The Point of no Return

Because I will never shut up about the Hardeen arc- I really need to emphasize the importance of this moment right here. When we think of the Hardeen arc, we only ever think about the aftermath, after the lie and after the pain. But I have never thought about the before. The moments right before.

Obi-Wan takes a deep breath, he brings his lightsaber to his chest and he gathers himself. He has to take a moment to think about what he's about to do.

This is a complete turn of feelings from when we see him wittingly ask how his funeral was, it's that simple and easy commentary that makes them all think this was easy for him to do. He shoves down what he's feeling right here and instead he jokes and laughs. He's fun and easy, he's funny, he's great, but he's not, he's not, he's in a lot of pain and he hurt everyone close to him in the worst way. Obi-Wan would never hurt them, but he has, and he'll never be forgiven.

He made this choice for the greater good, but the greater good is seldom so. It's in this moment we understand his full awareness of the deception he is about to undergo, how there is no forgiveness for the action he is about to commit, how after all this is over, Obi-Wan cannot expect forgiveness and understanding because this is for the greater good, this is for the Jedi and all they protect.

This isn't a choice for Obi-Wan. It is an assignment to a Jedi Master. Attachment is forbidden, become a part of the cosmic force, and the galaxy will benefit from your sacrifice. But the undercurrent of remorse is there, and all the people he left behind will never forgive Obi-Wan for dying.

So, Obi-Wan holds his lightsaber to his chest because it is his life, it's a silent goodbye to who he is because of what he is. He chooses the Jedi and that choice kills him. It's in that moment that he says goodbye to Anakin and Ahsoka, to Cody and himself. His identity, his lightsaber, are about to no longer exist. Obi-Wan would willingly sacrifice who he is for the sake of the Jedi but that doesn't mean it is easy for him to do. So he holds his lightsaber close because he's not becoming a part of the cosmic force, he's becoming something much worse.

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?

"according to the law aegon should be the king" according to the law aegon should have been castrated and sent to the wall

It's them the boys my love's the lights if my life the yees to my haws my oTP-

I can't even begin to explain why I love them for me they just WORK-

John has been alone for so long, stewing in his regrets and failures as an older brother. He needs a gentle figure in his life to assure him that he matters and that he deserves love because despite all the mistakes he's made he's working to change

Trollex doesn't have much screen time, but he strikes me as a kind, gentle, and loving. He's open to the inclusion of other genres of Trolls, and strives to be a better King because of it.

In my personal headcanons, Trollex doesn't have a good relationship with his family because of how willing he is to let other Trolls in their kingdom. So he's lived most of his life trying to apease someone who was never gonna give him a chance, unless he went back to their old ways.

But when he meets John, someone who is unabashedly himself, he falls hard. And John falls right back, falling into the arms of this gentle giant who's more than willing to tell him how much he's loved over and over again.

These two are cheesy as hell and can often be found with their foreheads pressed together, whispering sweet nothings to one another.

They found each other late in life, but by god they're gonna make the most of it.

I could go on for hours about these two and frankly I already have so imma cut it off here and just say these two are without a doubt my OTP and I can't stop thinking about them-

i have spilled so much ink about gawyn but really i only need 2 passages to explain why he is Like That

1. My blood shed before hers; my life given before hers...That was the oath he had taken when barely tall enough to peer into Elayne's cradle. ... Gareth Bryne had had to explain to him what it meant, but even then he had known he had to keep that oath if he failed at everything else in his life. (LOC prologue)

2. From Morgase, Queen of Andor, to her beloved son, Gawyn. May he be a living sword for his sister and Andor. (ACOS prologue)

like yeah, no wonder he does what he does in AMOL. people will be like "gawyn is so stupid for not thinking about the fact that his death would hurt egwene" as if he's being maliciously stupid and careless, when in fact, he has such little self-worth that he genuinely does not consider himself a valuable human being whose loss would impact anyone or anything. his life given before hers. a living sword. this has been his mindset since toddlerhood and nobody ever noticed it enough to try and counteract it. gawyn is exactly what rand would have been like at the last battle if he hadn't had a mental health intervention.

i cant believe people still look at criston and boil what happened between him and rhaenyra down to him being a crybaby… i thought we had progressed as a society and developed at least some critical thinking skills

what do u think is jaime’s biggest flaw

oh he has a bunch

Biggest one: his fear of truly confronting things. his cowardice (the brave knight is deconstructed)

