you're in the habit of denying yourself things.

if someone asked you directly, you would say that you love a little treat. you like iced coffee and getting the cookie. you drink juice out of a fancy cup sometimes, and often do use your candles until they gutter out helplessly.

but you hesitate about buying the 20 dollar hand mixer because, like. you could just use your arms. you weren't raised rich. you don't get to just spend the 20 dollars (remember when that could cover lunch?), at least - you don't spend that without agonizing over it first, trying to figure out the cost-benefits like you are defending yourself in front of a jury. yes, this rice cooker could seriously help you. but you do know how to make stovetop rice and it really isn't that hard. how many pies or brownies would you actually make, in order to make that hand mixer worthwhile?

what's wild is that if the money was for a friend, it would already be spent. you'd fork over 40 without blinking an eye, just to make them happy. the difference is that it's for you, so you need to justify it.

and it sneaks in. you ration yourself without meaning to - you don't finish the pint of ice cream, even though you want to. the next time you go to the store, you say ah, i really shouldn't, and then you walk away. you save little bits of your precious things - just in case. sometimes you even go so far as putting that one thing in your shopping cart. and then just leaving it there, because maybe-one-day, but not right now, there's other stuff going on.

you do self-care, of course. but you don't do it more than like, 3 days in a row. after that it just feels a little bit over-the-edge. like. you can't live in decadence, the economy is so bad right now, kid.

so you don't buy the rice cooker. you can-and-will spend the time over the stove. you can withstand the little sorrows. denial and discipline are practically synonyms. and you're not spoiled.

it's just - it's not always a rice cooker. sometimes it is a person or a job or a hug. sometimes it is asking for help. sometimes it is the summer and your college degree. sometimes it is looking down at scabbed knees and feeling a strange kind of falling, like you can't even recognize the girl you used to be. sometimes it is your handprint looking unsteady.

sometimes it is tuesday, and you didn't get fired, and you want to celebrate. but what is it you like, even? you search around your little heart and come up empty. you're so used to denying that all your desires draw a blank.

oh fuck. see, this is the perfect opportunity. if you had a mixer, you'd make a cake.

house's little laugh as wilson openly flirts with him through an MRI microphone is Doing Things to me

Out of everything that could've possibly made me want to draw I was not expecting it to be a tangled series. But... cassandra you stole my heart

“Take my hand” pages 12-15

1 - 2 - day 3 - 💙free day❤️ - 4

good morning mr detective

I feel like we never acknowledge the sheer comedy of the fact that when Wylan and Jesper help Inej take down merchers involved in the slave trade they're literally ratting out their shitty coworkers.

wayne boys do it best

Leo being put into a situation where there is absolutely no fighting, just verbal manipulation and perception games, would be amazing to witness. We see a lot in the series how good he is at subterfuge and how he uses his perception to manipulate to great effect, so it’d be so cool to really see it put to the test even more.

Manipulation is one of the most effective tactical strategies of all time, so just imagine Leo putting this skillset of his to the full test. Imagine the boys slowly get up to busting bigger and more powerful criminals, including those with networks of crime under their belt, and a simple fight isn’t enough to take them down. For criminals like this, Leo’s skills in subterfuge would be deadly.

*tosses these into a pit and bolts*

i think in general we have a tendency to dismiss early book 1 atla episodes (with a few key exceptions) because it’s clear that the show was still kind of getting its bearings and generally didn’t hit its full stride until book 2. but i think “imprisoned” in particular is really underrated as an episode, and actually does for katara what “the warriors of kyoshi” does for sokka. what i mean by that is, both episodes showcase these characters’ unique capacity for excellence: in sokka’s case, “the warriors of kyoshi” serves as our first real introduction to his scientific approach to synthesizing new information and adjusting his worldview accordingly, his capacity for growth, humility, and open-mindedness; and in katara’s case, “imprisoned” is our first demonstration of katara’s indomitable revolutionary spirit as she fights for justice and to liberate all oppressed peoples wherever she goes, her capacity to inspire others coupled with her righteous anger and unyielding belief in doing what’s right. these are traits that define each character, respectively, and they are first introduced to us through these early episodes. each episode also starts with them making a mistake (sokka misogynistically belittles the kyoshi warriors, katara naively misjudges a situation that results in haru’s arrest) that leads them to then demonstrate their unique ability to rectify it. sokka not only apologizes to the kyoshi warriors, but is then trained by suki in a way that positions him as her equal. katara not only risks her own safety to find haru, but also liberates the entire prison rig in the process.

