotions like fear and ignorance completely overwhelming his young system. He became obsessive over the implications and consequences of the Season 8 Moon Apocalypse, joining the Mooners and spreading his conspiracy theories religiously throughout the server as he descended into madness. The insanity was like a virus to his programming, pervasive and all-engulfing, and Cub’s final attempt to free himself from the Moon’s impact with the Earth—to launch himself on a llama into space via potion-powered TNT(insane btw)— left his hands and feet singed and cracked to ruin.

The experiment, considered a horrific failure by a deeply shameful—and more awake—S9 Xisuma, left Doc and Xisuma with the decision to reset him for the new season, and they ended up pairing him with a hermit like they had done with the other androids until they had found deviancy enough to pursue their own projects. So, at the start of season 9 and fresh after a reset, Cub was paired with Scar. Naturally, because Scar is… Scar, Cub deviated almost instantly after being given to him, and very quickly adopted the iconic lazy, stoic, amused attributes normally associated with Cubfan. Scar’s tendency towards mischief and general shenanigans grew instantly on Cub, and the two were an immediate inseparable pair. So much so that when Scar began rambling one day about his Season 5 Hermitcraft Shenanigans (where deals with the Vex may or may not have been involved), Cub immediately stated he was interested in being in on it. Whatever “it” means. It’s unclear if Cub also made a deal with the vex or became connected to them in some other way, but… well, he got Doc’s help to trick out his eyes, hair, and back to best fit the part. Scar is very jealous that he can't magically make himself have the same features to match.

Cub is closest with Scar, but he gets along just as well with any of the other hermits! He’s close with Jevin and many of the other redstoners like Etho and Doc, who are the other two androids I’ve put on artfight!

-ˋˏ ༻ ❁  EXTRAS ❁ ༺ ˎˊ-

Cub's eyes can light up in the dark, and he’s the only android who has edited his programming so that the default state of his LED is white, not blue. It still will go yellow and red if his processors are working particularly hard, but he’s replaced the blue setting on his LED with white to better match the Vex vibe. Cub has all of the vibes of a fae. If that’s anything <3

[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?

[shannonsketches]

Why is the anime so weird, it's not even the same series dude?? It's like,

Anime:

GOKU: I have a great idea to bring peace to the universe, and my leadership and compassion alone will unite us all. I have No Flaws and am A True Relatable Everyman :)

VEGETA: NO! I AM THE BEST AND I WILL CAUSE PROBLEMS UNTIL I AM RECOGNIZED AS SUCH!!!!

Manga:

GOKU: Vegeta what's cornmeal made of? I know it's what the corn eats, but what's it made of? VEGETA: Hey Kakarot let's play the quiet game until one of us dies.

[starflungwaddledee]

Bandee and Starstruck 🎀💖

starting off my february starstruck dee ship-a-ganza with the big one. they do seem like... the obvious answer, huh...?

they have far and away the most development together and the strongest personal relationship, both in what i've posted, and in her story overall! would kill or die for each other in a heartbeat. i would be absolutely lying if i said i'd never thought about it, but i'm not 100% convinced my thoughts lead me to romance specifically...

they're already pretty insane about each other! starstruck in particular is madly in love with bandee in every way it's possible to be. loves him the way he loves kirby, i think (pretty sure he does not know this. might be shocked to learn it.)

however she's daft as bricks, so he'd have to initiate, and i can't really imagine anything in their relationship would change.... so he'd have to mostly want The Title or the Performance one way or another, and i'm not super sure he would!

[withacapitalp]

Out of This World

Read it on AO3 instead

Tw: Depression

There was a black hole inside of Steve. 

He would lie down flat on his back in the living room. The stone floor beneath him would pull his mind down from wherever it liked to drift to, and he would be able to focus enough to  stare at the ceiling, put his hands on his stomach, and breathe deep into the sensation. 

When things got really bad, it was like he could physically feel it. A dark mass that spread out from his core and swallowed everything around it. If he flipped over to lie on his stomach and press his cheek to the cold marble, then it would sprout out of his back like demon wings, menacing and grim. 

He had never told anyone about it, but he was sure everyone knew. That was the thing about black holes, they dragged everything towards them. He was a magnetic person, people were drawn to him, but when they got close and saw that there was nothing inside, they ran. The empty expanse living in Steve was terrifying. 

He was the only one who couldn’t escape himself. 

No matter what he did, inevitably he would be reminded of what was inside of him. He could try to be happy, but he had to remember it wouldn’t last. 

Steve could mess around with the kids, dance along to the radio with Robin, try and love the people who chose to stay with everything he had, but the black hole would always return. It would suck up whatever joy he had tried to grow, making it disappear in the blink of an eye, lost to whatever cosmos existed beyond the gnawing hunger in Steve’s stomach. 

