#Did you think I was dead?

[mihhkael]

> Flower dance

#stardew valley #stardew sebastian #sv sebastian #stardew valley fanart #hello 😈 #Did you think I was dead? #HEHEHEHEHEHEHE #okay okay #I'm so sorry for disappearing for a whole month without saying nothing #I went into airplane mode. my brain had stopped thinking straight and I had no ideas to draw #Lately I've been pushing myself a lot to put social media aside and go get a job in real life. #(Which I will.) #ALSO I don't know if this will be a permanent return (probably not.) #anyway. I'll post some things here and on X sometimes. because I don't want to give up on this #but the frequency will be EXTREMELY slow ☠ #really sorry for that.

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

#every time someones like ''AI will replace u" im like. u will have to fucking KILL ME #there is no replacement here bc i am not filling a position. i am just writing #and the writing is what i need to be doing #writeblr #this probably doesn't make sense bc its sooo frustrating i rarely speak it the way i want to #edited for the typo wrote it and then was late to a meeting lol #i love u people who mention my typos genuinely bc i don't always catch them!!!! :) it is doing me a genuine favor!!! #my friend says i should tell you ''thank you beta editors'' but i don't know what that means #i made her promise it isn't a wolf fanfiction thing. so if it IS a wolf thing she is DEAD to me (just kidding i love her) #hey PS PS PS ??? if ur reading this thinking what it's saying is ''i am financially capable of losing this'' ur reading it wrong #i write for free. i always have. i have worked 5-7 jobs at once to make ends meet. #i did not grow up with access or money. i did not grow up with connections or like some kind of excuse #i grew up and worked my fucking ASS OFF. and i STILL!!! wrote!!! on the side!!! because i didn't know how not to!!! #i do not write for money!!!! i write because i fuckken NEED TO #i could be in the fucking desert i could be in the fuckken tundra i could be in total darkness #and i would still be writing pretentious angsty poetry about it #im not in any way saying it's a good thing. i'm not in any way implying that they're NOT tryna kill us #i'm saying. you could take away our jobs and we could go hungry and we could suffer #and from that suffering (if i know us) we'd still fuckin make art. #i would LOVE to be able to make money doing this! i never have been able to. but i don't NEED to. i will find a way to make my life work #even if it means being miserable #but i will not give up this thing. for the whole world.

[egophiliac]

I have SO many thoughts about everything and they are in no kind of order yet, so here's just some quick little bits in the meantime!

I am not normal about any of these characters!

#art #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland spoilers #twisted wonderland episode 7 spoilers #twisted wonderland episode 7 part 6 spoilers #twisted wonderland book 7 spoilers #twisted wonderland book 7 part 6 spoilers #me just staring at the ceiling thinking about anime characters #if i start talking about the big stuff now it's going to turn into a huge rambling mess so in the meantime #i did not get sebek (yet) (i need to contemplate my gems...) but i did see his groovy #he is just full-on cinderella-sparkles bibbidi-bobbidi-booing into that armor! magnificent. #and i really don't have enough words for how much i love tiny malleus. he is perfect. he is precious. he is everything to me. #he knows who his dad is no matter what some crusty dead talking ectoplasm blobs say #(man no wonder lilia's got hangups if THAT was the general attitude he was getting) #('eww you got your dirty bat cooties on the prince' go sit in the corner with mrs. rosehearts you absolute garbage) #(...i did kind of love that lilia started to wake up because the senate said one nice thing to him) #(and he immediately was like 'this is not reality') #(sounds about right) #on a lighter note i was just. SO charmed by the little throwaway about ✨dragon lord consort esteemed diplomat revaan✨ #who picks the vegetables out of his food and hides them under the tablecloth #everything i learn about this man makes me like him more. he was SO dumb. #now we know where malleus gets it from i guess #also unrelated but once again the fact that i named my mc tamago has had unintentional consequences #tamago take the tamago and tamago tamagao tamago #frikkin love that when yuu gives the egg back you can just be like 'i love him. this is my baby now.' 100% accurate. #also yuu continually referring to malleus as tsunotarou even to the senate = amazing. yuu really has NO self-preservation or awareness. #they fit right in with everyone else #<- see what did i tell you. huge rambling mess. #and i haven't even BEGUN to talk about MELEANOR -- (is dragged offstage by a hook)

[expiredhydrogenperoxide]

oh nothing, just jegulus ‘accidentally’ swapping ties and watching sirius go absolutely mental trying to figure out how james ended up with a slytherin tie.

