#save me from this torment

[tizeline]

Happy Halloween!!

*gritted teeth* h-h-happy hallo-halloween

[sleepyzombiegirl]

If I see one more porn ad I’m gonna start lighting things on fire

[human-adjacent]

how it feels to be a bsd fan

[crystalvuu]

hey friends, does anyone know why despite having the 4GB patch and using RPC launcher with 4GB included, my free memory isn't matching 4096MB?

(i have graphics rules maker as well)

[spookysoup09]

I wish I could say it is. Oh how I wish. The amount of hair I've lost to the backs of these fuckers, the amount of times I cut my leg on the basket thing that always manages to be broken, the amount of times someone would manage to knock it over just by leaning against the stupid arm thing...

hey Americans?

what the fuck is this? this isn't real right. it's made up for tv like those metal lockers

[lucabyte]

Taking pride in One's own appearance.

[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?

[clowndensation]

there’s a question to be asked i think about to what extent “getting out” can be conflated with “being saved” in this show, and what freedom actually means to any of these characters.

like you can argue that shiv saved ken by voting against him on gojo, but what if your intent behind saving someone is to inflict a worse punishment than if you’d just left them trapped? can a child weaned on poison survive on milk, or are you just sentencing them to a death by inches, starved of the only thing they know? and if you save someone specifically because you know that being saved is the worst thing that can happen to them, is that kindness or cruelty? at what point does a good thing become a malicious act?

and you can say that roman is finally free, but what exactly is he free from? the company? his father? does unlocking a cage mean saving a dog, or are you allowing him out on the street knowing there’s a kill shelter nearby? if the driving anxiety behind roman is that he’s an idiot and a failure—that he’ll never amount to anything, and trying will only lead to pain—and he’s finally cut loose once all of those anxieties have crystallized into cold hard fact in his mind, what has he actually escaped from? if the cage is in your mind, is it even possible for somebody else to unlock it?

the fundamental truth of a tragedy is that even being saved can be a death sentence, if the characters are incapable of escaping the thing doing them the most harm (themselves and their childhoods)

[slime-crafters]

Gonna be real, I think Link deserves to have a panic attack. Just a full-blown mental deteriorating, absolute heart-wrenching scene of him absolutely losing his shit. I'm just thinking like... Imagine Link learning about what happened to Zelda in TotK and his response being something like falling to his knees, something to show that he can't Take It anymore

I want this twink to absolutely crumple.

[bibiparfait]

Super sad hfjone scene :(

[lyranix1201]

Bro, getting a new hyperfixation and getting obsessed over it. is a well-known phenomenon that's needs to be fucking studied by some kind of harved student, because what the fuck is this shit........ It's driving me nuts. It is consuming every single thought in my brain, and that says a lot, because I do not stop thinking about those stupid little characters who make me question my fucking life.

Yes, I'm talking about RIDE THE CYCLONE. I found out about it two days ago, and I already watched it twice. I'm a busy woman and I don't like wasting my time. And here I am, leaving everything behind me, just so that I can see it again🤦🏽‍♀️.

WHY CAN'T I JUST CONSUME ANY MEDIA CORRECTLY, LIKE A NORMAL FUCKING HUMAN BEING.

Also, this is the best "the ballad of Jane doe" cover, and you can never change my mind:

[quietwingsinthesky]

I think a lot about Dean and how he molds love to fit around violence and control to explain his actions to himself. I think a lot about how Soulless Sam said he needed help and Dean beat him unconscious. I think a lot about Dean believing Sam’s hallucinations lured him off and how Dean greeted him with a punch to the face. I think a lot about Dean locking Sam up in the panic room to detox or die. I think a lot about how Dean hurts Sam when he thinks he’s in danger, especially when that danger is coming from within Sam.

[un-pearable]

i know it’s been years and it’s basically irrelevant now but i genuinely love the green ninja prophecy if only for how much it must have tortured wu and garmadon. how long have they known it!! how did they find it, this script dooming them to forever be on opposing sides!! by the time morro rolls around, wu's spent most of his adult life with this looming over his head - this threat that there's some great evil out there that even their father didn't prevent, and then his brother leaves and adopts the very title that the prophecy foretold against. and then a ridiculously powerful elemental practically falls into his lap, with an uncanny command of his element without even unlocking his true potential, and with another threat already on the horizon (the serpentine) and the rest scattered (not to be brought together until years later), that was all he could do. it's been at minimum decades, at most centuries of the two of them having to carry this burden over their heads - of garmadon succumbing and of this unknown dark lord attacking. when do you think they made the connection. the wrong connection sure, but it makes sense. and it makes sense that years later, after wu is proven wrong and his brother returns to him and his son leaves him, and after his brother threatens to leave him again, he'd work backwards. collect the elementals, rebuild what he can of an alliance, and hope he's proven wrong again. and then kai steals his bag by accident and the rest is history.

[a-lilypad]

‘omg ailish why haven’t you been active lately i bet ur life is so fun and interesting and cool’

I AM ABOUT THIS CLOSE TO WALKING INTO THE SEA AND NEVER RETURNING I HAVE BECOME FULLY NOCTURNAL AND YESTERDAY I SAT DOWN AT THE DINNER TABLE TO EAT AT AROUND 7PM AND DIDNT GET UP OFF THAT CHAIR UNTIL i shit you not 9 FUCKING AM THIS MORNING

i read a 200k bkdk fanfiction in ONE SITTING without even a single tiktok break, one sitting straight, i didn’t move, i didn’t leave the app, i just read. i’ve read TWENTY SIX fanfics from 30k words to 400k in the space of a few weeks my brain is mush

[juliareed]

The time you were shot, you told me that you had been mugged. If you had died that day, I would have buried a stranger. I don't know if a single word you have ever said to me was true.

[lord-squiggletits]

Has anyone besides me actually talked about how Tyrest literally used Pharma as a test subject for the killswitch and how he basically says that Pharma being "famous for being forged" is the only reason he rescued Pharma from a fate as "an amputee with a mouthful of snow, a disease waiting to happen." bc like. Honestly even on my first few read throughs of MTMTE I didn't pay much attention to that part and it's only after many obsessive Pharma-focused readings that I went "hey wait a second that's really kind of fucked up."

I mean there's even a panel showing Pharma looking battered and fried on his hands and knees while Tyrest talks about how the killswitch needed fine tuning to actually target only cold-constructed mechs. Though sadly most of it is covered by Tyrest's text boxes so we don't even get to see it very clearly. BUT IT IS THERE.