#they also hated his guts

[ghost-bxrd]

Okay so I know this wasn’t the intention, but I read the most recent part of Owl Song and now I can’t stop thinking about Ivy, Jason, and Dick.

Like, in canon she fought both of them as Robin (I think??? I’m pretty sure she was around for Dick’s Robin) and she’s one of the better Rogues in terms of motive and morals. She probably cared for both of them somewhat, so how do you think she (and the other semi-decent rogues) took it when Jason died?

Ah I see how it is, we’re unpacking the good questions now!!!

So at first Ivy probably didn’t notice. Let’s be real, she’s got better things to do then play “keeping up with the batfamily”, and yeah, sure, some of her plants have been getting agitated the more days went by without sightings of either Robin or his loyal shadow (either Batman or Talon/Nightwing), but eh, maybe they’re on vacation or something.

But then Batman is back on the streets and it’s BadTM. Even simple thugs need to be hospitalized, more than one comes close to actually dying (one even flatlines for a moment) and Ivy gets suspicious. Not enough to raise any alarms just yet, still, odd. And still no sight of Robin anywhere.

And then the Joker keeps being found. All over Gotham. Her plants her agitated, they keep whispering about the child-from-the-clocktower and the-one-who-is-cold. And even Ivy can’t keep turning a blind eye.

At first she checks in with Harley, but her girlfriend she doesn’t have any insight either having just returned from a mission with the Birds of Prey (timeline? What timeline). So, dead end. And Crane is a no-go because the Bat hospitalized him with way too many broken bones just the other day.

Two-face it is, but Harvey (both sides of him) are equally as disturbed by the Bat’s sudden volatility as Ivy and he is now on board with trying to find out just what made the Bat snap.

(At this point she’s having a veeery bad feeling about this. Especially because even weeks later Robin is still suspiciously absent from the streets, and there are only whispers of Talon/Nightwing and even her plants can’t seem to pin down either of them.)

Next up is the Riddler, who is already neck-deep into investigation (because how dare Batman not appreciate all his carefully laid riddles and instead punch in faces of low time criminals! And also he may be a teeny-tiny bit worried about the sassy sidekick but SUE him, the kid grows on you like a particularly stubborn case of the pocks ok!?) and immediately agrees to a temporary ceasefire.

So now we have part of the rogue gallery joining forces to find out just wtf is going on, and their next bet is the elusive Catwoman.

And let’s say Selina doesn’t know who Batman is but she’s got soft spot for the big burry anyway so she’s CONCERNED ok? It doesn’t take much persuasion to join forces with the rest of the rag-tag group of high profile rogues to figure this out, and her next proposition is this: grill the Penguin for information.

Oswald Cobblepot is SO not prepared for the joint forces of Catwoman, Two-Face, Riddler, Harley, and Ivy and before long he’s telling them what little he knows about the Joker and his excursion to Ethiopia.

And they all just kinda— freeze. Because— what? No, Robin can’t be dead. Robin is magic. That spunky little kid who’d throw pebbles at Riddler, the one who’d always try to pick-pocket Catwoman, the one urging Harley to leave-the-Joker-he’s-an-ass, the one who always drives Harvey insane with his prime numbers, the one who’d stalked all the way into Robinson park just to ask Ivy how to save the little potted plant he’d been gifted—-

No, no he can’t be dead… right?

But he is. And the talon who’d always kept him safe? That one is gone, too. Nobody knows where he went, but Batman is unspooling, and unspooling fast. And the rogues… well, for once they keep quiet. they don’t give Batman any additional grief (god knows he’s got enough) and instead now make it a point to keep kids out of their business in silent solidarity.

From that day forward any and all people who try to associate themselves with the Joker get taken down by them with extreme prejudice. You think Batman is bad? Try spouting some Joker loving bullshit in front of Ivy. She doesn’t even have to ask her plants to gut you and hang you from the carousel at amusement mile like a Christmas ornament. And god forbid you say anything negative about Robin.

[contagious-watermelon]

Why do I keep seeing transmascs and trans men insisting or implying that all trans men are "female socialized," or "understand the female experience," or "navigated the world as a woman." Because yeah, sure, that can be true for some people. especially if you weren't gnc at all as a kid and didn't crack your egg until well into adulthood, it makes sense.

But they don't stop at saying they had that experience. It always comes with an addendum that trans men, as a group, all can relate to this experience. I don't know about the entirety of my demographic, but I never got even a little bit of what some of them talk about. I didn't even believe that women were scared of going out at night until I kept consistently seeing them say it, online or wherever, for years. I never realized catcalling was a thing until I saw some women complaining about it on reddit.

But they posit it as some sort of, you're safer than cis men, right? You know what it's like? Which, on top of being patently, demonstrably false in the case of myself and many other trans men, holds some unpleasant and often outright hostile implications about trans women. And they always deny it, but if you can't even conceptualize someone like me who grew up gnc, and never got the bulk (or any?) of whatever we consider to be 'female socialization,' what does that say about what you think trans girls went through, growing up? I don't want to speak for them, as I've never experienced that firsthand, but I can guarantee that (if you're even a little bit obviously trans) people don't treat you like a cis kid of the opposite gender. By and large, they don't get treated like cis boys.

