AG AU where Billy is recruited, ignores Jerry and hangs out with those people who look like the gremlin in his head (who apparently logged off their mind otherwise the plot wouldn't work).
The shady lady Jeralt always told them to watch out for has a strange hat, but she talks to them and even said she enjoys spending time with them, even if they don't say a thing or eat a strange fruit together. Sometimes she talks about their mom, a woman called Sitri, and recalls stories and anecdotes and Billy feels closer to the mother they never met than to Jeralt.
(then Billy felt immensely wrong and guilty, because they are the reason why Sitri isn't alive anymore and is it their fault? Jerry drunkily said Sitri died to birth them, it's as if they killed her :( - the shady and evil lady then hugs them - it's so awkward for the both of them but Billy feels so strange and they hug the evil lady back, crying for the first time, and they cry even more when the evil lady tells them Sitri would never have wanted them to feel sad about her fate because she chose their life over hers (she still doesn't tell them about the magic rock).)
The young lady who loves to talk about romance and to ask them how was the world they saw was saddened when they told her they don't like to be called Ashen Demon - so she calls them Billy, and gives them a new nickname : "Big Tuna", because they can catch a lot of fishes.
Billy found this nickname so ridiculous, but was happy to have something else, that they laughed, and from now introduced themselves as "Big Tuna".
The "not-fun" man who always frowns, well, frowns but often asks them to help him "supervise" stuff here and there - but he is different from Jeralt, because when Billy does something he thanks and congratulates them - saying it is important to convey his gratitude for the help he received through Billy's actions, which leaves Billy puzzled - what even are thanks? They grow more and more puzzled when some randoms, from kids to knights to monks to random persons thank them, and they finally ask the "not-fun" man if they could continue making people smile after the war.
Seteth is surprised, but nods : if they want, when the war will be over, they could join a place called Garreg Mach, to help and make people smile all around Fodlan.
(Jerry returns from a two weeks long mission, and sees his kid eating an inedible fruit with Rhea and her clique, sitting a on magically warmed rock, and now Billy call themselves "Big Tuna" and say they want to make people smile by helping not by killing anymore, just like their Mother did before, and even now after, her death.)
Post AG when the war is over : Billy joins Garreg Mach and learns Faith magic to heal people (without charging them a fee!) and becomes the fishing instructor of Garreg Mach, thus becomes popular with the students who leanr how to focus and how "it is important to rest. And please, try not to drop your belongings on the floor."
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Something else that makes me sympathetic to Pharma's situation is like. Idk if there's an actual term for this or if someone smarter and more academic wrote it about some real life context that actually matters.
But, so we've already established among Pharma stans that the circumstances at Delphi were blackmail/torture with no real way out that wouldn't involve Pharma being responsible for people getting killed (either killing patients for the deal or having everyone die bc he failed his end of the deal).
And I feel like while "he's still in the wrong because he killed people" is part of it, another sort of implicit part is the idea that Pharma should've been willing to take more personal risk, maybe even risk dying? I mean, Ratchet does ask "why didn't you just detonate it near the DJD" (to which Pharma responds that he did try to get Sonic and Boom to do it, but they refused) so like
Idk I feel like we do have this social notion of martyrs as a very romantic ideal, people you can praise for being so brave and strong and righteous that they ended their own lives for their cause, while you can also coo about how sad and tragic it is that dying is what it took for them to do the right thing. But at the same time I feel like in reality, having an expectation that people become martyrs is kind of a toxic social norm bc like. It's very easy to demand that others sacrifice their lives for some Ultimate Moral Good when you yourself aren't experiencing the same hardships as they are. And ultimately it is kind of fucked up to tell someone "the moral thing you should've done was risk your life/kill yourself" because asking someone to pay their life to do the right thing is no small request. And sure, the typical response would be to call them a "coward" for caring more about saving their own skin instead of doing the right thing... but again, death is a really scary thing and self-preservation is a really strong instinct, so it kind of feels like having this binary view of "you're either a Brave Hero who sacrifices your life for everyone else or a Dirty Coward who's too scared of dying to do what's right" is kind of fucked up?