It was like it was starving, like he was starving, but not for food. There was nothing Steve could give to make it go away, nothing that would satiate whatever was stuck inside of him. There was just the all encompassing need to have more, to get something that would kill the loneliness that lived there. 

And, when the people around him realized that they really couldn’t make that black hole go away, they left. They ran to keep themselves from getting pulled in, and Steve couldn’t blame them. He had spent most of his life trying to run from himself. 

Even now, lying in bed with Eddie late on Sunday morning, he could feel the first nudges of gravity shifting, the quiet stirrings of empty space needing to be acknowledged. 

There was a black hole living inside of Steve, and nothing he could do to change that.  

“God I swear it’s like you’re the sun,” Eddie sleepily whispered against his chest, unknowingly cutting straight through the icy black tendrils starting to creep up Steve’s spine. 

“The sun?” Steve said, feeling something finally touch the cold dark thing living in his stomach. 

“You just keep us alive and warm, don’t you Stevie?” Eddie mumbled, still half asleep, “Pull everyone into your orbit and make sure none of us go flying off into space alone,” 

Eddie was already starting to snore by the time Steve jogged himself out of his stunned silence enough to kiss the top of his boyfriend’s head and whisper a reverent declaration of love. 

Sometimes Steve felt like there was a black hole living inside of him.

And sometimes he was reminded not everyone saw it that way. 

[rosenfey]

things that are hard to find: writing advice that isn't condescending.

[viridian-house]

I'm taking him to touch the waters of the Ryuuchi Cave.

not me watermarking my unfinished work 🫣

anko and sasuke from the upcoming chapter of my kakanko fic histrionis, in which anko has some Problems, but so does sasuke. snakes, she figures, are as much the cause as they are the solution. (also, kakashi lends her his shirt for Reasons)

[dyketennant]

oh i can already tell i’m about to have some really unpopular opinions about the edge of sleep tv show

[rioblitzle]

i guess im not too involved in the zelda fandom cause seeing a post about rabid totk defenders is wild to me. from my perspective people were singing that game's praises for 2 months total before it fell to the "popular game bad actually" criticism wave and i don't think i've seen anyone say positive things about totk since then lmfao

[astrxealis]

if i do "?" in text i'm genuinely tilting my head like a dog if i do "!!" my eyes are sparkling and i am figuratively wagging my tail if i am IN ALL CAPS i'm screaming from the top of a mountain with all the power i can with love and the strength of RAGHHH within me

[gen-is-gone]

hrgh every time I think I've come close to forgiving lance fucking parkin I skim the gallifrey chronicles. and then I remember the Horrors.

[schwazombie]

I think one of the funny things about me deciding that Kidd and Killer are bilingual and Law is trilingual is that I have decided on specifics on the German front so when Kidd and Law are trying to learn each other's respective languages they are learning primarily from the other so Kidd opens his mouth and Northern German comes out and when they're driving to Italy he's like Law? Babygirl? Darling? Sweet pea? What the fuck is up with Bavarians.

[itspileofgoodthings]

tags continued from prev post.

[pynkhues]

Different anon here- I’m generally ok with mpreg existing. But the sheer volume of it in this fandom is pretty weird. Especially considering the source material… one of the great things about the unholy family (to me) is that it’s this family unit without the necessity for sexual reproduction. It’s so interesting because they all had lives outside of each other at some point so it’s part found family, part queer and yet biological parents. I think that’s one of the things I first loved about the 1994 movie and it’s a shame that aspect is overlooked

(x)

Yeah, I totally agree on all counts. Like I don't usually bat an eye at mpreg (whatever floats your boat! I'm very good at scrolling, haha) but there have literally been times I've opened ao3 and have counted five or six fics on the front page of updated works that are mpreg which feels really disproportionate to the amount of fic that actually gets posted in this fandom?

I - - mmm, kind of wonder a little if its tied to some of this gender essentialist stuff that's coming up more and more both in this fandom, and in social media generally? There feels like there's this real desire to shoehorn them into a quote-unquote 'traditional nuclear family dynamic' which really feels like it's the antithesis of the show. Like you said, the fact that they've all had lives outside of each other is, and the fact that as a family they are both one found and made is, I feel, pretty crucial not just to their interpersonal dynamics, but also to each individual character?

[st4rstudent]

Giant cornplate post here but I'll get my thoughts out anyways. I really like how even visually Mac and Winn are contrasting yet similar. Winn's main color is yellow and Mac's is purple, which are contrasting colors. Yet, they both wear green. And then both of them having glasses but they're different shapes (circle vs square). and ouuughhoguhgh. theyre good friends. i like them.