(he would have so many outlandish theories)

#i think that everyone who writes this trope has too much faith in sirius btw #sirius would never connect the dots that quickly #he’d be like ‘did you steal it as part of a prank ??’ #and when one of the others asks james if he’s perhaps secretly dating a slytherin #sirius is like ‘james ?? dating a slytherin ?? i’d sooner be forgiven by my mother’ #marauders #dead gay wizards #sirius black #jegulus #regulus black #james potter #james x regulus #moony wormtail padfoot and prongs

[redhotarsenic]

@nowfallc Pictures pictures for youuuu sliding these under your door <3

#when did I start this? let’s see… #THE 24th OF LAST MONTH!! ACK!!! #I’m SORRYYYYYY #I did NOT wish for it to take this long but you see. this was so so hard!! #I probably could’ve pushed this further but. I was turning into a flaming ghoul towards the end! so I quit! #you see my friend. one thing about me. is that I ❤️ quitting!! #but I’m FREE I’M FREE I’M FINALLY FREE MOTHERFUCKERS AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA #NO MORE TRIALS OR TRIBULATIONS YEAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! #also I think I am actually just a skeleton now. I’m just bones. that’s how dead I am #trigun #nicholas d. wolfwood #trigun fanart #trigun stampede #so tireeed

[stellaclaw]

boiling hot take but i literally dont give a fuck that mapleshade let the clan believe her kits were birchfaces. her clanmates can be mad but exiling a queen and her kits is fucking deranged i dont care what lie she told. “she deserved what she got” her kids deserved to die because their mom fibbed??😭 her kids deserved to die because their mom did crimes LATER???😭😭 “um but she chose to cross the river” if i was orpheus i would simply not turn around.

#stellatalks #warrior cats #mapleshade #if i was just physcally assault and kicked out of my home on threat of being mauled i would simply make perfect choices #like ‘deserved what she got’ v much implies her kids deserved to die. since ‘what she got’ was mourning dead children #‘so you think murder is okay’ DID NOT SAY THAT. I SIMPLY DO NOT THINK LYING IS WORTHY OF BEING EXILED AND HAVING UR CHILDREN DIE #im not even a mapleshade fan i actually prefer freckle💀 i just think the fandom is SO weird about her in particular

[fantastic-nonsense]

stop saying "Kaz would be jealous and possessive over Inej if he thought she and Tolya liked each other" no he wouldn't! Kaz isn't like that! He defends Inej's freedom, autonomy, and desires at every single turn in the books. He spends the entire duology pining over her and yet gives her every single chance he possibly can to walk out of his life forever if she wants. It's the foundational cornerstone of their entire relationship! It's why they work in the first place!

literally the only Crow who does petty jealousy is Wylan and that's that on that, folks

#six of crows #shadow and bone #s&b #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #kanej #wylan van eck #jesper fahey #wylan hendriks #wesper #otp: on the seas and in the city #otp: you can't kiss me from down there #(even if Kaz WAS jealous he'd never act on it. see: how he reacts to thinking about Jesper and Nina being able to hug Inej when he can't) #I am dead serious about Wylan being the jealous Crow though lol #Matthias thinks that he 'has no right' to think about what Nina did at the White Rose #Inej is super chill with Jesper having a crush on Kaz #and the rest of them are too busy pining and/or aggressively flirting to cover up their pining to worry about being jealous

[yashley]

#critical role #cr lb #ygifs #imogen #and now I'm like did imogen have her own reason for not even going near the raven queen did she pray to her for her mother #thinking her mother was dead was gone and the goddess of death had her and it was just a little girl praying at her bedside #take care of her mother. tell her how much she misses her. she misses her so much. and the raven queen never answered #and she could find no comfort not even in a deity who brought eternal rest there was no solace. and there was no correction #did she pick a god and pray? for her mother to come back. for her father not to hate her. for someone to look at her like shes not a monste #that all this time this certified atheist to have zero interest in the gods or helping them not because she genuinely didn't care #but because once upon a time the little girl she used to be cared so much. and prayed so hard. never seeing the red veil around her #damning her from the grace of the gods #and isn't that just what a monster deserves #not even a gracious god will find you special enough you feel like nothing to them because you are nothing to them #and it's like is that true or is such an evil force preventing their light and it's like I'm chewing but I'm choking #I had to stop looking at laura's face because it was making me too craaazzzyy she'd just be like (bafta) and I'd be like (SCREAMING) #hey matt if this is a birdcall to make imogen a paladin tweet tweet beautiful man

