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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As a homesteader, I can say 100% Halsin needs some serious help. He is all about "nature has a balance, where all are cared for", meanwhile here I am, having to pull two drakes off one lady duck because, by nature, both will attempt to breed her as roughly as possible, even if it ends up injuring/killing her.
Also, by nature, my chickens have a strict pecking order. A good few get bullied as they are the lowest in the order. I attempted to introduce some young ladies to my less than a foot tall Sebright Rooster, and he was brutal with the bullying. I had to pull them out, he was so bad.
Nature is not a beautiful, idealistic lifestyle. It is survival of the fittest.
Perhaps Halsin needs to seriously rethink civilizations' role in nature. That we, as people of all races, differ from animals in that we can choose to rise above our basic desires and urges if we so choose. Chaotic change is normal among the wilds, but we can actually bring good change, despite however much evil is in the world.
That is our role.
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saw some art of hunter making a grimwalker of belos to cope and man am i glad the owl crew made belos into a writhing pile of goo so he doesn’t have any more bones to make grimwalkers with. like i can imagine hunter’s mental state getting bad enough somehow that he’d think to do something like that, to raise belos so he’d turn out good. and that’s the same pitfall phillip fell into when creating grimwalkers of caleb.
and damn what a cruel thing to do to a kid. to the grimwalker, hunter-his creator and probably father figure-would have created him to prove a point to himself. that someone evil in his past could have grown up to be good. that hunter could shape the grimwalker into what hunter wanted him to be. and everything the grimwalker does, he would have to wonder if phillip did the same in life, and if hunter would approve.
its the exact kind of existential crisis hunter is having in the show from being the clone of caleb. except the theoretical belos grimwalker would have to live with the fact that his ortet almost committed genocide on his entire civilization. im sure hunter would avoid being an abusive parent the way belos was. he might even be a good dad. but the act of making the grimwalker means hunter is giving the kid the same kind of trauma he struggled through. belos couldn’t accept that caleb left him, so he tried to reshape innocent kids into filling that void. if hunter creates a grimwalker, he would be doing the same with belos. he would have turned into his uncle, which to me is a very depressing way to end his story arc.
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More Shazamily/Marvel Family headcanons
Billy has a deep seated hatred for the Indiana Jones movies, there is no force on earth that can get him to watch any of the movies the whole way through
Normal magic rules don’t really apply to them in practice, they break and bend the rules a lot without realizing it. It’s one of the many perks of being champions and guardians of eternity, magic just goes with them and what they want to do
Have used spells from fantasy media’s to see if they work in real life; They do work but only for them, so each member of the Shazamily has a trump card in the form of random spells from random kids tv shows but they all use wands when they remember to just incase a spell backfires
Darla copied Star vs the forces of evil’s spells, no Fawcett villain likes admitting that they got beat by a Narwal Blast or a Warnicorn Stampede. Uses her wide array of princess and fairy wands she already has
Eugene, as seen in the first Shazam! movie, copy’s mortal combat moves and phrases. Doesn’t use a wand or a stand in for one much but uses a classic magicians wand from a magic kit he got
Billy binge watched every episode of Ben 10 and made a spread sheet of magical attacks shown in the show with Freddy to copy. Both use “Scribo in incendia” to multitask with homework and “Somus” to fall right asleep after patrol. Freddy uses his foam Wonder Woman sword and Billy just has a stick he picked up one day when he was 9 and hasn’t let go of since
Mary has copied some phrases from Sabrina the Teenage witch with varying levels of success, in part due to her not having full confidence in every attempt she makes. Bought one of those fancy wands with a gemstone at the end of them to cast spells
Pedro took a page out of Harry Potter and started using Latin to come up with his own spells. Uses whatever he has on hand as a wand, be it a pencil or the spork he was eating his lunch with
Billy has an older portable movie player he got as a hand me down gift from a foster sibling and a CD booklet with some kids movies in it that he’s held onto, its how he passed his rare instances of downtime when he was still homeless. Liked borrowing movies from local libraries to watch on it, some of the discs he actually owns are Matilda, the Night at the Museum trilogy, the Iron Giant, Tangled, Atlantis: the Lost Empire, and a CD copy of the second season of The Worlds Greatest Animal Detective; Tawky Tawny.
Freddy spends the first few years of his hero career pretending to be able bodied, constantly using his flight as a mobility aid, but decides later on to utilize a Wizards staff formed in a way to double as a crutch for him.
Followed by pidgins relentlessly. If a pidgin can go there they follow the Marvels everywhere. They’re chill, don’t steal their food or land on them, but they follow them everywhere. They all collectively blame Hermes influence as a patron god of messengers since pidgins are messenger birds (and yes it is the fault of his divine influence on them)
Billy got permission from the Wizard and other greek goddesses to have separate blessings for his sisters (Agility of Selene, Strength of Hippolyta, Stamina of Artemis, Flight of Zephyrus, Invulnerability of Aurora, and the Wisdom of Minerva) for the sole reason of keeping the influence and voices of Billy’s patrons out of their heads and away from them. (Because there’s no way in any form of hell he’s cursing Mary or Darla with Zeus to be in their heads)
They can talk to animals with the omnilinguistics the Wisdom of Solomon gives them, if anyone on the mortal plane can understand the language so can they. This has led to people seeing Captain Marvel coo back and forth with pidgins like they’re having a conversation (they’re talking about favorite snacks) and the one time he interrogated a rat through small squeaks to know which way a group of smugglers went.
Billy is an awesome gift giver, every year when the justice league has their annual white elephant on Dec 20th people pray they get their names drawn by him. He got Wally a bunch of shoes that were enchanted to not wear down from his speeding (dress shoes, running shoes, slippers, flip flops, the works), did some dimension hopping and time traveling to get a box full of Kryptonian books for Clark (including a collection of folklore with English translations so he can read a bedtime story to Jon), and a crud ton of sweets from the Funlands for J’onzz (including a giant Choco’s cookie big enough to sleep on.)
Freddy’s YouTube channel has a lot of videos of the Shazamily testing their powers based on comments, it has 2.3 million followers and the ad revenue they all rake in goes to helping out with the expenses at home and buying a lot of games at a 50/50 split
They are literally the only group of child vigilantes that are home in time for curfew/bed consistently, they’re more daytime heroes. The only exception being Billy when he has to go off world or to another dimension for League/Champion business but he always tells the Vasquez’s about them so they can call him in sick from school
Billy worked out an agreement with Harley Quinn so that him and his siblings could have semi-regular therapy appointments (hero/villain work permitting), she works her degree every other Tuesday and in return she gets Superman style flights whenever she wants and access to magical plant stuff for Ivy. Victor and Rosa worried about their kids mental health with all the responsibility and horrors of hero life but had no idea how to start getting them professional support for it so they’re glad Billy was able to find someone already in that life who could help and isn’t likely to endanger their identities.
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