i hate it HATE IT so much when asoiaf fans go "grrm finish the fucking books already" and "lmao we'll never get twow" and "what if grrm dies and doesn't finish the story" and if i see this shit one more time i'll start biting people, because SHUT UP LET HIM COOK let him take his time!! this is so mean-spirited like here's the author that gave us so so many wonderful heartwrenshing captivating profoundly human stories but instead of being supportive and grateful you bitch and moan about how long it takes him to write more???
people on tumblr make such long post that analyze every word in these books, because literally every word is so thought-out it's either a foreshadowing or a subtle but real reflection of the pov character's constantly evolving inner life or has some otherwise deeper meaning to it; and the same thoughtfulness goes for every chapter, every plot point, every character interaction! and then the same people wonder why it takes grrm so long to write it?? seriously??
and if you ever attempted to write anything real and sincere you know that it doesn't come easy. and all the emotional complexity and depths that make characters feel so human and their struggles so real peaking at "ned loves my hair" and "i dreamed of you" and "he wondered what it's like to have a home" and every line that is so simple but so sharp and raw it makes me wanna pull my hair scream cry sob throw up - none of it comes easy!! it takes time and effort and emotional work to write like this! of course it takes long!
not to mention that grrm's in his seventies and likely has some health issues that take time and energy to manage and that he doesn't mention publically because why would he? ALSO when you get older you tend to get tired more easily! and need more time to rest! like, that's why people usually retire in their sixties. but grrm keeps working! ALSO have you never experienced a burn out or a creative block after years of working on the same thing??
ALSO one of asoiaf's main theme is that any person in any circumstances deserves empathy and understanding!!
so while we all are waiting for next books it's so important to show our amazing beloved author respect and support and gratitude! all say thank you, thank you george rr martin and please take care and take your time!!
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God, imagine being Zelda in Echoes of Wisdom
-You get captured by your kingdom's worst enemy, thought to be merely a legend by those who know of him at all
-You're stuck in some ruined temple with him, trapped in a magical crystal, for who knows how long waiting for who knows what
-Eventually a boy in green clothes and a blue cloak you've never met before shows up and fights the Demon King and wins, like a scene from the fairy tales Impa told you when you were a little girl
-and then something goes horribly wrong, and the boy is sinking, and he looks up at you without a hint of fear on his face and uses his final act to free you
-and just like that you're alone, in the dark, with nothing to do but leave the temple as fast as you can before the rift swallows you too
-you pick up his cloak as you run
-once you're out and your father's men have found you, it sinks in; that boy, that hero, gave everything to save your kingdom
-to save you
-and you don't even know his name
-you get back to the castle and reunite with your father, only for another rift to appear and take him from you too
-and then some thing wearing his face manages to trick everyone into thinking you're the one behind this new crisis and you're trapped again
-(in the darkest corner of your mind you can't help but wonder if you really do share some of the blame somehow. you're the only one who survived the very first rift, after all)
-a strange creature appears before you, offering to help in exchange for your aid, and of course you're wary because you've never seen anything like Tri before and her power seems far too similar to whatever made the imposters that have taken over your kingdom to not be connected somehow, but given the circumstances you really have no choice but to trust her for now
-you sneak your way through the bowels of your own home, past your own soldiers, and at the very end your luck seems to run out... only for Impa, loyal to the end, to jump in and rescue you
-she gives you a disguise and a map and tells you to go to a village to the south where you'll be safe, and she stays behind to cover your tracks
-as you emerge into the sunlight, even with Tri beside you and Impa on your side, you feel terribly, painfully alone
-you make your way to the village, and even though they have every reason to be suspicious of a strange hooded girl and her even stranger companion, especially with their home and families ravaged by the rifts, you're met with kindness and open arms
-Many of them tell you of a boy named Link, who's kind and helpful and so painfully shy that he barely says a word, and how some time ago he ran off on a journey with nothing but an old sword on his back and a strange feeling that someone needed his help
-As you hear their stories, it slowly dawns on you that the boy they're talking about is your hero, and the guilt settles heavy in your gut
-Well. At least you know his name now
-You continue on towards the very temple where this all started, pushed forward both by Tri's urging and your own determination to get to the bottom of all this, and eventually you find yourself in a nightmarish realm of stolen land and lost souls
-You reach the temple and brave its many tricks and traps, until halfway through you're met with the cruelest of jokes; Link, your lost Hero, looking at you with cold, hate-filled eyes the color of blood
-You have no choice but to fight him, and as you do it soon becomes clear that this is yet another imposter
-Eventually you defeat it, and its sword, Link's Sword, is left behind
-As you pick it up, you feel Something shift, as if your spirit has touched that of another, and you look down at yourself and find that you're glowing blue and wearing an unfamiliar-yet-familiar tunic
-your hero is with you, now, or at least a piece of him, and it finally feels like maybe you really can solve this crisis
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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...
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?
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