[yesokayiknow]

i think it'd be fun if while the master was on gallifrey and messing around in the matrix he found about abt the confession dial. not the sanitised story that twelve might've told missy during the vault but the actual real 4.5 billion years of the time lords using twelve's own will and testament as a torture chamber story. and he loses it. and he burns gallifrey. except he can't ADMIT that's why he did that he'd look SENTIMENTAL he'd look like an IDIOT so instead he makes up a story about how he found something in the matrix something so horrifying and awful and unbelievable that he HAD to destroy the time lords. and then thirteen ends up on gallifrey and digs a little deeper than he had and manages to reconstruct some of the missing files and when she runs back into him she's like i finally found out why you burned gallifrey and i can't believe they did this to me i can't believe they wiped my whole life and experimented on me and built the time lords from my stolen dna and the master's like yeah while mentally he's like hm i'm sorry they fucking what

#doctor who #the master #dhawan!master #the doctor #thirteen #and then he can never fucking admit that he didn't know that!!!! #he has to spend the rest of the eternity of their relationship like yeah it was fucked what they did to you queen #also i think it'd help you if you talked thru the exact memories you saw while using as many descriptive words as possible #also a part of him destroys gallifrey for clara. less bc he actually cares that she's dead and more bc like #the time lords REALLY think they can enact a scheme that ends up having clara as collateral damage??? #after all that work missy did finding her????????? if that woman was gonna die it'd be by THEIR hand tyvm #if he'd spent a bit longer in the matrix after finding abt the confession dial he'd have discovered that 12 made her temporarily immortal #but alas he did not. gets a big shock in a a couple decades when he runs into her dsajlkdaklj #to be the master is to be god's favourite jester (derogatory)

[spacedlexi]

i thought we were gonna kiss up here are you still not over your dead girlfriend

#the walking dead game #twdg #violentine #clementine twdg #violet twdg #theres no casual explanation for clems reaction to that why did she look so upset #wide eyed middle distance stare brows drawn mouth open girl please relax #if your friend was wistfully thinking of their dead gf why would you be upset by that 🤨 hmm interesting #part of violets route will be about how she feels she failed minnie and so refuses to fail clementine and continuously makes that choice #and i still have to hear people yap about how she never got over minnie bro i swear some people are playing with their eyes and ears closed #i think her complicated relationship with her not dead not ex is fun and interesting actually and she tells clem not to worry Immediately #i just like poking fun at my girl for being a little jealous 😏 this and the way she looks at them hugging in the woods. i know what you are #her immediate reaction to seeing the v+m heart is also questionable girl why are you making those faces #spaced art 2024

[ew-selfish-art]

DP x DC AU: Danny desperately wants to find the explosion guy. Tim is really good at covering his tracks... he didn't account for ghosts.

The explosions make it onto TV as purported terror activity and most people haven't heard of that part of the world much less ever given a second thought to care about it. The only real reason it gets reported on has something to do with the Justice League and... Danny knows too much.

He's been in training for Clockwork's court (which he's suspicious of- feels like kingly duty bullshit- but Danny is playing along out of curiosity for now) and he's learned a lot about how the living and non-living worlds collide. That means learning about CW's usual suspects- one of which just happened to have a ton of bases around the area Danny was seeing on the news.

It didn't take long for Danny to try to piece together that whoever blew up Nanda Parbat was trying to fuck with the League of Shadows, and was doing it successfully. Less green portals in the world the better, same goes for assassins. But it gets Danny thinking... Maybe he can employ similar tactics on the GIW Bases that keep spawning on the edges of Amity Park. It would at least set them back while he and his friends navigated the help line desk to request Justice League intervention. None of them can leave Amity Park, so outreach is going to have to be creative.

So Danny figures he'll just find the guy. Call up some ghosts who were there, or er, came from there and get a profile and track him down. But the ghosts keep saying it was The Detective. Annoying!

Danny goes full conspiracy theory, gets Tucker and Sam involved, and begrudgingly asks Wes Weston his thoughts.

He hadn't expected Wes to garble out a thirty minute presentation (that had 100 more slides left to go before he cut it off) about how Batman totally trained with a cult and so did his kids. Danny kind of rolled his eyes but... hey, new avenue of searching in the Infinite Realms at least.

The ghosts confirm that Bombs is for sure not Batman's MO- But maybe his second kid would know? The second kid was already brought back to life though, so no way to easily reach him... Danny starts to realize that this might be the work of a Robin now. Wasn't the red one known for solving cold cases? (Sam provides this information- its a social faux pas to not know hero gossip at Gotham Galas- everything she's learned is against her will).

It all comes to a head when Danny goes about the hard task of opening a portal for the guy to come through at just the right time, explain the infinite realms so he doesn't panic and then describe what the fuck was going on with the GIW. It takes months, just over a full year, of random (educated guesses) portal generating- Finally, Red Robin drops into the land of the dead.

