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#pay attention to your characters
royalarchivist · 3 months
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[ Volume warning at the beginning ]
Quackity: LUZUUUUU!!!
Luzu: [Shifts happily]
Quackity: Luzu! Luzu!!!! Luzu, I love you very much! Luzu I love you very much!
Luzu: [In chat] Hello Quackity how are you
Quackity: You don't speak, you aren't speaking, [he's] speaking in English, [he's] speaking English. He speaks in English, he speaks in English! [He switches his translation box]
Luzu: [In chat] Como estas? [How are you?]
Quackity: No no, I speak English too! I speak English too, I'm so good– wait. ...Hello? Are you not able to speak to me? Are you not able to speak to me?
Luzu:
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[ Translation: i speak anything ]
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lord-squiggletits · 2 months
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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...
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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.
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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
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batcavescolony · 6 months
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Demigod: it really sucks that we never get to see or interact with our godly parent.
Other Demigod: yeah, I'd be nice to meet them.
TOA era Apollo kids: *see their dad every once in awhile* ... Yeah
Dionysus kids: *Dad is at camp* ..yeah
Percy: *has been to his Dads home* ...mhm
Nico: *literally has a room in the underworld*
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givehimthemedicine · 3 months
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free miracle cure for some of the takes & winning poll options that've been on my dash lately. get well soon
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mikesbasementbeets · 10 months
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"if they don’t tell me explicitly that mike was never attracted to el then that means he was"
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[removes hands while kissing]
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[unresponsive to kiss & "i love you," eyes wide open]
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[the sunglasses stay on during kiss, also get off me you're crushing the flowers i carefully placed right in between us]
[no fear]
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[one fear]
"idk if they don’t make it clear to me that he doesn’t love el romantically then that means he does"
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"they haven't given any indication yet that he doesn't like girls..."
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"yeah, mike has definitely shown attraction to girls"
[image not found]
...
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black-and-yellow · 9 months
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How much would it cost to see post lov Loudspeaker with all of his scars? I have shiny rocks and seashells
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Doesn't take much to convince me to draw Loudspeaker. But give me your coolest rock.
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hamartia-grander · 7 days
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Idk how to say that acknowledging Larian's racism regarding Wyll but then turning around and saying he's bland/poorly written is still racism on your part. You're still refusing to pay attention to his character and you're still just dusting off your hands and repeating what everyone else says because you can't take two seconds to actually see him as more than the hero trope the way you delve into the other characters.
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yea-baiyi · 5 months
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tgcf makes the argument that as a crazy devoted stan you might actually know your idol better than their actual friends do
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melon-official · 6 days
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She wails as though a part of her has died.
oh man. i picked up the sidestory to @just-a-carrot's five-arc horror epic a couple days ago and i'm so glad i did. i'll probably be talking nonstop and/or drawing about it for days
there's a handful of whiteboard doodles with other characters under the cut, but rly i just wanted to pay a homage to the scene that hit me the hardest... enjoy
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people who hate on nemona because she's "too yandere" and "doesn't take a no for an answer" make me wonder if they actually payed attention to her dialogues or only read those joke comics about her being obsessed with the player and always craving violence and said "yeah this is her personality now". or just hate women.
#''she's too yandere!'' you don't know what yandere means then#''she doesn't accept a no for an answer!'' she repeatedly accepts you refusing to battle her through the whole game#she just gets insistent when you say you don't passed the league test#(because she truly believed you were so strong you would pass easily)#and when you tell her you don't want to be rivals (she though you liked battling her and wanted a friend to share her passion with)#''she's so weird!'' my brother in arceus this is pokémon EVERYBODY is weird as fuck#''she only talks about battling!'' and arven almost always talk about food and kieran always talked about ogerpon in kitakami#but i've seen nobody complaining about these two#wonder why#and nemona talks about other thinks beside battling!#she has Lore (TM) too#she has health issues despite her trying to shrug them off#she lived in a very rigid upper-class family where she's implied to have felt repressed#her own family pays more attention to her sister because she's going to be the heir of their corporation leaving nemona neglected#she doesn't have friends because her passion to pokémon battles alineates her from her classmates#if she defeats you in your first battle she gets depressed and says sorry because she believes she scared you away from being her friend#she's such a complex character but her background is more subtle than with arven or penny (and locked behind the postgame)#it saddens me that she's flanderized by literally everyone (even gamefreak/tpc in sv's epilogue)#pokemon#ramblings
