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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Hi. I just had an idea about temporally misplaced Danyal Al Ghul.
Clockwork yoinked him after he was seriously injured and patched him up. Basically saved him. And then yeeted him to the past to be adopted by the Fentons.
So by the time Danny and Damian have a reunion Danny is in his late 20s at most, early 20s at the very least. And he is most definitely a shapeshifting magical eastern dragon with a cult and all that.
I do not make anything having to do with Danny being related to the Al Ghuls.
However
This gives me the foundation to do such a thing.
Alright, so we would need to find a reason why Clockwork would even want to help Danny in any sort of capacity since he wasn't being pushed to kill him because of the observants.
But what if the reason was because he needed someone to beat some sense into (and I am both sorry and not at all sorry for this) his husband turned tyrant turned sleeper soon into the future. Since in a few timelines Danny does beat Pariah Dark he just, decided to push him onto that path.
The perfect opportunity presented itself when Danny was heavily injured in a battle between brothers to decide the true heir, to which both was heavily injured actually, and yoinked him away, patched him up, and left it to the LoA to assume he was just dead after his body disappeared.
So then, following the timeline he foresees where he fought against Pariah, gently and carefully guided him along the timestream (For which to prevent the notice of other Masters of times) to a few years prior and landed him in the care of the Fentons.
Over the years he did gently nudge things here and there to have the Fenton's views on ghosts changing slowly, but surely, as thanks to the boy for unknowingly helping him.
Oh, and avoiding a disastrous future, he guesses.
Everything followed along with his plan, slowly coming to fruition until the boy knocked some sense into his husband, to which made him the new king of the Ghost Zone after the Observants deemed Pariah unfit to rule beyond this point anymore, and as a boon because he was unable to have the Crown and ring in Pariah's possession (given to Clockwork to watch over, so as to not have a repeat of Pariah Dark), he was granted the ability to turn into an eastern dragon at will.
Occasionally he sent the boy back into the past to right some wrongs, avoid disaster, and to occasionally collect the soon-to-be Duke after he found himself in the past. Though he does find himself (and his husband) amused at seeing the boy slowly having a cult built in his name.
Danny's honestly been living the good life, no longer being expected to succeed the League of Assassins and leaving it up to his twin, he was adopted by a new family who, while a bit eccentric was amusing nonetheless, and they did become a true, proper family after his reveal went exceedingly well!
He was 25 now, and decided to take a break from both his kingly duties, and Amity Park, his parents pushed him to take this as a well-deserved vacation and, since Jazz was also in Gotham, he could drop by and say hi to her!
Danny was a bit miffed about leaving the inner-workings of the Ghost Zone to Vlad, more so that it's him than anything. But he did at the very least trust the Duke's skill in making everything go as smoothly as possible and having him consumed in paperwork would stop his brooding over being unable to find that guy, he had a one-nighter with.
(He's honestly surprised anyone would do that, but he guesses people have... interesting tastes. Also, a brooding phoenix, to his displeasure, was far worse than a phoenix trying to woo his mother.)
So he stopped by Gotham, said hi to sister and decided to crash at her place for a while. Wandered around Gotham, seeing the sights, tasting the food, talking to people.
A very good vacation, in his books.
So now what was he supposed to do, when he found his vacation interrupted by what was undoubtedly his twin along with the goddamn Wayne's showing up in his sister's apartment.
They gave him a jumpscare of a lifetime, honestly. But also couldn't they do this somewhere else? Like, a coffee shop, perhaps?
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Jamie would 100% make Roy a dating app profile sometime after the Keeley rejecting both of them thing to try to help him move on and meet people when clearly he’s refusing to get back out there organically and he’d think he’s being so helpful and generous and the best wingman ever. He’d handpick what he considers the sexiest pictures he can find and put a bunch of shit Roy would never say thinking he’s being accurate and helpful and not even taking the clear opportunity to make a joke account to embarrass him or anything when he easily could have just made fun of him and chosen the worst pictures possible instead
And then he would be SO offended when it doesn’t go well when Roy finds out about it and is not properly appreciative at all
Roy thinks it’s Jamie’s account when he starts showing Roy girls like what do you think of her and asking him way too many questions when Roy has no interest in participating and has no idea why the fuck Jamie seems incapable of swiping without trying to get Roy’s opinions first. Meanwhile, Roy’s giving one word answers at first and then increasingly trying to brush him off when he doesn’t stop and then he’s just flat out like “Choose your own dates and leave me the fuck out of it” and Jamie’s like “Nah, this is your account. You should have a say” and instead of being grateful and appreciative and thanking Jamie for being oh so generous with his time and energy, Roy just scowls at him and growls out “You did not make a fucking Tinder profile for me” and Jamie just smirks and decides now is not the right moment yet to mention that he actually made him accounts on like three different apps because he wasn’t sure which Roy would like best
Roy barks at him to delete it and Jamie’s all whiny like “Come on, I spent a lot of time on these and you haven’t even considered it. Plus, even if you’re not ready to date someone yet, you’d still be less miserable to be around if you at least found someone to shag in the meantime”
And Roy’s like “Delete it. I don’t want a fucking Tinder profile.” And Jamie looks at him confused for a moment and then seems to have an epiphany as he goes “Oh, do you want a Grindr one instead? Hold on a second” and he flips to a different app and Roy’s too busy being baffled by the fact that Grindr is already on Jamie’s phone and that he’s having to sign out of his own account to try to make one for Roy to even stop him before he’s already trying to sign up for a new account and Roy goes “That’s not what I meant. I don’t want any dating app”
And Jamie pauses his typing and turns and looks at him so skeptically and so judgily and suddenly somehow Roy is trying to fight for his life trying to defend why he’s not looking for some random stranger to date or fuck around with
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In dc au there isn’t this one big, climactic, movie moment of sonic and shadow getting together.
when, where and how it happened is a complete mystery, it just happened one day and even then their entire situation is so confusing for people to understand cuz they’re so Like That, that no one even knows they’re dating anyway
Like they’re rivals but they’re also allies on occasion, they’ve tried to kill each other more than once, Sonic keeps stuff at his apartment, Shadow gave Sonic a potted plant for his birthday, Sonic dangled Shadow of a building and left him for Batman after a heist, Shadow thinks clowns are stupid yet lets Sonic hang around, etc.
They’re not what you’d typically expect from a romantic relationship, not even close, so no one really gets what’s going on there but their honestly too scared to ask
But Silver knows. He’s the only one who recognised what was going on with them as soon as he first saw them interact in the present.
He hates it. He hates so much
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