Arrogance is a given. His obsession with perception and his ego. His destructive dissociative tendencies and forced detachment. His self delusion and cynicism he uses to enable acts that his conscience knows are wrong. He also often falls into the trap of cynicism when he expects quick results and does not get them. When he makes choices to become better and people keep dehumanizing him and expect the worst from him he gets super frustrated and petty (less so atp, just compare his behavior to Brienne’s reaction when he gives her Oathkeeper and she misreads his intensions vs the gate not being opened for him in ADwD) His misogynistic and classist blindspots. Him weighing his values wrong even when his conscience is screaming at him (multiple examples of this, e.g Jeyne Poole: “her eyes were sad and wary”, “then why do you sound so frightened?”: vows from so many vows speech in conflict: obey your father vs protect the innocent. He obviously chooses wrong. George was telling us the way he changed by the end of ASoS is not enough he is not where he needs to be yet) His desperate want to make his “so many vows” compromise instead of making the correct choice and drawing the hard line he already did at 17. His desire to become Goldenhand the Just (just a mess frankly, gold tends to have negative symbolism in his story, his goldenhand also is associated with violence and is his desperate attempt to recreate his old self, his phantom fingers — again, has to be addressed in a dream.) While we are here also his need for his subconscious to literally repeatedly slap sense into him (his dreams addressing things he refuses to consciously address because it would hurt to do so). His tendency to repeat his father’s dogma when he is viscerally aware that that man is the worst man oat (Lannister sibling parallels! uwu!), unwittingly contradicting it in every way, then trying again. His desire to pursue glory as well as honor (and whatever they mean in the subtext) when the symbolism is very clearly established that the two cannot be achieved simultaneously for him, he cannot ride two horses at once. It might be that both get turn down at the end in some form. The honor related to the KG, and the glory related to duty to house Lannister. I think that conflict is getting picked apart right now with the choice he makes in ADwD to abandon his position/hunting down the brotherhood any kind of glory tying to house lannister pursuit etc to follow an injured and suspicious Brienne alone (mind you he was also riding Honor in that chapter, ntm the half moon). I think both honor and glory are very abstract and are rooted in some form in his desire for love as well (honor and glory paid their parts but in the end it was for cersei is something he reflects on) but “the things we do for love” has to be something not destructive and prejudiced. He is disillusioned by both honor and glory, especially after aerys. “What is honor?” A horse. Like deep down he knows. His arc in AFfC-ADwD was about about taking apart and looking at all of these flaws imo, put him in a spot to make his choice in adwd. and all that matters are choices. He is also an asshole.

(Mightget some hate for this but...)

What if I compared Rhaenyra to Cersei hmm?

Even better what if I compared Alicent to Jamie

What if I did

What if I did

Every fic with both Zhongli and Xiao is Xiao being comforted by Zhongli, what I really need is to see Zhongli fall apart for the first time ever and Xiao helping him while internally panicking to the moon and back.

finwë & aulë ❤️‍🔥 

{tfo}

so am i right saying that men in the realm were opposite the idea to put woman on the throne - not because it was against the law because it was stated many times in books that they may have stronger claims than their male relatives - and that's why visenya, rhaena, aerea, daenerys, rhaenys and laena didn't get their chance, that's why the men were weird the fck out when viserys called rhaenyra his heir disinheriting daemon but y'all say that after aegon's birth he was the rightfull heir cause of some law you state does exist (also some calling the law "son before daughter, daughter before brother" as if that wouldn’t mean that rhaenyra was the heir since her birth all along before daemon)

and you - and the westerosi "historians" - call rhaenyra the usurper or pretender for sitting on the throne acknowledging at the same time that she was supported by many houses - the whole north, arryn, velaryon, beesburry, caswell, fell etc - mostly leaded by men

so y'all really try to say that rhaenyra targaryen was a woman AND a usurper in the realm who refused the crown to female heirs for years even though she was supported by the very same men that freaked out hearing she's the heir of viserys, how the fck a woman in westeros had any chance to usurp the throne if she wasn't acknowledged publicly by most (ekhem every ehkem ekhem) of the houses as truthful heir? how?? who would support a pretender woman against male heir in westeros? it was a male pretender against female rightful ruler all the way

being half done with s1 of SNW reminded me how the writers didn’t really disappoint me in s1 (there might be episodes I enjoyed less than others, but that’s just my taste and sometimes even how I felt that day, overall the characterization - which is the most important for me - was consistent and the characters all fun), how they more or less even validate my own readings of TOS (especially with like T’Pring, but also other small things)... and how ever since Discovery, I was never ever disappointed with their interpretation of Spock and his interpersonal relationships

which is now unfortunately leading me to have more trust in s2 too

and I really don’t want to be disappointed

wotseries said that per a casting call there was a baby needed for the caemlyn palace filming and i just went "oh that's gawyn of course"

Gotham E1xS3

"The eye of the tiger and the wind in your nostrils, Sir Bruce! A nice sword fight gets our blood up, dunnit?"

quinlan: horny gaze maul: he's eyeing me up like i'm his prey. he is a test sent by my master or by the dark side itself. his intentions are clear; he is here to kill me.

there's something about hal's last words being his green lantern oath