"So, you're the guy I've got to talk to about explosions right?" Danny enthusiastically asks.

Tim thinks he's died and landed in the after life following 56 hours of being awake and plummeting off the side of a building into a Lazarus pool. Nothing makes sense about the kid in front of him.

"Yeah, I got a guy for munitions." Tim answers cooly.

"How do you feel about secretly sanctioned government operations that violate protected rights?"

"Gotta get rid of 'em some how. Need me to point you in the right direction?" This might as well be happening.

#dcxdp #dpxdc #dp x dc #dc x dp #danny phantom #long post #tim drake #red robin #tim and danny team up to blow up the GIW au #Tim being known as the explosion guy is my favorite and i will not let this part of his lore go ignored #Jason is the munitions guy obviously and the ghosts go crazy over the gossip it enlights when he helps in amity park #Danny one hundred percent is living for this working relationship- what a weirdo -danny hasn't met someone stranger than himself in a min #tim bartering his services for a few more years of life and danny just pikachu facing him #Tim wants to improve his relations in the afterlife be he still completely thinks hes dead #danny: dude ur still alive #Tim: yeah thats the goal but i'll help you meet your goals first and then we can negotiate #Danny decides to make the guy super ghost rich (thinking big Haunt real estate) and send him home #Tim blows up the GIW with no remorse and with all the data back up for proper justice to be served court side #tim returns from the dead and this is how the bats learn that he's the one who blew up nanda parbat all those years ago #it takes danny so long to find tim bc tim was spiralling and only after bruce got back did he get into a normal routine enough to get got

[rad-roche]

It's Valentine's day! You there, browsing the tag. Have you ever thought 'I like Nick Valentine, but I wish he starred in two novels lovingly written in the prose style of a detective noir from 1943, and so help me God, I don't want to pay a cent for it?' No! Nobody has! What an unusually specific dream!

But it's too late, I've already written them.

More than that, I've filled them with art, too.

If this sounds like something you'd like, you can find the full series (the two books and two small side stories) here.

#fallout #fallout 4 #fo4 #nick valentine #DiMA #gloria roche #sole survivor #rochedotpng #unmade man #dead man talking #dead woman walking #this vday i'm treating myself. to a plug #i've hauled absolute ass on these and loved every minute. thoroughly glad i did and i think the love shows #thank you to people who've reached out to say kind things about it also

[heartorbit]

just how can i protect your smile?

#you guys like yaoi? can i get you some yaoi #pjsk #prsk #project sekai #proseka #tsukasa tenma #rui kamishiro #ruikasa #AUUUUUGH. #this is what finally makes me actually draw riks. vocaloid autism #putting the link in the caption because NOBODY FUCKIGN TLAKS ABOUT SCISSORHANDS EVER WHERES THE HYPE I NEED HER. SONG OF THE DECADE(2009) #this song makes me incredibly normal. my bad. i saw the miume choreography when i was like 11 and my brain shifted #i wanted their outfits to look like mikus in the mv so bad. Fuck my life for that btw stupid fuckign frill trim. why did she have to slay #tried to think of smth other than butterflies for kasa but i have no brain and tbh i hope his life is miserable so its fine #me posting this only to tmblr and not twt because i fucking hate twt #im drawing more song covers that live in my mind palace so i'll pist them there all together. and maybe here all together. who give a shit. #emnn skeleton orchestra next and it will fix me #Good lord. sorry. Im so caught up posting this for no reason. Get me out of here #im supposed to have a lecture in 3 hours but post covid symptoms say otherwise. im so fucked #i have a cyberpunk dead boy wip with them but idk i dont like posting wips on here its like an archive. n i want to actually finish it #but dear lord rendering it with their stupid outfits. clutches my chest falls to the floor. AUUUUGH #wxs killing me killing me taking damage augh auugh aughg

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

It’s turning out to be a bad day when Jason finds himself stabbed during a drug bust.

It’s turning out to be a very bad day when he starts to feel woozy (seriously, what the hell? It was just a little stabbing) and promptly collapses.

It’s turning out to be a monumentally bad day when the batfamily drop in on his drug bust.

And then the night takes a hard nose dive into catastrophically bad, because whatever toxin that blade was laced with? It’s making his heartbeat slow down into near flatline, paralyzing Jason in the process.

And now he’s stuck listening to his family lose it completely upon finding his “dead” body.

… shit.