I guess the best way to describe it is that if someone willingly gives up their life as a sacrifice to others, it can be a noble thing because it's a choice they made willingly, but if it becomes a Moral Standard that in order to be a Good Person you have to be unafraid of throwing your life away and if you aren't willing to die you're a Cowardly Bad Person, that's when it becomes toxic.
Idk, I guess how this ties back to Pharma is that he was never in a position where he expected to make these kinds of moral decisions/ultimatums. He's a doctor who doesn't even get into combat, his job is to heal and not to kill, he's behind the front lines in a hospital that's supposed to be a safe, neutral place for him to heal people. So in the face of suddenly having a "murder people on behalf of me, or I murder everyone you swore to protect" ultimatum thrust upon him, I understand why Pharma wasn't """"""""""brave enough"""""""""" to "do the right thing" (whatever that would've been in the case of Delphi). You could argue that maybe a frontliner soldier accepted the burden of possibly dying for their cause and they've become used to it as someone who lives that reality every single day, but I feel like for Pharma, who's a doctor and a protected non-combatant (from what we can tell), that sort of risking of his life/living with the fact his life could be snuffed out any day isn't something he would've been prepared for at all.
And for me personally, from an outsider's perspective, it strikes me as kind of unethical to go "oh well he should've just detonated the bomb himself even if it killed him" bc again, there's a difference between witnessing a moral conundrum as a bystander versus being the person living with it and being under time pressure where it's do-or-die. Just as part of my personal standards, I feel like death is such a huge consequence/burden of someone's actions (literally you are no longer alive, any potential you had left is cut short, you cease to exist on this plane) that it feels rather callous to go "Well you should've just been willing to die for your beliefs if you really cared that much!!!"
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your Amelia analysis post is so on point aah
and I also feel like a lot of people overlook that Amelia dies in ep 1 and would have definitely motivated her actions in ep 7 😿
THANK U!!!
YEAH.... i think it gets overlooked largely bc it was Fast, rather than drawn out like liams death was, to the point where it looks kind of like it even confused amelia when she was revived- but no matter what, no matter how slow or fast it was, she died and she KNOWS it, and i dont inagine someone just walks away from that
similar to how liam , in s2, seems to kinda just... lean into some feeling of already having Died, amelia comes to REALLY have complicated feelings on her own life bc she died too. ive seen ppl talk abt her relationship w life pre-one, and i agree w it a lot, but a lot of it doesnt even include the fact that. i imagine dying has a deep impact on how one sees their own identity. in ep 7, i think the guilt was Likely the biggest factor, but that feeling of having died also seems to have just been building and building and DEF had smth to do w it. i think it all comes to a head during the 7 months, leading her to sort of imagine her before one AS being dead. before that, i think the gradually increasing ease of being agitated is REALLY impacted by seeing the plane as a place that she Died At, but during the 7 months that stress turns from 'i need to get out of here bc i dont wanna Be dead' to 'who i was before this already died, so this is just life now'
theres also the fact that i think maybe, it was hard to consider getting the others out before herself, because up until then, she WAS the only person to have died. but after liam drowns, i imagine it... makes her not forget that she died, too, but think that it was irrelevant, because it was fast and his death wasnt, which makes all of this just ADD to her guilt. i dont think it SHOULD illegitimize her own death. brcause she still DIED, but given that ep 6 definently impacted her in terms of giving her so, so much, guilt, it looks to have made her feel like what happened to her was irrelevant in comparison to him :(
to her, she already died, and she couldnt even save liam from dying, too. the least she could do at this point was to stop anything else from happening to him
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i’ll stop talking about this mf eventually but like okay. i hate being taken care of. 99% of the time, i HATE being taken care of. but i am also not naturally skilled at social stuff, like i’ve learned and i can do it and i’m good at it now, but—iiiii hate to admit it—but i’ve always wanted to be with someone who can like. take the driver’s seat, socially. and Bookstore just knows exactly how to shine the spotlight on me in a group setting. sometimes i get so overwhelmed taking everything in that i forget to talk even when i have relevant things to add! but they know just when to say Oh al said/did/made me watch/read/listen to xyz, and then give me the space to elaborate. or they’ll be more subtle and say like [Nearby person who likes something i like], have you seen/do you know about [specific thing they know i love] and it’s. gosh it’s really nice. also they are very big and warm. gosh
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