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spacedlexi · 2 months
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i just think a "friended/romanced + saved + trust aj" violet does such a good job rounding out the plot and characters of S4 and i dont say that lightly
she walls people off out of fear just like S3 clem did and learned to grow out of through the compassion of others. feeling like she could have done more to save minnie being what initially makes her step up to lead, but her accepting her love for clem (and clem choosing to save her) is what leads to her Truly accepting the school and everyone inside it as her Home and gives her something to fight for ("i tried my damnedest not to care about either of you. and i still couldnt tell you why." "i know where youre coming from. after losing so many people, sometimes its easier to keep everyone at arms length." "and then you wonder why you fight so hard to stay alive. i dont wonder anymore."). this being the reasoning behind violets detachment from the school, as well as a negative home life impacting her idea of what a home even was. but together they turn ericson from a prison into the home theyve BOTH been looking for, renaming it together, and envisioning it for the future together. the two of them understand each other deeply, from what theyve lost to how its affected them and the poor ways theyve decided to react to it. but through their support of the other, they BOTH get to evolve into more relaxed and confident versions of themselves, who know Exactly what theyre fighting for
her troubled relationship with brody and getting to learn more about what happened with the twins/violets reaction to it and how she ultimately blames herself/brodys guilt about her part in it and how she misses violet. getting the chance to mend that relationship before its too late. the 3 of them becoming closer because of it. and getting to develop clems friendship with brody leads to a more impactful moment later in the basement
her relationship with tenn reflecting clems relationship with aj, in the way they both made the decision to look after their respective boys after their primary guardians died (ajs parents, tenns sisters). both of them can understand the responsibilities they have taken upon themselves, and how hard it can be to do right. the 4 of them become a tight knit group quickly. especially in EP2 as vi supports clem while tenn supports aj through the marlon fiasco
her confused relationship with minerva introducing interesting conflict both within her relationship with clem (who has her own personal conflict with minerva, which vi still ties into through her relationship with both minnie and tenn) and the over arching plot, which has themes of learning when to let someone go because they are no longer who they once were (clem and lilly "we were family once", mitch about ms martin "you get all caught up in who people used to be, and you cant deal with whats in front of you", violet about minnie "the real minnie? shes been gone this whole time and i have to stop mourning her")
having a saved violet on the boat expanding the conversation with minerva about her motivations with the delta. violet apologizing for never looking for her, minnie saying she knows she would have but that its too late now, so sure this is just the way things have to be. getting to hear minnie say "you can be rewarded, just like i am", giving us insight into her character. and clem getting the last word before she rams the door down, her and violet fighting minnie Together. and violet saves clems life, making the Choice to shoot minerva, which in and of itself is a huge moment for violets character in regards to her relationship with both minnie And clem
and aj shooting tenn on the bridge brings things full circle, by putting violet in the same position louis was in EP2, where aj has killed the most important person to her, in an effort to save her life, and now she must reckon with those feelings the same way louis had to about marlon. not so easy now is it violet? ("so youre mad, but sad" "can i be that for a while?" "yeah, its ok")
just... ough... violets whole character just fits into Everything so well, but in a way that elevates the characters and plots around her, while also developing her into her own
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veinsfullofstars · 2 months
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🌌 Memories of wonder 🌌
(ID: Kirby series fanart, Childhood Friends AU, of the kids - Bow Dee, Meta, Dedede, and Para Dee respectively - seated side-by-side in their winter garb on top of a snowy hill dotted in footprints, their backs to the viewer, gazing up at the green-blue waves of an aurora glowing overhead across the starry night sky. END ID.)
Part 1 | Part 2 (you're here!)
Sketch started some time in 12/23, render started 01/08/24, finished 03/13/24.
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welcometoteyvat · 1 month
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the only thing i took away from hsr 2.1 is that march is gay
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y-rhywbeth2 · 3 months
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"Bhaal's essence left me as I died… and that which has been given to me now maintains my mortality only. Some might still consider me a Bhaalspawn, but it is solely a matter of history and memory." A few days and a conversation with a bloodthirsty dwarf later: “In the cold nether realm while I waited to be reborn I sorely missed the crimson spray and the hot tang of death on my tongue.” "Even after my resurrection, violent rage pollutes my tainted blood. As [my sibling] can surely attest, it is a constant struggle to keep our bloodlust in check."
Great news! Bhaalspawn canonically keep the urge to kill the shit out of people after having Bhaal torn out of them! Thank you again, Sarevok!
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proteesiukkonen · 5 months
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Opted for doodling during a long meeting.
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yuzuna123 · 4 months
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"Kazuya has been in charge of his Devil since Tekken 4! he's an irredeemable asshole kazujun shippers are delusional blah blah blah"
no
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