#don’t you just love it when your family thinks you’re dead again #but hey at least Jason finds out that they absolutely DO care about him #Damian needs to be sedated because he was about to murder every single person in that warehouse #oh yeah did I mention it’s a warehouse again #lmao #Nightwing just—- zones out. crashes. dissociates. #Tim is trying for frantic cpr #(ouch ouch OUCH replacement) #Bruce can’t do this again #please he CAN’Y #he couldn’t have been too late again oh god #Jason would be crying if he wasn’t paralyzed #that raw grief is contagious #presumed dead #prompts #yeah I know it’s similar to a previous prompt #VUT I NEED MORE PRESUMED DEAD FICS OK #jason todd #batfamily #dick grayson #batfam #bruce wayne #robin #red hood #tim drake #batman

[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?

#squiggposting #pharma apologism #i'm sure the doylist reason for the writing is just that pharma was a designated villain #so since he's a villain and 'crazy' it's fine for everyone even the good guys to treat him like complete trash #i just think from a watsonian perspective taking a sympathetic approach is way more interesting and logically consistent #what i mean is like. from a meta perspective one of the best ways to show that a character is super evil and not worth saving #is when even the good guy heroes. the ones who are supposed to be kind and compassionate and wise. see him as dirt #and this is also kind of a necessity in most plots bc TF is the kind of series that just needs action villains and long-term antagonists #so not every villain is written or has a plot to be made redeemable. and pharma is one of these bc he's not important or a legacy character #so from a doylist (meta) perspective you could read the autobots' disregard of pharma as a sign of #'this guy is not meant to have your sympathy as a reader. pay no attention to him' #but from a watsonian (in universe) perspective it paints a miserable picture of pharma being utterly forsaken by the ppl he served alongsid #and like yeah i'm super autistic about pharma so of course i view him with sympathy but like #the idea of being a loyal and good person for years only to be subjected to a Torment Nexus of #being blackmailed into breaking all of the oaths you held sacred. under threat of you and all your comrades dying horrible torturous deaths #then when your comrades find out about it they focus solely on the 'harvesting organs' and not on the 'blackmail' part #and then you get literally left for dead by your comrades and best friend hating your guts #and then you get rescued by a guy who uses you as a test subject for his evil machine #this is a fucking nightmare scenario like pharma could hardly be suffering more if the author TRIED to make him suffer #and for me it's like. the evil pharma did can't be decontextualized to what drove him to that. as well as the question of like #how easily ppl can write someone off as evil and turn a blind eye to (or even find satisfaction in) their suffering bc theyre evil #and either brought it on themselves or it's just karma paying a visit #like. i feel like if pharma WERE a shitty doctor and a terrible person his whole life then the delphi situation would feel like karma #but the way it's written and the lore retroactively put in makes it feel more pharma getting thrown in a torture carousel #and THEN becoming evil. but then being treated as if he was always evil or was some sort of bad apple #bc like i'm not opposed to LOLing when a villain gets a karmic torture/death related to the wrongs they committed #but in pharma's case it feels less like karma and more like endless torture + being abandoned by ppl who should have been more loyal

[swampthingking]

andrew’s definitely gotten in trouble with his pr manager for tweeting things along the lines of:

“no mania inducing medication will compare to the euphoria i will feel the day donald trump drops dead”

#pr manager is like: andrew… this is the last time i’m gonna tell you #andrew: whats the point of democracy if i can’t exercise freedom of speech #pr manager: andrew it’s no longer about your image #at this point we are concerned the fbi is going to show up #andrew: neil has connections. i’m fine #they thought marketing andrew on social media would be good #they were sooooo wrong #because now andrew has a place to share every insane thing he’s ever thought #for instance—a tweet that just says ‘an alien googling: human clothes’ #he’s on there advocating for lgbtq+ youth you KNOW HE IS #he’s cursing and mildly threatening members of congress for imposing these disgusting bills #one day he tweeted ‘does mitch mcconnell know he’s dead yet’ #when mitch mcconnell stepped down from senate andrew tweeted ‘hopefully next he steps down from life’ #unsurprisingly: this endears him to some people and makes others fucking hate him #and he’s such a shit. he does not care either way #he’s kind of just like: pr manager. you gave me a twitter and told me to tweet. i’m just doing what you asked me #they’ve threatened to change his password so many times #they actually did once but andrew reported the account so many times for defamation and fraud that it got suspended #and he made a new account out of pure spite #his pr manager is like: andrew nobody is going to want to sign you because of your public image #and andrew is like: ?? ok. they can lose every game then #(he knows he’s the best goalie) #ok i think that’s enough for now. however i will probably be back #andrew minyard #aftg #tfc #trk #tkm #the foxhole court #all for the game