haru is also positioned as a love interest who complements katara perfectly, much in the same way that suki is to sokka. of course, haru is not katara’s “primary” love interest in the way suki is sokka’s, but they’re both established through very similar frames, and if not for katara’s other, more prominent love interest also being the literal titular character and thus overshadowing haru (the one (mustache-less) episode wonder), i think that people would realize that katara and haru are actually pretty perfect together. (also i need to believe that they kissed offscreen in this episode. jet cannot have been katara’s first kiss that’s just tragic.) i used to be someone who dismissed haru as some boring background mustache boy, and never really paid much attention to this episode because it struggles with that sort of early book 1 forgettability (you all know what i mean), but haru is actually a really well-constructed love interest for katara, and katara just really shines in this episode in general. i mean, she literally infiltrates a labor camp, gives a beautiful, passionate speech about the necessity of resistance, supplies them with weapons, and helps them to drown their captors. so i just think that we should all have more appreciation for “imprisoned.” it’s not remotely the best episode of atla, but if you love katara (and who doesn’t), then you should really consider revisiting it.

"it's so embarrassing you like that popular thing" "oh ew that geeky/strange thing is so cringe lol" "oh it's kind of weird you get excited about that harmless shit"

dude i love how ironic and jaded you are and that's so cool and sexy of you. and i am so so glad to tell you - you won!! we all had a meeting and we decided that you won, and we are writing your name on the inside of a burger king crown. the marker smeared, sorry, but we knew any form of real effort is ugly to you. but anyway. congrats! you are officially the coolest, most ironic, most jaded person in-the-world-right-now. we would throw you a party but you would think it was totally boring - and besides, we're weird so we wouldn't have been coming. we would have brought our love of beetles and of baking and of little canapes. we would have brought our artsy videogames and pages of writing. we would have written a poem with you, our hands covered in ink, and spread out a canvas to dance on, the night so lurid and pink.

but do not worry. we will not throw the party. we will just get you a ringlight and that crown i mentioned. it is a nice crown, except for where one of us dropped it.

the vote was a really hard one because we had so many cool ironic people to pick off the shelves. all of you have hands that rot fruit, how strange is that - you can't look at something without destroying it for other people. you like it when you can squeeze a person into a pinpoint - all us small ones scampering our little feet around our ugly joys. the vote was also a hard one because we kept our voices down because you don't like it when we talk too loud. you were on your phone at the time, talking to people other than us. you are a ghoul of every moment - half in, half out, you resent us for being here without shame or embarrassment.

so good news! we have invented an island for people like you. you get to go there and speak into the air things like if you still like watching harmless twitch streamers in 2023 you're fucking boring. you will say things like liveplay podcasts are fucking ugly and it's kind of awkward they try to make everything gay. on the island we made you, all of your words will have weight. they will form in the air like icicles, large white behemoth letters that will crumple in anvils around your feet. maybe we will send someone there once in a while to sweep, but honestly you might be there for a while, alone, waiting. we are busy being outside looking for mushrooms and flapping our hands and humming. we are busy kicking our little heels while we watch cringey tv. we are busy - sorry! as an apology, we have pre-filled the island with every bland, mediocre, unscented thing we could find. the island has the texture of american cheese. the island has an ocean that never gets angry. the island is perfect for you, trust me. you will be so happy there - as happy as you can be, ironically.

we want to say we are sorry for doing harmless things that you find annoying, childish, or unappealing - but we are not sorry. we thought we could help you, because we don't mind laughing at ourselves, but it turns out you are allergic to color and noise and atmosphere, so this is the best that we can do for now. we are all making a big shirt that says i voted in the ironic monarchy. we got you one that is just a fast fashion buttondown. i am so excited for you and this island and the big life you have won. you have a cool jaded grey life and miles of irony to roam. i love you! be well.

now leave us alone.

Felix asking ‘better?’ when Oliver throws up in the maze and telling him he thinks he should go to bed, literally moments after telling Oliver he makes his blood run cold. Like he’s still looking out for him, despite everything. He can’t help it! 😭

Nick and Ellie hanging out

The ''Are you trying to romance me?'' meme but with Barnaby and Howdy

i belted this out in like a half hour flat <3 bc Yes

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 got- I can't!

