#the machine is not your friend

[stil-lindigo]

the machine.

a comic about being a 'creator' online.

creative notes:

[astriiformes]

I know for some people trans headcanons are more about the vibes than anything else, but I personally love to really think them through to absolutely ridiculous conclusions.

Last night we were talking about trans Marty McFly and the fact that Marty Jr. and Marlene are very obviously his biological kids. But to be the right age they would have to have been born in the mid-to-late 1990s, and reciprocal IVF (one of the most popular ways for trans men to father kids) wasn't really pioneered until 2007. Which some people might be tempted to just handwave and say it doesn't matter but I think the much funnier explanation is. Time machine.

[emunenenes]

time machine (for ruikasatober day 30 : future)

[shadystranger]

and then would come the murder you will never survive– your brother, sam

the profoundly rattled face dean makes right after cain tells him he'll kill sam. like someone just grotesquely ripped his arteries out. he looks shaken and filled with cowardice. his steadfast mask of unshakable fortitude shattered completely. It's almost as bad as a helpless child at the end of the world. absouletly terrifed. nothing brings him to his knees and breaks his soul quite like sam. It's like watching a proud king stripped of all his grandeur. It's so satisfying bc he does not make these expressions because of anyone else

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

Transcript:

Benjamin, you are worthy in the eyes of God.

It is said amongst all the angels that of all the creatures available on earth and above and below, through all of creation, through all of life!

You are God’s favorite.

And I would think it’s so cool for you to come over sometime and we could hang out on the couch and order a pizza, and maybe watch some anime together.

It’s been a while since I rewatched Gurren Lagann.

So maybe this weekend if you’re not to busy, you could pop by.

But no pressure or anything I know we’re all very busy these days.

Thank you, Benjamin. I love you.

Audio source

[luck-of-the-drawings]

ANCIENT wip that i finally got around to splashin color onto. NO idea where this colorin style came from n it WONT happen again!! anyway i LOOOVE the general dynamic between arthur n emizel. both are so cool and so awesome and yet SO silly...

[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?

[thecryoftheseagulls]

anyway speaking of Varric being a mob boss, nowhere has this been made more apparent than in playing a Cadash. You would Think that a rogue Carta agent adrift in a sea of variably-hostile humans would latch right onto Varric in early Inquisition (also a criminal! and another dwarf! and dragged around by Cassandra against his will!) and it's not that Bodkin *didn't* do that, exactly, but I think Bodkin is

a) cunning enough to see through a lot of Varric's bullshit from day 1

and more importantly b) like he knows?? who Varric Tethras is?? the humans know Varric Tethras is a famous author but any Carta worth their salt is gonna know that Varric is descended from a fuckin once-noble house of Orzammar with Paragon(s) and a king and Steward of the Assembly in their line, and he's only one generation removed from allll that prestige, and also rich as hell thanks to Bartrand. He's a voting member of the prestigious Merchant's Guild, as much as he is always saying that they're after him. Even when he was pretending to be an idle younger brother with a writing habit, he was still running a spy network and by this point it definitely rivals Leliana's. Not to mention Varric and Hawke personally kill off Carta gang members in da2 so odds are good a Cadash tasked with spying on the Conclave knows about that too.

all of which to say the vibe of Cadash meeting Varric Tethras is one where like: you're a grunt, maybe a medium-level grunt, and you're having the worst day of your life. You've just stumbled out of the Fade, you get threatened with execution, and the next guy you meet is The rival mob boss, and you just have to grin and bear it in front of all these trigger-happy humans

[peachcitt]

punches you in the face. don’t use ai for stupid shit. hey. look me in the eyes. anything you want to ask gemini meta mr beast look-alike whatever the fuck you can just google. please just fucking read. is it that bad to think for yourself. is it too much to ask for you get your wrong answers and shitty party ideas from friends and family and strangers on the internet like god intended. jesus christ

[lynxfrost13]

LSTR-S2301 and the maintenance tunnel ARAR are best friends to me even though that Elster was only on sierpinski for a seemingly brief time, they’re bros who fuck around on the clock during work. I think Elster was probably more willing to put extra time in however she’s also very “okay you’ve given me a list of tasks I did them. They’re done and done well. That’s it, my time now.” Whereas I see Ara being more of a slacker (very valid of her) or at the very least just a bare minimum type of gal when it comes to work.