It just makes me mad that we're taking this inaccurate framework that (ever so conveniently) puts trans people into the box of our assumed birth gender, and trying to fancy it up and use it with a faux-progressive veneer; never mind the way that transphobes use it to bar trans women from being athletes, or using the bathroom, or having access to any gendered resources they need. It would be bad enough to try and dust it off and use it even if it were largely accurate, due to the aforementioned connections to outright transphobia, but it literally is patently false. Not in all cases, obviously, but why are we trying to revamp this untrue, inaccurate generalization and pretend that we can make it 'trans-inclusive?'

[starry-bi-sky]

mmm throwaway conversation between Dan and Danny that popped into my head that I had to write out:

"You spent ten years being a one-man mass extinction event, then went back in time and fought me, and lost." Danny snarls, arms crossed and throat tight. His mouth pulls back to bare dagger-sharp teeth, and his eyes burn with the familiar thrum of ectoplasm heating up behind his eyes. "If I didn't believe you were half of Vlad before, I do now."

His other self -- and really, can he even call him that? He's half of Vlad too. Two halves severed from each other and welded together to make a new whole, -- snaps his head over to him. Wild-eyed and furious, he looks unlike the man Danny fought before, the one unruffled and untouched, unbothered by the world around him. It's familiar, but not like the way a reflection is.

"What's that supposed to mean." The Other hisses, matching Danny's scowl one-for-one with fangs much bigger and sharper than his.

But there's a reason lions fear hyenas. Danny matches the rumble in The Other's chest with one of his own, and shoves his face close to his. "I don't lose."

[dykealloy]

small aside but y'know how luffy's stupidity is usually met with physical abuse of some kind? anyway. here's law's worst in response to luffy being manipulated by his arch nemesis

[lemon-box]

What if Viktor asked Jayce to kill him. It is clear that being in the Arcane completely reconfigures your time and space reality. I think Jayce not only saw what happened if the arcane continued to affect people, but got stuck in a time loop where he tried and failed over and over to prevent Viktor from being a vessel to it, and this is the reality where he succeeded.

This would explain why he is so consumed with rage, along with repeating “this time I won’t miss” before killing him. If I was stuck in what felt like a futile time loop where I have to prevent an unpredictable and dangerous cosmic force I’d be seething too??

Also explains why Viktor didn’t stop Jayce from killing him. He probably realized what happened after acknowledging that Jayce wasn’t himself and that maybe in another timeline he asked Jayce to stop this. Whatever the cost.

[nedlittle]

need the historical romance girlies to go back to their roots and read forever amber (1944)

[topperscumslut]

obx 4 spoilers!

“i don’t hate the pogues like topper and them” coming from a man who literally would have killed pope if topper hadn’t stopped him and then manipulated topper into attacking pope again after he sunk topper’s boat (among SO many other things). oh rafe cameron they could never make me like you

[miafeystits]

truly one of my favorite things about the klapollo dynamic is that yes klavier is a world-famous rock star with tons of fans and probably a grammy or something, but apollo truly Could Not Care Less. it's the least interesting thing about this guy to him. he doesn't even like his band's music. he went to one of their concerts and decided he'd prefer to hang out backstage during the last 3rd of the show. he likes one (1) gavinners song and its an acoustic ballad collab that klavier doesnt even sing on

[datura-tea]

that's the ring-a-ding move, baby!

[agir1ukn0w]

love how what made me hate snow in the original thg trilogy was all the atrocities, but what made me hate him in tbosas was the fact that he doesn't get poetry and hates ghost stories, like what a fucking jock

[euzede]

"Uncle Hob is nothing like Uncle Dream, but that's good too. He has strong arms, and hair that's both silver and brown. On Fridays we have movie nights at his house. He insists I choose the film we're watching - I think it's because he knows I didn't get to watch telly much."

[ghastlyaffairs]

for something as trivial and simple those feelings sure are hard to get rid of

also made a gif a version for fun + alt version with no tears under the cut

the gif is in very low resolution...this is a feature (i could make it bigger but that would require saving each frame individually and than glueing it all together. also i feel like low resolution suits it better. aesthetically and fits the mood)

[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?

[shadelorde]

Why do so many people unironically think the Fire Nation is the misogyny-less “girlboss” nation. What the fuck.

[ganondoodle]

monk miz kyoshia (engl. maz koshia) somewhat redesign? rehydrated? doodle bc i listened to his soundtrack and wanted to draw him

[fave-fix]

hey guys do we realize that the main difference betwen how kai and midori developed is that kai was given the chance to learn what normal life and love and family was like by working with chidouins while midori was kept under asunaros thumb all his life. do we realize that just a few changes could have kai acting just as cruel and merciless as midori. do we realize that midori is a victim of asunaro too, and though that doesn't excuse his actions it does make them more tragic. do we realize this or are we all being serious when we say midori is the only character who isn't worth redemption.