Imagine being 15, you've grown up your whole life with this one belief in this one God and you were told you were Chosen by Him, for Him. And you're 15. You believe so fully in the spirit of your religion, not necessarily the word, that you want to go to a non-religious school to try and help other kids maybe find your God because you genuinely believe that could be helpful to some of them, because it's all you know, and it's helped other strangers (human trafficking victims she helped in the black pit before) so why not other kids her age? You're 15 and all you can think about is helping others. And you start thinking about your religion, and reading books, and asking questions and you come to the conclusion that maybe your God and His Father aren't actually all that great. Maybe the church you're in has done some really bad things that you can't possibly make up for. Maybe that church is still doing bad things. And then you find out your family is actually in a cult for that God, not just part of the normal church, and you suddenly have to undo all the cult shit in your brain you were raised with, while that cult stuff you know about is actually useful to your friends, like having that knowledge is helpful for them! You're 15 and you stop going home. You have no real adult supervision or carer, just your other 15 year old friends.

Imagine you're 16, you're gay and figuring that out on top of navigating your first full romantic relationship and being the sole creator and cleric to a new God that you honestly find to be very two dimensional and empty. You're on a quest to find an evil being and stop them. You nearly die. Your friends nearly die. You're 16. You're 16 and feel something calling out to you, you know it's divine because you've felt that sort of pull before, but you've never felt one like this. You find memories and hints and pieces and you figure out that the evil being you have to stop, isn't evil, she's just hurting. She's hurt and She's a God. She's your God, and she's so happy to see you, and she has so many ideas, and so many hopes.

You're 17. You've spent your rest time (summer vacation) tearing across the world chasing down and defeating another evil thing that you and your friends accidentally released in the first place. Your God is with you, you have no time for Her. No time for anything but trying to survive and stay sane. You know She's disappointed in you, but you're one person -ONE PERSON- and you're 17. You missed your birthday. again. You've saved the world; again. You're so fucking tired -like always. You're Chosen, and alone, and have no idea what to do with your life, let alone your God. You aren't very good at school, but you go to every class. You're drowning as you try to rewrite your understanding of the world from what you grew up with, having no idea how to do anything without a book and godly hand to guide you. You only ever followed before, your new God is demanding you Lead. You don't know how. You're only 17. You see your horrible, abusive parents spitting abuse and racist rhetoric at your baby brother, who you haven't seen in two years, on the front steps to your school and for the first time ever you are filled with righteous fury. Your God answers your call, not knowing what you need but so eager to help, eager for your attention, she starts talking to you but you're busy -why can't she understand that you're fucking busy? trying to not die, trying to be safe, trying to keep your friends alive, trying to navigate a world that hates you, you're 17 and you're busy goddammit just wait!- and she snaps back at you and flees. The next time you see Her, maybe an hour later, She's got a creature with Her that nearly destroyed you and your friends last year sitting in her lap, so smug to see you again.

You're 17- no, 16- no, 15 years old and you're expected to build and carry the world on your shoulders, Chosen from birth, raised a lamb to follow a Shepard, not to be followed behind. You have no one and nothing and everyone expects everything and you can't back up, you can't pause because if you do someone dies and doesn't come back. You have to be a hero, a chosen, a saint. The steps behind you crumble to dust with each step you take forward and the new one is already cracking under your weight. There are only wrong choices. There's no hand reaching for you. God, you were taught, will save and guide you. God knows best. Why is your God looking to you, a mortal human, to be saved, raised and guided? You're a child.

You're just a child.

You just want to go home, wherever that is. You thought it was your God, but She's not exactly helping you out either, is She? She's just disappointed. Like everyone else. Like you.

You're 17. You think it would have been better to never do any of this. It would have been easier to stay, blind and naive. Sometimes you think you should have stayed in heaven. Sometimes you think about the God you killed by not being good enough for it. Sometimes you lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling and pretend you don't exist for awhile. Sometimes you work your body so hard you forget it's there and your mind shuts up and you exist without being you. Sometimes you wish you never asked any questions or read any books. You're 17, but sometimes you wish you were 15, with no idea yet.

You're 17. You wish you were good enough.