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?
I feel like I've seen most of what interests me in FiMFiction for the time being, so I read through some good ol' reliable Stardew Valley fanfics last night, only to realize.
Haley x Female Farmer is basically Rarijack. Rarijack adjacent.
Calling golden age Clark an anticapitalist/socialist paragon is only true for prewar golden age Clark (1938-42). The instant the US entered the war and the character started to be used to sell war stamps, he couldn't act as anti-authoritarian; destroying a car factory for its use of unsafe, inferior materials (action 12), trapping a mine owner in his own mine to force him to improve conditions for his workers (action 3), or tearing down tenement housing in order to force the government to build better, safer apartments (action 8) are all actions that would be seen as actively traitorous in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The Superman office contributed enthusiastically to war propaganda in all the forms of media the character was appearing in (comics, newspaper strips, radio show, and the Fleischer animations). By the end of the war Superman the Character was firmly established as Establishment. Postwar golden age Superman is still devoted to doing the right thing, of course, but now he helps raise money for charity, donates his time and labor to build orphanages, that sort of thing. He's not trying to tear the system down... much as I wish DC would let him try.
Instead of Siegel's original justice cryptid, the furiously kinetic Champion of the Oppressed outsider Superman, postwar to modern day we get a Clark who shifts back and forth on the spectrum of establishmentarianism depending on the writer, but who is generally not allowed to act directly against institutions (Wolfman, Morrison, Waid, Byrne, and Maggin for example all have WILDLY different takes on the relationship between superman and Authority). My personal favorite Take is that Clark as a person is not establishmentarian, but the establishment of superheroes and their conduct codified (or calcified, if you prefer) itself around him and his personal conduct. Both in a Doylist sense and in the continuities where he's the First Superhero a Watsonian one. How does your behavior change when you know people are looking to you to determine what's right and what's allowed for themselves? How does that constrict you, when your actions are dissected and taken for justification? That's why I always think of him as a person whose natural inclination is to be chaotic good, but who restrains himself into being lawful good. Clark would sure LIKE to Solve Capitalism. But he both can't, and will never be allowed to... and that tension, far from being a bad thing, can fuel a good interpretation.
it ever hit you out of nowhere that castiel is living in a dead guy's body and the show just does not care. it does not care. jimmy novak might as well not exist the moment he or claire is out of sight. cas stole a guy's body and his face and his life, and we can't ever talk about it or discuss it in detail because of how fucking horrifying it is that sam and dean's best friend just walks around in a dead guy suit. there's not even a human soul in there anymore. it's just a corpse. stone-cold body snatcher indeed.
yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.
to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!
i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.
also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.
they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.
they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.
i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.
There are only so many fanfics that use the entirety of DC as cardboard cutouts to prop up bat family characters that I can read before I go berserk.
I swear to god. Every character that has ever been shipped with a bat or coexists on the same team as a bat is owed an apology.
How many Young Justice fanfics that solely revolve around Tim must exist? How many Titans fanfics centered only on Dick? Why is it a herculean task to find a Justice League fanfic without Bruce as the main character?
And then even when you do find a fic that seems like it's balanced, everything still revolves around the bat. Like Kon, Cassie and Bart have nothing else going on in their lives except Tim and Tim's issues or thinking about Tim. Like Donna and Wally and Roy just cannot function if they aren't spending every waking moment thinking about Dick.
I'm... Guys. I'm at my limit. I swear to god. We need to make a Batman tag and surgically remove all these fics and quarantine them there. We'll keep the actual DC fics and they can do whatever the fuck they want in their own tag. It's getting ridiculous how hard it is to find fanfic that's actually DC related and isn't just 'The BatFam Show'.
Sometimes I remember that line in S3 meant to show how BK keeps up appearances of running Providence more humanely than WK where Rex says WK was so cheap that he didn't even buy individual stalls for the bathroom and then I remember that Rex got his own basketball court and locker room and Providence was constantly canonically paying for repairs for damages caused by Rex fighting EVOs and fighting EVOs rather than just immediately collaring them and paying for food and cages and such for incurables and EVOs waiting for Rex to cure them and paying to keep Paradise/Purgatory base afloat and then I think maybe. Maybe there is another reason WK was cheap.
Taking screencaps of the Unexpected Meng Yao Mention was going to take too long, so here's the scene in full! It encapsulates several changes that the drama makes to the chronology and the character dynamics! NMJ is the active force behind his and MY's separation in CQL; rather than MY incapacitating NMJ and fleeing to escape punishment for the captain's murder, NMJ straight-up exiles him with no trickery from MY involved whatsoever. While NMJ is upset about this, it was his choice/moral obligation, so he doesn't appear to bear MY any ill will over it.
Given that lack of ill will, it makes sense for him to inquire how MY is getting on with the Jin clan even at this juncture... EXCEPT! Except. He didn't send MY to the Jin with a nice recommendation letter here. He fired him and sent him packing with an actively bleeding stab wound! Drama NMJ really thought--or really told himself--that not only would an injured MY make it to Lanling in the first place, but that the man who personally kicked him down the stairs for existing would hire him even after he was banished from another sect. He really wants him to be alive and thriving!
JZX's bewildered reaction to his questions drives home just how ridiculous that prospect is, and you can see NMJ go through it. No, his father was never going to accept him; even his awkward half-brother who doesn't even know him can tell you that. Yeah, stab wounds kill people, like JC pointed out on the day of the exile! Drama NMJ is confronting the fact that MY might in fact be dead, and this hurts him.
Once JZX exits, the scene cuts to JC sadly holding Suibian as he and JYL cry about missing WWX. That transition seems deliberate!
And then in the scene after that opens with WLJ, frightened of the WWX in her nightmares, overhearing WC complain:
With just 1 month to go until the new @ f1 season, we look back at Formula 1 superstar @ lewishamilton's collaborative custom F1 crash helmets... can't wait too see who he collabs with this year!
1. @ danielarsham, 2. @ hajimesorayamaofficial, 3. @ takashipom, 4. @ mad.dog.jones *majority of photography by @ 13thwitness
I've only read the first volume of Dungeon Meshi but I'm convinced Laios and Marcille are both autistic but two EXTREMELY different flavors of autism, so much so it enables autistic PVP (one sided, Laios is unaware, possibly due to the autism)
What if the Pale King locked himself away in the Dream Realm to recreate what he did to the Hollow Knight? After the Vessel leaked and he realized that it most likely had capability enough to suffer, but far far too late to even hope to do anything to fix it. He was beyond the point of no return, there was nothing he could do to undo the Sealing. And even if he could, there were no other options that he could think of of what to do about the Blazing Light.
He had no choice but to keep the Vessel sealed. No choice but to watch his kingdom crumble. There was nothing he could do.
Nothing, but to seal himself away in a self-imposed punishment in the exact same way he imparted onto his only (known) living child.
A weak attempt to impose the same agony onto himself as he forced onto them.
And should the people of his kingdom stop worshiping him and forget he exists, dwindling his power and life to a pathetic end?