Idk I tend to imagine them fucking off in the middle of shifts to go find weird lonely corners of sierpinski to hang out in. They don’t even talk half the time but they love it.

[the-kipsabian]

BRACELETS FOR SALE

OKAY HI!

finally got some ready made wrestling themed bracelets up for sale! what you see is what you get, you can order multiples for a bit of an added shipping cost cause its really hard to set it up in a way it makes sense without overdoing it but it is what it is, if youre concerned about it please message me so we can figure something out if youre planning to buy a lot at once. i will be adding more to here frequently probably when i make more 💜 they are priced pretty low with a pay what you want option on top of that if you feel like they're worth more tho

AND if you're not seeing anything you want and/or are looking for something custom i have great news for you!!

you can also order custom bracelets for a little bit of extra price, however ordering more than one gets you a small discount so :) up to four bracelets at a time as thats what the shipping cost they let me set for this covers

(also wink wink ko-fi functions as a tip jar as well if you just like whatever stuff i make 💜)

[stumpgirl]

Now we have the DILF with the hair sticking to his face 🤤. I managed to capture all 4 handsome men in this one 🎉. Andy was so hard to film because of his position on the stage.

[watcherintheweyr]

desperately need people to understand that alicent is a victim but she’s also an abuser and a perpetrator

that she actively makes choices to harm other women because of jealousy and envy and the greed deep in her bones because submitting to suffering didn’t get her what those women fight to grasp for themselves.

she is absolutely a victim, in show.

that doesn’t change that she abused rhaenyra and her children, her own son, most likely helaena given how she flinches every time her mother touches her, and is actively weaponizing the patriarchy of westeros against other women- rhaenyra primarily, but also mysaria and dyana.

she isn’t the moral, righteous force of good that even she thinks she is, she’s a wounded woman directing all of the rot, pain, and fury inside her at the wrong people and forces.

[tricoufamily]

i can tell that we are gonna be friends

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[peasant-player]

I just saw a YT video where some random people put electronics house hold items on a S- tier to F-tier :

To all of you out there who puts a vacuum cleaner over a washing mashine

I hope you get haunted by a laundry women. Or by your grandma.

And special mentions to:

that one woman that thinks that the fuckin Dyson Air wrap is S-Tier

And to that one man that puts the satisfyer on F-Tier.

I hate you both.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, I recently went into the x-men and I found my own dead with Charles and Erik AND I NEED READ MORE OF THEM BUT I SO LOST AFTER POWERS AND HOUSE OF X SO I DON'T KNOW WHERE CONTINUE, can u help me?

(alsoIlikeyoursdrawingsiwishbeingsoconstantwithmycontentlikeu)

i'll be very candid with you my friend: i'm totally lost too !!!!!!! your comic-reading journey is about as green as mine and so i cant personally give you a super great guide- but beautiful people on the internet exist who've done most of the dirty work for us when sorting through the stories you 'should' read so i'm borrowing them to help us both

you can read this article to read about one person's advice with exploring krakoa and- in their opinion- its most 'significant' stories, though to summarize the issues they recommend looking into:

House of X/Powers of X (which you should have already done)

X of Swords event

Hellfire Gala

Inferno

X Lives and X Deaths of Wolverine

Second Hellfire Gala

Third Hellfire Gala

Fall of the House of X/Rise of the Powers of X (also should have already done, however...) +Single issue: X-Men (2021 series) #35 aka Uncanny X-Men #700 is featured at the end of the FoX omnibus, though the omnibus excludes an extra bit at the end involving a cliffhanger for Charles's fate after he's arrested

if you want to dig a little deeper though, you can check out this article from another individual which includes another wave of 'relevant' (word used loosely as some can be considered more poignant than others) krakoa stories and stories related to it or set during the period.

it's a lot longer and more in depth than the last article, so again i only really rec peaking at this one depending on how deep you wanna go, or if you decide you want to explore more after reading the more 'key' stories. def wouldn't hurt to give it a glance just in case you read some summaries that pique your interest!

all in all, don't take these as concrete rules or guides to follow: comics are meant to be fun, these are just good starting points if you're feeling lost or overwhelmed. at the end of the day, you decide ultimately what you want to read and which stories interest you the most

happy reading !